Ilium (14 page)

“Who among us knows the will of the Fates?” snaps Ares, still pouting, his arms folded across his powerful chest.

“Father does.”

“Zeus
says
he does,” says the god of war with a sneer.

“Are you doubting our lord and master?” Athena’s tone is almost, not quite, light and teasing.

Ares looks around quickly, and for a second I fear I’ve given myself away by making a noise where I stand on a flat boulder, afraid to leave footprints in the sand. But the war god’s gaze moves on.

“I show no disrespect to our Father,” Ares says at last, his voice reminding me of Richard Nixon’s when he was speaking into the hidden Oval Office microphone he knew was there. Putting his lies on the record. “My allegiance and loyalty and love all go to Zeus, Pallas Athena.”

“Which our Father must certainly note and reciprocate,” responds Athena, no longer hiding the sarcasm in her voice.

Suddenly Ares’ head snaps up. “God damn you,” he shouts. “You just brought me here to get me away from the battlefield while your cursed Achaeans kill more of my Trojans.”

“Of course.” Athena launches the two syllables as a taunt, and for a second I think I’m going to witness something I’ve not seen in my nine years here—a direct battle between two gods.

Instead, Ares kicks sand in a final show of petulance and QT’s away. Athena laughs, kneels by the Scamander, and splashes cold water on her face. “Fool,” she whispers—to herself, I presume, but I take it as a statement directed at me protected here only by the Hades Helmet’s distortion field; “Fool” seems to me an accurate judgment of my folly.

Athena QT’s back to the battlefield. After a minute devoted to trembling at my own foolishness, I phase-shift and follow.

The Greeks and Trojans are still killing each other. Big news.

I seek out the only other scholic visible on the field. To the unaided eye, Nightenhelser is just another slovenly Trojan foot-soldier hanging back from the worst of the fighting, but I can see the telltale green glow the gods have marked us scholics with even when we’re morphed, so I take off the Hades Helmet, morph into the form of Phalces—a Trojan who will be killed by Antilochus by and by—and I walk over to join Nightenhelser where he stands on a low ridge looking down on the carnage.

“Good morning, Scholic Hockenberry,” he says when I approach. We’re speaking in English. No other Trojan is near enough to hear us over the clash of bronze and the rumble of chariots and both of these motley coalitions are used to odd tribal languages and dialects.

“Good morning, Scholic Nightenhelser.”

“Where have you been the last half hour or so?”

“Taking a break,” I say. It happens. Sometimes the carnage gets to be too much even for us scholics and we QT away to Troy for a quiet hour or so—or for a large flagon of wine. “Did I miss much?”

Nightenhelser shrugs. “Diomedes came charging in about twenty minutes ago and was struck by an arrow. Right on schedule.”

“Pandarus’ arrow,” I say, nodding. Pandarus is the same Trojan archer who wounded Menelaus earlier.

“I saw Aphrodite inciting Pandarus,” says Nightenhelser. The big man has his hands in the pockets of his rough cape. Trojan capes had no pockets, of course, so Nightenhelser had sewn these in.

This
was news. Homer had not sung of Aphrodite urging Pandarus to shoot Diomedes, only of Athena’s earlier prompting of the archer to wound Menelaus so the war would resume. Poor Pandarus is literally a fool of the gods this day—his last day.

“Flesh wound for Diomedes?” I say.

“Shoulder. Sthenelus was there and pulled it out. Evidently this arrow wasn’t poisoned. Athena QT’d into the fray a minute ago, took her pet Diomedes aside, and ‘
put energy into his limbs, his feet, and his fighting hands
.’ “ Nightenhelser was quoting some translation of Homer that I’m not familiar with.

“More nanotech,” I say. “Has Diomedes found the archer and killed him yet?”

“About five minutes ago.”

“Did Pandarus give that endless speech before Diomedes killed him?” I ask. In my favorite translation, Pandarus bemoans his fate for forty lines, has a long dialogue with a Trojan captain named Aeneas—yes,
the
Aeneas—and the two go charging at Diomedes in a chariot, flinging spears at the wounded Achaean.

“No,” says Nightenhelser. “Pandarus just said ‘Fuck me’ when the arrow missed its mark. Then he leaped on the chariot with Aeneas, tosssed a spear that went right through Diomedes’ shield and breastplate—but missed flesh—and said, ‘Shit,’ in the second before Diomedes’ spear caught him right between the eyes. Another case, I presume, of Homer’s poetic license in all the speech-making.”

“And Aeneas?” That encounter is crucial to history as well as the
Iliad
. I can’t believe I missed it.

“Aphrodite saved him just a minute ago,” confirms Nightenhelser. Aeneas is the mortal son of the goddess of love and she watches over him carefully. “Diomedes smashed Aeneas’ hipbone to bits with a boulder, just as in the poem, but Aphrodite protected her wounded boy with a forcefield and is carrying him off the field now. It really pissed Diomedes off.”

I shield my eyes with my hand. “Where is Diomedes now?” But I see the Greek warrior before Nightenhelser can point him out, about a hundred yards away, in the center of a melee, far behind Trojan lines. There is a mist of blood in the air around shining Diomedes and a heap of corpses on each side of the slashing, hacking, stabbing Achaean. The augmented Diomedes appears to be hacking his way through waves of human flesh to catch up to the slowly retreating Aphrodite. “Jesus,” I say softly.

“Yeah,” says the other scholic. “In the last few minutes he’s killed Astynous and Hypiron, Abas and Polyidus, Xanthus and Thoon, Echemmon and Chromius . . . all the captain Pairs.”

“Why in twos?” I ask, thinking aloud.

Nightenhelser looks at me as if I’m a slow student in one of his freshman classes. “They were in
chariots,
Hockenberry. Two men per chariot. Diomedes killed them all as the chariots came at him.”

“Ah,” I say, embarrassed now. My attention isn’t on the murdered Trojan captains but on Aphrodite. The goddess has just paused in her retreat from the Trojan lines, still carrying the wounded Aeneas, and is now strutting to and fro, clearly visible to the milling and frightened Trojans fleeing Diomedes’ attack. Aphrodite is forcing the Trojan fighters back toward the fray with stabs of electricity and shimmering forcefield shoves.

Diomedes sees the goddess and goes berserk, hacking his way through a final protective line of Trojans to confront the goddess herself. He does not speak but readies his long spear. Aphrodite raises a forcefield almost casually, still carrying the wounded Aeneas, obviously not worried by a mere mortal’s attack.

She has forgotten Athena’s modifications of Diomedes.

Diomedes leaps forward, the goddess’s forcefield crackles and gives way, the Achaean lunges with his long spear and the shaft and barb of it tear through Aphrodite’s personal forcefield, silken robes, and divine flesh. The razor-sharp spearpoint slashes the goddess’s wrist so that red muscle and white bone show. Golden ichor—rather than red blood—sprays into the air.

Aphrodite stares at the wound for a second and then screams—an inhuman scream, something huge and amplified, a female roar out of a bank of amplifiers at a rock concert from hell.

She reels, stil screaming, and drops Aeneas.

Rather than press home his successful attack on Aphrodite, Diomedes unsheaths his sword and prepares to decapitate the unconscious Aeneas.

Phoebus Apollo, lord of the silver bow, QT’s into solidity between the berserk Diomedes and the fallen Trojan and holds the Achaean at bay with a pulsing hemisphere of plasma forcefield. Blinded by bloodlust, Diomedes hacks away at the forcefield, his own energy field crashing red against Apollo’s defensive yellow shield. Aphrodite is still staring at her mangled wrist, and it looks as if she may swoon and lie there helpless in front of the still-raging Diomedes. The goddess seems unable to concentrate enough to QT while in such pain.

Suddenly her brother Ares arrives in a blazing flying chariot, shoving aside Trojans and Greeks alike as he widens the ship’s plasma footprint to land by his sister. Aphrodite is blubbering and wailing in pain, trying to explain that Diomedes has gone mad. “
He’d
fight Father Zeus!” screams the goddess, collapsing in the war god’s arms.

“Can you fly this?” demands Ares.

“No!” Aphrodite does swoon now. She falls into Ares’ arms, still cradling the injured left hand and wrist in her bloody—or ichorish—right hand. It is strangely disturbing to watch. Gods and goddesses don’t bleed. At least not in my nine years here.

The goddess Iris, Zeus’s personal messenger, flicks onto the battlefield between the chariot and Apollo’s forcefield where the god still protects the fallen Aeneas. The Trojans have backed away now, eyes bugging, and Diomedes is being held at bay by the overlapped energy fields. The Achaean is radiating heat and fury in the infrared, looking all the world like a warrior made out of pulsing lava.

“Take her to her mother,” commands Ares, laying the unconscious Aphrodite on the floor of the chariot. Iris lifts the energy-craft skyward and phase-shifts it out of sight.

“Amazing,” says Nightenhelser.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” I say. It is the first time in my more than nine years here that I have seen a Greek or Trojan successfully attack a god. I turn to see Nightenhelser staring at me in shock. I forget sometimes that the scholic is from a previous decade. “Well, it is,” I say defensively.

I want to follow Aphrodite to Olympos and see what happens between her and Zeus. Homer had written about it, of course, but there already has been enough disparity between the poem and real events here today to pique my interest.

I begin edging away from Nightenhelser—who is watching events so raptly that he does not notice my departure—and ready myself to don the Hades Helmet and twist the personal QT medallion’s controls. But something is happening on the battlefield.

Diomedes lets out a war cry almost as loud as Aphrodite’s still-echoing scream of pain, and then the augmented Achaean charges Aeneas and Apollo again. This time, Diomedes’ nano-strengthened body and phase-shifted sword hack through Apollo’s outer layers of energy shield.

The god stands motionless as Diomedes hacks and cuts his way through the shimmering forcefield like a man shoveling invisible snow.

Then Apollo’s voice rings out with amplification that must be audible two or three miles away. “
Think,
Diomedes! Back off! Enough of this mortal insanity—warring with the gods. We’re not of the same breed, human. We never were. We never will be.” Apollo grows in size from his imposing eight feet of stature to become a giant more than twenty feet tall.

Diomedes halts his attack and backs away, although it is impossible to tell whether it is out of temporary fear or sheer exhaustion.

Apollo bends down and opaques the forcefields around him and the fallen Aeneas. When the black fog disappear a minute later, the god is gone but Aeneas is still lying there, wounded, hip shattered, bleeding. The Trojan fighters rush to form a circle around their fallen and abandoned leader before Diomedes slaughters him.

It is not Aeneas. I know that Apollo has left a tensile hologram behind and carried the real wounded prince to the heights of Pergamus—Ilium’s citadel—where the goddesses Leto and Artemis, Ares’ sister, will use their nanotech god-medicine to save Aeneas’ life and mend his wounds in minutes.

I’m ready to flick away to Olympos when suddenly Apollo QT’s back to the battlefield, shielded from mortal view. Ares, still rallying Trojans behind his defensive shield, looks up when the other god arrives.

“Ares, destroyer of men, you stormer of ramparts, are you going to let that piece of dogshit insult you like that?” Invisible to the Achaeans, Apollo is pointing at the panting and recovering Diomedes.

“Insult me? How has he insulted me?”

“You idiot,” thunders Apollo in ultrasonic frequencies audible only to the gods and scholics and the dogs in Troy, who set up a fearsome howling in response. “That . . . that
mortal
. . . has just assaulted the goddess of love, your sister, slashing the tendons of her immortal wrist. Diomedes even charged
me,
one of the most powerful of the gods. Athena has made him into something superhuman to make Ares, war god, reeking of blood, into a laughingstock!”

Ares’ head swivels back toward the panting Diomedes, who has been ignoring the god since his attempt to cut through the forcefields failed.

“He makes fun of
me!?
” screams Ares in a shout everyone from here to Olympos can hear. I’ve noted over the years that Ares is rather stupid for a god. He’s proving it today. “He dares make jest of
me!!??
”

“Kill him,” cries Apollo, still speaking in the ultrasonic. “Cut out his heart and eat it.” And the god of the silver bow QT’s away.

Ares is going crazy. I decide I can’t leave yet. I desperately want to QT to Olympos and see how badly injured Aphrodite is, but this is just too interesting to miss.

First, the war god morphs into the runner Acamas, prince of Thrace, and runs to and from among the milling Trojans, urging them back into the battle to push the Greeks out of the salient they have created following Diomedes into the Trojan lines. Then Ares morphs into the form of Sarpedon and taunts Hector—the hero is holding back from the fight with rare reticence. Shamed by what he thinks are Sarpedon’s accusations, Hector rejoins his men. When Ares sees that Hector is rallying the main body of Trojan fighters, the god becomes himself and joins the circle of fighters holding the Greeks away from the hologram of unconscious Aeneas.

I confess I’ve never seen fighting this fierce during my nine years here. If Homer taught us anything, it is that the human being is a frail vessel, a fleshly flagon of blood and loose guts just waiting to be spilled.

They’re spilling now.

The Achaeans don’t wait for Ares to get his second wind, but rush in with chariot and spear behind the wild leadership of Diomedes and Odysseus. Horses scream. Chariots splinter and tumble. Horsemen drive their steeds into a wall of spearpoints and gleaming shields. Diomedes flames to the front again, calling his men forward even while he kills every Trojan who comes within his reach.