Vengeance of Orion by Ben Bova Read Free Book Online Page B

"Honor?" he snapped at Phoenix. "What kind of honor would I have left if I put my spear back in the service of the man who robbed me?"
    Odysseus said, "We can get the girl back for you, if that's what you want. We can get a dozen girls for you."
    "Or boys," Ajax added. "Whatever you want."
    Achilles got to his feet, and Patrokles scrambled to stand beside him. I was right, he was terribly small, although every inch of him was hard with sinew. Even the slender Patrokles topped him by a few inches.
    "I will defend my boats when Hector breaks into the camp," Achilles said. "Until Agamemnon comes to me personally and apologizes, and begs me to rejoin the fighting, that is all that I will do."
    Odysseus rose, realizing that we were being dismissed. Phoenix stood up and, after glancing around, Ajax finally understood and got up too.
    "What will the poets say of Achilles in future generations?" Odysseus asked, firing his last arrow at the warrior's pride. "That he sulked in his tent while the Trojans slaughtered his friends?"
    The shot glanced off Achilles without penetrating. "They will never say that I humbled myself and threw away my honor by serving a man who has humiliated me."
    We went to the doorway, speaking polite formal farewells. Phoenix hung back and I heard Achilles invite his old mentor to remain the night.
    Outside, Ajax shook his head wearily. "There's nothing we can do. He just won't listen to us."
    Odysseus clapped his broad shoulder. "We tried our best, my friend. Now we must prepare for tomorrow's battle without Achilles."
    Ajax trudged off into the darkness, followed by his men. Odysseus turned to me, a thoughtful look on his face.
    "I have a task for you to perform," he said. "If you are successful you can end the war."
    "And if I am not?"
    Odysseus smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. "No man lives forever, Orion."

Chapter 7

    In less than an hour I found myself picking my way across the trench that fronted our rampart and heading into the Trojan camp. A white cloth knotted above my left elbow proclaimed that I was operating under a flag of truce. The slim willow wand in my right hand was the impromptu symbol of a herald.
    "These should get you past the Trojan sentries without having your throat slit," Odysseus had told me. He did not smile as he said those words, and I did not find his reassurances very reassuring.
    "Get to Prince Hector and speak to no one else," he had commanded me. "Tell him that Agamemnon offers a solution to this war: If the Trojans will return Helen to her rightful husband, the Achaians will return to their own lands, satisfied."
    "Hasn't that offer been made before?" I asked.
    Odysseus smiled at my naiveté. "Of course. But always with the demand for a huge ransom, plus all the fortune that Helen brought with her. And always when we were fighting under the walls of Troy. Priam and his sons never believed we would abandon the siege without breaking in and sacking the city. But now that Hector is besieging us, perhaps they will believe that we are ready to quit, and merely need a face-saving compromise to send us packing."
    "Returning Helen is nothing more than a face-saving compromise?" I blurted.
    He looked at me curiously. "She is only a woman, Orion. Do you think Menalaos has been pining away in celibacy since the bitch ran off with Aleksandros?"
    I blinked at him, so taken aback by his attitude that I had no reply. I wondered, though, if Odysseus felt the same way about his own wife, waiting for him back in Ithaca.
    He made me repeat my instructions and then, satisfied, led me to the top of the rampart, not far from where I had gained my moment of glory earlier in the day. I gazed out into the darkness. In the silvery moonlight a mist had risen, turning the plain into a ghostly shivering vapor that rose and sank slowly like the breath of some living thing. Here and there I could make out the glow of Trojan campfires, like distant faint stars in the shrouding fog.
    "Remember,"