The Song of Achilles Read online

  I staggered dizzily to my feet; the plain seemed to slew and pound like surf before me. My eyes would not focus; there was too much movement, flashes of sun and armor and skin.

  Achilles appeared from somewhere. He was blood-splattered and breathless, his face flushed, his spear smeared red up to the grip. He grinned at me, then turned and leapt into a clump of Trojans. The ground was strewn with bodies and bits of armor, with spear-shafts and chariot wheels, but he never stumbled, not once. He was the only thing on the battlefield that didn’t pitch feverishly, like the salt-slicked deck of a ship, until I was sick with it.

  I did not kill anyone, or even attempt to. At the end of the morning, hours and hours of nauseating chaos, my eyes were sun blind, and my hand ached with gripping my spear—though I had used it more often to lean on than threaten. My helmet was a boulder crushing my ears slowly into my skull.

  It felt like I had run for miles, though when I looked down I saw that my feet had beaten the same circle over and over again, flattening the same dry grass as if preparing a dancing field. Constant terror had siphoned and drained me, even though somehow I always seemed to be in a lull, a strange pocket of emptiness into which no men came, and I was never threatened.

  It was a measure of my dullness, my dizziness, that it took me until midafternoon to see that this was Achilles’ doing. His gaze was on me always, preternaturally sensing the moment when a soldier’s eyes widened at the easy target I presented. Before the man drew another breath, he would cut him down.

  He was a marvel, shaft after shaft flying from him, spears that he wrenched easily from broken bodies on the ground to toss at new targets. Again and again I saw his wrist twist, exposing its pale underside, those flute-like bones thrusting elegantly forward. My spear sagged forgotten to the ground as I watched. I could not even see the ugliness of the deaths anymore, the brains, the shattered bones that later I would wash from my skin and hair. All I saw was his beauty, his singing limbs, the quick flickering of his feet.

  DUSK CAME AT LAST and released us, limping and exhausted, back to our tents, dragging the wounded and dead. A good day, our kings said, clapping each other on the back. An auspicious beginning. Tomorrow we will do it again.

  We did it again, and again. A day of fighting became a week, then a month. Then two.

  It was a strange war. No territory was gained, no prisoners were taken. It was for honor only, man against man. With time, a mutual rhythm emerged: we fought a civilized seven days out of ten, with time off for festivals and funerals. No raids, no surprise attacks. The leaders, once buoyant with hopes of swift victory, grew resigned to a lengthy engagement. The armies were remarkably well matched, could tussle on the field day after day with no side discernibly stronger. This was due in part to the soldiers who poured in from all over Anatolia to help the Trojans and make their names. Our people were not the only ones greedy for glory.

  Achilles flourished. He went to battle giddily, grinning as he fought. It was not the killing that pleased him—he learned quickly that no single man was a match for him. Nor any two men, nor three. He took no joy in such easy butchery, and less than half as many fell to him as might have. What he lived for were the charges, a cohort of men thundering towards him. There, amidst twenty stabbing swords he could finally, truly fight. He gloried in his own strength, like a racehorse too long penned, allowed at last to run. With a fevered impossible grace he fought off ten, fifteen, twenty-five men. This, at last, is what I can really do.

  I did not have to go with him as often as I had feared. The longer the war dragged on, the less it seemed important to roust every Greek from his tent. I was not a prince, with honor at stake. I was not a soldier, bound to obedience, or a hero whose skill would be missed. I was an exile, a man with no status or rank. If Achilles saw fit to leave me behind, that was his business alone.

  My visits to the field faded to five days, then three, then once every week. Then only when Achilles asked me. This was not often. Most days he was content to go alone, to wade out and perform only for himself. But from time to time he would grow sick of the solitude and beg me to join him, to strap on the leather stiffened with sweat and blood and clamber over bodies with him. To bear witness to his miracles.

  Sometimes, as I watched him, I would catch sight of a square of ground where soldiers did not go. It would be near to Achilles, and if I stared at it, it would grow light, then lighter. At last it might reluctantly yield its secret: a woman, white as death, taller than the men who toiled around her. No matter how the blood sprayed, it did not fall on her pale-gray dress. Her bare feet did not seem to touch the earth. She did not help her son; she did not need to. Only watched, as I did, with her huge black eyes. I could not read the look on her face; it might have been pleasure, or grief, or nothing at all.

  Except for the time she turned and saw me. Her face twisted in disgust, and her lips pulled back from her teeth. She hissed like a snake, and vanished.

  In the field beside him, I steadied, got my sea legs. I was able to discern other soldiers whole, not just body parts, pierced flesh, bronze. I could even drift, sheltered in the harbor of Achilles’ protection, along the battle lines, seeking out the other kings. Closest to us was Agamemnon skilled-at-the-spear, always behind the bulk of his well-ranked Mycenaeans. From such safety he would shout orders and hurl spears. It was true enough that he was skilled at it: he had to be to clear the heads of twenty men.

  Diomedes, unlike his commander, was fearless. He fought like a feral, savage animal, leaping forward, teeth bared, in quick strikes that did not so much puncture flesh as tear it. After, he would lean wolfishly over the body to strip it, tossing the bits of gold and bronze onto his chariot before moving on.

  Odysseus carried a light shield and faced his foes crouched like a bear, spear held low in his sun-browned hand. He would watch the other man with glittering eyes, tracking the flicker of his muscles for where and how the spear would come. When it had passed harmlessly by, he would run forward and spit him at close quarters, like a man spearing fish. His armor was always soaked with blood by the day’s end.

  I began to know the Trojans, too: Paris, loosing careless arrows from a speeding chariot. His face, even strapped and compressed by the helmet, was cruelly beautiful—bones fine as Achilles’ fingers. His slim hips lounged against the sides of his chariot in habitual hauteur, and his red cloak fell around him in rich folds. No wonder he was Aphrodite’s favorite: he seemed as vain as she.

  From far off, glimpsed only quickly through the corridors of shifting men, I saw Hector. He was always alone, strangely solitary in the space the other men gave him. He was capable and steady and thoughtful, every movement considered. His hands were large and work-roughened, and sometimes, as our army withdrew, we would see him washing the blood from them, so he could pray without pollution. A man who still loved the gods, even as his brothers and cousins fell because of them; who fought fiercely for his family rather than the fragile ice-crust of fame. Then the ranks would close, and he would be gone.

  I never tried to get closer to him, and neither did Achilles, who carefully turned from his glimpsed figure to face other Trojans, to wade off to other shoals. Afterwards, when Agamemnon would ask him when he would confront the prince of Troy, he would smile his most guileless, maddening smile. “What has Hector ever done to me?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ONE FESTIVAL DAY, SOON AFTER OUR LANDING AT Troy, Achilles rose at dawn. “Where are you going?” I asked him.

  “My mother,” he said, then slipped through the tent flap before I could speak again.

  His mother. Some part of me had hoped, foolishly, that she would not follow us here. That her grief would keep her away, or the distance. But of course they did not. The shore of Anatolia was no more inconvenient than the shore of Greece. And her grief only made her visits longer. He would leave at dawn, and the sun would be nearly at its peak before he would return. I would wait, pacing and unsettled. What could she possibly have to say
to him for so long? Some divine disaster, I feared. Some celestial dictate that would take him from me.

  Briseis came often to wait with me. “Do you want to walk up to the woods?” she would say. Just the low sweetness of her voice, the fact that she wished to comfort me, helped take me out of myself. And a trip with her to the woods always soothed me. She seemed to know all its secrets, just as Chiron had—where the mushrooms hid, and the rabbits had their burrows. She had even begun to teach me the native names of the plants and trees.

  When we were finished, we would sit on the ridge, looking over the camp, so I could watch for his return. On this day, she had picked a small basket of coriander; the fresh green-leaf smell was all around us.

  “I am sure he will be back soon,” she said. Her words were like new leather, still stiff and precise, not yet run together with use. When I did not answer, she asked, “Where does he stay so long?”

  Why shouldn’t she know? It wasn’t a secret.

  “His mother is a goddess,” I said. “A sea-nymph. He goes to see her.”

  I had expected her to be startled or frightened, but she only nodded. “I thought that he was—something. He does not—” She paused. “He does not move like a human.”

  I smiled then. “What does a human move like?”

  “Like you,” she said.

  “Clumsy, then.”

  She did not know the word. I demonstrated, thinking to make her laugh. But she shook her head, vehemently. “No. You are not like that. That is not what I meant.”

  I never heard what she meant, for at that moment Achilles crested the hill.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” he said. Briseis excused herself, and returned to her tent. Achilles threw himself down on the ground, hand behind his head.

  “I’m starving,” he said.

  “Here.” I gave him the rest of the cheese we had brought for lunch. He ate it, gratefully.

  “What did you talk about with your mother?” I was almost nervous to ask. Those hours with her were not forbidden to me, but they were always separate.

  His breath blew out, not quite a sigh. “She is worried about me,” he said.

  “Why?” I bristled at the thought of her fretting over him; that was mine to do.

  “She says that there is strangeness among the gods, that they are fighting with each other, taking sides in the war. She fears that the gods have promised me fame, but not how much.”

  This was a new worry I had not considered. But of course: our stories had many characters. Great Perseus or modest Peleus. Heracles or almost-forgotten Hylas. Some had a whole epic, others just a verse.

  He sat up, wrapping his arms around his knees. “I think she is afraid that someone else is going to kill Hector. Before me.”

  Another new fear. Achilles’ life suddenly cut shorter than it already was. “Who does she mean?”

  “I don’t know. Ajax has tried and failed. Diomedes, too. They are the best after me. There is no one else I can think of.”

  “What about Menelaus?”

  Achilles shook his head. “Never. He is brave and strong, but that is all. He would break against Hector like water on a rock. So. It is me, or no one.”

  “You will not do it.” I tried not to let it sound like begging.

  “No.” He was quiet a moment. “But I can see it. That’s the strange thing. Like in a dream. I can see myself throwing the spear, see him fall. I walk up to the body and stand over it.”

  Dread rose in my chest. I took a breath, forced it away. “And then what?”

  “That’s the strangest of all. I look down at his blood and know my death is coming. But in the dream I do not mind. What I feel, most of all, is relief.”

  “Do you think it can be prophecy?”

  The question seemed to make him self-conscious. He shook his head. “No. I think it is nothing at all. A daydream.”

  I forced my voice to match his in lightness. “I’m sure you’re right. After all, Hector hasn’t done anything to you.”

  He smiled then, as I had hoped he would. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve heard that.”

  DURING THE LONG HOURS of Achilles’ absence, I began to stray from our camp, seeking company, something to occupy myself. Thetis’ news had disturbed me; quarrels among the gods, Achilles’ mighty fame endangered. I did not know what to make of it, and my questions chased themselves around my head until I was half-crazy. I needed a distraction, something sensible and real. One of the men pointed me towards the white physicians’ tent. “If you’re looking for something to do, they always need help,” he said. I remembered Chiron’s patient hands, the instruments hung on rose-quartz walls. I went.

  The tent’s interior was dim, the air dark and sweet and musky, heavy with the metallic scent of blood. In one corner was the physician Machaon, bearded, square-jawed, pragmatically bare-chested, an old tunic tied carelessly around his waist. He was darker than most Greeks, despite the time he spent inside, and his hair was cropped short, practical again, to keep it from his eyes. He bent now over a wounded man’s leg, his finger gently probing an embedded arrow point. On the other side of the tent his brother Podalerius finished strapping on his armor. He tossed an offhand word to Machaon before shouldering past me out the door. It was well known that he preferred the battlefield to the surgeon’s tent, though he served in both.

  Machaon did not look up as he spoke: “You can’t be very wounded if you can stand for so long.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m here—” I paused as the arrowhead came free in Machaon’s fingers, and the soldier groaned in relief.

  “Well?” His voice was business-like but not unkind.

  “Do you need help?”

  He made a noise I guessed was assent. “Sit down and hold the salves for me,” he said, without looking. I obeyed, gathering up the small bottles strewn on the floor, some rattling with herbs, some heavy with ointment. I sniffed them and remembered: garlic and honey salve against infection, poppy for sedation, and yarrow to make the blood clot. Dozens of herbs that brought the centaur’s patient fingers back to me, the sweet green smell of the rose- colored cave.

  I held out the ones he needed and watched his deft application— a pinch of sedative on the man’s upper lip for him to nose and nibble at, a swipe of salve to ward off infection, then dressings to pack and bind and cover. Machaon smoothed the last layer of creamy, scented beeswax over the man’s leg and looked up wearily. “Patroclus, yes? And you studied with Chiron? You are welcome here.”

  A clamor outside the tent, raised voices and cries of pain. He nodded towards it. “They’ve brought us another—you take him.”

  The soldiers, Nestor’s men, hoisted their comrade onto the empty pallet in the tent’s corner. He had been shot with an arrow, barbed at the tip, through the right shoulder. His face was foamy with sweat-scum, and he’d bitten his lip almost in half with trying not to scream. His breath came now in muffled, explosive pants, and his panicked eyes rolled and trembled. I resisted the urge to call for Machaon—busy with another man who had started to wail—and reached for a cloth to wipe his face.

  The arrow had pierced through the thickest part of his shoulder and was threaded half in and half out, like a terrible needle. I would have to break off the fletching and pull the end through him, without further tearing the flesh or leaving splinters that might fester.

  Quickly, I gave him the draught that Chiron had taught me: a mix of poppy and willow bark that made the patient light-headed and blunted to pain. He could not hold the cup, so I held it for him, lifting and cradling his head so he would not choke, feeling his sweat and foam and blood seep into my tunic.

  I tried to look reassuring, tried not to show the panic I was feeling. He was, I saw, only a year or so older than I. One of Nestor’s sons, Antilochus, a sweet-faced young man who doted on his father. “It will be all right,” I said, over and over, to myself or him I did not know.

  The problem was the arrow shaft; normally a doctor would snap off one end
, before pulling it through. But there was not enough of it sticking out of his chest to do it without tearing the flesh further. I could not leave it, nor drag the fletching through the wound. What then?

  Behind me one of the soldiers who had brought him stood fidgeting in the doorway. I gestured to him over my shoulder.

  “A knife, quickly. Sharp as you can find.” I surprised myself with the brisk authority in my voice, the instant obedience it provoked. He returned with a short, finely honed blade meant for cutting meat, still rusty with dried blood. He cleaned it on his tunic before handing it to me.

  The boy’s face was slack now, his tongue flopping loose in his mouth. I leaned over him and held the arrow shaft, crushing the fletching into my damp palm. With my other hand, I began sawing, cutting through the wood a flake at a time, as lightly as possible, so as not to jar the boy’s shoulder. He snuffled and muttered, lost in the fog of the draught.

  I sawed and braced and sawed. My back ached, and I berated myself for leaving his head on my knees, for not choosing a better position. Finally the feathered end snapped off, leaving only one long splinter that the knife quickly cut through. At last.

  Then, just as difficult: to draw the shaft out the other side of his shoulder. In a moment of inspiration, I grabbed a salve for infection and carefully coated the wood, hoping it would ease the journey and ward off corruption. Then, a little at a time, I began to work the arrow through. After what felt like hours, the splintered end emerged, soaked with blood. With the last of my wits, I wrapped and packed the wound, binding it in a sort of sling across his chest.

  Later Podalerius would tell me that I was insane to have done what I did, to have cut so slowly, at such an angle—a good wrench, he said, and the end would have broken. Jarred wound and splinters inside be damned, there were other men who needed tending. But Machaon saw how well the shoulder healed, with no infection and little pain, and next time there was an arrow wound he called me over and passed me a sharp blade, looking at me expectantly.