Chapter 24

IT was my turn to stand there in the tent gawking with surprise. "To Egypt?"

"It's the only really civilized land in the whole world, Orion. They will receive me as the queen I am, and treat me and my entourage properly. Royally."

I should have refused her point-blank. But my mind was weaving a mad tapestry of revenge. I pictured the face of Agamemnon when he learned that his sister-in-law, for whom he had ostensibly fought this long and bloody war, had spurned his brother and run off with a stranger. Not a prince of Troy who abducted her unwillingly, but a lowly warrior, recently nothing but a thes, with whom she ran off at her own insistence.

I had nothing much against Menalaos, except that he was Agamemnon's brother—and he did nothing to prevent Poletes's blinding.

Let them eat the dirt of humiliation and helpless anger, I said to myself. Let the world laugh at them as Helen runs away from them once again. They deserve it.

They would search for us, I knew. They would try to find us. And if they did, they would kill me and perhaps Helen also.

What of it? I thought. What do I have to live for, except to wreak vengeance against those who have wronged me? Apollo seeks to destroy me, now that I have helped to bring down Troy. What do I have to fear from two mortal kings?

I looked down at Helen's beautiful face, so perfect, her skin as smooth and unblemished as a baby's, her eyes filled with hope and expectation, innocent and yet knowing. She was maneuvering me, I realized, using me to make her escape from these Achaian clods. She was offering herself as my reward for defying Agamemnon and Menalaos.

"Very well," I said. "Poletes should be able to travel in two more days. We will leave on the second night from tonight."

Helen's eyes sparkled and a smile touched the corners of her lips. I took her tiny hand in mine and kissed it, and she understood fully what I did not need to say.

"The second night from tonight," she whispered to me. Then she stepped lightly to me and stood on tiptoes to kiss me swiftly on the lips.

She fastened the oversized helmet back on her head, tucking her hair well inside it, and left with her escorts. I watched them march back toward Menalaos's boats, then sent one of Lukka's men to fetch the healer. His women came and dressed Poletes's wounds before he himself arrived.

"Will he be able to travel in two days," I asked, "if he doesn't have to walk?"

The healer gave me a stern look. "If he must. He is an old man, and death will claim him anyway in a few years."

"Would traveling in a wagon harm him?"

"Not enough to make much difference," he said.

After they left, I stretched out on the pallet that had been freshly laid beside Poletes's. The old man tossed in his sleep and muttered something. I leaned on one elbow to hear his words.

"Beware of a woman's gifts," Poletes mumbled.

I sighed. "Now you utter prophecies instead of stories, old man," I whispered.

Poletes did not reply.

I fell asleep almost as soon as my head touched the straw. I willed myself to remain here, on the plain of Ilios, and not allow myself to be drawn to the realm of the Creators. I knew that danger beyond my powers awaited me there.

Whether my willpower was strong enough to keep me from being summoned to the Creators' domain, or whether Apollo, Zeus, and their company simply did not bother trying to reach me, I cannot say. All I know is that I met no gods, angry or otherwise, in my sleep that night.

But I did dream. I dreamed of Egypt, of a hot land stretching along a wide river, flanked on either side by burning desert. A land of palm trees and crocodiles, so ancient that time itself seemed meaningless there. A land of massive pyramids standing like strange, alien monuments amid the puny towns of men, dwarfing all human scale, all human knowledge.

And inside the greatest of those pyramids, I saw my own beloved, waiting for me, as silent and still as a statue, waiting for me to bring her back to life.

The next morning I told Lukka that we would be leaving the camp and heading for Egypt.

"That's a far distance," he said. "Across hostile lands."

"That is where we're going," I insisted. "Will the men follow me?"

Lukka's brown eyes flicked up at mine, then looked away. "We've won three wagonloads of loot for a few days' work and a couple of hours of hard fighting. They'll follow you, never fear."

"All the way to Egypt?"

He made a humorless grin. "If we make it. The Egyptians hire soldiers for their army, from what I hear. They no longer fight their own wars. If we get to their borders, we will find employment."

"Good," I said, happy to have an excuse that would urge them onward toward my goal.

"I'll start the men gathering wagons for our supplies," Lukka said.

I took his shoulder in my hand. "I may bring a woman with me."

He actually smiled. "I was wondering when you'd unbend."

"But I don't want the men dragging along camp followers. Will they resent my bringing a woman? Will it cause trouble?"

Scratching at his beard, Lukka replied, "There've been plenty of women here in the camp. The men are satisfied, for now. We can move faster without camp followers, that's certain. And we'll probably find women here and there as we march."

I understood what he meant. "Yes, I doubt that our passage to Egypt will be entirely peaceful."

This time his eyes locked on mine. "I only hope that our leaving the camp is entirely peaceful."

I smiled grimly. He was no fool, this Hatti soldier.

Two nights later I bribed a teenaged boy to come with me to the camp of Menalaos. The area was not really guarded: the few armed men who stood watch knew that there were no enemies present. They were more intent on protecting their king's loot and slaves from thievery than anything else.

The youth and I found Helen's tent. Serving women loitered outside, eyeing me askance, as if they knew what was about to happen. One of them ushered me into her mistress's tent. It was large, and Helen was pacing in it nervously when we entered it.

Helen dismissed her servant, and with hardly a word between us, I knocked the startled youth unconscious, stripped him, and watched Helen pull his rags over her own short-skirted chemise. She pointed to a plain wooden chest, half as wide as the span of my arms, and as I hefted it she took up a smaller box.

Still wordless, we walked out of the tent, past the women, past the careless guards, and toward the riverbank, where Lukka and his men waited for us with horses, donkeys, and oxcarts.

We left the Achaian camp on the plain of Ilios in the dark of night, like a band of robbers. Riding on a thickly folded blanket that passed among these people for a saddle, I turned and looked for one last time at the ruin of Troy, its once-proud walls already crumbling and ghostlike in the cold silvery light of the rising moon.

The ground rumbled. Our horses snorted and neighed, prancing nervously.

"Poseidon speaks," said Poletes from the oxcart, his voice weak but discernible. "The earth will shake soon from his wrath. He will finish the task of bringing down the walls of Troy."

The old man was predicting an earthquake. A big one. All the more reason for us to get as far away as possible.

We forded the river and headed southward. Toward Egypt.