Stella Gemmell - Fall of Kings

Standing alongside the body of Dios, his face stricken, the merchant Plouteus looked into the eyes of Tobios. He was shaking his head.

“Never wanted this,” he cried. “I swear by all the gods, Tobios, I had no choice.”

“You worm!” an angry man in the crowd shouted. Tobios recognized him as the trader Actonion. Running forward, he plunged his dagger into Plouteus’ neck, forcing it deep. Blood spouted from the wound, and Plouteus pitched to his face on the stones.

Tobios knelt beside Dios. The man’s eyes were open, but they could see nothing. The stab wounds to his face and neck no longer were bleeding.

The man who had killed Plouteus also knelt beside the body. Tobios looked up into the dark eyes of Actonion.

“I would have thought such a famed fighter would be bigger,” Actonion commented, staring down at the corpse.

“Famed fighter?” Tobios queried.

“Did someone not say this was the dread Helikaon?”

“They were wrong. This is Deiphobos, son of Priam.”

Pushing himself to his feet, Tobios turned back toward his stall. Paris still was standing there, slack-jawed, his eyes full of tears. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” he whispered.

“A man stabbed that many times usually is,” Tobios told him.

Paris groaned. “He called out for me, and I didn’t go to him. I couldn’t move, Tobios.”

“Then go to him now,” Tobios said softly. “It is not right for the son of a king to lie alone in the dust of a marketplace.”

But Paris seemed rooted to the spot. “Oh, Tobios, I failed him. My greatest friend, and when he needed me, I did nothing.”

Tobios held his tongue and sought to hide his contempt. Paris was spineless, but he was a good customer. Merchants did not stay in business long if they drove away good customers. Then he saw that the young man was staring at him, his expression imploring. Tobios sighed. He knew what the prince needed, what all cowards needed. “You could have done nothing, lord,” he said, putting as much sincerity into the lie as he could muster. “The first blows would have been fatal. By rushing in you would have risked being killed yourself for nothing. You acted wisely.”

Paris shook his head but said nothing.

A troop of soldiers arrived too late in the marketplace. They lifted the body of Dios, carrying him back toward the Scaean Gate. Tobios looked around for Actonion, but the man had gone.

How strange, he thought. Priam surely would reward the man who had killed the assassin of one of his sons.

Leaving Priam and Helikaon deep in conversation in the Amber Room, Andromache made her way down to the megaron, where she spotted Antiphones among the crowd. He was hard to miss, for he was still the largest man in Troy, though much of his weight was now muscle. Where once he had enjoyed bouts of almost Heraklean eating, he now was famed for his ferocious training regimen. Andromache liked him greatly but was in no mood for idle conversation.

“Have you seen Hektor?” she asked him swiftly.

“A few moments ago. He left the palace.” He leaned toward her and whispered, “You seem troubled, dear one.”

“This has been a difficult day,” she told him.

“There are many difficult days now. Hektor also seemed downcast. Is all well between you?”

Andromache paused before answering, and when she did, the words sounded hollow in her ears. “There is love between us, Antiphones. Ultimately, therefore, all will be well. I have to believe that.”

“He adores you, so I hope you are right,” Antiphones said. Andromache looked into the big man’s eyes and knew he wanted to say more.

But the conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the king’s son and chancellor, Polites. Stooping and balding, Polites seemed to age a year for every season that passed. His face was pale, his eyes dark-ringed, his mouth permanently downturned. “We need to speak, Antiphones,” he said.

“You forget your manners, Brother,” Antiphones admonished him. Only then did Polites notice Andromache. His tired face reddened with embarrassment.

“I am sorry, Sister,” he told her. “Please forgive me.”

“No need to apologize, Polites. You are obviously more in need of Antiphones’ fellowship than I am. Therefore, I will leave you both to talk.”

Andromache left the megaron and, trailed by two bodyguards, made her way back toward the palace of Hektor. Once she was outside, her problems returned to haunt her. She understood Hektor’s fears. There had been honesty between them from the first, so he knew she loved Helikaon. Now the thought of his wife sailing across the Great Green with Helikaon must be burrowing into his mind like a maggot into an apple.

Her heart in turmoil, Andromache paused by a well. One of her guards, thinking she was thirsty, drew up a bucket. Andromache thanked him and sipped a little water from a wooden ladle. Thoughts of Kalliope suddenly filled her mind. Sweet, damaged, brave Kalliope. And she remembered the vile killers, the blazing farm, and Kalliope, standing tall on the hillside shooting arrows down at the assassins. Tears formed as she struggled to hold to that heroic image. But she could not, and cold reality made her see again the black shaft ripping into Kalliope. Now all that remained of her lover was the few bones Andromache had gathered from the ashes of the funeral pyre. They were contained in an ebony and silver chest beneath a window in her bedchamber.

Andromache had dreamed of returning the bones to the Blessed Isle and burying them in the tamarisk grove beside the temple of Artemis. Now the High Priestess planned to hurl Kalliope’s bones into the pit and chain her spirit to serve the Minotaur forever.

“Are you well, lady?” asked Ethenos, the youngest of her guards. “You are looking very pale.” He was a serious young man and a cousin to the murdered Cheon, who had died along with Kalliope on the day of the assassins.

“I am fine,” she told the fair-haired soldier. It was a lie.

Kalliope had adored the goddess Artemis, had prayed to her many times a day. Had that adoration been repaid in any way? Raped as a child, betrayed by her family, and then murdered by assassins. Not twenty years old when she died. Now, even after death, she was to be brutalized.

For a moment only Andromache thought of praying to the goddess, but the voice of her anguish screamed out then. You think Artemis or any of the gods cares a whit about your life or Kalliope’s? Think on it! Have any of your prayers ever been answered?

Suddenly Andromache smiled, but her thoughts were bitter. When she first had left Thera, she had wanted nothing more than to return to the Blessed Isle, to its simple life, with Kalliope. She had prayed for that and for the freedom she never had known before or since. And in her first unhappy days in Troy she had daydreamed about Helikaon taking her away on the Xanthos and had prayed for that also. Now, like a knife twisting in her gut, the gods had decided she would have both prayers twistedly fulfilled.

Cold anger coursed through her. The demigod would not have Kalliope, not even if the fate of worlds hung on it. Yes, she would take bones to Thera, but not those of her lover.

The decision made, she dropped the ladle into the bucket and walked on. At the palace she dismissed her guard, nodded to the soldiers at the side gates, then stepped through into the courtyard gardens. She saw Astyanax playing in the dirt, Hektor kneeling beside him.

Her love for Astyanax was like nothing she had ever experienced. It was as if he were tied to her with tender ropes. Each time she left him, even for a day, there was a dull ache in her heart. An entire winter without him would be close to unbearable. Her heart began to pound with increasing panic. She also feared for his life. She was afraid of traitors, spies, poison, and the dagger in the night.