Gears of Troy 2 Page 6

  I was never one to seek out shrinks to solve my problems, but having your hands flattened in the heat of combat like roadkill under a steamroller had a pretty good chance of messing with your head. Luckily, I hadn’t noticed any unusual behavior in myself over the last year, and it was not for lack of the world putting me to the test.

  My first day at sea, I found myself in the middle of this bizarre storm that lifted my ship from the water and flung me around, knocking me unconscious. I woke up in a different place and time and was greeted by my beautiful Helen. The rest was literally history. Needless to say, I have not been able to check back in with my shrink or any commanding officers, but I did not really miss them all that much.

  I must have slept five or six hours before coming back on deck. The guys were taking turns sleeping on the couch in shifts. I passed one of them far away in dreamland on my way up the stairs. Linos hailed me as I appeared.

  “Any updates?” I asked.

  “No, sir,” he said.

  “Well, no news is better than bad news, I suppose.”

  I looked to the shore and surveyed its green hills and the road running between them and the water.

  “No one’s even been walking out there?” I asked, squinting at Linos in the light of the afternoon sun.

  “Few travelers,” he said. “Two at most in each group. No soldiers, all normal from the looks it.

  I nodded. That was fair enough. It would not be an efficient use of time to chase down every Bob and Sue that crossed our path.

  One of the men was leaning on the rail, also watching the road. I joined him. He was archer from back at Dardanelles, who shot the soldier I was in the process of beheading. I thought he might make for good conversation to pass the time.

  “What’s your name, warrior?” I asked.

  “I am called Scander,” he said, glancing at me before returning his attention to the shore. I did not take this action as dismissiveness, just dedication to his duties—a trait common among all Thirians I had crossed paths with so far.

  “What does ‘Scander’ mean?” Most Thirians had names that let a person know something about them—things such as: what their best skill was (Sees-All, although that name was also bestowed upon the man with a bit of humor in mind as he had no eyelids, rest his soul); a behavior that was unique to them (Linos, since he roared like a lion); or if they did something important for the tribe (Spits-Venom, a daring woman who sucked the venom from a snake bite in a child’s leg). I never asked Artession what his name meant, and Helen, who knew their language, never told me. I assumed it was something held in high regard though.

  “It means I poop in inappropriate places,” he said with no hint of humor. If he had ever found it funny, it had surely run its course over the years.

  “Oh.” I was curious to know the story, so I followed up with a question that likely had an obvious answer. “So, what did you do to earn that name?”

  He looked at me from the corner of his eye, not bothering to turn his head. “When I was a little child, I pooped at night near Mother’s bed.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Afraid of the dark. I did not go outside and was too young to hold it in.”

  Poor bastard. He had to live with that embarrassing name for the rest of his life because of something he could not control as a child. I thought back to Sees-All and how his name was bestowed upon him as a joke. From the moment I met him, he’d struck me as a guy who had something to prove. That wasn’t to say he was inadequate in any way. He proved whatever he was trying to. I taught him a handful of MMA moves back on Santorini, and he soaked it up like a sponge, as fast as the best of the Thirian warriors.

  I always wondered if his name fueled his win-or-die-trying attitude. It reminded me of an old song from back home that my dad was fond of, about a man who was given a girl’s name by his father in the hopes that he would take the humiliation that came with such a name and use it to grow stronger. I always thought that was an interesting concept and wondered if it had any merit. Here I was, standing next to another bit of evidence to support that theory. Scander had clearly done something to earn his chief’s favor over all the other warriors. Linos had only hand-picked him and two others to join us on our trip to the mainland.

  “Do the other guys give you a hard time about that?” I asked.

  “No longer. If they do, they know they will have to say hello to my fists.”

  “Sounds about right.” I laughed.

  “You are called Troy,” he said. This time he did turn to look at me. “Why are you named as the city? Trojans do not pick their names as Thirians do. If they did, it would not be good to have a name after the place of your birth. There would be over one hundred of you all walking around at once named Troy.”

  I laughed again. “Yeah, it’s probably for the best that they don’t do that. I’m not actually from Troy. I forget that not all of you know that. My home is far away. Troy is a common name where I come from, and as far as I know, it doesn’t really mean anything. I mean, I’m sure it means something, but I doubt my parents had a specific meaning in mind when they chose it for me. It’s purely coincidence that the city and I have the same name.”

  “Coincidence?” He squinted his eyes at me, confused. “What is this?”

  “Oh, that just means ‘two things that seem to have something to do with each other but don’t’. You get it?”

  He continued to stare me down with the same expression.

  “Okay . . . so, like if I were to wake up tomorrow morning and say to the sky ‘I order you to rain today’ and then it happens to rain later that day. Someone might think it was raining because I told the sky to, but in reality it was going to rain anyway, and me telling the sky to rain had nothing to do with it. The fact I told it to rain and then it actually rained was a coincidence. You understand?”

  “I still do not know the meaning of coincidence.”

  I waved it away. “Never mind. That was probably a bad example. I’m not good at thinking up stuff on the fly like that.”

  “You fly?”

  “No, no—never mind it all.”

  “Okay, Troy,” Scander said, turning back to face the coast. “On this day and after, you shall be called, in your language, ‘He-Who-Makes-Bad-Examples-Of-Coincidences’.”

  A slight smirk crept out along the corner of his mouth. That was a decent attempt at humor, for a stone-faced Thirian like him.

  “Then I’ll call you ‘He-Who-Makes-Bad-Jokes’.”

  He looked at me, and we exchanged full grins this time. It was not long after that that Linos called out. There was a large cluster further along the shore, just starting to peer up at us from over the horizon. I could not tell quite what it was just yet. It did not look like a caravan, and most likely was not a city. The shapes looked to be man-made structures but did not fit the template of any buildings I had seen in the land prior to then. As best as I could make out, it seemed like we were looking at a camp of some kind, but it would be strange to set up right along the road like these people had, especially just at the edge of the tide.

  As we drew nearer, I saw that it was not only a campsite inconsiderately placed for any random travelers who might happen by, but it was a Hittite campsite adorned with proud flags bearing the unmistakable symbol of the two-headed bird that I’d been acquainted with during my last meeting with a Hittite camp.

  “That’s them!” I shouted. “The Hittites.”

  The warrior who was sleeping below deck had awoken to the noise and was now joining us, watching the site with a fierce intensity.

  “What do we do?” Linos asked.

  “Let’s wait until night and get the jump on them while they sleep. Sound good?”

  Everyone agreed. While we waited for night to fall, we sailed off out of view of the camp. The idea was that we would row to shore when most of the camp was asleep. We decided it would be best to wait well into the night before heading over. Naturally, guards would be posted all ove
r, but it was not likely they would raise any alarms at the sight of a single rowboat coming their way. False alarms would piss a lot of people off, so chances were that they would come over to us and see what we were doing sailing to this shore without a port in the middle of the night. That would give us plenty of time to cut down any conscious opposition. That was what I hoped would happen anyway.

  Over the past year, I ended up having Moonshadow fit with two rowboats. I just thought it would be handy to have as a backup. There was a common saying we had in the military: “two is one and one is none.” I figured I would take my chances with two, since three rowboats on my little ship would be reaching the point of impracticality. We used both for this mission.

  Linos and I took one and rowed straight for one of the night watchmen’s torches. The rest of the gang rowed a distance away from us, aiming for the end of the camp on the opposite side of the road. There was at least one watchman posted there as well, but the plan was that Linos and I would make land first and distract all of the guards while our other guys snuck up behind them.

  We hit land, and the guards showed no sign of seeing the other rowboat.

  “What is this about?” said one of the soldiers approaching us.

  There were four of them in all, two of whom had indeed been called over from the other side of the camp to investigate. The camp itself had somewhere between twenty and thirty tents at a glance, each one housing anywhere from one to four soldiers—maybe more, but I doubted it. Regardless, that was a ton of people to contend with if they were all to wake up right then.

  I held my hands up as the soldiers appraised us, saying, “Hey, we were just passing through and thought we’d check out whatever was going on here. I thought this might be a trading caravan—I can see that it’s not now.”

  The guys smirked at each other. The one who addressed us initially said, “Is that to say you intended to rob such a caravan in the dead of night?” His comrades were chuckling.

  “No—what?” I kept my hands up, insisting that I meant no harm, which was of course a complete lie. “Just the two of us? Does that sound like a smart plan to you? Any caravan worth its salt is going to have at least twice as many combat-ready men as the two of us rowing to shore. I saw your torches. We knew there were people awake here. That would be ridiculous.”

  “That is a fair point, sir, but criminals are not known for their intelligence,” laughed the first man. “Well, you have your desire to look fulfilled, so be off with you. This is no place for you.”

  “Sure,” I said, seeing our other three tribal friends creeping up behind the unwilling soldiers like a pack of silent panthers. “I have a quick question though.”

  “What?”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know a guy by the name of Zidan, would you?”

  The soldiers suddenly became alert, their hands on the hilts of their swords.

  The first man said, “Who asks? Are you from Troy? Have you seen him of late?”

  Before he finished his questions, he was already beginning to unsheathe his blade, but it did not matter because before he was able to take his next breath, an arrow darted straight into his back, sending him into the sand with a surprised grunt.

  The others turned just in time to meet their speedy demises, all from surgically placed cuts to the throat. That was probably the quickest end to an altercation I had seen so far. It was comforting to see the soldier’s reaction to my question about the diplomat, because I was honestly a little hesitant to fight with these people, not knowing for sure if they were my enemies. His response was evidence to support my suspicions, and also led me to believe that Zidan was not there. Perhaps their commander would know more, I thought.

  His tent was easy to spot as it stood twice as tall as all the others. We hurried over to it and crept inside. There were torches lighting either side of the room, but the man was sleeping soundly in a bed of furs on the ground with a woman snuggled up to his side. I could not get a good look at the woman nestled under the pile of covers, but this man was clearly no fighter, himself looking much more like Zidan than any other Hittite I had met so far.

  I don’t know why in that moment, but something tipped him off and he jerked awake to a room full of people prepared to kill him if he made a sound. I wanted answers, but I was not going to risk a fight with dozens of trained men breathing down my neck. Unfortunately for him, he did not understand this and immediately rose to ring the bell that dangled overhead. One of my men—I think it was Scander—shot him in the arm before he could complete the action. He began to yelp but was quickly silenced by Linos’s backup blade.

  The woman was awake and standing now, her hands up in surrender. One of my guys moved to shoot her, but I waved him down. It was a bad call as I soon discovered she was faking just as I had with the watchmen minutes earlier. Her hand was on the chord of the bell in the blink of an eye, and the alarm wailed.

  “Go!” I shouted.

  My men and I left her behind, our primary objective now being survival. The sleeping Hittites were just beginning to come out of their tents by the time we were in our boats and rowing back to Moonshadow. A couple of arrows fell short of my rowboat by the time the guys at shore realized what was going on, and then we were out of their reach.

  We took shifts keeping watch from the ship for the rest of the night but were not met with the sight of any visitors until dawn. To my surprise, it was the commander’s woman heading toward us in a rowboat, accompanied by four soldiers. Strapped to their boat was a flag of truce. I guessed they wanted to talk.

  This should be interesting, I thought as I watched them inch our way.

  6

  “This is a most unusual ship,” the woman said. Along with her men, they climbed aboard as she ran an appreciative hand along the polished fiberglass of the railing.

  That was the first time I had gotten a good look at her. The aristocrat we met the previous night sure knew how to pick his women. She, like all the other Hittites, looked to be what we would call Middle Eastern back home. I supposed that label was still accurate in the time and place I was standing. The tip of her head was at my chin level, and from it her long raven hair fell in a cascade of curls over one shoulder, reaching down to her chest. She had a dainty pointed nose, large lips, and big brown eyes that demanded my total attention. At first assessment, she appeared harmless, fragile, but once an onlooker found himself trapped in those almond orbs, there was no doubt he would see the fierceness that lay just beneath the surface. I could not help but think of my first few days with Helen, when I was eager to see more signs of the hint of danger she had been taunting me with since the moment we met. It was soon clear to me that this woman was no mere concubine. Her bearing was far too proud of such a lowly position.

  “Where is it from?” she asked, turning to me.

  In my appraisal of her, I had almost forgotten that she was talking about my ship.

  “It’s from a faraway place called the United States of America.”

  “I have never heard of such a place.”

  “I . . . wouldn’t expect you to. It’s very far away. Very secluded and secretive.”

  “Hm . . .” She mulled my words over for a moment and said, “I see no armaments, yet you come to land and attack my men in the middle of the night. You are warriors, yes? But this appears to be a vessel for pleasure.”

  Her men. Apparently, the aristocrat we had ended the other night was only a pawn and not the leader of this organization. I thought about him, and his balding head and watermelon belly bumping out from beneath his food-strained robes. The two of them were clearly sleeping together. He must have been a charismatic fellow, but perhaps that was what made him an effective member of the ruling elite.

  “That’s correct. We are warriors, but this is my private vessel,” I said. “We did not come looking for trouble when we set sail, but we did not expect to see a Hittite encampment along the banks.”

  “I see.” Her voice showed no outward hostility,
only quiet reflection. “And what is it that you hate about my people so much that you would row to shore and murder them?”

  “I have a strong reason to believe the Hittites are behind my king’s ailment,” I said, maintaining a firm tone.

  “Your king’s . . . you are from Troy? I do not understand—you said you are from this other place.”

  So, she knew what I was talking about. If the Hittites did not have anything to do with the sickness, there was a slim chance that she would understand the reference. There was a chance word would have gotten to them by now even if they were not involved with the situation, but it did not seem likely given only a handful of days. I would admit there was still a possibility that I was jumping to conclusions, but more and more signs were pointing to them being at fault.

  “I live in Troy now. It is not where I was born, but I have had the honor of earning the title of Trojan prince. They are my people now. My name is also Troy, if you can wrap your head around that. But enough about me. What do you know about Priam’s sickness?”

  She grinned, but I could see through it that she was trying to not appear nervous. Apparently, this was news that she was not prepared to handle. She said, “Your attack on us last night makes much more sense now. Yes, I know of the sickness, and I may even have the answers you seek. But first, let us hail our larger ship so that we may discuss it further.”

  She signaled to one of her men, and he blew a horn that was strapped around his neck. I did not have time prior to that to ask why this was necessary.

  “Why can’t we just discuss it here?” I asked.

  “That is not how we handle diplomacy at sea,” she said. “Hittite naval law dictates that all political discussions must take place on neutral ground.”