Chapter 18 - The Night Troy Fell
I woke because someone screamed.
At first, I thought the celebration had continued too long.
Then I smelled smoke.
Not cooking fire.
Not torch smoke.
A house burning.
I sat up.
Ione was already awake.
Another scream came from the street.
Then metal struck metal.
She looked at me.
“No.”
One word.
That was all.
I opened the door.
A man ran past barefoot.
Behind him, flames climbed from a roof farther down the street.
People poured from houses.
Someone shouted:
“The Greeks are inside!”
For several seconds, nobody believed it.
Then an armed Achaean appeared at the end of the lane.
The world changed.
I slammed the door.
“Ione, cloak. Shoes. Nothing else.”
“My aunt.”
“We get her.”
“Myrine.”
“Yes.”
I grabbed my knife.
The same small knife a guard had once mocked because it was better for cheese than war.
He had been correct.
I did not become a hero that night.
I want that clear.
I ran.
I hid.
I pulled people through alleys.
I was terrified almost every moment.
Anyone who tells you courage feels like strength has forgotten fear.
Courage often feels like being sick and moving anyway.
We found Myrine in the courtyard trying to carry a jar of grain.
“Leave it!” I shouted.
“That is food!”
“The city is burning!”
“All the more reason!”
Ione took the jar from her and threw it aside.
Myrine cursed us both, then followed.
Her aunt lived two streets away.
We reached the house as fighting spread through the lower city.
How had the Greeks entered?
The answer came quickly.
The horse.
Men hidden inside had emerged after Troy slept.
They killed guards.
Opened gates.
Signaled the returning fleet.
The Achaean army came back in darkness.
Our victory had opened the city better than any siege engine could.
We found Ione’s aunt alive.
Dymas appeared moments later with blood on his shoulder that was not his.
“West side,” he said. “There are people moving toward a smaller gate.”
“What about the main gate?”
“Lost.”
“The palace?”
He looked at me.
“Lost soon.”
We moved.
Every street carried memory.
That was the cruelest part.
We passed Sira’s bakery.
Flames were already inside.
I remembered my first warm loaf.
The cheese seller’s stall had been overturned.
The herb courtyard where Ione once laughed at my writing was filled with smoke.
The market where I learned Troy’s languages had become a battlefield.
The streets I had described as crowded were crowded again, but now everyone moved in the same direction.
Away.
A horse screamed somewhere unseen.
Roof beams cracked.
Bronze flashed in torchlight.
Men shouted in Greek and Trojan.
The boundaries I had studied for years disappeared inside fire.
We reached a wider road.
Above us, the citadel burned.
I stopped.
Ione pulled me.
“Theron!”
The palace.
Priam.
Helen.
Cassandra.
Andromache.
Astyanax.
I did not know what was happening to them.
I would learn fragments later.
Some truths I wish I had never learned.
That night, I knew only that Troy’s heart was burning.
Near the western route, we encountered soldiers trying to hold a passage open for civilians.
One recognized Dymas.
“Go now!”
“What about you?”
The soldier laughed once.
“Someone has to close the door.”
I never saw him again.
We moved beyond the densest buildings.
People stumbled into darkness outside the walls.
Old men.
Women carrying babies.
Children without parents.
Wounded soldiers.
Servants.
Merchants.
A prince somewhere among refugees would later carry Troy’s story to other lands, if the singers are right.
I carried only Ione’s hand.
At the edge of the plain, we stopped.
Myrine could go no farther.
We turned.
Troy burned behind us.
The walls were still there.
That was the cruel part.
Great sections remained standing against the red sky.
The same walls I had admired on my first morning.
The same walls everyone believed made us safe.
But a city can lose everything long before its walls fall.
Ione stood beside me.
Her face reflected firelight.
“What do we do?” she asked.
For once, I had an answer.
“We live.”
She nodded.
We walked before sunrise.
Behind us, Troy became smoke.
Years later, people would ask me about heroes.
Achilles.
Hector.
Paris.
Helen.
Odysseus.
Agamemnon.
They wanted gods, duels, prophecies, kings, and the wooden horse.
I remembered those things too.
But when I close my eyes, I remember something else.
Sira placing warm bread in my hands.
Myrine’s impossible rooster.
Dymas insulting my intelligence.
The old onion seller cheating me.
Children running through the market.
Hector removing his helmet so a frightened boy would stop crying.
Ione dancing with me on the final night because we truly believed the war was over.
People will tell you Troy was destroyed because of Helen.
Or Paris.
Or pride.
Or gods.
Or fate.
Perhaps all of them are right.
Perhaps none are enough.
I only know what I saw.
I came to Troy as a traveler with oil to sell and a tablet full of empty space.
I stayed long enough to watch a city become a legend.
So when you hear the story of Troy, do not begin with the horse.
Do not begin with Achilles’ anger.
Do not even begin with Helen.
Begin where I did.
The sun is rising over the plain.
My sandals are covered in dust.
A mule behind me hates everyone.
And ahead, above fields of wheat, stand the walls of Troy.
May you like
Come with me.
The gates are still open.
