Troy: A Brand of Fire

  *

  The path wound deep into the forest, sometimes a yard wide and marked with the prints of sandals, at other times dwindling to little more than a fox run squeezing under bushes and slinking around trees. Eliade had no idea what he might find at the end of it, carnal sensuality or calm piety, but his heart was beating very fast, and he whistled as he walked.

  He heard splashing water once, somewhere down the slope to his right. A little later he thought he heard a monkey screech in the trees, though that was surely impossible. He’d only ever seen one monkey, in a stout cage at the market of Tanis in the Egyptian Delta when he’d sailed there, on a trade mission for Odysseus. It had shrieked and bared wicked teeth at him when it saw him staring, and Eliade had moved on hastily. He didn’t like the idea that a beast like that might be watching him from high in the trees, but that had to be a mistake. He couldn’t imagine how monkeys might have come here.

  Anyway, never mind worrying about simians, there was something ahead of him through the forest.

  It turned out to be a small temple complex, in the usual pattern of sanctuary in the middle and sleeping quarters ranged around. Simple dresses hung on a line beside the temple, away from the shade of the trees. On the far side plots had been dug and crops now grew, mostly wheat and barley: the basic foods that kept a body alive. Two white-clad women hoeing among the stalks saw him and straightened up, exchanging glances before one came towards him. The other went into the shrine, emerging a moment later with four other women carrying cudgels and sticks. Eliade smiled to himself. Women with staves wouldn’t last one minute against trained fighting men.

  But here they had the Myrmidons to protect them. Eliade let the smile fade as the woman reached him.

  “You’re looking for some… amusement?” she asked. Her accent was odd, hard to place.

  He nodded. “Am I in the right place?”

  “No. We don’t do such things here. Not all the priestesses of Dionysus are driven by their own desires.”

  “Very well, lady.” He inclined his head. “Might you know where such women could be found?”

  “The trail up the mountain,” she said, pointing. “It’s a long climb, but at the top you’ll find a temple complex by a hot spring. The women there will give you wine for your thirst, and satisfy whatever other needs you might have.”

  He was about to thank her, and move on, when his brain understood something. “That accent. You’re Mysian.”

  “I am,” she said. “I was taken from my home and brought here, only for my captor to grow bored with me. Now I am a priestess of Dionysus. I’m content enough. As long as need not deal with the urges of men anymore.”

  “Who brought you?” he asked, before he could help himself.

  “Achilles, of course.” Her lips quirked. “As he’s brought many women, through the years. Cyrilla over there was his favourite toy long before he met me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And there is Deidameia,” the woman went on. She indicated a girl, surely not old enough to really be called a woman… but she had a child in her arms, a boy Eliade thought. He might be a year old. “Once Achilles’ favourite, now forgotten. As all of us are.”

  His body had forgotten its desire, for the moment. “Does Achilles know he has a son?”

  “He knows. We never see him.”

  “I wish I could help you,” Eliade said.

  “I told you I am content enough,” she smiled. “There is happiness here, on some days. Now go, and find your lascivious women. I don’t blame you for it.”

  He was already walking away when something occurred to him, and he turned back. “Will you tell me your name?”

  “I am Išbardia,” she said. “If it matters.”

  “Who we are always matters,” he answered. It was something Odysseus liked to say, and Eliade thought it was probably true. He gave the woman a nod and turned back to the forest, and the trail up the mountain, and a moment later was gone.