‘Troy will be taken by the autumn, sire.’ He sighed, that cool and iron-hard man, more than a trace of weariness in his grey eyes. ‘I’m sick of Troy too. If I have to remain away from Ithaka for twenty years, then let the second ten of them be spent anywhere save in the Troad. I’d rather contend with a combination of sirens, harpies and witches than more boring Trojans.’

I grinned. ‘Sirens, harpies and witches combined won’t know what hit them when they have to deal with you, Odysseus. But it doesn’t matter to me. Troy is the end of my world.’

Knowing the prophecies, Odysseus said nothing, simply looked down into his wine cup.

‘Only promise me one thing, Agamemnon,’ I said.

His head was on his arms again. ‘Anything you like.’

‘Bury me in the cliff with Patrokles and Penthesileia, and see Brise marries my son.’

Odysseus stiffened. ‘Are you called, Achilles?’

‘I don’t think so. But it must come soon.’ I held out my hand to him. ‘Promise me that my son will wear my armour.’

‘I have already promised that. He’ll get it.’

Nestor wiped his eyes, blew his nose with his sleeve. ‘It will all be as you wish, Achilles.’ He plucked at his hair with shaky fingers. ‘If only the God would call me! I’ve prayed and prayed, but he doesn’t hear. How can I go back to Pylos without all my sons? What will I tell their mothers?’

‘You’ll go back, Nestor,’ I said. ‘You still have two sons. When you stand on your bastions and look down to the sandy shore, Troy will fade to a dream. Only remember those of us who fell, and pour us libations.’

I cut Memnon’s head off and flung the body at Nestor’s feet. We took fresh heart that day; the shortlived Trojan resurgence ended. They retreated slowly across the plain while I, with an alien agony inside me, killed and killed. My arm felt sluggish, though the axe bit as often and as viciously. But as I ploughed through the best King Hattusilis of the Hittites had to offer on the bloodsoaked altar that was Troy, I grew sick at the carnage. At the back of my mind I could hear a voice sighing, I thought my mother’s, blurred with tears.

At the end of the day I paid my respects to Nestor and assisted at Antilochos’s last rites. We laid the lad alongside his four brothers in the cliff chamber reserved for the House of Neleus, and hunched Memnon at his feet like a dog. But the thought of the funeral games and the feasting was unbearable; I slipped away.

Brise was waiting. When was she not?

I took her face between my hands and said, ‘You always wipe away the grief.’

‘Sit down and keep me company,’ she said.

I sat, but found myself unable to talk to her; an awful coldness was settling about my heart. She went on chattering brightly until she looked at me, then her animation died.

‘What is it, Achilles?’

I shook my head dumbly and got up to go outside, standing there with my head lifted to the infinite reaches of the sky.

‘What is it, Achilles?’

‘Oh, Brise! I am torn open to the very roots of my being! Never until this moment have I felt the wind so keenly, smelled life so strongly in my nostrils, seen the stars so still, so clear!’

She tugged at me urgently. ‘Come inside.’

I let her lead me to a chair and sat down while she sank at my feet and put her arms on my knees, staring up into my face.

‘Achilles, is it your mother?’

I took her chin in my fingers, smiling down. ‘No. My mother has left me for good. I heard her weeping farewell on the field. I’m called, Brise. The God has called me at last. I’ve always wondered what it would be like, never dreaming for an instant that it would be this uttermost consciousness of life. I thought it would be all glory and exultation, something that would carry me physically into my last fight. But it’s quiet and merciful. I’m at peace. No daimons of vanished years, no fear for the future. Tomorrow it ends. Tomorrow I will cease to be. The God has spoken. He will not leave me again.’

She started to protest, but I stopped her words with my hand.

‘A man must go gracefully, Brise. The God wills it, not I. And I am no Herakles, no Prometheus to resist him. I am a mortal man. I have lived thirty-one years and have seen and felt more than most men do who see the leaves turn golden on the trees one hundred times. I don’t want to live longer than the walls of Troy. All the great warriors will die here. Ajax. Ajax! Ajax… It isn’t fitting that I should survive. I’ll face the shades of Patrokles and Iphigenia across the River with everything gone. Our hatreds and our loves belong to the world of the living – not one thing so strong can exist in the world of the dead. I’ve done my best. There is no more. I’ve prayed that my name will continue to be sung through all the generations of men to come. That is all the immortality any man can hope for. The world of the dead gives no joy, but no sorrow either. If I can fight Hektor a million times over on the lips of living men, I will never truly die.’

She wept and wept; her woman’s heart couldn’t glimpse the intricacy of the warp on the loom of time, so she could not rejoice with me. But there comes a depth of grief when even tears are dried. She lay still and quiet.

‘If you die, then I will die,’ she said then.

‘No, Brise, you must live. Go to my son, Neoptolemos, and marry him. Give him the sons I have not got out of you. Nestor and Agamemnon have pledged to see it done.’

‘Even for you I can’t promise that. You took me out of one life and gave me another. There can’t be a third. I must share your death, Achilles.’

I lifted her up, smiling at her. ‘When you set eyes on my son, you’ll think differently. Women are meant to survive. All you owe me is one more night. Then I give you to Neoptolemos.’

28

NARRATED BY

Automedon

We went out across the causeways with light hearts to face an army almost crippled out of existence. Achilles was unusually quiet beside me, but I didn’t think to question the significance of his mood. He stood like a beacon in his golden armour, the fine gold plumes of the helm flying in the wind and bouncing around his shoulders as we lurched over the uneven terrain. Expecting his habitual comradely smile, I turned sideways to grin at him, but that day he forgot our little ritual. He looked straight ahead, at what I didn’t know. A stern and controlled peace had settled upon that stormy face; suddenly I felt as if I drove a stranger. Not once did he speak to me during our drive to the battle place, nor did he give me any kind of smile. Which should have cast me down, yet inexplicably did not. Rather, I felt buoyed up, as if something in him was rubbing off on me.

He fought better than in all his life, seeming bent on concentrating all his massive glory into the space of a single day. Though instead of working himself into his usual killing furore, he took pains to see that the Myrmidons were prospering. He used his sword, not his axe, and used it in complete silence, as the King does when he makes the annual great sacrifice to the God. That thought gave birth to another; all at once I knew what the difference in him was. He had always been the Prince, he had never been the King. That day he was the King. I wondered if he had some premonition that Peleus was dead.

As I manoeuvred the chariot around the field I took an occasional glance at the sky, misliking the weather. Even at dawn it had been dull and drear, with the promise not of cold but of tempests. Now the vault was a peculiar copper hue, and to the east and south great black thunderheads were gathering, lightning flickering. Over Ida, where we were sure the Gods congregated to watch the fray.

It was a complete rout. The Trojans couldn’t hold us, not when every leader of our army seemed possessed by a lesser form of the grandeur which sat upon Achilles like the rays around the head of Helios. It is reflecting off him, I thought; he has become the highest of all kings.