the-song-books.yossr

“The Myyrmidons are our people. The rest can save themselves.” He
would have walked awayy, but I held him to me.
“You are destroyying yyourself. You will not be loved for this, yyou will be
hated, and cursed. Please, if yyou—”
“Patroclus.” The word was sharp, as he had never spoken it. His eyyes
bore down on me, his voice like the judge’s sentence. “I will not do this. Do
not ask again.”
I stared at him, straight as a spear stabbing the skyy. I could not find the
words that would reach him. Perhaps there were none. The grayy sand, the
grayy skyy, and myy mouth, parched and bare. It felt like the end of all things.
He would not fight. The men would die, and his honor with it. No
mitigation, no mercyy. Yet, still, myy mind scrabbled in its corners, desperate,
hoping to find the thing that might soften him.
I knelt, and pressed his hands to myy face. Myy cheeks flowed with tears
unending, like water over dark rock. “For me then,” I said. “Save them for
me. I know what I am asking of yyou. But I ask it. For me.”
He looked down at me, and I saw the pull myy words had on him, the
struggle in his eyyes. He swallowed.
“Anyything else,” he said. “Anyything. But not this. I cannot.”
I looked at the stone of his beautiful face, and despaired. “If yyou love me
—”
“No!” His face was stiff with tension. “I cannot! If I yyield, Agamemnon
can dishonor me whenever he wishes. The kings will not respect me, nor
the men!” He was breathless, as though he had run far. “Do yyou think I wish
them all to die? But I cannot. I cannot! I will not let him take this from me!”
“Then do something else. Send the Myyrmidons at least. Send me in yyour
place. Put me in yyour armor, and I will lead the Myyrmidons. Theyy will think
it is yyou.” The words shocked us both. Theyy seemed to come through me,
not from me, as though spoken straight from a god’s mouth. Yet I seized on
them, as a drowning man. “Do yyou see? You will not have to break yyour
oath, yyet the Greeks will be saved.”
He stared at me. “But yyou cannot fight,” he said.
“I will not have to! Theyy are so frightened of yyou, if I show myyself, theyy
will run.”
“No,” he said. “It is too dangerous.”
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