Priam bared his teeth in a confident grin. “My son will save us,” he promised. “Hektor will arrive in time. Hektor never lets me down.”
Polites nodded, clutching his side and watching the blood pumping through his fingers. “He is a good son,” he agreed sadly. Then he closed his eyes and slept.
It was full daylight when he opened his eyes again. More than a dozen Mykene warriors were walking toward them across the roof. Polites sighed and tried to move, but his limbs would not work, and he lay there helpless. He was terribly tired, but he felt no fear. He turned his head and saw that his father somehow had climbed back onto the parapet. The words of Kassandra came to him: “Priam will outlive all his sons.” He thought of her and smiled.
“Goodbye, Father,” he whispered as the old man threw himself from the tower. The last thing he saw was a sword swinging at his neck.
The storm had swept in from Thraki, from the cold heights of the Rhodope Mountains. Its burden of icy rain did little to slow the north wind, a wind strong enough to flay the roofs from peasants’ homes and fishermen’s huts and tear stout branches from trees. Centuries-old oaks, their deep roots loosened in the bone-dry summer, toppled under its might on the slopes of Mount Ida, and wild animals ran for shelter from its howling fury.
The gold roof of Priam’s palace clattered in the gale as the wind tried to pry its precious covering free. All across the city terra-cotta roof tiles were flung about the streets like leaves, and the walls of ruined palaces collapsed.
On the steep hillside outside Troy, Khalkeus the bronzesmith looked into the teeth of the gale and rejoiced.
“Boreas, the north wind. The Devourer, they call him,” he muttered to himself happily. “Let the Devourer eat up the star stones and spit them out for me!”
He gazed up proudly at the towering furnace, the biggest he had built after many failed attempts. The stone tower was square at the base, just two paces to a side, yet it was as high as the walls of the city. His first attempt had toppled over, confounding his calculations of the necessary thickness of the walls. The second and third had been torn down by enemy soldiers while he had hidden close by in the woods, seething with fury at their casual destruction of his labor. But he had braved the Mykene camp and spoken to Agamemnon. Since then the soldiers had left him alone. His last two attempts had been successful in their way. They had built up the necessary heat, but both had burned down, taking the remaining structures on the hillside with them. Khalkeus simply had started again.
“Patience, patience,” he told himself aloud. “Nothing useful was ever wrought without patience.”
He regretted that he had no one to discuss the project with. The Golden One would have been interested, would have understood the construction of the furnace and praised Khalkeus for the valuable work he was doing. With the metal of Ares, Khalkeus would make the perfect sword, one that would not bend or break and that never would get dull.
He had been pleasantly surprised by his conversation with Agamemnon. Khalkeus loathed the Mykene as a race. They were plunderers, pirates, and murderers. He always had imagined that their king would be a brute without intelligence or imagination. But he had asked thoughtful questions about Khalkeus’ work and promised to fund his experiments once the war was over. Khalkeus did not trust him entirely, but the bronzesmith certainly could expect no more support from the Trojans.
A tiny flicker of doubt entered his mind. Another weapon, Khalkeus? he asked himself. After seeing so many men die because of your inventions, do you really want to create another weapon to put in the hands of violent men? He shook his head, shaking free the annoying thought.
Khalkeus had forecast the storm as early as the previous day, and to heat up the furnace he had worked all night and all day. Like a madman, he chortled to himself, the Madman from Miletos!
The furnace had been filled with dry olive branches and white limestone chips for purity. Then he had piled in the batches of gray sponges that were all he had succeeded in making from smelting the red rocks. At the bottom of the furnace was a square door, and inside the door was a shallow pottery bowl to receive the molten metal. At the base of the bowl a tube ran out of the furnace to the sword-shaped casting mold. The door controlled the updraft. It was now fully open, and the ferocious wind gusting around the plateau had built up the heat far beyond what he had achieved before.
Nervously, Khalkeus stepped back a few more paces from the intense heat. I cannot stop it now, he told himself. It is in the hands of the gods. Rolling thunder overhead scarcely could be heard above the deafening roar of the furnace. The howl was like the voice of Cerberus in the gathering darkness.
Then, just as he had feared and dreaded, the huge furnace trembled and suddenly shattered. A roaring blast of heat ripped across the hillside, knocking Khalkeus over. As the fire leaped out from its confines, rocks and debris rained down, narrowly missing him. Half-dazed, he cried out in frustration and beat feverishly at his singed hair and beard.
Rolling over, he crawled on trembling limbs to the edge of the hill and looked over, shielding his eyes from the blaze. Only paces from where he lay, in the middle of the debris, he saw with amazement that the furnace had fulfilled its task before its destruction. The furious heat had turned the star metal to liquid, and it had poured, as intended, into the sword mold even as the chimney had collapsed. The cover over the casting had been torn away, and rain was quenching the red-hot metal.
Hope surged in the old man’s breast. There was a sword, but was it the perfect sword he had dreamed of?
As Khalkeus watched, unbelieving, the last section of chimney toppled slowly toward the sword mold. The smith cried out in an agony of fear as it hit the edge of it, flipping it over, throwing the red-hot sword sizzling into the mud.
Khalkeus scrambled down toward it, struggling to put on the heavy leather gauntlets that hung around his neck. As he touched the glowing sword, the glove instantly smoldered, and he snatched his hand away. He sat gazing greedily at the weapon, only half-aware that the fire had spread to the remaining trees and shrubby undergrowth unscathed by previous blazes.
Slowly, very slowly, the light in the sword died as it cooled under the relentless rain. Khalkeus reached forward and cautiously picked it up.
It was just before sunrise and the storm was past when Kalliades returned to the palace with Astyanax. As he had left the great tower, it had dawned on him how Priam had gotten there: He had walked along the walls. This must be the first time in generations, he thought, when the walls are not manned. Striding swiftly along them, he had met only a couple of soldiers. Both had been drunk, and on this night no one questioned a man in Mykene armor carrying a child.
When he came within a bowshot of the palace, Kalliades started shouting. “Open the gates! It is Kalliades!” He did not want an overenthusiastic archer shooting him down. He heard his name yelled on the wall. The high bronze-reinforced gates slowly opened, and he slid through the gap. Andromache and Banokles were waiting for him on the other side. He handed the child to the princess, who clutched him close to her.
“Mama,” the little boy said sleepily.
Tears of relief and joy ran down Andromache’s face. Gently she kissed her son’s cheek. “I am in your debt, Kalliades. Be certain I shall not forget,” she said gravely. “But what of Priam and Polites?”
“I left them together.” He was unwilling to give her false hope. “I do not expect them to live. Even now this child might be king of Troy.”
She nodded sadly, then turned and walked back to the palace, holding her son tightly.