The Song of Achilles(90)

The sound that comes from him is hardly human. “I tried to stop him! I told him not to leave the beach!”

“You are the one who made him go.” Briseis steps towards him. “He fought to save you, and your darling reputation. Because he could not bear to see you suffer!”

Achilles buries his face in his hands. But she does not relent. “You have never deserved him. I do not know why he ever loved you. You care only for yourself!”

Achilles’ gaze lifts to meet hers. She is afraid, but does not draw back. “I hope that Hector kills you.”

The breath rasps in his throat. “Do you think I do not hope the same?” he asks.

HE WEEPS as he lifts me onto our bed. My corpse sags; it is warm in the tent, and the smell will come soon. He does not seem to care. He holds me all night long, pressing my cold hands to his mouth.

At dawn, his mother returns with a shield and sword and breastplate, newly minted from still-warm bronze. She watches him arm and does not try to speak to him.

HE DOES NOT WAIT for the Myrmidons, or Automedon. He runs up the beach, past the Greeks who have come out to see. They grab their arms and follow. They do not want to miss it.

“Hector!” he screams. “Hector!” He tears through the advancing Trojan ranks, shattering chests and faces, marking them with the meteor of his fury. He is gone before their bodies hit the ground. The grass, thinned from ten years of warfare, drinks the rich blood of princes and kings.

Yet Hector eludes him, weaving through the chariots and men with the luck of the gods. No one calls it cowardice that he runs. He will not live if he is caught. He is wearing Achilles’ own armor, the unmistakable phoenix breastplate taken from beside my corpse. The men stare as the two pass: it looks, almost, as if Achilles is chasing himself.

Chest heaving, Hector races towards Troy’s wide river, the Scamander. Its water glints a creamy gold, dyed by the stones in its riverbed, the yellow rock for which Troy is known.

The waters are not golden now, but a muddied, churning red, choked with corpses and armor. Hector lunges into the waves and swims, arms cutting through the helmets and rolling bodies. He gains the other shore; Achilles leaps to follow.

A figure rises from the river to bar his way. Filthy water sluices off the muscles of his shoulders, pours from his black beard. He is taller than the tallest mortal, and swollen with strength like creeks in spring. He loves Troy and its people. In summer, they pour wine for him as a sacrifice, and drop garlands to float upon his waters. Most pious of all is Hector, prince of Troy.

Achilles’ face is spattered with blood. “You will not keep me from him.”

The river god Scamander lifts a thick staff, large as a small tree-trunk. He does not need a blade; one strike with this would break bones, snap a neck. Achilles has only a sword. His spears are gone, buried in bodies.

“Is it worth your life?” the god says.

No. Please. But I have no voice to speak. Achilles steps into the river and lifts his sword.

With hands as large as a man’s torso, the river god swings his staff. Achilles ducks and then rolls forward over the returning whistle of a second swing. He gains his feet and strikes, whipping towards the god’s unprotected chest. Easily, almost casually, the god twists away. The sword’s point passes harmlessly, as it has never done before.

The god attacks. His swings force Achilles backwards over the debris lining the river. He uses his staff like a hammer; wide arcs of spray leap from where it smashes against the river’s surface. Achilles must spring away each time. The waters do not seem to drag at him as they might at another man.

Achilles’ sword flashes faster than thought, but he cannot touch the god. Scamander catches every blow with his mighty staff, forcing him to be faster and then faster still. The god is old, old as the first melting of ice from the mountains, and he is wily. He has known every fight that was ever fought on these plains, and there is nothing new to him. Achilles begins to slow, worn out from the strain of holding back the god’s strength with only a thin edge of metal. Chips of wood fly as the weapons meet, but the staff is thick as one of Scamander’s legs; there is no hope that it will break. The god has begun to smile at how often now the man seeks to duck rather than meet his blows. Inexorably, he bears down. Achilles’ face is contorted with effort and focus. He is fighting at the edge, the very edge of his power. He is not, after all, a god.

I see him gathering himself, preparing one final, desperate attack. He begins the pass, sword blurring towards the god’s head. For a fraction of a second, Scamander must lean back to avoid it. That is the moment Achilles needs. I see his muscles tense for that last, single thrust; he leaps.

For the first time in all his life, he is not fast enough. The god catches the blow, and throws it violently aside. Achilles stumbles. It is so slight, just the smallest lurch off-balance, that I almost do not see it. But the god does. He lunges forward, vicious and victorious, in the pause, the small hitch of time that the stumble has made. The wood swings down in a killing arc.

He should have known better; I should have known. Those feet never stumbled, not once, in all the time I knew them. If a mistake had come, it would not be there, from the delicate bones and curving arches. Achilles has baited his hook with human failure, and the god has leapt for it.

As Scamander lunges, there is the opening, and Achilles’ sword streaks towards it. A gash flowers in the god’s side, and the river runs gold once more, stained with the ichor that spills from its master.