Fall of Kings (61 page)

He paused for breath under the walls of Troy, beneath the northeast bastion,
and drank some of his water. He sat down for a moment and fell instantly asleep.

It was well past dawn when he woke again. His hands were on fire, and his
head ached abominably. He drained the water skin in one long gulp, then vomited
most of it onto the ground. He threw away the water skin and slowly got to his
feet. A long look at the perfect sword invigorated him, and he set off around
the walls. He passed the Dardanian Gate and the East Gate but found them both
closed and sealed, and so he headed for the Scaean Gate.

But when he got there, those gates also were closed. He craned his neck to
see the top of the wall but could see no guards. He wandered around the ruined
lower town, but it was deserted. His strength exhausted, he sat down in the dust
outside the wall. The six stone statues guarding the Scaean Gate watched him
balefully.

It was a long time before there was a creak and a groan and the gates opened
to allow a troop of soldiers out. He saw they were Mykene by their armor, and he
struggled to his feet.

“You, soldiers, take me to Agamemnon!” he cried. Ignoring the waves of agony,
he took the sword in both hands and waved it at them.

The troop ignored him and marched off down through the town.

“Your king is expecting me!” he shouted despairingly. “This sword is for him,
you idiots!”

A single soldier peeled off from the rear of the troop and walked toward him,
sword unsheathed. Khalkeus saw that half the man’s face was hideously scarred.
Sand, he thought with sudden interest. That must be what red-hot sand does to
flesh and skin.

The warrior did not hesitate or pause. “Idiots, are we?” he asked. He rammed
his sword through Khalkeus’ chest, dragged it out, and rejoined his comrades.

It was like being hit by a hammer, Khalkeus thought as he fell, the perfect
sword cast into the dust beside him. The pain in his hands had disappeared, he
realized with relief.

He had a curious dream. He dreamed that he was on the
Xanthos
and a
stiff breeze was filling the black horse sail. The ship cut through the water,
which was deep green and strangely still. The Golden One was striding toward
him, the sunlight behind him outlining his form but putting his features in
shadow. Khalkeus could not see well and felt very weak. Then he realized the
golden man was bigger than Helikaon. In fact, he was a giant, and the light
around him was not from the sun but was emanating from the man himself. Is it
Apollo, the sun god? he wondered. Then, with a shock of realization, he saw the
god was limping.

The god leaned down to him and gently took the perfect sword from his hands.

“You have done well, smith,” his deep voice boomed. “Sleep now, and tomorrow
we will set you to work.”

Tudhaliyas IV, emperor of the Hittites, strode into Priam’s
megaron
surrounded by his retinue. Xander watched with interest. He never had seen an
emperor before. Apart from the Hittite mercenaries he had treated, who seemed
the same as any other mercenaries, the only Hittite Xander had met was Zidantas.
Zidantas was huge, with a shaved head and a forked black beard. This emperor was
thin and very tall, with a curled beard, and was dressed in shiny clothes like a
woman. His retinue was even more strangely garbed in brightly colored kilts and
striped shawls. But they all were armed to the teeth, as were their hosts.

Xander had wanted to stay with the wounded, but as Agamemnon left the queen’s
gathering room, he suddenly turned to Meriones. “Bring the healer,” he ordered.

Xander now stood nervously at Meriones’ side, feeling that the black-clad
Kretan was his only friend in the room.

Emperor and king met in the center of the
megaron,
which still was
heaped with corpses and abandoned weapons. Tudhaliyas looked around silently,
his dark eyes revealing nothing.

Agamemnon spoke first. “My condolences on the death of your father.
Hattusilis was a great man and a wise leader,” he said, and Xander was surprised
at the sincerity in his voice. “Welcome to Troy, a city of the Mykene empire.”

Tudhaliyas regarded him for a moment, then replied mildly, “The Hittite
emperor is accustomed to his vassals prostrating themselves before him.”

Agamemnon’s eyes hardened, but he replied evenly, “I am no man’s vassal. I
fought for this city, and you enter it with my permission. I opened the Scaean
Gate to you as a gesture of friendship. Everything you see belongs to me. And to
my brother kings,” he added swiftly, seeing Idomeneos frown.

“You fought to win this charnel house?” Tudhaliyas commented, looking around
again at the corpses, the blood, and the gore. “You must be very proud.”

“Let us not misunderstand each other,” Agamemnon replied smoothly. “The
allied kings of the west fought to win this city, and by superior strategy and
military strength and the will of the gods, we succeeded. Your fame as a
strategos
precedes you, Emperor. And you know that for a people to dominate
the Great Green they must first dominate Troy.”

“You are right, Mykene,” Tudhaliyas said. “It is important that we do not
misunderstand each other. Priam ruled this city on the suffrance of the Hittite
emperors. Under his kingship Troy flourished and became rich, and the land was
at peace. The city guarded the Hittite trade routes by sea and land, bringing
prosperity to our great city Hattusas. Trojan troops fought for the empire in
many battles. My friend Hektor”—he paused for the words to sink in—“was partly
responsible for the triumph over the Egypteians at Kadesh.

“Now,” Tudhaliyas went on, his voice hardening, “Troy is in ruins, its bay
unnavigable. All its citizens are dead or fled, and its army is destroyed. The
countryside is barren, with crops ruined and livestock dying. That is why I have
taken the trouble to come here myself with my thirty thousand warriors.”

He paused, and a thoughtful silence hung in the air.

“The Hittite empire cares little who holds Troy if the city prospers and
showers its wealth around it. But a dead city in a dying land attracts only
darkness and chaos. The empire is forced to intervene.”

Xander felt the atmosphere in the
megaron
become icy. There were fewer
Hittites in the chamber than there were Mykene warriors, but they were fresher
and better armed, and they looked as though they were spoiling for a fight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And you are?” the emperor asked scornfully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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