Mountain of Black Glass, Page 65

  The holy martyrs in the old days must have felt this way, she realized one morning as she pulled out onto Interstate 10 with an insulated coffee-pack in her hand, the cushioned mylar warming against her palm like some small creature stirring into life. Every wound a gift from God. Each blow of the whip a divine kiss.

  But the martyrs died, she reminded herself. That's what made them martyrs.

  Even this thought could not perturb her. The sky was gray and cold, the huddled birds unmoving knots along the road signs, but something inside her was so alive that she almost could not believe in death.

  In some inexplicable way, a thousand miles from everything that was familiar, and thousands more from the place she had been born, Olga Pirofsky knew she was finally coming home.

  CHAPTER 28

  A Coin far Persephone

  NETFEED/SITCOM-LIVE: "Sprootie" for Better Sexual Life!

  (visual: Wengweng Cho's living room)

  CHO: Chen Shuo, help me! I cannot find my Sprootie implant, and Widow Mai will be here for our date any minute. With no implant, she will mock my impotence!

  SHUO: (whispers to Zia) Your father has too much faith in that Sprootie philosophical implant. (Out loud) Here, Mayor Cho. I have found it.

  CHO: Thank Heavens! (rushes off)

  ZIA: You are a wicked man, Chen Shuo. That was my panda implant for biology class.

  SHUO: Make sure there are enough bamboo shoots in the refrigerator!

  (audio over: laughter)

  CHO: (offstage) I am glad I can now give proud, bumptious sex to the Widow Mai—she is so attractive! Her eyes, her wet nose, her beautiful fur. . . !

  (audio over: rising laughter)

  SHUO: That is what happens when a foolish man thinks Sprootie will solve all his sexual problems.

  (audio over: laughter and applause)

  The Trojan attack seemed more a force of raw nature than an assembly of humankind—an armored mass flashing with bronze and silver that came howling out of the Skaian Gate and onto the plain like a terrible storm. The Greeks were still struggling into their own armor as the first of the Trojan chariots reached the wall around the Greek encampment. Arrows flew over the barricade and hissed down in a fatal rain. Soldiers stumbled and fell on their faces in the sandy earth, bristling with feathered shafts. Their companions could not even put the bodies to safety or separate the wounded from the dead—corpses and living men alike were trampled as the Greeks rushed to find shelter from the Trojan archers.

  The sun had barely appeared above the hills and the gate of the Greek encampment was already the site of a fierce struggle. Huge Ajax, so large in his armor that he seemed to be a god who had taken sides in the battle, had been caught outside when the gate was hurriedly closed and bolted; he was holding strong against the first Trojan assault, but he had only a few men beside him, and already several had dropped, skewered with arrows.

  Paul had never seen anything so impersonally terrifying in all his life. As the first wave of Trojan charioteers and archers pulled their horses back from the wall and sped away along the edge of the great defensive ditch, the second wave wheeled in with hooves thundering like muffled kettledrums. One of Paul's Ithacans went down with a black-feathered arrow in his gut, coughing and spewing blood, calling, to the gods to save him.

  How can I avoid a battle that's right on top of me? Paul wondered desperately as the wounded man clutched at his legs. He crouched lower, doing his best to ignore the dying, bubbling thing beside him. Two arrows thumped into the shield, jolting his arm. What am I supposed to do? The spear clutched in his hand already felt as heavy as a lamppost. I can't fight with one of these bloody things—nobody taught me how to do this!

  The Greek archers began scrambling up onto the embankment behind the wall, some with only half their armor. Many died before they could even get their bows strung, but others were able to begin returning fire. The Trojan archers and their charioteers could not use their shields while they were shooting, so when arrows began coming back from the Greek wall, the chariots pulled back to a safer range.

  A ragged cheer went up from Paul's Ithacans as the hail of arrows slowed, but if any of them were foolish enough to think they had repelled the Trojan attack, that misunderstanding did not last long. The last wave of Trojan chariots was nearing the ditch, but this time they were not wheeling in to shoot and then gallop away. As the Trojan foot soldiers came roaring across the plain in a vast wave, the chariots' passengers dismounted and strode forward, hidden behind tall shields except for their expressionless, insectile helmets and their long spears.

  But one moved faster than any of the others, rushing toward the Greek wall as though he meant to throw it down by himself.

  "Hector!" shouted one of the Greeks. "It is great Hector!" Paul could feel dread ripple through the men around him. Elsewhere along the wall a few shouted insults down at Priam's son, but even those had a nervous sound.

  "We cannot face him without Achilles," muttered one of the Ithacans. "Where is he? Is he going to fight?"

  The Trojan leader did not respond to any of the insults, but hurried forward as though afraid that one of his own comrades might reach the wall first. By the time he had gone down into the ditch and begun clambering up the other side his shield was pincushioned with Greek arrows, but he carried it as lightly as if it were made of paper. He vaulted up to the base of the wall and brushed aside a thrown spear with his shield so that it caromed away and stuck quivering in the ground; a moment later his own long spear flicked out, swift and deadly as a bolt of lightning. The archer impaled on the spearpoint had only a moment to shriek before Hector jerked him off the wall like a harpooned fish and finished him with a brutal thrust and twist of his short sword.

  The other Trojans leaped out of their chariots. Some were already scrambling up out of the ditch behind Hector, carrying not just spears and swords, but also long boards like ship's timbers. As their comrades in front and the archers on the far side of the ditch kept the Greeks busy, these men began digging beneath the edge of the wall, trying to find leverage to unseat some of the stones. Some were pierced by arrows and fell, but others continued the grim work. Paul knew that if they were given enough time, they would succeed—the defenses of the Greek camp, unlike the ramparts of Troy, were not meant to withstand a determined siege.

  Chaos swarmed around him as the morning sun rose higher, with Greek defenders hurrying to this or that part of the makeshift wall, wherever it seemed the Trojans were about to gain a foothold and scramble over, always just managing to repel the assault. King Agamemnon himself, accompanied by the hero Diomedes—Paul had heard several people call him the best Greek fighter after Achilles, and he had only to watch the man to know that he was a star and not a bit player—made a sortie over the walls to save Ajax, who had lost almost all his men, and had been reduced to clubbing Trojans into bloody ruin with one of their own wall-toppling timbers. Hector spotted Agamemnon from a hundred meters away down the wall, but by the time he could make his way through the crush of his own men, fighting for their lives along the Greek defenses, the high king and Diomedes had rescued the giant. A fiercely-defended ladder allowed them all back over the wall and left Hector raging in futility along the base of the ramparts, pounding his spear against his great shield so that it could be heard even above the clamor of battle, demanding that they return and measure themselves against him.

  A Greek soldier found Paul and summoned him to Agamemnon, who stood spread-legged and trembling a short distance behind the walls, covered in bleeding scratches.

  "Even now, noble Odysseus," the high king panted, "I can feel the scales of Father Zeus tipping. Our side is plunging down, down toward Hades, while Priam's cursed Trojans are lifted up toward Heaven. Ajax and Diomedes have hurried back to the fighting, but I think neither of them can stop Hector, who clearly has the hand of a god upon him. What will we do?" He wiped sweat from his face. "Only Achilles can stand against him. Where is he? Will you go to him, beg him to stand wit
h us in this our dark time?"

  It was hard to look at this powerful man gone gray and quivering with strain and not feel at least a little pity. "He's ill. He can barely stand—I've seen it with my own eyes."

  Agamemnon shook his head and sweat flew from his ringleted beard. Only a short distance away, one of the Greek defenders fell back from the wall shrieking, a spear all the way through him, the bloody point standing out from his back. "Then some god has put this upon him, as Apollo earlier brought us plague for dishonoring a priest. Olympus must wish our destruction." The high king crouched, still panting. "It is hard. Have we not given them all the sacrifices they were due?"

  "It's Hector, isn't it?" Paul said. "If we could stop him, that would take some wind out of the Trojan sails, wouldn't it?"

  Agamemnon shrugged heavily. "I do not think even godlike Diomedes can stop him—have you not seen Hector as he slaughters Greeks and calls for more? Priam's son is like a lion, roaring in the middle of a village, while all the dogs hide beneath the houses."

  "Then we shouldn't fight him one to one," Paul said. Something had to be done now or whatever purpose had brought him here, had led him to the boys Orlando and Fredericks, would disappear in a sea of blood. "We should drop a rock on him or something."

  Agamemnon looked at him oddly, and at first Paul thought he was going to be denounced for insufficient nobility. Instead, the high king said, "You are indeed the cleverest of the Greeks, resourceful Odysseus. Go and find Ajax and tell him to come to me."

  Paul hurried across the encampment. Already the ground was strewn with bodies that had been hastily dragged back from the walls so as not to impede the other defenders, and in many places so much blood had drained out that the mud was stained a sickening red.

  How can they do it? was his helpless thought as he drew closer to the knots of combat rippling along the top of the Greek wall, each one a pair or more of men struggling to kill before they were themselves killed. This . . . organized murder? Even in the real world, how could anyone rush into something like this, knowing that thousands of people are waiting to drive a spear into your guts or put an arrow in your eye? He could hear Ajax's bellowing war cry now, loud as an angry bull. But why am I here, for that matter? Why don't I just hide until this is over? To protect those two kids so they can help me find out why all this has happened to me?

  Whether you call it rotten luck or you blame it on the will of the gods, he decided as the screams of the wounded rose to the skies, disturbing the calm circling of the ravens, I suppose it's what you do when all the choices left are bad ones.

  Paul was forced to take Ajax's place on the wall, and his more philosophical considerations were pushed aside by the necessity of not being killed.

  The Trojans came on and on like an ocean beating against the rocks. For all the hundreds of them swarming along the walls of the Greek camp, there seemed to be thousands more just behind, pushing to take their places beside their comrades. At times it seemed as though the gods had indeed fired the Trojans with some kind of madness; no matter how many were killed, there were always others willing to drag the bodies aside and step into their places.

  Several Trojan heroes fought in the assault—Paul heard their names shouted by both their companions and foes, as though the war were some kind of wild, dangerous sporting event, the foot soldiers on either side as thrilled as they were terrified to be sharing the field with legends like Sarpedon, Aeneas, and Deiphobus. But grandest and most terrifying of all was Hector, King Priam's son, who seemed to be everywhere at the same time—threatening to break open the camp gate by sheer strength here, then moments later leading an assault on a weak part of the Greek defenses. The Greeks offered champions of their own, Diomedes and aged Nestor, and Helen's spurned husband, Menelaus, but at this moment none of them could stand against Hector, who even managed to impale two Greek soldiers with one thrust of his spear so that they were pressed together like spoons in a drawer as they coughed out their lives. Hector did not stop to marvel at his own might, but put his foot against the nearest and pushed the bodies down the length of the shaft; they fell in a heap together on the ground as Hector turned his attention elsewhere. He seemed truly, as Agamemnon had called him, a lion among hounds.

  Paul's existence had devolved into a constant rhythm of stabbing and retreating, taking lives to preserve his own. This ancient warfare was not like anything he had seen, no measured attack and counterattack of trained swordsmen. When the arrows and the long spears had hissed out and fallen, the survivors charged forward, shouting. Shields were locked so the combatants could stab at each other with their short blades. It was maddening, everyone so close in the thickest clinches that Paul could feel other men leaning on him as they fought, and there was little way to distinguish friend from enemy. He was himself injured several times, the worst a long bleeding runnel on his arm, an aching but fairly shallow wound from a spear that had partially pierced his shield. He wanted nothing more than to be off the wall and out of harm's way, but as the sun rose blood-red over the plain, it was clear that the Trojans smelled victory, and with Hector in his glinting armor savaging hapless Greeks like a jungle beast turned loose at a children's party, Paul began to feel his own weakness and weariness mirrored in the other defenders. It would all be over soon. He would finally get the black peace he had often wished for, now when he least desired it.

  Trojans were massing again at the gate for another push. Paul stood, gasping for air, and watched them jostling up the gulley toward him and the other exhausted Greeks. With their shields above their heads, the invaders looked more like insects than men—Paul almost seemed to be looking down on a horde of cockroaches. Only one face could be seen: black-haired Hector stood in their midst like a warrior god, unafraid of Greek arrows, his blood-slicked spear held high in one hand as he used the other to shove his countrymen toward the vulnerable gate. Diomedes had dropped down from the wall in an effort to engage Hector, but the Greek hero had instead been hemmed in by other Trojan fighters; although he had killed several of them, he was still beset, several dozen meters away.

  Just as Paul felt himself slipping into a sort of doomed fever-dream, hypnotized by the wave of shields slowly rising toward him, there was a heavy thump near his feet, then a hand like an industrial vise tightened on his ankle. He raised his stabbing-sword with exhausted languor, realizing only after a long instant that he had been grabbed from behind—from the Greek side of the wall.

  The giant Ajax stood on the ground below him. He lifted the hand that had clutched Paul's leg.

  "Help me up, Odysseus."

  Paul braced himself, then reached down so Ajax could grip his wrist and found that it was all he could do even to bear a portion of the massive hero's weight. Ajax pulled himself up onto the wall, then took a moment to catch his breath, looking down with distant malice on the swarming Trojans,

  "I would have returned sooner," he rumbled, "but that pretty-boy Paris got over the wall with some of his men. We chased him back out quick enough," Ajax was red-faced and sweating, clearly exhausted, but his presence was still startling. If Hector was a warrior god, this was some older, less subtle deity, a god of mountains, of earth, of . . . stone.

  Paul stared in amazement as Ajax bent and lifted the boulder he had set down on the wall by Paul's feet, then gulped air and straightened. "I wouldn't have wanted to carry this much farther," he rasped, the tendons on his neck swelling and stretching tight. The stone looked like it weighed as much as a small car.

  Heroes, Paul thought. They're bloody heroes, and meant to be so. That's what it said all through The Iliad—"a stone that ten men of our day could not lift."

  "Now, where is that bastard Hector?" rasped Ajax. It took him only a moment to find Priam's mighty son, who was shoving his way to the front of the assault. "Ah," the giant grunted, then with a creaking of muscles so loud Paul winced and shied away, he heaved the boulder up above his head and held it there, tree-trunk arms trembling. "Hector!" he shouted. "I bring
you a gift from the Greeks!"

  Hector's handsome face turned upward just as Ajax hurled the great stone down at him. The hero of Troy had time only to jerk his shield up above his head and brace himself before the stone smashed him to the ground. Rolling away, it killed three men, and the Trojan line fell apart, bellowing in surprise and fear. A few of them had the presence of mind to pull Hector's limp body back with them as they retreated into the mass of the Trojan forces.

  "You killed him!" Paul said, stunned.

  Ajax was slumped, bent almost double with his forearms on his thighs, trembling all over. He shook his head. "Great Hector still moves—that I saw as they dragged him away. He is too strong for one rock to kill him. But he will not fight again beneath today's sun, I think."

  Paul watched, amazed, as defeat eddied out through the Trojan ranks like the smell of a brushfire through a herd of deer. The soldiers assaulting the walls pulled back, and although arrows continued to fly, the great number of Trojans retreated with Hector's senseless body to the far side of the ditch. The gods, it seemed, had withdrawn their favor from Priam's forces . . . at least for a while.

  "Code Delphi. Start here.

  "The sun is up, and all the royal household are atop the watch-tower trying to make sense of what is happening in the battle by the Greek camp, which to those on the wall, at such a distance, can be little more than a scurrying of ants. The fighting has been going on for hours. Everyone knows that there must already be many dead on both sides. What a dreadful thing, to wait helplessly to find out who has survived, who has not! And I understand Priam and Hecuba and all the others only too well, for my own friends are somewhere on that field of slaughter. Even in this imaginary world humankind seems to be a machine built solely to damage itself. If the hand of evolution is at work, if somehow violent death serves some greater purpose, I cannot see it.