“Can you win?”
“I have beaten everyone who has ever come against me. And I have beaten Achilles before. You were there.”
“Yes, it was brutal.”
He nodded. “Fistfights can be like that. This will be a duel to the death with swords.”
Her blood ran cold as she thought of it. “It must be quick,” she told him, thinking back to Helikaon’s duel with Persion.
“Yes.” He nodded. “The longer it goes on, the more likely he is to kill me. He is very skilled, very fast, and he is younger than I am. But he has weaknesses. Pride and vanity are his constant companions. They are unreliable friends and often give bad advice.”
“That is not very reassuring,” she said, smiling slightly.
He shook his head. “It is all I have to offer, Andromache.”
Hektor called for food. He ate a meal of salt fish and corn bread, and they both sipped wine as they talked deep into the night. She told him of the desperate situation in Troy, the fact that the entire city now relied for water on one unreliable well, and the dire state of the granaries. They discussed the successes of the Xanthos and those of the Trojan Horse. He asked about Astyanax, and she made him laugh by telling him the trivial gossip of the palace.
At last Hektor, weary beyond words, threw himself on the bed and was instantly asleep. Andromache watched him for a while, her heart aching. Then she walked back out onto the terrace.
The moon was riding high, and she stood looking at it for a while. Then she did something she had not done since she had left the sanctuary of Thera. She prayed to her own special deity, Artemis the moon goddess.
“O Lady of the Wild Things,” she pleaded, “protector of small children, take pity on your sister, and protect my husband tomorrow. Guard him so that he can return to guard his son.”
Then she lay on the couch listening to the night sounds of the city and eventually drifted into a troubled sleep.
It was daylight when she was woken abruptly by a shrill cry. She leaped up, startled, and rushed indoors. There she found little Astyanax standing in the doorway to his bedchamber, gazing up in fear at Hektor, who had donned his bronze armor, including the high helm with its black-and-white crest.
Hektor laughed and pulled off the helm again. “Don’t be frightened, boy.” He knelt in front of the child and picked him up, holding him in front of his face. “See, you remember me. I am your father.”
Astyanax grinned with delight and cried, “Papa! Did you bring my pony?”
“Not yet, boy. When you are a bit older, you will have the pony I promised.”
The child reached out and ran his small finger along the lines of the golden horse embossed on Hektor’s breastplate. “Like this, Papa?”
“Yes, just like this one.” Hektor looked at Andromache, and there was anguish in his eyes as he held the boy close to him. He shook his head, and Andromache knew what he was thinking.
“Many other men’s sons will live because of what you do today, my love,” she reassured him.
He breathed a deep sigh, looking down on the child’s flame-colored hair. “It is not enough,” he answered. “I can never do enough.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE BRAVEST OF THE TROJANS
As dawn cast its pink rays over the city, the massive Scaean Gate swung open a crack and a small girl toddled out. She was scarcely more than a baby, with big blue eyes and golden curls. When she saw the armed men lined up outside, she stopped in surprise, then sat down suddenly. Sitting in the dust she started to wail.
A young woman followed her through the gates, crying, “Susa, I told you to wait for me!” She saw the enemy soldiers, and her face went ashen, but she ran forward and picked up the child. She carried a shapeless bag of belongings under one arm, and she tucked the crying girl under the other. Then she looked around.
Odysseus stepped forward. “You know where you are going, woman?”
She nodded, bobbing her head nervously.
“Then go!” he roared, pointing down the road that led through the lower town and across the Scamander plain to the safety of the sea.
“Thank you, sir,” she whispered, passing him, head down. “Thank you, lord.”
Next through the gates was a skinny old crone with two children, a boy and a girl, held tightly by their hands. She glared when she saw the soldiers and hurried past the watching ranks as quickly as possible.
As more women came out from the gate, Odysseus signaled to his Ithakan riders to accompany the exodus toward the Bay of Herakles. One trotted his horse up to the first woman and, leaning from his mount, picked up the crying toddler by one arm and lifted her up in front of him. The girl stopped wailing instantly, startled into silence.
Throughout the morning there was a continuous stream of refugees out of the city until, Odysseus guessed, the line of them stretched all the way from the Scaean Gate to the bay. There were a few donkey carts and a couple of starved-looking horses, but most of the women walked. There were wives with small children and some young women traveling in groups, but many of the refugees were sturdy older women, soldiers’ wives and camp followers who were used to walking long distances behind moving armies. They did not pale when they passed the enemy warriors; they marched with their heads high.
Odysseus glanced at Agamemnon from time to time. Tall and stooped in his black cloak, the Mykene king was standing watching the refugees. Odysseus was reminded of a hungry vulture deprived of its prey. Alongside him was a thin, swarthy man called Dolon. Each time a woman or child with red hair came out of the gates, Agamemnon would look at Dolon, who would shake his head. Odysseus knew the man once had played a role in the Trojan royal household and guessed he would be well rewarded for this day’s work.
Long before noon the trickle of refugees from the gate stopped. There was an expectant silence among the waiting soldiers, then finally Hektor himself walked out. He was in full armor of bronze, his black-and-white crested helm held under one arm and four swords in the other hand. He looked twice the size of any of the men around him, and he gazed at them without expression. The Scaean Gate closed behind him, and they all heard the locking bar being rammed firmly into place.
Odysseus walked up to the prince, who asked him, “Will they be safe, sea uncle?”
The king nodded. “You have my word. The first ones to leave are already on Kypriot ships. The masters have been well paid to take them to Lesbos. And many will have enough rings for passage far away from here.”
Hektor’s face was grave, and Odysseus could see the tension around his eyes.
“Then let’s get on with it,” he said.
Followed by hundreds of warriors, the two walked around the walls to the west of the city. There the wall was lowest, and the people of Troy could watch the combat from the battlements. A wide area of ground had been leveled off during the night, and a huge circular trench dug, wider than a man could leap across. It was filled with glowing coals, and the heat rising from them made the air shimmer. The arena of combat inside the trench was more than fifty paces wide, and Odysseus knew the ground had been scrutinized closely for loose pebbles that could make a fighter lose his footing. Thousands of soldiers were gathering around the circle, six to eight deep, jostling for a vantage point. The ones at the back pushed forward; those at the front tried to stay back from the heat of the coals.
Achilles was waiting alongside the priest of Ares. He was garbed in his black armor and helm, and if he noticed the heat, he did not show it. There were four swords at his feet, as agreed. Hektor checked the straps on his breastplate, then put on his helm. He placed his swords on the ground by the priest. Odysseus noticed that the hilts of Hektor’s swords were incised with the horse insignia of the house of Priam.