Chapter 6 - Sails on the Horizon
The Greeks announced themselves as dots of white on the sea.
I was buying onions.
There are moments you imagine should happen with thunder.
Trumpets.
Omens.
A god appearing in the sky.
Instead, Sira the baker’s youngest son came running through the market shouting, “Ships!”
Nobody listened at first.
Children shouted many things.
Then a guard on the upper road began yelling.
Another answered.
The market changed.
It did not stop.
It tightened.
People looked toward the citadel.
Men abandoned arguments.
Women gathered children.
A seller began packing goods into baskets so quickly that he knocked over half his own jars.
Ione appeared from between two stalls.
“Theron.”
“I heard.”
“Come.”
We joined the movement toward the wall.
By the time we reached higher ground, hundreds of people had gathered wherever the plain and distant water could be seen.
At first, I saw nothing.
Then Dymas pointed.
“There.”
Tiny white marks on the horizon.
Sails.
One.
Five.
Ten.
More appeared as my eyes adjusted.
Far more.
The line seemed to lengthen every time I blinked.
No merchant convoy sailed like that.
No fishing fleet.
These ships came together because someone had ordered them together.
A murmur passed through the crowd.
“Achaeans.”
The word moved from person to person.
A woman beside me whispered a prayer.
Someone else cursed Paris.
A man told him to shut his mouth.
Within an hour, orders spread through Troy.
Outer workers were called toward the city.
Livestock were driven closer.
Carts crowded the roads.
The gates remained open, but guards multiplied.
Soldiers moved through streets carrying shields and spears.
The easy noise of daily life vanished beneath organized urgency.
I found Myrine tying bundles.
“What are you doing?”
“Moving grain into the back room.”
“Why?”
“Because armies eat what farmers grow.”
“You think they’ll reach the city?”
She stared at me.
“Theron, they did not cross the sea to admire our walls.”
I had no answer.
By afternoon, the fleet was clearer.
Ships approached the coast in numbers I had never imagined seeing together.
Their dark hulls crowded the water.
Men lined decks.
Shields flashed.
Oars moved.
The entire horizon seemed to have grown teeth.
I stood on the wall beside Dymas.
“Hundreds,” I said.
“Maybe more.”
“Can Troy hold?”
He looked at the walls beneath us.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“How long they are willing to stay.”
That frightened me more than if he had simply said no.
The first ships reached shore before sunset.
From the city, we watched men jump into shallow water and drag vessels higher.
More ships arrived behind them.
Then more.
A camp began appearing across the plain with unnatural speed.
Lines of men.
Tents.
Fires.
Animals.
Weapons stacked in groups.
The empty land between Troy and the sea was becoming another city.
A city made entirely of war.
Names passed through the crowd.
Agamemnon.
Menelaus.
Ajax.
Odysseus.
Diomedes.
Nestor.
Someone claimed Achilles had landed.
Another said he had not.
Another swore he had seen him kill three men before his feet were dry.
Rumor was already fighting faster than soldiers.
That evening, the gates closed earlier than usual.
The sound of the great timbers settling into place echoed through the city.
I had heard the gates close before.
Never like that.
Before, it meant night.
Now it meant inside and outside.
Us and them.
I found Ione on Myrine’s roof.
She was looking toward the plain.
Hundreds of campfires burned below.
Yesterday those fields had belonged to farmers.
Tonight an army was sleeping on them.
“Can you leave?” she asked.
The question surprised me.
“I don’t know.”
“The roads inland are still open.”
“For how long?”
She said nothing.
I understood what she was really asking.
Would I go?
Three weeks, I reminded myself.
That had been my plan.
Sell goods.
See Troy.
Go home.
I looked at the wall.
The market.
Myrine’s roof.
Ione beside me.
The lights of the palace above.
Then the fires of the Greeks below.
“I’ll stay a few more days,” I said.
She nodded.
Neither of us smiled.
That night, nobody in Myrine's house slept well. The rooms were crowded with relatives from outside the walls who had come in before the gates closed. Blankets covered the floor. A baby cried until dawn. Someone's goat had been tied in the courtyard and objected loudly to captivity.
I lay awake listening to unfamiliar breathing around me.
This, more than the fleet, showed me what war did first. It compressed lives. It took people who had space and put them together behind stone. It made strangers share water, floors, food, fear.
Before sunrise I walked to the roof. The Greek camp was already awake. Tiny figures moved among the fires. From that distance, the enemy seemed almost peaceful. Men carrying water. Men cooking. Men repairing gear. Somewhere down there, someone was probably complaining about breakfast exactly as I had in Troy.
That thought unsettled me.
I wanted them to remain faceless. It was easier to fear an army than thousands of individuals.
Ione came up behind me and placed a piece of bread in my hand.
'Eat.'
'You always solve fear with food.'
'Fear on an empty stomach is worse.'
We stood side by side as the sun rose between two worlds preparing to kill one another.
May you like
A few more days, I had told her.
That was the last foolish promise I made before the war began.
