Steep Wilusiya (Age of Bronze) (46 page)

“Ariyádna,” he said in a husky whisper.  He dropped his sword to the floor and pressed her close to him.  “Ariyádna,” he moaned again, cradling her in his arms.

“Meneláwo,” she whispered back, crushing him warmly in her embrace, hot tears spilling over her cheeks yet again.  “Ai, my beloved, thank Diwiyána you have come at last.”

The crash of falling masonry interrupted the couple.  “Come on,” Meneláwo urged her, taking his wife by the hand ever so gently.

She pulled back.  “Wait,” she whispered, laying a work-worn hand to her abdomen.  The pink striations were the same as Meneláwo remembered them, the marks of past child bearing and no more.  In that moment the Lakedaimóniyan king knew that his wife had born no child to any prince of Wilúsiya.  “Not like this,” the woman said.

Meneláwo cast about him, then seized the rumpled and stained linen from the bed, wrapping it about the woman’s shoulders.  “We must go,” he told her gently.  “I will wrap you in the finest purple when we are home.”  They hurried from the room to the sight of fires blazing on all sides.”

aaa

In Tróya’s broad streets, piles of broken plaster and brick rose as the Ak’áyans tore at the earthquake-damaged walls of the palace and the fine houses.  The attackers set fires in every quarter, pillars of smoke rising to heaven as a monstrous offering to bloodthirsty gods.  Foot-soldiers ransacked the homes of the high-born, tossing the few remaining valuables into the streets and carrying them to the gates, to be handed over to Agamemnon’s contingent.  Bloody bodies lay scattered everywhere.  Archers, perched on rooftops, sent their missiles down into anyone who still moved.

Outside the main gate, the women and children who had been spared from death had been rounded up.  Close to the damaged obelisks, they sat in a small cluster, sobbing and clinging to each other.  At every crash of falling stone or brick, they screamed and called on the gods anew.  When the sun rose, Tróya’s buildings were all in flames, the citadel blackened by the fire.  Even the small sections held by Antánor and Ainyáh, marked though they were by the sign of blood, had caught fire, as flames do not respect the compacts that are made by men.  Antánor passed through the gates with his household, his sons and his sons-in-law carrying their possessions on their back, leading their frightened wives and little ones by the hand.

aaa

Armed and armored, Ainyáh stood on the roof of his house with his men.  From there, the Kanaqániyan mercenaries watched the destruction of the fortress unfold.  Marauding Ak’áyans approached the commander’s door, led by Odushéyu, their hair stiffened with resin the ancient fashion of the warriors of the western islands.  “Stay back or you die,” Ainyáh warned them.  Beside him, his soldiers prepared to hurl their spears down into the attackers’ bodies.

“This way, men!” Odushéyu roared, gesturing toward the houses across the street, on their higher terrace.  “We will have the traitor’s bronze later, when fire takes down that door post with its mark.”  Into the undefended homes of the king’s retainers went the Ak’áyan warriors.

“The fire is getting close,” Ainyáh worried, surveying the scene.  “We must lead our people out now and risk the Ak’áyans’ treachery.  Our weapons will prove useless against the fire.”

Descending to the house’s dark interior, the warriors found themselves surrounding by their weeping wives and children.  “Kréyusa, get the boy,” Ainyáh ordered his wife.  “We are going out.  There is no time to lose.  Stay close behind me.”

But Kréyusa’s dark eyes brimmed with tears and she gripped the bronze plates of Ainyáh’s corselet, her knuckles white.  “Owái, my husband, we will all be killed by those godless men!  I know it in my heart.  Do you love me at all, Ainyáh?  Am I nothing more than war booty to you?”

“By the gods, Kréyusa, you are my wife, not my concubine!” Ainyáh cried, pulling the woman by the arm.  “Now, come!  This is no time to talk of love.”

His wife pulled away, taking in her arms their boy, who wept and pulled at her garments.  She knelt before the Kanaqániyan.  “I beg you, Ainyáh, do not let me suffer the fate of the ‘Elléniya.  Take your sword and pierce my heart and your son’s.  Do it now!  Spare us from Ak’áyan brutality.  Those people sacrifice their own children to their evil gods!  Do you want to see me raped or your son thrown from the walls?  Kill us now.  Show us pity!”

Ainyáh clapped his thighs in an agony of frustration, crying, “Woman, say no more!  You and Askán are not going to die.  Just stay with me.  I swear that I will protect you.”  Ignoring the woman’s please, he knelt then to take the hands of an emaciated, old man crouching by the outer door of his home.  “Come, Father.”

The old man weakly shook his head.  “I have had too little to eat for too long.  I am too weak to walk, my son.  Go on without me.  Save yourself and my grandson.  I will die here in Tróya.  It is fitting.  It was I who advised you to live among these northern barbarians.  If we had not come here, you could have joined my brother on Alásiya and grown wealthy in the copper trade.  All your sufferings are my fault.”

“Father, you are as mad as Kréyusa!” Ainyáh groned.  “If you cannot walk, I will carry you on my back.  But we must go!”  The Kanaqániyan commander hoisted his father to his back.  “Now, follow me,” he commanded and his fellow countrymen filed into the street, the princess Piyaséma clinging to her older sister’s hand, sobbing.

When the others had all gone ahead, Kréyusa pulled herself free of Piyaséma’s grip.  She pushed the younger princess and her little boy forward.  “Go now, sister, take Askán to his father.”  As the rest pressed onward, she returned to the now-burning house.

“Mamma,” Askán whimpered after her.  But Piyaséma obediently dragged him along, hurrying to catch up with the child’s father.

Kréyusa stumbled through her house, coughing in the acrid smoke.  From an alcove in the northern wall she collected three small idols of baked clay.  One spread wing-like arms from a fluted pillar adorned with a woman’s breasts.  A second, larger figurine had a disk bulging from each side of a similar column.  The third, the largest of all, was identical to the second, but with two slender caps to the pillar.  All three “goddesses” were faceless, painted with wavy, black lines.  With the sacred objects in her arms, Kréyusa staggered, choking, back out into the street to follow her husband.

Before the narrow, northwestern gate, the fleeing party was delayed.  There, Kréyusa caught up with her people, coughing and wheezing from the smoke she had inhaled.  She found her sister and pushed the idols into Piyaséma’s arms.  “Protect the household goddesses for me, little sister,” Ainyáh’s wife gasped.  The assembled Kanaqániyans passed through the gateway of the Horse’s Leg, leaving Kréyusa behind.  Her lungs burning, she sank down against the wall.  Flames engulfed the supporting timbers of a nearby merchant’s home and Kréyusa disappeared under the falling masonry without a sound.

aaa

Outside the ruined city, the Ak’áyans gathered in the half-light of early morning, with their Kanaqániyan and Tróyan allies.  Agamémnon strode to the center of the circle of humanity, a shattered spear in his hand instead of the usual speaker’s staff.  “It is time to divide the booty,” he called out cheerfully.  “Meneláwo, come forward.”

His brother limped to the center of the ring, leading Ariyádna, his arm around her linen-swathed shoulders.  Several other women followed, Kluména among them.  All were blackened by the smoke, all thinner than when they had arrived a year before.  Their cheeks were marked with self-inflicted scratches and scarred from similar wounds made the previous year.  Most had cut locks of their hair in honor of those who had died for their sake during the long months of fighting.

The Lakedaimóniyan king was no more impressive than his queen.  His limp was heavier than ever as he gave to his wounded side.  Raising his arms, blood-blackened to the elbows, Meneláwo called out hoarsely, “I claim queen Ariyádna and every woman abducted with her from the holy island of ‘Elléniya.”  Agamémnon simply nodded in response.

But Aíwaks rushed to the center of the assembly shouting, “No!  It will not end this way!  Not after all this time.  By Díwo, that woman should die for causing this war!”  He raised a bloody dagger, ready to do the deed himself.  “No blood price can ever repay Ak’áiwiya for the losses we all suffered on her account!”

Meneláwo pushed Ariyádna behind him, moving surprisingly quickly, repeating more loudly and forcefully,” I claim my wife, wánasha of Lakedaimón and ‘Elléniya!  She is mine!  Do you hear?  Mine!”  Behind him, the queen moaned and her knees threatened to give way beneath her.  Kluména dutifully stepped up and kept Ariyádna from falling.  The two women clung to each other, as they had so often in the past year, listening to the dispute that would determine their fates.

Aíwaks called out, pointing his knife toward the women for emphasis, “The ‘Elléniyan is a faithless woman!  She has been to another man’s bed.  Death is the fate she deserves!”  Around him, the northern Ak’áyans raised their own bloodied weapons above their feathered crowns and shouted Díwo’s name in approval.

Alarmed, Agamémnon asked with dramatic feeling, “How can you make such a demand?  What was this war all about, if not to restore this woman to her husband?”

“Let the men vote!” Aíwaks cried.  “Even the high wánaks must listen to the will of the army.”

But Odushéyu quickly advanced, knowing that the quarrel put the overlord in a difficult position.  “Listen, Ak’áyans!,” the It’ákan bellowed.  “We fought this war for Meneláwo’s sake, is that not right?”  The troops raised their weapons and shouted their agreement.  The island king continued, “Then I say that Meneláwo should take his prize.  If he wants to kill the woman, I say let her die.  If he wants to keep her, it is his business to treat her as he sees fit.  She is rightfully his, a captive won by the spear!  What do you say?”

All the troops from the south roared their approval and a fair number of P’ilístas now changed sides, hearing the issue expressed in those terms.  Aíwaks resumed his place in the circle of spectators, grinding his teeth and glaring furiously at Odushéyu.  “Préswa take you and all your Zeyugelátes,” the big man cursed quietly.

“As high wánaks over all Ak’áiwiya,” Agamémnon began, quickly moving to a new topic, “It is my right to choose from the booty first after Meneláwo.  I choose the priestess Kashánda.”

Many men’s eyes turned to the tall qasiléyu in his headdress of feathers.  “She is dead,” Aíwaks announced, ducking his threateningly, as a bull does when it prepares to charge.

“Do not lie to me, you dog,” the overlord warned his subordinate.  “Several men have told me that they saw you take her from the sanctuary in the citadel.  If you refuse to yield her to me, I will have you stripped of your status as a qasiléyu and exile you from Argo as a traitor to your king.  If any Ak’áyan king gives you sanctuary in his realm, then I will be at war with that wánaks!  Go, Diwoméde, and bring me the priestess!”