My guts churned as I realized what he intended to do. I reached for my sword, only to find ten spears surrounding me, almost touching my skin.
A hand clasped my shoulder. I turned. It was Menalaos, his face grave. “Be still, Orion. The storyteller must be punished. No sense getting yourself killed over a servant.”
Poletes was staring at me, his eyes begging me to do something. I moved toward him, only to be stopped by the points of the spears against my flesh.
“My wife has told me how you protected her during the sack of the temple,” Menalaos said, low in my ear. “I owe you a debt of gratitude. Don’t force me to repay it with your blood.”
“Then run to Odysseus,” I begged him. “Please. Perhaps he can soothe the High King’s anger.”
Menalaos merely shook his head. “It will all be over before I could reach the Ithacans’ first boat. Look.”
Nestor himself carried a glowing brand from one of the pyres, a wicked, perverse smile on his aged face. Agamemnon took it from him as the guards yanked on Poletes’s arms while one of them put a knee in his back. Agamemnon grabbed the old storyteller by the hair and pulled his head back. Again I felt the spear points piercing my clothes.
“Wander through the world in darkness, cowardly teller of lies.”
Poletes screamed in agony as Agamemnon burned out first his left eye and then his right. The old man fainted. The smile of a madman still twisting his thick lips, Agamemnon tossed the brand away, took out his dagger again, and slit the ears off the unconscious old man’s head.
The guards dropped Poletes’s limp body to the sand.
Agamemnon looked up and said in his loudest voice, “So comes justice to anyone who maligns the truth!” Then he turned, grinning, to me. “You can take your servant back now.”
The guards around me stepped back, but still held their spears leveled, ready to kill me if I moved on their king.
I looked down at Poletes’s bleeding form, then up to the High King.
“I heard Cassandra’s prophecy,” I said. “She is never believed, but she is never wrong.”
Agamemnon’s half-demented smile vanished. He glared at me. For a long wavering moment I thought he would command the guards to kill me on the spot.
But then I heard Lukka’s voice calling from a little way behind me. “My lord Orion, are you all right? Do you need help?”
The guards turned their gaze toward his voice. I saw that Lukka had brought his entire contingent, fully armed and ready for battle: thirty-five Hatti soldiers armed with shields and iron swords.
“He needs no help,” Agamemnon answered, “except to carry away the slave I have punished.”
With that he turned and hurried back toward his hut. The guards seemed to breathe one great sigh of relief and let their spears drop away from me.
I went to Poletes, picked up his bleeding, whimpering body, and carried him back to our own tents.
Chapter 23
I tended Poletes through the remainder of that night. There was only wine to ease his pain, and nothing at all to ease the anguish of his mind. I laid him in my own tent, groaning and sobbing. Lukka found a healer, a dignified old graybeard with two young women assistants, who spread salve on his burns and the bleeding slits where his ears had been.
“Not even the gods can return his sight,” the healer told me solemnly, in a whisper so that Poletes could not hear. “The eyes have been burned away.”
I knew what that felt like. I remembered my whole body being burned alive.
“The gods be damned,” I growled. “Will he live?”
If my words shocked the healer, he gave no sign of it. “His heart is strong. If he survives the night he will live for years to come.”
The healer mixed some powder into the wine cup and made Poletes drink. It put him into a deep sleep almost at once. His women prepared a bowl of poultice and showed me how to smear it over a cloth and put it on Poletes’s eyes. They were silent throughout, instructing me by showing, rather than speaking, as if they were mute, and never dared to look directly into my face. The healer seemed surprised that I myself wanted to act as Poletes’s nurse. But he said nothing and maintained his professional dignity.
I sat over the blinded old storyteller until dawn, putting fresh compresses over his eyes every half hour or so, keeping him from reaching up to the burns with his hands. He slept, but even in sleep he groaned and writhed.
Long after dawn had turned the sky a delicate pink, Poletes’s breathing suddenly quickened and he made a grab for the cloth covering his face. I was faster, and gripped his wrists before he could hurt himself.
“My lord Orion?” His voice was cracked and dry.
“Yes,” I said. “Put your hands down at your sides. Don’t reach for your eyes.”
“Then it’s true? It wasn’t a nightmare?”
I held his head up slightly and gave him a sip of wine. “It is true,” I said. “You are blind.”
The moan he uttered would have wrenched the heart out of a marble statue.
“Agamemnon,” he said, many moments later. “The mighty king took his vengeance on an old storyteller. As if that will make his wife faithful to him.”
“Try to sleep,” I said. “Rest is what you need.”
He shook his head, and the cloth slid off, revealing the two raw burns where his eyes had been. I went to replace the cloth, saw that it was getting dry, and smeared more poultice on it from the bowl at my side.
“You might as well slit my throat, Orion. I’ll be of no use to you now. No use to anyone.”
“There’s been enough blood spilled here,” I said.
“No use,” he muttered as I put the soothing cloth over the place where his eyes had been. Then I propped his head up again and gave him more wine. Soon he fell asleep again.
Lukka stuck his head into the tent. “My lord, King Odysseus wants to see you.”
I ducked out into the morning sunshine. Commanding Lukka to have a man stand watch over the sleeping Poletes, I walked over to Odysseus’s boat and clambered up the rope ladder that dangled over its curving hull.
The deck was heaped with treasure looted from Troy. I turned from the dazzling display to look back at the city. Hundreds of tiny figures were up on the battlements, pulling down its blackened stones, working under the hot sun to level the walls that had defied the Achaians for so long.
I had to step carefully along the gunwale to avoid tripping over the piles of treasure covering the deck. Odysseus was at his usual place on the afterdeck, standing in the bright sunshine, his broad chest bare, his hair and beard still wet from his morning swim, a pleased smile on his thickly bearded face.
Yet his eyes searched mine as he said, “The victory is complete, thanks to you, Orion.” Pointing at the demolition work going on in the distance, “Troy will never rise again.”
I nodded grimly. “Priam, Hector, Aleksandros — the entire House of Ilios has been wiped out.”
“All but Aeneas the Dardanian. Rumor had it that he was a bastard of Priam’s. We haven’t found his body.”
“He might have been burned in the fire.”
“It’s possible,” said Odysseus. “But I don’t think he’s terribly important. If he lives, he’s hiding somewhere nearby. We’ll find him. Even if we don’t, there won’t be anything left here for him to return to.”
As I watched, one of the massive stones of the parapet by the Scaean gate was pulled loose by a horde of men straining with levers and ropes. It tumbled down to the ground with a heavy cloud of dust. Moments later I heard the thump.
“Apollo and Poseidon won’t be pleased at what’s being done to their walls.”
Odysseus laughed. “Sometimes the gods have to bow to the will of men, Orion, whether they like it or not.”