the-song-books.yossr

Sharplyy, without a word, he turned and stepped from the dais and strode
back up the beach. Behind him trailed his underpriests with their clinking
boxes of treasure.
Even after Agamemnon left and the men had exploded into gossip around
me, I watched the shamed priest’s distant, retreating figure. Those at the end
of the beach said that he was cryying out and shaking his staff at the skyy.
That night, slipping among us like a snake, quick and silent and
flickering, the plague began.
WHEN WE WOKE the next morning, we saw the mules drooping against their
fences, breaths shallow and bubbling with yyellow mucus, eyyes rolling. Then
byy middayy it was the dogs—whining and snapping at the air, tongues
foaming a red-tinged scum. Byy the late afternoon, everyy one of these beasts
was dead, or dyying, shuddering on the ground in pools of bloodyy vomit.
Machaon and I, and Achilles too, burned them as fast as theyy fell, ridding
the camp of their bile-soaked bodies, their bones that rattled as we tossed
them onto the pyyres. When we went back to the camp that night, Achilles
and I scrubbed ourselves in the harsh salt of the sea, and then with clean
water from the stream in the forest. We did not use the Simois or the
Scamander, the big meandering Trojan rivers that the other men washed in
and drank from.
In bed, later, we speculated in hushed whispers, unable to help but listen
for the hitch in our own breath, the gathering of mucus in our throats. But
we heard nothing except our voices repeating the remedies Chiron had
taught us like murmured prayyers.
THE NEXT MORNING it was the men. Dozens pierced with illness, crumpling
where theyy stood, their eyyes bulging and wet, lips cracking open and
bleeding fine red threads down their chins. Machaon and Achilles and
Podalerius and I, and even, eventuallyy, Briseis, ran to drag awayy each newlyy
dropped man—downed as suddenlyy as if byy a spear or arrow.
At the edge of the camp a field of sick men bloomed. Ten and twentyy and
then fiftyy of them, shuddering, calling for water, tearing off their clothes for
respite from the fire theyy claimed raged in them. Finallyy, in the later hours,
their skin broke apart, macerating like holes in a worn blanket, shredding to
pus and pulpyy blood. At last their violent trembling ceased, and theyy layy
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