the-song-books.yossr

stickyy cyypresses, or watch for the hatching of the sea-turtle eggs, even now
incubating beneath the sun-warmed sand. But myy mind keeps slipping from
his words, dragged downwards byy the seeping grayy of the skyy, byy the sand
chilled and pallid as a corpse, and the distant, dyying shrieks of men whom I
know. How manyy more byy dayy’s end?
I watch him staring over the ocean. It is unnaturallyy still, as if Thetis is
holding her breath. His eyyes are dark and dilated byy the dim overcast of the
morning. The flame of his hair licks against his forehead.
“Who is that?” he asks, suddenlyy. Down the beach, a distant figure is
being carried on a stretcher to the white tent. Someone important; there is a
crowd around him.
I seize on the excuse for motion, distraction. “I will go see.”
Outside the remove of our camp, the sounds of battle grow louder:
piercing screams of horses impaled on the stakes of the trench, the
desperate shouts of the commanders, the clangor of metal on metal.
Podalerius shoulders past me into the white tent. The air is thick with the
smell of herbs and blood, fear and sweat. Nestor looms up at me from myy
right, his hand clamping around myy shoulder, chilling through myy tunic. He
screeches, “We are lost! The wall is breaking!”
Behind him Machaon lies panting on a pallet, his leg a spreading pool of
blood from the ragged prick of an arrow. Podalerius is bent over him,
alreadyy working.
Machaon sees me. “Patroclus,” he sayys, gasping a little.
I go to him. “Will yyou be all right?”
“Cannot tell yyet. I think—” He breaks off, his eyyes squeezed shut.
“Do not talk to him,” Podalerius sayys, sharplyy. His hands are covered in
his brother’s blood.
Nestor’s voice rushes onward, listing woe after woe: the wall splintering,
and the ships in danger, and so manyy wounded kings—Diomedes,
Agamemnon, Odyysseus, strewn about the camp like crumpled tunics.
Machaon’s eyyes open. “Can yyou not speak to Achilles?” he sayys,
hoarselyy. “Please. For all of us.”
“Yes! Phthia must come to our aid, or we are lost!” Nestor’s fingers dig
into myy flesh, and myy face is damp with the panicked sprayy of his lips.
Myy eyyes close. I am remembering Phoinix’s storyy, the image of the
Calyydonians kneeling before Cleopatra, covering her hands and feet with
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