Stella Gemmell - Fall of Kings

On the gray beach in their still, twilight world, Helikaon gazed toward the east. He thought he could detect a breath of breeze, and the sky seemed to be lightening in that direction. He wondered if they ever would see a cloudless day or a starry night again.

He smiled. Ahead of him he could see Andromache and Dex walking toward them along the shore. Even her dress of flame seemed diminished in the gray light.

They met and stood facing each other. He put up his hand and brushed ash from her cheek. He looked into her gray-green eyes.

“You are beautiful,” he told her. “How can you be so beautiful when covered with ash?”

She smiled, then asked, “You walked to the headland again? Do you still hope to see the Bloodhawk ?”

He answered ruefully. “No, I do not. The ship is smaller than the Xanthos and was closer to Thera. I do not think it survived. But perhaps its crew did. Or some of them. Odysseus was a strong swimmer, although it was a long time before I found that out.” He smiled at the memory. “And he claimed he could float on his back all day, a goblet of wine balanced on his belly.”

She laughed, and the air seemed to lighten at the sound. She looked up. “The sky is getting brighter, I think.”

He nodded. “If the breeze picks up, we might sail today.”

The main mast of the Xanthos had been swept away by the sea, along with the black horse sail, but there was a spare mast lying the length of the ship, and it had been raised in readiness. There were extra oars stored in the bowels of the galley and a new sail of plain linen. When the men had rolled it out and checked the sail for weaknesses or tears, Oniacus had asked him, “Will we paint the black horse of Dardanos on this one, Golden One?” Helikaon had shaken his head. “I think not.” We need a new symbol for the future, he had told himself.

“But you do not know where we are. How can you know where we are going?” Andromache asked.

“We will sail west. Eventually we will see familiar land.”

“Perhaps we have been swept far beyond the known seas.”

He shook his head. “In our terror, my love, the great waves seemed to last an eternity. But in truth, it was not very long. We cannot be far from the lands we know, but they might have been changed by the waves and be hard to recognize.”

“Then we will still reach the Seven Hills by winter?”

“I am sure we will,” he told her honestly. His heart lifted at the thought of the fledgling city where families from Troy and Dardanos were building their new lives. The land was lush and verdant, the air sweet and the soil rich, the hillsides teeming with animal life. They would start again there as a family, the four of them, and leave their old world behind. He wondered if he ever would return to Troy, but as he thought it, he immediately knew he would not. This would be the Xanthos’ last great journey.

He said, “Once we reach the mainland or a large island, we should be able to enlist more oarsmen.”

“I can row again if needed.”

He gently took her hands and turned them over. The palms were raw and blistered from helping row the Xanthos to this barren island. He said nothing but gazed at her quizzically.

“I will bandage them as the men do, and then I can row,” she argued, her face stern. “I am as strong as a man.”

His heart filled with love for her. “You are the strongest woman I have ever known,” he whispered. “I loved you the moment I first saw you. You are my life and my dreams and my future. I am nothing without you.”

She gazed at him in wonder, and tears came to her eyes. He took her in his arms and held her close, feeling the beating of her heart against his chest. Then they turned and walked hand in hand back along the beach, their two sons trailing behind.

The light breeze from the east picked up. The sky started to lighten, and after a while the sun came out.

Queen Andromache stood on the grassy hilltop, motionless, as she had been since the morning. Now the sun was falling brightly into the west, and still she watched the preparations on the old ship below. She was dressed in a faded brown robe and wrapped in her ancient green shawl. She felt the weight of her years. Her knees ached and her back was on fire, but still she stood.

She saw someone move out of the crowd on the beach below and sighed. Yet another serving maid with a cup of warm goat’s milk and advice to rest for a while? She squinted shortsightedly, then smiled. Ah, she thought, clever.

Her small grandson trotted up the hill and without a word sat down on the grass at her feet. After a moment she knelt beside him, ignoring the pain in her knees.

“Well, Dios,” she asked, “what did your father tell you to say to me?”

The seven-year-old squinted up at her through his dark fringe, and she impatiently brushed his hair from his face. So like his namesake, she thought.

“Papa says it’s time now.”

She glanced at the sun. “Not yet,” she told him.

They sat in companionable silence for a while. She saw that his gaze was fixed on the Xanthos. “What are you thinking, boy?” she asked.

“They say Grandpapa will dine tonight with the gods in the Hall of Heroes,” he ventured.

“Maybe.”

He looked up at her, his eyes wide. “Isn’t it true, Grandmama? Grandpapa will dine with Argurios, and Hektor and Achilles, and Odysseus?” he persisted anxiously.

“Certainly not Odysseus,” she told him briskly.

“Why not? Because he is the Prince of Lies?”

She smiled. “Odysseus is the most honest man I’ve ever known. No, because Odysseus is not dead.”

The people of the Seven Hills last had heard from Ithaka some ten years before. The collapse of the Mykene empire, its leaders dead, its armies in ruins, its treasuries empty, had opened the way for barbarians from the north to sweep down through the mainland, and where once-proud cities had ruled, there lay only darkness and fear. But little Ithaka still stood, as Penelope and her growing son Telemachus stood on the cliffs each sunset watching for their king to come home. Andromache remembered Odysseus carving his wife’s face in the sand and wondered if he was doing it still somewhere.

“How do you know he’s not dead?” little Dios asked.

“Because Odysseus is a storyteller, and storytellers never die as long as their stories live on.”

Invigorated by the thought, she stood up, cursed as her knees cracked, then set off down the hill, the boy running after her. Spotting her, two men peeled away from the crowd and raced up the hillside to meet her where a campfire blazed in a small hollow. Andromache’s old bow and specially prepared arrows lay beside it.

She took each of her sons by the hand and gazed at them fondly. Astyanax had her flame hair and green eyes, and his handsome face bore a dreadful sword wound, a legacy of a battle with the Siculi the previous spring when he nearly had died saving his brother’s life. Still, when he smiled, he looked just like his father. Dex had his mother’s fair hair and the powerful build and dark eyes of his Assyrian sire. He had taken the name Ilos as an act of fealty to his adopted people, but the local folk called him Iulos.

“I am ready,” she told them, “I have said my goodbyes.”

She had lain all night racked with grief at the king’s funeral bier, her heart cracked and drained, her soul bereft, her tears staining his face and hands. Then, in the morning, she had dried her eyes, kissed his cold lips and his forehead, and walked away from him forever.

Now Astyanax turned and signaled, and a score of men leaped to put their shoulders to the Xanthos. There was a rumbling of wood against gravel, a groan of protesting timbers, and then the old ship once more was afloat. Her mast had been dismantled, and the steering oar tied. The galley was heaped with fragrant cedar branches and herbs. At its center the body of Helikaon lay on a cloth of gold. He was dressed in a simple white robe, and the sword of Argurios was on his breast. On his right foot only he wore an old sandal.