“You’re not afraid of their anger?”
“If they didn’t want us to pull down the walls, we wouldn’t be able to do it.”
I wondered. The gods are subtler than men, and have longer memories. I knew that Apollo was angry with me. How would his anger display itself?
“It’s your turn to select your treasure from the spoils of the city,” Odysseus said. He gestured toward a large pile of loot at the stern of the boat. “Take one-fifth of everything you see.”
I thanked him, and spent an hour or so picking through the stuff. I selected blankets, armor, clothing, weapons, helmets, and jewels that could be traded for food and shelter.
“The captives are down there, between the boats. Take one-fifth of them, also.”
I shook my head. “I’d rather have horses and donkeys,” I told Odysseus. “The children will be useless to us, and the women will merely cause fighting among my men.”
Odysseus eyed me carefully. “You speak like a man who has no intention of sailing to Ithaca with me.”
“My lord,” I said, “you have been more than generous to me. But no man in this camp raised a hand to help my servant last night. Agamemnon is a cruel and vicious animal. If I returned to your land, I would soon be itching to start a war against him.”
Odysseus muttered, “That would be foolish.”
“Perhaps so. Better that our paths separate here and now. Let me take my men, and my blinded servant, and go my own way.”
The King of Ithaca stroked his beard for several silent moments, thinking it over. Finally he agreed. “Very well, Orion. Go your own way. And may the gods smile upon you.”
“And on you, noblest of all the Achaians.”
I never saw Odysseus again. When I returned to my tent, I told Lukka to send the men to pick up the loot I had chosen, and to find horses and donkeys to carry it — and us: I saw questions in his eyes, but he did not ask them. Instead he went to carry out my orders.
As the sun began to sink behind the islands on the western horizon, and we gathered around the cook fire for the final meal of the day, a young messenger came running up to me, breathless.
“My lord Orion, a noble visitor wishes words with you.”
“Who is it?” I asked.
The teenager spread both hands. “I don’t know. I was instructed to tell you that a noble of the royal house will visit you before the sun goes down. You should be prepared.”
I thanked him and invited him to share our meal. He seemed extraordinarily pleased to sit side by side with the Hatti soldiers. His eyes studied their iron swords admiringly.
A noble visitor from the royal house. One of Agamemnon’s people? I wondered who was coming, and why.
As the long shadows of sundown began to merge into the purple of twilight, a contingent of six Achaian warriors marched toward our campfire, with a small, slim warrior in their midst. Either a very important person or a prisoner, from the look of it, I thought. The man in the middle seemed too small for any of the Achaian nobles I had met. He wore armor buckled over a long robe, and had pulled the cheek flaps of his helmet across his face, as if going into battle. I could not see his face.
I stood and made a little bow. The mini-procession marched right up to my tent before stopping. I went to the tent and pulled open the flap.
“A representative of the High King?” I asked. “Come to make certain that the old storyteller is truly blind?”
The visitor said nothing, but ducked inside the tent. I went in after him, feeling a seething anger rising in me. I had not slept in two days, but my smoldering fury at Agamemnon kept me awake and alert.
The visitor looked down at Poletes, lying on the straw pallet asleep, a greasy cloth across his eyes, the slits where his ears had been caked with dried blood. I heard the visitor gasp. And then I noticed that his hands were tiny, delicate, much too smooth to have ever held a sword or spear.
I grasped the visitor by the shoulders, swung him around to face me, and pulled off the helmet. Helen’s long golden hair tumbled past her shoulders.
“I had to see…” she whispered, her eyes wide with fright.
I spun her around to face the prostrate old storyteller. “Then see,” I said gruffly. “Take a good look.”
“Agamemnon did this.”
“With his own hand. Your brother-in-law blinded him out of sheer spite. Drunk with power and glory, he celebrated his victory over Troy by mutilating an old man.”
“And Menalaos?”
“Your husband stood by and watched. His men held me at spear point while his brother did his noble deed.”
“Orion, I wish I could… when I heard what had happened, I was so sick and angry…”
But there were no tears in her eyes. Her voice did not shake. The words she spoke had nothing to do with what she actually felt, or why she was here.
“What do you want?” I asked her.
She turned toward me. “You see how cruel they are. What barbarians they can be.”
“You’re safe now,” I said. “Menalaos will make you his queen once more. Sparta may not be as civilized as Troy, but there is no Troy any longer. Be happy with what you have.”
She stared at me, as if trying to decide if she could dare to say what was in her mind.
I felt my anger melting away under the level gaze of those exquisite sky-blue eyes.
“I don’t want to be Sparta’s queen or Menalaos’s wife,” Helen blurted. “Just one day in this miserable camp has made me sick.”
“You’ll be sailing back to Mycenae soon, and then to…”
“No!” she said, in a desperate whisper. “I won’t go back with them! Take me with you, Orion! Take me to Egypt.”
Chapter 24
IT was my turn to stand there in the tent gawking with surprise. “To Egypt?”
“It’s the only really civilized land in the whole world, Orion. They will receive me as the queen I am, and treat me and my entourage properly. Royally.”
I should have refused her point-blank. But my mind was weaving a mad tapestry of revenge. I pictured the face of Agamemnon when he learned that his sister-in-law, for whom he had ostensibly fought this long and bloody war, had spurned his brother and run off with a stranger. Not a prince of Troy who abducted her unwillingly, but a lowly warrior, recently nothing but a thes, with whom she ran off at her own insistence.
I had nothing much against Menalaos, except that he was Agamemnon’s brother — and he did nothing to prevent Poletes’s blinding.
Let them eat the dirt of humiliation and helpless anger, I said to myself. Let the world laugh at them as Helen runs away from them once again. They deserve it.
They would search for us, I knew. They would try to find us. And if they did, they would kill me and perhaps Helen also.
What of it? I thought. What do I have to live for, except to wreak vengeance against those who have wronged me? Apollo seeks to destroy me, now that I have helped to bring down Troy. What do I have to fear from two mortal kings?
I looked down at Helen’s beautiful face, so perfect, her skin as smooth and unblemished as a baby’s, her eyes filled with hope and expectation, innocent and yet knowing. She was maneuvering me, I realized, using me to make her escape from these Achaian clods. She was offering herself as my reward for defying Agamemnon and Menalaos.
“Very well,” I said. “Poletes should be able to travel in two more days. We will leave on the second night from tonight.”
Helen’s eyes sparkled and a smile touched the corners of her lips. I took her tiny hand in mine and kissed it, and she understood fully what I did not need to say.
“The second night from tonight,” she whispered to me. Then she stepped lightly to me and stood on tiptoes to kiss me swiftly on the lips.