“Prince Hector the Tamer of Horses he wants to see,” said the pot-belly. He laughed harshly. “So would I!”
The younger one grinned and showed a gap where a front tooth was missing.
“An emissary, eh?” Pot-belly eyed me suspiciously. “With a sword at his side and a mantle of chain mail across his shoulders. More likely a spy. Or an assassin.”
I held up my herald’s wand. “I have been sent by the High King. I am not here to fight. Take my sword and mantle, if they frighten you.” I could have disabled them both before they knew what had happened, but that was not my mission.
“Be a lot safer to ram this spear through your guts and have done with it,” said Pot-belly.
The youngster put out a restraining hand. “Hermes protects messengers, you know. I wouldn’t want to draw down the anger of the Trickster.”
Pot-belly scowled and muttered, but finally satisfied himself by taking my sword and chain mail. He did not search me, and therefore did not take the dagger strapped to my right thigh. He was more interested in loot than security.
Once Pot-belly had slipped my baldric across his shoulder and fastened my mantle under his quivering chins, the two of them led me to their chief.
They were Dardanians, allies of the Trojans who had come from several miles up the coast to fight against the invading Achaians. Over the next hour or so I was escorted from the chief of the Dardanian contingent to a Trojan officer, from there to the tent of Hector’s chief lieutenants, and finally past the makeshift horse corral and the silently waiting chariots, tipped over with their long yoke poles poking into the air, to the small plain tent and guttering fire of Prince Hector.
At each stop I explained my mission again. Dardanians and Trojans alike spoke a dialect of the Greek spoken by the Achaians, different but not so distant as to be unintelligible. I realized that the city’s defenders included contingents from many areas up and down the coast. The Achaians had been raiding their towns for years, and now they had all banded together under Trojan leadership to resist the barbarian invaders.
That was the Golden One’s aim: to have the Trojans beat back the Achaians and gain supremacy over the Aegean. Eventually they would establish an empire that would span Europe, the Middle East, and India.
If that was his goal, then mine must be to prevent it from being achieved. If Odysseus was offering a compromise that would allow the Achaians to sail away without burning Troy to the ground, then I must sabotage the offer. I felt a momentary pang of conscience. Odysseus trusted me. Or, I asked myself, had he sent me on this diplomatic mission because he could better afford to lose me than one of his own people?
With those thoughts swirling in my head, I was brought before Hector.
His tent was barely large enough for himself and a servant. A pair of armored noblemen stood by the fire outside the tent’s entrance, their bronze breastplates gleaming against the night. Insects buzzed and darted in the firelight. No slaves or women in sight. Hector himself stood at the entrance flap to the tent. He was a big man for these people, nearly my own height.
Hector wore no armor, no badge of his rank. Merely a soft clean tunic belted at the waist, with an ornamental dagger hanging from the leather belt. He had no need to impress anyone with his grandeur. He possessed that calm inner strength that needs no outward decorations.
In the flickering light of his campfire he studied me silently for a moment. Those same grave brown eyes. His face was handsome, intelligent, though there were lines of weariness around his eyes, furrows across his broad brow. Despite the fullness of his rich brown beard I saw that his cheeks were becoming hollow. The strain of this war was taking its toll on him.
“You are the man at the gate,” he said finally. His words were measured, neither surprise nor anger in them.
I nodded.
He looked me over carefully. “Your name?”
“Orion.”
“From where?”
“Far to the west of here. Beyond the seas where the sun sets.”
“Beyond Okeanus?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He puzzled over that, brow knitted, for a few moments. Then he asked, “What brings you to the plain of Ilios? Why are you fighting for the Achaians?”
“A duty I owe to a god,” I said.
“Which god?”
“Athene.”
“Athene sent you here to fight for the Achaians?” He seemed concerned at that, almost worried.
With a shake of my head, I answered, “I arrived at the Achaian camp the night before yesterday. I had never seen Troy before. Suddenly, in the midst of the fighting, I acted on impulse. I don’t know what made me do what I did. It all happened in the flash of a moment.”
Hector smiled tightly. “Battle frenzy. A god took control of your spirit, my friend, and inspired you to deeds no mortal could achieve unaided. It has happened to me many times.”
I smiled back at him. “Yes, perhaps that is what happened to me.”
“Have no doubt of it. Ares or Athene seized your spirit and filled you with battle frenzy. You could have challenged Achilles himself in such a state.”
Slaves came out of the darkness to set up chairs of stretched hides and offer fruit and wine. Following Hector’s lead, I sat and took a little of each. The quality of the Trojan wine was far superior to that of the Achaians.
“You carry the wand of a herald and say that you are here as an emissary of Agamemnon,” Hector said, leaning back tiredly in his creaking chair.
“I bring an offer of peace.”
“We have heard such offers before. Is there anything new in what Agamemnon proposes?”
I noticed that his two aides stepped closer, eager to hear what I had to say. I thought briefly of Odysseus, who trusted me. But I said: “The High King repeats his earlier offer of peace. If you will restore Helen and the fortune she brought from Sparta with her, and pay an indemnity for the costs the Achaians have incurred, Agamemnon will lead his ships away from Ilios and Troy.”
Hector glanced up at his two standing lieutenants, who muttered grimly.
Then to me he said, “We did not accept these terms when the Achaians had us penned up inside our city walls, without allies. Now that we outnumber them and have them penned in their own camp, why should we even consider such insulting terms?”
I had to make it sound at least halfway convincing, I thought. “In the view of the Achaians, Prince Hector, your success today was helped greatly by the fact that Achilles did not enter the battle. He will not remain on the sidelines forever.”
“One man,” Hector countered.
“The best warrior in the Achaian host,” I pointed out. “And his Myrmidones are a formidable fighting unit, I am told.”
“True enough,” admitted Hector. “Still, this offer of peace is no different than all the others, even though we now hold the upper hand.”
“Then what am I to tell the High King?”
Hector got to his feet. “That is not my decision to make. I command the army, but my father is still king in Troy. He and his council must consider your offer.”
I rose too. “King Priam?”
“Polydamas,” he called, “conduct this herald to the king. Aeneas, spread the word to the chiefs that we will not attack until King Priam has considered the latest peace offering from Agamemnon.”
A surge of elation swept through me. The Trojans will not attack the Achaian camp as long as I am dickering with their king! I can give Odysseus and the others a day’s respite from battle, at least.
And then I realized that this is exactly what Odysseus had planned. The King of Ithaca had sent an expendable hero — one whom Hector would recognize, yet not someone important to the Achaian strength — into the Trojan camp in a crafty move to gain a day’s recuperation from this morning’s disaster.