Kalliades stepped down and handed his mount to a horse boy, then sat beside the powerful warrior. Another youngster brought two cups of watered wine and a plate of meat and corn bread. Kalliades thanked him.
He nudged Banokles and handed him the wine. Banokles sat up and took it. He sipped the wine, and after a while he asked, “Do you think they’ll attack again?”
Kalliades glanced around, but there was no one within earshot. “Agamemnon’s ambition and Achilles’ need for vengeance will feed their determination,” he responded, “at least for a while. Yes, I think they will attack again. But they must come through the pass, so they cannot use the phalanx. It will be a death-or-glory charge.”
“I always liked that one,” Banokles said. “It worked for us. It might work for them. Not a soft-bellied puker up there.” He gestured with his head in the direction of the pass.
Kalliades knew he was right. They had served with the Mykene army themselves for many years, and they both knew that the reputation of those grim warriors was well deserved.
The silence lingered for a while. It was a still night, and Kalliades listened to its sounds: the laughter of the men, the crackling of the nearby campfire, the sounds of horses shifting their hooves and snuffling gently. Then he asked, “What did the king say about generals? He’d rather have a lucky fool than an unlucky genius?”
Banokles frowned and scratched his thick blond beard. “I think that’s what he said. Great Zeus,” he said indignantly, “only a king could get away with calling me a fool.”
“You’re not a fool, Banokles. But you have always been lucky in battle.”
Banokles’ face darkened, and he said nothing. Kalliades guessed he was thinking about luck and about Red, so he stayed silent.
Finally Banokles asked him, “How many battles do you think we’ve been in, Kalliades?”
Kalliades shrugged. “I don’t know. Hundreds.”
“But here we are, waiting for another one. Fit and strong and ready. We’ve neither of us been badly wounded. Just my ear, I suppose.” He rubbed the nub of his ear thoughtfully, then the scar on his right bicep where the sword of Argurios had plunged through it. “Now, we are great warriors, you and I. But we have been lucky, haven’t we?”
He glanced at Kalliades, who nodded his agreement, guessing what he was leading up to.
“So why”—Banokles frowned—“why in the name of Hades does someone like Red, who never did anyone any harm, die like that when we’re still here? What poxy god decided she had to die such a stupid poxy death?”
He looked at Kalliades, who saw grief and anger in his friend’s ice-blue eyes.
“Whores get killed sometimes,” Banokles went on. “It’s a perilous business; everybody knows that. But Red had given up her whoring when she got married. She just loved those honey cakes, and he was the only baker in the city who was still making them. That was the reason she asked him to our house.”
There was another long silence. “And he was only a skinny little runt.”
“He was a baker,” Kalliades said gently. “He had strong arms and shoulders. Red would not have stood a chance.”
Banokles was quiet again, watching as the sky darkened to pitch black. Then he said, “That priestess Piria, Kalliope, whatever she called herself. That was a good death, saving her friend. And that queen on the black stallion. They both had a chance of a warrior’s death even though they’re women. But Red…” His voice trailed off.
“They say heroes who die in battle go to the Elysian Fields and dine in the Hall of Heroes. I’ve always looked forward to that. But what happens to the women who are heroes? Like Piria and that queen? And what happens to Red? Where does she go now?”
Kalliades knew that his comrade was consumed by the grief of loss and by frustration. Banokles had been used to the simple code of the warrior: If someone kills your friend or brother in arms, you take revenge. Yet how could he avenge himself on a dead baker?
Kalliades sighed. “I don’t know the answer to that, my friend. Maybe one day you’ll find out. I hope so.”
He added sadly, “We’ve seen a lot of death, you and I—more than most. You know as well as I do death doesn’t always come to those who deserve it.”
Kalliades’ mind went back to the farm outside Troy and Piria standing on the hillside, her blond hair shining in the light from the blazing barn, her face stern, calmly shooting arrows into the assassins who had come to kill Andromache. He had promised Odysseus that he would take Piria to meet Hektor’s wife, that he would see her safely to the end of her journey. How foolish of him, how arrogant, to think that he could guarantee her safety, as if love were all that was needed. The hurt in him had lessened over the seasons, but the doubt had grown. Had he really loved Piria? Or had Red been right?
He thought of the big whore’s words to him long ago. “We are so alike, Kalliades. Closed off from life, no friends, no loved ones. That is why we need Banokles. He is life, rich and raw in all its glory. No subtlety, no guile. He is the fire we gather around, and his light pushes back the shadows we fear.”
He looked at Banokles, who had lain back again and closed his eyes, his profile barely visible in the firelight. A sudden trickle of fear ran through Kalliades. His old comrade in arms had changed so much in the last few years. His wife’s death had wrought more changes. Would he continue to be the lucky fool Priam had called him?
“Help me. Please help me.” The cry came from a dying man, and the young healer Xander, pulling a cart full of severed limbs past the rows of wounded soldiers at the barracks hospital, hesitated before stopping. He pulled a bloodstained cloth over the cart to hide its grisly load, then went over to the man.
He was a rider. Xander, who had seen more injuries in his young life than most soldiers, could tell at a glance. One leg had been severed raggedly below the knee, perhaps by a blow from an ax. The other had been injured so badly, perhaps by an awkward fall from his mount, that it had been amputated high on the thigh. Both stumps were rotting, and Xander knew the man would die soon and in agony. He laid his hand gently on the man’s shoulder. “Are you Trojan Horse?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, Phegeus son of Dares. Am I dying, sir?” Xander saw that Phegeus had been blinded by a blow to the head. He believed he was being visited by a commanding officer, not a freckle-faced healer of fewer than seventeen summers.
“Yes, soldier,” the youngster said gently. “But the king knows you fought bravely for your city. Your name is on his lips.”
Xander long since had learned to lie glibly to dying men.
“Is he coming, sir? The king?” Phegeus reached out anxiously, grasping at the air, and Xander took his flailing hand and held it between his own.
“King Priam will be here soon,” he said quietly. “He is proud of you.”
“Sir,” the man said confidentially, pulling Xander toward him. “The pain… Sometimes I cannot… Sometimes… the pain is too bad. Let me know when the king comes. I would not have him hear me cry like a woman.”
Xander reassured Phegeus that he would tell him when the king arrived, then left to deposit the contents of his cart outside the barracks. He stopped for a moment, gratefully sucking in the fresh night air off the sea before going back into the hot fetid building.
The king would not come, Xander knew, but he had given Phegeus a small hope to cling to in his dying moments.
He found Machaon, the head of the house, washing blood off his hands in a barrel of water in the corner of the barracks. Machaon was still a relatively young man but now looked like an ancient. His face was gray, the cheekbones jutting from pallid skin. His eyes were hollow and deeply shadowed.
“We need hemlock,” Xander told him urgently. “We have brave men here whose courage falters when they face the torment of their wounds.”