David Gemmell - Shield of Thunder

It would annoy young Menon, he knew. The boy had become increasingly concerned for his uncle’s health. “You need rest,” he had said earlier that day.

“I have a feeling I will be resting more than I would like soon enough,” Pausanius had grunted. “Fetch me some wine, would you, boy?”

Menon had laughed. “If you feel like wine, you must be improving.”

They sat together then and talked for a while of the problems they faced. Pausanius gazed affectionately at the young man, the sunlight glinting on his red-gold hair. So like me, he thought.

“What are you thinking, Uncle?”

“I am proud of you, Menon. I know it has not been easy to walk in my footsteps. But you have it in you to be a great man and to help save this kingdom. I hope the gods bless you, as they have me.”

Menon blushed. Like Pausanius he was obviously uncomfortable with compliments. The old general chuckled. “Am I sounding maudlin?”

“Not at all, Uncle. Rest here today and gather your strength. Tomorrow, if you are feeling better, we will ride together.”

But Pausanius no longer felt like resting. For nearly sixty years he had been charged with the safety of the fortress, and few visitors arrived of whom he was unaware. So he plodded on toward the Seagate.

The fool Idaios worried him. Did Priam have so little faith in the army at Dardanos that he thought a moron like Idaios could be of any help? Idaios had been given the Seagate to guard. A simple task—let no one pass this gate bearing a weapon. But Pausanius doubted he was up to it.

As he walked, his mind drifted back to his conversation with the queen four days before. He regretted criticizing her treatment of the boy Dexios. She has enough problems to contend with, he thought. Adversity was a harsh tutor but a good one. Perhaps the boy was too sensitive and needed to find some backbone. Pausanius dismissed the thought almost instantly. Dex was only three years old, unloved by his mother and raised by servants. On the rare occasions when Helikaon was home, he would talk to the boy and take him riding or fishing in the sheltered lake. There were few such opportunities when the king was absent.

It had heartened Pausanius to see young Menon playing with the child a few days back. The young soldier had perched Dex on his shoulders and run around the courtyard, making neighing sounds like a horse. The child’s laughter had been joyous to hear.

Pausanius thought of his own son, dead these thirty years. When he had first heard the gorge called Parnio’s Folly, he had been offended, as if a joke had been made out of his private tragedy. But over the long years his grief had been washed clean by the relentless waves of time.

He pressed on. Crossing the busy stable yard, he walked with care down the sloping stone roadway to the Seagate. When he arrived there, Pausanius was surprised to see the gates open. They were always closed tightly before sunset. Who had opened them? He looked for the guards but could not see them. A maggot of fear wormed into his heart.

As he stood there unnoticed, an old man with a staff, a troop of soldiers came running up through the gateway and past him. Pausanius peered at them, his vision blurred by his eighty years and the light of the low sun. By Ares, they are Mykene, he thought. Mykene soldiers in the fortress? For a moment he thought the pain was making him hallucinate and recall the invasion three years earlier.

Another troop of Mykene in their distinctive bronze-disked armor charged unchallenged through the Seagate and up into the fortress. From far away Pausanius heard the sounds of combat beginning, screams and shouts and clashing metal.

Confused and uncertain, he stumbled forward, leaning heavily on his staff. Through the open gate he saw Mykene troops still pouring off the two ships and climbing the hill to the fortress. More ships were beaching, soldiers leaping to the sand. A group of Mykene officers stood outside the gates a few paces away, talking casually. They glanced at the old man but ignored him.

The gate guards lay dead. On a sagging wooden table beyond the two bodies Pausanius saw a sad pile of old swords, knives, and battered clubs confiscated from visitors during the day. As Pausanius had feared, the fool Idaios had no system for dealing with the weaponry. It was just dumped in a heap and guarded by two bored soldiers. Two dead soldiers now.

The body of Idaios lay with them, a great wound in his throat.

Traitor! Pausanius thought with rage. I believed him to be just a fool, but he was a traitor, too. He opened the gates for them, then was slain by his new masters. A fool and a traitor both.

One of the group of Mykene officers noticed him and said something to the others. They all turned to look at the old general struggling toward them. Some of them smiled. One man dressed all in white stepped forward, two swords belted at his side.

Flame-haired Menon spoke. “I am sorry to see you here, Uncle.”

The shock was almost too great to bear, and Pausanius groaned as if in pain. Dead Idaios was not the traitor. The man who had delivered the fortress to the enemy was his own flesh and blood.

“How could you do this?” he said. “Why, Menon?”

“For the kingdom, Uncle,” Menon said calmly. “You said I could help it be great. And I will. As king. You think Dardania and Troy can withstand the might of all the western kings? If we continue to resist Agamemnon, the land will be laid waste, the people slaughtered or enslaved.”

Pausanius stared at him, then at the Mykene officers close by. In the distance the sounds of battle echoed through the fortress. “People who trusted you are being slaughtered now,” he said. “You have broken my heart, Menon. Better for me to have died than to see you as a traitor and a cur.”

Menon flushed and stepped back. “You never did understand the nature of power, Uncle. When Anchises died, you could have seized the throne. That is how dynasties are born. Instead, you pledged allegiance to a simpering woman and her get. And look where it led. To a war we cannot win. Go back to your apartment, Uncle. You do not have to die here.”

“Of course he has to die,” said a Mykene officer with a forked beard. “He knows you, and once we have left, he will tell Helikaon of your deeds.”

“Best listen to your master, little dog,” Pausanius said contemptuously. “When he says bark, you bark!”

Menon’s face turned crimson. Drawing one of his swords, he stepped in. “I did not wish to kill you,” he said, “for you have always been good to me. But you have lived too long, old man.”

The general’s body was ancient, but it remembered sixty years of battles. As the sword swung down at his neck, wielded with casual arrogance, he lunged and head butted the younger man. Grabbing the front of Menon’s white tunic, he dragged him forward, then curled his hand around the hilt of Menon’s second sword. Blood streaming from his broken nose, Menon wrenched himself clear of the old man’s grip. As he stepped back, he failed to notice Pausanius pulling the sword clear. The old general stepped in with a straight thrust that stabbed through Menon’s jugular. Blood sprayed over the white tunic. Menon gave a gurgling cry and staggered back, his hands clamped around his throat, seeking to stem the gouting flow.

Pausanius fell to his knees, his strength suddenly gone. He heard the sound of running feet and felt a blow, two blows, to his back. All pain ceased. Menon collapsed before him, his head drooping onto Pausanius’ shoulder. The old general looked at the dying Menon as his own vision blurred and darkened.

“I… so loved you… boy,” he said.

The little boy awoke with a start. Rubbing his small fists in his gummy eyes, Dex sat up and looked around him. It was dark in the bedchamber. A single candle guttered low in the corner, and by its dim light he could see that Gray One was not in her bed. He was alone.