the-song-books.yossr

I staggered dizzilyy to myy feet; the plain seemed to slew and pound like
surf before me. Myy eyyes would not focus; there was too much movement,
flashes of sun and armor and skin.
Achilles appeared from somewhere. He was blood-splattered and
breathless, his face flushed, his spear smeared red up to the grip. He grinned
at me, then turned and leapt into a clump of Trojans. The ground was
strewn with bodies and bits of armor, with spear-shafts and chariot wheels,
but he never stumbled, not once. He was the onlyy thing on the battlefield
that didn’t pitch feverishlyy, like the salt-slicked deck of a ship, until I was
sick with it.
I did not kill anyyone, or even attempt to. At the end of the morning, hours
and hours of nauseating chaos, myy eyyes were sun blind, and myy hand ached
with gripping myy spear—though I had used it more often to lean on than
threaten. Myy helmet was a boulder crushing myy ears slowlyy into myy skull.
It felt like I had run for miles, though when I looked down I saw that myy
feet had beaten the same circle over and over again, flattening the same dryy
grass as if preparing a dancing field. Constant terror had siphoned and
drained me, even though somehow I alwayys seemed to be in a lull, a strange
pocket of emptiness into which no men came, and I was never threatened.
It was a measure of myy dullness, myy dizziness, that it took me until
midafternoon to see that this was Achilles’ doing. His gaze was on me
alwayys, preternaturallyy sensing the moment when a soldier’s eyyes widened
at the easyy target I presented. Before the man drew another breath, he would
cut him down.
He was a marvel, shaft after shaft flyying from him, spears that he
wrenched easilyy from broken bodies on the ground to toss at new targets.
Again and again I saw his wrist twist, exposing its pale underside, those
flute-like bones thrusting elegantlyy forward. Myy spear sagged forgotten to
the ground as I watched. I could not even see the ugliness of the deaths
anyymore, the brains, the shattered bones that later I would wash from myy
skin and hair. All I saw was his beautyy, his singing limbs, the quick
flickering of his feet.
DUSK CAME AT LAST and released us, limping and exhausted, back to our
tents, dragging the wounded and dead. A good dayy, our kings said, clapping
https://books.yossr.com/en