"You, boy, you have seen your parents death. A great tragedy, I am sure. I, however, watched helplessly as one of your cousin's soldiers crushed my newborn son's skull upon the temple walls, helplessly pinned beneath another of those men." I listened to myself berating the boy as if from afar, yet, withdrawn though I was, I could still feel the bite of adolescent fury in my voice.
The boy looked at me with betraying eyes, full of disbelief and hurt. He sank back onto the ground, head low and hands trembling.
"I did not know what they did to women." He raised his head, and his blue eyes met mine, dancing in the firelight.
"It is not to a woman they have done it, it is to a child, who is yet a wife and mother." Both the boy and I looked around, to find the tent mouth occupied by none other than my rescuer and captor, Achilles, so-called son of a goddess.
"I am as much a woman as any, I had produced a worthy heir." My voice trembled, despite it's defiance, and the man, the killer, slunk forward, plunging his adroit fingers into my dark hair, and spoke to the boy more than to me.
"And now all of Greece has stolen him. He sails the River Styx tonight - in his fathers arms, no doubt?" The last part he directed at me alone, as I wept under his grasp, my head forced back into the post I was tied to. With his hand still in my hair, he forced my chin down, onto my chest, and then yanked my head back up again, so fast I felt the whole world spin before me, both the man and the boy 's images swum in the firelight as I felt my vision fading.
My eyelids grew heavy quickly, and my mouth dried in desperation - I could not faint, could not sleep, could not dare to dream, for fear of what awaited me behind the veil of conscious thought.
***
Through the darkness I felt weight upon me, pressing down, a grasp upon my arms, pulling me down, a weight and warmth wrenched from where I had held it to my chest, my little blackbird, pulled from my grasp. A shattering wail, the cry of a child, pierced my mind, wanting me to come to it, to rescue the sound, silence it.
Then as the wail grew louder, vibrating within my very being, my eyes seemed to begin to work again, as did my other senses; I could feel, now, the pain ensnaring my lower body, so deeply coiled I could hardly breath. Before my eyes, the faces of men appeared, one enamoured with a pleasure and fury I had seen upon no face before, while the other sneered, baring long, stained teeth, bloody between his gaping lips. He held my baby in his arms, my child, faceless, now silent, somehow.
Then, as the pain within me intensified, fresh waves of the unbearable torturous pain, the second man raised my child above his own head, howling in joy.
I shrieked in agony, as he brought my child's head to the ground with the speed and force of a charging horse.
And then the sensation of another pair of hands gripping my arms overtook me, and in fear, I struck out, the darkness returning to me, but it was punctuated by the faintest light, and no more could I feel the great pain.
"Wake up, girl, you'll rouse the whole camp, wake up!" The voice of the boy, the boy who was my captor, and somehow I felt my arms were unbound, and moved forward as I opened my eyes. Realising I was wailing still, I closed my mouth and stilled my lungs. The room settled into place before me, and so to did the knowledge that I was no longer tied to the post. Instead, I was coiled up in the boys arms.
I reached out with my now raw and frail arms, and clamped them around his thick torso, pulling myself closer to his unmoving form.
"I saw it, again…"My confession was no more than a whisper of a whisper, soundless and yet pertaining to sound all at once.
"What?" His tone was clipped.
"The men…my son -" I wailed once more, my misery rising in great sobs which burst from my lungs like overfilled skins, and buried my face in his uncovered torso. In an attempt to quieten me - and perhaps save me from the wrath of more severe hands, he cradled my head, twisting his fingers in my black hair, and rubbed my back with the other rough hand.
"If you are quiet, we won't tie you up again. My cousin might even let you go home…"His voice was full of sleep, and fear. It was still boyish, but not high pitched.
"What is your name, boy?"
"Patroclus. What is your name, little girl?" I cringed hard, it had been a very long time since anyone had held me and called me a little girl. Those were times before my marriage, when I was still little Eris, daughter of Erous, collector of summer-fruit and groomer of my fathers warhorse, and before I was forced to marry a man twice my own age of twelve, though I am now fourteen.
"Eris, daughter of Erous but I am no little girl, Patroclus." I raised my head, focusing on his face in the darkness. His eyes held mine, momentarily, and only then did I see the pain in him - though I could not comprehend pain out-with myself, in that moment I knew that he felt a certain empathy for me.
"Are your family alive, Eris? Or did they die with the city?"
"My family are long since dead, they died in the first painful effort to protect our homeland, which is not this land. My mother took her own life when she saw my father die, I am told that my brother died in his slaying of the man who butchered my father. My husband - Hades curse his soul - had long since taken me abroad."
There was a long silence, in which I realised my arms still held fast around Patroclus' torso, and that my head was resting on one muscular pane of his chest. When he spoke again, there was true kindness in his young voice, despite his words;
"Then you are alone in this world, and I feel pity for you because of that."
I knew then that I had been wrong when I'd told him he knew nothing of my pain. This boy knew as well as anyone how I hated life, and relished the thought of death. The adolescence was gone from him, while my own child-like fury remained.
"I apologise" And with those words, I removed myself from him, and sunk into the darkness of the tent, praying for morning.