Chapter 35:: Meet The Trojans

“Hey, Sal, is Hector in?”

“Dr. Miller.” The girl looks up from the papers she’s marking. “I didn’t know you were back…” Her voice trails off into OMG why’s he here? What went wrong? Who’s the kid? Is it his son? Looks a fair bit like him, I didn’t know he had kids.

“You wouldn’t. Just got back last night. So, about Hector…”

“Uh, yeah, sorry, I’ll go check.”

“She thinks she knows you well,” he says, watching her go down the corridor.

“She does,” Daniel says. “She’s doing her doctorate under me. I let Hector appoint her his TA because I was planning on being gone this term.” Of course he had, Daniel and Fiona finish a year between them, then his mother manages a year alone, then Indrasish and Deborah take a turn. That’s how it’s worked probably since he was born. But this year, everything changed and he’s standing in a corridor of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, waiting to meet Hellenus and Cassandra, the Trojan seers. He doesn’t usually get angry, or even think of himself as a particularly angry person, but, for the last few days, he’s been grateful that his powers are not aggressive, because the rage he feels inside himself terrifies him.

“He’s expecting you.” She mock-frowns at Daniel. “It’s rude to inform your landlord and not your house-keeper, y’know.”

“Ah, but now you don’t have to check the rest of those copies. I’m reclaiming you. Hector will have to go hunt for another TA.”

She doesn’t look too happy, but he can hear the wry grin, and feel, below that, a slow pulse of annoyance-affection-resignation.

The door Daniel leads him to looks like all the other doors lining the corridor, but the presence behind it feels different, to both senses, than anything he has felt before in waking life. The man who looks up when it opens seems in his late forties, a few years older than his guardians, broad and brown and obviously Greek, from the iron curls, to the full, sculpted, mouth, to the ‘Dr. Hector O’nassis’ on his door. But he is also the white-skinned, silver-haired, silver-eyed man he has seen every night for weeks.

“Hullo, Daniel.” He’s risen from his seat, and is shaking hands with Daniel. “And you, Al’skandar.”

“I know you,” he blurts, trying frantically to find a way inside the man’s tightly-sealed mind. “You’re the man in my dreams.”

For a second, they stare at him while he looks everywhere but at them. Then the man, Hector/Hellenus, says, “Awkwardly as that came out, it’s hardly unlikely. While the dreams would focus on Harmonia, you catching a glimpse of me and Cassandra and perhaps one or two of the others is something that Hermes would perhaps have wanted.”

“Who else did you see?” This from Daniel, who gestures him, at the same time, into one of the chairs in front of the desk. “I don’t know why we didn’t ask him earlier, Hector.”

“It’s hardly been an easy week for any of you. But it’s important that we know now.”

He stares at the grain of the wood, trying to completely ignore the expectation-apprehension that he can feel surrounding him, trying to remember the dreams. “Two women… perhaps three. No, two.”

“Cassie, then. But who else?”

“Someone from Harmonia’s entourage, I’d think.” Hector/Hellenus looks at him, a smile curling his lips, not reaching his dark eyes. “Good that you saw us clearly. As we are yours, Al’skandar.”

“Why did you choose this name?” It’s petty and childish, but he resents not being allowed into the man’s mind and this question seems likely to push him, at least slightly, off-balance.

“He was my favourite brother. He was everybody’s favourite, I think. Troy fell long before the gates were opened,” He holds Hector/Hellenus’ unnerving gaze. “Our hearts broke when that butcher murdered Hector.”

Still calm, and it infuriates him, pushes him over the line of what is remotely acceptable. “You weren’t too heart-broken to bed his wife.”

And this, finally, provokes an answer. He has never before experienced being let into someone’s mind with the full awareness and consent of that person, being pulled in, almost, rather than entering of his own will. It is not an experience he wants to repeat, he decides, as the man he knows is sitting in front of him, pins him with unblinking silver eyes. He tries, vainly, to escape. But the not-hand crushing his windpipe will not loosen and the not-voice growls, ‘We watched our hero die. We watched her son die. We watched our parents die. We watched our kin perish. We watched the city burn. We watched our women, our queens, become the Greeks’ whores. We became chattel, dragged to Greece in the holds of their ships. The son of her husband’s murderer raped her— weak, beardless boy as green in this as in war. If I took her from that spawn, if I licked his feet to let me take her, who are you, my soft little child, still crying for your mother, to judge?’

Then he is being thrown out of that too-hostile mind and gasping for breath, still feeling the phantom grasp around his throat. It has barely been a minute. Daniel is watching him, eyes narrowed behind glasses, the coolly appraising look that makes him always feel like he has been weighed and found wanting. “Alex, I think you should apologise now.”

But Hellenus beats him to it. “Unnecessary, Daniel. He’s not going to repeat it. Are you?” He shakes his head, slowly, catching a glint in Hellenus’ eyes that tells him the man knows why he asked the question, and far from despising him, has decided to like him. He finds himself returning the sentiment.

The door opens. “Dr. O’nassis, Dr. O’nassis called. She wants you wait for her at your apartment. She’ll go there straight from her lecture.”

“Thank you, Sally.” The door closes. “She’s good, Daniel,” Hellenus chuckles.

“You can’t have her, Hector.”

“Trade you.”

Daniel shakes his head, grinning. “You don’t have anyone as good as her, or you wouldn’t be wanting her.”

Hellenus shrugs eloquently. “Did you bring your car, Daniel?”

“No, it’s locked in the garage in my apartment. Didn’t have the time. We came almost straight here.”

“Well, let’s go, then.”

He lets the men precede him, Hellenus asking Sally to lock his office. Following at a slower pace, he notices one of the answers on the papers she’s marking. It begins ‘ Zeus’ progress from the youngest sibling to the eldest is interesting, as, by becoming Hera’s twin and husband, he is, in fact, usurping her power, though, of course, his position is yet nowhere near the prominence it reaches by the time of the Iliad…’. Suddenly, his morning’s conversation with Daniel makes a lot more sense. The Gods, Old and new, Daniel had said, thrive on and owe their power, if not their existence, to human belief. Where but in academia are you going to find people who believe enough in the Old Gods to devote a lifetime’s work to them?

“Hey, you okay?” Daniel and Hellenus are out of sight, and Sally is staring strangely at him.

“I really like the Greek myths,” he says.

“I can see that,” she smiles. “Come on, I’ll walk you out. It’s a bit complicated.” He nods and she guides him through the, admittedly labyrinthine, corridors. “Did you come to see the college?”

“Sort of. I…might be trying for a place here, later this year.”

“You’ll enjoy it. Dr. O’nassis, both the Drs. O’nassis, really, are great. And so’s Dr. Miller, but you already know that.” She looks at him a bit more keenly. “Are you related to him, by the way? ’Cause, y’know, you’ve got almost the exact same eyes.” Not his son. A nephew? Or maybe his son, what do I know? But why would he hide a son? A nephew, probably. Or a cousin’s kid. It’d explain why he’s taken off for six months twice in the time I’ve known him.

He knows they do, but that’s got a lot more to do with contacts than genetics. “No, I’m not. Brown’s hardly an uncommon colour.”

“There’s that, yeah. Oi, Dr. Miller!” They’ve walked fast enough, or the others have walked slowly enough, that rounding a corner has brought them within both eye-shot and ear-shot. “You left your boy behind.”

Daniel turns, clearly unaware that he hasn’t been trailing five-and-a-half steps behind them. “Alex! Where were you?”

“I…uh…”

“Never mind, Daniel. Now that he’s here, let’s try to not lose him again, shall we?” Hellenus smiles at them. “Thank you, Sally. I shall not contest you returning to him, though I was planning to. His need is clearly greater than mine.”

Sally grins back. “I’ll not answer that,” she says, then walks back off.

Daniel puts a hand on his shoulder, dragging him level with them, and keeps it there as they resume walking. “When does Cassie’s lecture end?”

“About an hour. It’s the preliminary one on Mycenae.”

“That’ll take longer, I think. There’s always at least one smart-arse who will dispute, oh, every single thing.”

“Yes,” Hellenus smirks, “I seem to remember that happening the first year I was a TA. What was the name of the boy?” Daniel smiles back, inclining his head in acceptance.

They’ve reached Hellenus’ car and they get in. As the car wanders out of the college campus, and heads towards the faculty housing, both men fall silent. And stay silent till they reach the apartment building.

“Daniel,” he says, pulling him back as Hellenus enters the apartment, “why would they want to help the Gods? They didn’t fare at all well last time round.”

“Alex,” Daniel says, eyes sad and hands gentle on his arms, “they haven’t any more of a choice than you do.”

He stumbles in after Daniel, sick at the thought of having to help his puppeteers, and is shown to a sofa and handed a Pepsi.

“I’ll get dinner started,” Hellenus says, and this is, somehow, the most surreal line he has heard in the entire month. “See what’s on,” and he’s handed the remote. “Daniel, come chop up potatoes.”

The men disappear into the kitchen and he flips listlessly through the channels, before discovering ‘Troy’ and masochistically settling down to watch his favourite epic being massacred. By the time ‘Patroclus’ dies, and ‘Hector’ shows ‘Andromache’ the path to flee, Daniel has popped out of the kitchen once to make acerbic comments. As ‘Achilles’ watches the pyre burn, the door-bell rings.

“Make yourself useful, Alex,” comes from within the kitchen, and he gets up to do so.

The woman who enters the room is very clearly Cassandra. Hellenus, he remembers, was a twin. Her eyes are, perhaps, kinder than her brother’s. “Γειάσου, Αλέξανδρος,” she says, voice low and melodious, “έχω περιμένει πολλά φεγγάρια σας.”

Her mind is blocked, he realises, trying to wrench the meaning of the words from her. Then he realises that he doesn’t need to. “I hope your wait has not been too tedious.”

“Indeed not,” she smiles, “how could it be, when I was awaiting our hero?”