*
The prince’s brother was several miles away, sitting at a campfire as afternoon faded into evening.
Three fat, red-breasted geese hung on spits over the flames. A fair return for half a day’s hunting, though less than they’d hoped for. These wooded slopes in the upper Simois valley usually teemed with game, everything from boars and wild goats to leopards, but today they’d seen nothing. Only old spoor, long since dried out, and the remnants of tracks almost worn away by the summer wind. Hector had been hoping to find a leopard, if he was honest. A brush with danger would have fitted his mood perfectly.
“So what do you think?” Lycaon asked.
It was unusual for Lycaon to be home long enough to join a hunt. Most often he was off sailing somewhere, in a galley he’d bought from an Argive and crewed with men from all over. Trojans, Lydians, a couple of Phoenicians; even an Egyptian, a man with the blackest skin Hector had ever seen. All of them must have sailed to their homes since then, probably more than once. Lycaon had seen things Hector knew he never would, from the Cypriot copper mines to the strange pyramids that rose out of the sand in Egypt.
But Lycaon was married now, to a member of the Hittite royal line no less, albeit a fairly remote cousin. Marriage changed a man, changed the way he lived. Hector knew that for himself now. He loved to hunt, felt more at home outdoors than in the streets of a city, but part of him now longed to be home, where Andromache was. Where half his heart was.
“I think Father has tried everything else,” he said. “The Argives deserve it. Maybe now they’ll see sense.”
“That’s right,” Pandarus said. He turned the spits and fat sputtered. The smell of the birds was driving Hector mad. “And really, what are they going to do? Attack Troy?”
He chortled, as though that was a great joke. Probably it was. Troy’s mighty walls, and her position on the ridge above the plain, made it almost impossible to attack. Even so, the surrounding area might be threatened, even seized, which would be a disaster anyway. The horses would be lost the moment that happened. It had taken a hundred years to build up those herds; it would take a hundred more to replace them, if they were lost. And to what point? Once the Argives had Trojan bloodstock they could sell it around the world, and no one would ever need to buy from Troy again.
Pandarus didn’t understand that. He was lord of Zeleia, the growing city in the Scamander valley, halfway to Mount Ida. Zeleia didn’t have a coastline, or a hinterland threatened by raiders. The only way into that valley was either over the peaks or through the gorge, and the routes were watched. That made Pandarus more confident than he should be. He was a good man to have around though, one of only two warriors who could stand against Hector and meet him blow for blow – more or less. Whenever Hector’s spirits flagged Pandarus was there, as full of energy and spirit as ever.
And yet he was nagged by unease, over this business with Greeks and taxes. The Argives would be mad to attack Troy, but Hector couldn’t shake the worry that they might.
“No Argive kingdom is strong enough to challenge us,” Lycaon said. “And they can’t work together anyway. I’ve visited enough of their halls to know. Whenever two kings meet they bicker over something. It might be trade, or borders, or women,” his mouth tightened, as though he was thinking of Hesione, “or who the gods love best. But they don’t work together in warfare.”
“They have a High King now,” Hector murmured.
“And what difference has that made?” Pandarus demanded. “How many times has their High King led all the Argives into war?”
He never had, of course. Agamemnon was a surly sort of man, by all accounts, long on intimidation but short of subtlety and tact. And the other Greek kings didn’t like having an overlord, and took every opportunity to show that they were more than Agamemnon’s lackeys. It didn’t make for stability. Agamemnon seemed to spend most of his time trying to prevent his subject kings from smashing one another into pieces over some minor disagreement; and even then, the kings fought in a constant series of minor raids against each other. Nothing short of the end of the world seemed likely to end it.
That was the Argives for you. They knew how to fight, by the gods they did, but they didn’t know how to stop. They had conquered their way across the Aegean and beyond, but when they met their match they would have no other gift to turn to, no other way to live. They would fail, and night would fill their eyes as they died, and were forgotten.
“What about you?” Hector asked the fourth man. “What do you think?”
He looked up, a tall lean man with thoughtful hazel eyes. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“How can you say that?” Hector asked, surprised. “It always matters. Father always asks you, Aeneas.”
“Not this time,” he said. “The decision was made without me. As is Priam’s right.” He hesitated. “What I think… is that this is dangerous. The Argives don’t like to be challenged. It makes them angry.”
“Abducting our women makes us Trojans angry,” Pandarus growled. “Especially royal women.”
“With reason,” Aeneas murmured. “I’m not defending the Greeks, my friends. Lycaon here can journey to their halls if he likes, but I’ve no stomach for it myself. If I want to watch half-educated beasts fight over the table I can let my dogs into the supper hall.”
Hector grinned. Aeneas was the other man who could stand toe to toe with him and not back up, and he liked him even better than he did Pandarus. There was more intelligence behind the slim man’s words, more consideration than Pandarus could match. That was why Priam took him into his confidence so often. But not today, apparently. He hadn’t counselled Aeneas before deciding to raise the taxes. Hector found that surprising.
When he was king, he was going to make Aeneas his main advisor. It would take him away from Dardanos of course, and that would need to be dealt with, but Hector would find a way. He’d have to. Aeneas was too clever to be allowed to dither away in that little town.
“But I wonder if this course of action is wise,” Aeneas went on. “To be blunt, Hesione is one woman. What’s been done to her is monstrous, it’s appalling – but still, it has happened to one woman. And it has happened, my friends. Nothing we or the king of Troy can do will change that.”
“We can bring her back,” Lycaon said.
“But we cannot undo the last twenty years,” Aeneas said. “What we can do, however, is embroil Troy in a dispute with no resolution, for the sake of a woman we can no longer save. If Hesione comes back to Troy it won’t be home to her any longer. She’ll hardly know the city. And Priam, for all his love for her, will hardly recognise her. She’s no longer the sister he remembers.”
“So you think we should abandon her?” Pandarus demanded.
Aeneas regarded him calmly. “I think she was abandoned twenty years ago. The time for direct action was then.”
“You think the Argives will attack us,” Hector said. The others fell silent as he spoke. “Don’t you?”
“I think the Argives are Argives,” Aeneas answered. He stared into the fire. “Nobody knows what they’ll do until they do it. Least of all them. But it will probably be mad, and dangerous, and foolish.” He shook his head. “Never mind. The dice have been thrown, they’re rolling now, and there’s nothing we can do but wait to see how they land.”
Aeneas was uneasy too. Hector thought there should have been comfort in that, of a strange kind to be sure, but still. Every man likes to know his fears are not mere creations of his own mind. In the event, hearing them spoken by Aeneas only made Hector more concerned. He didn’t know what to say. The four of them sat in silence for some time, staring at the flames or the stars, each lost in his own thoughts.
“The geese are done,” Pandarus said finally. They took them down from the spits and shared them onto four plates, and then sat and ate as the stars wheeled, and owls began to talk above them.
*