The Song of Achilles(85)

Chapter Thirty

ACHILLES WATCHED ME APPROACH, RUNNING SO HARD my breaths carried the taste of blood onto my tongue. I wept, my chest shaking, my throat rubbed raw. He would be hated now. No one would remember his glory, or his honesty, or his beauty; all his gold would be turned to ashes and ruin.

“What has happened?” he asked. His brow was drawn deep in concern. Did he truly not know?

“They are dying,” I choked out. “All of them. The Trojans are in the camp; they are burning the ships. Ajax is wounded, there is no one left but you to save them.”

His face had gone cold as I spoke. “If they are dying, it is Agamemnon’s fault. I told him what would happen if he took my honor.”

“Last night he offered—”

He made a noise in his throat. “He offered nothing. Some tripods, some armor. Nothing to make right his insult, or to admit his wrong. I have saved him time and again, his army, his life.” His voice was thick with barely restrained anger. “Odysseus may lick his boots, and Diomedes, and all the rest, but I will not.”

“He is a disgrace.” I clutched at him, like a child. “I know it, and all the men know it too. You must forget him. It is as you said; he will doom himself. But do not blame them for his fault. Do not let them die, because of his madness. They have loved you, and honored you.”

“Honored me? Not one of them stood with me against Agamemnon. Not one of them spoke for me.” The bitterness in his tone shocked me. “They stood by and let him insult me. As if he were right! I toiled for them for ten years, and their repayment is to discard me.” His eyes had gone dark and distant. “They have made their choice. I shed no tears for them.”

From down the beach the crack of a mast falling. The smoke was thicker now. More ships on fire. More men dead. They would be cursing him, damning him to the darkest chains of our underworld.

“They were foolish, yes, but they are still our people!”

“The Myrmidons are our people. The rest can save themselves.” He would have walked away, but I held him to me.

“You are destroying yourself. You will not be loved for this, you will be hated, and cursed. Please, if you—”

“Patroclus.” The word was sharp, as he had never spoken it. His eyes bore down on me, his voice like the judge’s sentence. “I will not do this. Do not ask again.”

I stared at him, straight as a spear stabbing the sky. I could not find the words that would reach him. Perhaps there were none. The gray sand, the gray sky, and my mouth, parched and bare. It felt like the end of all things. He would not fight. The men would die, and his honor with it. No mitigation, no mercy. Yet, still, my mind scrabbled in its corners, desperate, hoping to find the thing that might soften him.

I knelt, and pressed his hands to my face. My cheeks flowed with tears unending, like water over dark rock. “For me then,” I said. “Save them for me. I know what I am asking of you. But I ask it. For me.”

He looked down at me, and I saw the pull my words had on him, the struggle in his eyes. He swallowed.

“Anything else,” he said. “Anything. But not this. I cannot.”

I looked at the stone of his beautiful face, and despaired. “If you love me—”

“No!” His face was stiff with tension. “I cannot! If I yield, Agamemnon can dishonor me whenever he wishes. The kings will not respect me, nor the men!” He was breathless, as though he had run far. “Do you think I wish them all to die? But I cannot. I cannot! I will not let him take this from me!”

“Then do something else. Send the Myrmidons at least. Send me in your place. Put me in your armor, and I will lead the Myrmidons. They will think it is you.” The words shocked us both. They seemed to come through me, not from me, as though spoken straight from a god’s mouth. Yet I seized on them, as a drowning man. “Do you see? You will not have to break your oath, yet the Greeks will be saved.”

He stared at me. “But you cannot fight,” he said.

“I will not have to! They are so frightened of you, if I show myself, they will run.”

“No,” he said. “It is too dangerous.”

“Please.” I gripped him. “It isn’t. I will be all right. I won’t go near them. Automedon will be with me, and the rest of the Myrmidons. If you cannot fight, you cannot. But save them this way. Let me do this. You said you would grant me anything else.”

“But—”

I did not let him answer. “Think! Agamemnon will know you defy him still, but the men will love you. There is no fame greater than this—you will prove to them all that your phantom is more powerful than Agamemnon’s whole army.”

He was listening.

“It will be your mighty name that saves them, not your spear arm. They will laugh at Agamemnon’s weakness, then. Do you see?”

I watched his eyes, saw the reluctance giving way, inch by inch. He was imagining it, the Trojans fleeing from his armor, outflanking Agamemnon. The men, falling at his feet in gratitude.

He held up his hand. “Swear to me,” he said. “Swear to me that if you go, you will not fight them. You will stay with Automedon in the chariot and let the Myrmidons go in front of you.”

“Yes.” I pressed my hand to his. “Of course. I am not mad. To frighten them, that is all.” I was drenched and giddy. I had found a way through the endless corridors of his pride and fury. I would save the men; I would save him from himself. “You will let me?”