Page 68 of The Song of Achilles

“I don’t know. Ajax has tried and failed. Diomedes, too. They are the best after me. There is no one else I can think of.”

“What about Menelaus?”

Achilles shook his head. “Never. He is brave and strong, but that is all. He would break against Hector like water on a rock. So. It is me, or no one.”

“You will not do it.” I tried not to let it sound like begging.

“No.” He was quiet a moment. “But I can see it. That’s the strange thing. Like in a dream. I can see myself throwing the spear, see him fall. I walk up to the body and stand over it.”

Dread rose in my chest. I took a breath, forced it away. “And then what?”

“That’s the strangest of all. I look down at his blood and know my death is coming. But in the dream I do not mind. What I feel, most of all, is relief.”

“Do you think it can be prophecy?”

The question seemed to make him self-conscious. He shook his head. “No. I think it is nothing at all. A daydream.”

I forced my voice to match his in lightness. “I’m sure you’re right. After all, Hector hasn’t done anything to you.”

He smiled then, as I had hoped he would. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve heard that.”

D URING THE LONG HOURS of Achilles’ absence, I began to stray from our camp, seeking company, something to occupy myself. Thetis’ news had disturbed me; quarrels among the gods, Achilles’ mighty fame endangered. I did not know what to make of it, and my questions chased themselves around my head until I was half-crazy. I needed a distraction, something sensible and real. One of the men pointed me towards the white physicians’ tent. “If you’re looking for something to do, they always need help,” he said. I remembered Chiron’s patient hands, the instruments hung on rose-quartz walls. I went.

The tent’s interior was dim, the air dark and sweet and musky, heavy with the metallic scent of blood. In one corner was the physician Machaon, bearded, square-jawed, pragmatically bare-chested, an old tunic tied carelessly around his waist. He was darker than most Greeks, despite the time he spent inside, and his hair was cropped short, practical again, to keep it from his eyes. He bent now over a wounded man’s leg, his finger gently probing an embedded arrow point. On the other side of the tent his brother Podalerius finished strapping on his armor. He tossed an offhand word to Machaon before shouldering past me out the door. It was well known that he preferred the battlefield to the surgeon’s tent, though he served in both.

Machaon did not look up as he spoke: “You can’t be very wounded if you can stand for so long.”

“No,” I said. “I’m here—” I paused as the arrowhead came free in Machaon’s fingers, and the soldier groaned in relief.

“Well?” His voice was business-like but not unkind.

“Do you need help?”

He made a noise I guessed was assent. “Sit down and hold the salves for me,” he said, without looking. I obeyed, gathering up the small bottles strewn on the floor, some rattling with herbs, some heavy with ointment. I sniffed them and remembered: garlic and honey salve against infection, poppy for sedation, and yarrow to make the blood clot. Dozens of herbs that brought the centaur’s patient fingers back to me, the sweet green smell of the rose- colored cave.

I held out the ones he needed and watched his deft application— a pinch of sedative on the man’s upper lip for him to nose and nibble at, a swipe of salve to ward off infection, then dressings to pack and bind and cover. Machaon smoothed the last layer of creamy, scented beeswax over the man’s leg and looked up wearily. “Patroclus, yes? And you studied with Chiron? You are welcome here.”

A clamor outside the tent, raised voices and cries of pain. He nodded towards it. “They’ve brought us another—you take him.”

The soldiers, Nestor’s men, hoisted their comrade onto the empty pallet in the tent’s corner. He had been shot with an arrow, barbed at the tip, through the right shoulder. His face was foamy with sweat-scum, and he’d bitten his lip almost in half with trying not to scream. His breath came now in muffled, explosive pants, and his panicked eyes rolled and trembled. I resisted the urge to call for Machaon—busy with another man who had started to wail—and reached for a cloth to wipe his face.

The arrow had pierced through the thickest part of his shoulder and was threaded half in and half out, like a terrible needle. I would have to break off the fletching and pull the end through him, without further tearing the flesh or leaving splinters that might fester.

Quickly, I gave him the draught that Chiron had taught me: a mix of poppy and willow bark that made the patient light-headed and blunted to pain. He could not hold the cup, so I held it for him, lifting and cradling his head so he would not choke, feeling his sweat and foam and blood seep into my tunic.

I tried to look reassuring, tried not to show the panic I was feeling. He was, I saw, only a year or so older than I. One of Nestor’s sons, Antilochus, a sweet-faced young man who doted on his father. “It will be all right,” I said, over and over, to myself or him I did not know.

The problem was the arrow shaft; normally a doctor would snap off one end, before pulling it through. But there was not enough of it sticking out of his chest to do it without tearing the flesh further. I could not leave it, nor drag the fletching through the wound. What then?

Behind me one of the soldiers who had brought him stood fidgeting in the doorway. I gestured to him over my shoulder.

“A knife, quickly. Sharp as you can find.” I surprised myself with the brisk authority in my voice, the instant obedience it provoked. He returned with a short, finely honed blade meant for cutting meat, still rusty with dried blood. He cleaned it on his tunic before handing it to me.

The boy’s face was slack now, his tongue flopping loose in his mouth. I leaned over him and held the arrow shaft, crushing the fletching into my damp palm. With my other hand, I began sawing, cutting through the wood a flake at a time, as lightly as possible, so as not to jar the boy’s shoulder. He snuffled and muttered, lost in the fog of the draught.

I sawed and braced and sawed. My back ached, and I berated myself for leaving his head on my knees, for not choosing a better position. Finally the feathered end snapped off, leaving only one long splinter that the knife quickly cut through. At last.

Then, just as difficult: to draw the shaft out the other side of his shoulder. In a moment of inspiration, I grabbed a salve for infection and carefully coated the wood, hoping it would ease the journey and ward off corruption. Then, a little at a time, I began to work the arrow through. After what felt like hours, the splintered end emerged, soaked with blood. With the last of my wits, I wrapped and packed the wound, binding it in a sort of sling across his chest.