Horses of Fire

1

Andromache

The boy is lost.

And so is his mother. I can tell with one glance.

With a warrior this young, there is only ever one reason for such a clean spear wound. A neat hole right between the shoulder blades. Slowly, I roll the stiff corpse back onto the stone slab until he lies face up, eyes unblinking. Across the room, I meet his mother's raw, wild gaze. Her hands fidget anxiously.

There is no hiding what I've seen. She knows that I know.

The primal wail that follows is like no sound I've heard, and yet I've listened to a million variations of the same tune. Every mother's cry of lament is her own. As unrepeatable as each new life she carries. Only this woman's groans speak of a secret.

A song of betrayal. Of cowardice. Shame.

I take a step back from the washing slab, letting the wet cloth in my hand hit the floor with a soppy splat.

"Please, Harsa Andromache. I beg you."

The mother throws herself at my feet, arms wrapped around my calves. She thrusts the rag back into my hand, closing my fingers before returning unceremoniously to her seat at the other end of the slab. There she presses her tear-stained cheeks against the soldier's feet. The part of him farthest from the light that once filled her boy's eyes.

For that is what he is. A boy. Large for his age but younger than a soldier should be. I may not have sons, but I have washed enough of them to know what fifteen summers looks like. This child is at least a year shy of the minimum age for serving in Troy's army. Not that most captains care to check so long as he can carry his shield upright.

"He wanted to follow his father and brothers. For Prince Hector. He was . . . too strong . . . I, I couldn't stop him." The woman's explanation unravels into sobs. "I've given a husband and two sons for Troy already. Will you deprive me of my youngest even in the afterlife?"

My throat tightens. I open my hand. The flax-colored cloth is now pink in most places, a rusty red in others. No one in Troy, not even Hector, expects me to cover myself in blood that stains my nail beds brown. But that is exactly why I do it.

I want to get my hands dirty.

When I muster enough courage to look into the eyes of the desperate, childless widow again, I see that she is far from old. Despite her tears, the firm line of her mouth says she would do anything to guarantee her son's safe passage across the Great River.

My eyes land on the knife at the edge of the slab an instant before she lunges. I am fast, but she is faster. The mother brings the blade to her own quivering throat before I can exhale.

"If he is condemned to wander, then I will wander with him."

Her eyes blink fire. A thin, crimson drizzle travels to her collarbone.

"Have you heard me issue such a condemnation?" I ask calmly.

The mother's gaze flickers. Her grip on the knife handle loosens slightly even as her voice shakes. "My son was not a coward."

I nod. "No man who stands across the plain from Achilles can ever be called one."

And the boy who turns and runs from Achilles's spear? Surely the only name for him is human.

But the King's Council is not interested in shaping men. It is demigods they seek to mold. Names, after all, cannot be speared in the back. Names can live on, ringing glory throughout the ages. Which is why the punishment for fleeing the battlefield isn't so merciful as a clean death. It is eternal shame followed by a corpse left exposed. An unburned body that becomes a lost soul, doomed to wander the shadow lands. Even worse, there is nothing the warrior or anyone else can do to redeem his name. The last note of his song has been sung.

But only if you sentence the boy to this fate.

I look down at the blue, bloated face. The full cheeks of a child. With the swift stroke of my hand, I close the black holes of the boy's eyes.

"Eda, the stones."

The aging woman in charge of Troy's dead rushes toward me from her stool in the corner. She presses the smooth, flat stones made from smoky quartz into my hand. Compared to the boy's flesh, they are warm. As usual, Eda looks somewhat surprised to see me here.

She shouldn't be. If Hector is the type of commander who walks among his men, thanking even the lowest-born for his sacrifice, then I intend to be the kind of queen who reaches for a washcloth when the women of her city must bury sons who cannot yet grow beards.

If I live to be queen, that is. Or have a city left to rule.

I turn back to the mother. "It is time to let go."

With aching tenderness, the mother places the atamanui in her dead son's palm. A symbol of a life, carried into death. A fare to be paid at the Great River for passage across.

The atamanui the mother chose is a piece of jade carved into the shape of a small bird. The artistry is as impressive as the stone itself. It would have cost the woman much. By the looks of her ragged tunic, more than she could afford.

"It is beautiful," I tell her. Somehow, it is also confirmation that sending the boy to the pyre instead of the refuse heap is the right choice. "Fitting."

The woman's lips tremble as she closes her son's stiff fingers around the jade bird. "From birth, Antinous woke with the dawn. I would hear him singing in his sweet little voice. Just like a sparrow."

A sweet little sparrow.

Not the kind of soul there is room for on the plains of Troy. But perhaps there is a place for him in whatever lies beyond.

I place a smooth stone over each halfmoon of lashes, then kiss the boy's forehead and whisper, "May your journey across the Great River be swift and your rest eternal."

The mother's lament crests.

"Not a word of this to anyone," I whisper to Eda as I refit my headscarf. When I move toward the door, I stop to rest a hand on the mother's shuddering shoulder.

There is nothing more that I can do. There never is.

Outside the Citadel bathing house, the scent of the jasmine bush spilling over the wall hits me before my blinking eyes adjust to the bright day. Its luscious perfume overwhelms the pungent aroma at my back. Still, in Troy, one cannot escape the stench of death for long.

It was not always this way. When I left my home of Thebe under Mount Placos and glimpsed Troy for the first time, the city felt even more like a bridegroom than the prince who was to be my husband. Its high outer walls shone like the stores of bronze that could be found in every household past her great gates. My mountain-girl eyes had never glimpsed such a blue-green sea, nor had they encountered such wealth. Troy seemed to contain the colors, smells, and sounds of the entire world.

The stone streets inside the Citadel are quieter these days. Troy's common men defend the walls while her women secure food stores in the Lower City. The royal Citadel-home to the palaces of King Priam and his many children-sits at the top of the plateau. Its High Temple to the countless gods Troy has imported from every land hovers over the city, a shadowy place where the incense always burns. I am told the shimmer cast by the pearly white stone of the palaces can be seen from far off the coast, but I have never set foot on a ship. Nor do I ever intend to.

Still, before the war, I often gazed upon Troy from the shoreline. The city's many rings unfold like an artichoke, that uninviting vegetable I've watched our cook Bodecca prepare often, seeing as it is Hector's favorite. Despite a hard exterior, Troy contains the most tender heart.

"You are much the same," the old woman told me after I married the prince she'd nursed at her own breast. Somehow, I knew not to take offense.

The memory begins to thaw the chill in my chest, the one that settles in whenever I spend a morning at the bathing house.

It is a short walk to the home Hector and I share a few paces beyond the Citadel's walls, but the modest house feels a world away from the ruling center of Troy's Old Blood. That's precisely what Hector intended when he moved us there after our wedding feast. The house has direct access to the army's training grounds and stables, the place Hector spends every free moment, but it is far from the gossip that turns the lives of Hector's siblings into a whirlpool that rivals Charybdis's. My husband may be the heir of Troy, but he is a soldier first. And soldiers value action over idle talk.

My Hector.

The mere thought of him quickens my pace. Hector returned from the battlefield late last night, but he was up with the dawn as usual. Every morning he is home and before tending to his horses, Hector begins his day with a run around Troy's outermost walls.

"I have circled the city twice, but never three times," he sighs when I ask why he invokes this extra pain upon himself. "Even if I'm never the fastest warrior, I intend to endure the longest."

Given how long this war has lasted already, I pray to Tarhunt, god of storms, that Hector is right. Entering the courtyard that leads to our home, I pluck a ripe lemon from the tree that grows near the central fountain. Its crisp rind fills my nose, a welcomed change from the weary scent of lavender. The herb reminds me of dressing corpses, and I wish to inhale life.

The promise of submerging my body in a fragrant tub of citrus peel draws me toward the house. I intend to stay in the water until the blood beneath my nails turns it the color of the rose oil we have not imported since before the war.

There, I will do my best to forget the mother's moans. And my own betrayal of the Citadel's rules that somehow doesn't feel like a betrayal at all.

"A fresh robe, Harsa Andromache," Faria offers as I climb the stairs to my bedchamber. Her arms are heavy with the colorful garments she's brought in from drying in the sun. Our servants know better than to ask
if I want their assistance when drawing a bath. All I ever want once I have fled the wails of grief is silence. A few minutes to whisper the name of the dead warrior whose wounds I have washed-my best attempt at a plea to the gods.

"Antinous. Antinous. Antinous," I whisper once I slip into the steaming tub.

For how long is such a soul remembered? A boy who does not have any sons of his own? Even if he had not fled in shame, his name would not last an entire generation. It will be blown away as quickly as the dust soars from his funeral pyre to the sea.

Still, it is a fate better than wandering somewhere in between. But he will be gone just the same.

I push away the thought, as we each must do a thousand times a day if we are to endure this world. This endless war. The water's warm caress nearly lulls me to sleep, but the moment I hear a horse's whinny and the crack of a whip, I open my eyes.

The breeze kisses my damp skin as I step onto our balcony, wrapped in a clean linen robe. Hector is in the horse ring below, helmet removed, his bronze face streaked with mud. From my perch, I watch his muscled arms glistening in the Anatolian sun.

Each evening that I wash his body before rubbing his sore muscles with olive oil, he tells me of the day's conflict. Of the strategies that worked against our enemies, and those that ended in more bloodshed. More dead sons.

Unlike most Trojan wives, I tell him what I think.

Unlike most Trojan husbands, he listens.

I only wish I could convince him to let me tell the rest of them.

My eyes follow Hector's lean body as it moves with the horse he is intent on breaking, an unruly colt. They never resist him for long. I should know.

"You will be his partner, the iron rod that sharpens his sword," my father, King Eetion, assured me when Hector came to Thebe at the base of Mount Placos to pursue my hand. "He is equal in dignity, even if you have your own spheres of influence. There is no other prince in all of Anatolia who can offer you that."

"But why have the Amazons train me if you intend that I end up another coddled queen?"

"Coddling is neither in your future nor your nature." My father, who'd grown frail in a way I'd never thought possible, had pulled his chair close to mine until our knees touched. "Andromache, your mother gave birth to seven sons-the pride of any king-before she placed you in my arms. It was then that I knew fear, for every father knows in his heart that losing his daughter to another is as inevitable as winter's return. I had Penthesilea instruct you not because I wished to send you off to war, but because the gods gave me a premonition."

"Of what?" I'd asked, crossing my arms like only a girl of seventeen can.

"Of a war that will come to you."

Hector looks up from the colt and meets my gaze through a cloud of dust. His eyes smile even if his mouth does not. Ask the people of Troy and they will tell you their dutiful prince does not know how to smile, but I know better. My husband is weary from defending his city, but his eyes have always smiled for me. From the moment I asked him the question that forged our fates-a melding of tin and copper.

"Will you let me fight by your side if the time comes?"

"Women do not fight, Harsa," Hector had replied in his quiet, stalwart way as we walked through the orchards beyond my father's palace. "They are what we fight for."

"Fight for? Or fight over?"

A boyish smirk I have rarely seen since danced across his lips.