MIGHTY warrior though he was, Achilles apparently enjoyed his creature comforts. The cabin's interior was draped with rich tapestries, and the floor was covered with more carpets. Couches and pillows were scattered across the s.p.a.cious room. In one corner a hearth fire smoldered red, keeping out the cold and damp. I could hear the wind moaning through the hole in the roof, but inside it was reasonably snug and warm.

Three women sat by the fire staring at us with great dark eyes. They were slim and young, dressed modestly in sleeveless gray chemises. Iron and copper pots stood on tripods at the hearth, faint wisps of steam issuing from them. I smelled spiced meat and garlic.

Achilles himself sat on a wide couch against the far wall of the cabin, his back to a magnificent arras that depicted a gory battle scene. The couch was up on a dais, raised above the floor of the cabin like a king's throne.

My first sight of the great warrior was a surprise. He was not a mighty-thewed giant, as Ajax. His body was not broad and powerful, as Odysseus's. He seemed small, almost boyish, his bare arms and legs slim and virtually hairless. His chin was shaved clean and the ringlets of his long black hair were tied up in a silver chain. He wore a splendid white silk tunic, bordered with a purple key design, cinched at the waist with a belt of interlocking gold crescents.

He wore no weapons, but behind him a half-dozen long spears rested against the arras, within easy reach.

His face was the greatest shock. Ugly, almost to the point of being grotesque. Narrow beady eyes, lips curled in a perpetual snarl, a sharp hook of a nose, skin pocked and cratered. In his right hand he gripped a jeweled wine cup; it seemed to me that he had already drained it more than once.

At his feet sat a young man who was absolutely beautiful, gazing not at us but up at Achilles. It was Patrokles, I knew without being told. His tightly curled hair was reddish brown, rather than the usual darker tones of the Greeks. I wondered if it was his natural color. Like Achilles, Patrokles was beardless. But he seemed young enough not to need to shave. A golden pitcher of wine stood on the carpet beside him.

I looked at Achilles again and understood the demons that drove him to be the greatest warrior of his age. A small ugly boy born to a king. A boy destined to rule, but always the object of taunts and derisive laughter behind his back. A young man possessed with fire to silence the laughter, to stifle the taunting. His slim arms and legs were iron-hard, knotted with muscle. His eyes were absolutely humorless. There was no doubt in my mind that he could outfight Odysseus or even powerful Ajax on sheer willpower alone.

"Greetings, Odysseus the Ever-Daring," he said, in a calm, clear tenor voice that was close to mocking. "And to you, mighty Ajax, King of Salamis and champion of the Achaian host." Then his voice softened. "And to you, Phoenix, my well-loved tutor."

I glanced at the old man. He bowed toward Achilles, but his eyes were on the beautiful Patrokles.

"We bring you greetings, Prince Achilles," said Odysseus, "from Agamemnon the High King."

"The bargain-breaker, you mean," Achilles snapped. "Agamemnon the gift-s.n.a.t.c.her."

"He is our High King," Odysseus said, his tone barely suggesting that they were all stuck with Agamemnon and the best they could do was try to work with him.

"So he is," admitted Achilles. "And well beloved by Father Zeus, I'm sure."

It was going to be a difficult parley, I could see.

"Perhaps our guests are hungry," Patrokles suggested in a soft voice.

Achilles tousled his curly mop of hair. "Always the thoughtful one."

He bade us sit and told the serving women to feed us and bring wine cups. Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoenix took couches arranged near Achilles's dais. Patrokles filled their cups from his pitcher of gold. We underlings sat on the floor, by the entrance. The women pa.s.sed trays of broiled lamb with onions among us and filled our wooden cups with spiced wine mixed with honey.

After a round of toasts and polite banter, Achilles said, "I thought I heard the mighty Agamemnon bawling like a woman, earlier today. He breaks into tears quite easily, doesn't he?"

Odysseus frowned slightly. "Our High King was wounded today. A cowardly Trojan archer hit him in the right shoulder."

"Too bad," said Achilles. "I see that you did not escape the day's fighting without a wound, yourself. Did it bring you to tears?"

Ajax burst out, "Achilles, if Agamemnon cries, it's not from pain or fright. It's from shame! Shame that the Trojans have penned us up in our camp. Shame that our best fighter sits here on a soft couch while his comrades are being slaughtered by Hector and his troops."

"Shame is what he should should feel!" Achilles shouted back. "He's robbed me! He's treated me like a slave or even worse. He calls himself the High King but he behaves like a thieving wh.o.r.emaster!" feel!" Achilles shouted back. "He's robbed me! He's treated me like a slave or even worse. He calls himself the High King but he behaves like a thieving wh.o.r.emaster!"

And so it went, for hours. Achilles was furious with Agamemnon for taking back a prize he had been awarded, some captive girl. He claimed that he did all the fighting while Agamemnon was a coward, but after the battle was won the High King parceled out the spoils to suit himself and even then reneged on what Achilles felt was due him.

"I have sacked more towns and brought the Achaians more captives and loot than any man here, and none of you can say I haven't," he insisted hotly. "Yet that fat lard-a.s.s can steal my proper rewards away from me and you-all of you!-just let him do it. Did any of you stick up for me in the council? Do you think I owe you anything? Why should I fight for you when you won't even raise your voices on my behalf?"

Patrokles tried to soothe him, without much success. "Achilles, these men aren't your enemies. They've come here on a mission of reconciliation. It isn't proper for a host to bellow at his guests so."

"I know," Achilles replied, almost smiling down at the young man. "It's not your fault," he said to Odysseus and the others. "But I'll see myself in Hades before I'll help Agamemnon again. He's not trustworthy. You should be thinking about appointing a new leader for yourselves."

Odysseus tried tact, praising Achilles's prowess in battle, downplaying Agamemnon's failures and shortcomings. Ajax, as blunt and straightforward as a shovel, flatly told Achilles that he was helping the Trojans to murder the Achaians. Old Phoenix appealed to his former student's sense of honor, and recited childhood homilies at him.

Achilles remained unmoved. "Honor?" he snapped at Phoenix. "What kind of honor would I have left if I put my spear back in the service of the man who robbed me?"

Odysseus said, "We can get the girl back for you, if that's what you want. We can get a dozen girls for you."

"Or boys," Ajax added. "Whatever you want."

Achilles got to his feet, and Patrokles scrambled to stand beside him. I was right, he was terribly small, although every inch of him was hard with sinew. Even the slender Patrokles topped him by a few inches.

"I will defend my boats when Hector breaks into the camp," Achilles said. "Until Agamemnon comes to me personally and apologizes, and begs me to rejoin the fighting, that is all that I will do."

Odysseus rose, realizing that we were being dismissed. Phoenix stood up and, after glancing around, Ajax finally understood and got up too.

"What will the poets say of Achilles in future generations?" Odysseus asked, firing his last arrow at the warrior's pride. "That he sulked in his tent while the Trojans slaughtered his friends?"

The shot glanced off Achilles without penetrating. "They will never say that I humbled myself and threw away my honor by serving a man who has humiliated me."

We went to the doorway, speaking polite formal farewells. Phoenix hung back and I heard Achilles invite his old mentor to remain the night.

Outside, Ajax shook his head wearily. "There's nothing we can do. He just won't listen to us."

Odysseus clapped his broad shoulder. "We tried our best, my friend. Now we must prepare for tomorrow's battle without Achilles."

Ajax trudged off into the darkness, followed by his men. Odysseus turned to me, a thoughtful look on his face.

"I have a task for you to perform," he said. "If you are successful you can end the war."

"And if I am not?"

Odysseus smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. "No man lives forever, Orion."

Chapter 7.

IN less than an hour I found myself picking my way across the trench that fronted our rampart and heading into the Trojan camp. A white cloth knotted above my left elbow proclaimed that I was operating under a flag of truce. The slim willow wand in my right hand was the impromptu symbol of a herald.

"These should get you past the Trojan sentries without having your throat slit," Odysseus had told me. He did not smile as he said those words, and I did not find his rea.s.surances very rea.s.suring.

"Get to Prince Hector and speak to no one else," he had commanded me. "Tell him that Agamemnon offers a solution to this war: If the Trojans will return Helen to her rightful husband, the Achaians will return to their own lands, satisfied."

"Hasn't that offer been made before?" I asked.

Odysseus smiled at my naivete. "Of course. But always with the demand for a huge ransom, plus all the fortune that Helen brought with her. And always when we were fighting under the walls of Troy. Priam and his sons never believed we would abandon the siege without breaking in and sacking the city. But now that Hector is besieging us, perhaps they will believe that we are ready to quit, and merely need a face-saving compromise to send us packing."

"Returning Helen is nothing more than a face-saving compromise?" I blurted.

He looked at me curiously. "She is only a woman, Orion. Do you think Menalaos has been pining away in celibacy since the b.i.t.c.h ran off with Aleksandros?"

I blinked at him, so taken aback by his att.i.tude that I had no reply. I wondered, though, if Odysseus felt the same way about his own wife, waiting for him back in Ithaca.

He made me repeat my instructions and then, satisfied, led me to the top of the rampart, not far from where I had gained my moment of glory earlier in the day. I gazed out into the darkness. In the silvery moonlight a mist had risen, turning the plain into a ghostly shivering vapor that rose and sank slowly like the breath of some living thing. Here and there I could make out the glow of Trojan campfires, like distant faint stars in the shrouding fog.

"Remember," said Odysseus, "you are to speak to Prince Hector and no one else."

"I understand," I said.

I scrambled down the slope of the rampart, into the inky shadows of the trench, and finally made my way through the slowly drifting tendrils of mist toward the Trojan camp, guided by the fires that flickered and glowed through the fog. The mist was cold on my skin, like the touch of death.

Peering through the moon-silvered haze, I saw one campfire that seemed larger, brighter, than all the others. That must be where Hector's tent is, I told myself. I headed toward it, tense with the expectation of being challenged by a sentry at any moment. I hoped I would be challenged, and not merely speared out of the darkness before any questions were asked. My senses were hyper-alert; I think I could have heard a dagger being drawn from its sheath, or seen a man stalking behind me out of the back of my head. But I heard and saw nothing. It was as if the fog had enveloped the whole camp, m.u.f.fled every sound, mummified every man there except me.

The fire seemed to be growing, as if someone were feeding it, turning it from a dying campfire into a great welcoming beacon. But it no longer flickered like a fire. It was a steady bright glare, growing more brilliant by the moment. Soon it was so bright that I had to throw my arm across my brow to shield my eyes from its burning intensity. I felt no heat from it, but its brilliance exerted a force of its own. I felt myself pressed pressed by that blinding glare, forced to my knees by its overpowering golden radiance. by that blinding glare, forced to my knees by its overpowering golden radiance.

Then I heard a man's laughter, and knew at once who it was.

"On your feet, Orion!" said the Golden One. "Or do you enjoy crawling like a worm?"

Slowly I rose to my feet. The Golden One stood bathed in a warm glow that seemed to separate us from the mist-shrouded plain. It remained night beyond us. No one in the camp stirred. No sentries saw us or heard us.

"Orion," he said, his smile mocking, "somehow you continually find ways to displease me. You saved the Achaian camp."

"That displeases you?" I asked.

He scratched at his chin, a strangely human gesture in so G.o.dlike a person. "As Apollo, the sun G.o.d, the one who brings light and beauty to these people, I seek victory for the Trojans over these barbarians from Achaia."

"And the other..." I groped for a word, settled on, "G.o.ds? Not all of them favor Troy, do they?"

His smile withered.

"There are others," I said. "G.o.dlike beings like yourself?"

"There are," he admitted.

"Greater than you? Is there a Zeus, a Poseidon?"

"There are several... beings such as I, Orion," he said, waving a hand vaguely. "The names that these primitive people call them are irrelevant."

"But are they more powerful than you? Is there a Zeus? A king among you?"

He laughed. "You're trying to find a way of fighting against me!"

"I'm trying to understand who and what you are," I said. Which was truth, as far as it went.

The Golden One eyed me carefully, almost warily. "Very well," he said at last, "if you want to see some of the others..."

And gradually, like a night fog slowly burning away under the morning sun, I saw images beginning to form all around me. Slowly they emerged, materialized, took on solidity and color. Living, breathing men and women surrounded me, peered down at me, inspected me as a scientist might examine some species of insect or bacterium.

"This is rash," said one of them in a deep G.o.dly voice.

"He is my creature," the Golden One retorted. "I can control him."

Yes, I thought. You can control me. But one day your control will slip.

I could see dozens of faces peering at me: beautiful women with flawless skin and eyes that glowed like jewels; men who radiated youth and yet spoke with the gravity and knowledge of millennia, eons, eternity itself.

I felt like a little boy in the midst of vastly wiser adults, like a child confronted by giants.

"I brought him here from the plain of Ilios," said the Golden One, almost as if daring them to complain.

"You grow bolder," said the one who had spoken first. He was dark of hair and eye, as solemn as a high craggy mountain. I thought of him as Zeus, even though there were no lightning bolts in his grip and his beard was neatly trimmed and barely touched with gray.

The Golden One laughed carelessly.

Around that circle of vast unsmiling faces I searched, looking for one that would be familiar, the G.o.ddess I had loved, or even the dark Ahriman whom I had hunted. I saw neither.

One of the women spoke. "You still intend to allow the Trojans to win their war?"

The Golden One smiled at her. "Yes, even though that displeases you."

"The Greeks have much to offer your creatures," she said.

"Pah! Barbarians."

"They will not always be so. In time they will build a beautiful civilization... if you let them."

With a shake of his golden mane, "The civilization of Troy will be even more beautiful, I promise you."

"I have studied the time-tracks," said one of the males. "The Greeks should be allowed to win."

"No!" shouted the Golden One. "d.a.m.n the time-tracks! I am creating a new track here, one that will please all of us, if you'd only stop interfering with my plans."

"We have as much right to manipulate these creatures as you do," said the woman. "I really have very little confidence in your plans."

"Because you don't understand," the Golden One insisted. "I want Troy to win because Troy will then become the most important nexus in this phase of human history. The city will grow into a mighty empire that spans Europe and Asia. Think of it! The energy and vigor of the Europeans combined with the wisdom and patience of the East. The wealth of both worlds will be commingled into a single, unified Ilian empire that will span from the British Isles to the Indian subcontinent!"

"What good will that do?" asked one of the other men. Like the others, he was as handsome as a human face can be, flawless in every detail. "Your creatures will still have to face the ultimate crisis. Unity among them may be less desirable than a healthy amount of compet.i.tion."

"Yes," said the woman. "Remember the Neanderthal-dominated track that you sent this creature to destroy. You ended by nearly destroying all of us us."