the-song-books.yossr

puddling in the swamp of their final torrent: the dark emptyying of their
bowels, clotted with blood.
Achilles and I built pyyre after pyyre, burning everyy scrap of wood we
could find. Finallyy we abandoned dignityy and ritual for necessityy, throwing
onto each fire not one, but a heap of bodies. We did not even have time to
stand watch over them as their flesh and bone mingled and melted together.
Eventuallyy most of the kings joined us—Menelaus first, then Ajax, who
split whole trees with a single stroke, fuel for fire after fire. As we worked,
Diomedes went among the men and discovered the few who still layy
concealed in their tents, shaking with fever and vomit, hidden byy their
friends who did not want, yyet, to send them to the death grounds.
Agamemnon did not leave his tent.
Another dayy then, and another, and everyy companyy, everyy king, had lost
dozens of soldiers. Although strangelyy, Achilles and I noted, our hands
pulling closed eyyelid after eyyelid, none of them were kings. Onlyy minor
nobles and foot soldiers. None of them were women; this too we noticed.
Our eyyes found each other’s, full of suspicions that grew as men dropped
suddenlyy with a cryy, hands clutching their chests where the plague had
struck them like the quick shaft of an arrow.
IT WAS THE NINTH NIGHT of this—of corpses, and burning, and our faces
streaked with pus. We stood in our tent gasping with exhaustion, stripping
off the tunics we had worn, throwing them aside for the fire. Our suspicions
tumbled out, confirmed in a thousand wayys, that this was not a natural
plague, not the creeping spread of haphazard disease. It was something else,
sudden and cataclyysmic as the snuffing of Aulis’ winds. A god’s
displeasure.
We remembered Chryyses and his righteous outrage at Agamemnon’s
blasphemyy, his disregard for the codes of war and fair ransom. And we
remembered, too, which god he served. The divinityy of light and medicine
and plague.
Achilles slipped out of the tent when the moon was high. He came back
some time later, smelling of the sea.
“What does she sayy?” I asked, sitting up in bed.
“She sayys we are right.”
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