Daren Dean

THE FATE OF JESSE JAMES, a short story by Daren Dean

2012-01-22T13:22:00.000-08:00

Memory of a bloodred tear drop, a cardinal flittering out of the coppices of wood, just before the calm was shattered by men pushing their mounts hard. Cotton sacks of gold and silver pinging over the backs of lathered horses. But he also remembered gaunt-faced men wearing hand-embroidered, deep-pocketed shirts with tell-tale rosettes. The smell of rage and fear, pushing them beyond exhaustion, had journeyed from the past to the present day.

Banks, a stage coach, and trains drove through his memory—belching black smoke and hellish fire. But today he read the Kansas City Journal and the St. Louis Republican and smoked a cigar with an enigmatic smile. He cocked an ear to another more recent memory of Dick Liddils strange behavior and the disappearance of his cousin Wood Hite. Now it all made sense. He was in the presence of his enemies.

So many had died, been delivered up unto Glory or now in hiding. The apocalypse was nigh, but it wouldn’t make sense to stop now just in case the good Lord tarried. He had recently returned under a star-filled night from Nebraska where he had posed as a wealthy farmer to get a drop on the practices of the local banks there. He had known the rage of Achilles.

“Read this news about the untimely death of Wood Hite,” Jesse said.

“Well, all right then,” Bob Ford gingerly took the paper from Jesse and returned to his seat near the window and began to read.

“Does this surprise you, Bob?” He took the cigar out of his mouth with his left hand.

“Not all all, Jesse,” Bob said. “Don’t nothing surprise me these days.”

“It says here they’re going to get you soon,” Bob said.

“They’ll get me one day,” Jesse admitted. “But I’ll shake up the country once more before the Devil gets his due—I vow to sally forth one last time.”

Jesse nodded with the cigar clenched in his teeth. His grin grew larger. He cut accusing eyes back and forth to the Ford brothers. He held Bob’s eyes and glanced knowingly at the pistol in his gunbelt. Bob felt he was a dead man at the moment. He thought about drawing on Jesse then even from a seated position on the divan and taking his chances, but he knew Jesse was too fast for either him or Charley. The moment passed with an audible sigh from Bob when Jesse turned to look at the slightly crooked picture on the wall—not for the first time.

“I guess I’ll take off my pistols,” he called out loudly to Bob, “for fear the neighbors will spy them if I walk out into the yard.”

Jesse took off his gun belt and lay the holstered revolvers on a mattress. He pushed a chair over to straighten the picture and stood up on it. The metallic sound of pistols being cocked in unison. His ear turned to the sound, he knew what it meant, and waited for oblivion in that second. The guns belched flame in the little house on the hill. The acrid smell of gunpowder flitted to the wood floor enveloping the man in a cowl of blue smoke. Zee, Jesse’s wife, came in from the kitchen as the assassins ran out the door and tore at her hair in disbelief.

Is This the Future I was Hoping for?

2012-01-18T13:51:00.000-08:00

If you’re like me it’s difficult to find yourself in the moment. How do you keep yourself from sliding into the past or worrying about the future to the point of distraction. Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” And the older I get the more true that line seems to become. Everything that happened in the past has left an indelible scar on the personal timeline, yours and mine. When I was very young I used to think of it in terms of the good and bad that had been done to me, but now this exercise of self-examination has been turned on its head to include the things I have said and done and often, usually, what I find there is not so noble.

What’s wrong with now? It is a cold afternoon in January. I let the dog in. I hear her nails clicking as she leaps across the floor in little joyful skips. She licks my hand when I stop petting her. There is that rank dog smell that reminds me when it warms up again that she will need a bath. I sip my lukewarm coffee. It’s Folgers, nothing fancy, but it’s good and has all the good qualities of familiarity. The furnace has kicked on. All is well. For the moment.

See this is when it gets tricky. What Natalie Goldberg called “monkey mind” takes over. Distractions enter the picture. Anxiety begins to rage at the feet of expectation. How long before I find a job again? Will I teach again? And when I do will there be any real content beyond busy work and merely satisfying course objectives which I believe comes from the instructor more than the best planned syllabus. When will I finally write that narrative, story or novel, that will be everything I hope it will be and what others will also recognize? Will I be big enough to be the kind of father I should be to my kids? Will I ever be the kind of man my wife expects me to be? Will I run out of time? God, I hope not.

So when I look into the past I see a blurred vision; in the future there’s a warped reflection of the past made into flesh. The cardinal I saw flittering from branch to branch of the cherry tree in my backyard like a bloody teardrop looks like every red bird I’ve ever seen as if it had been reborn again and again or made of papier-mâché and animated by some alien force for an ulterior motive I may never fully apprehend.

If I sometimes struggle with the words, thoughts, and deeds of others and even more myself I know I have to have some faith in the struggle itself. Count this intention as equal parts obedience and faith. I can change. I can evolve. Emerson wrote about this idea of expansion of circles in life, “If the soul is quick and strong, it bursts over the boundary on all sides, and expands another orbit on the great deep, which also runs up into a high wave, with intent again to stop and to bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and narrowest pulses, it already tends outward with a vast force, and to intense and innumerable expansions.”

Inside me always is a boy who felt abandoned at times. There was a time my father had a new wife and son. My mother was searching for herself out west while I lived with family here in Missouri. The timeline of my childhood is so tangled with comings and goings that I can’t even put it in order now. I remember longing for my mother with an intensity that sometimes we fail to give children credit for. I remember certain family members that might by definition be considered distant becoming the people that mattered to me. Hard times breeds a closeness unlike other experiences.

We moved around the country, within the state, and back and forth in some of those towns. I remember watching my mentally handicapped brother standing in a green playpen leaning against the side for balance because one of his legs was a bit lame from birth as he hit one birdlike hand with another as if he were punishing that hand for its sin while a Jacob’s ladder of light poured in the living room window illuminating him as if he were a saint. I had this notion that one day I’d be able to communicate with him telepathically someday and have a normal brother. I used to look into his eyes and speak to him in my mind while he chanted his childish “mummumumum.” I remember later we had to take him to the hospital in Sedalia where they could take care of him better when he was about six years old. I thought he’d always be with us. We would visit him in institutions across the state as the years went by. I always wondered why I was so lucky to be normal and why this had happened.

I remember my great uncle who was a cook at Gasper’s truck stop who decided to become a charismatic lay minister in the seventies. He would often take us all, my aunt, and two of my cousins to nursing homes around the state where we would have church services for them. Sheila played the piano and we sang The Old Rugged Cross and In the Garden. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysiDcqCFCM0&feature=related

The sound of my aunt’s incredibly high voice. The dutiful expression of Sheila’s face as she played the upright. The incredible glow my younger cousin Bryan had at age four wishing so hard that he would no longer have to endure being the youngest--and most loved. When we pestered him too much Aunt Vivian would always say, “Leave that baby alone.” I said, “He’s not a baby, he’s four years old.” She said matter-of-factly, “Well, he’s my baby!”

The faces of the elderly lighting up when my uncle would tell us at a certain point in the service to walk through the audience and they would touch us with their feeble hands with an inexpressible joy as if we were performing miracles just by the power of our youth. It was the hand of the woman with the issue of blood who reached out to touch Christ for healing.

I suppose what I was searching for was family. The feeling of not quite belonging has been like a stain that I thought everyone else could see. It was hard not to feel like an intruder into other people’s lives. This feeling became a reality. I embraced this idea that I was some sort of rebel. I withdrew. I lost the ability for a time to connect with people. This problem sometimes rears its ugly head every so often. I become the angry kid who retreated into silence and became an observer and wanted to avoid the pain of being seen. I tried to avoid showing my emotions so that no one could criticize my sorrow or anger. I kept those things hidden. It was what we did then. I worry that though I have some measure of control of things now that I give myself too much leeway to the other direction now. But this feeling of not belonging, wishing I belonged persisted. Emotionally and intellectually this thought had become an unseen reality—a trench, an open wound, that would not allow me to navigate life without embracing this truth which had somewhere along the way become a lie. It was an untruth I was not ready to surrender. I was incapable of giving it up. It was the narrative I’d used to define myself by. If it wasn’t true anymore then I’m not sure I’d recognize myself.

I touch my wife’s shoulder in bed. The bedroom door opens and our daughter comes in complaining about a nightmare. She spoons up to Cassie. My four year old, Finn, hears us murmuring and comes in full of life and clambers on top of the mountain of family and lies across Cassie and me with a blissful smile on his face. I realize both of these children are remarkable in their own way. My daughter is the mercurial and sometimes mischievous rebel without a cause. My son already has the charisma of any ten men I know and I sometimes think must be bound to be both popular and loved. The four of us crammed together in a knot. I understand something for a moment. I already have something I thought I was missing. I have a family. I’m part of it. I’m still here and we do our best to love each other. One thing I’ve already achieved that no one achieved for me when I was a boy. I don’t think that the boy I was would hold it against his parents or anyone else if he could see me now. He would be envious of what I have and remind me to appreciate what he doesn’t have. Maybe this is the future I was hoping for.

THE DEATH OF VINCENT VAN GOGH

2012-01-13T14:13:00.000-08:00

27 July 1890

They said he was a lunatic. Carrying his pallet, paints, and brushes around Auvers. In and out of the Ravoux Inn. One minute he could be polite and then the next it was as if he were biting at the wind. He sucked on his brushes deep in thought. They were not always cleaned properly and a wisp of green or yellow painted his lips a most unseemly harlot of art.

Rene Secretan and his brother were on holiday from Paris searching out any amusement available. The surly Dutchman was an easy target for them. They talked to him friendly enough but when he wasn’t looking they put salt in his coffee and laughed in his face at his fierce ways. Rene was dressed in his Wild West outfit. He had seen the traveling Buffalo Bill show. He believed he looked quite smart in his wild man clothes. The boys laughed at Vincent for pronouncing it “Puffalo Pill.” What an oaf, they thought. He begged the tavern owner, Gustave Ravoux, to allow him to borrow his gun. The Secretan boys were from a wealthy family so Ravoux allowed them to have it thinking they couldn’t get into too much trouble. They were mischievous but basically good boys. He didn’t need any trouble from their father.

It was a fine day when Vincent left the Inn with his supplies. The voices in his head had fallen silent lately. The feeling that he had been thrown in a cistern had dissipated. His soul had stayed in his body instead of jumping into crows, fir trees, irises, or dissipating over the wheatfields in a burst of quavering violent blues. The quality of light he had found in Arles seemed to be with him now.

As he trudged walking along the Chaponval road until he came across Rene and Gaston playing at being robbers amid the walled farmyards and dung heaps. Vincent lifted a hand as a hello to the boys and they jumped back and forth, Stand and deliver! I have nothing you’d be interested in, Vincent snarled. Rene pointed his peashooter. The boys laughed and Rene elbowed Gaston who attempted to take it from him so he could point it at Vincent who fancied himself a painter instead of a crazy man who had recently been institionalized. With his left hand he reached and grabbed at the paintbox which infuriated Vincent—haha! Just the rise they were hoping to get out of him! In a rage now Vincent yanked back the paintbox and before he had quite realized it Rene pulled the trigger of the .380 caliber wounding the painter in the abdomen. Vincent fell down as if dead. Rene dropped the gun on the ground and cried out. He bent over at the waist in horror.

What have you done? Gaston said.

Vincent was unconscious and no one was about so they dragged his lifeless body into a courtyard and hid it behind a dung heap. They picked up all Vincent’s supplies and skittered away to make plans to return to Paris as early as possible. Later Vincent awoke and staggered back down the road to the Ravoux Inn where he thought that this was finally how God had intended he should die. He would not tell the authorities or anyone what had happened. He would tell them he had tried to commit suicide and they would believe him. He limped back to the Inn. The wind was hot and dry. The Ravoux family and others were dining out on the patio to escape the heat in the Inn so he buttoned his coat to hide the blood seeping from the pea-sized hole despite the blistering yellow sun and mumbled something unintelligible as he climbed the stairs to his room.

Suicide had tempted him in Saint-Remy, in the Borinage, and especially in the yellow house or the Schenkweg studio but he had not succumbed despite the horror and loathing beating on leather wings. It seemed he had talked romantically and rashly of doing himself in now in letters to Theo, but ultimately it was a cowardly, immoral act. Now that the reaper had sought him out in such a way he was almost relieved that the temptation had been taken from him. Sometime later a man who called himself Dr. Mazery arrived. He looked purple to Vincent and he wished he could paint him for a moment until the pain of the bullet lodged deep in his abdomen caused him to cry out. He felt better for awhile and Dr. Gachet arrived to find Vincent smoking his pipe. Will someone take this thing out of me! When the authorities asked him if he had tried to kill himself Vincent replied, “Yes, I believe so.”

Link to my Columbia Business Times article THE BEIJING CONSENSUS

2011-11-05T21:09:00.000-07:00

http://columbiabusinesstimes.com/13047/2011/10/28/the-beijing-consensus/

Reading

2011-09-18T08:28:00.001-07:00

William Woods University at 4:30 PM on Thursday, September 22 to hear me read with local writer Justin Hamm. He will be reading a mix of newer work and poems from his chapbook, Illinois, My Apologies. I will be reading from my novel Mercury in Retrograde. The reading will be held at Woody's, on the lower level of Tucker Dining Hall. I hope you can make it.

BINGO

2011-08-18T07:52:00.001-07:00

Today is my daughter’s first day of 3rd grade. Her shirt is covered in silver bling and her multi-colored shoes light up with every step she takes. When she was in Kindergarten someone taught her a car game. Each time we passed a yellow car she’d shout, “Bingo!” At first I thought it was funny which morphed into annoying before long. Over time it was a game that became somewhat addictive. Claira’s 4 year old brother likes to holler bingo after his sister or even just to say it to get her goat. The whole family is doing it now. In fact, it’s difficult to avoid thinking the word bingo when we see a yellow car. I have to admit too that a car that color seems a bit garish to me but to each his own. Still, driving around town, the next thing you know you’re looking for a bingo. It almost feels like you’ve won a prize.

It got me thinking about the power of words to change our mood, outlook, and ultimately maybe even our future. Not that I’m all about positivity no matter the context, but I do believe in change and that finding a doorway to inner change is usually preferable to a negative state. I will cop to being a road rager in my daily commute in the past so this is quite a progressive state for me personally. So what I was thinking, feel free to try this yourself, is this: each time you spot a yellow car instead of thinking or shouting bingo you might think or say “love” or “peace” or “compassion.” Anything that will bring you to your own optimal state in a world that seems chaotic and harsh. Maybe we can start to become our own catalyst for change one yellow vehicle at a time.

David Gessner Book Trailer for MY GREEN MANIFESTO

2011-07-26T13:49:00.000-07:00

The Night Train Book Trailer--Clyde Edgerton

2011-06-23T13:10:00.000-07:00

The Night Train Book Trailer - Clyde Edgerton from Mark Teachey on Vimeo.

In Case You Missed It: Checkout My Recent Post on the University of Missouri Press Blog on David Foster Wallace

2011-05-23T12:54:00.000-07:00

http://umissouripress.blogspot.com/2011/05/books-ive-been-reading-rereading.html

BOOKS I'VE BEEN READING, REREADING, STUDYING, AND THINKING ABOUT RECENTLY

2011-05-11T20:43:00.000-07:00

1. THE FUTURE WITHOUT A PAST: THE HUMANITIES IN A TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY/ JOHN PAUL RUSSO

2. DISTANT STAR/ROBERTO BOLANO

3. THE CORRECTIONS/JONATHAN FRANZEN

4. THE HUMAN STAIN/PHILIP ROTH

5. INFINITE JEST/DFW

6. UNDERSTANDING DAVID FOSTER WALLACE/MARSHALL BOSWELL

7. THE PALE KING/DFW

8. WHITE NOISE/DON DELILLO

9. MAO II/DON DELILLO

A Recommendation: I recently read an excerpt from this book in American Poetry Review and it looks pretty interesting:
A JOURNEY WITH TWO MAPS: BECOMING A WOMAN POET BY EAVAN BOLAND

Middle Path

2011-03-19T07:58:00.000-07:00

Trying to find the middle path
with a machete,
meditating on the breath
but your boy is asking
for another glass of water,
seeing a charming deity
in his impy smile,
you blow out the candle flame.

The Language of the Universe

2011-02-06T12:31:00.000-08:00

We drove up to my brother's foster home in Mom's old Ford. She wore a black outfit, mini-skirt and high heels, and big round movie star sunglasses. I sipped from the can of Mountain Dew I clutched in my lap letting the cold, sweet soda slosh around in my cheeks like a bullfrog. Mom was happy. She sang Me and Bobby McGee with Janis Joplin on the radio. She asked me for about the fortieth time what I thought about moving out to Arizona. My uncle lived out there and he said we could stay with him for awhile. She didn't know what she was going to do but she had the vague idea that things would be better somehow. It would be warm there all year round and no snow.

The foster home was a house that belonged to a Mr. and Mrs. O'Connell. They lived on the second floor of their bungalow style house with their two teenaged children. The house was green. I remember that for some reason. It was so green it glows in my memory. We got out of the car in the driveway. I skipped the flag stone steps to the back door. It opened to a nice kitchen.

Mom talked to Mrs. O'Connell about Lane. I wandered through the house. The house had been gutted except for the wall that intersected the room. The noise of the retarded children hit me as I walked through what had once been the dining room, living room, and bedrooms. Every few feet there was a crib or a bed with a kid lying or standing nearby making whining or hollering noises. I wasn't sure where Nick would be. We hadn't seen him in months. I came to a crib and peered over the side expecting to see a tiny baby what I saw instead was a head as big as the baby's entire body. I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. It seemed to smile at me. I knew then that the world was not a fair or just place. The face of a young mother popped into my mind. She was trying to hold this baby, tears streaming down her cheeks, and then she handed the baby over to Mrs. O'Connell. I wonder if the baby felt loved.

"Hi Laney-bird," I said.

My brother was stretched on the floor slobbering on his knuckles and making a sound like he was terrified. This was normal for him. He sat up when he saw me although I don't believe he recognized me. He would get these expressions on his face like a compassionate saint or buddha until the spell would be broken and he might hit himself repeatedly in the temple like a flagellent. For now he was calm. He put an arm around my shoulder to pull me close. He called "Mmm-Ma, Mmm-Ma, Mmm-Ma but it could just as easily have been "Om." At Church some people spoke in tongues. My brother chanted in the language of the universe.

I laid down on the rug next to him. I stared into his eyes thinking what it would be like to have a brother. A brother who lived with me. Maybe even shared the same room. His eyes were a very light blue. His lips were chapped as were the fingers on one hand. He had never spoken a word in his entire life and never would. He made a noise part chant and part song. I imitated it. He fell silent. There was a secret behind those eyes. I thought about the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Somehow I knew this story would not end like that. I waited for the mystery to reveal itself. I did not ask questions or think of answers. I looked into his eyes and he looked back at me. I wanted to tell him that this, all this, was not fair but somehow I believed he knew it already.

A PRESCRIPTION FOR ANDY RODDICK by Daren Dean

2011-02-02T22:04:00.000-08:00

After his latest loss can Roddick turn his career around and win another grand slam title at this point in his career? Roddick (Age 28) is ranked number 8 in the world but he went down in straight sets in his fourth-round match at the Australian Open to the journeyman Swiss player Stanislaus Wawrinka.

On paper Roddick has all the advantages in this sort of matchup. He has the ability to hit a 155 mile an hour serve (the fastest recorded serve in the history of our sport) and he’s appeared in 5 grand slam finals, Wimbledon 3 times and twice at the U.S. Open. Oddly enough it was his first final at the 2003 U.S. Open against Juan Carlos Ferrero where he first hoisted a major trophy where you might expect him to win Wimbledon with that titanic serve. However, it was Roger Federer who stunned Roddick with a straight set defeat of the American at Wimbledon in 2005. Federer demonstrated that the way to nullify the booming Roddick serve was to simply block it back deep. Roddick visibly struggled as Federer time and again returned his serve with ease.

This defeat showed not only the tactical brilliance of Federer on defense, but also a psychological achilles heal in the mental game of Roddick. Roddick allowed Federer to get away with blocking back his serve partly because he was surprised Federer could consistently do it over the course of the match, but also because Roddick did not back up his serve by effectively coming to the net behind it. Part of this is because despite having an amazing serve and forehand his volleys are only average at his level of the game. Another area of his game that is problematic in my view is that two-handed backhand. Rather than argue about which is better a one-hander or a two-hander I’d say that in certain situtations one hand is sometimes better than two despite the barrage of male players ranging from 6’4 to 6’10 who use the double-fisted grip. The difficulty comes in the transition game where it can be a liability at the top of the game when players are dealing with low short balls in the middle of the court.

Roddick causes his opponents to regularly hit weak shots off of the return of his serve but a two-hander finds himself making a split-second decisions to hit an outright winner or an approach shot. If it’s above the net you’ll see two-handers go for the winner, but if it’s low or angled away from them then they’re forced to carve under it while reaching forward with two hands or hitting a one-handed slice shot which more players have developed, but I would argue these players either hit it with too much slice and it pops up or they’re just not used to hitting it effectively against the top players. Obviously both Federer and Murray attempted to use this strategy of hitting off speed shots to the backhand to throw off Djockovic but the Joker loves this surface at the Australian Open and he triumphed over both of his top rivals with quick feet and a refurbished first serve.

Aside: Another reason for this rise of all-court baseliners is due to the fact that the surfaces have been slowed down perhaps due to the sharp criticism back in the 90s that watching short points and booming serves was too boring. There were several years where the common wisdom said the sport was not appealing to the masses the way it did when you had the violent personalities of Connors and McEnroe drawing spectators to see the blood sport aspect of the game these American players brought to the game. In my view, real tennis fans still loved the sport after the decline of those colorful players but not all of the folks who watched them really cared or knew anything about the game. Changes that were discussed or put into practice were playing loud music, changing the rules of the game, and all of this criticism seemed to disappear since the Federer-Nadal rivalry has emerged. But I digress, can you imagine what terror the 6'6 Juan Martin del Potro would strike in his opponents if he hit a kick serve and followed it into the net?

It was the Swiss Stanislaus Wawrinka who took a page out of Federer’s book to mentally and physically take the match from Roddick by using a strategic game to underscore Roddick's weaknesses. Whenever A-Rod seemed to get ahead in the point he seemed to play passively and allow Wawrinka to exploit his neutral two-hander and then turn defense into offense.

It might be ridiculous to suggest that a one-handed backhand is always better than two. Not what I'm suggesting at all, but I have noticed a trend in professional tennis which seems to be dominated by big men who move like gazelles with Thor-like serves and forehands but play like they have to skitter around on the baseline as though they are afraid they might be passed at the net if they come in off the backhand. It's analagous to the 6'11 basketball player who decides he's a three-point specialist. Yes, he might have a nice outside shot but why not maximize your natural gifts? Let's face it, it is an awkward shot for a two-hander.

I would even suggest it’s those darn two-handed backhands that have forced them to play this way. Now, I have to back track and say yes Soderling has an amazing flat two-hander and there are others but in the transition game only a few players over the years have overcome this problematic issue of the transition game. Number one, to the detriment of many of these top players there isn't much of a transition happening and it's awkward to do the graceful shuffle with the feet to hit an effective approach shot when you have both hands on your racquet.

Jimmy Connors had probably the greatest two-handed approach in the history of the game while Mats Wilander who went 3 for 4 in the grand slams in 1988 with his new secret weapon—the one-handed slice backhand. Players can hit this shot but largely it’s just to pin their opponent on the baseline rather than a threatening shot like the infamous knifing Ken Rosewall stroke. In addition, the racquet technology of the game has given rise to another phenomenon that almost everyone on the men’s and women’s tour now has a very serviceable backhand. I think this is a case of technology over technique. Another point I’ll throw in there is that strategy and the ability to change game plans in the middle of the match separates Nadal and Federer from the pack. So many technically brilliant players seem to be out there whacking the ball for all their worth but hitting through the opponent and chasing down balls seems to be the go-to plan which in my view is no plan at all.

On the other hand, I watched a couple of Francesa Schiavone’s matches and was reminded of a time when players actually tried to exploit weaknesses and take control of the net. More players than you can shake a ripstick at seem to be playing in the Agassi style these days which I think has shown one great weakness which is currently being exploited by the world's best players. Nadal and Djokovic use two hands too, but they have had more success because of their conditioning and quick feet in my view—and they aren’t afraid to be aggressive and take over which, if you’ll remember, Nadal was tagged with this criticism earlier in his career.

In this vein, I believe Roddick could improve his chances against the field in general if he concentrates on backing up his serve by taking those floaters in the air, improving his conditioning for his movement’s sakes, and developing his transition game. I’m sure great coaches like Stefanki have been begging him to do this but it’s up to Roddick to get outside of his comfort zone in order to compete with the greatest players of his generation: Federer, Nadal, and revived Novak djokovic. No easy feat I’ll grant that but he’ll have to take more chances particularly on the return of serve.

A-Rod is moving in the right direction with Larry Stefanki as his coach, but the real question is will he listen to Stefanki? He’s been through a numer of coaches including his brother, and more notably Jimmy Connors, and Brad “Winning Ugly” Gilbert to name a few. Does the Nebraska native’s recent loss at the Australian Open mean he’ll soon be shopping around for another new coach? (I hear Patrick McEnroe is free.) Let’s hope not. I haven’t noticed Roddick’s game improving or changing for the better but I suspect that his on court woes are a combination of strategy and confidence issues. Against the top 5 players in the world he will definitely have to produce brilliant tennis. His tendency to stay back and wait to hit a big forehand will just not work against Nadal and Federer who frankly can do everything he can and a little better. His movement is good but it’s not at the level of the top contenders. I believe he can get back into the mix again but it will take work if he's willing to dedicate his 2011 to finding the right formula for his game.

Don’t feel sorry for Roddick. He is, after all, married to the beautiful swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker besides being a grand slam winner. But it would be nice to see him as a serious contender for future slam titles for the sake of American tennis.

Richard Ford on Writing

2011-01-20T11:46:00.000-08:00

This is a part 1 in a 2 part video interview with Ford talking about moving to the Jersey shore, writing, and other things. It has a nice atmospheric sense to it that I think you might enjoy. Richard Ford is a brilliant writer. I've known this for awhile but funny enough I've never read the Trilogy he's most well known for which are the books about his character Frank Bascombe (The Sportswriter, Independence Day, and the Lay of the Land). I read Wildlife and Rock Springs years ago and really loved that stuff. I only just finished A Piece of My Heart. I'm not sure how long ago it was after I read Wildlife I was surprised to learn Ford was from Mississippi since those other books had a western flavor. It must have been the early 90s I was reading other western writers like Thomas McGuane and Rick Bass. A little later I found Annie Proulx and the list goes on. I could identify with these writers because I'd moved around a bit growing up and before I started high school we'd lived in Arizona, California, Colorado, and Nebraska. The open landscape and the myth of the American west that my mother must have bought into that there are limitless possibilities in the west must have appearled to her. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The idea of reinventing oneself has always appealed to me.

A Piece of My Heart echoes with the southern cadence you might expect. It's a literary novel with long stretches of atmosphere and conversations that seem to about to explode into violence. It just solidifies this idea of Ford in my mind as a great writer. I want to say he's underrated but since he did get the Pulitzer for Independence Day in 1996 I guess that might sound funny though I rarely hear anyone mention his name. I'm going to read that trilogy for sure now since I've given myself a pep talk about it. Let me know if you read him and what you think. He has successfully avoided getting labeled as a Southern writer or a Western writer because his work takes place all over the country. He's an American writer.

Columbia Tribune Piece

2011-01-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

Niche: A weekly peek at an area artist

Daren Dean
By Aarik Danielsen Columbia Daily Tribune
Sunday, November 7, 2010

Often, talk about successful writers centers on bringing shades and shadows of a very specific setting, the haunts and hallows of their homes to bear on their words. Faulkner had Mississippi, Steinbeck the Central California coast and Thoreau the Walden woods.

Daren Dean’s work has a definite sensibility, but it’s born from a childhood in the company of rich characters rather than born out of a single location. Dean was born in Missouri, the state always a point of reference and return. Growing up, however, he and his mother sojourned frequently “for no good reason,” an indefinable wanderlust rousing them and a westerly wind blowing them to states such as Arizona, California, Colorado and Nebraska.

At each stop, Dean encountered a cast worthy of preserving in print: jovial shop owners, beguiling barflies and roughnecks who doubled as swimming teachers. Each of their stories added contour to his character, each highway and byway traveled providentially pointing toward one path. “I think partly my background was raising me to become a writer,” he said.

Dean speaks like a modest Midwesterner but writes like a Southerner with sordid stories to tell, versed in the vernacular of violence, fluent in the language of hard luck, acquainted with everyday drama and the alienation that occurs even in close-knit communities. In his new novel, “Far Beyond the Pale,” Dean draws deep from wells of tradition and tension established by his literary forefathers.

“Things resonate with me more … with these Southern writers,” Dean said. “I guess it has to do with growing up mostly in the Midwest. … There’s a lot I recognize when I look at those characters. Some people think it’s funny that you write about these kinds of characters when you’re not this kind of person. But I’m very familiar with that thought process and how people really do things and think about things.”

Like a sphere careening through a pinball machine, he was flung back and forth between drastically different situations. Living with his mother, Dean knew few restraints. They occasionally lived in motel rooms, and, often, he would get off the school bus to visit her in bars where she worked. There, he heard “a lot of funny talk because everyone was drunk or on their way.” Tall tales, outright lies and candid confessions were part of the chatter; Dean was often amazed at how adults would fail to filter their comments around him.

He would also stay with a devoutly Pentecostal aunt and uncle; Dean was given a great deal and love in each environ but felt adrift in a world of extremes, hoping to find merit in the middle. He learned to blend in during even the most “volatile” situations, a gift that would later serve him well. “When you’re a kid, you’re not in control of too many situations so, really, what you have is the power of observation to help you,” he said.

Yet, for a long time, he had little interest in writing, inspired instead by visual movements such as surrealism and dada. Over time, he warmed to the likes of Truman Capote and, especially, Flannery O’Connor, whose stories he felt paralleled his own. French author André Breton provided just the bridge Dean required between surrealism and the written word; his “Soluble Fish” encouraged him to engage writing techniques such as free association. He eventually completed a degree at Central Methodist University and a Master of Fine Arts at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. Influences deeply felt during school and beyond included professor and novelist Clyde Edgerton and Mississippi-based author Larry Brown. He taught writing and literature classes adjunct at the University of Missouri, Westminster College and William Woods University but, after struggling to “cobble together” enough classes each semester, accepted a position at the University of Missouri Press.

All the while, he penned and published prose, poetry and creative nonfiction, securing a style that positioned him as an heir to a rich legacy of Southern literature, though Dean also identifies with genre-blurring labels like Industrial Gothic, Southern Punk and Country Noir. His work possesses a quick, dark wit similar to O’Connor’s — his narrators are self-deprecating and self-aware — as well as a characteristic fascination with the grotesque. His most astute awareness is of the alienation felt by a generation with increasingly absent parents. “I think my characters struggle with being true to their loved ones, and being true to your family is a way of being loyal to yourself,” he said in a follow-up e-mail. “They struggle with these loyalties because the characters … are divided within themselves.”

Each factor emerges in “Far Beyond the Pale,” the story of “Honey Boy” Kimbrough, “a 13-year-old, four-letter spouting, pistol-packing kid” who befriends a violent scofflaw on his search for any semblance of a functional family. Although the tale’s trajectory mirrors his, Dean said the main character is far more audacious and willing to act than he ever was. Currently available, the book is being considered by a larger publisher, so Dean’s work continues “to hopefully make the characters stronger and perhaps make the arc of Honey Boy’s life more dramatic for the reader.”

The book contains no grand epiphany; Dean said he doesn’t succumb to the “misconception that fiction has to have a moral.” He agrees with Harry Crews, who said, “What the artist owes the world is his work, not a model for living.” Dean would rather concentrate on crafting “an interesting and entertaining story or have a certain aesthetic.”

The perpetual migration Dean endured meant rarely seeing resolutions in the lives of characters he encountered. As such, he sees solid beginnings, muscular middles and incomplete endings in his work. However, as he continues on with Honey Boy and in his career, Dean is learning how to craft fascinating conclusions to his chapters, ones sure to reflect his Midwest-by-birth, Southern-by-the-grace-of-great-writers sense of self.

Checkout the article in the Columbia Tribune

2010-11-07T06:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2010/nov/07/daren-dean/#

Orr Street Studio Reading Lisa Groshong and Daren Dean

2010-10-26T06:25:00.000-07:00

Far Beyond the Pale Review

2010-10-10T14:13:00.001-07:00

http://301media.com/301/2010/finally-cracking-open-an-ebook/

David Baker discusses ebooks and Far Beyond the Pale on his blog:

HomeAboutFilmsScreenplaysWeb DesignWriting RSS301media.com

A mixed media blog by David BakerBusiness Comics Contests Dialog Fiction Films Habits Misc. Poetry Resources Tips Gutenberg, iPhones and “Far Beyond the Pale”10th August 2010 Update – 08-11-10 – ReadWriteWeb offered 5 reasons why paper books are better than eBooks. Kobo offers a host of free eBooks including every classic you’ll ever need to read.
It’s been at least ten years since I first started thinking seriously about eBooks and getting excited about the idea. I had a Palm Pilot for work, and the display was poor and the Internet connection was horrible. But I loved the idea of carrying an entire library in my pocket. Still, I never even purchased the first book. The Palm Pilot is probably in some museum right now. Maybe the Gutenberg Museum we recently visited in Mainz, Germany.

Far Beyond the Pale is the new novel from Daren Dean.

Well, it’s taken me ten years to finally give it a try. What I needed was the right device and a strong reason to jump in. I bought an iPhone a couple years ago. But still, I didn’t download the Kindle app and a book until my friend Daren Dean released his amazing novel, Far Beyond the Pale, on Amazon. I downloaded the app and fired up the book, and now I’m thoroughly enjoying both Daren’s excellent writing and the experience of reading a novel electronically.

Readwriteweb recently gave five reasons why eBooks are better than their paper ancestors.Though they highlight some amazing features of eBooks that aren’t available in the dead tree format, I wouldn’t go so far as saying this makes them superior. There’s still nothing quite like the smell of a fresh (or old and dusty) book, or the feel of pulp in your hands. There’s a sensory pleasure in reading a paper book that can’t be replicated digitally.

But the actual act reading, of experiencing words, even on the iPhone’s small screen, is just as engaging as reading on paper. You can make notes, highlight, save your spot. The iPhone allows you to flip pages with your thumb, adding a new level of touch to the experience that pressing a button can’t give you. The digital annotation tools are more efficient than the analog system of sticky notes, highlighters, bent corners and margin scrawls (albeit aesthetically less pleasing). The price is also fantastic. Daren is self-published, but I was able to buy his novel at a price on Kindle that allowed him a better profit margin (per copy) than if he’d connected with a traditional publisher.

Some writers and book lovers may think that the advent of eBooks is a sad day for novels, words and books in general. I think that’s pessimistic horse shit.

There’s also something nice about the short page length on an iPhone…it gives you the feeling of headlong progress (through the 4,000+ pages that Daren’s novel reaches in this format). I thought I’d need time to adjust to thousands of micropages compared to the traditional200-400 page length of a novel, but it’s been no problem at all. In fact, I appreciate being able to flip a page or two between giving my kid a bath or waiting for her to brush her teeth. It seems easier to dip in and out of a novel than reading a fraction of a longer, standard-length page.

Some writers and book lovers may think that the advent of viable eBook platforms is a sad day for novels, words and books in general. I think that’s pessimistic horse shit. eBooks may just be what saves the novel form in this digital age. The new platform introduces the novel experience to people who are used to consuming all of their information on a mobile device and wouldn’t otherwise think to read something of that length. It saves trees. It allows self-published authors to reach a global audience in minutes. It enhances the opportunity to deepen the novel experience with, say, video of the author reading or social highlighting and notes that give you an instant book discussion group. The future of the book-length manuscript would be far more precarious if they didn’t translate so smoothly to the Kindle, iPhone and iPad.

And it’s silly to think that paper books will die as a result of the growing popularity of eBooks. We all now have keyboards and mobile devices that shoot video and record audio. People write blogs and online diaries and send volumes of digitally composed email. But personal journals are as popular as ever. Moleskine notebooks are on sale everywhere. I see them in every coffee shop in Oregon, but I also recently returned from Germany and Italy, and they’re all over Europe as well. Every corner in Florence seemed to have a fine stationary shop, where Moleskines were the cheap option, and antique leather notebooks fetched ridiculous prices. There’s still a place for the handwritten word five hundred years after Gutenberg. People will always read paper books as well.

Hands-on printing at the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz - they'll still be doing this 500 years from now.

While we were in Germany, we stopped at the Gutenberg Museum. My daughter joined her cousins in making prints in the museum’s hands-on print shop. She was thrilled by the tactile, mechanical experience of creating art in a method not unlike Gutenberg used when he printed his first Bible page a half millennium ago. This experience could never be replicated digitally. The art hanging on the walls of the print shop was innovative, and had a warm, comfortable feeling. Prints will be decorating walls for as long as I’m alive. Gutenberg’s invention brought the Bible and a host of other materials to the hands of people who didn’t have access to them before. He created a world of readers, expanding the simple practice of reading to the great unwashed. eBooks have the potential of bringing novels and book-length manuscripts forward, not only reaching people who already read them, but even introducing them to folks who never would have thought to pick up a manuscript on their own before.

Just like Gutenberg's invention brought the new experience of reading a book to people never reached before, the digital novel will bring novels to new readers.

So for writers and serious readers, there’s nothing to fear from eBooks. Bookstores will still exist. Some will flourish, and some will close. But books and novel manuscripts will persist. Writers like Daren Dean will be able to share their stories with friends on the other side of the country, and hopefully even reach a wider audience. Far Beyond the Pale is a compelling novel with an engaging voice. It’s a little raw, but it’s better than a lot of the pap that I’ve bought from traditional publishers in the past year. It also has a feeling of personal authenticity that other novels I’ve read recently. Maybe it’s because I know Daren, or maybe it’s because the digital age is allowing novelists to engage readers without the filter of big corporate publishers.

Daren is an amazing writer who surrounds his readers with voice-driven prose and rich, tactile imagery that comes through just as well on screen as it does on paper. And even traditional publishers and agents have been telling him for years that he’s an amazing writer, though, “the market is just too tough right now.” But today he’s now able to reach the audience he deserve.

Book Review: Dirty Little Angels by Chris Tusa

2010-10-01T06:44:00.000-07:00

Dirty Little Angels, by Chris Tusa, The University of West Alabama's Livingston Press 2009,147 pp., $15.95

Tusa is a gifted poet who shows us why southern writers have a leg up on the competition when it comes to telling stories in this his debut novel. New Orlean's native son strikes a balance somewhere between the humid characterization of Harry Crews, the almost criminal prose of Walter Mosley, and Jim Thompson's downright belligerent noir. It's a real pleasure to watch Tusa's people rant and rave about wrongdoing, the limits of familial love, and the motivations of God Himself in the Big Easy.

Hailey Trosclair leads us through the gritty streets of the New Orlean's French Quarter. She and her new friends hang out at hardluck places like the The Dead Goat and the abandoned bank on Elysian Fields. Hailey is growing up fast and just beginning to see the violent side of the adult world as a participant rather than as a child. Moses, a friend of Hailey's brother Cyrus, is a hustler who proselytizes sinners with a pair of brass knuckles, but he goes too far and one young man, Cory Rabalais, dies from the beating that Hailey's brother Cyrus helps visit upon the young man for attacking a girl. The reader speculates with delicious anxiety . . . will they all be blamed for the young man's death? The characters of Tusa know they are imploring to an impassive god who ignores prayers when they talk about creating a drive-through Church. Not unlike Flannery O'Connor's "Church Without Christ" one wonders about the real identity of the indifferent wrathful God at issue here.There's no doubt a careful reader, like a girl Hailey meets in the hospital after a suicide attempt, might find a dirty angel or two in these pages.

What makes Tusa's writing enjoyable is his attention to language. No surpise since he is also an extraordinary poet who sings us a dark hymn in Dirty Little Angels of grief and retribution. For instance, the novel opens with a strange yet arresting metaphor, The baby was a white fist of flesh. There are other examples of his talent for turning a strange and compelling phrase like crows opened like black flowers in the trees; that creepy bastard could spook the chords out of a guitar; the sky was the color of raw meat. Call his work modern southern gothic with a grotesque host of characters who cheat on each other, steal cemetery angels, name their pitbull Hitler, and have tattoos of Christ crucified across their chests. Read this book for the florid descriptions and near divination that inspired this apocalyptic tale. Tusa is a writer's writer who causes us to say out loud, "I wish I could write like that."

Influence, Reading, and Apocalypse

2010-09-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

"I'm a poet now, searching for the extraordinary, trying to express it in ordinary, everyday words. So you think there are ordinary, everyday words?"--Roberto Bolano

The words nearly blew through the top of my head.

Earlier I picked up a small book of short stories and hadn't made it halfway through the first paragraph when I had to stop reading, get up, snatch a beer out of the fridge, take a swig, and marvel at what I had just read. It was a story called Jim from The Insufferable Gaucho by Roberto Bolano. I can't even say I understood what it was about at first, but the language was just poetry. The words, man! Genius.

What must it be like to read him in the original? I ask my wife. She is used to hearing me talk this way. Making no sense as usual. I would like to hang back a little and be more critical, but when I get excited about a writer I become their biggest fan. No argument or news of a bad review is likely to change my mind. Besides, reviewers, and some readers, thrive on what William Hazlitt termed "the pleasure of hating" from that infamous essay. You could point out problems with his plotting, but I'd hesitate to call them flaws. Stylistically (perhaps that's the word I'd allow) he can be challenging, frustrating even, but when I first read The Savage Detectives I kept trying to put it down. I could not. I kept going back to it. These characters aren't going anywhere, not really, I'll just read a few more pages. If something interesting happens I'll keep reading. Then, of course, something always did. It was a story about writers after all. Young writers who are passionate about poetry! In a way I'm not sure Americans can be. Yes, I said that out loud. Passionate about Surrealism too! Or maybe that's Bolano and the culture he grew up with, which I won't bore you by pretending I understand. I don't understand the subtle and outspoken comments on politics either. It makes me want to learn more about it.

Yes, I've read Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Octavio Paz, Nerudo, a little Borges, and Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo because the musician Jim White mentioned him in an interview. Bolano though! After Savage Detectives I read 2666. Another book that's starts off more about scholarly book writing critics! That sounds boring, eh? Um, well, it's not. These two hefty volumes are made up of shorter pieces hinged together to make something more with recurring themes and characters. Arturo Belano narrates a tour through the hell of his Santa Teresa, but it's many voices. A multi-layered narrative. Yes, and then if you tackled these mammoth books you soon discover the brevity that makes up the rest of his library. At first blush you might think you are dealing with two different writers, but then you find the short pieces where the characters in the novels emerged from. So very Faulkner like in this construction but the meat of the story is that necessary strangeness that Bloom talked about as a necessity for literary fiction. The enigmatic Amalfitano of 2666. The mysterious writer-philosopher. The innumerable deaths. To what end does Bolano shows us these murders? ah, even the number whispers, hints at, apocalypse. An eschatological mystery that ends more with a satan and chaos.

A university editor I used to know told me he hates to read stories, particularly fiction, about writers. I kept silent just to be polite. I'm like that unless pushed. Sometimes people mistake silence for consent. I, on the other hand, love books about writers. Fiction about unsuccesful (some succesful too) writers is amazing the way Bolano does it. Anyway, it got me to thinking.

My influences. Are they the right ones? I'm an American. Trapped in a certain way of looking at the world that I doubt I could articulate very well if I tried for better or worse. I've been the proverbial ugly American in my reading habits except for the exceptions. What I'm trying to get at is quite difficult. Sometimes I say, I am this kind of writer and others who know me are surprised but they read the stories and novels and know that it's true but sometimes there are hints of another writer's intellect and soul. Seen through a glass darkly I'll give you that. Can I be a better writer of the ilk that I am? Can I evolve, in my forties, to yet another style of writing and a new set of sensibilities? Would I want to? Can't I just improve a bit more before the clocks runs out at the end of the period?

I just read an essay by Raymond Carver called Fire. He hems and haws about his influences. It reminded me of when you ask a writer from the south if he's a southern writer. There's no way he's going to admit to it. A few will, but most will go to great lengths to contradict you. It seems like Carvers going to do this in this piece at first. He says his children influenced his writing the most. In the time we live in now and reading this, you think, okay, here we go. Some touchy-feely political correct bullshit about his little shining stars and how they've influenced him. You soon find that's not what he's saying, not at all. He tells a little vignette about doing five loads of laundry in a laundry mat where he has an argument with a woman trying to give him shit about using too many machines. Then, he worries about not getting a dryer in time to dry the clothes before he had to pickup his kids. The real stuff. The problems. The mind numbing existential nausea, right? This made him by necessity a poet and a short story writer. Oh, he allows it could just be short attention span. It could be. Probably not. Ah, who knows if he didn't?

If you're a writer, it makes you wonder, these are the things you obsess about. It's no wonder some say you are crazy.

The Good Word

2010-09-28T13:32:00.001-07:00

"I believe he [Daren Dean] will join the other young Southern writers like Brad Watson and Tony Earley as a vital new voice."
--David Gessner
Author of Return of the Osprey, Sick of Nature, Soaring with Fidel

Appropriation: Sex Fantasy of Artist Cindy Sherman

2010-09-26T19:17:00.000-07:00

I loved you and your art for all the wrong reasons
in 1985, Cindy Sherman.

Your Untitled Film plays on my mind
like cheap perfume advertised in 30-second spots,
your innocent girls so like nudes
in a deck of cards
just as you planned.

It is your vulnerability,
their vulnerability,
makes them so alluring,
I love you, Cindy Sherman,

Oh, woman with the dog eyes,
close my eyes for me so I
do not have to see myself
descending down to Hades.

I would save all your
naive young women,
Oh, oh, those lovely blonds and red-heads,
and all of them you,

if I weren't such a male cliche'
but I can't even save myself
from social expectations
and the limitations of sex,
much less your ceramic body,
wrapped in cellophane,
filmed in technicolor.

These looming cities in our hearts
Get your hands off my
broken-down fantasies
and put your hands on me.

News

2010-09-25T14:57:00.000-07:00

What's happening lately? There are a number of things in the works at the moment. My friend and artist Brett Williams is working on a book trailer for Far Beyond the Pale. I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with it.

But wait, that's not all! If everything goes well I should be doing a reading soon at the Missouri River Regional Library in Jefferson City. More details to come as they are available.

Also, I've joined the group at Orr Street Studio where I'll have a working office. I did a reading there last year and I loved the atmosphere and immediately wished I could become a part of it. Starting next month I will be. It's particularly inspiring to be around such creative people who are also interested in being apart of a creative community.

I was looking at what Press 53 is doing with publishing and their center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and I'm thinking about the steps they've taken to support writers. I wonder if Columbia and MidMo in general is big enough to support something like this? I wonder if there are enough writers who would want to get involved? Checkout Press 53:

http://www.press53.com/CenterforCreativeWriting.html

The Crossing, a Poem

2010-09-22T19:56:00.000-07:00

A cattail opening
lotus pure signal

angel-whispers white
milkweed nature drift

so far across the
wide pond grants

a traveler grace
as a small seed

trails cometfire in
the bowing willow's

shade a final
transcendent joy

settling into mire.

The Drowning, a Poem by Daren Dean

2010-09-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

Out of the hazelnut thickets,
Stepping through the canebrakes,
and walking through the drainage ditch

a body was lying in Hungry Mother Creek,
silent, on porous rock;
looking down, stepping back in the ankle-deep,

icy pool approaching against gagging tide,
waterbug ripples spent themselves against
her face, her long hair, and a white gold

cross where the chain bit a puffy burgundy
lesion around it in a ring,
almost expecting her name or help

to be spelled out on her pallid skin
but how long ago a rounded cheek
was fair and perhaps a boy had nuzzled

in the crook between her neck
and shoulder blade?
Running through the windbreak of ash,

pine, evergreen, and the scent of blood
surrounded me and I found an old buddy
and we drank out of fruit jars

and shot clay pigeons with shotguns
He told me to call the authorities.
When I said no, he shook his head:

Time will tell, he said as he turned the bottle
up to see the glassine bead bob as he drank.

The Sun of Arles, a poem by Daren Dean

2010-09-16T16:50:00.000-07:00

Those who don't believe in this sun here are real infidels.
--Vincent Van Gogh, from a letter to Theo.

A blur of river flood and heat lightning,
a corpse lies immobile in a winter field,
yellow light flashes, distracts the eye,
water burbles in a dirty stream.

Trickling into the Devil's Icebox,
over rounded creek stones
where crawfish and green frogs
pause careless sentinels over waterbugs.

Silver fish spawning beneath my
own private Sun of Arles,
imprisoned in the realization
life is a dreaming god's nightmare.

Paint hardens on heavy loaded brush,
color expresses itself in words,
images dye, an unkind corruption.
The trees are looming violet
as the sun shrieks Damn Yellows,
my harsh words, destructive lights,
green lichen climbs unmilled stone.

Endure, A Short Story

2010-09-15T05:14:00.000-07:00

Judah House Belfour awoke at dawn flailing his arms at the voices in his dreams that he could never quite remember later on. His skin itched from nightsweats. The coffee maker belched rebelliously as the sound of the hot liquid coursing into the pot inspired him to go make some water of his own in the bathroom.

The entire house was gutted and bare except for a kitchen table with a formica top and four chairs, a few castoff appliances from the 1940s, a black woodstove that took up the biggest part of the living room, a chest of drawers, and a double bed in what would be the bedroom when he finished the place. His great grandparents had built the place originally. It was one hell of a nice place on forty acres. Time stood still here. It pained him to think he might have to sell it all just to get by. The radio on the table, left on from the night before, was tuned to the local country station where a deep voice uttered in a tongue sibylline and inaudible.

The sink had a couple of dishes in it. He washed a couple of ants out of yesterday's coffee cup. The pot was only half full, but he went ahead and poured a cup anyway. Belfour took his cup onto the front porch wearing only a pair of jeans as the sun struggled to move beyond the horizon over the misty fields.

His skin burned from the radiation treatments. They had drawn green marks all over his body so they could aim the radiation. They had even drawn on him down there. He was supposed to be at the hospital already and he still had to drive thirty-eight miles to get there. It took all of his will power to finish dressing, but then he decided he wasn't going to the hospital today.

He only had about thirteen more treatments to go, but the cancer had already taken everything from him. A couple of years earlier he had the prostate exam and found out the worst. They did the surgery and he had even had to learn how to piss again. The doctor, an attractive blond much too young for him, in her thirties, told him there was a possibility it wouldn't work the way it had before. My noodle won't jump. She had pushed a strand of yellow hair behind her ear self-consciously when she told it to him and that had made it almost unbearable.

He put off his radiation treatments for as long as he could. He had to quit his job doing landscape for Rick Harlow, a kid his son had went to high school with, who used to pay him under the table in cash. He had lost it for awhile when Jimmy was killed over in Desert Storm. They said he had served honorably in defense of his country and that was about it. The landscaping job didn't have any benefits. Nobody would give him a job once he had started drinking so heavily after Joshua's death except the Harlow boy.

There was no job to go to anymore except the house itself. The old place called him to it. He was partly raised by his great grandmother. It was almost as if the place felt he was beholding to it somehow. A lineal trace through the winding creek bottom, the last vestige of ancestral blood called from the ground for retribution, summoned him to restoration. A pallet of new shingles sat in the front yard. He didn't have the money to fix up the place, but he had determined to do what he could when he had the money. He remembered his grandfather switching him for love in front of the white barn.

The birds were already screaming at one another when he went out on the dilapidated porch. The rail whined but held firm when he pushed his weight against it. He spat out the coffee grounds on his tongue. The porch had been built a little crazy. Nail heads stuck up. There were extra lengths, no longer than his forearm, of two by fours that were there just for extra support. They didn't know what the hell they was doing. I never seen anything like it. He gave the rail a good kick now. Maybe the whole thing would come flying apart, make his job easier if it did. They didn't know what the hell they was doing.

An old school bus lay on its side out by the pond. A family of ducks made their home in it. He thought about taking some stale bread to them, but knew if he got distracted now he would never get up on that roof with the shovel to scrape off the old shingles. He wanted to get up there before the sun got up. He lit a Pall Mall and looked at the pack without thinking about the comfort, the familiarity, the red pack logo gave him. Not everything in life had to be "new and improved" because some things were just fine the way they were. The sun peeked over the horizon and bathed the new day in shades of burnt umber.

"Does your dog bite, sir?" A smiling black man in a sharp new suit got out of a green woody station wagon with the man's entire family in it and an older white woman in silver horn-rimmed glasses. The man with blazing white teeth and a sharp new suit stepped toward the porch with a bible, a magazine, and a stack of tracts. He didn't know what hit him when the dog out of the cab of the old Dodge and bit the sallow palm of his outstretched hand. The sound of horror emanated from the station wagon. Belfour looked on silently as the station wagon gently rocked back and forth on its shocks. He should have said something to the dog, but then again he hadn't been expecting company.

"He never bit me," Belfour took a sip of black coffee.

The man looked like he was trying to do a new style of dance going backwards. Aahhh. Ah. Aahhh! The man dropped his literature and held his bleeding hand by the wrist. The dog was showing its white teeth, barking and growling, shuffling forward a step for every foot the man retreated until he made it back to his encroaching vehicle. The station wagon backed out of the drive and hit the fence on the other side of the road before the driver righted it and barreled off down the road under Belfour's acerbic eye.

"Good dog," Belfour mock-saluted.

The dog snorted at the flags of dust. He turned and wagged his tail at Belfour before jumping back into the Dodge. Since the sun was climbing up he went out and picked up the bible and the magazine that read Watch Tower. The idea of a black Jehovah's Witness struck him as funny, because he didn't know there was such a thing. He started laughing bent over at the waist and could not stop. 144,000! 144,000! 144,000! 12,000 each from the twelve tribes of Israel! He did not read too well to begin with, but he would have to find the drugstore reading glasses he used for reading the obituaries and the sports page. He couldn't wait to tell Wiener down at the Big Four Barber Shop how his dog had bit a black Israelite on a Sunday morning.

Mitchell Belfour might have been one of the 144,000 going to heaven, but he didn't think any of them could be black. Had he lived his son would be twenty-three years old. The boy had been driving drunk and just drove of the road into a little embankment that looked like it couldn't have hurt anyone. Not hardly a mark on the body when he had to identify it. Belfour stretched and went back in to make some toast. He fried an egg, a few strips of bacon, and shook hot sauce on the whole operation. The place became acrid, smoked up, with the dark smell of bacon until he had to open the back door. It was hard to find something to eat that he could taste. Everything tasted like shit anymore. He badly wanted a drink. A beer. But he knew if he got started this early he would never get to the roof and it wasn't going to shed the old shingles by itself. He went to the toilet and his entire breakfast came up. When he finished, on one knee, the sweat was pouring off his face. He rinsed his mouth out with some water and spit. Now, he felt better.

He went out and threw a piece of bacon to the dog who caught it in his mouth like an athlete. The yellow dog, the one he had liked, had disappeared last week. He strapped on his utility belt with his carpenter's hammer, chalkline, pencil, tape measure, nails and once on the roof planned to take the belt off and lean it against the fireplace to keep it from sliding off. The ladder leaned against the back of the house where the newer addition offerred the lowest access. Clambered up top with the shovel in hand. He would have liked to have had one of those roofing shovels with the grooves on the end made special for pulling up the nails, but he would have to make due instead.

The appaloosa mare down in the pasture just stood near the lake with her head down. Forty acres still belonged to a Belfour, but Miss Molly was all alone in the field with nothing do but eat until she almost looked pregnant. He might have to move her to the yard where he kept the grass short. Red MacMurray sold horses sometimes and he considered getting a pony to keep the mare company, but he just couldn't afford to feed them both in the winter.

He ought to get rid of Miss Molly, but the mare had belonged to his ex-wife. She up and left about seven-eight years earlier. Mitchell was still alive then. They lived in town over on Jefferson street back then. Belfour thought if Gale ever did decide to return she might be pleased that Miss Molly was still there. Gale had never been happy for long and it seemed to him she had carried a deep wound from childhood that she would not seem to rise above. Of an evening, he would get some feed and rattle it until the mare practically ran him over trying to get to the barn. Her mottled hide rippled as he stroked her with the curry-comb. She would make satisfied noises, happy for the company, as he spoke to her. She liked to listen to the radio. Belfour caught himself imagining Gale was working in the garden wearing her large sunhat or in the kitchen snapping beans into the white ceramic bowl with purple grapes humming to the radio.

The shingles clung stubbornly to the old plywood. It was much better quality wood, thicker than what was normally used now, but dried up and warped with years of water absorbed into the grain. He would work loosening up the nails with the shovel and then a whole section would get pryed up like a carbuncle, and then he pushed the whole mess down the roof even using his feet when he became winded. He had practically buried the bushes, the box elders, and assorted perennials around the old place, but then he never had company anymore and getting the roof done was the important thing for the moment.

The sun was nearly overhead when he heard some yipping out in the field. The shovel came out of his hands. It went sliding down the roof hit the ground with a muffled clang. Then the dog started barking, shimmied under the fence, and tore into the field. The dog jumped almost comically like a kangaroo to see over the tall grass. From his vantage point on the roof he could see about three coyotes heading toward the mare wraithful spirits of the country. If he had been on the ground the horseweeds and Johnson grass were just tall enough to have obscured them.

"You son-of-a-bitches," he flicked his cigarette off the roof. "Wait until I get my god-damned gun."

Belfour nearly fell off the roof. Boots scraping halfway down, until he came to bald patch revealing the warped and graying wood where he found purchase. The coyotes were almost on the mare. Molly's head whipped around, her mane like a banner, as her coffins tore clumps from the earth as she hurtled toward the far end of the pasture where the woods of scrub oaks, cedar, and sumac were another barrier hemming her in. The dog hit the last of the coyotes head on and they rolled like feral cats.

When he landed on the window frame he had laboriously removed for re-painting between the sawhorses. A sharp pain shot through his side. He had either just broken a couple of ribs or they would be very sore later. On his feet, he tore open the screen door and held it in his hand--off its hinges. He swore softly to himself and threw it down. Just inside the doorway, tucked away in the corner, was a deer rifle. Grabbing it by the stock he turned and went out to the pasture. The coyotes and the dog made terrible noises like demons fighting over the scraps of human souls. A cloud of starlings flew overhead.

It was hard to see now actually out in the field with the grass so high. He ran toward the woods where he had last seen them. The weeds were canted in the direction the animals had went. He nearly stepped on the dog. He was laying in a bloody mess, panting and smiling. It had a deep gash in its shoulder. The man touched the dog and it tried to lick his hand. Stepping over the dog he went on to find Molly. Up ahead he heard the sound of growling and the smell of the wild. There was movement now of the bushes and the sound of wood snapping. Pollen was thick in the air floating by in spherical balls of white.

The first coyote appeared apparition-like. Belfour could see it attacking the mare's hindquarters. Anger gripped his chest as he willed himself forward and swung the rifle to his shoulder. The horse reared up and was caught in a barbed-wire fence. Her hide was bloody as she bucked against it until she was wedged into the wire so tightly she had to kneel down on her front legs.

One of the coyotes leapt in and bit her neck then and jumped back with a sound almost like a derisive human laugh. Belfour squeezed the trigger and the sharp report made all the animals recoil. The coyote that had just bit Molly tried to turn and bite the bullet that had just lodged in near it's spine. It loped off several yards, its body curled, and fell dead.

The other two coyotes immediately beat a retreat in the direction they had come from. Belfour fired at them, but he was too mad to shoot straight. He pulled the trigger again, and the sound of the click was even more enraging. In frustration he flung the rifle after them. He regretted it immediately and hoped he would be able to find it again. The coyote lay there immobile and he strode over and kicked it. It seemed to grin defiantly at him even in death with its tongue clamped down by yellow teeth.

The horse started to get riled up again. She only succeeded in working the barbs deeper into her skin. He went to her with his hands up and made soothing sounds with his mouth.

"Whoa," he said. "Miss Molly it's going to be all right now. All right now. All right."

The mare rumbled in its chest. She even tried to kick at him, but she was in the fence tight until Belfour wondered if he could get her out on his own. He had cutters in the barn, but a foreleg was hooked and bloodied and he knew with his intellect that she was done for, but hoped with his heart that she could be saved. The blood on the horse formed a stellated pattern that gave Belfour reason for pause. He looked around as if someone might be watching his reaction. He took off his shirt and rubbed at the horses blood, at the jagged pattern, but slowly the image returned much to his consternation.

Turning to go to the barn for cutters, he started for an instant at the dog standing there as he took up the rifle in the clover. The dog had never been named, Belfour had just called it dog but now it had done something worthy of naming it.

"C'mon Argos," he said. "Let's go to the house. It don't mean a damn thing. It's just blood." The dog followed hard on his heels, his tongue lolling out almost to the ground, nearling walking directly in the man's foot steps.

He hoped he would be able to cut Molly free. He couldn't afford to pay someone to help him, but he might be able to trade favors if it came to that. Everyone had tough times and he knew that there wasn't anything to do, but embrace the difficulties life threw at a man and rest in the cleft of the most terrible heartbreak. If you loved something with acute emotion--then you were sure to lose it. A man couldn't help but get irate about his fate at times, but it was always best to accept whatever event that might befall a body. Let the bad wash over. Endure.

He walked along the horsepath that went under the cedar trees where the Belfour cemetery lay. The whispering sound of the wind in the leaves sounded like running water, deceased voices from the otherworld, gave him reason to pause while the dog flattened against his leg blinking his eyelids as if to avoid a harsh light. The spirits of Belfours going back to 1812, when the land was wild and unnamed by white men, now sat upright on the battered gravestones and murmured indecipherable warnings that sounded like water gurgling in the brook over the smooth and yellowed creekstones. The horse nickering to him was pitiable and sorry. The familiar sound of Gale's car coming down their road made him stop and listen, but it wasn't her afterall. It wasn't nothing. Not a damn thing to hear, but a dying horse caught in the fence.

MY EYE DISTRACTED BY THE CRUCIFIX

2010-09-13T18:08:00.000-07:00

for Claira

My eye distracted by the crucifix
on the wall above our bed, alone,
single decoration of a missionary’s hut
but those ivory walls, creamy and blank,
as I mentally construct poetry, lineless,
blank stucco almost too well crafted
to see the lines, engrams, wrinkles
of an elderly woman emerging over time
the way they will on children,
all, each and everyone, of us.
Should we name her after the dawn?

We tear and pull at our bedspreads and quilts
taffy in our dreams too strong to break
seeing the metaphor of life like a taffy pull:
invite your friends and neighbors!
Awake, consciousness, we shift together
under the pile of wool and I move my hand
to your belly where the child grows
and you say, “Quick! I felt her move.”
And here is magic, epiphany, and awe . . .
I reconsider all my theories about God
and the universe and surrender logic
to the mathematicians, opinionated people
do love to hear themselves speak
but I have relinquished the theoretical
for the specific: you are here, she is almost here,
and in the morning I smell the coffee
and feel the heat coming from spiraling vents.

The snow melts into the ground and into the air
just like the souls of people and animals
where they hover and whirl just off the coast
awaiting their chance to become hurricanes,
snowstorms, severe thunderstorms, and out of the
ground they will emerge as dew--or earthquakes.
We will name her after the dead.

We give them their libation of blood
so they will remain in their swirling castles
favoring us with good fortune.
Memories embedded into rocks and stones
handprints from 150 years ago still
on the trees, invisible with time, but there
just the same and leaving a message
in wiggles on a trilobite:

I too was here. I was alive. I held my breath
for a touch. I, too, prayed for you when
you were born and still un-named.

CONFESSIONS OF A SNAKE-BIT VIRGIN BY DAREN DEAN

2010-09-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

Knew me this ole boy name of Johnny Southern. Nick, said his name was when I first met him but later I found it out his name was Johnny. Or so him said, anyway. Gots to know him when I was riding the city bus in San Diego across town high on Sudafed and NyQuil
See where I climbed aboard the big lumbering dinosaur, it was always hissing at me when it opened its door like a lover’s arm, and on my second transfer is when I met him. Johnny said I was sitting in his seat. It was my seat from way back. All them regular ole black women and hispanic ladies knowed it was my seat too. Even them ole boys with the bald heads and hair sticking out of they skulls like springs knowed it. Girls with hardware in their noses, lips, eyebrows, bellybuttons, and who knows what all. MY SEAT! MINE! They knew it too. So when he said I was in his seat, it’s ripped and bandaged with duct tape anyhow, I kindly snarls at him with my lip like that one ole boy in the videos and tells him to go screw his-own-self. You should’ve seen his face, man. And then, that’s all I remember. He really fucked me up

On the gritty track of floor

between the seats

I was looking up at the ceiling

of the bus wondering if I missed

my stop yet.

A girl with an earring in her nose and a hand very near Johnny’s privates said:

I like your accent.

Him said he liked hers too.

I don’t have an accent, she said

SISTER-GIRL WAS SERIOUS TOO

When she lisped I knew she had one of them shiny bolts jammed in the middle of her tongue. Some time later Liam told me that them girls with them bolts in their tongues have great technique and skill in sexual deviations. Then Johnny Southern mentions Fellatio. Well, I didn’t know him from Adam and said as much. Is Fellatio her pimp? Her cousin, Johnny Southern says with a little you-know grin on his lips;

TOO: Said he was born in Bonn, Germany, on an American military base but he had him one of them Aus-tralian accents. Him was saying he lived in Eng-land too. I thought the accent was Eng-lish at first, but he said no. Aus-tralian. I told him he could kiss my ass if I could tell the difference. Well, pard, I shouldn’t have said that. Said as much to him too It didn’t do no goddamn good

FROM: When next I awoke he told me the story of his life. Or one of them. He said he had lived in Oklahoma, Texas, Illinois, and Chicago. Ain’t Chicago in Illinois? I asks all cagey. Him just give me one of his nasty looks. So I try to eg him on and say, Chicago was in Illinois last time I checked. Shit like that, I says. Once again, that was my mistake

Back

from the hospital

johnny Southern, he started to tell me

One of the stories of his life,

Born:

in a nunnery to a nun. It was a mistake. It wasn’t no Holy Spirit neither fore you religious nuts get to thinking about explanations. For the most part, his life sounded like a country and western song. Sorta. Daddy drove across the tracks, drunk, in a pickup. To the nunnery I expect. Next to the Catholic Church. St. Somethingorothers. Got it on with his Mama and made him. All right? It was a highpoint in his life. Things went downhill from there

Calamitous tribulations of the umpteenth power.

He engaged in the behavior of notorious misogynists. Don’t ask me. Me not, NOT,

know what the Sam Hell himbe talking about most times. We spent that summer riding the bus with two connector accordions down to Ocean Beach to watch girls. Johnny Southern hated them. He would ask them if he could take their pitchers. Some said yes and tossed they head and whipping their hairs across their faces like wild ponies. Others were “grossed out.” Sometimes they men folks wanted to kick both our asses. He especially loved them gals what was grossed out by him being such a prevert and all. It all started with his Mama. She had her golden hair and her face all tarted up. She dyed it red some, too. Right before he left home at fifteen she had ballooned. I mean, ba-llooned. It didn’t stop her sluttish ways none. No effect. Nada. So off we’d go to watch them girls rollerskating, rollerblading, jogging, or just plain strutting they stuff down the sidewalk. Waiting for something, someone. Johnny Southern pointed at one blond-haired girl in a red two-piece bathing suit really swaggering through the sand. All the mens was watching her all google-eyed and boy she knowed it too, sir. Then ole Johnny Southern said something that made me choke on my hotdog and get mustard on my t-shirt

I’d like to take a bite out of that ass.

I laughed, “Har har.”

I’m serious.

I knowed he was

He didn’t mean it in no sexual way neither. He meant it in a cannibal way. Psycho-needs-some-Valium-kind-o-way. He was always holding too. He kept it all in Tylenol bottles and such. Didn’t know what was what. Some of it was Quaaludes, sleeping pills, Demerol, goofballs, barbital, yellow jackets and even “white stuff.” On the other hand, he like hallucinogens like sacred mushrooms, locoweed, blotter, mescaline, Owsley’s acid, morning glory seed, and all hemp products. So he disappears into the public shitter and comes out looking all relaxed, he don’t like to share his pharmaceuticals like normal folks, and I can tell . . . way gone on scag. It don’t agree with me so don’t feel droopy on me behalf. I like it, but it don’t like me kind of love-hate relationship, see? About that time a black chick walks by and he said he wanted some of that

I want me some of that, he says. Never had me none before

Where I’m from, I says. That dog don’t hunt

That’s how come you moved out here, ain’t it? he says.

Which?

To do shit your kin don’t think you ought, he says.

What? I shook my head. Never thought about it like-at before

Him shakes his head so disgustipated. He sometimes talked more worser than me. In his moods he would talk differently. Like someone. Somebody. Then he would launch into the story of his life again. He couldn’t get away from it. It et at him all the time. There we were in paradise. Watching every spectrum of woman in every kind of designer bathing suit and apart from me being “lascivious” and “prurient” he’s over there worrying about something his Mama said to him when he was nothing but a gummer

He took his government check from the war and didn’t work. Coulda bought a car too, but he didn’t like to renew his driver’s license. He didn’t want the guvment keeping tabs on him. How they not gonna keep tabs? Them Feds had to send his check, didn’t they? Well, I don’t have to apologize to nobody about that because I didn’t say it aloud. I was learning to think things. Not say things. I shit you not

Anyways, he was in that Desert Storm. Said him was a paratrooper medic. Had the medals to prove it. On Veterans day in the morning, he got all decked out in his Army uniform and rode his Harley in the pa-rade. At first, they thought he was part of it all. I seen him riding behind a high school marching band throwing out them little yeller butterscotch candies. Kids following behind him. His hair flowing out long from underneath his “cover.” When them found out he weren’t part of nothing they pushed his bike over (don’t worry it weren’t his’n) and told him go home. Later, I think he beat up the kid in the tiger suit (the high school mascot of the aforementioned marching band) cause later on I seen that big tiger humping on ladies every twenty-five feet or thereabouts

Nother problem Johnny Southern had was amnesia. That’s why he was trying to tell you his story all the time. Couldn’t remember shit. It was no reason he had all them names. Johnny Southern and Nick are only two of them. Times I just called him Mister like an ole’ boy I heard about oncet. Johnny Southern was a sociopathic-narcissist on his mother side and a bipolar-zoophiliac owing to his Daddy. Rightly, it wasn’t amnesia. It was something new nobody never named yet

You know where there’s money to be made? he axed me. Nope. Lamas and emus, he says. He lights up a Camel with a feminine looking golden monogrammed lighter like he really said something that made sense. Come again, I says, Come again, he says in a Four Season’s fal-setto voice. Emus are food too. You think you going to start a ranch?

An emu-lama ranch? he asks. Hmmm, he says. Pulling at his whiskery chin.

Hmmm. We need some venture capital.
About that time a bunch baldheaded mens in orange robes started jogging down the sidewalk. They was single file-indian style and they was jog-dancing. The ropes around their waists had little tassels that kind of hypnotized ya after awhile. If ya was weak-minded and all. They was singing: Harry Krishna. Krishna. Krishna. Harry. Harry. And so forth. I heard one talking to a woman out to the zoo in front of a reflecting pool with lily pads floating in it all purdy with goldfish swimming below. It was kind of ironic that they called themselves Harry when they was baldheaded. Much later I discovered my mis-information being that they was Hares and not Harrys. Basically, the Krishna dude was proselytizing while a chap on a one-story tall unicycle rode from one museum building to the other screaming: “Watch out! Get out of the way! I’m serious!” And he was serious too b’ez that would be one hell of a fall. The woman was asking if them Harrys had to give up everything and he started in on an explantion: “I’m an accountant.” And then I walked off

“You want to raise lamas?” I says. “When you could sell drugs instead? Make money quicker and easier unless you get pinched or snitched.”

“Problem with you, Comrade,” Johnny Southern says. “You ain’t got any personal vision. Who said anything about making money the quick and easy way? I’m an I-dea man. I get I-deas. I have I-deas. I’m always thinking. The wheels is always turning up here. If I wanted to work a regular job, then that’s what I do. I know things. Believe me. I know what you’re thinking right now, b’ez I’ve always been knowing shitheads like yourself. Always wanted to do it the easy way.”

“I’m sorry there Johnny Southern,” says I.

“I told you about calling me by my real name! Didn’t I? Well, didn’t I?”

And indeedy he did. I was supposed to call him Captain Goodnight and he called me Comrade. It was one of them special codes. It was to confuse his enemies. Mainly the government. The federal government was definitely more evil that the state government in his mind. He didn’t just want me to call him Captain. I had to say it like they did on them ole episodes of Zorro: “Capitan!”

Either way we lived in the shadow of a hegemony in the final throes of a passionless existence ever since the Evil Empire had expired and now we were reduced to I-dealogical wars against ole boys in robes who lived in caves. “Fulmination!” Captain Goodnight like to say to kind of punctuate his speeches I guess you’d call em. “We live in the shadow of the world’s last true hegemon, goodnight!”

Such as that I gathered Johnny Southern, Capitan Goodnight I mean, was really a homeboy. I mean, he was from back home. When I first got out here on the coast I heard all these brothers calling theyselves Flyguy and they pardners Homeboys. Homeboy, the Capitan explained, meant they was from back home. This may be one of them areas where his cultural lit-racy slipped a bit but I didn’t call him on the carpet about it. Him did know lots of shit. So I never knowed if he was lying or saying the truth. But I began to have my suspicions that the Capitan was from somewhere back east like me. He talked a little the same, but if he wanted to say he was from the Congo what did I care?

We was riding the bus one day and there was this girl. She was mighty fine. She was all dressed in black and her hair was blue. After she got off the bus downtown someone said she was in the Sun Cult. Whatsit? I never heard me about no sun cult before. Capitan Goodnight wouldn’t admit it, but I think this was when he got the i-dea to start his own cult. Said he wanted to move back home on his Pap’s land. It was built over an ole indian village. When he was a little fella he was always finding arrowheads and pottery and suchlike. The state university refused to come out b’ez they said his old Pappy had “tainted” the site. It was the perfect place for a cult. Remote. We could build our own compound. Shoot shit. Grow our own vegetables what had not been sprayed with pesticides and other carcinogensy

First thing we wanted to get were some female followers, but I am plum ugly at best myself. The Capitan was working on hypnotizing people with his eyes. It just scared folks, mostly. For the time being, we was a long way from home down there in Tornader Alley. It weren’t too practicable. Not when we had to rambunculate everywhere we wanted to go--or ride the bus

Johnny Southern would not ride the streetcars b’ez they was red

Krishna

Finally found us a girl follower. Sorta. Except she weren’t too good at following. More the leader type. Her name was Krishna. At first Johnny Southern thought she was a plant by the Harry Krishnas or the guvment, but she wasn’t neither. Just a girl name of Krishna, or Sugarbaby. She wasn’t just a girl. She was tall. She towered over the Capitan so much that after awhile he made her wear flats or go barefoot. She was still taller. It didn’t bother me none. I was just the right height. She was strong too. Krishna could pick me up like a tightend hugging a football while he stumbled a couple of yards for the first down. She was super model thin. Her story was that she used to be called Billy, but had a cancer and wanted to change her life. After she changed, she found out it was a benign cyst rather than a cancer but she didn’t want to look back. She had big brown eyes, big hands. Krishna could give your car a tuneup (if you have one which we didn’t) or she could make eyes pop when she walked down the street in her fishnets which ain’t perzactly in vogue

Comrade Va Va Voom is the new name Krishna gave me

She could handle the Capitan too. When he got to bellyachin at her too much she would say, “. . . he ejaculated!” No matter what he said or tried to argue Krishna said, “he ejaculated!” And she was all for the whole cult thing. She had read “Helter Skelter” enumerable times and one of her regrets was not being part of the Manson Family

Plague Years of Childhood

When discussed him’s carefree early years, lips twisted with irony, he told me about frogs raining from the sky; blood in the teacups; how he was born to make big pow wow with the President. But when the time came he could not speak. Him ran from the Oracle at Delphi. His legs would not walk down the ramp to the aero

Okay his Pappy had owned one-fifth interest in an oil well in Saudia Arabia. His Pap was a powerful big man of the higher ups. His Pap believed a man is nothing without he don’t got land. The old man was eighty years old when he went to Saudia Arabia where he was meant to discuss bidness deals with the A-rabs

“My rod,” him’s father said. “Shall become a serpent.”

And it was so

The A-rab he called Pharoah. That A-rab did not cotton to being compared to Egyptians.

J.R. Southern (a.k.a. “the old man”) was a real sumbitch. Had the gift of gabbiness with the A-rabs. Growed money with words like em was weeds. Things about went wrong when at the perzact epiphainein of that apocalypse viz-a-viz moment of John Hancockery. J.R. Southern pitched forward his face into an expansive bowl of green jello (“1. A colorless or slightly yellow, transparent, brittle protein formed by boiling the specially prepared skin, bones, and connective tissue of animals, used in foods, drugs, and photographic film.”) At that moment, the rod became a serpent for Johnny Southern. Shortly thereafter, him found himself with a tank unit blowing up any and every vehicle, and especially including civilians, with terrible veracity. Like as much to smite as not smite. Gifted as his talents lay in the smiting of enemies of the great Eagle of that great and terrible country of the West

Him turned Pharoah’s water into blood.

. . . but wait, that’s not all!

It took Johnny Southern, Captain Goodnight, years to remember that bit of sequence. Scrambled in his memory in drops of blood, O Negatory in nature, and hovering between Aries and Scorpio in the expanse of the heavens. His good country used him as a human gunea pig or so him said. Paranoia? Don’t use the word in his attendance. Agitation is what happens. Followed shortly by violent outbursts of temper fits. Memory was amplified by the government. He could remember everything. Every scrap of information and reconnaissance was imprinted onto the cells of his brain like a computer disk long before such. His abilities were legendary. That is, until the shock treatments. Sometime after that was when he started riding the bus downtown with me, but him was beginning to remember. He would hear something about the moon landing and cry out triumphantly:

I REMEMBER THAT!

I REMEMBER THAT!

The Wrath of Achilles, A Novel Excerpt by Daren Dean

2010-09-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

Prologue

The air of Hades was stagnant. A chill on leathery wings passed over the lord of the dead, only a shade himself now, as he languished in the darkness of a cavern near the twin rivers of Archeron and Cocytus sometimes called by their real names: Woe and Lamentation. Thought was difficult in the undergloom. Time was torturous moment by moment. The sound of bronze swords clashing with shields was a distant echo. Arrows shredding the air overhead like furious birds of prey, slicing into the flesh of the Dardans on the sands at the mouth of the Hellespont, were nothing more than fading memories from the time of heroes. The glory was all that remained.

His name would be sung throughout time was his only comfort. It was a kind of immortality after all the warriors he had killed with his sword wearing the armor that Hephaestus, the God of fire, had made for him after the death of Patroclus at the hands of Hector. How he had longed to save his brother from his funeral pyre but even he, a child of the gods, could not turn back time. Rivers of fire ran in channels around the boundaries of the Underworld.

Achilles was distressed that everything he saw and felt had lost its savor. What he wouldn't give to be among the quick again. In his mind's eye he was most often with the beautiful Briseis in his tent or in the thick of a hot battle with Automedon and his Myrmidons at his side fighting against the Trojans. How he loved war despite its terrible consequences! Even arguing with Agamemnon, the King of Mycenae, the pompous commander of all the Argives was a better fate than walking the maze of the Underworld. Yes, how he had wanted to destroy Atrides and the House of Priam! In his mind their names echoed through the halls to become one name. He could not differentiate between them at times, but then he would remember a detail. The sun reflecting off the golden temple of Apollo; the ageless beauty of the sea goddess; the centaur rising above him pawing at the air; the face of the beautiful Helen of Sparta.

It had taken Athena to stop him, grabbing him up by his hair, just as he was about to carve Agamemnon up--the old buzzard. There was no denying the gray-eyed goddess. It had grieved him at the time, sulking on the beach, telling his troubles to his mother-goddess Thetis but what he wouldn't give to be sailing on the deck of his ship! To once again see the oblique city walls of Troy, built by the very hands of Poseidon, rising up over the frothy waves as if personally issuing a challenge: Take me! Take me if you can son of Peleus!

The heavy footfalls of the dead echoed in the ruins. But then Achilles heard a new sound. Men's voices. Living men. The sound echoed off the stone walls. He heard the voice of men who were still alive and having adventures not just reliving their glory days. Curiosity caused him to throw off the poorly made animal skin he used as a blanket. Something extraordinary was happening in the land of Persephone.

He brushed off dirt and ashes from his tunic as he stood. There was one voice he knew above all others. It was not the voice of Patroclus. His brother-in-arms had grown so morose in the asphodel meadow that even Achilles could scarcely bring himself to converse with the man. Patroclus could not forgive himself for taking on Achilles' armor and facing Hector--he could not forgive the gods who fought against him. Who could blame him? He had been ten times the warrior that Hector was, but the gods had handed the victory over to the Prince of Troy that day. Hecto was a fine warrior, but he was no match for those who had been trained by the wise centaur Chiron.

The voices seemed to move toward him so Achilles crouched. He favored his war-wounded leg as he made his way down the rough stone alleyway. His hands were on the ragged outcroppings of the wall where churned pottery shards jutted, volcanic rock, amid the hissing steam of geysers as he felt his way around a blind corner. In other places the walls were alive with the faces of tortured men and women. They looked like the marble statues of the gods trying to escape their stygian graves and leap back into the flesh of their former lives. The smell of burning flesh continually singed his nostrils. The cries of the tortured filled the silences. Torches blazed ahead illuminating the waking sleep of the denizens of the underworld.

Achilles shielded his eyes with his hands from the piercing light brought in by the living. Up ahead the cavern opened up into a room like a great hall with a stream running through one side. A gathering of the famous dead. Their skin and raiments were as pale as Hera's arms. The husky voice of an old woman, without a hint of inflection, droned to the living men who looked around in horror. The monotone oration made it difficult to understand what the woman was saying. Achilles could just make out the shape of the man the crone was talking to and it was vaguely familiar to him. Unconsciously his hand went to grip his sword, but he left it sheathed. If only he could summon the name, but it escaped him like a great many things these days. He felt the core of himself fading.

When he had first died he had raged! He had stalked the darkness with a torch trying to find a way out. Surely, even his death was a temporary thing! The gods would come for him. Every minute he expected his mother or perhaps Athena to come down and take him to Olympus to see his grandfather Zeus, Tethys, and Asopus. But none came for him. A sound like cicadas screeching in August was the only answer he received for all his angry oration. Until finally Lord Hades did come and explain that he was to remain here for eternity--to rest--his rage was pointless now. Achilles had been crushed to realize that no man or god would come to save him, but he had grown to accept the truth of it after so much time--and yet the time was only a moment to him but years had passed for the living.

Many of the shades were lining up in front of a trough full of living blood. The scent of it was intoxicating. The heads of kings and queens bobbed at the trench like thirsty dogs lapping up the libation the living men had poured out for them. Achilles had to fight back the urge to go hacking his way through the crowd with his sword to get at the sheep blood himself. It was more appealing to him than any wine he had ever tasted. Just the bouquet of the blood mingled with the aroma of honey, sweet wine, and water was enough to incite him but he held himself in check to see what this visitation could be about. He would not mix with the milling denizens at the blood trough.

The leader of the foreigners attempted to embrace an old woman who put her hand to his cheek in a gesture unmistably that of a mother. The bearded face of the man and the dark flowing mane of hair gave him away for an Achaean. A mist blurred Achilles' eyes. The thought occurred to him that nymph or goddess had beguiled him so that he could not recognize this man for who he was. The fine armor the man wore Achilles finally reconized as his own.

Ajax glowered in the corner at the intruder and finally Achilles recognized the man as the crafty-one--King Odysseus of Ithaca! Ajax scarcely talked of anything else. How he had been wronged by the vote that gave the armor of the fallen Achilles to the Ithacan. Ajax killed himself with his own sword rather than live with the humiliation. His body was interred dishonorably because his death was a suicided. Achilles agreed it was a terrible injustice since Ajax had been one of their best, but Achilles had told the great man that it was not such a terrible dishonor to end up walking in the underworld over it.

Agamemnon was whining about how his shrewish wife Clytemnestra, and her lover Aigisthos, had slaughtered him after his return from conquering Troy. The foul black blood of the libation pouring from his lips as he cried like a child. From his own experience, he gave Odysseus grave advice about women. Never trust a woman--not even your beloved Penelope--Agamemnon warned.

Achilles laughed at Agamemnon and spat acerbically, Lord of Men.

The air grew warmer as if a campfire had been stoked. Achilles nodded in agreement when Odysseus told Agamemnon that they shouldn't speak vainly of things of such import. The Mycenaean was engulfed by the souls clamoring to ask Odysseus for news of their loved ones--and the hordes who wanted to sample the blood of life.

"Go rest awhile in your tent," Achilles shouted after Agamemnon. "That was always where you were most comfortable." Agamemnon did not return the barb, but stalked off like an old man whose mind had begun to fade in his last years.

Achilles shouldered his way through the walking shades. Men and women fell to the stone floor unceremoniously before him. Most of them were seneseless and worn out with the passage of time since their death. There was a multitude of soldiers from famous battles of the past still wearing their gore-spattered armor. A lance jutted from a weary-faced man who held the lance with his hands, every few moments he attempted to pull it out. There was a young woman with a beautiful face contorted in agony because of a ghostly fire that engulfed her. She held out her hand to Achilles like a supplicant, but there was nothing he could do for her--her suffering was beyond the physical realm. Still more shades made their way to the assembly. A battalion of men marched together of necessity, their eyes put out dishonorably in war so that they would wander the underworld sightless. Achilles watched as the souls of Patroclus, Antilochus, and even the great Minotaur killer Theseus--also made their way to the front of the assembly. Achilles was compelled to ask the King of Ithaca about his beloved son, Pyrrhus.

"I recognize your boar-scars, Odyesseus!" Achilles voice caused great stalactites to fall from the ceiling of the vast cavern. "That's fine armor you're wearing!"

"The swift-footed Achilles!" Odysseus held his hands wide as if to embrace him, but he had already found that this was impossible. "Are you going to kill me with your sword over this armor? You don't need it down here, do you? I would hand it over to you if it would make you happy."

"Keep it," Achilles had to lift his voice over the shrieking of souls battling to get their chance at the libation. "The dead don't need armor, but it is a comfort to have a sword sheathed at your waist. What are you doing in this godforsaken place before your time my friend?"

"I was sent down here to ask Tiresias how to get back home," Odysseus said."But Poseidon is angry with me and won't allow me to return to Penelope and my son."

"Don't linger here for long," Achilles warned. "The dead may find a way to bring you down with them or return in your place to the land of the living."

Odysseus look for a good place to step over the trench of blood he had dug to talk to Achilles more personally, but it was impossible with all the shades converging on the libation like a terrible oasis. "You had your time--and how glorious it was!"

"Don't try to make me feel good about being dead," Achilles tossed his mane of hair in a rebellious gesture left over from life. "I would rather serve the humblest slave on the earth than to be in this state. Forgive me, but I have to ask after my father Peleus? Do the Myrmidons fight for him now? Or, do they treat him poorly because he is old? If I were alive they would be afraid to treat him in such a dishonorable way."

"I am sorry, Achilles. I haven't heard anything about him."

"Is there news of my son?"

"Ah Pyrrhus," the mariner said. "At Troy, we finally made our way in by the ruse of a giant wooden horse. Your son was the most eager of us all to get out first and fight! He has killed many great champions. He's very much the son of Achilles in every way!"

"Good. I hope to see you again, but not until it's your time. I pray you find your home again soon. I will ask the gods to allow your homecoming to be a happy one instead of the fate that has befallen the lot of us who sailed across the great green together."

Achilles saluted his old friend and began to drift back into the crowd. Odysseus looked surprised that Achilles was ending their conversation so soon. There was more to say about the war, and the enchantress Circe, but the golden warrior did not have it in him to wait to hear these stories. It was all a reminder that even he was no more than a shade.

Limping away from the assembly he turned to look over his shoulder at Odysseus and his bizarre assembly. Only Odysseus could make such an audacious trip and live to tell the story. Surely, the gray-eyed goddess was assisting him. She had an eye for mortal men. Achilles smiled angrily through his teeth. The time of heroes was fast drawing to a close. When all the heroes were gone so would follow the gods, but they were too stubborn to admit it. He would leave with Odysseus if he could, but when he first came here had tried to escape. There was an invisible boundary that none of them could cross. It was some deep enchantment allowing the Ithacan to linger here while he was still yet alive. It was nothing Achilles cared to ponder now.

The son of Peleus passed King Minos with his golden scepter as he made judgments over the dead seated on his throne. Achilles found he could not have cared less for the troubles of Odysseus. His mind was full of the past. He was consumed with the lots the Fates had given him; doomed by the judges Rhadamanthus, Minos, Aeacus; kept from returning to the world of the living by the triune-headed dog Cerberus. For a temporary distraction he watched as the vultures tore violently at the live of Tityos. For a moment, it reawakened his raging spirit.

At last he stalked back to his personal chamber in the deepest heart of the keep and fell onto his pallet with a groan to dream again of his victories with women and on the battlefield as a mist rose up along the scaly walls. The last images he held onto in his slumber were the scion gates of Troy rising above him as he fell on the battlefield, and a vision of the wooden horse--the Trojan horse--come alive with fiery coal eyes and the voice of his wise teacher Chiron switching his tail to ward off the biting flies on the practice field, urging him on one last time: Remember.

"O goddess of the waves, conceive: you shall be the mother of a youth who, when to manhood grown, shall outdo his father's deeds and shall be called greater than he."
--from "The Metamorphoses" by Ovid, Book 11

I

THE VIRGIN OF THE DEEP

I

Within a fortnight of his birth, Thetis spirited her child away to baptize him in the River Styx against her husband's wishes. King Peleus was proud of his fine son, but Thetis worried the child was sickly by her standards so she lowered him under the lapping waves of the Styx in a desperate attempt to make her son immortal. The baby was no god, but he was unmistakably marked for greatness in the world of men--she was sure of it. No doubt he would rise as a savior to the Achaeans. She anointed the child with oil, wrapped him in a blanket made from wolf fur, and named him Achilles.

A year of plague, foul weather, and death fell across Phthia. Thetis took great pleasure in watching her son grow up in the early days of his childhood, but her true home was under the waves of the great green with her father the Old Man of the sea. She had already lost her greatest love, the Cloud-gatherer, due to his fear of what Proteus had foretold about the child. The Son of Cronus gave it more credence than it deserved by calling it a prophesy, when to the sea nymph it sounded like a trick of Hera to keep the lovers apart.

Before her marriage to Peleus, Thetis had not given much thought to marriage. She was happy to pursue her own interests as a goddess. Nereus on occasion broached the subject with her, because he was always interested in more grandchildren. Without her knowledge, Nereus and Zeus met to discuss her fate. She was to be given to Peleus for a wife, but first he would have to prove himself worthy of an immortal. Peleus consulted a prophet who told him he would have to catch Thetis in her lair beneath the waves with strong nets. No matter what form she takes be sure to hold her fast. She thrashed in the net taking on the form of a bird, a tree, and a spotted tigress. Peleus let go of her then out of fear he would be torn apart by her claws. The next he saw her he would know her secret from the Carpathian prophet. Though she takes on a hundred forms do not let her go. She agreed to become his wife.

Over time she learned to admire Peleus in many ways, but she was not in love with him. It had been decided without her consent that she would be his wife from the beginning. When she decided to return to the breaking waves, resting in the knowledge that she had done everything she could for their child, Peleus was plotting his next conquest--he had lost all interest in his wife. All of his adventures with Jason and the Argonauts had made the sedentary life disagreeable to him.

One evening as the sun was diving below the horizon, and the moon was red, Thetis left her boy in the arms of a maid and clammered down to a jetty where the white waves pounded ashore under a gentle mist. The twin Thessalian bays curved in mirror images like a sickle. She removed her linen gown and sandals and cast them on the small beach overlooking the bay like an ampitheater. It had been a favorite place of hers long before she met Peleus. There was a mytrle wood growing not far away bearing luscious blue and red berries.

No human swimmer could have braved the swells booming down on the natural jetty of tumbled volanic rock she walked out across and the sea creatures called to her senses with an intoxicating voice like the sirens. She had been gone far too long. A bridled porpoise leapt through the air in eager anticipation of his mistress's return.

She heard the familiar sounds of her husband calling her name from the jagged cliffs above. Even from this distance she recognized him pulling their young son along by the hand. She turned to face them, kissed her fingers, and waved goodbye. In a gesture of remembrance she took the form of first a bird, an olive tree, and then a spotted tigress as he watched helplessly above. It tortured her to hear the sound of her child plaintively calling out her name, but she felt she had to escape back to the land where she belonged. She vowed to herself to visit him often, but only when he came to the water's edge or rode the waves.

Peleus continued to call to her, but at last she lay down naked on the rocks with the ocean's spray cascaded down. Her upper body was as beautifully human as it had ever been, but now it had taken on tough scales made for dwelling in deep water with a decidedly pale greenish cast. Her legs shifted until they were a single scaly tail glimmering under the moonlight in shades of emerald, burgundy and gold. Thetis slipped under the crashing waves. When she once again resurfaced she could see Peleus making his way recklessly down the path cut into the cliff. The porpoise, her old friend Glaucus, came to her and she draped an arm around his neck and took one last look at her mortal family.

Another great plume of water shot into the air and out of it a colossal god appeared towering above her, but only to his waist. It appeared to be the body of a giant, but it was Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea himself. Her heart had started in her chest because she thought it might be Poseidon come to do some evil on her, but instead it was her beloved father eager to meet her. He did not say anything, but only looked down on her benignly with love. In one hand he held a trident, but he did not wish to frighten or threaten Peleus, he merely beckoned to Thetis as if to say it was time for her to return home.

"Greetings Achilles," Nereus said. "I am your grandfather. The one they call the Old Man of the Sea."

Achilles craned his neck to look at the giant before him. One thrust of the gods' trident and he and his father would be no more. His heart pounded in his chest. He had already begun to suspect that he was different from other boys and girls of his age in the royal apartments and now he knew why. His mother and grandfather were gods. Everyone spoke of the gods, but he had never seen one for himself--or so he had thought. Nereus towered above the beach and even though he was smiling Achilles could not help from being terrified.

"Do not fear me," Nereus instructed. "Remember this. The secret of facing any god or enemy is to have faith in yourself. If any god seeks to do you harm remember that he is only as powerful as you perceive him to be. No need to speak now, but know that I will be watching over you as you grow up."

"I am lonely for my home in the sea," Thetis said to her son.

"Why are you leaving us?" Achilles asked.

"Ask your father."

Achilles turned to ask his father, but he hid his face in his hands and refused to answer. "Don't leave me," Achilles pleaded. He sunk down to his knees. "Please."

"Don't worry," Thetis said. "I will visit you often when you need me most." A huge wave appeared to engulf the gods and and they were gone.

II

Achilles would never forget the sight of his mother abandoning him for the wine dark sea or her shocking transformation. The god, his grandfather, brandishing his trident had terrified him. His father turned loose his hand and threw himself down on his knees in despair pouring handfuls of sand over his head. He looked on from under the myrtle as his father began to pace the beach hoping Thetis might change her mind and return, but it became clear as the moon reflected brightly on the now calm waters of the bay that she would not. Peleus took his son's hand and led him back up the path away from the sea. The relationship between father and son grew strained as time went on. Achilles could not bring himself to ask why his mother had left and Peleus volunteered nothing.

A few weeks later Peleus admitted to himself that he did not know anything about raising a boy who at seven years old, along with Automedon his trusted charioteer, he took to the wise centaur Chiron to learn the arts a noble born should know. Chiron's skin from the torso up was blue. The rest of his body was like that of a black stallion only larger than any horse Achilles had ever seen. Over the compound flew a standard with the image of a rearing red centaur on a field of white, which he would take for his own symbol one day. Chiron was quite old by this time and his wisdom and gentleness far exceeded the race of centaurs who were known the world over for being vicious, nasty, creatures. Achilles hung back warily upon introductions after one look of the centaur's deadly iron hooves.

"He's a cautious one," Chiron said to Peleus. "Don't be afraid of me, little one."

"I'm not afraid of you," Achilles said, "I just don't want to be stepped on."

Chiron exchanged an amused expression with Peleus. "Just like your father?"

"How do you know my father?"

"Chiron was once my teacher," Peleus said. "When I was your age I too came here to be trained. Listen closely to everything Chiron tells you. He will teach you how to behave properly and how to fight."

"With a real sword?" Achilles eagerly rushed forward momentarily forgetting his fear of the centaur.

"With a real sword," Chiron, as was his habit, stamped his hooves when engaging in conversation. "Not only that but you will learn to use a spear like the ones those young men are using."

The older boys Chiron pointed to beyond the corral of milling horses were heaving man-sized, nine-foot long, spears at targets. An olive skinned boy with long black ringlets grunted as he sent a spear hurtling much further than seemed physically possible. The spear hit the target squarely from an impressive distance.

Achilles was suddenly overtaken with a sick stomach. A high-pitched ringing sounded painfully in his ears. "Who is he?"

"That boy is Hector, the Prince of Troy," Chiron said. "My best student. He is about to return home back across the sea to his father King Priam in a few days. I have taught him all I can."

"Will I be able to throw a spear like that one day?"

Hector cast an insolent stare at Peleus and his son, although Achilles was much too far away to hear them talking about his prowess with a spear. Achilles was frightened of the older boy at first and looked down respectfully at his own feet, but then an emotion of defiance overcame his fear and he lifted his head to return the gaze through narrowed eyes. The prince laughed smugly at the boy and broke eye contact first. The warning sounding in Achilles' ears receded to a manageable buzzing.

"Yes," Chiron laughed. The centaur glanced at the silent Automedon, "I should have thought that a Myrmidon warrior worth his salt would have taught you the spear by now."

Automedon always cautious when not on the battlefield, gave a sidelong glance to Peleus, inclined his head in a respectful bow to Chiron but remained silent. His first master had taught him long ago that his place was to serve the House of Aeacides and not to question or engage in frivolous conversation. Any word or action by a subordinate could enrage or offend a host so it was always best to be as invisible as one could.

"Are you ready to start your training, Achilles?" Chiron asked.

"Will you give me a sword?"

The centaur laughed with a booming trill that sounded just like a horse. "He's an eager lad, isn't he, Peleus?"

"Chiron once saved my life," Peleus told his son. "I was abandoned by Acastus in hostile . . ."

"You can say it," Chiron smiled broadly, "hostile centaur country. Our lands are hostile to outlanders. Centaurs are faster and stronger than mortals, but I suppose there are a few decent men in the world though very few."

"Who is Acastus?" Achilles asked.

Peleus gave Automedon a telling look.

"That is a story for another time my prince," Automedon knelt down next to Achilles. "Do you want to see one of the spears up close?"

"Yes," Achilles beamed. "How will I ever lift one?"

Automedon led the boy away to watch as the centaurs shouted instructions at the students heaving spears and practicing a grappling technique in the dust. The students wore simple kilts and most were shirtless. Some of the boys bore welts on their backs from the lash. The training program the centaurs had developed was a rigorous one that included rough physical treatment of their students sometimes bordering on the brutal, but the results were unquestionable. A group of young men from Sparta that Automedon pointed out were using wooden training swords as they hacked at one another in a display of impressive discipline.

"The Spartans are well-disciplined for boys," Peleus said.

"I wish I could take credit for all of it," Chiron stroked his cobalt beard thoughtfully."It is a character trait of their race I have found. Alone they are not bad fighters, but as a unit they are quite good. Mark my words, one day the world will know the Spartans as great warriors."

Peleus stepped closer to Chiron so that he could speak to him privately. "When Achilles' mother left us he was bereft. I think he keeps his feelings bottled up, but he is a fine and intelligent boy. Thetis told me of certain prophecies made concerning him--I don't know what to make of it. I have no doubt he will be great in his way, but I would shield him from wagging tongues who call him a messiah. A Hero is one thing, but I only want him to grow up to be a good man."

"Leave him to me," Chiron put a fatherly arm around the shoulders of his former students. "We live far from the world. We don't discuss oracles or prophecies here except as a matter of history. I am sure he will take after his father."

"That's another thing I wanted to tell you," Peleus face went pale. He looked over his shoulder at Achilles who was making his way to the horses in the corral. "I'm not altogether sure I am his father. I love him just the same . . ."

"What makes you think this?"

Peleus looked to the sky, but it was perfectly blue without a hint of clouds. "I tell you this because the knowledge might be important in some way for his training. I loved Thetis--I still love her--our marriage was a hastily made contract with her father. Anyway, it's quite possible that Zeus himself might be his father."

"Zeus?"

"Yes."

"It would not be uncommon," Chiron said, "Zeus has fathered many a bastard child, but put your mind at ease. I have an instinct for these things and he has the look of his father about him."

"Yes--" Peleus stammered.

"You," Chiron put a brawny palm on the chest of Peleus. "I mean, you. I think you are his father. He has your face."

"I know it, but I thought that could be a trick of the gods making me think he was mine."

"Listen," Chiron slapped Peleus on the back. "It's all right. If he is the son of Zeus then all is well, but I don't believe he is. He is small for his age which will make him a more determined warrior. Sometimes my naturally large students lack the fire in the belly, because they are not challenged as often. I will teach him everything he needs to know and we will not go easy on him either."

"I thank you for that."

"Seems like not so long ago Aeacus was bringing you to me," Chiron said. "Time gets away from us. The age of heroes is drawing to a close. All the oracles and palm readers say so."

"I thought most centaurs preferred not to listen to oracles."

"They don't my friend," Chiron said. "But then I am not like most of the centaurs. But I have to admit that the last few classes that have come under my tutelage have been the best I have ever seen in all my years here."

"Perhaps you are simply a first rate instructor," Peleus said.

"Perhaps," the centaur allowed.

The old friends fell silent. They turned to observe Automedon and Achilles. Automedon gave the boy his own bone-handled dagger in a very ceremonial display. The boy eagerly accepted the gift as the two fell into a game of mock fighting. After a few wild lunges by Achilles Automedon demonstrated the best way to hold the dagger, how to stand, and how to defend against an attacker. When the warrior realized an audience was beginning to form he immediately bowed humbly to the assembly of boys who were disappointed not to receive instruction from an authentic Myrmidon warrior. Chiron himself had told the boys how ferocious they were in battle.

"Myrmidons don't look so dangerous up close," Hector pushed two smaller young men out of his way. "What weapons do the ant men prefer to fight with and I will match you with them!"

Automedon looked at the centaurs who merely crossed their arms in front of them in a gesture of expectation. A challenge had been issued, which was perfectly in line with their training. The warrior looked submissively over his shoulder at Peleus and then risked a glance at Chiron. Chiron's features betrayed no amusement, but he gave a nod of encouragement to Automedon who still felt uncomfortable at the prospect of a hand-to-hand engagement with a lad not quite out of Chiron's program when he himself was a veteran of many notable battles with both Aeacus and Peleus. The strapping lad probably thought him not much older than himself, many made that mistake, since the Myrmidon metabolism was slower than that of their human counterparts.

"So what will be ant man?" Hector asked. "Spears? Swords? You choose now!"

Automedon straightened himself to his full height with a dignified expression on his face. "I do not take orders from boys, nor do I fight them."

"You are afraid of a boy then?" Hector laughed, but his eyes were cold.

"I am not afraid," Achilles stepped forward.

"No my Prince," Automedon hissed. "You are much too small to fight him. He's nearly a man and you are still just a boy."

Achilles ran so swiftly toward Hector that the older boy barely had time to move his head away from the child's thrusting knife. The sharp blade left a nasty red cut across Hector's neck. Achilles retreated crouching low with the dagger in front of him as he had been instructed. The Trojan felt his blood trickling down his neck and when he saw it on his hand became enraged. Charging forward he threw a kick at the boy's chest knocking him flat on his back. Achilles wheezed from the force of the kick, lay panting like a feral animal.

Automedon stepped between Hector and his young charge with his hands up to show that he was merely protecting the boy. Hector's own dagger was quickly in his hand before Automedon had time to react. The Dardanian prince swung the dagger in a slicing arc which, had it landed, would have cut deep into the Myrmidon's throat. At the last instant Automedon ducked under the dagger, stepped forward, and grabbed Hector around his arms to heave him high above his head before wrestling him to the ground. Hector was as big as any warrior Automedon had faced on the battlefield, but experience was on his side. His strength and agility on display reminded everyone that he was not fully human, his abilities were beyond only the best of mortal warriors. Once he had Hector on the ground he kept the boy pinned there by extending his legs and by remaining on the toes of his sandals he kept his full body weight on Hector.

"You have lost this one Hector!" Chiron bellowed. "Stop resisting." Chiron gestured to a centaur to assist Automedon by helping him up, another centaur pulled Hector onto his feet to keep the angry young man from attacking his opponent again.

"He's no match for me!" Hector said, stepping forward. "Let me go and I will prove it! Toss me one of the bronze swords, Aeneas!"

"You were defeated by a boy and an unarmed man!" Chiron said. "Aeneas put down that sword."

"Yes sir," a boy of Achilles' age said.

"Hold," a centaur instructor barked at Aeneas.

Chiron's expression hardened. "Your punishment for losing is to go without your evening meal! No blood soup for you tonight. Now, return to the barracks and await further orders."

Automedon was helping Achilles back on his feet now. There was a perfect outline of a foot print from Hector's kick on the boy's shirt. Achilles held his hand across his chest still gulping air. He was beginning to recover the air in his lungs and with it his anger. His eyes were saucers as he stared at Hector.

"I've still got my kris knife," said Achilles.

"One day I will cut out your eyes! I will stick your head on a pole!" Hector shouted. "It won't be soon enough to suit me."

"You were lucky," Achilles answered coldly. "Apollo protected you today, Trojan."

"No more, prince," Automedon said to Achilles. "Please. No more."

"You had better listen to the antman," Hector sneered. "One day he won't be able to protect you. It will just be the two of us then!"

"Go!" Chiron commanded. "You are fortunate Automedon did not draw his sword and take your life!"

Achilles watched as Hector turned away slowly even from the great centaurs' command. He could see that Chiron was used to dealing with high strung boys. It was nothing new. Neither were skirmishes, but this one had boiled over to a real warrior being attacked in the person of Automedon. Chiron jogged over to make sure the boy was okay. He felt along the ribs and his breastbone asking the Achilles if it hurt when he pressed them. Chiron was highly skilled in the medicinal arts as well as combat. Hector had been trained to do real damage with a kick or a punch. The camp trained hard not allowing for weakness of any kind including being taken by surprise.

"That was very brave," Peleus said. "But very stupid, Achilles. Never rush to battle with an unknown opponent."

"I was just doing what you said. Never send a servant to do a job you wouldn't do yourself."

Peleus smiled at both his son and Automedon. "You two are a matched set. Achilles, I meant when you are far older. After Chiron is done with you then maybe you will be ready to take on anyone."

"Would you show some of our boys the way you took Hector down?" Chiron asked. "Of course, I apologize for his behavior but we do encourage a certain amount of aggressiveness here."

Automedon would not look Chiron in the eyes, "I was merely protecting Achilles and myself. I did not want to hurt the Dardanian prince even if he acted rashly. It is not my place to discipline him."

"Thank you for not hurting him," Chiron bowed his blue head. He stepped forward to clasp forearms with Automedon to show him his words were genuine.

Chiron turned his body to face Achilles again, swishing his long black tail, "Your quickness was quite impressive especially for one your age." The centaur did not wait for a reply but told the centaur instructors to take Achilles to the barracks for the young boys with strict instructions to keep Hector away from him. "Besides, I wouldn't want to have to explain to Priam that a mere boy on his first day in camp killed his son." The centaur did not smile, but only nodded obediently.

Achilles sheathed the knife in the belt at his waist. He would have to keep a sharp eye on Hector until he returned to Ilium. Automedon gave the boy a squeeze at the shoulder. Peleus clasped his son's wrist. The boy had left the world of women earlier than most, but now it was official. He would learn the art of war. Chiron would make a man out of him. The centaur warriors came forward to meet their newest student. Chiron introduced Achilles to the other boys who rushed forward to congratulate him on his courage with pats on the back. Some of the boys felt his biceps and others mussed his hair. Achilles reveled in the acceptance he felt. When he looked around his father and Automedon were already heading back to their ship. The centaurs looked more intimidating than they had only a moment before.

"This way," a centaur called Arion pushed him so hard toward the barracks he fell down. Achilles turned to glare at the centaur who now held a whip in his hand. "Get up, now!"

Before the boy could rise to his feet the centaur lashed him with the whip across his back. He snatched the dagger out of his belt, but suddenly Chiron came out of nowhere to wrench it out of his grip. "The first lesson you must learn here is obedience. Hold your anger. A true warrior always holds his temper so he can fight clear-headed. We will treat you no different than the other boys here. No go with Arion to the barracks. He will show you where to eat and sleep. He will be your mentor in all things."

"Yes sir," Achilles said through gritted teeth. He vowed to escape from Chiron's camp at the first opportunity. If he could make his way to the sea undetected he was sure his mother would save him. She would not approve of his father's decision to send him away from home.

Rage--Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,

murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,

hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,

great fighters' souls, but made their carrion,

feasts for dogs and birds,

and the will of Zeus was moving towards its end.

Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,

Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.
--from "The Iliad" by Homer, Book 1

II

The Plague of Apollo

The Coast of Troy, 1240 B.C.

I

It was the tenth year of the war against the Trojans. The waters of the Aegean shimmered under Apollo's chariot as the Greek navy of roughly a thousand ships sat aground the golden beach under the watchful gaze of the Gods. Until that moment Achilles, the chieftain from Phthia, had fought with a madman's ecstasy despite the fact that his glory depended on an ill-conceived love affair between one of the princes of Troy and the wife of the King of Sparta. Helen was a striking woman, some said she was the most beautiful woman who had ever lived. Beauty, terrible beauty, the old men of Troy murmured because they knew men of honor would line up to die for her. The lowliest servant boy, after looking on her face, understood and approved of the war. Even Hera and Athena were jealous of her, but hers was a mortal splendor that would fade in just a few short years reckoned by the immortal gods.

The anger of Menelaus over his wife's unfaithfulness was that of a man whose prized breeding mare had been stolen; not a lover who had lost his greatest love. Made even more ridiculous was the artifice by which the High King Agamemnon, the brother of Menelaus and the leader of the Greeks, used the excuse of Helen to attack the Trojan citadel. His insatiable desire to rule had helped him conquer Greece through diplomacy and war, now extended beyond the sea to the greater empire of the Hittites.

Achilles relished his role as Commander of the actual hand-to-hand fighting. Let Agamemnon sit on his backside in his tents awaiting news from the front. The intoxicating feeling of rushing headlong across the wide plain leading to the Scion gates of Troy with his spear in one hand and his shield in the other could not be equaled by riches or the notion of political might in Achille's heart. No mortal man could stand before him. His mother had seen to that when she had bathed him in the waters of the River Styx. Even Athena fought invisibly at his side or often disguised as one of his terrible Myrmidon. He surrendered himself to the passion of the blood-stained Ares in the heat of the battle for all these years.

Achilles ran his hand over the sleeping girl, Briseis. She was his war prize. A beautiful girl who had endeared herself to him in the short time since he had been awarded her as his share of a recent raid to the temple of Apollo. Achilles considered Apollo his enemy so it was of no importance to him that the god might be angered. He was after all the god of the House of Troy. As Achilles stepped out of his tent, a group of soldiers he recognized Diomedes of Argos with his men involved in a sacrifice to the gods. Calchas presided as he dragged a knife across the throat of an unblemished lamb. The young prince who stood with the wise Nestor were fast becoming inseparable friends like a father and son. All the Kings of Greece agreed Diomedes was a soldier with great promise.

Achilles did not spend much thought pondering their sacrifice. The war had waged long. Victory was the only acceptable outcome despite the fickle will of the gods. He knew the gods, and he was under no illusions concerning their love for mortal men--they could be as unfaithful as a young girl with their affections.

The sound of clanking weapons. The murmur of men's voices echoing over the water. Seagulls had learned the hard way to stay away from the invaders. Men gathered around fires discussing their exploits from the last battle. How to surmount the walls was the topic of conversations, but a cry arose and Achilles joined the soldiers gathered around a dead horse. Unconsciously he turned his head toward where his own pure bred horse, Bold Dancer, was stabled. He would hate to lose such a fine war horse. There were many dead or dying animals. Packs of dead dogs that had been living on the rubbish of the army were now lying dead. Their bodies were reportedly arranged across the dunes in cryptic circles that only the Lycian himself understood. Argive chieftains were gathered together in clusters of men pondering the meaning of it. A knot of curiously silent men surrounded another body. Upon his approach the men stepped back to allow their greatest warrior access to the untimely death of a young man from Mycenae. His body was covered with black lesions that were indications that plague had come into the midst of the Greeks.

"Plague," Achilles said under his breath. He was not immortal as it was whispered, but he wasn't terrified either because he knew his fate. He wasn't destined to die until he had accomplished great deeds in war that the bards would sing about for eternity.

"Plague," a bearded man repeated. "It's plague! We must give up this seige! The gods are against it! The mouse god, Apollo, is angry! Plague!"

A cry arose as more of the Achaeans were suddenly stricken down from above. After several days watching healthy men struck down in an instant convinced Achilles this curse had supernatural origins. Even he began to wonder if he shouldn't take his men back to Phthia. Achilles had heard stories of plague, but this was nothing ordinary. It was a sign of extreme displeasure from the gods. He knew the reason for the plague. It was all Agamemnon's fault. Men were running back and forth with horror written across their ashen faces trying to gather up weapons and other belongings in preparation of a swift retreat back across the great green.

The corpse-fires were burning day and night. The sickening-sweet smell of burning flesh filled the days and nights. It was a wonder the Trojans didn't attack them while they were weak. It was said Agamemnon had surreptitiously sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to insure calm seas, and now he refused to return the daughter of the priest of Apollo. Achilles considered the whole affair another delay from the glory owed him in battle.

The hero reached out and clamped a boy on his forearm carrying an enormous spear, "Get Calchas the prophet! He'll know what to do!"

"Where should I look for him?" the boy dropped the spear of Ajax on the ground.

"If he isn't in his own tent," Achilles growled. "I'm sure he's lurking in the tent of your insufferable lord, Agamemnon."

The boy ran swiftly amid the chaos around him. Grown men were backing away from dead comrades dropping stone dead moment by moment. Their arms and faces were covered in purple-black sores which were beginning to turn bloody as the plague intensified. War hardened men were on their knees weeping, at the loss of their fallen comrades, in terror of this unknown. The Argives were awed by the supernatural in their midst, but Achilles was not impressed. It was more of the gods in-fighting and their pettiness. They loved one side and then the other.

Achilles stopped as many men whose fear of him was greater than fear of plague and led them away to an uninhabited stretch of beach. It relieved him to see Patroclus stalking almost serenely toward him. Achilles soon laid eyes on clever Odysseus who commanded a loose confederation of Ithacans, Spartans, and Athenians. His Ithacan friend's group was much larger than his own and he noticed Odysseus smiling grimly at the fact knowing that he would tease him at a more opportune time. It was important for the men not to surrender to fear and despair or the war would be lost.

"I guess you know already," Odysseus said. "It's plague."

"Don't you wish you were back in Ithaca plowing and planting pillars of salt for the harvest again," Achilles teased.

"And what about you?" Odysseus said. "Maybe I should have left you dressed in women's clothes--"

"Yes," Achilles crossed his forearms against his chest, "with the beautiful women."

"What is this plague about?"

"It's no doubt linked to Agamemnon's stubborn refusal to return the girl," Achilles said. "I guess I will have to force his hand since everyone is afraid of the bloated peacock."

"There is a difference between fear and respect," Odysseus put a hand on Achilles arm and shook it gently. "Agamemnon's the commander of the Argives. He knows how to lead men--you have to give him that."

"I won't argue with you," Achilles said. "Besides, I always lose every argument to you."

"True enough," Odysseus said. "Share some wine with me while we wait. If we were going to be struck down by the gods I'm sure it would have happened by now."

A boy rode a horse in the spray. Water and sand flew from the hooves. It was one of the fabled Dardan-bred horses. The men of Troy, and throughout the Dardanelles, were known for their fine horses but it was one of Agamemnon's messengers riding bareback on a captured warhorse. He pulled hard on the reins as he recognized Odysseus. The horse pranced and turned as the boy spoke. He wouldn't make eye contact with Achilles so great was his fear he addressed himself directly to Odysseus. Achilles could see the tension in his friend's face as he spoke to the messenger although his words and actions were that of a born leader.

"King Agamemnon bids you come to an assembly at his royal pavilion, forthwith," the boy turned the mare without waiting for their reply.

"Forthwith?" Achilles arched an eyebrow at Odysseus.

"As the Athenians loved to say," Odysseus held out a hand for Achilles to lead. "Nothing without Theseus."

The heavens burgeoned with dark thunderheads. The Cloud-gatherer threw his bolts of lightning from one horizon to the other as the azure sky gave way to forbidding black clouds. The winds began to threaten to topple the smaller tents with their force. The great green pitched with angry waves that would test the mettle of the most experienced sailors among the Greeks famous for their sailing prowess had they been off shore with oars in the water. A young man, hardly more than a boy, from the island of Salamis claimed he saw Poseidon rise from the tossing sea with his trident raised overhead as if urging the waves to do their worst.

On approaching the lavish tents of Agamemnon, Achilles could barely hold back his disgust at the ostentatiousness of Atrides. Being a military man first he had no taste for the intrigues of men like Agamemnon who wanted not just to rule as Odysseus said, but to be worshipped. How many days would the hard-headed man watch the Argives die from plague? The entire Greek army was in an uproar about another woman! Helen caused the war, now the temple priest's daughter impeded it. Automedon, Achilles second in command, clasped his forearm asking him to be patient and wise with his eyes. He knew the look well and gave a respectful nod to his charioteer. The man served him as loyally and vigorously as he had Aeacus, Achilles' grandfather. The life span of the Myrmidons, the ant-people, was twice as long as that of mortals.

Achilles nodded at the Mycenae guards posted in front of the tent with Odysseus at his shoulder. The sound of Agamemnon's bellowing voice caused Achilles to tense with annoyance. He felt Odysseus clap a steadying hand on his shoulder. The assembly was listening to Agamemnon raging about the plague. He demanded to know who was to blame for the displeasure of the gods. If they found the offender, and any offender would do, they would sacrifice him to the gods on a fiery pyre. Even as Agamemnon's war bride, Chryseis, sat dejectedly by the throne Atrides used to receive the commanders of his army.

Agamemnon, Field Marshall of the Argives, paced in front of the Kings of Greece. He was a powerfully built middle-aged man with much gray in the ringlets of his long hair who exuded an air of authority that most men would not question. His hope was not only to help his brother take Helen back to Sparta, but to expand the Mycenaean influence across the Aegean perhaps to threaten even the Hittites.

"Call the prophet Calchas!" Agamemnon raged. "He will explain this mystery soon enough."

The prophet appeared in the doorway in a fine mist created by the Nereids, as if he had known he would be summoned. A young boy led Calchas by the arm to stand in front of the assembly. The murmuring voices of the chieftains quieted as they watched the prophet expectantly. The only sound was the licking of the hearth-fire. Calchas pulled back the cowl from his face to reveal the eyes of a seer, enormous and white with cataracts, who seemed unconscious of his audience whispering in dread of his prophetic utterances. A gnarled staff was his only guide now that the boy had retreated to where the King's guard stood. Achilles had to admit that Calchas was adept as any bard when it came to captivating an audience even with silence.

Agamemnon was impatient for the prophet to speak, but he gave a slight bow of acknowledgement to Calchas more for the sake of propriety than any real respect he held for the Seer. The prophet pressed the palms of his hands together and appeared to be in deep thought or asleep on his feet. Direction from Agamemnon would have been merely stating the obvious since every Argive on the beach, to every resident safe behind the Scion Gates, knew the Commander wanted to know the cause of the plague. What man, woman, or other follower of the Greek army had angered the gods. The assembled Kings of Greece had to pretend in silence not to know that it was Agamemnon himself who had caused the displeasure of the gods. Despite how respected the prophet Calchas was in all of Greece, the men attempted not to laugh outright and suffer the displeasure of their leader. It would be laughable too if not for the memory of the swift and agonizing deaths of those stricken by the pestilence.

"Let us not stand on formality," Calchas began in his authoritative voice. "It is no secret that the gods are displeased."

"Just tell us Calchas," Agamemnon waved an imperious hand in the direction of the prophet. "Which of the gods is angry and how can we appease him?"

"It is not just any god--" the prophet touched the amethyst necklace at his throat.

"Agamemnon!" Achilles stepped away from the other chieftains.

Odysseus gave Achilles a steadying look, but it was too late.

"Lord of Men, indeed! Every man here knows you have angered Apollo--"

"What impudence!" Agamemnon roared. "I should have you taken out and horse-whipped!"

"Tell him, Calchas," Achilles said.

"Achilles," Calchas said. "You ask me to tell our Lord Agamemnon why Apollo is angry with him, but I am afraid for my life. If you swear to protect me, then I will tell it."

"While I'm alive," Achilles placed a hand over his heart. "No man will touch you for what you say today."

A murmur went up among the leaders gathered before Agamemnon. Even the King's face transformed from annoyance to bloodless with fear as Achilles continued to stare at him like the lions known to attack people outside the confines of Argive cities. Achilles was a warrior second to none, the gods fought on his side, and he was no respecter of persons--not even Kings.

The prophet took a deep breath. "Beware, Agamemnon, Apollo is angry because you have refused to give back the daughter of his priest. The priest came to you bearing a golden staff with the wreath of Apollo wound around it to petition for the life of his daughter, but you turned him and his gifts away. She is your war bride by rights, but Apollo will not relent until you return her with the appropriate sacrifice. Apollo's arrows of pestilence will continue to rain down on us all. Many more men will die needlessly unless you, Lord Agamemnon, do the pleasure of Apollo and give back Chryseis to the priest."

"Yes, the priest!" Agamemnon face contorted in ridicule. "His exact words were: Oh Apollo, pay back the Danaans arrows for my tears! There was more threat than entreaty in that priest, that Chryses! He thinks he can control Apollo with his impotent muttering."

"I assure you," Calchas said. "Apollo heard his prayers and has let his rage spill out onto us all. With his silver bow he has killed the mules and the packs of roaming dogs. Now our war horses are beginning to fall. Without them our chariots will be useless."

"We will have to steal horses from the Trojans then somehow," Agamemnon spat.

"Now our men are falling in droves from this plague," Calchas argued although his legs were trembling now as the King of Mycenae stood before him full of menace. "The corpse-fires have begun to burn throughout our camp. There is no alternative I'm afraid, but to placate Phoebus Apollo."

"She will die of old age in my house first," Agamemnon sat down on his chair refusing to make eye contact with anyone.

"Listen to him Agamemnon," Achilles stood again. "Apollo gave Calchas his prophetic gift. In Calchas we should have some influence with the god. Even my fearless Myrmidon are beginning to wonder, if things continue as they are, if we shouldn't go back across the sea."

"Calchas," Agamemnon said. "You are a diviner of misery! Nothing you forecast is ever of any benefit to me. I tell you I want this girl. I think she is finer than my own wife. But I will give her back if I must for the sake of the men, but never forget that I will not be disgraced . . ."

"You must be the most greedy man alive," Achilles made his way to stand beside the King's chair which had the look of his throne back in Mycenae only just a bit smaller. "All our treasure has been divided amongst us. Are we supposed to call it back from the men and divide it up again just to satisfy your honor? Once we take Troy we will pay you back four times over."

"Achilles," the King stood and placed his hand on Achille's shoulder in a gesture of condescension. "Don't try to cheat me. If I have to I will take someone else's prize--your own if it pleases me. How would like that, eh? Then you can choke on your anger!"

Even the chieftains were silent now. All were shocked at the words of Agamemnon to the warrior known for his speed of foot. A soldier's personal sense of honor was all that he had and to have it so blatantly challenged was an insult that no respectable man could ignore. The men were staring into each other's eyes with pure hate. Would one of these great men challenge the other to a personal duel? It was unthinkable that during a war that the Achaeans could be so divided against themselves. For the moment nobody knew what to say to properly address the situation. Some of the men looked to Odysseus to step in and restore calm, but he remained silent chewing his lip. The wise Nestor was nowhere to be found.

"I did not come here to fight the Trojans," Achilles walked away from Agamemnon as if to address the entire assembly as much as the man. "The Trojans never stole my horses or cattle. Tyndareus extracted an intelligent oath from all the men who wanted to take Helen as a bride. We promised to help each other. We came here to fight for the honor of the house of Atrides--you dog-face! And now you threaten to take Briseis away from me? I don't have to fight for you and your greed!"

"Desert then!" Agamemnon sneered. "I hate you the most of all the warlords loved by the gods. I will give Chryseis back to satisfy Apollo. Not because you demand it. My own crew will take the girl back on my own ship immediately. But I am coming to your tents to take Briseis for myself! I am the greater man here, not you."

Achilles looked slightly down at the scornful face and the thick lips of Agamemnon. His heart pounded in his chest with anger. The assembly watched as Achilles hand went to hover near his sword. Every man there knew they could not stop Achilles alone from killing Agamemnon if he chose. The greatest warrior pulled his sword from his sheath. The Mycenaean guards began to rush forward to protect their lord. Everything was happening so fast that men were divided in their hearts between the two warriors. When suddenly Achilles fell backward a step in a fit. His eyes rolled white in their sockets. The men fell silent as Achilles turned away from Agamemnon and spoke incredibly to the thin air.

"Gray-eyed goddess!" Achilles looked at the roof of the canvas tent.

"What's he doing?" Agamemnon asked. "What's wrong with him? He's gone mad!"

"He speaks to Athena," Calchas stepped in wonder toward Achilles. "I can just make out her form in the shadows near the tent-pole."

"I don't see anything!" Agamemnon said.

"Neither do I, Calchas," Odysseus stood next to the prophet to get a better look at where he pointed. "But is Achilles flying?"

The events of the meeting place receded as Achilles felt Pallas Athena pull him back from the King by his fiery hair as he felt himself lifted off his feet before the hardened Argive rulers. Their faces expressed amazement and terror. From above the goddess looked down on him her eyes smoldering fury. Her burnished armor glowed with the glory of her being. Achilles was overwhelmed by her strength as her hair flowed around her face on an updraft like the heat of a sacrifical fire. As his own rage subsided, Athena lowered him back to the tent floor.

“Why are you here Athena?” Achilles asked. “Did you hear the outrageous things Agamemnon has said? Stay a moment longer and you can watch me kill him!”

“Hera sent me down here,” Athena hovered slightly above him, “to try to convince you not to kill him. She loves you both. She wants the Greek army to destroy Priam's city, but you must not kill Agamemnon. Disagree with him if you must. One day you will receive such gifts as cannot be described by mere words as repayment for this outrage.”

“You know I will always obey the two of you,” Achilles sobbed with anger. “It’s difficult but I will submit to your will.”

The eyes of Athena no longer burned with rage, but were clear and luminous again. She gave the warrior a smile that calmed his own anger in an instant. He stumbled and fell to the ground on his hands and knees. When he looked up toward the dark folds of the tent the goddess was gone as in a whirlwind. His sword lay several feet away from where he groped on the floor. Even as he grasped his sword again he stared at the huge blade, the silver hilt seemed to beckon with a life of its own, but then he sheathed his sword before he turned once again to the King.

“It was her,” Calchas face shone like a child’s.

"Have you gone mad, Achilles?" Agamemnon sneered. "You would do well to obey me."

"You are a drunk," Achilles hoped to goad Agamemnon into attacking him. If he killed Atrides while defending himself then even the goddesses could not claim he had acted rashly. "You are a coward who sits around drinking in his tent while the rest of us risk our lives."

The King was holding his scepter next to him as if it offered supernatural protection, but then much to his surprise Achilles snatched it out of his hand. Agamemnon signaled his guard to attack but neither of them was a fool. The men wore their horse-brush helmets and were dressed in full battle gear and still were afraid to attack the young man although his only weapon in hand was the scepter. Their spears blazed in the light of the great fire, but their eyes faultered before the son of Peleus. Patroclus deliberately stood beside his friend making a threat of hauling out his own sword to point it at the guardsmen. Automedon, the charioteer of Achilles, stood blocking the entrance as he yanked a spear out of the nearest guard's fist. Achilles raised his hand to halt the progress of the guards, and to gain the attention of all present.

"I make an oath on this scepter," Achilles said. "A great cry will rise up for my help when the Trojans are slaughtering Achaea's sons. Hector himself will destroy your army. Then, you will eat your heart out for the way you have dishonored me today."

The scepter rose above them all in the center of a great circle and Achilles brought it down with authority. Smashing the gold studded rod on the ground the warrior from Phthia fell silent and took his seat along with his friend. The entire force of chieftains was stunned into an awkward silence. The majority of the Kings of Greece were suddenly on their feet talking excitedly about what had just happened before them. The elderly Nestor, King of the Pylians, himself appeared out of nowhere to stand exactly where Achilles uttered his curse on Agamemnon's force. His white hair appeared to glow in the gloom of the tent. He put his fingers together to address the group in an attempt to restore order. Long ago he had weathered the storms of great men who challenged the gods themselves like Pirithous who had carried off Helen as a child and Theseus who had fought the Minotaur and the Amazons. The old man had learned enough about war among heroes to know the value of the art of compromise.

"When I was a young man," Nestor's voice quavered. "I was enlisted to fight the centaurs, violent beasts in the mountains, and we hacked them down. None of you today are man enough to fight with those men I fought side-by-side with, but yet they listened to my advice. Conciliation is a better road to take. Agamemnon, you are so powerful--you don't need to keep the girl. And Achilles, son of a goddess, you are physically more than the King's match being a son of a god but Zeus himself puts men in their offices of state."

Achilles gave a look of disgust and whispered something to Patroclus that caused his friend to laugh. Agamemnon saw their blatant display of disrespect only to be stirred up all over again. The great King smashed his fist into the palm of his own hand. His brother, Menelaus, looking slightly ridiculous in his boar-tusked helmet gave him a look that strengthened his resolve to stand firm against Achilles.

"All you say is true, old man," Agamemnon said. "But this young pup thinks he is greater than the entire army!"

"I will never serve a coward like you," Achilles said. "Let one of your men just try to take anything from me! I will give the girl back, but everything else in my black ship is mine. Just try to take it from me yourself and your men will see your black blood flowing on the beach!"

Achilles vaulted out of his seat with Patroclus and Automedon following on his heels. The confused guards gave token resistance, but Achilles flung them aside as if they were children. Menelaus followed them to the entrance shaking his mane of red hair. An army divided against itself could never win. Odysseus was the first to leave and the rest of the council soon followed.

"To think you even considered giving Iphigenia to him as bride," Menelaus turned as Agamemnon stood at his shoulder. "God bless her sacrifice."

"I want oarsmen to take Chryseis back to her father immediately," Agamemnon told Menelaus, "with cattle loaded on the same ship for sacrifice to Apollo. Everything will be done as it should on my part. I want Odysseus to Captain the ship to make sure there are no mishaps."

"Do you think Achilles would take the ship?"

"He might if given the opportunity just to frustrate me," Agamemnon said. "With the Ithacan at the helm he won't molest the cargo--he respects Odysseus."

"What about the plague?"

"Order our men to purify themselves," Agamemnon ordered. "We will sacrfice bulls and goats to Apollo. Hopefully, after all of this is done, the god will be appeased for awhile. Then, I will send men to the tents of Achilles and take Briseis from him."

Up and down the golden beach of Troy the gods looked on as the army of Greece made sacrifices sending the aroma of burning animal sacrifices to waft north toward Olympus. The soldiers were stripped down scrubbing their bodies in the hope no more of them would be struck down by the pestilence. Agamemnon sent his heralds, Talthybius and Eurybates, to go to the black tents of Achilles and take the beautiful Briseis from him. His aides were visibly shaken by the order and the King explained to them they would simply be acting on his authority. If Achilles refused then Agamemnon would go to Achilles with his entire army if necessary and slaughter the swift runner and his Myrmidon. As the men stalked off dejectedly walking along the shore as the sea's foaming waves rushed in and out, Talthybius pointed out a line of pelicans flying overhead like an armada casting a shadow over the sands.

Achilles held Briseis in an embrace and she tried not to weep. She had given herself to one man already. Now she would be taken from him and given to another to satisfy his pleasure. She clung to him. The strength Achilles had should be enough to protect her, but they were both victims of war he explained to her. He brushed the hair out of her eyes. Automedon came to the entrance of the tent to warn him that the messengers of Agamemnon begged an audience.

Talthybius and Eurybates refused to look the great Achilles in the eye. They had seen the excellence of his fighting up close and knew it would take a dozen heroes to take the maiden from him if he did not willingly give her up. Talthybius involuntarily jumped away from Achilles when he reached out a hand to his arm. He held Briseis by the hand and embraced her again before he made a gesture of sending her over to where Patroclus stood.

"Give Briseis to them," Achilles stared down at the sand. "Don't worry. I don't hold it against you two. You are only following the orders of your ignorant king. He's not fit to lead a herd of goats down a dogtrot. This may be the very destruction of our enterprise here at Troy."

The men were very relieved as Patroclus in a ceremonius attitude led the beautiful young girl to them. Her eyes welled-over with tears. Even Patroclus himself wore a visibly pained expression. The guards did not bother to take the maiden in custody by putting hands on her or binding her wrists as they might have under normal circumstances. Eurybates wanted to be sure they did not anger Achilles into changing his mind so the guards merely saluted Achilles and turned away. Briseis followed somberly a yard or so behind them as they made their way back to Agamemnon's tent with the inhuman eyes of the Myrmidon glowering after them.

III

The sun was a bloody orb low on the horizon shining on Achilles back as he walked away from his camp to be alone. The greatest warrior of the entire army disgraced. It was almost too much to bear. A terrible dishonor had been done to him by Agamemnon. It turned his stomach now to think of fighting under the twin flags of Mycenae and Sparta. Menelaus did not deserve Helen. Paris and Troy could have her as far as he was concerned. In his misery he scanned the waters of the barren sea for signs of his mother.

His beautiful mother had told him of the time she had saved Zeus from the other gods who tried to shackle him. Many were in on the plot including Hera, Poseidon, and Athena. Thetis went into the Cloud-gatherer and broke his chains. She knew the gods would be quick to react and ordered Aegaeon to attack the gods. Even the gods were afraid of the hundred-hand monster hammering on his fifty shields with fifty swords and breathing fire through fifty mouths. He could not help thinking these stories she told him since the time he was a boy were all mere fairy tales. Thinking about everything that had happened he sat idly thrusting a dagger into the sand everytime he saw the face of Atrides in his mind.

The water began to boil and swirl violently. The green surface broken like a fountain shooting water into the air. A great vapor arose as Thetis emerged from the depths to where she had been seated by her father Nereus until moved with compassion at her son's heartbreak. Her skin shimmered emerald and claret under a light shift made for the sea as she settled back down to earth to sit next to her son stroking his hair as he wept bitterly. She enveloped them both in a pleasing mist under a prism of lights.

"What sorrow has touched your heart?" Thetis asked.

"Why even go into it? You know it already--"

"Tell me, son," Thetis took his hand and placed a ring on his finger inlaid with pearl. He smiled half-heartedly at the token.

"After our raid on Thebe," Achilles sighed, "we divided the plunder amongst us all evenly. When we were back in our ships the holy priest of Apollo, Chryses, wore armor from Apollo and asked for his daughter back. It was clear Apollo would fight for him because he held a golden staff with the god's own wreath. The sight of the cadaverous priest in armor was laughable, but the will of Apollo was clear."

"Why wouldn't they give the girl back?"

"Hubris on their part." Achilles leaned against the goddess. "The priest even held a generous ransom, but the sons of Atreus refused him. The entire Achaean army tried to convince them to respect the priest. It didn't make sense. Maybe another god clouded their judgment. Not long after that, Apollo sent the plague. The girl, Chryseis, is on a ship now to Chryse island. The guards came and took away my Briseis."

Thetis rubbed his arm. She didn't say anything at first, but appeared to be distracted by her own thoughts on the matter. Achilles watched her carefully for some sign of her opinion. Did she think he was the one being petty? If she didn't appeal to Zeus on his behalf he wasn't sure what he would do. He wanted to fight the Trojans, Hector most of all, but not if the other Kings and their men were laughing at him behind their hands.

"What do you want me to do?" Thetis asked.

"Ask Zeus to fight against the Achaeans," Achilles turned to face her. "Remind how you once saved him. If he will only help the Trojan cause for awhile so the King will see his own insanity."

"That certainly would displease Hera," Thetis laughed to think of it.

"I want to get back to the fighting!"

"My son," the smile faded from her lips. "I am sorry I have doomed you to a short life. For you I will go back to Olympus and the halls of Zeus to ask him to grant your prayer. He loved me once."

"You will do it for me?"

"Of course," Thetis said, relieved to see hope alive in his face again. "Only stay out of the fighting for now."

Time stopped for a long heartbeat. Thetis smiled. A wave crashing onto the beach nearly came to a complete stop in mid-air. The flight of a seagull overhead was interrupted and it seemed as if it were flying into a strong headwind. The mist was gone. His mother no longer sat beside him. The wave crashed onto the beach. The seagull cried out in terror. It was an old joke between them the way she vanished. It usually made him laugh, but not on that day. Instead he thought about the doe eyes of Briseis and what he had lost. He vowed not to return to the war until Hector had driven the Argive force to its knees.

And Thetis did not forget her sons's appeals.

She broke from a cresting wave at first light

and soaring up to the broad sky and Mount Olympus,

found the son of Cronus gazing down on the world--
--from "The Iliad" by Homer, Book 1

III

THE HOUSE OF ZEUS

Thetis knew the gods were back in Olympus and appeared out of a wave at its apex to fly through the air before it crashed to the shore. The gods were walking in a parade up the vaulted steps to the house of Zeus. It was an impressive sight to see even for an immortal like Thetis. The power of the gods invidually were formidable enough, but to see them together in high spirits as they returned from a feast with the Aethiopians was an amazement even to the sea goddess who was regularly in their presence. Horns, drums, and cymbals crashed as they wound on marvelous gold steps up the crag to Mt. Olympus.

Apollo plucked his lyre and sang a song of the Titans. Ares lumbered behind with a grimace on his face. Aphrodite was still carrying her golden apple although her beauty alone was enough for any god or man to recognize her. Strife was following behind exulting in the ill-will between Hera, Athea, and Aphrodite over that same apple when Thetis was given to the mortal Peleus in marriage. Hermes darted back and forth on his winged sandals across the sky watching over the procession. Poseidon used his trident like a walking staff as he brought up the rear. While her own heart was breaking for her son Achilles, she marveled out how the gods could seemingly be so untouched by a war of mortals that the immortals were responsible for. Thetis also knew the gods well enough to know that nothing stood in the way of their sport. Eternity could be incomprehensibly dull for the gods without distractions.

Zeus gave a self-conscious wave as soon as he caught sight of Thetis. For her part, Hera glowered at Thetis knowing that Zeus would soon be up to his old tricks. Thetis would have to wait for Zeus to be alone before she put in her appeal on her son's behalf. The warning in Hera's cow eyes caused Thetis to return to the sea waiting for the right opportunity.

Time flew while she kept on the lookout for the son of Cronus from the beach head. She hid behind a tumble of volanic rocks on a jetty when Athena appeared soaring across the cobalt sky on her way to help the Greeks in full battle dress bearing her shield with the head of the Gorgon visible. A fierce looking owl, her familiar, flew behind her. Under normal circumstances she might have come out and spoke to Athena, but as she was about to ask Zeus to fight against the Greeks she was afraid to face the anger of the goddess--afterall she loved conflict. Athena's vanity still smarted from the decision of Paris to give the golden apple to honor the beauty of Aphrodite.

Finally she spied Zeus alone on a rugged outcrop of Olympus looking down on the world of men in deep thought. His face glowed with a burnished radiance like none other. Here was the god who had usurped a throne from his father. Here was a being who insisted on absolute obedience--were it not for his wife. Thetis cautiously made her way to the flat irons and found a dangerous path leading up to where Zeus sat. At the end of the path she found that now she was behind him, but she could tell in his posture that he knew someone was behind him.

"Thetis," Zeus said over his shoulder. "Please, come and join me, see what new things these men have done."

"You saw me then?"

"I watched you make your way up the trail," Zeus turned to face her. "Come sit next to me and tell me what it is you want to ask."

"What if I sit in your lap instead?" Thetis smiled.

"You are trying to lead me into temptation," he beckoned to her to come.

Thetis threw herself on his lap with a hand under his chin. She laughed lightly and told him how much she had missed him. If he weren't so afraid of too powerful offspring they could spend time together. Zeus had an infamous weakness for women. He like mortal women and goddesses alike. Thetis looked around to make certain they were alone before she kissed him vigorously on the mouth and squirmed on his lap.

Zeus held the sea nymph at arm's length, "If I didn't know better I could easily fall in love with you."

"For a night?"

"Is that what you think of me?" Zeus asked.

Thetis laughed at the suggestion that his reputation was flawless.

"It was said that our union would produce a son more powerful than any of the gods," Zeus said.

"That's why you saw to it the Peleus married me?" Thetis said. "Or, was it Hera?"

Zeus countenance quickly went from delight to brooding. Dark tornadic clouds began to gather overhead in reflection of his mood. The rumble of thunder was audible. Thetis put her arms around his neck and embraced him to show that she was only teasing until the sun began to break through the clouds. Her skin glistened with sea water and vitality.

"I will never forget how you saved me," Zeus said. "I know you wouldn't be here now if there wasn't something on your mind. Just because we were feasting doesn't mean I haven't kept myself informed on the Trojan war. Ask whatever you will and you shall have it."

"Zeus," Thetis sat at the god's feet, "my son Achilles is doomed to die too soon. You have been watching from on high. You saw Agamemnon disgrace him by taking away his prize. Grant his prayer. See to it that Priam's army makes the Achaean's pay for their treachery to Achilles until they see their mistake. Achilles could have been your own son . . ."

Zeus suddenly became angry and stood. The sound of his footsteps echoed like stampeding cattle. He was agitated for fear of his wife although he did not want to display his fear in front of the beautiful nymph. Her mouth was turned down in an unattractive copy of distress. It reminded him of how Leda had behaved at the end of their affair. The god looked in the air above him as if he expected harpies with faces like Hera to come flying out of the skies to attack him for even considering this request.

"Thetis," Zeus bowed his head. "I will grant this prayer although it will drive me into war with Hera again. She says I always fight for the Trojans so this will only confirm it for her."

The Cloud-gatherer tossed his mane of hair. Lightning struck the earth. Thunder shook Olympus with the force behind it. Zeus arose to return to the assembly hall to face the gods--and Hera.

Thetis was overwhelmed that Zeus had agreed to help Achilles. He was doomed to live such a short life that it pained her to see him dishonored. She could see his glorious promise written in the stars. It was so clear to her. Daily visions of Achilles' future deeds presented themselves before her unbidden. The specter of his golden body thrusting his spear into the Trojan soldiers one by one. A nimbus of light emanated from the Achilles in her mind as he cut down his enemies with his sword from his crashing chariot.

In a separate vision, she saw Automedon, Achilles' charioteer, driving into battle as her son wielded an iron lance the first weapon of its kind forged by the god of fire, Hephaestus as countless Dardanus fell before his weapons. Yet another heartrending apparition of Automedon weeping over the fallen body of Achilles. Thetis blamed herself for his doom.

The children of Zeus it seems were cursed in one way or another. She pitied Helen. The girl was rumored to be another child of Zeus, although Tyndareus was believed by many to be her father. Men would tear the world, and each other, apart to possess her beauty as if it weren't intransitory for mortals. As the goddess plunged into a cresting wave she wept for Leda, the mother of Helen, even if she shared her love for Zeus she could not find it in her heart to hate her. They had the heartbreak of their children in common. She moved through the water as quick as any porpoise. She could not wait to see Achilles’ eyes light up when she told him the good news.

II

Zeus strode into his throne room in a vile mood. He sat down not caring to notice the gods standing at attention before their seats. All had jumped out of their seats at his approach for fear they might stir his anger. Hera was the only immortal who dared to keep her seat. She watched her husband with a sardonic grin. She had observed the lovely Thetis throwing herself at Zeus and him loving it. It angered her but it was nothing new.

“So what are you plotting with Thetis?” Hera sipped from a bejeweled goblet of wine. “Why don’t you ever share your plans with me?”

Zeus stared at her and let the righteous anger in his eyes do all the talking. He was thinking more on the corpse-fires he had witnessed around Troy more than his petty arguments with his wife. Though he loved her, ultimately more than any other, she was always needling him. She was the kind of personality that relished a good fight--it was foreplay for her. There were times when it was perfectly appropriate to leave well enough alone. One day he might forget himself and then it would go bad for her. He wrenched his gaze away from her wondering that Thetis would ask him to fight for the Trojans who he favored anyway and yet Achilles would rather hundreds of his brothers in combat die for the sake of his honor--how long would it be before he reversed himself?

Hera looked down at her plate, but stole glances at him until he looked away. Hera felt she had to watch her husband every moment or he would be screwing the livestock of Polyphemos the Cyclops if left to his own schemes.

"If I am plotting something," Zeus signaled for Aphrodite to pour wine into his goblet. "What could you do about it? Constantly needling me is just going to make me angry with you. If you push me too far all the gods in Olympus couldn't keep me from choking the life out of you with my own two hands."

The gods murmured in discomfort at the arguing of Zeus and the Hera. It was far from unusual to see them fighting, but they were afraid the day would come when they would have to choose between the two. Hera wasn't always right; Zeus was omnipotent. Hephaestus was most strongly affected by their arguing. The god of fire hated to see his parents bickering so viciously. He could barely contain his agitation as if he were a small child trying to defend Hera from the anger of his cloud-gathering father. He had been raised by the mortals on the isle of Lemnos where he had landed after falling from morning to noon like a comet crashing through the heavens. Family secrets made his own childhood difficult to decipher. Had it been his mother or his father who had tried to cast him out when they saw he was lame--and hideously unattractive besides.

Despite his brutish looks he only wanted harmony between the gods. Aphrodite noticed him struggling with his emotions as the two fought and put her hand on her husband's arm to soothe him. He clasped her delicate white hand in his own calloused hands from years at the forge building dwellings, furniture, and even weapons of the gods. He could not keep his hands still or finish his meal in piece in his agitation.

The complexion of the white-armed goddess was pale with genuine terror of her husband now. She sat in stunned silence. The gods were quiet in the hall and nobody knew what would be appropriate to say.

Even if Hephaestus was the least favorite of his parents, he loved them the most of all their children. He shook off the hands of Aphrodite who was trying to keep him in his seat. The heaviness of his expression moved them all with emotion. Buttressing himself with his massive hands and arms on the royal table he began to speak, but was afraid to make eye contact with the heavenly couple.

"It would be disastrous," Hephaestus began, "if the two of you decided to fight or separate. Your harmony is life for the rest of us gods. If we someday cease to exist, it will because we have lost the Father and the Mother. Don't fight over mere mortals and their politics. We rule them and not the other way around."

His words were met with some assent, shaking of heads, but it seemed to Hephaestus that everyone was holding their tongues to see what Zeus would say. Hephaestus did not want to wait for his father to speak, because it would probably be more hasty words. He had to appeal to the strength and pride of Zeus. Even if all present knew he was the Monarch of the gods it never hurt to point out the obvious to gain a little goodwill. The burly forger felt he was thinking clearly, but could not control his shaking hands yet.

"Mother," Hephaestus gave his mother a clandestine wink. "What could I do to help you if you make him angry? Remember when I was a child and try to save you from his rage and he snatched me up by my foot and threw me out of heaven!"

Hera knew at once what her son was doing. She raised her cup to salute him to indicate agreement on her part. The Queen of Zeus would bide her time for now. Best not to confront Zeus directly. As if reading her thoughts Zeus looked at her blankly. For all his powers of observation she knew he could not read minds, but she couldn't help blushing. Luckily for her Zeus seemed to take her flushed cheeks as a sign of embarrassment over her behavior.

Just as the gods in the assembly were at their most tense--Zeus laughed. His mirth filled the hall and echoed off the mountains until it trailed into a pleasant rolling thunder. Immediately the tension dissipated and the gods began to eat and drink again. Apollo played a sweet song on his lyre. Hephaestus toasted his father and mother with an eloquence that normally escaped him. Aphrodite kissed her husband lightly on the cheek.

--god of greatness, god of glory, all you immortals!

Whichever contenders trample on the treaty first,

spill their brains on the ground as the wine spills--

theirs, their children's too--their enemies rape their wives!"

--From, "The Iliad" by Homer, Book 3

III

BROKEN OATHS

I

The sun glinted off the bronze armor and weapons of the two great armies. The Greek army looked on the impressive walls of Troy with resignation after over nine years of warfare. The city was said to be unconquerable. Even the Hittites to the east hadn't bothered with it. The Egyptians and their strange gods in the south had heard of her, but had also stayed in their own lands. Troy was known throughout the world as a rich trading city-state and as a result it was regarded as a more valuable resource left undisturbed behind it's god-crafted walls.

The flatness of the land between the armies was marred by a few gentle sloping dunes and flowering thickets. The troops stood in full regalia with flags waving stiffly in the breeze creating a tableaux impressive to even the Olympians. Men were not immortal, their glory would depend on a bloody day of battle just like this one. Troops from both sides continued to march into position with their gleaming spears and thundering

footsteps. Drums pounded on both sides as each battalion attempted to intimidate the other with ancient songs of call and response.

Agamemnon did not know that Strife had been hurled onto the black hulls of the Greek ships to oversee the failure of the Achaeans waving her stormcloud sign of war. She stood with her legs shoulder-width apart as she let loose a howling war cry to send the Achaeans on to their doom. Agamemnon felt determined to fight to the last man rather than return in failure to Mycenae. Ares arrived to stand next to King Priam where he overlooked the battlefield only to reappear next to Hector on his chariot whispering bloody notions into his ear.

Agamemnon watched the movements of the opposing force with a grim expression affixed to his war-ravaged face. His legs were wrapped in greaves fastened with silver. The breastplate he wore was a gift from Cinyas, the father of Adonis, when he heard of the expedition against Troy. The cuirass was formidable with bands of dark blue enamel, gold, and tin. An image of three arched serpents in indigo decorated either side of his armor. Hung across his royal chest was a sword with golden studs on the hilt. The King's bronze shield bore the likeness of the fire-eyed Gorgon flanked by Rout and Terror. On his head, the Lord of Mycenae, wore a helmet with four white crests of horsehair.

Dust boiled up in a whirlwind from the earth as each army advanced into position. Agamemnon gave a sign for the Argives to attack. Lord Agamemnon had to admit the Trojans were the most impressive army he had ever fought against. Individually his own commanders were without peer, even in the Trojan army, but the average foot soliders in the Dardanian army were better equipped and trained than his own. The Achaeans were even outnumbered by the enemy. He began to rethink his treatment of the situation with Achilles. Achilles, though Agamemnon despised him, was clearly the greatest warrior by far on either side. The son of Peleus was a throwback to heroes like Theseus, Perseus, and Hercules--Agamemnon hoped to write his name beside theirs one day. The Phthian was useless to him now as he sat brooding with his Myrmidons in his tents like a child.

Upon seeing the invaders running over the slight rise in silence the Trojans cried out and were sent crashing down the beach with their commander, Hector, leading the way with his long spear in hand. Paris ran ahead of his brother into the fray. He wore a leopard skin across his shoulders. He was as heavily armed as a bristling red scorpion with two bronze-tipped spears, a reflex bow strapped to his back, and a sword at his hip. Just the sight of the Trojan prince enraged Menelaus who slowed his chariot, handed the reins to his driver, and leapt in full view of Paris. Menelaus fiery red hair glowed even brighter as Ares inflamed his charge with hatred for the adulterer.

The fierceness of Menelaus terrified Paris. Instead of facing the broad-shouldered Atrides, Paris shrank back into the ranks behind his men. He knew without a doubt that Menelaus would kill him easily so he began to run back toward Troy pushing and dodging around his own men in sudden terror. Hector grabbed his brother by the arm as he attempted to fly by him.

"Oh, beautiful Paris!" Hector sneered. "Where do you think you're going? It would have been better for our city if you had never been born! You are a coward! But you must fight for the honor of our race--even if you deserve to have your body hacked into pieces and fed to dogs!"

"Everything you say is true," Paris shook his arm out of his brother's grasp.

"I only pray they don't think you are an example of Trojan bravery!"

"I know a fair way to stop this bloodshed, brother," Paris said. "I will fight Menelaus in single combat for the love of Helen. The winner will take her and then both sides can call a truce and swear an oath to be friends forever."

The sounds of swords thumping on shields could be heard at the front. Hector smiled now in approval of his brother's plan. The sound of battle drums punctuated the sense of this new plan. A trumpet from the parapets of the Scion gate sounded tinny in the morning air. The sound of arrows raining down on the men ahead and their cries of anguish turned Hector's expression grim. Ares stalked away from the brothers in the hopes of regrouping this failure. The words of the Trojan leader should have shamed Paris, but instead his ideas would likely stop unwarranted bloodshed!

Hector sent a rider to the front with a white flag. The rider was hit in the shoulder with a Mycenaean arrow as he ran a gauntlet of spears, arrows, and stones in the alley of no man's land before he was received by their King. Hector himself raced ahead on his charger to signal a withdrawal to his troops. His men were ready to fight now so it was difficult to make them hear the command. The Achaean archers sent volley after volley at the prince of Troy the entire time until finally the Trojans began to retreat almost as one man. They stood behind their large shields and began to pull out in a practiced, honorable method. An Argive trumpet signaled a ragged withdrawal after several desperate spears and even stones had been thrown at Hector.

"Speak Prince Hector!" King Agamemnon called. "Why have you stopped the battle? Are you surrendering to us now?"

The sound of laughter from the ranks of the Achaean army filled the air. Agamemnon's men pounded their shields with their swords in approval of their leader's remark. Loud groans from wounded men could be heard along the front.

Hector raised his hand from where he sat his horse. His mount was excited and his hooves flashed. The stallion was known to throw kicks at men on foot around him in the heat of battle. The prince waited for the Achaeans to finish enjoying their joke before he called back to them.

"My brother," Hector called out in a strong voice, "Paris makes a challenge of single combat to Menelaus himself no less! He is responsible for this long war. He will give Menelaus the chance to redeem his honor and the rest of us act as witnesses. The one who wins takes Helen and her treasure home. Then we can forge a treaty and become friends again!"

"I agree!" Menelaus called back. "We must make the appropriate sacrifices to the gods first! Let the mature men attend the peace talks and make the arrangements! Let King Priam seal this pact in blood, because I don't trust you young princes. Bring lambs for slaughter for the Sun and the Moon and Zeus! After I have annihilated Paris there can be peace between us again!"

Both sides were cheering now that the war at last would come to an end. The chariots were lined up away from the front. Men were stripping their armor to sit down on the ground. Both sides lined up in large semi-circular area to make room for the sacrifices--and for the anticipated combat. An Achaean stood and told the Trojans what Menelaus would do to Paris in gory detail. Paris was known to be a fine archer, but this was no archery tournament. The Trojan soldiers were strangely silent and refused to answer the mockery of the Argives. Just the same, all the soldiers were excited to witness a titanic battle between Menelaus and Paris. In battle things did not always work out the way one thought they should. Menelaus was confident now, but it was difficult to gage a man's heart in a battle to the death.

Menelaus was far larger and more experienced in hand-to-hand combat than his youthful opponent. The splendor of the prince's appearance offended Atrides. He could not wait to destroy Paris for stealing away his wife. The rage of Ares burned in his veins as he imagined cutting up the youth's striking face with his bone-handled knife.

"He's so pretty!" the enormous Ajax quipped. "I think I want to kiss him!"

A murmur rose up among the Trojans. Men were turning away from their enemies to look to the rear. Many of the soldiers walked toward the city walls shading their eyes with their hands to catch a glimpse of the most beautiful woman who had ever lived. It was rumored that Helen herself had been called out to watch the combat for her hand. When word filtered over to the Achaeans they began to react in much the same way. The men of Sparta knew very well the effect of her beauty. Even many of Agamemnon's soldiers had seen the beautiful Helen for themselves. The memory of her face and those wet green eyes was enough to make their throats go dry if they thought about her too long. There were, however, many greeks who had not had the good fortune to behold the face of Helen of Sparta--now lately of Troy-- and they began to rush forward even into the clearing made for the combat until Diomedes and his men rode out on horseback and beat some of the overeager men back to the lines. The Achaean men who lived that day would tell their family and friends that Helen's countenance was such that it was an honor to fight for her.

"Marry me, Helen!" an Ithacan youth called out plaintively over the assembled lines. Such a heartfelt proposal caused uproarious laughter on both sides.

Helen stood high on the wall next to Andromache to watch her husband destroy her lover. She prayed Menelaus would kill Paris so the terrible war would come to an end. It was no way to live cowering in fear every time the Achaeans attacked the walls. If the walls were breached she could just as easily be killed as anyone.

Andromache held her son Astyanax, the very image of the father Hector, and stood so close to Helen that their arms touched. Helen envied Andromache because her position was secure; Hector was an honorable man unlike Paris. If Andromache harbored ill will toward Helen she kept silent about it. She was terrified for her husband and for her home.

One day another woman would catch Paris's roving eye, and he would not give a thought to pursuing her. Even though Helen was considered the most exquisite woman any man had ever seen, something in her personality did not allow her to believe it entirely. Even though men had always reacted strongly to her, she saw the features of other women and wished she had this one's hair or that one's mouth. Even when she observed the men in both armies surging toward the wall where she stood in the chance of seeing her it seemed unreal that anyone would be so inclined. There were women who knew how to use their gifts to their advantage, but Helen felt her beauty was more of a curse to be endured rather than exploited. In fact, she had tried to seduce Paris in the fairy tale hope that somehow she could be rid of the physically repulsive Menelaus. She hadn't loved Menelaus, but her father had forced her to marry him for political reasons.

Her plans had backfired. Now, looking down on the plain she hoped for an end to it all. Back in her bedchamber she had confessed her feelings to Iris--even refered to herself an unfaithful bitch. How she regretted ever running away with Paris to begin with. She prayed silently to Zeus that Menelaus would kill Paris!

Helen's handmaiden, Iris, stood not far from her mistress trying to take in the waving penants on the battlefield below. There were dead men down there who were killed in just the first half hour of battle. It was too much for Iris who held her hand over her mouth in horror. It was far enough way that it was difficult to make out the faces but the actions of the priests of Apollo, the patron god of Troy, were obvious enough. A contract was being made in sacrificial blood between Troy and the Achaeans to abide by the rules of the contest. The sacrifice technically belonged to Zeus in the hope that neither side would break the pact. Helen would be handed over to the winner and the war would be over.

Men were assigned on both sides to attend to the wounded, and the dead. Carrion birds flew overhead. An archer occasionally skewered one or two for the sport, but there were too many vultures to stop that way. The sight of soldier's bodies being dragged around, great pools of blood left where the bodies had fallen, caused Iris to run back to her room in the palatial estates.

Iris promised herself to return to Athena's shrine to beg the goddess for her favor with the other women of the city. The girl had not been allowed to see such things in all the years of the war because of her youth, but over the duration of the war she had become a young women. There was a generation of Trojan youth who could barely remember anything but war.

II

Achilles and his Myrmidon watched from afar. Word had been sent to him by way of an Ithacan runner of what was happening. The thought of hand-to-hand combat with Paris made him wish he were in the fighting again. Patroclus nudged Achilles and pointed to the priest. It amazed the swift-runner that anyone would pray to or worship the gods. They were powerful, but prayers and sacrifices in no way guaranteed their support. The gods did as they chose whether one was a priest, a King, or farmer. Living for the favor of the gods only increased their sense of self-importance on Olympus! Achilles face twisted in mockery of the ceremony, but even Automedon and Patroclus exchanged nervous glances to see their leader's brazen disregard for the gods. He openly disdained Apollo.

The priest cut the throats of the lambs to drip in the mixing bowls. The lambs kicked and gasped on the ground while the armies of both sides prayed to Zeus over the sanctity of the blood testament. Many soldiers stretched their hands in the air as they prayed that the best man would win the challenge. King Priam rode back to the city on his chariot with Antenor and his entourage.

"When Menelaus kills my son, Paris," King Priam said to Antenor, "we will give them Helen, but we will not pay any reparations. They will have to take my city first. And my city is impregnable."

"Will Agamemnon continue to lay seige to Troy--even after he has Helen?"

"Oh Yes," King Priam said. "But I say, let him rot! Let him sink to the house of death. Hector will destroy him and his Achaeans."

III

Hector and Odysseus measured off the ground for the contest. Row upon row of soldiers were babbling excitedly about what would happen. Some were betting horses, women, and future treasures. Trojans and Achaeans were discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the combatants. An Achaean soldier said: Menelaus is strong and loved by Ares! But then just as quickly a Trojan argued: He is strong, but he is old and slow! Paris will skewer him with his spear and carve him up with the sword! After so many years of fighting the armies had begun to know one another quite well. The war gear was piled behind the lines of each side. Horses were led away back to the ships by boys considered too young for battle.

A tent was erected on the field for Paris. Inside his attendant helped dress him for battle. His hands shook so he allowed the boy to attach the armor to his legs, a breastplate around his chest, and bronze helmet with a black horsehair crest. He dismissed the boy and looked to his weapons. Paris slung his sword over his shoulder, shook his shield on his arm for weight, and he chose a spear that felt good in his hand. Out in the harsh sunlight he blinked at the sunspots before his eyes. He hefted the spear up to his shoulder as if he might launch it from where he stood and then planted it next to him on the ground. A cheer went up from the Trojans when they saw outfitted for battle.

The men did not know the terror in his heart. Menelaus terrified him for some reason. It was not a feeling Paris was used to so he had no defense against it. He took a few deep breaths which seemed to help. The eyes of Troy were on him, the pressure of fighting for the honor of all of his people was heavy on his shoulders. Normally he stood in the shadow of his brother Hector, but now everyone was looking to him. He looked up to the wall where he knew Helen was watching. The greatest fear he had was that he might embarrass himself in front of her. She already felt, he knew, that he was half the man that Menelaus was. The thought drove away the sharpest edge of his fear.

"Are you ready, brother?" Hector asked.

"No," Paris said.

"You can defeat him," Hector said. "But you have to use your brains and your speed. Don't try to fight him strength for strength. Use your spear and make no more than two thrusts and retreat. Let him wear himself out swinging that enormous war sword. Be patient. The same goes for your sword. Make a couple of thrusts from oblique angles and then dance away. When he is tired, then go in for the kill. Are you listening?"

"Yes." He stared past Hector to the frightful image of Menelaus. A nimbus of fire appeared to dance on the crown of his enemy's head as if he fought for Ares himself. "Help me now Aphrodite if you still care for me."

Menelaus was visibly seething with rage. Finally, he would have revenge on this loverboy. Gritting his teeth he shook his spear at the smooth-faced adulterer and much to his satisfaction the prince visibly quaked. Menelaus turned and raised his spear overhead to incite the Achaeans who responded with a loud cheer. When he turned back to his opponent, Paris suddenly let his spear fly and Atrides just had enough time to position his shield for impact. It was an excellent throw by the prince. The spear quivered in the direct center of Atrides' shield.

"Someone forgot to tell you we aren't throwing spears at targets!" Menelaus brought his spear to his shoulder and heaved it with a grunt. "Zeus, give me revenge!"

The spear of Menelaus flew and stuck through the shield of Paris and tore his war shirt. There was a tiny rivulet of blood flowing from the scratch of his opponent's spear. Paris threw down the shield and hauled out his war sword. He tried to remember what Hector had told him, but he had already thrown away his spear. Menelaus advanced on him with his menacing sword before him. His arms and legs were heavily muscled and bore scars from old war wounds.

Menelaus and Paris circled one another. Paris felt his legs were made of granite. He was supposed to be the one with youth and agility on his side, but his stomach swirled. Menelaus leapt forward with startling quickness, his sword over his head, and struck Paris from above in an attempt to cleave his bronze helmet in two. Paris managed to move at the last second and much to the astonishment of everyone the sword of Menelaus shattered. Murmurs went up that it was the work of the gods.

The red-maned Spartan was incredulous with frustration. If his sword hadn't broken Paris would not only be dead, but possibly cleaved partially in half. Paris wobbled on his feet. Menelaus reached out, although unarmed, and firmly grabbed Paris by the horsehair crest and drug him around the circle. The chin-strap dug into the soft flesh of Paris's throat. He clawed at the strap, but the force of Menelaus hauling him around held it fast. Paris thought it was a terrible and humiliating way to die, but the world seemed to be going black as he struggled for air. Suddenly, the strap snapped and he could breath again.

Menelaus slung the helmet into the Argive ranks. He ran to where his spear lay and turned back to Paris. Atrides rushed at the prince, but Paris had recovered enough to back coolly away rubbing his neck. The prince's hair flew in the breeze. Menelaus could see that Paris had lost all taste for combat and was ready to concede his life. He dashed in for the kill with his spear leveled at the Trojan, when just before he should have been watching the youth die--Paris disappeared into a visible swirling mist.

The cheering soldiers fell silent. It was a stunning development to everyone. Menelaus stumbled around in a circle almost comically looking for his errant rival. What had become of him? Menelaus stalked up and down the lines thinking that Paris was somewhere nearby still. He looked to Hector, but even he appeared puzzled by the turn of events.

No one was sure of what to make of it, but it wasn't long before there were whispers of the gods. The Olympians refused to leave well enough alone. Had Paris been taken to the halls of Zeus? Was he dead? If a god or goddess had rescued him, then it was from sure and swift death. Even if he was alive he had lost the contest. Under the terms of the agreement, Menelaus and the Achaeans had won.

"Hear me Trojans!" Agamemnon stepped forward to take charge of the situation. "Clearly Menelaus has won the contest! You must surrender Helen immediately in accordance with the rules of our agreement! Also, you owe us war reparations! Whatever has become of your champion is of no concern to us accept that he has violated the terms of this combat! Victory is ours!"

The Achaeans roared with approval. It was all fair and according to rigorous agreement and sacrifice. To dissolve such a contract would anger the gods! It would reflect poorly on the character of the Trojans for all time. There was great celebration on the side of the Argives. The long bitter war was finally over. After collecting their war reparations they could return home to their families who they hadn't seen in almost ten years! The Trojans were silent and looked around for guidance. Hector himself was not sure what to say or do. His brother had disappeared in full sight of everyone. What could it mean?

IV

From his vantage point on a dune Achilles was stunned with grief. Not that Paris had disappeared, but that his quest for glory had been thwarted. He had half a mind to go down there and challenge Hector in single combat next. Then, their domination of the Dardans would be complete. From what he had learned about Paris from Thetis, Achilles was certain that Aphrodite had something to do with this miraculous disappearance. Paris was one of her favorites. The goddess certainly wouldn't engage in war, because that was not her strength. If she had been as able as Athena, she could have helped Paris destroy the wart hog Menelaus, stuck him like a pig, and then Agamemnon would have been forced to beg him to return to the battle. What Achilles knew that the Trojans didn't was that they would not surrender Helen or quit the battlefield. If they did surrender, then Achilles was no judge of human nature. It was a worry that he might not get his due glory.

"Do my eyes deceive me?" Patroclus asked. "Or did Paris just vanish?"

"It was nothing Paris did," Achilles assured him. "Just another trick of the gods!"

"What do we do now?" Automedon asked.

"Nothing," Achilles said.

"Shouldn't we go down there--"

"Automedon," Achilles began. "We will do nothing for now. It is not over yet. Our fool friends believe the Trojans are just going to hand over Helen and reparations, but they know Agamemnon will not stop with that. He is too greedy. We fought here for ten years for power and glory--and Troy herself! Agamemnon won't relent until he's inside the walls of Troy! We can only hope that the tide of war turns yet again."

"Do we return to the ships?" Automedon asked.

Achilles nodded in agreement. It was not a far walk to where the ships sat on the beach just above the tide. He gave both Patroclus and Automedon reassurances that he knew what he was doing in this contest of wills with Agamemnon, but in reality he had no idea how it would play out. There were times when his faith was tested, but ultimately he believed his mother when she prophesied that he would win great glory for himself. It was all a man had in the end. Thetis told him that Zeus wanted to marry her, but was afraid of the oracles who whispered that the fruit of their union would produce a son greater than the father. He did not know if he fully believed this, but he did know that as it was no mortal man could defeat him on the battlefield.

As he sat on his pallet sharpening his broad sword he fell into a reverie: Despite his immortal bloodline, Peleus had sent him to be trained by Chiron the centaur. Centaurs were known as nasty, violent beasts! They looked like men from the waist up and the rest of their body resembled that of a horse, but their temperament was vile. Chiron was different though, famous for his wisdom, already quite old when he took on Achilles and Patroclus as students. Chiron taught him how to really hold a sword and how to use it:

"Don't stare at your opponent's sword," Chiron delivered a chopping blow at Achilles. "But watch his entire body. His stance and his eyes give away his next move!"

The boy took the shuffling steps of a trained swordsman as he went on the attack with a series of thrusts and hacking blows. "How am I supposed to watch all that when my opponent is trying to kill me?"

"It seems impossible now," Chiron deftly blocked the boy's attack. "But once you have been doing it for years it will become second nature. Don't think about watching my eyes, my feet, and my swords--do it!"

"I am not sure I will ever learn all of that," Achilles sword was knocked from his hand by Chiron.

Chiron reared up on his back legs and flashed his hooves at the boy. "You will or you will die! And nobody will ever remember your name! I never want to hear doubt in your voice again. Heroes do not know doubt! Do you understand?"

"Yes," Achilles said. "I am sorry."

"Don't be sorry either," Chiron snorted. "Just listen to me. Now, Patroclus you come in with your spear!"

Patroclus smiled enthusiastically and had every intention of ramming his spear straight through the great centaur's body, but Chiron merely laughed as he parried the huge spear.
Achilles had not failed to notice the look between Patroclus and Automedon. They were fearful of the world in the most elemental ways as anything of the world must be. The misgivings the two felt would only increase if he told them the truth as he knew it. He was only part mortal and because of his particular gifts he perceived the race of his father was inherently inferior to that of his mother. When he met the Trojans, or any foe, in battle he experienced an emotion more like lust than fear or excitement he had heard great men like Odysseus describe. Automedon knew what he was, but Patroclus might run from him in terror if he understood the truth about Achilles. He was more god than man.

The Phthian could observe a man in battle and know in just a few coarse movements that he was no match for the son of a god. He was not invulnerable or immortal, he had been wounded by men and their weapons on occasion, but his nature was ignited by those accidents when due to his own indiscretion he had allowed a mortal to inflect a wound on his person. And how could he reveal to his greatest friend Patroclus what was truly in his heart of hearts? That he aspired to be like the gods! It was no ordinary goal. It might frighten--or worse, such open yearning for immortality could make any mortal wary. One day he would reveal it to him, but after he had utterly destroyed Prince Hector in combat. Even after he had accomplished a feat worthy of a god how could he expect Patroclus to respond? With love? If Achilles were a god would he expect his friends to offer sacrifices to him--fall on their knees--and worship him?

It was not to say Achilles had never felt fear. When his mother talked of his death as if it had already happened he felt fear, but he buried it under his anger. Agamemnon had dishonored him when he took Briseis away, but the real source of his anger was over the fact that Agamemnon was an inferior in every way. He had no tact for leadership. Men did not respect a leader who stood behind the lines on his chariot watching the battle.

Not only that but Agamemnon had no direct claim to godhead through his genealogy. The Atrides bloodline was impressive by human standards, but rife with atrocities going back to Tantalus and his proposed cannibalism. Agamemnon was just as arrogant! He had committed a similar crime by slaughtering his own daughter on the altar. Zeus was the only god to be found in the house of Atrides--if one believed it. It sounded to Achilles like just another mortal claiming a god in the family to elevate his own status. Achilles on the other hand was descended from Thetis, Zeus, Asopus, and Tethys.

The sun was falling out of the sky so quickly Achilles thought he could hear the rumbling of Apollo's chariot itself. He considered finding a temple and daring the gods to discuss this whole matter, but there was no point. It was common knowledge where they all stood on the subject of the war. When Agamemnon was ready to fall down at his feet and beg him to return to the battle, Achilles would unleash his fury on the Trojans so that a god would be the only thing to attribute his prowess on the field to. He returned the sword, now terribly sharp, to its scabbard.

The stench of the corpse-fires wafted on the breeze. Achilles had not quite become immune to the sickening odor of burning flesh. Even before the sweet burning smell of the dead the sea had given off it's own fish reek to magnify the effect, although it was nothing new. The Trojans were retreating back behind their walls presumably to produce Helen and their first tribute.

Agamemnon led the Achaean contingent back to the tent city just beyond the reach of the tides. His expression was smug as if to suggest he had won a great battle. The Lord of Men might have seemed invincible to any onlooker other than Achilles. As the men approached he could smell their sweat wrapped in a musk of fear and tension. As Achilles retreated the comfort of his tent he observed the gaiety and the penants whipping in the breeze and knew the war was not close to being over. The late afternoon heat was upon the army as they put away their war gear and prepared for the evening meal. Achilles thought he saw the pale image of King Priam on the wall and he knew the House of Troy would not acquiesce so soon.

--of all the cities under the sun and starry skies,

wherever men who walk the earth have dwelled,

I honor sacred Ilium most with my immortal heart--

--from "The Iliad" by Homer, Book 4

IV

WAR IN HEAVEN

I

After Aphrodite deposited Paris sleeping into his bed she flew to find Helen wherever she might be. She recognized the physical beauty of Helen, but considered a vapid woman with no sense of family or true understanding of love. How very much like the gods Helen seemed, so wrapped in her own troubles that she could not truly enjoy her gifts. The goddess only knew that Paris needed Helen, or would have need her, when he awoke. She didn't care that it made no sense to pluck him off the battlefield or that the gods might be laughing at her. Or, that it was only putting off the inevitable showdown between himself and Menelaus. For now her golden one was safe instead of residing in the bowels of the House of Death. The handsome young man had a hold on her immortal heart. She had heard Paris whisper under his breath for help, she had been right there with him in the thick of battle all along, and sent him to the one place he felt most at home-- the bedroom.

Aphrodite transformed herself into an old crone that no one in the royal palace would give a second look toward until she found Helen. Even Helen at first did not properly see the palsied arms of the woman standing before her hissing that she must follow immediately.

"Your Prince needs you," Aphrodite hissed through the ruined lips of her host. "He awaits your presence in the bedchamber."

"What?" Helen asked imperiously. She was contemplating the disappearance of Paris just as her husband was about to kill him with all the ferocity of a wild beast. The other artistocratic women gathered at the shrine of Athena imploring her favor gave no notice to the crone tugging at Helen's robe. It dawned on her who the old woman was just as she began to suspect Aphrodite's part in her lover's vanishing act.

The old woman in front of her moved like a blur as she led the way to the rooms of Paris. "Please hurry."

"Wait," Helen closed her hand on the crone's wrist. "I know you." The image of the old woman appeared to flicker and hum to reveal the dazzling beauty of Aphrodite. Her glorious profile, high firm breasts, and preternatural alabaster skin. "Aphrodite."

"Yes," the goddess suddenly became quite ugly as her face rippled with annoyance approaching the demonic in its baleful glare. "Paris requires your presence immediately!"

Helen felt her pulse quicken. It was startling to behold the fury of a goddess. Even if it was one not known for violence, but still it was disquieting to witness. Visible waves of power emanated from her like heat under a blistering summer sun. The majority of mortals lived their entire lives without ever seeing even a minor god, but Helen had seen her share of Olympians since she was a child in the house of Tyndareus at Sparta. Some even held that her real father was Zeus. The charming hills of Lacedaemon were worlds away.

It may have been her familiarity with the gods that caused Helen to speak crossly to Aphrodite. "What do you want now? Isn't it enough that I gave up my husband for Paris?"

"Quickly," Aphrodite hissed. "He's waiting for you in bed glistening with oil. You wouldn't think he had just come from battle. He wants you, now!"

The words of the goddess cut through her imperious attitude. Helen found herself becoming aroused at the thought of Paris's tanned young body. At the same time she assumed her lust was unnatural, merely brought about by the goddess to further her own plans. She was playing Helen for one of her pawns. She didn't need any help wanting Paris in bed, but she still felt terrible about betraying Menelaus and couldn't wait to return to him. He was a real man after all unlike Paris who was still in most respects just a boy. Fine for a roll in the hay, but he could never be a real husband. Let the goddess have him if she was so fond of him.

"You think filling me with lust is necessary?" Helen shouted at the goddess. The eyes of Aphrodite were puzzled. Most mortals of either sex succumbed to passion, whether it was hate or sexual passion, quite easily in her estimation. But she could feel Helen fighting against it. Perhaps there was more to this daughter of Zeus than she suspected. "If you believe Paris is such a prize then why don't you become a mortal woman! You can lay around in bed with him all day and all night. Let him grab and poke at you until he gets his fill! Protect him with your life!"
"How dare you talk to me with such insolence!" Aphrodite rose up imperiously off the ground still in her guise, had anyone come along to observe, as an old woman in the arched doorway leading to the royal wing of the palace. "I could arrange it so no man could look on you with anything but revulsion."

"What a gift you tease me with," Helen said. "I'm imprisoned in this body that men and poets say is beautiful. No one sees me. They just see beauty--an intangible thing they want to possess."

"You are the most envied woman in all the earth," Aphrodite said. "Do you know how many women have begged me to give them a sweet portion of what you have known? Now quite arguing with me and come along! He waits for you."

"And then what?" Helen cried. "After Paris has been killed in battle will you then send me to amuse another one of your favorites in Phrygia perhaps? You made me his prize for picking you in a beauty contest--do you think I'm supposed to like it! I do not want to share a bed with a man as cowardly as Paris. Give me a real man, goddess!"

"Do as I tell you Helen--"

"Or what?" Helen asked. "Why don't you be his slave if that is what you want? He's managed to seduce you somehow goddess. Can you shake his enchantment off or is he too powerful for you?"

"Don't try to manipulate me," Aphrodite's body burned white-gold with light until Helen had to avert her gaze. "You will lose that game. Don't try to provoke me because I could make both the Argives and the Trojans hate the sight of you! Don't you realize I love you and Paris? I am on your side in this, but don't dare me to annihilate you."

Helen felt her body quivering in fear under her silver robes. If her father truly was Zeus why wasn't she given godly powers to fight with? All she was given was her face alone. Aphrodite claimed to love her, but in the fading lamplight of the hallway she could see that her interest in Paris verged on obsession. He was a lovely man, but looks weren't everything in a man. But what need would a goddess have of character traits beyond the aesthetics of form? What need would any immortal have for an abstruse quality like moral character in a person? The immortal nature of the gods placed them beyond death and the consequences of immorality that men and women were obligated to face.

"What have you seen--what has made you like this?" Helen asked.

Aphrodite vanished in front of the door to the bedchamber of Helen and Paris. Go to him--he needs you! She hated to obey the goddess, but she had no choice. Voices were echoing through the halls of the palace. Orders were being shouted, but they were unintelligible.

Upon opening the door she could see her lover lying on the bed resembling a god in his perfection. His body was a man's without question, but his face was almost feminine in its beauty. She had to admit they made quite a startling couple. The citizens of Troy had cheered wildly when they first entered the city even despite misgivings that Helen should have remained in her homeland across the sea. Helen sat on the edge of the bed. She could see his eyes moving back and forth under his eyelids. He gasped and sat up in bed.

"What am I doing here?" Paris sat up in bed with a look of shock.

"Aprhodite brought you here," Helen said.

The Prince of Troy put rubbed his neck where the helmet strap had choked him. "I thought I was about to die. I was, wasn't I? This will not look good. How will I explain it to my brother--much less the Achaeans?"

"I'm not sure there is any adequate explanation."

"What is it?" Paris scooted to the foot of the bed to sit next to Helen. "What has happened?"

The sound of a harp could be heard, but there was no harpist in the room. Scented incense burned sweetly in the room. Helen glared about the room looking for a sign of Aphrodite. She was watching them this very moment! Helen could feel it! Undoubtedly she was always at the side of her Trojan prince. Had she watched them making love here--and even in Sparta! It became clear that they were not living their lives by their own will, but that the goddess of love manipulated them for her own amusement. It did not appear to matter that Helen no longer wanted Paris. She began to long to be with Menelaus again. Even as Helen thought these things she looked and now bouquets of flowers multiplied in the room supernaturally. Aphrodite, known as the goddess of love, was so desensitized to the feelings of others that Helen thought the goddess insane.

"Get away from me, you fool!" Helen said in an icy voice. The presence of the goddess was hovering at her back giving her not an altogether unpleasant sensation of relaxation, but she fought it! She wanted her feelings to be her own again. Not generated for the distraction of a goddess.

"Why are you talking like this to me?"

Helen could not help smiling cruelly at the wounded expression on his face. "So you just returned from battle? Who won? My husband was about to kill you and send your soul to Hades! You don't know how much I wish he had killed you."

"I gladly faced him," Paris tried to defend himself. "I was the one who suggested it. How is it my fault if Aphrodite chose to defend me?"

"I am not convinced," Helen said. "What's stopping you from going back out there and challenging him again? All these years you have been saying what a great fighter you were . . ."

Paris rose out of the bed and kneeled down in front of Helen with his hands on her knees. "Aphrodite wasn't the only goddess on the field today. You know that Hera and Athena both aid the Achaeans. If it weren't for Athena's help Menelaus would never have defeated me in a true test. Man against man. The gods, the fates, they never like to leave well enough alone. I will destory Menelaus the next time we meet."

Helen was aware of a soft violet light engulfing them now. She knew it was Aphrodite, but the feelings she began to experience were overpowering and too exquisite too powerful to fight against. She no longer had the will to oppose the goddess. The dark eyes of Paris were boring into her own green eyes as the room spun her forward and down onto the bed. A foreboding cry of a bird sounded outside the window, but Helen could not force herself to respond to it.

"We have gods on our side as well," Paris laid her down on the bed, carved with flying cherubs on the headboards, with his hands gripping her shoulders. He covered her body with his own. The weight of his body on hers felt right. She pushed her hips against him even though she knew this was all a mistake. They were transported in emotion back to where they were all those years ago in Sparta when they met for the first time in her maid's bedchamber hoping nobody would discover them while everyone else feasted. She could not think of another protest.

"I know you love me," Paris voice husky in her ear.

"Yes," Helen heard herself say. "I know I want you."

Beyond the light illuminating the room Helen saw Aphrodite watching them with all too human lust. Helen no longer cared. Let her watch. She could eat her heart out if that's what pleased her. The face of Paris seemed to drain of emotion the way it did when they made love. It was a look of total concentration. The cares of the war, and who might be dying on the field below, or who might be hurting because of them drained away. The tinkling laughter of the goddess urged them on before succumbing to the Minotaur's Labyrinth of dreams.

II

Aphrodite went back to the Scion gates to observe the chaos she had caused on the battlefield. She laughed behind her hand as Menelaus stalked up and down the lines in a vain search for a glimpse for Paris. Even Ares stalked the lines with blood dripping from his jaws like an enraged beast. Just as she was beginning to enjoy the scene below the goddess Athena appeared in full battle gear and nearly bumped her off her perch on the gate. The gray-eyed goddess burned her with a gaze that would have struck terror in any mortal or minor god, but it only caused the goddess of love to burst out laughing at her half-sister's attempt to frighten her.

Athena had her sword out and patted the blade in her hand as if she meant to cut off her sister's head with it.

"Is that a new sword?" Aphrodite patted at the folds in her skirt.

A hint of a smile tugged at Athena's lips, but regaining her composure said, "Follow me, Cytherea. We are discussing the fate of Troy if you are at all interested. Come with me now."

III

The immortal gods were engaged in an official summit on the war in Ilium when Athena arrived with a reluctant Aphrodite wreathed in riotous white clouds. They stood in the archway listening to Zeus dominate the meeting as he always did on official occasions of state. Hera raised a hand when she saw them loitering in the hallway where the walls shimmered with gold and waved them in with a finger. Zeus was boring into his wife's eyes when she broke his gaze and he turned to give them a particularly annoyed expression. All the gods turned to glance down the table at the late arrivals to deliver stern, disapproving glances.

Aphrodite observed that Zeus did not appear angry as much as simply amused at the present situation. The son of Cronus appeared to be intent on Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite herself as he surveyed each of them in turn. He stroked his beard and turned his attention to linger with pleasure on a stein filled with the blood and honey of the sacrificial contract between Troy and Agamemnon. A furrow crossed his brow as he realized it could not be consumed by himself, or any god, since the agreement had already been desecrated by the Trojans--because of Aphrodite. His hand clenched the cup in a white-knuckled grip as he tossed its bloodred contents on the tessellated floor to illustrate his displeasure.

Many of the gods drank from golden cups of nectar while others sipped at sweet wine. When they weren't watching the unfolding drama between Zeus and the goddesses they cast their gaze through the misted window down to beyond the layered heavens to Troy.

"The Judgment of Paris . . ." Zeus shook his head in disgust. "Will we lose Ilium over a glorified beauty contest? Do you really care about Strife's golden apple? I could give you each living apple trees of solid gold if that would put an end to it."

The triune goddesses were silent. The gold apple wasn't the issue. As a prize it was paltry by the standards of the gods. The competition between them was the real subject at hand. Who was the most beautiful! Each believed she had a claim on that title.

What gauled Hera was that the contest had started over who was the most beautiful, but had become who offered Paris the most convincing bribe. She had railed that the three of them go to the prince again, even after all the years had passed, to make certain he judge them on their beauty alone! It irritated her that she had misjudged the youthful prince! She had offered him the prize of being Lord of Europe and Asia! Of course, he had been lonely out in the fields all alone. She hated to admit it, but Aphrodite had judged his heart with great skill--but Hera would never forget the slight. If she had anything to do with it the city of Troy would be utterly destroyed by Agamemnon's army.

Zeus wanted the goddesses to see their foolishness for themselves. Each time the Lord of Heaven opened his mouth to speak the shrill cry of one of Hera's peacocks sounded to interrupt him so that he had to speak in a rumble of thunder.

"I can still see Priam as a youth hurling his strong ash spear! And he has never been stingy with sacrifices on my altar. So how will this war turn out? Come, tell me now." The cloud-gatherer reclined in his gilded chair.

He wanted every god who sat at his table to be satisfied, perhaps he erred toward being too generous at times, but he wasn't sure how he could make the goddesses happy when their minds turned in such contradictory ways especially concerning mortals. Zeus probed their minds with his incalculable power for any thought the goddesses might try to veil from him. It gave him some pleasure when he sensed them fighting, however vainly, to twist their thoughts away from him. It made him think of all the virgins he had bedded and the ways they teasingly cried no when he could see acquiescence in their eyes.

Pallas Athena, the Battle-goddess, muttered curses behind her cup. It was no wonder Aphrodite held her tongue since she had everything she wanted. Paris chose her and the golden apple was hers. No matter what she would hereby be known as the beautiful one! She was even allowed to pluck Paris from certain and just death on the battlefield. It was an outrage since Aphrodite was the weakest!

Athena tried to signal Hera, transfer her thoughts to the Queen, and tell her to stand up to the Father! She was the only one who dared to confront Zeus head on. It took all of her will power to remain silent and not blurt out what she felt in her heart to Zeus who in complex ways was both father and mother to her. She had grown accustomed to Zeus giving her what she wanted since she was his favorite child. Hera acknowledged to Athena that she had heard. The Queen's expression conveyed that she had regained control of her raging emotions and would mount a counter attack momentarily.

The Goddess of Love and Beauty kept to herself. She was in love with Paris, but she could not admit it to the council of the gods, her husband, and not even completely to herself. Not only that, but she had been in love with other mortals in the past. She had been involved in a brief affair with Anchises which had resulted in a son, Aeneas, who resided in Troy now. Aphrodite had glimpsed a new world beyond that of the Greeks. The gods think they owe these humans something for all their adulation and sacrifices. She saw a time when Aeneas would found a new race of mortals in the land where Cronus was now exiled, biding his time, to mount a possible counter-offensive to the throne of Olympus. For the time being she would remain quiet concerning the future--a time when she would be known to her descendents as Venus.

Zeus found all their thoughts to be along the lines of what he expected. Each wrapped up in their own plots. If they could overthrow him as he had Cronus they would do it. He was not an ancient god bloated with power like his father had been. He was ever careful not to display the full extent of his power in front of the other gods, but many had seen his abilities and marveled. He was not about to gain the universe and lose it to his wife, siblings, or children. Certainly, he was much too powerful to consider any mortal a challenge. They were bound to the earth and its physical limitations. He could envision a time in the far future when he would withdraw from the world and sleep. He had witnessed lesser gods who had slept for thousands of years only to awaken rejuvenated in temples and rituals among their followers. Some slept too long, until their darker matter dried up into husks and were blown away by the winds of Ailios.

Hera and Athena had their heads together now at the table. It was so blatant--so offensive! He did not need to eavesdrop on their thoughts since it was obvious they were plotting the destruction of Troy. Zeus loved the city and continued to think of how to save it from these ivory-skinned harpies. Didn't they know he could simply reach across the table and crush their eternal necks with his hands? Worse yet he could destroy their temples, lay waste to their shrines, cause their names to be erased forever from the hearts of the earth dwellers. A goddess without followers was no goddess at all.

As powerful as Zeus was he could not kill Hera and Athena. Athena was his own child in every way. She had sprung from his mind in full battle gear sparkling in all her glory. The other gods were awestruck at her birth! It was no small irony that she had caused him many a headache since with her willfulness. He loved Hera for her strength and vulnerability, but when they were apart he had to admit his eye did tend to roam.

His appetite for women was voracious. He had to be careful what mortal women he chose to sleep with since the results could produce powerful offspring. The children of Alcema and Thetis were shining examples that gods and mortals should not mix. This knowledge did not, and would not, deter him from scouring the world for lovely young virgins. And he could hardly punish other gods for what he did himself. If he attempted to ban the gods from taking mortal lovers he would have a rebellion on his hands.

Apollo was murmuring to Aphrodite now. Troy was Apollo's city so it was obvious that he would want to save her. His golden temple looked out across the sea. His priests offered sacrifices to him daily while the Dardan beach was home to a huge enemy navy that sought to destroy Apollo's city. It was no wonder Apollo had on more than one occasion taken matters into his own hands. Watching the gods and goddesses plot against one another gave Zeus a terrible sense of foreboding. As their King it was was his duty to work out a peace whereby each immortal could save face and agree to compromise.

Hera rose from her seat with her drink in hand. "All I ask is that you don't make my plans come to nothing, dear husband. I rode my own horses down there and sweated like a common mortal urging the Achaeans to launch their armies against Troy! You can protect Priam all you want--but don't expect any of us gods to thank you for it!"

Now Zeus arose applauding her sarcastically. "What has Priam ever done to you? Apart from Paris and your bruised ego? If you could eat Priam raw I guess you might be satisfied then? You remember who I am! Don't clash with me over who I favor or decide to destroy. You make it difficult for me, because I love sacred Ilium more than any other city in the world!"

"I have favorites too," Hera's bravado gone. She hung her head, but tilted it to the side to look up at her husband. "I love Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae, but if you were to choose to obliterate them then there would be nothing I could do about it. You are far stronger. I'm just begging you not to make my work come to nothing. I am a god too.We are husband and wife so let us compromise to one another so we can sleep well tonight."

Zeus considered what she said. He hated to argue with her as much as she seemed to love it. It was better for her when she appealed to his strength than when she tried to intimidate him--it bordered on the ridiculous. He was being manipulated, but if he gave her something she wanted now it would give him room to maneuver in the future.

"Prepare for war all you gods!" Zeus said. "Athena, go down to the battlefield and make sure the Trojans break the truce!"

Hera and Athena exchanged an excited look between them. They were almost giddy and Zeus had to suppress a smile. But he knew without turning to them that Apollo and Aphrodite were not in the least bit pleased of the turn of events. There was no way to keep them all happy all of the time so he had to rule as he saw fit as much as any King on earth.

IV

Pallas Athena ran out of the assembly giving a war cry as she flashed down the hall. When she came to the towering cliffs of Olympos she vaulted off the rocks and flew down to the earth leaving a fiery trail behind her in the heavens. Fishermen who chanced to look up into the sky saw what they interpreted as significant of a great event. A sign to be interpreted and talked about for generations.

The goddess flew low over the earth in pure exhiliration. Paris must pay for his arrogance! Who does he think he is to judge the immortal goddesses! Athena flew through a mist as her eyes teared as she picked up speed. She began to descend until she flew over the Dardan coastline, the fingers of Dawn pried up the morning sun, the surf hit the beach with new fury as the gods prepared themselves for war. Poseidon had been silent in the council of the gods, he had built the walls of Troy himself, and now the great Earth-shaker came on in his golden car over the waters.

The golden statue of Apollo with his bow appeared to hail Athena as she flew over Apollo's temple. Some of her hair escaped the glistening helmet, whipping around her head like flames, and when she came upon the Trojans and the Achaeans she slowed her pace enough so that they could see her flashing eyes and furious anger as she whipped in and out among them. Grown men were running from her like children now as she brandished her sword catching them in the middle of their morning duties. What a terrible day of bloodshed this will be! Only Ares himself took more pleasure in the potential for warfare.

The armies were exhausted. Warriors on both sides grumbled together their hope that Zeus would end the war soon. The Achaeans looked at the walls, still standing after all of their attacks, and the Trojans continued to huddle safe behind the Scion gates. As Athena raced through their ranks they became angry that the Dardans had made them look like fools. Their champion had lost, but still they refused to send Helen out to them. No tribute was to be theirs for the sweat and blood they had shed here. There was a growing disquiet, but still the peace held.

Athena hovered toward the rear of the Trojan ranks, transforming herself to the spearman Laodocus as her foot touched the sandy plain, emerging from a cloud standing next to the chariot of Euphorbus. She chose Laodocus because he was known for his toughness. He was of about average height, wide-shouldered--a rugged warrior the Trojans respected. Athena in her chosen form walked quickly through the crowds looking for the the archer, Pandarus. The famous bowman had marched from the wild Aesepes river with a band of savage warriors. He was known for his deadly accuracy--and she knew him to be ambitious. Just the right choice for her plan to cause the Trojans to break the peace and to ignite war again.

"Pandarus!" Athena shouted in a joking tone.

When Pandarus looked toward the voice and saw Laodocus only he continued to search the crowd of men for the voice he heard.. The bowman shook his head and blinked at the warrior he saw through blurred eyes before him.

"Give us a demonstration of your skill with the bow," Laodocus spoke, but his voice and movements were strange to Pandarus. When Laodocus moved a stream of light followed behind him. "I wager even the gods would sing your praises if you could bring down Menelaus from this range. Just think of the rewards Paris would give you alone."

"If Hector would give me the command," Pandarus said. "I would relish the opportunity to kill Menelaus the King of Sparta! His red hair makes the perfect target."

"Hector would be disappointed only if you failed to kill Menelaus!"Laodocus said. "Think of the glory you would win for your name from the Wolf-god himself it you were to send Menelaus down to the House of Death! Not only that, but I would wager the women of Troy would be very grateful to a hero who ended the siege--from the lowliest virgins to the very daughters of Priam!"

Pandarus seemed to think about it and then smiled broadly at Laodocus. He strung his impressive bow made from the horn of a wild ibex, notched an arrow. The early morning air was cool and a breeze blew in from the sea, but Pandarus did not think it would hurt his aim. He flung his long ringlets out of his eyes with a toss of his head to marhsal his courage, but he was visibly uncertain. If he did this thing he would have to kill Menelaus outright, otherwise it would be a failure. The bow in his hands felt good and Laodocus was encouraging, but the way the son of Antenor shimmered and blurred made him second guess taking aim at Menelaus at all. Once he even thought he saw the face of a goddess somehow where Laodocus stood, but only for an instant.

Laodocus spread his arms out wide like a bard. "I can see it now: Menelaus on his burning funeral pyre on the beach at night. The bards singing of the skill and valor of the archer Pandorus of Zelea for a hundred generations!"

Athena thought she might have laid it on too thick. She bit her lip as she watched Pandarus struggling between the discipline of a warrior and the chance for individual glory! It would make her angry if Pandarus was capable of resisting her. It didn't happen often, especially if she appealed to a particular vanity, weakness. Even the mightiest warriors had weaknesses, be they physical limitations or moral faults. Without appearing to stain Athena focused all of her considerable powers on the archer and saw it before he even knew it himself. His indecision weakened in a slight tic around the eyes, the firmness around the mouth, and she knew Pandarus was going to do it. In her best imitation of Laodocus' gravel voice she encouraged her mark, but in a way that suggested it was all in sport. The goddess was careful not to appear over-eager.

Pandarus called his Zelean warrios to form a phalanx to hide from view of the Achaeans behind their shields. The archer sat one end of his bow on the ground to help adjust his aim. He murmured a prayer to Apollo under his breath promising to slaughter an unblemished lamb on an altar when he returned to Zelea in triumph.

"Say hello to King Hades, Menelaus!" Pandarus drew back the string of his bow to his chest, the deadly point poised at the handgrip, aimed into the clear blue sky for the proper trajectory, and let fly. The gut sang as the archer released it. His phalanx surged forward with expectation--it looked to be a precise and deadly shot. No one noticed, least of all Pandarus, that Laodocus had vanished.

Athena knew Pandarus was a deadly shot. It was a day of calm winds. Most of all it was a testament to Pandarus steady hand that given everything that had happened his arrow would undoubtedly find its mark. The arrow whined like an insect as it rushed over the Argive ranks and file as though the power of the archer's prayer sent it along its way. The goddess flew to Menelaus, athletic and fluid, and deflected the iron point of it away from his heart with a deft movement of her hand. It tore a gash into Menelaus that immediately began to seep the blood of Atrides.

"Menelaus!" Agamemon called out to his brother. The wound was near the surface, pumping out blood with each heartbeat.

Menelaus was staring in horror at his hand stained like red wine. He staggered from shock to think that this was a less than glorious way to die in battle. The fact that he would never see his new kingdom of Sparta again or have his wife by his side caused him terrible anguish. The men around him were horrified. The Trojans had broken the truce--they had desecrated the contract between them and would suffer the fury of the great Zeus. The gods favored the Achaeans now.

Agamemnon rushed to his brother's side. "It's my fault. I put you in harm's way in front of our troops when I should have protected you. It doesn't seem possible that the Trojans would do such a thing! I have lost my brother--I have lost the war. Now, the Trojans will perceive this as weakness and sail across the great green and attack us at home!"

"See this strap," Menelaus held up a ragged piece of severed leather. "The arrow only grazed my stomach. I will be all right. My armor and the gods have protected me. I have been saved for a more noble purpose than to die in a foreign land for no reason."

"Zeus will brandish his storm-shield at this wicked nation!" Agamemnon fell to his knees and shouted more to the ground than to any person. He writhed on the ground making such a fuss that even his own soldiers looked at him with disgust. Their leader was known to be emotional, but it was usually fury or maybe repugnance. "Priam will have Helen to crow over. She will be their trophy."

The lord of men was inconsolable as he embraced Menelaus who clutched his brother with strength now that he knew his wound was not deadly. "Brother, I am not going to die today."

"I hope you are right," Agamemnon was still forlorn. "We will call for a healer to attend you. He will stop your pain at least. Make you comfortable."

"I'm trying to tell you I will be all right."

Agamemnon's tears began to dry up. He pinched the corner of his eyes with thumb and forefinger to brush aside his tears. "Talthybius! Quickly, call Machaon! Tell him the brother of Agamemnon has been wounded. Some god-touched archer nearly sent Menelaus to the underworld today."

"Such soaring rhetoric, Agamemnon, look at me," Menelaus was bloody but he rose to his full height. "I will live to fight another day."

The healer arrived to attend Talthybius. He was a tall thin man with long gray hair and beard. A man with the look of a seer who bent over his herbs. His hair smelled of smoke as if he had just been interrupted from some communion with the gods. At first Agamemnon looked over the healer's shoulder with a hand on his back, but when it became clear in Agamemnon's mind that his brother would live he rode off on his chariot driven by Eurymedon until they arrived at where the men were sorting out there armor to prepare for yet another battle until Agamemnon cried for his charioteer to stop. The horses pulling the chariot were stamping their feet in agitation as the leader of the Achaeans jumped down of his car. He had a black and white horse team, and each seemed to sense their lord's excitement. His blood was pumping with fear, to conquer his emotion he knew it was time to fight again. The soldiers listened to their commander shouting things at them that bordered on the nonsensical.

"Zeus will never defend these lying Trojans!"

The men held up their swords and cried out with a roar of agreement.

"They trample on their oaths! We shall be victorious before it's all over!"

Another roar exploded from the men.

Agamemon paced the lines of the Achaean host in an impromptu inspection. He studied their military bearing and bawled out Idomeneus and his Cretans. Far from being offended Idomeneus stood visibly straighter, proud. Idomeneus gave an order to his second in command, Meriones, who brought up more men in chariots from the rear.

"Very good, Idomeneus," Agamemnon praised him. "Your men have discipline. You have trained them well. I look forward to fighting with you again. You would make a good son-in-law--I have a daughter named Electra that might interest you if we ever finish this terrible war."

"I am yours to command, Lord," Idomeneus said.

The Mycenean began to feel his confidence returning so he continued with his inspection. It seemed a good time to speak with his commanders personally. The great Ajax from Salamis and the small Ajax, commander of the Locrisians, stood near one another buckling on their gear with their infantry behind them. Ajax seemed to be a throwback to the stories of heroes like Hercules, Theseus and the Cyclops, he was titanic in his size. His armor enhanced his already massive body so that even the Olympians must marvel. Little Ajax looked to Agamemnon like a pick-pocket or a murderer. He was short and slight, with whispy facial hair, his eyes placed closed together and too small for his face. Agamemon did not like the look of the man, but he admired his skill with his sword and his deft strokes meant to deliver bad intentions with each thrust. Men like these do not need my encouragement.

Agamemnon closed his eyes as a sea breeze blew his hair back over his shoulders. When he opened them again it was as if he stood on a cliff on the Dardanelles like a shepherd overlooking the sea. A great storm was coming toward the shore with terrible psychic import. A black anvil bearing down on the coast as if pushed by the full gale force by Poseidon. The boiling clouds became the fists of the Earth-shaker with fingers dripping the black blood of the Trojans. A hurricane was coming that no man could stand against without the aid of the gods. It would be just such a storm when the Achaeans charged the walls of Priam's city this time. He blinked again and the city arose like a jewel before him. It had seemed impossible to take the city the moment he saw Menelaus wounded, but he felt capable of the job again--it felt inevitable that the city would be his very soon.

"Hold the line as we advance," Agamemnon said. "Don't be a hero. One great warrior cannot fight the entire Trojan army alone!" He looked in the direction of Achilles' black ships with a smirk illiciting laughs from a few of the soldiers. "Charioteers! Hold onto your spears! Wait until you come into contact with the enemy and use your spear as a lance. Thrust at the enemy, but do not throw your spear away. They will be throwing their spears and then they will have no choice but to fight with swords. Then you can kill them easily without every coming within reach of their swords."

Athena kept herself hidden from the eyes of the army, but she rode in the car next to Agamemnon. Attack them! Today is the day Father Zeus decrees that you will have a great victory over the Trojans!vThe words of the goddess were not audible to Agamemnon, but he still heard them. They went straight to his heart.

Nestor brought his chariot around demonstrating his skill as his horses made turns without any visible means of command. A lifetime of command had given him more skills than any four chariot drivers of half his age. His white hair glimmered in the sunlight as he stopped his car short of Agamemnon.

Agamemnon stepped forward to meet Nestor with a salute. "If only we could give some of your experience to our younger men Nestor of Pylos."

"If only the gods could give me the youth of these men," Nestor handed the reins to his driver. "But the gods give us our gifts one at a time to fulfill their purposes."

Out of the corner of his eye Agamemnon saw Odysseus and his men who appeared to be further away from the field of the men. In an area war chiefs and kings referred to as the alley wide enough for a chariot to move back and forth along the battle lines but without being interfered with. Odysseus always had a disconcerting look in his eye that made Agamemnon feel as if he were being judged all the time. He liked Odysseus well enough. The Ithacan was a great asset on the battlefield, but he knew Odysseus was a friend to Achilles. He knew it would not be intelligent to take his eyes of Odysseus.

"Hanging back are we?" Agamemnon stroked his beard. "No stomach for fighting today--is that it, Odysseus?"

Odysseus was in the middle of a conversation with one of his men when he suddenly turned to Agamemnon outraged by such a rash statement. "Don't talk nonsense, Agamemnon. If you watch you will see what my men and I will do--we'll put any number of your brutal Myceneans to shame."

Agamemnon gave a curt nod acknowledging Odysseus. He was accustomed to having men beneath him and knew when to push and when to give. Odysseus was not the sort of man to push too far or he might take offense. The crafty Ithacan only needed a subtle push to raise his ire to prepare him for war. Odysseus was grossly offended at Agamemnon's remark disparaging his courage, but Athena left Agamemnon to soothe the Ithacan by rubbing his shoulders with her hands until his perturbance left him. Athena loved all the Achaeans and it was difficult for her to see their in-fighting when the real enemy lay across the plain.

Athena kept her eye on Agamemnon's progress through the ranks. She approved of his actions to inflame the fighting spirits of the men even if it meant angering them in the short term as he approached the fine young warrior Diomedes. Each man might take it personally, but it would strengthen just as they met their enemy in honorable hand-to-hand combat.

Across the battlefield in a sea of black war gear Athena saw Ares towering over the Trojans with his lips flecked with saliva. Ares was not alone, but Strife was at his side as well in league with the Trojans. Strife seemed only a speck as she climbed over the walls, but as she landed in her war- armored body outside the city she soon mushroomed as large as any of the race of giants who stand against the gods in mortal hostility. She cast down her greatest weapon--hate--on both sides of the battlefield as the pikes and bronze shields slammed against each other.

The din of horses screaming, men uttering oaths, and victory cries mingled with wails of pain filled the air and echoed up to the mezzanines of Olympus where the gods looked down piteously. Achilles looked out over the battlefield with a great desire overwhelming him to take his Myrmidons down there and win the day, but still he refused to honor Agamemnon with another victory and more treasure. He knew, as did Agamemnon and the rest of the Argives, they were no match for the Trojans without the swift-footed Phthian.

Even Hector and King Priam knew this and it was a powerful advantage in morale for the Dardanians as Achilles continued to sit in his tents or wander along the shore speaking to Thetis or Pallas Athena came to him after the day's battle to give him the gory details of which warrior distinguished himself--and the notable deaths on both sides. Athena came to him most evenings rubbing his shoulders and laughing with her lips pressed against his ear. She admired Achilles ability to defeat any and all comers. Unlike many of the goddesses Athena's skin appeared to be darkly tanned--a goddess who spent time out in the elements. She was especially proud of her role as invisible marshal. She flew back and forth across the lines, and when she saw any warrior hanging back from the fighting she urged him forward to where the skirmish was at a fever pitch.

"Come back to the line," Athena pulled his hands . "The Achaeans need you. As always I will be there fighting at your side. You are my favorite if the truth be known."

Achilles removed his hand from her grasp. He turned his face into a strong breeze coming off the sea. "I would look like a fool if I come back now. Agamemnon would continue to think he is the great man that made me come crawling back."

"No, Achilles," Athena argued. "He will be so happy you have returned to fight for him he will make a hecatomb as an offering to honor you. I will see to it that he gives you one of his holdings in Mycenae . . ."

"I don't want anything that broken King has to give."

Athena was beginning to grow annoyed with Achilles borish behavior and his obsession with honor. She wanted him on the field. "If you do not return to the front, I may just have to select another Achaean warrior to favor."

Then Pallas Athena granted Tydeus' son Diomedes

strength and daring--so the fighter would shine forth

and tower over the Argives and win himself great glory.

She set the man ablaze, his shield and helmet flaming

with tireless fire like the star that flames at harvest,

bathed in the Ocean, rising up to outshine all other stars.

--from "The Iliad" by Homer, Book 5

V

I

Achilles sat outside his tent eating a wheat cake and drinking water from a gourd contemplating the odd ways the fates worked. He knew, or thought he did, what was sure to take place in his future but what was happening now did not appear to jibe with the prophecies. Automedon approached with the humorless Calchas at his side. Achilles motioned for the prophet to be seated next to him on a fine Asian tapestry spread out on the ground. The charioteer exchanged a glance and Achilles gave him a hand gesture asking to be left alone.

"Do you wish me to read the auguries for you?"

"How does a blind man see anything?"

"Oh," Calchas raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. "Are we going to have a philosophical discussion then?"

Achilles sneered but he found he genuinely liked the Asian seer unlike many of the Achaean chieftains he had met. They were not so different. The Kings were here to sack Troy if possible. Priam's city occupied a prime trade route and yielded huge prophets. It was the true reason the pig Agamemnon was here. It had nothing to do with honor or even the beautiful Helen. "But Calchas was an enigma to Achilles because he wasn't only interested in being paid for his services, but he divined something more important than the future--the souls of men. He had watched Calchas measure the words of every speaker in the tent of Agamemnon and this impressed Achilles. He had seen Athena in the royal tent when she had meant to reveal herself to Achilles alone.

"Why is it no one speaks of your blindness?"

"I suppose no one notices it," Calchas sat immobile on the blanket facing toward the incoming tide down the beach.

"I notice it."

"You are a perceptive and intelligent man," Calchas said apropos of nothing.

It was Achilles' turn to be silent. Was the royal oracle mocking him to his face?

He was trying to take the measure of Calchas. He wanted to know what kind of man he really was. "Do you know I could kill you with my bare hands right now? And I'd enjoy it? What do you say to that?"

"Then what's preventing you? We are alone. I am helpless before you . . ."

Achilles laughed. He slapped Calchas on the back and the prophet nearly fell across the prophet's lap as he made no attempt to control himself. A couple of Myrmidons stood by nervously as they wondered what this could mean. Their prince had not so much as smiled ever since his meeting with Agamemnon. Calchas himself sat ramrod straight as if he could not fathom the humor of their exchange.

"What's preventing you?" Achilles mimicked, his eyes flashing. "You are a sober one, my friend. Most men would tremble in fear if they heard me speak to them that way. Why aren't you afraid? What is it that you know, that I don't?"

"Nothing," Calchas turned his head to face Achilles with his darkened orbs. "We both know your future, but I know something you do not godlike Achilles."

"And what is that, prophet?"

"I also know my own future," Calchas turned to face the sea again. "You see you are like a salmon rushing back upstream, fighting any obstacle to reach your destination. And you will fight with all your might. When you charge straight at a destination, even the rapids and stones sense your urgency. They rise up instinctually to slow your progress, though your quest will end in your death--you will not turn away from it."

"Doesn't the great prophet of the Achaeans pursue his own ends? As clandestine as they might be? If I am like the salmon--what animal are you?"

"Here I am now," Calchas pointed his walking stick at a small crab making his way across the sand. "I am like that blind crab. I approach my ends, to borrow your vernacular, from an oblique angle. My intentions are not easily guessed. My way is facilitated by stealth. My enemies see my funny walk and doubt the seriousness of my undertaking because of it."

"And?"

"And, so they are the ones who do not see--"

"So you are saying I should be a crab?"

"No," Calchas said. "You cannot help being what you are. You will do what you do."

"Fate," Achilles put a wheat cake in the prophet's hand, "will have its way with me then?"

Calchas took a bite of the morsel from his host. "Fate always does. Men only think they control their own destinies. In our ignorance each of us does the best he can, although we could all do better. Many men throughout time--in the past and in the far flung future--would gladly trade places with you. Those men seek after fame and glory just like you do, Achilles. There is no harm in it. It is the way of man."

"But I am always careful to honor the gods," Achilles said. "I keep in mind the situation in order not to offend them."

"Let me ask you something, Achilles. Do you love the gods with all your heart? Answer me honestly."

Achilles appeared to consider the question. His head slumped down in a rueful gesture as he held out a stick to the crab on the beach. The little creature used a claw to clamp down on the end of it. The son of Peleus looked up at Calchas and realized once again that the man couldn't read his expressions.

"You are silent,"Calchas said. "That is an answer unto itself. An answer best not elaborated on."

The sky was radiant with streaks of orange low on the horizon on the setting sun. A few stray clouds rambled overhead. The wind was constant, it ruffled the trees in a jangling music. Calchas was not blind, although he did not have eyes but his sight was severely diminished. He could have talked to Achilles for hours about paradox. He could read omens in the heavens, in the pattern of flocks of birds, even the insects told him many things about the multi-faceted future.

"Agamemnon--"

"Don't mention that pig's name!"

Calchas began more carefully, "The High King has asked me to inform you that your services are no longer required. Diomedes, Prince of Argos, has been favored by the gods and has been decimating the best of the Trojans on the field. It's been a pleasant surprise for our army since no one expected the young man to become so accomplished so soon. He's fighting beyond his years according to Nestor. He even--"

"Athena," Achilles shook his head despondently. "It's Athena's doing."

"The gods revealed themselves on the battlefield," Calchas said. "I watched the battle from the rise. I saw terrible Ares fighting for Hector. I saw Athena wearing her shimmering armor next to Diomedes keeping him safe from harm. It's no wonder the average soldier loses heart seeing that the great men are only so because the gods have randomly chosen to offer favor to one, withhold it from another. That is the way it seemed today. I overheard Diomedes say that Athena gave him the ability to distinguish gods from men on the battlefield."

"Did Diomedes kill anyone important? A royal perhaps?"

Calchas leaned forward to whisper, "I saw him wound the goddess Aphrodite. He cut her wrist with his sword."

"What?" Achilles jumped to his feet. "I find that difficult to believe, oracle."

"The Trojan archer who wounded Menelaus scored a direct hit with his arrow on Diomedes, but I heard him pray loudly to Athena who gave him strength to keep fighting as if nothing had happened. It was a very strange sight. Everywhere Diomedes road his chariot on the field--I saw it all very clearly--"

"You are blind!" Achilles hated to hear about the triumphs of another Achaean. "You didn't see anything."

"Oh yes!" Calchas now stood as if he might offer to fight Achilles with his bare hands. "Listen to me, Achilles! No matter where the son of Tydeus went on the battlefield it was as if a blurred cloud, a mantle, had settled down around his shoulders. Spears changed course in the air like sparrows. Arrows seemed to fall short as if a god, Athena I'm sure as you say, had knocked them away. If a mortal man has that much power--help from the gods--how will any man stand against him?"

"And where was Hector during all this?"

"He was there," Calchas said. "But the gods kept them apart I'm sure of that. Aphrodite fought for him."

"Of course."

"It was a glorious day for a soldier I'm told," Calchas sat back down on the rug. His face, as he told what happened, appeared to glow with a vigor that was not normally his. "The House of Zeus was empty today, because the gods themselves are a fighting lot. There were gods and goddesses that even I could not identify at first glance."

"Do you tell me this to torture me, Calchas? I thought I was one of the god's favorites and now--will they fight our wars for us?"

"In truth, I don't know." Calchas said. "But I haven't told you nearly half of it. Diomedes wounded the war god, Ares! How the god howled! I heard him cry out to Zeus like a child over it."

"That's impossible," Achilles said. "He wounded two of the immortal gods and was allowed to live?"

"We all wondered," Calchas said. "Is Diomedes a god?

Next, he finally killed the deadly archer Pandarus. Aeneas stood over his body and dared anyone to try to drag off the archer's armor. Diomedes lifted an enormous rock, like an immortal, and smashed Aeneas beneath it."

"Aeneas is dead?"

"No," Calchas said. "He should have been, but he lived through it somehow."

"I'll tell you how," Achilles said. "His mother is Aphrodite."

"Aeneas would have been next," Calchas said. "But Apollo, patron of Troy, protected him from Diomedes. It was a marvel to see a mortal warrior attack the gods and not be struck down for it. A permission, given by Zeus I am sure of that."

"And that's your only explanation?"

Calchas bowed gravely. The prophet could see that Achilles was burning with envy that Diomedes was stealing his glory, he had no real concern for the other Achaeans. So the oracle withheld the desperation he had detected in the voice of Apollo. The Lord of the silver bow warned off Diomedes and enlisted the aid of Ares to do something about Tydeus' son. But suddenly the seer's blood had went cold when he sensed a phantom on the battlefield. A god had created the likeness of Aeneas, Calchas had sensed this presence almost immediately, to stir up the courage of the Trojans. The apparition of Aeneas moved like a man, acted like a man, but he was an empty vessel that one of the gods had resorted to in a desperate time. What if such an automaton was forgotten after the battle and was allowed to live? What would become of such a vile instrument?

Calchas could have told Achilles how Sarpedon insulted Hector's fighting spirit, but he could not force himself to do that for the arrogant man in front of him, but then being part god it was understandable. But this Diomedes confounded even the gods. It was fortunate that he was an ally of the Phthian. Anyone could see that Achilles was holding himself back until the last possible moment.

A cry went up that some had glimped Demeter, before the battlefield was transformed with a storm of white chaff. It was as if it began to snow; it became difficult for the combatants to see the air was so heavy. The Achaeans shouted at one another in blinded by what could only be compared to when a mist of fog descends. The cries of wounded men could be heard more clearly now crying out in pain, fear. It was too terrible for the prophet to see it again. That was the problem with his visions, though his ability came and went, once he had seen something it haunted him.

A terrifying image of Queen Enyo came to him strongly so he knew the lethal goddess was on the battlefield. A hideous mask of her face was frozen in his mind and he could not make it recede. It was as if that was the last thing his gift had allowed him to see--now it would stay there until he had another. Once he had been honored to see the beautiful Aphrodite disrobe, and he had lived with her stunning likeness for a fortnight before he had another vision to replace it. But Enyo in a battle rage was quite overpowering.

The turning point had been the white fog sent by Demeter. And when Diomedes saw Ares leading the way for Hector he lost all desire for war. A god goes before him beating off disaster. It was at that instant the momentum had swung back to the Trojans.

"So many gods . . . " Achilles rubbed his temples.

Calchas waited for him to say more, but there was no need. He thought he knew what Achilles was thinking. It was enough to be fighting a war without the gods as well with all their contradictory designs on the world of man.

If one's patron god isn't around when another Olympian decides to kill a man . . .

"And just where is your Boetician goddess?" Calchas asked. "Fighting for Diomedes?"

Achilles' expression registered unmasked shock. Calchas had spoken directly to his thoughts. After recovering he made his face go blank. He would not resort to complaining or speaking of Athena in an unseemly way, he would not risk angering her by making a casual remark about his disappointment with her. He narrowed his eyes as he re-examined the High King's prophet. Here was no man to be taken lightly. The man was judging and evaluating his every word, breath, and gesture with great acuity.

Order him away! A voice in his head cried out at him, but he wanted to hear what Calchas might have to say. Was there any way out of this war and his own fate? It was the same defiant voice that demanded he not bow to the wishes of Agamemnon. In his flashes of lucidity he felt the voice might be coming from another source, perhaps a god, but he could not entirely shut it out. Or, he reasoned with himself, the voice truly came from within and it was just a portion of his mind that wanted to be saved from the prophecies of death. No matter. He had known his fate long ago. Fame and honor were the things great men lived for.

"Menelaus said that when you were on the battlefield the Trojans were afraid to fight beyond their own walls. Now they charge down the beach with courage in their hearts."

"The Argives have their Diomedes," Achilles said. "Perhaps it is time to take my Myrmidons home."

I hear the Achaean soldiers calling my name when I try to sleep at night. They blame me for each death when they should blame the Mycenean brothers.

"For now," Achilles said. "Hera and Athena have brought the armies to another stalemate. They've stopped Ares from spilling the blood of more good men."

"The Argives need Achilles," Calchas struggled to his feet.

Achilles caught the prophet by the arm to help him up. "Tell Agamemnon if he wants to know what I'm thinking to come speak to me himself instead of sending Diviners to sound me out. It takes no augury to ask a man what he's thinking."

Is he going to kill me? Calchas thought. Achilles hand gripped his arm that he felt like a child again in his presence. There would be nothing Calchas could do to stop him. He inclined his head in a bow of respect and the bronze hand released its grip. It was the first time he had felt fear during the decade they had been at war with the Dardanians. His sight was gone again as he stumbled down the beach, not sure he was heading in the right direction even. His boy appeared to lead him by the hand back to the royal tents. He did not overly trust the foreigner. When he spoke he stood several feet away as if he disdained the idea of coming within a respectable distance. It was not the Achaean way to be so reticient. The seer had awed him earlier, but now he was as helpless as a abnormal newborn left out to die in the wilderness. Achilles sensed the prophet did not serve Agamemnon joyfully.

We have our Calchas and the Trojans have their Helenus. Achilles mused. It seemed both sides were so alike in a myriad of ways it seemed a shame that one side would have to lose. King Priam was a great man, ruthless--but no more so than Agamemnon.

"Should we prepare the ships to depart?" Automedon asked.

Automedon was his most trusted advisor. The man knew his thoughts which was a relief. Achilles was a man who favored action over mere words. Without saying anything he knew Automedon disapproved of leaving even if he did wish to return home to his family as much they all did.

"The gods like drama," Achilles said. "This thing is just entering its final act. I guess we will have to see what happens next."

Automedon nodded with just a trace of a smile to let Achilles know that was the answer he hoped he would give. He would have a herd of the famous horses of Troy before it was over. They were also known for their gold, but Achilles--even at his relatively young age, cared more about fame. It was the honorable thing afterall.

Life could be short and violent, but the songs lasted forever. He listened to the singers who had come along with army over the sea to compose new songs and he longed to be the subject of one of their ballads. Once the Danaans heard a song by one of their singers, they learned that song, and sang it to their children at night. The deeds of the men of those songs never died. He had heard his share sung by serving women and relatives when he went to bed at night. Songs about the Titans! Poetry of how Zeus had usurped the throne from his own father Cronus!

But they weren't all about the gods. Some of the songs were about great men like Jason and his quest for the golden fleece! One of his favorites was of Daedalus and Icarus flying with wings like birds--he had imagined flying and how wondrous it would be. Even the death of Icarus could not dampen his enthusiasm for the wonder of it. The tale of Perseus killing the gorgon, Medusa, wearing winged sandals and the helmet of darkness. How helpful these things would be in war. He imagined having an unbreakable sword, but then he would sooner go into battle unarmed than have it said he had taken unfair advantage.

Since the contest between Paris and Menelaus he had ceased to watch the fighting from a distance. It only caused him to want to go out there himself and this he had promised himself not to do--not until the High King was made to suffer. Instead the gods had allowed Diomedes to take up his mantle. He had accomplished things in battle in one day that most men dream a lifetime about. It made no sense that the youth was allowed such power--even over the gods! Over Ares! It was impossible, but yet it had happened. Was Athena showing her displeasure with him through Diomedes? It was the only thing he could think of. Diomedes was a fine man from all accounts, but up until this point had never done anything to overly distinguish himself before.

He would have to start watching the battles again. Hector was the key and he knew it. What was Hector doing? Hector was the champion of Troy. The glory would be in laying the low their best warrior. The man was obviously intelligent, he had seen that the gods were fighting for Diomedes and left him alone.

Achilles watched as storm clouds rolled in from overland. A black anvil flew low to the ground as if it had emerged from the golden city itself. Rain began to fall until it turned into a mist, then a sprinkle, and then began a downpour. Patroclus came out in the weather and forced his brother into his tent to wait it out. Thunder cracked and roared. The sound of tiny pieces of hail bombarded the tent.

"What did Calchas have to say?" Patroclus asked.

"Just the usual tricks of soothsayers. He said nothing that wasn't perfectly obvious to any intelligent man."

II

The rain had finally stopped. Instead of leaving a sweet odor behind, the smell on the air was death. Hector was tired of war. Aeneas stood next to him as he drove the chariot to survey the battlefield. The corpse fires had burned interminably for ten years with no end in sight. The scope of death, in the last few days alone was devastating and he only wanted it to come to an end.

It wasn't war he minded, but when former friends were your enemies it was truly a cheerless war. The sight of the Achaeans killing his men and dishonoring them by stripping their bodies of armor and all posessions was a sickening practice. In truth both sides engaged in it, but Hector did not approve. In this terrible war, the prospect of gaining fame from a famous warrior's armor or hoarding the spoils of war, was the only thing keeping up the spirits of his men so he said nothing.

His cousin Aeneas gave a nudge with his elbow. Hector observed an impressive figure limping toward him in exhaustion from battle. The warrior-prophet's heavy armor was dented, covered in muck and blood. At first Hector thought he was carrying a head under an arm, but it was only his helmet and a long spear. He was a hard-working prophet unlike most Hector had seen. It was not unusual for Helenus to act as a doctor on the field or even to help stack corpses after a battle. He was a large man for a prophet, not so large as Hector, but his physicality gave his pronouncements more power. He was the best of the prophets. Some of the men were terrified of him--of his foresight--but most were glad to have an extra pair of hands for the worst jobs. He was a fine man on the battlefield. Helenus was never one to hang back from the heaviest fighting.

"My brother," Helenus stuck his spear into the ground. "I have important news for you."

The man's face was pocked with scars. He had a large bulbous nose and deep-set almond eyes that were troubling to look into. There was an abyss in those eyes that not many men wanted to see staring back into them.

"What is it, Helenus?" Hector pulled the chariot up short as the horses snorted and shook their tales at the mass of green flies harassing them.

"My Captains!" Helenus was breathing heavily as he walked over the wet, packed sand to where they stood. "We must make our next stand here. Our men's hearts grow faint. I'm afraid they're going to throw themselves into the arms of their mothers and wives like boys. They are so fearful of Agamemnon's hoard."

"The tides of battle change," Aeneas said philosophically looked up at the circling vultures overhead. "Why do prophets love to give bad news?"

"You are our bravest men so you must lead by example and fight here on the beach!"

Helenus had a wild look on his bearded face. He had seen something important. Even Aeneas had stopped his smirking. Had it been in the flights of birds? Had an insect done something unusual? The ways of prophets were baffling. He remembered Helenus had always been a thoughtful lad, although he could be as rough and tumble as the next.

"What would you have us do?" Hector asked.

"Go through our ranks," Helenus said. "Inspire the men. Remind them they are fighting for their homes! We cannot fail on this battlefield--there is no place to retreat to in safety except our beloved city."

Is this prophet trying to manipulate me? And, if so, to what purpose? Hector thought. Helenus had an abrupt personality. Not at all what one would expect from such a person. Even if they won the war, and it was very likely they would, the city would be devastated for years. As his father had said, a walled fortress doesn't have to win a war--it only outlast the patiences of its enemies.

Even if the Argives climbed back into their black ships it would take time to build her back up as the cosmopolitan city she had once been. It would take time for merchants and traders to come back to the city. No one would come during a war--and why would they? Not to sell silks, spices, and fine wares. Only bold souls, vultures, came to the city to make what money they could selling everything--overpriced, from sandals to bitter wine. They went back and forth between the two great armies selling their wares; laden with obscene messages from one commander to another.

"After you have inspired the men," Helenus said. "We will hold and fight here on this patch of ground, but you must return to the city. Tell the mature women to go to the shrine of Athena and sacrifice twelve heifers there. Perhaps then the goddess will feel some remorse for the women and children of Troy. Maybe she will hold back Diomedes--he is the strongest Argive now! We fear him more than we ever did Achilles."

The singer who was always dogging Hector's step was even now composing verse under his breath. He was a funny little man with his ruined face, women's lips, and twisted body cradling a kind of elaborate foreign lyre made to look as if it were solid gold. He painted his pitiful face like a woman with unnaturally red cheeks and black drawn around his eyes. He had several changes of expensive clothes that spoke of a possibly once-important family. Hector took him for an Egyptian, though they didn't see many of them. Hector had raided there once years earlier and found this specimen a poor example of a beautiful and sophisticated people. However, he was quite intelligent and languages came easily to him. He claimed to speak half a dozen of them.

The singer's spine was bent and it caused him to walk with a staff in what appeared to be a perpetually tortured condition. There was more than one warrior who had hired their own personal singer to create verse about them so as to create a myth of greatness for posterity, but Hector did not like this singer who had attached himself like a parasite to its host. If Achilles heard that everyone thought Diomedes was a greater warrior than himself; then, Hector shuddered for the repercussions that would soon follow. He could not forget his first meeting of Peleus's son in Chiron's camp.

There was nothing else to do but follow his brother's advice. The men were preparing to scatter rather than brace themselves for another Achaean onslaught. Hector sprung off his chariot and onto the ground in his full battle armor. As he passed the ragged lines, individually he could see their faces were frozen with shock, cold fear had gripped their hearts with a death grip. But upon seeing Hector among them urging them on, slapping their backs and calling each by name, it was as if one of the gods had descended from the sky to fight for them. He had never been much of an orator, but an occasion such as this was what he was meant to do. The warriors gathered in a vast circle as he addressed them.

"Stout-hearted Trojans and our allies! It is time to call on your courage and stamina again! Renew your fury! Hold these foreigners who seek to take what is yours! Refuse to give into a spirit of fear! Refuse to be defeated! I must go back to the city and tell our old counselors and our wives to pray for the favor of the gods and to offer sacrifices to placate them! When I return, it will be with the righteous judgment of the Olympians on our side!"

A roar went up at his last remark! Spears danced in the air overhead like angry wraiths. Helmets and bossed shields glinted. Aeneas handed the reins of the chariot back to Hector. Aeneas accompanied Glaucus who met Diomedes on the battlefield in no man's land with every intention of dueling to the death. Instead of fighting, Hector observed they were having a long conversation. They looked more like old friends rather than warriors on opposing sides.

Hector's warriors made a path for him as he returned to the city. He knew he could not let his Trojans see the weariness on his face even if his armor was caked with dried blood. His arms felt so tired now that he could barely lift them. The men called out to him as if he were a champion, as if the war were over. Some even reached up to touch his hand as he drove by. There were bearded older men engaging in their last war alongside smooth-cheeked youths who had been mere children when the Achaeans first landed on their beachhead. He hoped praying to Athena would help save the city as Helenus suggested. It had been such a golden city before. The House of Troy in danger of being razed and sacked.

Will her glory ever return?

Hector cursed the day he had met the black ships on the beach. What he remembered most distinctly, and would never forget, was the first Myceneaen ship he had seen with its golden lion perched on the prow of the ship. The lion fights the eagle.

The Scion gates were opened for the Prince and cries went up, as much celebratory as they were desperate. Women, children, and the elderly were living in what had become hovels not far inside the gates. They tried to keep the city as clean as was possible, but Troy was like a fading and cracked mosaic. Refuse was piling up. Vermin had invaded the once proud city. Even the air felt heavier within the god-built walls. The food stores still held, but no decent crops had been grown outside the city walls. For several years they sent men out on regular forays to villages large distances away to trade for food for the Trojan people. They would never surrender as long as they could fight, but it was hardest on the very young and the elderly.

The warrior was first approached by the women demanding news of their husbands, but exhaustion overwhelmed him. "Pray to the gods." It was the only response he could think of in his mental state. He held up a hand like a priest of Apollo, "Pray to the gods." The women responded by simply backing away from him in respect.

A young stable boy stood beside a tall older men waiting to take the reins of the chariot from Hector. Both men bowed low to him as a sign of their thanks. Before this war the people had always been respectful, but it was much deeper now that they had seen his fury on the battlefield for themselves. He was the protector of their city, and much loved for it.

He walked heavily down the stone streets to the palatial estates within the city. There were great porches and colonnades adorning the clean views of Priam's palace. As a boy Hector had imagine that this was what Olympus resembled in miniature. Behind the walls was where his brothers, sisters, and their wives and husbands slept. If the Achaeans ever made it into the city they would rape Priam's daughters and carry some of them off. He had heard men on the line fantasize about bedding a royal as if it would be a different experience. The palace was unusually silent and a pain gripped his heart. He had hoped Andromache would meet him upon his return.

Troy was the only home Hector could imagine. Abandoning the holy city was unthinkable. He avoided his father's chambers. There was something in King Priam's face he didn't trust. His father appeared to despise all of his children, but Hector. He uses me because of my usefulness with the military. I don't fight for him or the city. I fight for myself, my wife, my son--Scamandrius. The people of Troy already referred to the child as the Little Lord of the City.

There must be something for my son to inherit one day when I am gone.

Queen Hecuba approached wearing an ostentatious brocaded Sidonian gown, bearing a magnificent cup of wine in her hands for him. Her arms dripped with gold bracelets in the event they might have to leave the city hurriedly. The prince raised his hand to refuse the wine. The army, his army, was gathered just outside the gate waiting for him to appeal to the gods. He knew the way she thought about things. In her mind he should rest, but she did not understand his responsibility to everyone else first. His own comfort would have to wait.

The specter of Achilles, the thought of having to confront the son of Peleus in a duel, had deeply intimidated him. But this Diomedes had done things few mortal men had ever conceived of--and yet it was Achilles that worried Hector most. If the Phthian returned to the fight with Diomedes--then the Achaeans would have two invincible champions.

"Don't offer me wine now, Mother," Hector said. "Go with the other noble women to Athena's shrine. And I will try to find Paris and beg him to return to the war if I must. I can't believe he doesn't realize he has humiliated us."

"Try his private chambers," she had reached an age where she no longer lived in the present moment. Lately, she had been acting in a most peculiar way. It was almost as if she thought she was newly wed to King Priam. Often he had observed her of late wearing flowers from around the countryside on her head like a crown as if she were a child. Her features did appear softer than they had in years, although her hair held more gray than ever. "He is always there with Helen." She was already wandering in the direction of the shrine with her hands held out toward the walls reminding him of a young girl.

"I would send Paris to the House of Death myself," Hector said more to himself than his mother as he spun on his heel toward the quarters of Paris and Helen. The sound of his footfalls echoed down the long hall where sconces burned here and there illuminating the way. The idea that he might be walking the halls of a mausoleum came unbidden to his mind--he tried to shake off an image of horrors if the Argives gained the walls of Poseidon.

Paris was insensitive and self-obsessed. He thought the way women reacted to him really meant something in the world of men. It was a boyish point-of-view at best and he was no longer a child. He thought nothing of the Sidonian women he had brought to Troy to mock his enemies,and his wife. Seducing the wife of one of Troy's most powerful allies did not seem in the least troubling to his conscience. He had always been this way. You would think I was the older brother, Hector thought.

Paris and Helen seemed to be a well-matched couple in their physical appearance, and their self-indulgent natures was like a mirror. Helen's beauty had taken him by surprise when he had first met her as a girl in Sparta, but she only cared about her self--this made her repulsive to Hector. She was no match for the love and caring of his Andromache.

The lovers had been know, to have stormy arguments between them--by all appearances Helen had grown weary of Paris. It was almost amusing if the consequences had not been so terrible. Hector had heard through a housekeeper that she found Paris beneath her because of his youth, ignorance, and now she could add cowardice to that list.

Can a man redeem himself from the stigma of cowardice? Hector wondered if it was something Paris was even interested in. Don't you care that everyone thinks you are a disgrace? He considered his brother to be many things, but a coward wasn't one of them although he had acted disgracefully in his duel with Menelaus. No doubt he could redeem himself on the battlefield if Hector could convince him to return to the battlefield. Hector did not personally care what Paris did. He could climb into a ship and sail across the sea and lose himself on the island of Lemnos where, according to legend, only women dwelled. He put his hand to the door of Paris wondering what he might find on the other side.

III

The walk to the shrine of Athena was on an incline at the city's crest. Theano, the wife of Antenor and the priestess of Athena, stood in the doorway as if in full expectation of the outcry of grief and supplication to the warrior-goddess. Theano was a beautiful woman, statuesque with olive skin and pronounced features. She welcomed the noble women of the city into the shrine. She bowed respectfully as the Queen of Troy passed through the doorway. Once the doors were closed widows of the recently killed warriors felt to their knees in a display of public grief.

Athena herself appeared in the midst of the women of Troy. How she despised these Trojan women. Until the Achaean came across the wide sea there had been only sporadic offerings made to her. Even Theano, her own priestess, spent more time at her husband's side than she did attending the Boeotician shrine. The wild scent of honeysuckle, thyme, and flowers filled the tiny place of worship alongside the wailing female chattle of Troy.

The priestess held up her well-formed arms. Her beautiful face shone as if it had never known a weary thought. Far from giving the appearance of one worried about the outcome of the war, she appeared to be quietly confident. It rankled Athena that this beauty had no dark circles under her eyes, and that a proper priestess of Athena would be clamoring to strap on a sword like an Amazonian. The very notion that Apollo's city was filled with golden idols, images, and other remembrances of Apollo enraged the goddess. Troy was Apollo’s city; the holy city favored most by Zeus! Athena looked at the miserly offerings these rich matrons proposed to give her, and it was all she could do to keep from annihilating them all for their disrespect. These Trojan women needed to learn what abject despair meant. Maybe when they saw all their men laid out they would become acquainted with sorrow.

Dark-haired Theano went to the statue of the goddess with the gorgeous robe Queen Hecuba had produced and draped it across the knees of the idol. Athena could not have been more disgusted with the gift.

Where our my offerings? Where is the blood on the altar? The life is in the blood.

A robe, indeed! They should have brought me Hector’s spear, eleven forearms long--then I might be moved to fight for this rancid city!

Athena sat in the place of her statue, still cloaked from their sight, including Theano, and her lip was curled in an expression between loathing and resentment. I should annihilate this city myself! If all the gods and goddesses had not become so involved in the fate of the Dardans--I would not leave one stone on top of another!

But this she knew she could not do as she drummed her fingertips on the top of the hand of her likeness. The women wailed and snorted like feral boars. Athena began to laugh at this observation until tears ran down her face. She hardened her heart against the women, children, and men of Troy. Their gifts were offensive. They came to her diminutive temple as a last resort; when they should have sought her out as soon as the black ships of the Achaeans made the shoreline. Hadn’t they witnessed what Achilles had done to their men? Hadn’t they understood her loyalties after she had given Diomedes the ability to recognize and fight against even the Olympians?

The goddess despised the whore of Priam above all. She had given birth to a litter of Dardanians for her pompous King like a bitch in heat all these years. Now she was finally beyond child-bearing age after giving life to nineteen sons, and entering the senility of her second childhood. Even now she wore a gown more suited to a celebratory affair rather than the soberness appropriate to a war--and the jewels marked for someone out of touch with reality. But the King was still waylaying young virgins, and Athena longed to stop him. Perhaps one of her favored warriors would end his life with an iron-pointed spear or a bronze dagger of death.

The women lay on the floor of the shrine making prostrations and keening over-loud into the heavens as if she did not inhabit her own temple. Do they think I cannot hear their theatrics?

“Queen Athena!” Theano’s hands raised in a gesture of supplication. “Oh protectress of the city--splinter the spear of Diomedes! We will sacrifice twelve heifers for you at once if that will please you!”

Pallas Athena felt her ire rise. Stop Diomedes! I am the one who guides him justly against you! And you would still deny me offerings! If offerings will please me--then you will do it! These women would even withhold heifers from my altar! I am one of the Tritogenia!

Couldn’t her own priestess be skilled in the art of communication with her deity? She valued deft communication between gods and men above all. It was why she favored Achaeans like Nestor once and more recently the shrewd Odysseus.

At last, Athena had had enough and arose from her dais. She would not give the women of Troy the honor of seeing her with their own eyes much less honor their requests. In anger she pushed over her own likeness. She allowed her laugh to be heard above their disingenuous warbling. She put out the votive candles with a breeze through the shrine.

Theano announced in a dramatic voice, "Athena is here with us! She has something to say to the daughters of Troy!"

Athena gave an ear-piercing shriek of rage that caused the noble women to fall to their knees with their hands clapped against their ears. An icy whirlwind filled the shrine knocking over lampstands. As Athena left the shrine she slammed the door so hard it came off its hinges. The holy place began to shake as if in the grips of the Earth-shaker. The noble women flooded out of the temple in terror. Their servant-combed hair fell loose around their shoulders. The self-satisfied expressions that so offended Athena were traded for horror. This is only the beginning of sorrows. Women were embracing one another and weeping real tears as the shrine fell in on itself; buried under a knot of rapidly growing vines and stones so that what had once been the Shrine of Athena now resembled an abandoned cairn.

IV

The door was opened by a young maiden who blushed when she saw Hector. By taking one look at the child he knew Paris had deflowered her. There had been rumors that Paris and Helen engaged in drunken orgies. The odor of incense was overpowering.

The city had her own royal enemies within--she did not need armies crashing against her walls. Paris was following in their father's lecherous footsteps. A grave weakness for a leader to be so obsessed with carnal matters like an adolescent boy.

On the edge of the bed sat Paris running his hands over his bronze battle-gear. Hector watched before announcing himself to his elder brother as he played with his curved longbow. It was an odd scene to Hector's mind. Paris appeared to be dreaming about days of war that were now already at hand. Helen sat on cushions surrounded by women of her house as they worked on embroidering a large piece of cloth. It looked more like a celebration rather than a war of vital consequence ensueing right outside the scion gates.

Hector felt himself burn with anger at Paris. How can he hang back from the fight! Safe in his bedchamber with his wife! He could barely keep himself from knocking his brother to the floor of his own apartment and nailing him to the floor with his skean. Helen caught his eye before Paris. She smiled at him. It was a dazzling smile on her face or maybe it just affected him that way. Suddenly, one of the excuses for this all but meaningless war came flooding into his consciousness. The hint of sex with a woman one had no possibility of gaining could make some men do things that the reality of it with their own wives could never motivate. The power of a beautiful woman was incommunicable, but as soon as Helen began to speak he found her repulsive. Her mind was filled with one subject: Helen. The beauty of Helen. How put upon it was to be so beautiful! He could not help, but frown at her. She looked quickly away with a frightened expression on her face.

"What are you doing! You need to get up and come fight with us! Your men are dying for you all around the Citadel! Put on your armor and help me save Troy before it becomes a black cinder on the earth! You have no reasong to be angry at us if that's what it is."

Paris turned toward Hector. His expression was calm and his reputed beauty was as great as it had ever been. Helen and Paris could have been brother and sister. His splendor radiated outward like a blazing fire in the hearth. It seemed to Hector as though he might have been crying not long before. His eyes were still red; cheeks flushed from lament. The gaze of Paris fell on Hector's hand as it grasped the handle of the skean in his belt. Hector forced his hand to unclasp the grip.

"I know I deserve it," Paris began to strap on his sheaves. "But after losing the fight with Menelaus I just wanted to disappear. I know that's not possible. Helen has brung me out of it. It just wasn't my day when I faced him."

"If it hadn't been for Aphrodite," Hector said. "You would be dead now."

Paris nodded in agreement. His lips pressed tightly together. "I will meet him on the battlefield again. Next time I will be the victor. He is strong, but he is slow. I would beat him easily were we to meet again. Listen, go ahead back to the army. Once I get my armor on I will catch up to you."

Hector said nothing and turned away to hide his own intense anger. He was beginning to think Paris was just as vapid as Helen. Why was he so worried about his own personal honor when their city and all its people were at stake. If Troy falls . . .but he wouldn't allow himself to complete the thought. He was just about to leave the lavish apartment when he felt a petite hand at his elbow.

Helen's face was lifted up to his as he turned toward her. She stood too close to him. The scent of her perfume sent compulsive thoughts to him, but beneath the perfume the odor of recent sex was still on her. Her eyes appeared to plead for understanding, and something more. He found her physically attractive, but the problem of who she was as a person with the iron conscience of a god. Helen of Sparta; Helen of Troy. Lately, Paris had been angered that the people of Troy had not fully accepted Helen as a denizen of their city. So to help them embrace her as one of their own he had insisted she be announced at all officials state occasions as Helen of Troy. What more lovely face could be assigned to represent a city?

"I wish I had chosen a better man," Helen said to him suggestively drawing even nearer. She dripped in jewels as if she were about to meet an honored visitor from another city-state. On her head was a gold headress with strands of gold made to look like the ringlets of an idol. Her arms were ringed in bands of gold with jewelled rings on her fingers. She took one of his hands and began to caress it. "Paris is no warrior. He is a mere boy in so many ways. But the fighting grieves you the most of all. Do you do it all for me? Why do you do it for me? Whore that I am?"

The way that she said whore was so suggestive. She was plainly offering herself to him. She didn't care that such a liaison would result in war inside the royal family itself. Was she so insecure? Did she need to feed on every man's lust? In one instant he could touch her hair, lead her to a discreet apartment, and take her there. But then he thought of his beautiful and loving Andromache. He thought of his infant son. The consequences would not be too great for a prince, but eventually the carnal act would bear fruit. Perhaps Helen has a motive, deeper than just petty desire. She may still love Menelaus and is trying to help the Achaeans by sowing discord. Her hand reached up to touch his face.

"Sit here with me for a minute," she tried to pull him to a bench.

He wrenched himself away. "Don't ask me to sit with you. I don't have time to talk of your love for me. But help Paris get ready to return to the line. We need him there. This is his war more than anyone's. I have to go see my own wife--and my own son. I could die at anytime so I must take this opportunity to see them."

Hector strode out of the apartment. A burden felt like it had been lifted. In the presence of both Paris and Helen he somehow felt less than what he was. Now, his mind cleared as he strode back the way he had come beneath the lamps of the hall's complex. Back out under the sun he felt the warmth on his face. The palace street was empty as he made his way to his own apartments. Andromache.

"Reckless one, my Hector--your own fiery courage will destroy you! Have you no pity for him, our helpless son? Or me, and the destiny that weighs me down, your widow, now so soon. Yes, soon they will kill you off, all the Achaean forces massed for assault, and then, bereft of you, better for me to sink beneath the earth."
--The Iliad, Book 6

VI

I

The apartment was empty. He went to the rooms calling Andromache's name, but his own voice echoed back to him from the walls. There were many places she could have gone. It was possible she had taken Scamandrius to stay with one of Hector's relatives. Had she gone to the shrine of Athena with the other women? Anxiety constricted his chest as it became clear he might never see her or his son again. The Achaeans had the army so hard-pressed, backed up to the city walls, that the image of the Fates weaving the cloth of his inevitable bloody death.

"Are you looking for Andromache?" An elderly household servant appeared holding a broom in one hand and his lower back with the other.

"Where is she, Urda?"

"She heard that our city was about to fall," Urda said as if he were only describing a bad storm come in from the sea. "So she went to the Scion gates to watch the fighting. The child is with her."

Hector turned and ran through the streets practically empty now. The majority of citizens prepared to leave the city; many of the old men and some of the women and children were organizing themselves to fight against Agamemnon's raiders. But it was the eery stillness on the streets that caused panic to grip Hector's heart. He could not imagine not seeing his Andromache and his son, but he feared he would miss the last decisive battle within the city searching for her.

Nearing the Scion gates he could hear the clashing of the armies below. A great roar went up which he knew meant the Argive forces were aiming to overrun the heroic Trojan line. His army was more than a match in sheer numbers, armaments, and supplies but still the Achaeans came on. They were being assisted by the gods and it was impossible to fight agains the Olympians and their will. The Achaeans did have their heroes as well, but it was hard to separate fact from the lyrics of the bards already working to create songs about Argive heroes: Achilles and Odysseus. No doubt the works were commissioned, but even within the city the inhabitants had heard phrases from these songs. He had seen Diomedes with his own eyes managing feats only a god could be capable of; before that it had been the athletic Achilles decimating them with his bronze sword flashing in the sunlight.

As soon as he saw her she ran to him. He was so relieved to see her. Andromache. He embraced her and lifted her off the ground. The smell of her jasmine perfume both relieved and strengthened him. He put his face in her hair as she placed her hands on his face and kissed his lips. Her dark eyes were wide with barely restrained terror. Her pupils were dilated to minute specks against twin amber fields. Just behind her a servant girl stood holding his son, Scamandrius. The baby was rather large for his age. The boy laughed and gurgled at him oblivious to a war that would decide their destiny. Hector could not keep himself from laughing when he saw the child. A feeling that could be described as exultation spread through his body like the effects of good wine.

Hector took his son in his arms, holding him slightly away from his body, and stared into the boy's ebullient features so like what the prince himself had looked like as an infant.

The citizens of Troy began to chant the name they used to refer to Hector's son: Astyanax! Astyanax! Lord the city! A desperate cheer went up from various knots of men and women arming themselves with axes, hoes, and shovels. He held up his son to the people he had been destined to rule, but Hector's mind was flooded with apocalyptic images of the city and its annihilation. Without him the city would die; his son would be, at best, dashed against the rocks below.

Then, the father's joy was transformed into sadness as he stood on the parapet overwhelmed by a premonition that he would be killed on the battlefield in the near future. It was not a feeling he was familiar with. He had always defeated his enemies, but his apprehension soon infected all around him. The champion of Troy will soon be dead. His blood will stain the battlefield and the city of Priam will be lost. Hector was no seer, but he could not shake the feeling. Who would it be? Diomedes? Or, would Achilles eventually return to the fight? Barring intervention from a god, the Achaeans, though they had their entourage of heroes, only had a handful of men could hope to best Hector in honorable combat.

The family embraced in a tight group. The winds were suddenly still as if the earth was holding its collective breath in the moment. He searched the heavens for a sign of what was to come next. His father would have called for Helenus at a moment like this, but Hector did not need a prophet to confirm what was obvious. He trusted what his heart told him even though he found it a hateful truth. The hot tears of his wife fell on his hands. Her makeup smeared. The true face of Troy.

The servant took the child away from the royal couple.

"I am afraid," Andromache placed her head against his armored chest. "The Achaeans will kill you and I will be alone again. Achilles killed my father and my brothers, he was responsible for the death of my mother. You and Scamandrius are all that I have. If something happens to you I might as well be dead too."

"Don't talk of such things . . ." Hector could not bear to hear his own thoughts of death coming out of his wife's mouth.

"I can't help it,"Andromache pulled away to look up at him.