Machaon turned to him, and Xander could see the pain in his eyes. “There is no hemlock to be found in the city,” the healer responded. “My prayers to the serpent god have gone unanswered.”
Xander realized in a moment of dread that Machaon was not just exhausted, he was gravely ill.
“What’s wrong, Machaon?” he cried. “You are suffering, too.”
Machaon stepped closer to the youngster, then lowered his voice. “I have had a vileness growing in my belly since the winter. I have tried herbs and cleansing honey, but it continues to grow.” His face suddenly spasmed, and he bent over as if gripped by a clawing pain. When he stood up again, his skin was ashen and beaded with sweat, his eyes unfocused.
“I have told no one, Xander,” he said shakily. “I ask you to keep my secret. But I am too ill to travel down to the battlefield. You must go in my place.”
Despite his concern for his mentor, Xander’s heart leaped. It was a chance to leave this place of death and go out in the fresh air, to deal with the lesser wounds of men who were not dying, not in agony. Hektor had decreed that all wounded men who could walk should stay out on the plain in case of a further attack by Agamemnon’s armies. Those with serious wounds that were likely to heal were carried to the House of Serpents in the upper city to recover their strength for future battles. Those likely to die were in this hospital, the former barracks of the Ileans. The barracks were in the lower town, inside the fortification ditch and just a short distance from the funeral pyres that had been burning day and night.
“I will go, Machaon,” he responded, “but you must rest.” He looked into the tortured eyes and saw no chance of rest there. “Where do I go?”
“There are injured men everywhere. They will not be hard to find. Do your best.” As Xander turned to go, Machaon’s hand shot out and grabbed his arm. The boy could feel only cold from the older man’s bony fingers. “You always do your best, Xander,” he said.
Xander packed a leather bag full of healing potions, bandages, his favorite herbs, needles of different sizes, and thread. Then he snatched up a jug of wine and three water skins and set off toward the battlefield.
The evening was cool, and as he walked, Xander tried to imagine that he was back home on Kypros, strolling the green hills among his grandfather’s herds. The distant cries of injured men became the gentle bleating of the wandering goats. He half closed his eyes as he walked and could smell the distant sea and hear the cry of the gulls. He stumbled on the rough path and nearly fell, and he grinned at his foolishness. Yes, he thought, walk about with your eyes closed and break a leg, Xander.
Machaon had been right. The injured were not hard to find. Xander walked among them, placing clean bandages on wounds and sewing cuts on faces with fine needles. He used larger bandages for legs and arms, along with thicker needles and sturdier thread. He boiled his herbs in water over soldiers’ campfires to make healing brews and splinted broken fingers. He urged some of the more seriously injured men to go up to the houses of healing, but all refused. He could not blame them.
The long night wore on, and as the sky started to lighten in the east, Xander carried on working. He had met many of the soldiers before; they had come to him with their wounds and their unexplained pains and minor illnesses, some of them many times over the years. They greeted him as a comrade and joked with him in the way of soldiers everywhere. They called him Shortshanks and Freckles, and he flushed with pleasure at the affection in which he was held.
The sky lightened, the air warmed, and a heavy mist came rolling down the Scamander valley, making it hard for him to see. He was so tired, he could hardly stumble from one small campfire to the next, and his trembling hands no longer could sew wounds. Still he walked on.
“Time to go, Xander,” said a familiar voice in his ear.
“Machaon?” he asked, looking around him, but the fog obscured everything. “Machaon? Is that you?”
“Quickly, boy,” the voice said with urgency. “Stop what you are doing now and hurry back to the city. Quickly now.”
Xander packed his leather bag hurriedly and threw it over one shoulder, then picked up the empty water skins and started to make for the river. He barely could see his hand in front of his face, and he was forced to walk slowly, careful not to stumble over waking men or into the flanks of dozing horses.
Then out of the mist came a loud cry, echoing eerily through the darkness and picked up by rank after rank of warriors’ voices, “Awake! Awake! They are coming!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE FOG OF WAR
Earlier that night, after the sun fell below the horizon to reveal a sky full of stars, Odysseus had stood on the walls of King’s Joy, nursing a pain in his shoulder and a wound to his heart.
Three days previously, his valiant force of Ithakans and Kephallenians had been fighting on the Scamander plain when the Trojan Horse had punched into the western armies like a battering ram, turning a knife-edge battle into a near rout.
Two of Hektor’s riders had charged as one into Odysseus’ infantry, each guarding the other’s flank, hacking with their swords, killing and wounding all around them. As one rider raised his sword high to slash at a young crewman from the Bloodhawk, Odysseus, running up behind, lanced a spear deep into the rider’s side, straight into the heart. The bronze spear head lodged under a rib. Odysseus tried to drag it out but pulled the dead rider off his horse. With dead and dying warriors around him, the Ithakan king was slow to get out of the way, and the body fell on him, dislocating his shoulder. The arm bone had been wrenched back into place by Podaleirios, the Thessalian surgeon, but even now, days later, Odysseus was still in pain. He had thrown away the sling he had been given and had hidden his discomfort from others. But now, as he moved his arm experimentally, as if swinging a sword, he cursed as agony fired through his shoulder.
Twenty years ago, he thought irritably, or even ten, I would have shaken off this injury within a day.
The greater agony, though, was in his heart. He remembered Penelope’s words years before on the beach at Ithaka. “I fear you will have hard choices to make. Do not make bullheaded decisions you will regret afterward and cannot change. Do not take these men into a war, Odysseus.”
“I have no wish for war, my love,” he had told her, and he had meant it.
How the gods on Olympos must be reveling in the irony, he thought ruefully. Or perhaps his wife’s fear never should have been voiced at all, lest the gods were listening and chose to make it real.
For here he was, within sight of the Golden City, his loyal men fighting side by side with the Mykene for Agamemnon, whose obsession was to destroy the city, kill Odysseus’ former friends, and take its wealth for himself.
He remembered Helikaon’s words to him at their last meeting: “I have not seen Priam’s hoard of gold, but it would have to be mountainous to maintain the expense of this war. Gold passes from the city every day, to hire mercenaries, to bribe allies. And there is little coming in now. If the fighting goes on much longer and you do take the city, you may find nothing of real worth.”
Odysseus smiled grimly to himself. Agamemnon and his fellow kings still had faith in the riches of Priam. At least they had a reason to fight. What is your excuse, Ugly One? he heard Penelope say. Because you gave your word? Is your word so powerful, so sacred, that you must fight with your enemies against your friends?