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destinies."
"I can refuse to serve you," I said stubbornly.
He lifted one golden eyebrow and considered me, the haughty, mocking tone back in his voice. "While
you live, my angry creature, you will play your part in my plans. You cannot refuse because you can
never know which acts of yours serve me and which do not. You stagger along blindly in your
time-bound linearity, going from day to day, while I perceive space-time on the scale of the continuum."
"Grand talk," I spat. "You sound almost as grandiloquent as old Nestor."
His eyes narrowed. "But I speak the truth, Orion. You see time as past and present and future. Icreate
time and manipulate it to keep the continuum from being torn asunder. And while you live, you will help
me in this mighty task."
"While I live," I repeated. "Is that a threat?"
He smiled again. "I make no threats, Orion. I have no need to. I created you. I can destroy you. You
have no memory of how many times you have died, do you? Yet I have revived you each time, so that
you could serve me again. That is your destiny, Orion. To serve me. To be my Hunter."
"I want to be free," I shouted. "Not your puppet!"
"Pah! I waste my time trying to explain myself to you. No one is free, Orion. No creature can ever be
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free. Not as long as you live."
He clasped his arms together across his chest and disappeared as abruptly as a candle snuffed out by a
sharp gust of wind. Suddenly I was alone in the fog-wrapped darkness of the plain before Troy.
As long as I live, I thought silently, I will struggle to reach your throat. It was a mistake to tell me that
you are not immortal. I am the Hunter, and now I know the prey I seek. I will kill you, golden Apollo,
Creator, whatever your true name and shape may be. While I live I will seek your death and nothing less.
Just as you killed her, I will kill you.
Chapter 8
"YOU there! Hold!"
I was standing in the Trojan camp again, a sudden sharp wind gusting in from the sea and shredding the
mist that had covered the plain. Campfires dotted the darkness, and off in the distance the beetling
towers of Troy bulked black and menacing against the moon-bright sky.
I tottered on unsteady feet, like a man who has drunk too much wine, like a man who has suddenly been
pushed through a door that he had not seen. The Golden One and the other Creators were gone as
completely as if they had been nothing more than a dream. But I knew they were real. They were out
there in another plane of existence, toying with us, arguing over which side should win this wretched war.
My hands clenched into fists as the memory of their faces and their words fueled the rage burning within
me.
A pair of sentries approached me warily, heavy spears in their hands. I gulped down a deep breath of
chill night air to calm myself.
"I am an emissary from the High King Agamemnon," I said, slowly and carefully. "I have been sent to
speak to Prince Hector."
The sentries were an unlikely pair, one short and squat with a dirty, tangled black beard and a pot belly
bulging his chain mail corselet, the other taller and painfully thin, either clean-shaven or too young to start
a beard.
"Prince Hector the Tamer of Horses he wants to see," said the pot-belly. He laughed harshly. "So would
I!"
The younger one grinned and showed a gap where a front tooth was missing.
"An emissary, eh?" Pot-belly eyed me suspiciously. "With a sword at his side and a mantle of chain mail
across his shoulders. More likely a spy. Or an assassin."
I held up my herald's wand. "I have been sent by the High King. I am not here to fight. Take my sword
and mantle, if they frighten you." I could have disabled them both before they knew what had happened,
but that was not my mission.
"Be a lot safer to ram this spear through your guts and have done with it," said Pot-belly.
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The youngster put out a restraining hand. "Hermes protects messengers, you know. I wouldn't want to
draw down the anger of the Trickster."
Pot-belly scowled and muttered, but finally satisfied himself by taking my sword and chain mail. He did
not search me, and therefore did not take the dagger strapped to my right thigh. He was more interested
in loot than security.
Once Pot-belly had slipped my baldric across his shoulder and fastened my mantle under his quivering
chins, the two of them led me to their chief.
They were Dardanians, allies of the Trojans who had come from several miles up the coast to fight
against the invading Achaians. Over the next hour or so I was escorted from the chief of the Dardanian
contingent to a Trojan officer, from there to the tent of Hector's chief lieutenants, and finally past the
makeshift horse corral and the silently waiting chariots, tipped over with their long yoke poles poking into
the air, to the small plain tent and guttering fire of Prince Hector.
At each stop I explained my mission again. Dardanians and Trojans alike spoke a dialect of the Greek
spoken by the Achaians, different but not so distant as to be unintelligible. I realized that the city's
defenders included contingents from many areas up and down the coast. The Achaians had been raiding
their towns for years, and now they had all banded together under Trojan leadership to resist the
barbarian invaders.
That was the Golden One's aim: to have the Trojans beat back the Achaians and gain supremacy over
the Aegean. Eventually they would establish an empire that would span Europe, the Middle East, and
India.
If that was his goal, then mine must be to prevent it from being achieved. If Odysseus was offering a
compromise that would allow the Achaians to sail away without burning Troy to the ground, then I must
sabotage the offer. I felt a momentary pang of conscience. Odysseus trusted me. Or, I asked myself, had
he sent me on this diplomatic mission because he could better afford to lose me than one of his own
people?
With those thoughts swirling in my head, I was brought before Hector.
His tent was barely large enough for himself and a servant. A pair of armored noblemen stood by the fire
outside the tent's entrance, their bronze breastplates gleaming against the night. Insects buzzed and darted
in the firelight. No slaves or women in sight. Hector himself stood at the entrance flap to the tent. He was
a big man for these people, nearly my own height.
Hector wore no armor, no badge of his rank. Merely a soft clean tunic belted at the waist, with an
ornamental dagger hanging from the leather belt. He had no need to impress anyone with his grandeur.
He possessed that calm inner strength that needs no outward decorations.
In the flickering light of his campfire he studied me silently for a moment. Those same grave brown eyes. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]