Agamemnon broke the silence. “Well, brother, I promised you we’d get her back! She’s yours once again, to deal with as you see fit.”
Menalaos swallowed hard and finally found his voice. “You are my wife, Helen,” he said, more for the ears of Agamemnon and the others than hers, I thought. “What has happened since Aleksandros abducted you was not of your doing. A woman captive is not responsible for what happens to her during her captivity.”
I kept myself from smiling. Menalaos wanted her back so badly he was willing to forget everything that had happened. For now.
Agamemnon clapped his brother on the back gleefully. “I’m only sorry that Aleksandros didn’t have the courage to face me, man to man. I would have gladly spitted him on my spear.”
“Where is Aleksandros?” Menalaos asked suddenly.
“Dead,” I answered. “His body is in the square at the Scaean gate.”
The women started to cry, sobbing quietly as they stood by their mother’s bier. All but Cassandra, whose eyes blazed with unconcealed fury.
“Odysseus is going through the city to find all the princes and noblemen,” said Agamemnon. “Those that still live will make noble sacrifices to the gods.” He laughed at his own pun.
So I left Troy for the final time, marching with the Achaian victors through the burning city as Agamemnon led seven Trojan princesses back to his camp and slavery, and Menalaos walked side by side with Helen, his wife once more. A guard of honor marched alongside us, spears held stiffly up to the blackened sky. Wailing and sobs rose all around us; the air was filled with the stench of blood and smoke.
I trailed behind and noted that Helen never voluntarily touched Menalaos, not even to take his hand. I remembered what she had told me when we had first met: that being a wife among the Achaians, even a queen, was little better than being a slave.
She never touched Menalaos, and he hardly looked at her, after that first emotion-charged meeting in the temple of Aphrodite at dead Hecuba’s bier.
But she looked over her shoulder more than once, looked back at me, as if to make certain I was not far from her.
Chapter 21
THE Achaian camp was one gigantic orgy of feasting and roistering all that day and far into the night. There was no semblance of order and no attempt to do anything but drink, wench, eat, and celebrate the victory. Men staggered drunkenly around, draped in precious silks pillaged from the burning city. Women cowered and trembled — those that were not beaten or savaged into insensibility.
Fights broke out. Men quarreled over a goblet or a ring or, more often, a woman. Blood flowed, and several Achaians who thought they were safe now that the war had ended learned that death could find them even in the midst of triumph.
“Tomorrow will be the solemn sacrifices of thanksgiving to the gods,” Poletes told me as we sat beside our evening cook fire. “Many men and beasts will be slaughtered, and the smoke of their pyres offered to heaven. Then Agamemnon will divide the major spoils.”
I looked past his sad, weatherbeaten face to the smoldering fire of the city, still glowing a sullen red against the darkening evening sky.
“You will be a rich man tomorrow, master Orion,” said the old storyteller. “Agamemnon cannot help but give Odysseus a great slice of the spoils, and Odysseus will be generous with you — far more generous than Agamemnon himself.”
I shook my head wearily. “It makes no difference, Poletes. Not to me.”
He smiled as if to say, Ah, but wait until Odysseus heaps gold and bronze upon you, and iron tripods and pots. Then you will feel differently.
I got to my feet and went out among the riotous Achaians, looking for Lukka and my other Hatti soldiers. I did not have to look far. They had made their own little encampment around their own fire. The area was heaped with their loot: fine blankets and boots, beautiful bows of bone and ivory, and a couple of dozen women who huddled together, clinging to each other, staring at their captors with wide fearful eyes.
Lukka scrambled to his feet when he saw me approaching out of the raucous darkness.
“Is that what you’ve taken from the city?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. The custom is for the leader to pick his half and the men to divide the rest. Do you want to pick your half now?”
I shook my head. “No. Divide it all among yourselves.”
Lukka frowned with puzzlement. “All of it?”
“Yes. And you’ve done well to stick together like this. Tomorrow Agamemnon divides the major spoils. The Achaians may want a share of your booty.”
“We’ve already put aside the king’s share,” he said. “But your own…”
“You take it, Lukka. I don’t need it.”
“Not even a woman or two?”
I smiled at him. “Where I come from, women are not taken as slaves. They come freely or not at all.”
For the first time since I had met him, the doughty Hatti warrior looked surprised. I laughed and bid him a pleasant night.
As I crawled into my tent I thought that the howling and screaming of the camp would keep me awake. But almost as soon as I stretched out on the pallet, my eyes closed and I fell asleep.
To find myself standing in that golden emptiness once more, in the realm of the Creators. I peered into the all-pervasive glow and made out, dimly, strange shapes and masses far, far off, like the towers and buildings of a distant city seen in the dazzle of an overpoweringly bright sun.
I had not willed myself to make contact with the Creators, I knew. It must be that the Golden One had summoned me once again.
“No, Orion, he has not summoned you. I have.”
A human form materialized about twenty yards from me. The dark-haired one with the precisely trimmed beard, the one I thought of as Zeus. Instead of godly robes, though, he wore a simple one-piece suit with trousers and sleeves and a high collar that buttoned at his throat. It was sky-blue, and it shimmered strangely as he walked toward me.
“Be glad that our Apollo has not called you,” he said, his expression halfway between amused curiosity and serious concern. “He is furious with you. He blames you for the fall of Troy.”
“Good,” I said.
Zeus shook his head in a neat, economical move. “Not good, Orion. In the rage he’s in now, he would destroy you utterly. I called you here to protect you against him.”
“Why?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Orion, you are supposed to thank the gods for the blessing they bestow on you.”
I bowed my head slightly. “I do thank you, whatever your true name is…”
“You may call me Zeus.” He seemed delighted at the idea. “For the time being.”
“I thank you, Zeus.”
His smile widened. “The most grudging thanks a god has ever received, I’ll bet.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Nevertheless, the truth is that you have wrecked Apollo’s plans — for the moment.”
“I doubt that I could have done anything at all without the help of some of you other Creators,” I said. “Several of you opposed his plan for Troy.”
He sighed. “Yes, we were not united about it. Not united at all.”
“Is the one I call Hera actually your wife?” I asked.
He looked surprised. “Wife? Of course not. No more than she’s my sister. We don’t have such things here.”
“No wives?”
“Nor sisters,” he said. “But that’s not important. The real question is, how do we continue our work in the face of Apollo’s intransigence? He’s quite enraged. We can’t have an open split among us, it would be catastrophic.”
“Just what is your work?” I asked.
“I doubt that you could understand it,” Zeus said, staring hard at me. “The capacity was never built into you.”