Lord of the Silver Bow (17 page)

“No, the stone contains copper. First we remove the copper, then we add another metal, tin. In exactly the right amount. Eventually we have a workable bronze. Sometimes—depending on the quality of the copper—we get poor bronze, brittle and useless. Sometimes it is too soft.” Khalkeus leaned in. “But I have a secret that helps make the best bronze in all the world. You want to know the secret?”

Xander’s interest was piqued. “Yes.”

“Bird shit.”

“No, really, I would!”

Khalkeus laughed. “No, boy,
that
is the secret. For some reason, if you add bird droppings to the process, the resulting bronze is hard but still supple enough to prevent it from shattering. That is how I made my first fortune. Through bird shit.”

The curious conversation came to an end when the lookout, high on the the crossbeam of the mast, suddenly cried out and pointed to the south. The boy jumped up eagerly and peered in the direction the man had indicated. He could see nothing except the endless bank of blue-gray mist.

Then he heard another shout and saw Odysseus gesturing to him from the aft deck. His heart lifted, and with wings on his feet he ran down the deck to where the trader waited.

“We’ll be on the beach at Troy shortly, lad,” Odysseus said. He was swigging mightily from a water skin, and liquid gushed down his chest. “I want you to stick with Bias. Once the rowers have stowed their oars, the mast will be dismantled, for we will remain in the city for a few days. Bias will show you how we take down the mast and stow it safely. Then I want you to make sure the passengers have left none of their belongings on the
Penelope.
”

Xander was daunted by the trader’s stern manner. “Yes, sir.”

For the first time in days he felt anxious. He had never been to a city. He had never been anywhere larger than his own village until Bad Luck Bay. Where would he go once they reached Troy? Where would he stay? He wondered if he could remain on the
Penelope.
Surely someone would have to keep watch, he thought. “What do I do when we reach the city? It is said to be very big, and I do not know where to go.”

Odysseus frowned down at him. “Where do you go, lad? You’re a free man now. You’ll do what sailors do. Troy is rich in fleshpots and taverns, as in everything else. Now get about your duties.”

Crestfallen, Xander reluctantly turned away.

“Wait, boy,” said Odysseus. Xander swung back to see the ugly king smiling at him. “I am jesting. You’ll stay with us until we leave. If Helikaon hasn’t come by then, I’ll see you safely back in Kypros. As for seeing the city . . . well, you can come with me if you have a mind. I have much business to attend to and many people to visit. Perhaps you will even meet the king.”

“I should very much like to go with you, sir,” Xander said eagerly.

“Very well. Walk with Odysseus and you will breakfast with peasants and dine with kings.” He smiled. “Look, there she is,” he said. “The city of dreams.”

The boy peered ahead through the bank of mist but could still see nothing.

“Look up,” said Odysseus.

Xander looked up, and fear lanced through him. Far to port and high in the sky above the mist he could see what appeared to be flames of red and gold. He saw high towers and roofs gleaming with molten bronze.

“Is it on fire?” he asked fearfully, an image of the flaming ship again invading his head.

Odysseus laughed. “Have you not heard of the city of gold, boy? What do you think that means? Troy’s towers are roofed with bronze, and the palace roof is tiled with gold. It sparkles in the sunlight like a painted trollop, luring fools and wise men alike.”

As the ship drew closer and the mist started to clear, Xander got his first glimpse of the great golden walls, higher than he had ever dreamed and stretching far into the distance. They sat atop a high plateau, and he found himself craning his neck to see the gleaming towers. He could count three along the wall that faced the sea, all dwarfed by a single one to the south. The battlemented walls shone like copper, and Xander could believe the entire city was made of metal, shining like freshly burnished armor.

“There must be many great warriors living there,” he said.

“Aye,” said Odysseus. “This is horse country and the home of horse tamers. The Trojan Horse—the city’s cavalry—is legendary, and its leader is the king’s eldest son, Hektor. He is a great warrior.”

“Do you know him?” Xander wondered if he would meet the king’s warrior son.

“I know everybody, boy. Hektor . . .” He hesitated, and Xander saw that Andromache had moved up the deck to stand quietly beside him. “Hektor is a fine rider and charioteer, the best you will ever see.”

“It is so beautiful,” the boy said suddenly.

Odysseus took another deep drink from his water skin and wiped his mouth, absently brushing drops from his tunic. “Do you know what an illusion is, boy?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Xander said uncertainly.

“Well, an illusion is a story, a tall tale, if you like. It’s a bright shining story that masks a hidden darkness. Troy is a city of illusion. Nothing is what it seems.”

Xander could see the land stretching out around the high plateau. It was green and lush, and he could make out the moving dots of horses and sheep on the low hills. Between the plateau and the sea, in front of the city walls, lay a massive town. Xander could make out individual buildings of many colors and even people walking in the streets. A wide road wound down from the great south tower of Troy, eventually reaching the beach, where many hundreds of ships were pulled up and there was a riot of activity as they were loaded and unloaded.

Seeing the crowd of boats, Odysseus growled to Bias, “This cursed mist has made us too late to get a good berth. By Apollo’s golden balls, I’ve never seen the bay so full. We’ll be halfway up the Scamander before we can get some sand under her keel.”

But at that moment a large ship started to pull away from the beach, and Bias gave a quick command to the helmsman. The
Penelope
turned and headed for the strand, passing close to the departing ship, a wide low cargo vessel with purple eye markings and a patchwork sail.

“Ho,
Penelope
!” A powerful dark-haired man dressed in black waved from the other ship.

“Ho,
Phaestus
! You’re setting sail late in the day!” called Odysseus.

“Kretan ships sail the seas when men of Ithaka are tucked up safe in their beds!” shouted the man in black. “Sleep well, Odysseus!”

“Good sailing, Meriones!”

The sun was passing down through the sky by the time Xander had his feet safely on the sand of Troy. He was struggling with several heavy bags. There was his own small sack of belongings, an embroidered linen bag Andromache had entrusted to him, and two large leather satchels crammed to the brim, their drawstrings straining, which Odysseus had told him to carry. He looked up at the city looming above him and wondered how he would ever carry everything up to its heights. His legs felt unsteady, his head was aching, and dizziness ebbed and flowed over him. Dropping the bags to the sand, he sat down heavily.

The beach was bustling with activity and noise. Cargoes were being unloaded and piled onto carts and donkeys. Xander saw bales of bright cloth, piles of pottery packed with straw, amphorae great and small, livestock in wooden crates. Odysseus he could see farther up the beach, arguing with a thin man in a gray loincloth. Both men were shouting and gesticulating, and Xander wondered nervously if there would be more deaths. But Andromache stood quietly by the two and seemed unconcerned. She was garbed in a long white robe, a white shawl around her shoulders and a thin veil covering her head and face.

Finally Odysseus slapped the man on the back and turned to Xander, gesturing to him to join them. He struggled over, the leather satchels banging awkwardly against his legs. Odysseus pointed to a battered two-donkey carriage standing nearby.

“Is that a chariot?” asked Xander.

“Of a sort, lad.”

The wooden carriage was two-wheeled, and there were four seats, two on either side of its U-shaped structure. The thin man stepped onto the driving platform and took up the reins.

“In there, lad. Quickly,” Odysseus ordered.

Xander climbed in, dragging the bags and satchels after him and piling them at his feet. Odysseus handed Andromache into the cart, and she sat beside the boy. He had never been so close to her before, and he could smell the fragrance of her hair. He awkwardly shifted away, trying not to touch her. She turned, and he could see her smile at him under the veil. The small silver sea horses weighting the ends tinkled together as her head moved, and he could feel the gauzy softness of the cloth against his shoulder.

“Whose chariot is this?” he asked. “Does it belong to Odysseus? Has he bought it?”

“No,” she said. “The cart is for travelers. It will carry us up to the city.”

Xander’s head was spinning with the strangeness of it all. The sickness seemed to be passing, but he felt terribly hot and wished he could feel a sea breeze on his face. Sweat dripped into his eyes, and he brushed it away with the sleeve of his tunic.

The donkeys plodded up the winding street through the lower town, moving ever upward toward the city walls. The boy craned his neck to see the brightly painted houses, some awash with flowers and others decorated with carved wood. There were potters’ homes with their goods piled high on wooden racks outside; metalworkers plying their trade out in the open, protected from the heat of their furnaces by leather aprons; textile workshops with dyed cloth drying on racks outside. He could smell hot metal, baking bread and flowers, the rich scents of animal dung and perfumes, and a hundred smells he could not name. The noise all around was of laughter and complaint, the braying of donkeys, the creak of the cart’s wheels and the leather traces, women’s shrill voices, and the calls of peddlers.

Xander could see the walls up close now. They rose from the rocky ground at an angle so gradual that it seemed possible to climb them but then straightened up suddenly and soared toward the sky.

The huge gate they were approaching slowly lay in the shadow of the tallest tower, almost twice as high as the walls, and as Xander craned his neck to see the top, he felt as if the weight of it were falling toward him and quickly looked away. In front of the tower was a line of stone pedestals on which stood six fearsome statues of ferocious warriors wearing crested helmets and holding spears. Xander noticed the thin cartman cease shouting at his donkeys and bow his head in brief silence as the cart passed by the statues.

“This is the Scaean Gate, the first great gate of Troy,” said Odysseus. “It is the main entrance to the city from the sea.”

“It is very big,” said Xander. “I can see why it is called a great gate.”

“Troy has many gates and towers now. The city is growing continually. But the four great gates guard the upper city, where the rich and the mighty dwell.”

As the donkey cart reached the gate it was swallowed in sudden darkness. There was silence around them, and the gateway felt cold out of the late-day sunshine. Now the boy could only hear the steady
clop-clop
of hooves and his own breathing.

Then they burst out into the sunshine again, and he shaded his eyes, dazzled by the light and the glitter of gold and bronze. The road continued to stretch away from them, but inside the city gates it became a roadway of stone made of the same great golden blocks that formed the walls. It was so wide that Xander doubted he could throw a stone across it. The road wound ever upward between huge buildings, the smallest of which was bigger even than Kygones’ citadel at Blue Owl Bay. Xander felt the size of an ant beneath their walls, some of which were carved with mighty creatures of legend. The wide windows and the edges of roofs were decorated with shining metal and polished wood. High gates stood open, and the boy saw glimpses of green courtyards and marble fountains.

He looked around, open-mouthed. He glanced at Andromache, who had pulled up her veil and was wide-eyed, too.

“Is this what all cities are like?” he asked at last.

“No, lad,” said Odysseus with amusement. “Only Troy.”

The street was thronged with men and women, walking or riding chariots or horses. Their clothing was rich and colorful, and the glitter of jewelry shone at every neck and arm.

“They are all dressed like kings and queens,” the boy whispered to Andromache.

She did not answer him but asked Odysseus, “Do all these buildings belong to the king?”

“Everything in Troy belongs to Priam,” he told her. “This poxy cart belongs to him, the road it travels on, that pile of apples over there—they are all Priam’s. These buildings are the palaces of Troy’s nobles.”

“Which one is the home of Hektor?” Andromache asked, looking around.

Odysseus pointed up the roadway. “Up there. It is beyond the crest of the hill and overlooks the plain to the north. But we are going to Priam’s palace. After that Hektor’s home will seem but a peasant’s hovel.”

The cart trundled on, and soon the palace came in sight. To Xander’s eyes its walls were as high as those of the city itself, and he could see the golden roof gleam as the westering sun caught its edge. In front of the palace, once they had passed through the bronze-reinforced double gates, was a red-pillared portico where the cart stopped and they descended. The portico was flanked by lines of tall soldiers garbed in bronze breastplates and high helmets with cheek guards inlaid with silver and white plumes that waved in the wind. Each had one hand on his sword hilt, the other grasping a spear, and each stared sternly over the boy’s head, as still and silent as the statues at the Scaean Gate.

“Those are Priam’s Eagles, boy,” said Odysseus, pointing at the soldiers. “Finest fighting men you’ll ever see. Look, Xander. Is that not a sight to lift the spirits?”

Xander turned to look back the way they had come, across the shining roofs of the palaces and the golden walls and down over the lower town to the sea. The sky had turned rose-pink and copper in the light of the dying sun, and the sea below it was a lake of molten gold. In the far distance Xander saw a glowing island of coral and gold on the horizon.