Vengeance of Orion (11 page)

Achilles, back in his chariot, was cutting a bloody path through the Trojans, hacking with his sword until the foot soldiers and chariot-riding noblemen alike gave him a wide berth. Then he snatched the whip from his driver's hands and lashed his horses into a frenzied gallop toward the city gate.

I saw Odysseus fling a spear into the chest of a Trojan guarding the gate. More Trojans appeared at the open gateway, graybeards and young boys armed with light throwing javelins and swords. From up on the battlements that flanked the gate on both sides others were firing arrows and hurling stones. Odysseus was forced to back away.

But not Achilles. He drove straight for the gate, oblivious to the bombardment from above. The rear guard scattered before him, ducking behind the massive wooden doors. From behind, someone started pushing them closed. Seeing that the gap between the doors was too small for his chariot to pass through, Achilles jumped to the ground, his bloodstained great spear in his hand, and charged at the gate. He met a hedgehog of spear points but dived at them headlong, jabbing and slashing two-handed with his own spear.

Odysseus and another chariot-mounted warrior, whom I later learned was Diomedes, rushed up to help him, their great shields strapped on their backs, protecting them from neck to heel from the stones and arrows being aimed at them from above. I saw the main mass of the Trojan troops not far behind us, a wild tangled melee battling with the rest of the Achaians, fighting its way to the protection of the city's walls.

I pushed my way between Achilles and Odysseus, hacking with my sword at the spears sticking out from the gap between the doors. I grabbed one spear with my left hand and pulled it out of the hands of the frightened boy who had been holding it. Flinging it to the ground, I reached for another.

Somewhere deep inside my mind I heard myself asking why I should be killing Trojans. They are men, human beings, creations of the Golden One just as I am. What they do they do because the Golden One drives them, manipulates them, just as he drives and manipulates me.

But I answered myself: All men die, and some of us die many times over. The goal of life is death, and as long as these creatures serve the Golden One, even unknowingly, unwittingly, then they are my enemies. Just as they would kill me, I will kill them.

And I did. I pulled on the spear in my left hand, dragging the graybeard holding it, until he was within reach of my sword. He saw the blow coming and released the spear, raising his arms over his head and screaming, as if that would protect him. My blade bit through both his arms and buried itself in his skull.

A teenager thrust his spear at me while I worked my sword free. I dodged it, wrenched the blade from the dead man's bloody head, and swung it at the youth. But there was little purpose in my swing, except to scare him off. He backed away, but then came forward again. I did not give him a second chance.

The struggle at the gate seemed to go on for an hour, although common sense tells me it took only a few minutes. The rest of the Trojans came up, still battling furiously with the main body of the Achaians. Chariots and foot soldiers hacked and slashed and cursed and shouted and screamed their final cries in that narrow passage between the walls that flanked the Scaean gate. Dust and blood and arrows and stones filled the deadly air. The Trojans were fighting for their lives, desperately trying to get inside the gate, just as our own Achaians had been trying to escape from Hector's spear a few days earlier.

Despite our efforts, the Trojans still held the gate ajar and kept us from entering it. Only a few determined men were needed to keep an army at bay, and the Trojan rear guard at the gate had the determination born of sheer desperation. They knew that once we forced that gate their city was finished; their lives, their families, their homes would be wiped out. So they held us at bay, new men and boys taking the place of those we killed, while the main body of their army began to slip through the open doors, fighting as they retreated to safety.

Then I saw the blow that ended the battle. Everything still seemed to move in slow-motion for me. Arrows flew through the air so lazily that I thought I could snatch one in my bare hand. I could tell where warriors were going to send their next thrust by watching their eyes and the muscles bunching and rippling beneath their skin.

Still fighting at the narrowing entrance to the gate, I had to turn almost ninety degrees to deal with the Trojan warriors who were battling their way to the doors in their effort to reach safety. I saw Achilles, his eyes burning with bloodlust, his mouth open with wild laughter, hacking at any Trojan who dared to come within arm's length. Up on the battlements a handsome man with long flowing golden hair leaned out with a bow in his hands and fired an arrow, fledged with gray hawk feathers, toward Achilles's unprotected back.

As if in a dream, a nightmare, I shouted a warning that was drowned out in the cursing, howling uproar of the battle. I pushed past a half-dozen furiously battling men and reached for Achilles as the arrow streaked unerringly to its target. I managed to get a hand on his shoulder and push him out of its way.

Almost.

The arrow struck him on the back of his left leg, slightly above the heel. Achilles went down with a high-pitched scream of pain.

Chapter 16

For an instant the world seemed to stop.

Achilles, the seemingly invulnerable champion, was down in the dust, writhing in agony, an arrow jutting out from the back of his left ankle.

I stood over him and took off the head of the first Trojan who came at him with a single swipe of my sword. Odysseus and Diomedes joined me and suddenly the battle had changed its entire purpose and direction. We were no longer trying to force the Scaean gate; we were fighting to keep Achilles alive and get him back to our camp.

Slowly we withdrew, and in truth, after a few moments the Trojans seemed glad enough to let us go. They streamed back inside their gate and swung its massive doors shut. I picked Achilles up in my arms while Odysseus and the others formed a guard around us and we headed back to the camp.

For all his ferocity and strength, he was as light as a child. His Myrmidones surrounded us, staring at their wounded prince with round, shocked eyes. Achilles's unhandsome face was bathed with sweat, but he kept his lips clamped together in a painful white line as I carried him past the huge windblown oak just beyond the gate.

"I was offered a choice," he muttered, behind teeth clenched with pain, "between long life and glory. I chose glory."

"It's not a serious wound," I said.

"The gods will decide how serious it is," he replied, in a voice so faint I hardly heard him.

Halfway across the bloody plain six men carrying a stretcher of thongs laced across a wooden frame met us, and I laid Achilles on it as gently as I could. He grimaced, but did not cry out or complain.

Odysseus put a heavy hand on my shoulder. "You saved his life."

"You saw?"

"I did. The arrow was meant for his heart."

"How bad a wound do you think it is?"

"Not too bad," said Odysseus. "But he will be out of action for many days."

We trudged across the dusty plain side by side. The wind was coming in off the water again, blowing dust in our faces, forcing us to squint as we walked toward the camp. Every muscle in my body ached. Blood was crusted on my sword arm, my legs, spattered across my tunic.

"You fought very well," Odysseus said. "For a few moments there I thought we would force the gate and enter the city at last."

I shook my head wearily. "We can't force a gate that is defended. It's too easy for the Trojans to hold the narrow opening."

Odysseus nodded agreement. "Do you think your Hatti troops can really build a machine that will allow us to scale their walls?"

"They claim they have done it before, at Ugarit and elsewhere."

"Ugarit," Odysseus repeated. He seemed impressed. "I will speak with Agamemnon and the council. Until Achilles rejoins us, we have no hope of storming one of their gates."

"And little hope even with Achilles," I said.

He looked at me sternly, but said nothing more.

Poletes was literally jumping up and down on his knobby legs when I returned to the camp.

"What a day!" he kept repeating. "What a day!"

As usual, he milked me for every last detail of the fighting. He had been watching from the top of the rampart, of course, but the mad melee at the gate was too far and too confused for him to make out.

"And what did Odysseus say at that point?" he would ask. "I saw Diomedes and Menalaos riding side by side toward the gate; which of them got there first?"

He set out a feast of thick barley soup, roast lamb and onions, flat bread still hot from the clay oven, and a flagon of unadulterated wine. And he kept me talking with every bite.

I ate, and reported to the storyteller, as the sun dipped below the western sea's edge and the island mountaintops turned gold, then purple, and then faded into darkness. The first star gleamed in the cloudless violet sky, so beautiful that I understood why every culture named it after its love goddess.

There was no end of questions from Poletes, so finally I sent him to see what he could learn for himself of Achilles's condition. Partly it was to get rid of his pestering, partly to soothe a strange uneasiness that bubbled inside me. Achilles is doomed, a voice in my head warned me. He will not outlive Hector by many hours.

I tried to dismiss it as nonsense, battle fatigue, sheer nerves. Yet I sent Poletes to find out how bad his wound really was.

"And find Lukka and send him to me," I called to his retreating back.

The Hatti officer looked grimly amused when he came to my fire and saluted by clenching his fist against his breast.

"Did you see the battle?" I asked.

"Some of it."

"What do you think?"

He made no attempt to hide his contempt. "They're like a bunch of overgrown boys tussling in a town square."

"The blood is real," I said.

"Yes, I know. But they'll never take a fortified city by storming defended gates."

I agreed.

"There are enough good trees on the other side of the river to build six siege towers, maybe more," Lukka said.

"Start building one. Once the High King sees that it can be done, I'm sure he'll grasp the possibilities."

"I'll start the men at first light."

"Good."

"Sleep well, sir."

I almost gave a bitter laugh. Sleep well, indeed. But I controlled myself enough to reply, "And good sleep to you, Lukka."

Poletes came back soon after, his face solemn in the dying light of our fire, his gray eyes sad.

"What's the news?" I demanded as he sank to the ground at my feet.

"My lord Achilles is finished as a warrior," said Poletes. "The arrow has cut the tendon in the back of his heel. He will never walk again without a crutch."

I felt my mouth tighten grimly.

Poletes reached for the wine, hesitated, and cast me a questioning glance. I nodded. He poured himself a heavy draft and gulped at it.

"Achilles is crippled," I said.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Poletes sighed. "Well, he can live a long life back in Phthia. Once his father dies he will be king, and probably rule over all of Thessaly. That's not so bad, I think."

I nodded agreement, but I wondered how Achilles would take to the prospect of a long life as a cripple.

As if in answer to my thoughts, a loud wail sprang up from the Myrmidones's end of the camp. I jumped to my feet. Poletes got up more slowly.

"My lord Achilles!" a voice cried out. "My lord Achilles is dead!"

I glanced at Poletes.

"Poison on the arrowhead?" he guessed.

I threw down the wine cup and started off for the Myrmidones. All the camp seemed to be rushing in the same direction. I saw Odysseus's broad back, and huge Ajax outstriding everyone with his long legs.

Spear-wielding Myrmidones guards held back the crowd at the edge of their camp area, allowing only the nobles to pass them. I pushed up alongside Odysseus and went past the guards with him. Menalaos, Diomedes, Nestor, and almost every one of the Achaian leaders were gathering in front of Achilles's hut.

All but Agamemnon, I saw.

We went inside, past weeping soldiers and women tearing their hair and scratching their faces as they screamed their lamentations.

Achilles's couch, up on a slightly raised platform at the far end of the hut, had turned into a bier. The young warrior lay on it, left leg swathed in oil-soaked bandages, dagger still gripped in his right hand, a jagged red slash from just under his left ear to halfway across his windpipe still dripping bright red blood.

His eyes stared sightlessly at the mud-chinked planks of the ceiling. His mouth was open in a rictus that might have been a final smile or a grimace of pain.

Odysseus turned to me. "Start your men building the siege tower."

I nodded.

Chapter 17

Odysseus and the other leaders headed for Agamemnon's hut for a council of war. I went back to my own tent. The camp was wild with the news: Achilles dead by his own hand. No, it was a poisoned arrow. No, a Trojan spy had done it. No, the god Apollo had slain him personally in vengeance for killing Hector and then despoiling his body.

The god Apollo.

I crawled into my tent and stretched out on the straw pallet. Lacing my fingers behind my head, I thought that for once I
wanted
to sleep, I wanted to go into that other existence and meet the Creators again. I had things to tell them, questions to ask, answers to demand.

But how could I pass through to their dimension? The Golden One had brought me to them. I could not do it myself.

Or could I? Closing my eyes, I cast my thoughts back to the "dreams" I had gone through before. I slowed their moments down to ultra slow-motion in my mind, stretching each second into hours, peering deeper and deeper into the scene until I could almost visualize the individual atoms that made up our bodies and see them scintillating and vibrating in their eternal dance of energy.

A pattern. I sought a pattern. There must be some arrangement of energies, some alignment of particles, that forms a gate between one world and the other. They are linked, I knew, part of what the Golden One called a continuum. Where is the link? How does the gate operate?

Outside my little tent, I knew, insects buzzed and the stars turned on their spheres. The moon rose and climbed up the night sky. Midnight came and went. Still I lay there as in a trance, my eyes closed, my vision focused on the times when the Golden One had pulled me through the gate that linked his world with mine.

I saw a pattern. I replayed each moment when the Golden One had summoned me before him, and saw the same pattern of energies arrange themselves in the atoms around me. I visualized the pattern, froze it in my memory, and then poured every gram of mental energy I had into that image. I felt perspiration trickling across my brow, my chest, my arms and legs. Still I concentrated until it felt as if my brain was on fire.

I will not stop, I told myself. I will break through or kill myself. There is no third way.

A flash of cryogenic cold swept through me and then, with the abruptness of a light being switched on, I felt a gentle warming glow.

I opened my eyes and saw myself standing in the middle of a circle of the same gods and goddesses I had met before. But this time I was on their level, in their midst. And they looked shocked.

"How dare you!"

"Who summoned you?"

"You have no right to intrude here!"

I grinned at their surprise. They were truly splendid, robed and gowned in rich fabrics and glittering metallics. I had on nothing except my leather kilt, I realized.

"The insolence of this creature!" said one of the women.

I searched their faces for the Golden One. He pushed past two other men and confronted me.

"How did you get here?" he demanded.

"You showed me the way."

Anger flared in his gold-flecked eyes. But the older, bearded one I thought of as Zeus stepped forward to stand beside him.

"You show remarkable abilities, Orion," he said to me. Then, turning to the Golden One, "You should be congratulated for making him so talented."

I thought I saw a trace of an ironic smile on Zeus's bearded face. The Golden One bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment.

"Very well, Orion," he said, "so you've found your way here. To what purpose? What do you want?"

"I want to know if you have decided to make Troy win this war or not."

They glanced back and forth at one another without answering.

"That's not for you to know," said the Golden One.

I looked around at all their faces, so flawlessly beautiful, so unable to hide their inner feelings.

"By that," I said, "I take it that you are still arguing among yourselves about what the outcome should be. Good! The Achaians will attack Troy one more time. And this time they will take the city and burn it to the ground."

"Impossible!" snapped the Golden One. "I won't permit it."

"You think that by killing Achilles you've ruined any chance the Achaians had of winning. Well, you're wrong. We'll win. And on our next attack."

"I'll destroy you!" he raged.

I regarded him calmly. Strangely enough, I actually felt serene within myself. Not a trace of fear.

"You can destroy me, certainly," I said. "But I have learned something about you self-styled gods and goddesses. You cannot destroy all of your creatures. You can influence us, manipulate us, but you haven't the power to destroy us, one and all. You may have created us, but now we exist and act on our own. We are beyond your control—not totally, I know, but we have much more freedom of action than you like to admit."

Zeus said softly, like the warning rumble of distant thunder, "Be careful, Orion. You are tempting a terrible wrath."

"Your powers are limited," I insisted. And suddenly I understood why. "You can't destroy us! If you did, you would be destroying yourselves!
You
exist only as long as your creatures exist. Our destinies are linked throughout time."

One of the goddesses, a cruel smile on her beautiful lips, stepped toward me. "You flatter yourself, arrogant creature. You can be destroyed utterly, and very painfully, too."

The Golden One agreed. "We don't have to destroy all of you creatures. Merely striking a city with plague or sending a devastating earthquake is usually enough to get what we want from you pitiful little worms."

The goddess reminded me of what the Achaians had said of Hera, the wife of Zeus: beautiful, wily, and a relentless, implacable enemy.

"Personally, I favor the Achaians," she said, tracing a fingernail down my bare chest hard enough to draw blood. "But if your conceited interference is what we have to look forward to, I will gladly switch my loyalty to agree with our Apollo, here."

The Golden One took her hand and kissed it. "You see, Orion," he said to me, "you are dealing with forces far beyond your scope. Perhaps it would be better if I eliminated you now, once and for all."

"As you eliminated the one called Athene?" I snarled.

"More insolence!"

"Destroy him now and be done with it," said one of the other males.

The Golden One nodded, a half-reluctant smile on his lips. "I'm afraid you've outlived your usefulness, Orion."

"Leave him alone."

The words were spoken in a hissing, rasping whisper, but they froze all the gods and goddesses ringed around me.

They stepped aside to make room for a burly, massive figure who walked slowly toward me. It was as if they were afraid to touch him, afraid that his powerful arms would crush them if he merely reached out. His shoulders were rounded, but broad and thick with muscle. His body was heavy and deep, his legs shorter than I would have expected, but equally massive and powerful. His face was wide, with eyes that burned red beneath thick brows.

Unlike the others in their splendid robes, he wore a black leather vest and knee-length kilt of forest green. His skin was gray, the hair of his head black and pulled straight back. Despite his slightly bent posture he loomed over me and all the others there.

He came straight up to me, glowering before me like a smoldering volcano.

"Do you remember me?" His voice was a harsh, labored whisper.

"Ahriman," I said, awed by his presence.

He closed his eyes for a moment. Then, "We have been enemies for long, long ages, Orion. Do you remember that?"

I looked deep into those red burning eyes and saw pain and hatred and a hunt that spanned fifty thousand years. I saw a battle in the snow and ice of a bygone era, and a struggle between us in other places, other times.

"It's . . . all confused," I said to him.

"Go back to your world, Orion," said Ahriman. "Once you did me a good turn and now I repay the debt. Go back to your world and don't tempt your destiny any further."

"I'll go back to my world," I said. "And I'll help the Achaians to conquer Troy."

The gods and goddesses remained silent, although I could feel the anger radiating from the Golden One.