Chapter 8

So much grief expended and indulged required calories. The blockhead retreated for a snack.

Due to the fantastical accounts arising from the war, Penthesilea and her Amazons arrived to verify them. With one look she saw through Andy’s disguise as Athena and addressed Andia of the Hamazons, requesting to duel her for the honor of the Amazons.

Andia asserted that Hamazons did not resolve issues of honor and integrity with swords, but with skill. Penthesilea, ignorant of Hamazonian ways, even though they were a block away, agreed to her conditions.

The Amazon and the Hamazon ran, dug poles into dirt, and flung themselves over bars.

The Amazon and the Hamazon spun and threw discuses far distances.

The Amazon and the Hamazons ran and, up to a point, leapt as far as they could.

The Amazon, huffing and puffing, said it was stupid and childish to even attempt to win invented games. She and her Amazons left, only to continue playing said-stupid games.

And that is how the Olympics were invented.

Gary kept a checklist of those who had to die before the war could end. He crossed off the names of Achilles, Paris and Telamonian Ajax. Everyone seemed tired of the war, even Helen, whose main contribution to the war was shifting her emotions from being concerned to very concerned.

Now there were innumerable sentries on the walls of Troy, in the case of a sudden assault. In the distance they saw a peculiar sight: Achaean men were grunting and sweating, laboring over something. They were dragging a large wooden horse. The Achaeans brought the horse right to the gates, rested a bit, wiped the sweat from their brows and shouted, waved, kissed the Trojans goodbye.

The sentries went down. By the horse, a note: We are sorry, love, the Achaeans. Scouts found that the Achaeans’ black ships had departed the shore.

To the Trojans, this all seemed a dream; ten years and ... what? The horrors, the trauma, the rage ending here? They were so dumbfounded that they accepted the situation as it were, as if they, indeed, were in a dream and they would wake up tomorrow to see the Achaeans’ fires at their gate, almost with relief. They brought the horse within the city’s gates. Laocoön did not think this was a good idea, but he was then eaten by sea serpents, on dry land, no less. Who looks a gift giant horse in the mouth?

And so, that night, the city of Troy was quiet and at peace. Warriors finally had some sleep, widows and orphans were given a respite from their grief, and the seller of eye masks made a profit after ten years of loss, while the seller of swords was worrying his head over the future.

The horse was still in the altar it was kept, as still as a wooden horse ought to be. Then, from its underbelly, a flap was opened, and a bronze arm fell, groping for the ground for its body to land on. An Achaean fell with the hand, more and more Achaeans streamed from the horse, and, climbing silently to the altar’s rooftop, they surveyed the city they had been clamoring to get into these last ten years; this city, beside its few orange torches, blue with night, silent in its calm, promising energy and wit in the daytime, human society, belonging with one’s fellows, the colors attending life; the Achaeans silently stood and breathed in this bastion of humanity.

They were beyond themselves with the desire to plunder everything.

Gary, in the silence, remarked, Oh, that’s where the phrase Trojan Horse comes from. Andy scowled.