There was a lusty cheer from the oarsmen, most of whom were Dardanians and were looking forward to returning to their families. As Andromache watched, the other ship’s sail was furled and her rowers took up the beat. The two ships glided toward each other. As they met, rowers on the approaching sides shipped their oars, and ropes were thrown across, lashing the ships together.
Andromache made her way along the aisle of the Xanthos to the stern. Helikaon glanced at her, his face expressionless. “It is the Boreas,” he said.
They waited in silence as the Dardanian ship’s young fair-haired captain shinnied up a rope, climbed to the deck, and fell to his knees before Helikaon. “Golden One, thank the mercy of Poseidon we met you,” he said breathlessly. “We were expecting the Xanthos to sail up the coast, and most of our ships are off Lesbos, waiting for you.”
“Calm down, Asios. Why was the Boreas waiting?”
“Troy is under siege, lord,” the young man told him, “and the Mykene fleet of Menados holds the entrance to the Hellespont. Agamemnon is camped in the Bay of Herakles with a thousand ships. We hoped to warn you before you sailed unknowing into them.”
Andromache closed her eyes. She had left Astyanax thinking he was safe in Troy. The familiar demon of guilt clawed at her. She had left her son to be with her lover. Who did she think of more often on her journey, her only son or Helikaon?
Helikaon was asking, “What of Dardanos?”
“The Mykene have ignored the fortress. Our people are safe for a while. Agamemnon has pulled his troops away from Thebe as well, lady.” He glanced at Andromache and flushed. “He has thrown all his forces and those of the western kings into an attack on the Golden City.”
“And Hektor?” Andromache asked.
“Hektor leads the Trojan defense, but they are outnumbered, and the last we heard they had been pushed back to the lower town. King’s Joy is taken, and the plain of the Scamander.” He hesitated. “Prince Paris and his wife are dead. And Prince Antiphones.”
Andromache, stunned by the news, saw the color drain from Helikaon’s face. “All dead?” he said, his deep voice grave.
“There has been great slaughter on both sides, lord. The funeral pyres burn night and day. If the Xanthos had arrived after dark, you would have seen their light from far across the Great Green.”
“The city is surrounded?”
“No, lord. All their efforts are on the south of the city, at the fortification ditch. People can still flee through the Scaean Gate or the Dardanian Gate. Everyone is leaving,” he said. “But that was six days ago. The situation changes daily. The Boreas has had no word since then.”
Oniacus stepped forward. “Agamemnon has left his ships vulnerable at the Bay of Herakles, Golden One,” he said. “Our fire hurlers can destroy his ships in one night, as we did at Imbros.”
Helikaon frowned. “Perhaps later. But at the moment, sadly, I do not have that choice. The city is awaiting our cargo of tin, is it not, Asios?”
The young man nodded. “The city’s forges are dark,” he said. “Troy desperately needs weapons and armor.”
Suddenly he glanced toward the coast, startled, and they all turned. In the distance at the tip of Trojan lands, the Cape of Tides, a light had appeared. It was a beacon, blazing brightly.
Helikaon gazed at it and frowned. “A beacon, but telling what to whom? Asios, is the Cape of Tides in Trojan or Mykene hands?”
“I know not, lord. Trojan when I last heard.” He shrugged.
“It tells us nothing, then,” Helikaon said briskly, his decision made. “Oniacus, we will sail on to the Hellespont and the Bay of Troy, then make our way up the Simoeis. We will berth there and, if Athene favors us, smuggle our tin into the city from the north.”
“But Menados’ fleet holds the Hellespont,” the young captain repeated. “Even the Xanthos cannot defeat his fifty ships!”
“But,” Helikaon said thoughtfully, “maybe together the Xanthos and the Boreas can.”
The Mykene admiral Menados looked up from the high deck of his patrol ship and saw a beacon blazing on the topmost cliff of the Cape of Tides.
“What does it mean, Admiral?” asked his aide, his sister’s son, a bright enough boy but with no initiative.
“I do not know,” the admiral told him. “The Trojans are signaling someone, but we cannot tell who or what the signal means. Much good may it do them,” he grunted. “They are all dead men, anyway.”
Like his crews, Menados was bored and frustrated after long days of sailing the Hellespont. Of his fleet of fifty-seven, he had ordered thirty ships to patrol the length of the Trojan coast from the tip of the Thrakian shore to the Bay of Herakles. Seven ships, including this own, the new bireme Alektruon, held station against the current in the Hellespont. The remaining twenty ships were beached on the coast of Thraki, their men relieved to sleep and eat. The ships’ duties were rotated regularly, but it was no work for fighting men, he thought, traveling back and forth, first under oars and then under sail, over and over again, wearing out the oarsmen and blunting the skills of their captains. Menados privately thought the duty was Agamemnon’s punishment of him for the mercy Helikaon had shown him at Dardanos.
Word of the blockade had traveled swiftly through the lands bordering the Hellespont, and no ship so far had tried to break it and sail out of the straits. They had sunk one Dardanian ship trying to break in under cover of darkness, and two Hittite merchants had tried to run the blockade and get home, angry at Agamemnon’s high-handed action in closing the straits to the ships of all lands.
As the doomed Hittite seamen had struggled in the cold, treacherous waters, Menados had been asked if the Mykene ships should pick them up. Let them die, had been his order. Personally, it would have been his choice to rescue them; he had respect for seamen of all lands, and it would have been easy enough to drop them on the Thrakian coast to make their way home on foot. But word could not get back to the Hittite emperor that his ships were being sunk by the Mykene. The few strong swimmers who seemed likely to make it to the shore were stalked by the ships, then picked off by archers when they failed to drown.
“Ship to the north!”
The admiral turned and shaded his eyes. Members of the Alektruon’s crew jumped up to look, eager for action. The distant ship was under sail, speeding toward them, pushed by the stiff northerly. Menados could not see its markings in the failing light but hoped it was Dardanian or Trojan.
Most of the Trojan fleet was bottled up in the Bay of Troy. It could not get out, but equally, the Mykene fleet could not get in. Priam never had acquired the strength of shipping justified by such a great city, relying instead on the huge Dardanian fleet built up by his kinsmen Anchises and Helikaon for his trading and defense. There were a mere eighteen Trojan ships trapped in the bay, but many were said to be equipped with fire hurlers, which balanced Menados’ numerical advantage. It was a stalemate.
With more ships at his disposal, Menados knew he could take the bay easily. But Agamemnon needed every available foot soldier to capture the city, for they were dying in the thousands.
Menados sighed. The crewmen confined to his ships should be content to stay aboard. Daily they saw in the sky above Troy the evidence of the funeral pyres, pillars of smoke by day and a fiery glow by night.
“It’s a Dardanian ship, lord!” his aide cried. “Your orders?”
Now Menados could see for himself the black horse sail. Not the Xanthos, though, he thought. Too small. A pity.