Stella Gemmell - Fall of Kings

Agamemnon gazed around assessingly, perhaps thinking the same thing. “Troy will prosper again under Mykene rule,” he vowed. “By next summer the bay will be full of trading ships once more. The city will be rebuilt, and under our strong leadership it will flourish again.”

Tudhaliyas suddenly stepped forward, and Agamemnon instinctively moved back. The emperor, his bodyguard shadowing him, strode over to Priam’s gold-encrusted throne and sat down gracefully. Agamemnon was forced to stand in front of him to speak to him.

Tudhaliyas told him, “The Bay of Troy has been silting up over the last hundred years, I am told. Now a Mykene fleet lies wrecked there, and already new mud banks will be building around the hulks. My experts predict that within a generation the bay will have disappeared and the city will be landlocked. Trading ships will pass it by in favor of the young cities flourishing higher up the Hellespont. Troy is finished, Agamemnon, thanks to you.”

“I did not start this war, Emperor!” Agamemnon spit it out, his composure lost. “But I saw, before all others, the danger Troy offered to the nations of the Great Green. Priam’s ambition, backed by his son’s cavalry and the Dardanian pirate fleet, was to subdue all free peoples to his will. And while others were bribed or seduced by him, Mykene was not fooled.”

Tudhaliyas leaned back in the throne and laughed, his voice echoing richly in the great stone hall. Then he told Agamemnon, “This nonsense might have fooled your puppet kings as you sat around your campfires at night, telling one another Priam was a monster of ambition determined to conquer the world. Yet this monster brought forty years of peace until you chose to destroy it.”

“I have fought for this city,” Agamemnon roared. “It is mine by right of arms.”

At that moment a Hittite warrior walked into the megaron and nodded to the emperor. Tudhaliyas flicked his eyes to him, then back to the Mykene king.

“So you invoke the right of arms,” Tudhaliyas responded, smiling. “At last, something we can agree on.”

He stood up and looked down at Agamemnon. “Outside this city are thirty thousand Hittite warriors. They are all well fed and well armed, and they have marched a long way without the chance of a good fight.”

He paused as a Mykene warrior came into the megaron and hurried up to Agamemnon. He spoke in the king’s ear, and Xander saw Agamemnon blanch.

“I see you have heard, King,” Tudhaliyas said. “My warriors have taken the Scaean Gate and are already starting to dismantle it. They will unseal all the great gates and take them apart one by one. For a while Troy will be a truly open city.”

Xander held his breath as he waited for the explosion he was sure would come from Agamemnon. But it did not come.

“We discussed misunderstanding earlier,” Tudhaliyas went on smoothly. “I do not want Troy.

“Before I left our capital, Hattusas, with my army, I consulted our… soothsayers, I think you call them. One told me a tale of the founding of this city. He said that when the father of Troy, the demigod Scamander, first voyaged to these lands from the far west, he was met on the beach by the sun god. They broke bread together, and the sun god advised Scamander that his people should settle wherever they were attacked by earth-born enemies under the cover of darkness. Scamander wondered at the god’s words, but that night when they camped on this very hilltop, a horde of famished field mice invaded their tents and nibbled the leather bowstrings and breastplate straps and all their war gear. Scamander vowed his people would remain here, and he built a temple to the sun god.

“But the gods the Trojans brought from the western lands were not our gods. Your sun god is called Apollo, also the Lord of the Silver Bow and the Destroyer. He is a god of might and battle. Our god of the sun is a healer called the mouse god. When our children are sick, they are given a mouse dipped in honey to eat as a tribute to the healing god.

“Over the years, as the city grew, the mouse god’s temple became neglected. The Trojans built greater temples, decorated with gold, copper and ivory, to Zeus and Athene and to Hermes. When the great walls were built around the city, the mouse god’s temple was outside them. When the small temple collapsed during an earthquake, it was not rebuilt, and eventually grass grew over it, and, with perfect irony, field mice ran in its halls.

“Now the last Trojans have left and taken their cruel and capricious gods with them. You, who worship the same gods of the west, will follow them. Perhaps the mouse god will stand on the beach again and watch you go, wondering why you all came here.”

Tudhaliyas stood up, and his voice darkened. “I proclaim that this city will be destroyed,” he ordered. “It will be taken apart stone by stone; then the very stones themselves will be smashed. This city of darkness will vanish from the land.”

As the emperor told his tale, more heavily armed Hittite soldiers moved quietly into the megaron. Agamemnon looked around, and Xander could see that his face was pale and his eyes wild as he watched his ambition come to nothing as the heartbeats passed.

Idomeneos stepped forward. “I care not for your stories, nor for Troy and its fate,” he rasped at the emperor. “I came only for the fabled riches of Priam. That much is due to us. You cannot deprive us of our plunder!”

“And you are?” the emperor asked scornfully.

“Idomeneos, king of Kretos,” said the man, flushing with anger.

The emperor waved his hand dismissively. “Go, little kings; seek out your plunder. But carry it back to your ships quickly. Any galley still in the Bay of Herakles come the dawn will be taken, and its crews dismembered.”

He turned and gave a brief order in his own tongue, then stalked out of the megaron. His retinue followed him, but the rest of the Hittite warriors remained.

Agamemnon seemed smaller now, shrunken by the Hittite’s contempt. He glared around the chamber, and his eyes, full of unfocused anger, settled on Xander.

“You!” he cried. “Healer! Take me to Priam’s treasury!”

Xander stood frozen for a moment. Then Meriones gave him a gentle push, and he said, “Yes, king.”

He knew where the treasury was. It was not a secret. Xander led the kings down a corridor to the rear of the megaron, then down a long flight of steps. They walked along a wide corridor deep below the ground. Above them on either side of the tunnel, carved shapes of stone stared down at them, mythical beasts with teeth and claws, their eyes flickering blindly in the torchlight.

At the end the corridor opened out into a round chamber. Xander and Meriones, the three kings, and their guards crowded in. There was a strong animal smell, Xander noticed. In front of them was a high door lavishly decorated with bronze, horn, and ivory. In the days of Priam the door had been guarded by six Eagles. Now there were no guards, and only a simple oak and bronze bar stopped intruders.

Kleitos, the king’s aide, ran forward and raised the locking bar. He pulled open the door, and Agamemnon stepped forward. The smell wafting out was pungent, and Xander’s nose wrinkled.

The Battle King walked into the darkness of Priam’s treasury, followed by Idomeneos and Menelaus, and then they all stopped. There was a gasp, then a volley of curses. Xander squeezed around the side of the door to see what was happening.

A dozen horses stood blinking at them in the light of the torches. They shifted about nervously, stepping in the piles of horse manure that covered the floor, and the acrid odor from the chamber grew even stronger.

Agamemnon cursed and grabbed a torch from a soldier. He pushed his way among the animals, looking for treasure. He searched frantically around the low square chamber, followed by Idomeneos and Menelaus. It was empty except for the horses and their droppings. Only in the far corner did they find two dusty goblets and a large wooden chest, its lid flung open. Agamemnon reached in and drew out three copper rings, then flung them onto the stone floor. Fury in his voice, he turned to the other kings.