Relta went back to the slave quarters with a handful of gold and silver bangles, which she distributed among the women who had prepared Ahma's body for burial. She thanked them, but they were reluctant to meet her eyes – the Thracians, the Egyptians, the Trojans, the Greeks, the Kalions, women from the southern countries like Ahma. All shapes, all colours, from her own freckled skin to the dark skin of the only other Abyssinian woman left among the slaves.
She looked around the tent, crammed with makeshift beds and cradles, private spheres marked out by haphazardly hung cloths and curtains, and she realised what these women already knew: but for a twist of fate she might have been sitting on the edge of a cot with a soldier's child on her knee or an archer's baby in her belly.
Some of the women kept their backs to her as they rolled their belongings in their cloaks.
"Are you leaving?" she asked curiously.
The other women started tidying up around her; she had been stared at enough, now they had more important things to attend to.
The older woman who's slept next to Ahma straightened up and looked at her with a frank gaze.
"Won't nobody be leaving here once the winter storms start," she said curtly. "We just move over the dunes for the winter. Can't camp out here on damp sand, so we pitch the tents on dry ground."
"The Greeks move closer to the city? Isn't that dangerous? What if Priam's army attacks?"
The woman snorted disparagingly.
"Won't be much fightin'," she said. "Last winter and the winter before, we all just bunkered down till we saw the equinox on the other side. The Trojan bastards just pull in behind their walls and make themselves comfortable, probably hopin' we all die of the cold on their beach."
Winter.
Her stomach fell, a whooshing, icy feeling that came with the realisation that if she didn't kill Agamemnon soon, very soon, she would be stuck in Achilles' tent till the spring came. There would be no boats westward and no chance to get on a ship to Carthage before the warm weather came. Any further delays in the spring and she would not get there in time.
And Hector would not like to have the Greek army sitting on his doorstep for one more winter, of this she was sure. Relta felt a sudden surge of urgency, a shortness of breath; she wondered where she had hidden the poison. She wondered how soon she could make that king of kings drink it.
xXx
As she was walking towards the tent, she saw Achilles, Patroclus and Odysseus sitting outside. Achilles was methodically sharpening the blade of one of his swords; the metal scraped the whetstone and the sound put her teeth on edge.
The three men looked up as she approached.
"You missed a visit from on high," Achilles remarked.
"From on high?" she repeated, not understanding the expression.
"Agamemnon came to see how I was coping with the loss of such a beloved member of my household," he said, his voice without emotion. "His words."
Patroclus made a noise in his throat like a growl.
"I hope you told him to – " she began hotly but Achilles stood, extending the sword and examining its blade.
"I thanked him for his concern," he said in that same dead tone.
"Why, I – "
"He is launching his last offensive against Troy before the storms set in," Odysseus interrupted quickly. "Your man here will fight again. The Greek soldiers will rejoice to see the Myrmidons swell their ranks. Priam's army will try to pound us into submission and we must all play our part in defending the beach."
"Defending the beach," she repeated bleakly. "Defending the damned sand. A noble task, if ever there was one."
She looked at Patroclus, who shrugged helplessly.
"You can't fight," she said to Achilles.
He looked at her with the cold, assessing gaze he normally reserved for others.
"I think I know best when I can fight," he said shortly. "Don't start, queen."
xXx
The next morning there was a call to battle; Achilles went.
Relta watched him walk out of the tent, his leg was slightly stiff but he moved confidently.
"At least the helmet fits better," he remarked drily, pulling it over his cropped hair.
Relta said nothing, followed him silently outside.
That dawn when he had woken her and told her he was going to battle, she'd started to argue with him again, but he'd held up a hand.
"I have to," he said shortly. "Or the Torjans will drive us back into the sea. Menelaus says Hector has been mustering for days."
"But Achilles –"
"You're not going to be one of those women who weeps, are you?" he asked, tugging the straps on his armour to make sure they were sewn fast. "A Phtian woman does not cry when her man goes into battle."
"I'm not Phtian," she muttered, but he hadn't heard her – he'd gone outside to Patroclus, who was waiting with the horses.
So she'd been warned.
When he took his leave, he ascended his chariot regally. Now she was no longer hidden away, she was allowed to stand outside with the slaves and the old men, watching as the Myrmidons gathered to leave. Achilles had glanced in her direction and nodded at her briefly before clicking his tongue and riding off with Eudorus at his side.
Relta had stood, rigid, and watched the men depart – Patroclus, clutching his newly-sharpened sword with Timon next to him, grinned at her from his chariot as they drew up level. One by one, she nodded at the men as they left, wondering how many would return. Because this battle felt different: Priam's army had been taunting them since before dawn with trumpets and drums from Troy's battlements. They had awoken the Greeks on the beach with a discordant cacophony, as though they wished to call them to their deaths. The noise had upset the animals, made the children cry and agitated the women. The men had hastily gathered their armour, prepared to march out.
Relta sat on the bed in the tent and tried to sew but it was too gloomy, so she went outside and took a walk down to the shore. As she walked, the wind whipped at her robe, changing direction and carrying the dull roar of the fighting beyond the sand dunes with it.
She passed Achilles' boat and it swayed, the wood moaning like a dying man as she passed, and she felt a shiver of foreboding crawl up her back like an insect. She felt drawn the edge of the battle, though she'd been determined to stay away. By the time she climbed up the sand dunes, her hand extended for balance as she did, the wind was pulling at her robe and she had plait her hair into a braid to stop it blowing into her eyes and mouth.
The other women looked at her, nodded; several discreetly stepped away, making sure they weren't close enough for her to strike up a conversation. Relta smiled at them, hoping they would smile back. To her relief, some did.
She raised a hand to her eyes to look out over the battlefield but could identify no troop colours that she knew.
"The Myrmidons are over there," said a voice at her left. When she looked around, there stood a woman in a grubby chiton, her shoulders covered with a homespun cloak. She pointed to the western end of the wall, but still Relta could see no one she recognised, just a heaving mass of helmets, shields and swords.
"Prince Hector reminds you that you have to kill Agamemnon," the woman said softly.
Relta's head spun around, but the woman was staring straight ahead.
"Kill him or you will be stuck on this beach until the Trojans come down to burn you off it, is what he said," the woman continued, her lips barely moving. "And it will not be long before that happens."
Relta's mouth went dry. She kept her eyes on the battlefield, licked her lips to reply – but when she turned her head, the woman just smiled at her.
"Once the winter winds come, you won't be sailing west," the woman continued. "You will be stuck here. And the offer will no longer stand come spring, he says. The choice is yours."
The insect of foreboding crawled into her heart and Relta nodded, stricken.
"I understand," she whispered. "Tell him I understand."
The woman smiled again and walked off down the dunes, pulling her cloak around her.
xXx
The Greeks were not victorious, but they did not seem to lose either.
Rather, it seemed that at some point both armies simply ran out of energy, ran out of the bloodlust that had fuelled the battle. Some of the Greek men began to move back, allowing themselves to be beaten back towards the dunes. The Trojans would not follow them, not caring to move out of range of their walls and their archers. And so a gulf began to emerge between the two armies, leaving a swathe of blood-stained sand. The great gates of Troy started to open and the Trojan army slowly fell back, dragging their wounded in behind the wall.
"Why don't they attack now?" Relta said to no one in particular, "The Trojans are retreating."
"Because the Trojan archers won't step down till the gates have closed," a slave woman said. "This is what they do when no one wins – no side has won, no side has lost. Both have retreated. Both kings save face."
She meekly glanced at Relta, up and down.
"Best get back and fetch hot water," she said. "He will want to wash."
"Thank you," Relta and smiled at her. She was rewarded with a shy smile in return before she turned to leave with the flock of women who hurried down the sandbanks, back to their tents.
She hurried back down the beach. The sky was darkening and she thought she heard the low rumble of thunder.
"Get water," she said to Dunni, who was lingering at the entrance to Achilles' tent.
Ahma would've filled the urns in expectation of his return, but luckily there was enough water for Achilles to wash. Relta stoked the embers of the fire and carefully poured some of the water in a small pot to heat up, listening to the sounds of the men returning.
There were cries from the women who were handed the dead bodies of the men they had loved and the men who had owned them, the sound of horses' harnesses and chariot wheels, warriors calling to each other as they assessed each others' wounds.
The curtain rattled open and he stood in the doorway.
Relta jumped, startled, then he pulled off his helmet, grinning.
"Happy to see me?" he said.
"I am," she replied.
It was not a lie. He was grinning, euphoric, as though the battle had restored something that his injuries had taken away.
She lifted the heavy pot and poured some of the hot water into his washing bowl, looking him over as she did, looking for cuts and wounds. But Achilles was covered in more dirt than blood, his lower legs were splattered with a mixture of muck and sand.
"Winter is coming," he said, looking down. "We are fighting in a mudbath. There won't be many more days like this."
"But you won?"
He grinned at her again, dunking his head into the bowl and rubbing his cropped hair with his fingers.
"Well, we didn't lose, which is enough of a cause for celebration for Agamemnon. He's called us to dine on his boat this evening, last time before we move up onto the dry land beyond the dunes."
She felt a flicker of hope.
"We? Me, too?"
Achilles looked at her sharply.
"Since when have you been eager to dine in Agamemnon's presence?"
"I'd like to get close enough to him to punch him in the face," she said quickly.
Achilles laughed drily, ducked his head in the water again, and then said, "I'm afraid you will have to wait your turn. I'm first."
"I am serious, though: have I been invited to sup with him?"
"Yes," Achilles said. "We shall go to the boat, we shall toast his magnificence, we shall drink his inferior wine and he will send us home before midnight to fight again tomorrow. That way he will not have to empty his stores to wine and dine us. But no face-punching. You are my woman now and I will not be told that I cannot keep you under control."
He removed the leather cloth around his waist and stood naked by the wash bowl, grinning at her as he sluiced the water over his chest.
Relta paused for a second, the next pot of warm water in her hands and fought the desire to fling it at him.
"We both know that you cannot keep me – " she started but stopped as the curtain opened and Dunni came in, water slopping from the buckets on the yoke.
"Beg pardon," she said loudly.
Achilles ignored her, kept his back to her as he continued to scrub off the dried blood and sand.
Dunni lowered the bucket and pointed at Achilles' behind. She winked at Relta and nodded approvingly.
"Get out," Relta said in the language of the Gaul and Dunni snickered before exiting the tent.
"I like her," Achilles said without turning around.
Relta put the pot down.
"You would," she said.
"Make yourself pretty, my queen," he said, grinning at her over his shoulder. "Agamemnon will be looking for you tonight."
She waited till he'd left the tent, then put on a fresh chiton and bound it around the waist with a black scarf, then fixed a cloak at her shoulder with a long pin that had a metal knot at its top. She wasn't sure where Achilles had picked it up or what its purpose had been, but it reminded her of the shawl pins her people wore. Glancing around, she took Hector's vial of poison and tucked it carefully into the folds of the band around her waist, making sure it was secure.
When she was dressed, she called for her slave, and Dunni plaited her hair in the elaborate braids that the women wore in her home country, rows of plaits that had small beads at their ends, criss-crossing across the top of her head. Then she rooted through Achilles' chest of stolen loot till she found what she was looking for: a gold head-dress with some black pearls attached. She snapped off some of the curlicues, bending the soft metal into shape before giving it to Dunni to place carefully on her head. Then the slave woman outlined her upper lids with black kohl and darkened the three dots on her neck.
"Do I look ...?"
"You look like a queen," Dunni said. "A real queen."
One of our queens, were the words unspoken.
Relta smiled at her and nodded, the pearls rustling against the metal. She felt the need to go to Agamemnon dressed as her true self, not some Achaean incarnation. She wanted to kill him as a woman of her own shores, and not a Greek.
Achilles came in, a robe wrapped around his waist, his body glistening with fragranced oils and his hair slicked back. He stood stock-still when he saw her, seemed to think to say something, then stopped.
"You do not look like a Kalion Queen," he said finally, pulling on his robe.
He stared at her, amused or bemused – it was hard to tell.
Dunni looked from one to the other, her eyes open wide, not even making an attempt at discretion.
"Well, I'm not a Kalion queen."
"If you are going to play dress-up, I want you to look like a Phtian woman."
"Don't you like it?" she replied.
He shook his head.
"You don't look like my woman."
She bit her lip; looked at the ground.
Maybe I'm not your woman, she thought.
"And I really don't think you need the cloak," Achilles continued.
He tugged out the pin and the cloak fell on the ground, then he loosened some of the plaits and removed the head-dress.
Relta tried to push his hands away, but he plucked the improvised crown from her head and flung it on the bed.
"Wait," he said as she scrabbled to put it back on.
He looked through one of his boxes and extracted a plain gold band, which he bent to fit her head. From its carvings, Relta knew it was Greek, maybe even from his homeland.
"Much better," he said, then he started to pull at her chiton and she jerked away.
"Don't," she said. "Leave it."
"Greek women don't wear it like that."
That was enough.
"Do I look like a Greek woman?" she asked lightly, warningly.
Achilles smiled, cupped her face in his hands.
"You do now," he said and kissed her nose. "Come, my sweet, and let us pay homage to that pig."
She glanced at Dunni as she left the tent, made a small movement of her head.
The slave woman leapt forward, licked the pad of her thumb and swiftly wiped the three black dots off the back of her neck.
Fine, Relta fumed. Maybe it was better not to draw attention to herself by looking - how had Odysseus put it? out-landish. Maybe it would be easier to get closer to Agamemnon dressed as a modest Greek woman, a meek consort and respectful subject. As long as she got to see him choke on his own vomit, what did it truly matter what she wore?
