"You can't stay by yourself," I insisted. "You have no house, no shelter of any kind. How will you find food?"

He reached up for my shoulder as unerringly as if he could see. "Let me sit in a corner of the marketplace and tell the tale of Troy," he said. "I will have food and wine and a soft bed before the sun goes down."

"Is that what you truly want?" I asked him.

"I have burdened you long enough, my lord. Now I can take care of myself."

He stood there before me in the pale light of a gray morning, a clean white scarf over his eyes, a fresh tunic hanging over his skinny frame. I learned then that even blinded eyes can cry. And so could I.

We embraced like brothers, and he turned without another word and walked slowly toward the city gate, tapping his stick before him.

I sent the others off on the inland road, telling them I would catch up later. I waited half the day, then entered the city and made my way to the marketplace. Poletes sat there cross-legged in the middle of a large and rapidly growing throng, his arms gesturing, his wheezing voice speaking slowly, majestically: "Then mighty Achilles prayed to his mother, Thetis the Silver-Footed, 'Mother, my lifetime is destined to be so brief that ever-living Zeus, sky-thunderer, owes me a worthier prize of glory...' "

I watched for only a few minutes. That was enough. Men and women, boys and little girls, were rushing up to join the crowd, their eyes fastened on Poletes like the eyes of a bird hypnotized by a snake. Rich merchants, soldiers in chain mail, women of fashion in their colorful robes, city magistrates carrying their wands of office-they all pressed close to hear Poletes's words. Even the other storytellers, left alone once Poletes had started singing of Troy, got up from their accustomed stones and ambled grudgingly across the marketplace to listen to the newcomer.

Poletes was right, I reluctantly admitted. He had found his place. He would be fed and sheltered here, even honored. And as long as we were far away, he could sing of Troy and Helen all he wanted to.

I went back to the city gate, where I had left my horse with the guards there. I handed their corporal a few coppers, and nosed my chestnut mount up the inland trail. I would never see Poletes again, and that made me feel the sadness of loss.

But time and distance softened my sadness, blurred it into a bittersweet memory of the cranky old storyteller.

Lukka led us across a steep and snowy mountain pa.s.s and down into the warm and fruitful Cilician plain, where wine grapes, wheat, and barley grew and olive trees dotted the countryside.

The Cilician cities were tightly shut against all strangers. The collapse of the Hatti empire was felt here; instead of depending on imperial law and the protection of the Hatti army, each city had to look to its own safety. We bartered for what we needed with farmers and suspicious villagers, then headed eastward across the plain and finally turned south, keeping the sea always at our right.

I noticed that Helen looked over her shoulder often, searching as I did for signs of pursuit. We scanned the sea, as well, whenever we could see it. None of the sails we spotted bore a lion's head.

On the road we slept apart. It was better discipline for the men, I thought. I did not take her to bed unless we were in a town or city where the men could find women for themselves. I realized that my pa.s.sion for Helen was controllable, and therefore not the kind of love that I had for my dead G.o.ddess.

Gradually, she began to tell me of her earlier life. She had been abducted when barely twelve, whisked away from the farm of an uncle on the saddle of a local chieftain who had taken a fancy to her newly budding beauty. Her father had bribed the grizzled old bandit and he surrendered her unharmed, but the incident convinced her father that he would have to marry off his daughter quickly, while she was still a virgin.

"Every princeling in Achaia sought my hand," she told me one night when we were camped in a little village ringed by a palisade of sharpened stakes. The village chief had decided to be hospitable to our band of armed men. Lukka and his men were being entertained by some of the local women. Helen and I had been offered a small hut of mud bricks. It was the first time we had been under a roof in weeks.

She spoke wistfully, almost sadly, almost as if all that had happened to her had somehow been her own fault. "With so many suitors, my father had to be very careful in his choice. Finally he picked Menalaos, brother of the High King. It was a good match for him; it tied our house to the most powerful house in Argos."

"You had no say in the matter?"

She smiled at such an absurd idea. "I didn't see Menalaos until our wedding day. My father kept me well protected."

"And then Aleksandros," I said.

"And then Aleksandros. He was handsome, and witty, and charming. He treated me as if I were a person person, a human being."

"You went with him willingly, then?"

Again her smile. "He never asked. He never took the risk that I might refuse him. In the end, despite his wit and charm, he still behaved like an Achaian: he took what he wanted."

I looked deep into her bright blue eyes, so innocent, so knowing. "But in Troy you told me..."

"Orion," she said softly, "in this world a woman must accept what she cannot change. Troy was better for me than Sparta. Aleksandros was more civilized than Menalaos. But neither of them asked me for my hand: I was given to Menalaos by my father; I was taken from him by Aleksandros."

Then she added, almost shyly, "You are the only man I've had to pursue. You are the only one I've given myself to willingly."

I took her in my arms and there was no more talking for that night. But still I wondered how much of her tale I could believe. How true was her pa.s.sion for me, and how much of it was her way to make certain that I would protect her all the way to distant Egypt?

The turmoil of our earlier travels eased after Cilicia. Robber bands and wandering contingents of masterless soldiery became rare. We no longer had to fight our way across the land. Yet each night Lukka had his men tend to their weapons and equipment as if he expected a pitched battle in the morning.

"Now we head toward Ugarit," Lukka told me as we turned south once again. "We sacked the city many years ago, when I was just a youngling squire clinging to my father's chariot as we charged into battle."

Past Ugarit we went. The once-mighty city was still little more than a burned-out sh.e.l.l, with shacks and shanties clinging to the blackened stumps of its walls where once mighty houses and fortified towers had stood. I saw the visible evidence of the power of the Hatti empire, strong enough to reach across mountains and plains to crush a city that defied its High King. And yet that power was gone now, blown away in the wind like the sands of a melting dune.

For the first time since I had been up in the hills above Troy, I saw a forest, tall stately cedar trees that spread their leafy branches high overhead, so that walking through them was like walking down the aisle of a living cathedral that went on for miles and miles.

And then, abruptly, we were in the rugged scorched hills of the desert. Bare stones heated by the pitiless sun until they were too hot to touch. Hardly any vegetation at all, merely little clumps of bushes here and there. Snakes and scorpions scuttled on the burning ground; overhead carrion birds circled waiting, waiting.

We cut far inland over the broken hilly terrain, avoiding the coast and the port cities. Now and again a band of marauders accosted us, always to their sorrow. We left many bodies for those patient birds to feast on, although we lost four men of our own.

The territory was a natural habitat for robbers: raw, lawless, a succession of broken barren hills and narrow valleys and defiles where ambush could be expected at every turn. The heat was like an oven, making the land dance in shimmering waves that sapped the strength from my men and their mounts.

Helen rode in the cart, shaded by tenting made of the finest silks of Troy. The heat took the energy from her, too, and her lovely face became wan and drawn; like the rest of us, she was caked with grimy dust. But not once did she complain or ask us to slow our southward pace.

"Meggido is not far from here," said Lukka one hot bright day, as the sweat poured down his leathery face and into his beard. "The Hatti and the Egyptians fought a great battle there."

We were skirting the sh.o.r.es of a sizable lake. Villages lay scattered around it, and we had been able to barter some of our goods for provisions. The lake water was bitter-tasting, but better than thirst. We filled our canteens and barrels with it.

"Who won?" I asked.

Lukka considered the question with his usual grave silence, then replied, "Our High King Muwatallis claimed a great victory for us. But we never returned to that place, and the army came back to our own lands much smaller than it was when it went out."

Around the lake we traveled, and then down the river that flowed southward out of it. Villages were spa.r.s.e here. Farming, even along the river, was difficult in the dry powdery soil. Most of the villages lived on herds of goats and sheep that nibbled the spa.r.s.e gra.s.s wherever they could find it. These people also spoke of Meggido, and told of the enormous battles that had been fought for it from time immemorial. But they gave the city a slightly different name: Armageddon.

The weather was getting so hot that we took to moving only in the very early morning and again late in the day, when the sun had gone down. We slept during the coldest hours of the night, shivering in our blankets, and tried to sleep during the hottest hours of midday.

One morning I walked on ahead, taking my turn as advance scout. The day before we had beaten off an attack by a determined party of raiders. They did not have the look of bandits about them. Like us, they seemed to be members of an organized troop, well armed and disciplined enough to back away from us in good order once they realized we were professional soldiers.

I climbed a little rise in the rugged, barren ground and, with one hand shading my eyes, surveyed the shimmering, wavering, h.e.l.lish landscape.

Rocks and scrub, parched gra.s.s turning brown under the sun, except for the thin line of green along the banks of the river.

Up on the top of a rocky hill I saw a column of grayish-white smoke rising. It looked strange to me. Not like the smoke of a fire that curls and drifts on the wind, this was almost like a pillar, densely packed, swirling in on itself, and rising straight up into the bright, blinding sky. The smoke itself seemed to glow, as if lighted from within.

I scrambled across the rocky desert toward the column of smoke. As I trudged up the slope of the hill, I felt a strange tingling in my feet. It grew stronger, almost painful, as I neared the top.

The hilltop was bare rock, except for a couple of tiny outcrop-pings of bare brown dead-looking bushes. The column of smoke streamed directly from the rock toward the sky, with no apparent source. My legs were jangling as if someone were sticking thousands of pins into them.

"Better to take off your boots, Orion," came a familiar voice. "The nails in them conduct electrostatic forces. I have no desire to cause you undue pain."

Sullen anger flooded through me as I grudgingly tugged off the boots and tossed them aside. The tingling sensation did not disappear entirely, but subsided to the point where I could ignore it.

The Golden One stepped out of the base of the smoke column. He seemed somehow older than I had ever seen him before, his face more solemn, his eyes burning with inner fires. Instead of the robes I had seen him wearing when I had been on the plain of Ilios, he had draped himself in a plain white garment that seemed to be made of rough wool. It glowed softly against the swirling pillar of grayish smoke behind him.

"For your disobedience, I should destroy you." He spoke in a quiet, level, controlled tone.

My hands itched to reach his throat, but I could not move them. I knew that he controlled me, that he could stop my heart's beating with the flick of an eyebrow, could force me to kneel and grovel at his feet merely by thinking it. The fury within me rose hotter than the sun-baked stone on which I stood barefoot, hotter than the blazing cloudless sky that shone like hammered bra.s.s above us.

I managed to say, as I stood with my fists clenched helplessly at my sides, "You can't destroy me. The others won't let you. They opposed you at Troy, some of them. Blame them them for your defeat." for your defeat."

"I do, Orion. I will have my vengeance against them. And you will help me to achieve it."

"Never! I won't raise a finger to help you. I'll work against you in every way I can."

He made a deep dramatic sigh and took a step toward me. "Orion, we must not be enemies. You are my creation, my creature. Together we can save the continuum."

"Once you killed her you made me your enemy."

He closed his eyes and bowed his head slightly. "I know. I understand." Looking at me with those intent eyes once more, he said softly, "I miss her too."

I tried to laugh in his face, but it came out like a snarl.

"Orion, I have been studying the situation carefully. There may-I say only may may, mind you-be a way of restoring her."

Despite his controls I leaped forward and almost grasped him by the shoulders. But my hands froze in midair.

"Not so fast!" the Golden One said. "It's only a remote possibility. The risks are huge. The dangers..."

"I don't care," I said, my pulse roaring in my ears. "Bring her back to me! Restore her!"

"I cannot do it alone. And the others... those who opposed me at Troy, they will oppose me again. It will mean a deliberate change in the continuum of a magnitude that not even I have attempted before."

I heard his words, but I could not comprehend their full meaning. Nor was I certain that he was telling me the truth.

"I never lie, Orion," he said, reading my thoughts. "To restore her means tampering with the s.p.a.ce-time continuum to such an extent that I could rip it apart just as surely as Ahriman once did."

"But you and your other Creators survived that," I said.

"Some of us did. Some of us did not. I told you that G.o.ds are not necessarily immortal."

"And that they are not necessarily just or merciful, too," I replied.

He laughed. "Just so. Just so."

"Will you try to restore her?" My voice was almost begging.

"Yes," he said. Before my heart could leap for joy he added, "But only if you obey me fully and completely, Orion. Her existence is in your hands."

There was no sense trying to resist or dissemble. "What do you want me to do?"

For an instant he did not reply, as if he were formulating his plans on the spot. Then he said, "You are heading south, toward Egypt."

"Yes."

"You will soon encounter a wandering band of people who are migrating out of Egypt. Whole families, hundreds of them, traveling together with their flocks and tents. They seek to occupy this territory, to make it their own..."

"This territory?" I gestured around at the barren rocks and dead scrub. territory?" I gestured around at the barren rocks and dead scrub.

"Even this," replied the Golden One. "And they are opposed by the villagers and townspeople who already live here. You and your troop of soldiers will help them."

"Why them?"

He smiled at me. "Because they worship me, Orion. They believe that I am not merely the mightiest G.o.d of them all, but the only G.o.d that exists. And soon, with your help, they will be perfectly right."

Before I could ask another question, before I could even think, the Golden One disappeared and the pillar of smoke evaporated as if it had never been.

Chapter 27.

WE pushed southward, down the river that flowed from one landlocked sea to another. There were villages dotted along its banks, protected by walls of dried mud bricks. Green farmlands fed by irrigation ditches stood in bold contrast to the bare browns and grays of the rocky hills. The people here were wary of strangers; too many wandering bands had come their way, anxious to take those green lands for themselves or, failing that, to pillage and loot the towns before moving on.

They traded with us, grudgingly, more in an effort to get us to leave their area as quickly as possible. I always kept Helen out of sight, inside the covered cart. And still I watched for signs of Achaians searching for us.

Then one hot afternoon, as the heat haze made a shimmering mirage out of a dry rocky canyon, we came across the advance scouts of the people the Golden One had told me about.

There were twenty of them, warriors, on foot, no two of them wearing the same kind or color of clothing or the same kind of weapons. A ragtag lot, at first glance. Smallish in stature, browned by the sun-just as we were, I realized.

They had arrayed themselves across the narrowest neck of the canyon as we approached them. I wondered if they thought they could stop us from pa.s.sing through, if it came to a fight. Most of us were mounted on horses and donkeys. I thought we could punch through their thin screen if we had to.

But Lukka, scrutinizing them with a professional eye as we approached, said, "They're not fools, despite their shabby clothes."

"Do you recognize them?"

He shook his head the slightest distance it could move and still convey a negative. "They may be the Abiru that the villagers warned us against two days ago."

I nosed my horse forward. "I'll speak with their leader."

He rode up beside me. "I can translate, if they speak any language of the empire."

"I can understand their language," I said.

Lukka gave me a strange look.

"It's a gift from the G.o.ds," I explained. "The gift of tongues."

I rode slightly ahead and raised my hand in a sign of peace. One of the warriors walked up toward me, still holding his spear in his right hand. I slid down from my horse and stood on the dusty soil as he approached me. The heat beat down from the brazen sky and reflected off the scorching rocks. It was like standing in an oven. The only shade in sight was the spa.r.s.e sliver along the canyon wall to my left. But this young warrior showed no interest in getting out of the hot sun.