Gears of Troy 2 Read online

  I remembered the first time I travelled the roads from Dardanelles to Troy. It took about two days, if I remembered correctly, but at that time I was suffering from the pain of a broken rib, had two run-ins with enemy soldiers, needed time to rest, and, most importantly, was without a horse. We were able to make this journey in less than one fourth of that time, arriving around midnight on the same day we set out.

  There were only six of us: me, Linos with his three men, and our guide. I had been told that eight armed guards accompanied Zidan on his visit to the palace but that I should not worry as there would be many Thirians on the lookout if things were to get out of hand. I was not worried. I rarely worried at all under the threat of these small skirmishes, and my hands twitched in anticipation of a fight.

  When I first found myself in that strange land, I was hesitant to engage in combat with trained soldiers, but as it became a routine occurrence during my first few weeks there, I grew confident in my ability to handle myself, having only met a few close calls, even then only at the hands of the most renowned fighters of the time. These small fries would surely not be a challenge for me, even if they outnumbered us four to one. I was excited for this particular fight; it had been so long since I really got to flex my muscles, and on top of that, these guys were going to learn what it meant to mess with my King.

  It turned out that revenge suited me.

  We left our horses in the city and made our way to the woods. The local scouts told us that they had carefully followed the instructions given to them by the Queen and filled us in on the latest details, confirming the enemy’s numbers and where their lookouts were last seen posted around the camp. We would be going into a side of the camp that sat in the periphery of two of the watchmen, with the intention of shooting them full of arrows before they could cry for help. If we could pull that maneuver off, it would take care of a fourth of them on the spot.

  Navigating the dense woods in the darkness was no easy task, especially while being cautious not to snap any twigs or rustle through too many leaves underfoot. I let Linos lead the way, as such forms of stealth were second nature to his people. Where he stepped, I stepped. As long as I did that, there was not much left for me to be concerned about.

  For most of the way, I could only see the outlines of trees, shaded by their own leaves from the light of the nighttime sky. Here and there, a moonbeam would shine through the packed forest ceiling and illuminate an exposed root or a cluster of underbrush. We steered clear of such spotlights, ever careful not to make our presence known.

  Over time, my eyes adjusted to the darkness as best they could. I was actually able to see the back of the chief leading me forward. Prior to that, I had to be content with following the subtle path of his footfalls as he crept along, silent as a leopard. Not long after his form took a recognizable shape in my eyes, we found the enemy camp.

  The sleepy embers of a fire marked the clearing’s center. After travelling all that time in near total darkness, I found it amusing that these men would setup camp in a bald patch of the forest, the most illuminated spot I had seen since venturing into the trees. Their night watchers would be of little help sitting on the edges of their encampment, peering out into the darkness, made ever darker in contrast to the light shining down on their campsite.

  We had come to precisely where the local Thirians suggested. On either side, I saw glimpses of the foreign men stationed on the edge of darkness, staring into nothing and looking bored. I had to stifle a laugh as the thought crossed my mind that I might be able to stand within a foot of one of them and wave my hands in his face without him noticing.

  My Thirian brethren fanned out on both sides as I dared a few yards closer, still under the cover of the thicket. I heard a surprised gasp, followed by a thump to my right, and looked to my left just in time to see one of the watchers take an arrow to the side of his head. Two down.

  A man on the opposite end of the camp whispered something that I could not make out. My allies and I stopped moving. The man hissed his comment again, clearly not satisfied at having received no answer. I saw all three of Linos’s men with their bows drawn, aiming for the last watchman on the far end, ready to let loose in a moment. I tapped the one closest to me on the shoulder, urging caution. I could not see the last guard yet, and, though I doubted it was the diplomat himself, I wanted to be absolutely certain of that before we ended him. Perhaps there was a little truth to Hecuba’s reasoning. My Thirians were hard men, and needed a strong hand to keep them on point. I snapped my fingers at the others to get their attention and make sure they understood not to fire just yet.

  It seemed the guard heard me snap, as he began talking louder, more frustrated. Among a cluster of obscenities, I heard him command his fallen allies to answer him. Then I heard some kind of clicking and realized he was trying to light a fire with flint and steel, possibly for a torch. The Thirian closest to me looked to me for instruction. I did not know whether it would be more helpful or hurtful for us to all see each other. We would still have the element of surprise since we were still under the cover of the forest. There was no way they would quickly be able to tell how many of us there were. Also, the light would make it easier to tell which of our targets was Zidan. I decided to allow it, holding my hand up to the Thirians as a gesture to wait.

  I leaned close to the warrior and whispered, “If he’s dressed like a soldier, shoot him.”

  The Thirian nodded that he understood.

  After several attempts at starting his flame, the man successfully lit his torch but was left with no time to celebrate as an arrow pierced his heart in the next moment. He was clearly not our man. I breathed a sigh of relief. They had shot him too fast for me to know whether it was the right decision or not.

  The soldier fell forward onto the freshly lit torch, and the cloth and leather of his armor was soon swallowed by the flames.

  “What is that?” came a voice from one of the tents. “What is going on out there?”

  A balding pudgy head peeked through one of the tents, and I knew immediately who I was looking at. Zidan saw me watching him in the flickering light of the corpse fire and hollered, “Attack! We’re under attack!” before disappearing back into the curtain of pelts.

  “Don’t kill that one!” I shouted as Linos and I moved in, leaving the other three warriors behind to pick the enemy off with their arrows. As an afterthought, I glanced back to make sure our guide was still there and said, “Stay put.”

  He responded with a stream of frantic nods.

  The other tents exploded with life when I turned back around. If my math was correct, there were five battle-trained men left to handle, making our numbers even.

  One burst out, sword held high, and charged straight for me. I was prepared to stab him in the next instant, but one of my men sent him flying off to the side with a shot to the ribs. Our enemies were running out, and I had been anticipating this fight for too long to come away without a single kill.

  Another came at me, lunging forward with his blade aimed at my stomach. I brought my sword down on his neck, cleaving him nearly through with a spectacular shower of gore. Before he hit the ground, his rib met the sting of an arrow, just as his brother had before him. I looked over at the archer providing me cover fire, and grinned. “He’s down. Save your arrows.”

  I turned my attention back to the action just in time to see Linos club one of the soldiers in the temple with his spiked bat. The man’s head moved under the coercion of Linos’s weapon, now with several of its metal barbs lodged deeply into the poor wretch’s flesh and bone. Upon his victim making contact with the ground, the Chief placed a foot on the corpse’s throat and yanked his club free, taking half the man’s face with it. He grinned as the blood sprinkled over his bare chest. Yeah, I thought, I could understand Hecuba’s hesitation to allow the Thirians to work without supervision.

  I looked to Zidan’s tent to make sure he hadn’t been killed in the crossfire. As far as I could tell, the prick r
emained under the covers, hiding. A soldier nearby suffered a sudden shot to the abdomen and looked up in confusion to see where it had come from. His eyes widened upon spotting the culprit across the camp, crouching among the trees in the hellfire light that was emanating from his fallen ally. The man who had shot him winked as the soldier fell to his knees clutching the wound, and he shot another arrow into the man’s chest for good measure. I was not sure if that was done out of mercy or enjoyment on the Thirian’s part, but it got the job done because his target planted his face in the dirt a second later and did not stir again.

  The final soldier was screaming as two of our men closed in on him. He feebly brandished his sword from side to side, futilely waving them and their spears back with no more success than one might have threatening two cobras with a fly swatter. Each of the men let loose a couple of playful jabs at different intervals, wanting to savor the moment. This was the last one, and there was no telling when they would get their next chance to have fun like this.

  The soldier’s blade made contact with the point of a warrior’s spear, but he barely tapped it and didn’t even force it down an inch. The other Thirian took this is an invitation and stabbed the shouting man in his side. He screamed and dropped his sword, which prompted the other warrior to spear him in the opposite side. He dropped to his knees, blood pooling in his mouth.

  “End it! Dear God, please, just end it!” he gurgled.

  One of the warriors twisted his spear, which drew out another stream of helpless cries from the man. He gripped his hands together as if in a desperate prayer, begging whatever god he followed to put him out of his misery.

  “End it already!” I shouted. My stomach was beginning to churn. I was no fan of torture by any stretch of the imagination. Typically, I would rush to end my opponent’s suffering. There was no need to continue to hurt a man once you had already beaten him.

  In response to what I said, Linos approached the man, took his sword from the ground, and tore a deep gash into his neck. Blood waterfalled out, and the other two warriors removed their spears from his stomach. I was not quite sure, but before he fell, he seemed to be mouthing the words, “Thank you.”

  With all that done, I gestured for everyone to surround Zidan’s tent. Even our scout crept out into the light of the clearing to get a closer look.

  “Zidan, come out!” I shouted.

  I was not in the mood to get stabbed in the face by a cowering aristocrat, so I was hoping he would make this easy on us and just come out of hiding without forcing me to go inside. I waited a moment and was met only with silence.

  “I’m serious, Zidan. We can make this a lot more difficult for you if you don’t cooperate.”

  Still nothing.

  “All right.”

  I stepped forward but then realized there were more cautious ways to go about this. I pointed to one of my men.

  “Flick the tent with your spear,” I ordered.

  The Thirian moved in an did as instructed, placing the tip of his spear beneath the hides of the tent and lifting it up as much as the thing’s weight would allow. He did it gently at first and then more vigorously. I motioned for the others to join in, and they did, even jabbing into the tent now and again.

  “Really, Zidan? What are you planning to accomplish like this? We’re going to get you out of there one way or another.”

  There was no answer.

  “Zidan?”

  It crossed my mind that we may have given the man a heart attack, or perhaps he even committed suicide to keep safe some secret we were not meant to discover. I took a few steps closer and held out my blade, slowly pulling one of the tent’s folds to the side.

  “He’s not here,” I growled. “How the hell does a buy shaped like a pot roast move that fast?”

  My men lowered their weapons.

  He must have fled when we were occupied, most likely at the beginning of the fight when my attention was focused on my archer friend stealing my kills. Things were not looking good for the King.

  It appeared as if some of the diplomat’s things were left behind. I crawled inside and was quickly drawn to an object sitting at the far end. It was unusual, like nothing I had ever seen. The words “like nothing” would alone have provided an accurate description. It was an understatement to call it black. No, it was blacker than black, as if it did not allow light to reflect off of its surface, instead gobbling up every photon it met like a black hole would. I was hesitant to touch it, not even sure whether it was solid or some tear in the fabric of reality leading to oblivion. My mind could not make sense of what I was looking at. It was just this emptiness sitting on the floor of the tent. All reason led me to believe that it occupied space there, but my eyes could not recognize any sort of dimension to the thing.

  “What in the . . .?” I breathed.

  Against my better judgement, I took a seat in front of it and reached over to pick it up. I was surprised to feel my fingers stop when they came into contact with it, as I was expecting them to just go straight through. It was a block of some kind. It tapped my knuckles on it and heard a hollow sound in response. Perhaps it was a box, I thought.

  I took it in my hands and discovered it weighed no more than five pounds. It was surreal to see my fingers disappear behind this seemly flat thing, devoid of dimension as far as my eyes could understand. My mind, trying to stitch together this conflicting input of sight and touch, felt as if it was expanding, reminding me of the giddy high I felt from the painkillers I was given after losing my hands. My eyes began to hurt as if they were looking at a color that was a little too bright, but I found that I could not pull them away. This logic-defying mystery was far too intriguing to turn my attention from it for even a moment.

  “What do you see?” I heard Linos say. I did not face him, but it was clear that he had lifted the fold of the tent to investigate after I fell silent. His question was not muffled by the walls of pelt like it would have been otherwise.

  “I’m not sure,” I said in almost a dreamy fashion.

  “Is it another bracelet?”

  I laughed. “No, I don’t think it’s anything like that. Look.”

  I held it over my head for him to see, still not removing my own eyes from it. A smile crept across my face when I heard him gasp. In the next couple seconds, he was sitting on the plush floor of the tent at my side.

  “Can I touch?” he asked.

  I held it closer to him, and he placed his index finger on top of the thing. When he found that his finger could go no further, he grinned like a child witnessing a magic trick.

  “What is it?”

  “I have no idea,” I said with a laugh. “I guess it’s some kind of box.” I knocked against its cold surface to demonstrate the hollow sound. “Seems like metal—definitely not wood. Other than that . . . beats me.” I shrugged.

  I shook it as gently as I could. Several objects rattled inside, confirming my suspicions.

  “Maybe there’s something in here that can help the King,” I said.

  “How does it open?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  I shook it again, a little more vigorously this time. I do not know how or why, but that did the trick. There was a click, and the thing popped open to reveal an internal void mirroring its exterior design.

  There were a handful of objects inside sitting in what appeared to be empty space. The sides of the box were not recognizable from its base, so it looked like the items sat clustered together in the center of some dark matter platter. Previous inspection revealed to me that this was not the case, but just for good measure, I reassured myself by feeling along the walls of the box to make sure that the items would not come sliding out if I were to tilt it a little in any direction. Before looking further, I amused myself for a moment by holding the box close to my face and turning it so that one of its sides blocked my view of the objects within. Seeing them disappear in that way with no warning gave me an excited thrill I could not quite explain.<
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  “This is magic!” Linos exclaimed.

  “That, or science . . . or both.”

  I forced myself to focus on the contents of the box. Inside there were a handful of colorful gems. I was no expert, but there seemed to be sapphires, rubies, and an emerald among them. Other than the stones, almost everything else in the container was a bronze-colored implement I could not make heads or tails of. I thought I remembered seeing similar tools in Zinni’s study, but that was only a vague recollection. She would be able to tell me for sure. The only other object in the box was an organically shaped hunk of what appeared to be skin, but felt more like metal to the touch. It reminded me of Helen, and I wondered if that was how her artificial skin felt before she began her transformation that would make her a human.

  I was sure Helen could tell me more about it. She had explained to me when we first met that she was created by the Pharaohs of Egypt, using their exclusive technology. It puzzled me to see it here in the camp of some sleezy eastern diplomat. Perhaps she would have insight into the Hittites’ relationship to the Egyptians as well.

  My thoughts were interrupted by a faint humming. It seemed to be coming from the crystals. I lifted a blue one in my hand and felt the tingle of its vibration tickling the synthetic skin of my fingers. This was some sort of magic, I was sure. It seemed that the box was full of both magical and scientific elements. Hopefully, something in there was the key to fixing the King’s problem. I would not know until the girls looked into it, so I decided to prioritize our return over chasing Zidan.

  Before we set out, I instructed the Thirians of the Dardanelles to scour the countryside for the wandering diplomat, and, under absolutely no circumstances, were they to kill him. They gave me their word that they would not harm him, and I was satisfied with that.

  My crew and I rode to Ilium, eager to unravel the mysterious we had just discovered.

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