Andromache frowned, angry at herself for giving in to despair, however fleetingly. You are the daughter of a king, she told herself. You do not whine or complain about your lot. Little Anio can find it in herself to smile despite the odds. You should feel privileged to stand beside her.
She watched the men on the wall, and pride surged in her breast. They are Trojan warriors, she thought. We are Trojan warriors. We will fight here, and we may die, but our tale will be told and the name of Troy will not be forgotten.
A familiar voice whispered in her ear: “Yes, Andromache, yes! Be strong! Look to the north, and help will come. We will meet again before the end, Sister.”
Kassandra! The girl’s voice was so clear, so present, that Andromache looked around. Inside her head she called her sister’s name, but there was no reply. Look to the north, Kassandra had said. Odysseus had told her the same thing.
At that moment, with awful suddenness, the enemy broke through on the wall. Eight Mykene warriors fought their way clear, racing down the rampart steps and across the paved courtyard toward the palace.
“Be ready!” she yelled to her archers, snatching her bow and notching an arrow to the string. The other women did the same thing. “Wait!” she warned. She watched coolly as the warriors approached.
Then she shouted, “Now!” and a volley of arrows tore into the running men. The women had time to loose two or three shafts each, and five of the attackers were hit. Two fell, and three stumbled on. When the men reached the closed megaron doors, there was nowhere to go, and they tried to scale the sheer stone walls. Only one managed to reach the balcony. As his hand gripped the top of the wall, Andromache pulled out her bronze dagger. She waited until his face appeared and then plunged the blade into the man’s eye. He fell without a sound.
She looked again to the struggle on the ramparts. The line of defenders had fractured in several places, and more Mykene were breaking through. The Trojans started to fall back in an organized retreat, pace by pace, trying to hold the line while being relentlessly forced toward the palace.
“Wait!” she ordered the women, seeing some of them raise their bows again. “Lower your bows. Now! Remember our orders.”
Beneath them they heard the groan and rumble of the megaron doors opening.
With a loud clatter of hooves on stone, the last horsemen in the city rode out from the palace. In the center of the battle line, defenders broke swiftly to the left and right. The riders galloped straight for the exposed center. With lance and spear they slammed into the enemy. Every horse left in the city was there. Andromache saw the black stallion Hero that had carried Hektor on his final ride. He was rearing, kicking out with flailing hooves at the enemy soldiers. Then all she could see was a melee of warriors and horses, all she could hear the shouts of men and the neighing of their mounts, the clash of metal and the rending of flesh.
It was a gallant last strike, but it was not enough. The gates in the palace wall had been opened, and hundreds more enemy warriors were joining the rear of the horde. The Trojans still were retreating, battling bravely but losing ground all the time.
“Be ready,” Andromache ordered the Women of the Horse. “Don’t shoot wildly. Take time to aim. We cannot risk shooting our own men. Make each arrow count. Always aim high. If you miss one man’s face, you might hit the man behind him.” This was the instruction she had drummed into her archers over and over in recent days until she found herself muttering it in her sleep.
Enemy warriors had fought their way within bowshot now, but still she waited. Then she saw a bearded bloodstained soldier in a Mykene helm look up at her and grin. “Now!” she shouted. Sighting high on his face, she loosed her arrow. The shaft plunged into the man’s cheek. She had a new arrow to the string in a heartbeat. She shot it at a soldier with his sword raised. It bit deep into his biceps, and she saw the sword fall from his hand.
For a moment she paused to glance at the other women shooting at the oncoming horde. Their faces were determined, their movements confident. Arrow after arrow was finding its target. Her heart soared.
“We are Trojan women,” she yelled at the enemy. “Come against us and we will kill you!”
She no longer could see the Trojan defenders beneath her; they were hidden by the jutting balcony. She and her archers kept shooting into the mass of enemy faces. She did not hear the megaron doors close.
No time seemed to pass as she carried on shooting, yet she realized it was growing dark. Her shoulder hurt.
“Andromache, fall back! Andromache!” She felt a hand on her arm and found herself being dragged from the balcony. Struggling, she looked up.
“Kalliades! We must fight on!” she cried.
“We are fighting on, Andromache. But you must rest. You are wounded.”
“Are the doors closed?”
“We have retreated to the megaron, and the doors are closed. The enemy is bringing ladders to the balcony. The fighting there will be hand to hand. It is the only place they can hope to break in until they can force the megaron doors. Your women have been magnificent, and they still have a part to play. We need you and your bows on the gallery. But you must rest first,” he urged. “There is time. Then you will be ready to fight on.”
She nodded and looked at the wound on her shoulder. Blood was flowing freely. She guessed an arrow had made the deep groove, though she could not remember it. “I will have my wound dressed once the other women have been attended to.”
“That has already happened. You were the last to leave the balcony.”
“Are any of them hurt?”
“Yes, but minor wounds only.”
“Then I must see my son.”
He nodded. “Very well. Go, see your son. I will find someone to tend your wound.”
Andromache walked through the palace, pushing her way through a megaron packed with men and horses, hardly seeing the frenzied activity around her, her mind in a whirl. She still could feel the smooth wood of the bow in her palm, the straightness of each arrow in her fingers, the muscles in her arm tensing as she drew back, the smooth release—over and over again.
The queen’s apartments were dusty and dark. Stillness lay on the rooms as heavily as the dust. Wounded men were being cared for in the queen’s gathering room, so she skirted it and made her way to the rear chamber where the boys slept. Astyanax and Dex were fast asleep, tucked up in the same bed, their two heads, one red and one fair, close together.
Andromache watched them breathing and stroked each small head. Her mind slowly calmed.
Behind her a voice said hesitantly, “Andromache?”
She started and turned. “Xander!” she said in surprise, embracing the freckle-faced healer. Kalliades, who had brought him, raised an eyebrow.
“This lad says he is a healer. Clearly you know him.”
“He is a good friend of mine and of Odysseus. We voyaged together. I feared you dead, Xander. You have been gone so long.”
As he examined her shoulder and applied ointment and a dressing, she told him of her travels and of Gershom’s sudden departure from the Xanthos. Xander explained how he had ended up in the enemy camp and talked about the time he’d spent with Odysseus and Achilles.