Mountain of Black Glass (91 page)

Each night, Olga found herself lying in bed in one of an interchangeable array of roadside motels, the roar of trucks muted almost to silence by the override of her telematic shunt, her head full of pictures and soft voices. The children surrounded her like shy ghosts, each whispering sadly of a personal past that seemed lost, each seemingly content to recite that story over and over as part of a fragmented chorus. Like doves, they closed on her, nudging and murmuring, and each night they led her to a place where she could see the great thrusting shard of black standing against the sky.

Closer now,
the murmuring throng told her.
Closer.

She awoke each morning tired but peculiarly exalted. Even the occasional flaring pains in her skull, which only weeks before had filled her with constant dread, seemed almost worthwhile, just more proof she was connected to something important. For the first time in years something was happening to her, something that
meant
something. If the headaches had led to this, then despite the terrible pain they had not been a curse but a blessing.

The holy martyrs in the old days must have felt this way,
she realized one morning as she pulled out onto Interstate 10 with an insulated coffee-pack in her hand, the cushioned mylar warming against her palm like some small creature stirring into life.
Every wound a gift from God. Each blow of the whip a divine kiss.

But the martyrs died,
she reminded herself.
That's what made them martyrs.

Even this thought could not perturb her. The sky was gray and cold, the huddled birds unmoving knots along the road signs, but something inside her was so alive that she almost could not believe in death.

In some inexplicable way, a thousand miles from everything that was familiar, and thousands more from the place she had been born, Olga Pirofsky knew she was finally coming home.

T
HE Trojan attack seemed more a force of raw nature than an assembly of humankind—an armored mass flashing with bronze and silver that came howling out of the Skaian Gate and onto the plain like a terrible storm. The Greeks were still struggling into their own armor as the first of the Trojan chariots reached the wall around the Greek encampment. Arrows flew over the barricade and hissed down in a fatal rain. Soldiers stumbled and fell on their faces in the sandy earth, bristling with feathered shafts. Their companions could not even pull the bodies to safety or separate the wounded from the dead—corpses and living men alike were trampled as the Greeks rushed to find shelter from the Trojan archers.

The sun had barely appeared above the hills and the gate of the Greek encampment was already the site of a fierce struggle. Huge Ajax, so large in his armor that he seemed to be a god who had taken sides in the battle, had been caught outside when the gate was hurriedly closed and bolted; he was holding strong against the first Trojan assault, but he had only a few men beside him, and already several had dropped, skewered with arrows.

Paul had never seen anything so impersonally terrifying in all his life. As the first wave of Trojan charioteers and archers pulled their horses back from the wall and sped away along the edge of the great defensive ditch, the second wave wheeled in with hooves thundering like muffled kettledrums. One of Paul's Ithacans went down with a black-feathered arrow in his gut, coughing and spewing blood, calling to the gods to save him.

How can I avoid a battle that's right on top of me?
Paul wondered desperately as the wounded man clutched at his legs. He crouched lower, doing his best to ignore the dying, bubbling thing beside him. Two arrows thumped into the shield, jolting his arm.
What am I supposed to do?
The spear clutched in his hand already felt as heavy as a lamppost.
I can't fight with one of these bloody things—nobody taught me how to do this!

The Greek archers began scrambling up onto the embankment behind the wall, some with only half their armor. Many died before they could even get their bows strung, but others were able to begin returning fire. The Trojan archers and their charioteers could not use their shields while they were shooting, so when arrows began coming back from the Greek wall, the chariots pulled back to a safer range.

A ragged cheer went up from Paul's Ithacans as the hail of arrows slowed, but if any of them were foolish enough to think they had repelled the Trojan attack, that misunderstanding did not last long. The last wave of Trojan chariots was nearing the ditch, but this time they were not wheeling in to shoot and then gallop away. As the Trojan foot soldiers came roaring across the plain in a vast wave, the chariots' passengers dismounted and strode forward, hidden behind tall shields except for their expressionless, insectile helmets and their long spears.

But one moved faster than any of the others, rushing toward the Greek wall as though he meant to throw it down by himself.

“Hector!” shouted one of the Greeks. “It is great Hector!” Paul could feel dread ripple through the men around him. Elsewhere along the wall a few shouted insults down at Priam's son, but even those had a nervous sound.

“We cannot face him without Achilles,” muttered one of the Ithacans. “Where is he? Is he going to fight?”

The Trojan leader did not respond to any of the insults, but hurried forward as though afraid that one of his own comrades might reach the wall first. By the time he had gone down into the ditch and begun clambering up the other side his shield was pincushioned with Greek arrows, but he carried it as lightly as if it were made of paper. He vaulted up to the base of the wall and brushed aside a thrown spear with his shield so that it caromed away and stuck quivering in the ground; a moment later his own long spear flicked out, swift and deadly as a bolt of lightning. The archer impaled on the spearpoint had only a moment to shriek before Hector jerked him off the wall like a harpooned fish and finished him with a brutal thrust and twist of his short sword.

The other Trojans leaped out of their chariots. Some were already scrambling up out of the ditch behind Hector, carrying not just spears and swords, but also long boards like ship's timbers. As their comrades in front and the archers on the far side of the ditch kept the Greeks busy, these men began digging beneath the edge of the wall, trying to find leverage to unseat some of the stones. Some were pierced by arrows and fell, but others continued the grim work. Paul knew that if they were given enough time, they would succeed—the defenses of the Greek camp, unlike the ramparts of Troy, were not meant to withstand a determined siege.

Chaos swarmed around him as the morning sun rose higher, with Greek defenders hurrying to this or that part of the makeshift wall, wherever it seemed the Trojans were about to gain a foothold and scramble over, always just managing to repel the assault. King Agamemnon himself, accompanied by the hero Diomedes—Paul had heard several people call him the best Greek fighter after Achilles, and he had only to watch the man to know that he was a star and not a bit player—made a sortie over the walls to save Ajax, who had lost almost all his men, and had been reduced to clubbing Trojans into bloody ruin with one of their own walltoppling timbers. Hector spotted Agamemnon from a hundred meters away down the wall, but by the time he could make his way through the crush of his own men, fighting for their lives along the Greek defenses, the high king and Diomedes had rescued the giant. A fiercely-defended ladder allowed them all back over the wall and left Hector raging in futility along the base of the ramparts, pounding his spear against his great shield so that it could be heard even above the clamor of battle, demanding that they return and measure themselves against him.

A Greek soldier found Paul and summoned him to Agamemnon, who stood spread-legged and trembling a short distance behind the walls, covered in bleeding scratches.

“Even now, noble Odysseus,” the high king panted, “I can feel the scales of Father Zeus tipping. Our side is plunging down, down toward Hades, while Priam's cursed Trojans are lifted up toward Heaven. Ajax and Diomedes have hurried back to the fighting, but I think neither of them can stop Hector, who clearly has the hand of a god upon him. What will we do?” He wiped sweat from his face. “Only Achilles can stand against him. Where is he? Will you go to him, beg him to stand with us in this our dark time?”

It was hard to look at this powerful man gone gray and quivering with strain and not feel at least a little pity. “He's ill. He can barely stand—I've seen it with my own eyes.”

Agamemnon shook his head and sweat flew from his ringleted beard. Only a short distance away, one of the Greek defenders fell back from the wall shrieking, a spear all the way through him, the bloody point standing out from his back. “Then some god has put this upon him, as Apollo earlier brought us plague for dishonoring a priest. Olympus must wish our destruction.” The high king crouched, still panting. “It is hard. Have we not given them all the sacrifices they were due?”

“It's Hector, isn't it?” Paul said. “If we could stop him, that would take some wind out of the Trojan sails, wouldn't it?”

Agamemnon shrugged heavily. “I do not think even godlike Diomedes can stop him—have you not seen Hector as he slaughters Greeks and calls for more? Priam's son is like a lion, roaring in the middle of a village, while all the dogs hide beneath the houses.”

“Then we shouldn't fight him one to one,” Paul said. Something had to be done now or whatever purpose had brought him here, had led him to the boys Orlando and Fredericks, would disappear in a sea of blood. “We should drop a rock on him or something.”

Agamemnon looked at him oddly, and at first Paul thought he was going to be denounced for insufficient nobility. Instead, the high king said, “You are indeed the cleverest of the Greeks, resourceful Odysseus. Go and find Ajax and tell him to come to me.”

Paul hurried across the encampment. Already the ground was strewn with bodies that had been hastily dragged back from the walls so as not to impede the other defenders, and in many places so much blood had drained out that the mud was stained a sickening red.

How can they do it?
was his helpless thought as he drew closer to the knots of combat rippling along the top of the Greek wall, each one a pair or more of men struggling to kill before they were themselves killed.
This . . . organized murder? Even in the real world, how could anyone rush into something like this, knowing that thousands of people are waiting to drive a spear into your guts or put an arrow in your eye?
He could hear Ajax's bellowing war cry now, loud as an angry bull.
But why am I here, for that matter? Why don't I just hide until this is over? To protect those two kids so they can help me find out why all this has happened to me?

Whether you call it rotten luck or you blame it on the will of the gods,
he decided as the screams of the wounded rose to the skies, disturbing the calm circling of the ravens,
I suppose it's what you do when all the choices left are bad ones.

 

Paul was forced to take Ajax's place on the wall, and his more philosophical considerations were pushed aside by the necessity of not being killed.

The Trojans came on and on like an ocean beating against the rocks. For all the hundreds of them swarming along the walls of the Greek camp, there seemed to be thousands more just behind, pushing to take their places beside their comrades. At times it seemed as though the gods had indeed fired the Trojans with some kind of madness; no matter how many were killed, there were always others willing to drag the bodies aside and step into their places.

Several Trojan heroes fought in the assault—Paul heard their names shouted by both their companions and foes, as though the war were some kind of wild, dangerous sporting event, the foot soldiers on either side as thrilled as they were terrified to be sharing the field with legends like Sarpedon, Aeneas, and Deiphobus. But grandest and most terrifying of all was Hector, King Priam's son, who seemed to be everywhere at the same time—threatening to break open the camp gate by sheer strength here, then moments later leading an assault on a weak part of the Greek defenses. The Greeks offered champions of their own, Diomedes and aged Nestor, and Helen's spurned husband, Menelaus, but at this moment none of them could stand against Hector, who even managed to impale two Greek soldiers with one thrust of his spear so that they were pressed together like spoons in a drawer as they coughed out their lives. Hector did not stop to marvel at his own might, but put his foot against the nearest and pushed the bodies down the length of the shaft; they fell in a heap together on the ground as Hector turned his attention elsewhere. He seemed truly, as Agamemnon had called him, a lion among hounds.