The Song of Achilles: A Novel

Exile might satisfy the anger of the living, but it did not appease the dead.

Man after man, and their names began to blur in my head.

Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another.” He spread his broad hands. “We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory. Who knows?” He smiles. “Perhaps one day even I will be famous. Perhaps more famous than you.”

IN THE DARKNESS, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.

We are men only, a brief flare of the torch.

Zeus’ thunderbolts still smell of singed flesh and patricide.

“I have no need to forgive you. You cannot offend me.”

I lay back and tried not to think of the minutes passing. Just yesterday we had had a wealth of them. Now each was a drop of heartsblood lost.

“There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.