The Hittite - Ben Bova [102]
“Wander through the world in darkness, cowardly teller of lies,” said the High King.
Poletes shrieked in agony as Agamemnon burned out first his left eye and then his right. The old man fainted. The smile of a sadistic madman still twisting his thick lips, Agamemnon tossed the brand away, took out his dagger again, and sliced the ears off the unconscious old man’s head.
The soldiers dropped Poletes’ limp body to the sand as the High King tossed the severed ears to the dogs scrambling behind his makeshift throne.
“Well done, Brother,” said Menalaos, with a nasty laugh.
Agamemnon looked up and called out in his loudest voice, “So comes justice to anyone who maligns the truth!” Then he turned, smirking, to me. “You can take your servant back now.”
The soldiers around me stepped back, but still held their spears leveled, ready to kill me if I moved on their king.
I looked down at Poletes’ bleeding form, then up to the High King.
“I heard Cassandra’s prophecy,” I told him. “She is never believed, but she is never wrong.”
Agamemnon’s half-demented sneer vanished. He glared at me. For a long wavering moment I thought he would command the soldiers to kill me on the spot.
But then I heard Magro’s voice calling from a little way behind me. “Lukka, are you all right? Do you need help?”
The soldiers turned their gaze toward his voice. I saw that Magro had brought my entire contingent with him. There were only five of them, but they were Hatti soldiers, fully armed with spears and shields and iron swords.
“He needs no help,” Agamemnon answered, “except to carry away the slave I have punished.”
With that he turned away and started tottering back toward his cabin, up the beach, his dogs following him. The soldiers seemed to breath one great sigh of relief and let their spears drop away from me.
I went to Poletes and picked up his bleeding, wimpering body. As we started back toward our own part of the camp, I asked Magro, “My sons?”
“Safe with Odysseos’ women. I thought you might want us to back you.”
I nodded, too angry and relieved and filled with disgust to speak. But after a half-dozen steps, I told Magro, “We leave camp tomorrow.” “Tomorrow?”
“I want to leave this damned place and all its blood far behind us.” “But where are we going?” Magro asked. I had no answer.
5
I tended Poletes far into the night. We had only wine to ease his pain, and nothing at all to ease the anguish of his mind. I laid him on the cot in my own tent, groaning and sobbing. Magro found a healer, a dignified old graybeard with two young women assistants. He spread a salve on his burns and the bleeding slits where his ears had been.
“Not even the gods can return his sight,” the healer told me solemnly, in a whisper Poletes could not hear. “The eyes have been burned away.”
“The gods be damned,” I growled. “Will he live?”
If my words shocked the healer he gave no sign of it. “His heart is strong. If he survives the night he could live for years to come.”
The healer mixed some powder into the wine cup and made Poletes drink. It put him into a deep sleep almost at once. His women prepared a poultice and showed me how to smear it over a cloth and put it on Po-letes’ eyes. They were silent throughout, instructing me by showing rather than speaking, as if they were mute. They never dared look directly into my face. The healer seemed surprised that I myself acted as Poletes’ nurse, but he said nothing about it and maintained his professional dignity.
I sat over the blinded old storyteller far into the night, putting fresh compresses on his eyes every hour or so, keeping him from reaching up to the burns with his hands. He slept, but even in sleep he groaned and writhed.
Twice I ducked out of the tent and checked my sons. They were still sleeping quietly, side by side, wrapped in a good blanket,