All morning, Achilles has expected Agamemnon and his simpler sibling, Menelaus, to show up, leading a mob of their loyal men to try to take back control of the Achaean forces and to push the war backward into mortal-versus-mortal, befriending the murderous, treacherous gods again, but so far that dog-eyed, deer-hearted former commander in chief has not shown his face. Achilles has decided that he will kill him when he does attempt the revolt. Him and his red-bearded stripling Menelaus and anyone and everyone who follows the two Atrides. The news of the home cities being emptied of all life is—Achilles is sure—merely a ruse by Agamemnon to incite the restless and cowardly Achaeans to revolt.

So when moravec Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo, the barbed rockvec in charge of the artillery and energy bombardment, looks up from the map they are studying under the silk of a lean-to shelter and announces that his binocular vision has picked up an odd-looking army coming through the Hole from the direction of Ilium, Achilles is not surprised.

But a few minutes later he is surprised as Odysseus—the most sharp-eyed among their command group huddled under the flapping canopy—says, “They’re women. Trojan women.”

“Amazons, you mean?” says Achilles, stepping out into the Olympos sunshine. Antilochus, son of Nestor, Achilles’ old friend from countless campaigns, had ridden his chariot into camp here an hour earlier, telling everyone of the arrival of the thirteen Amazons and Penthesilea’s vow to kill Achilles in single combat. The fleet-footed mankiller had laughed easily, showing his perfect teeth. He had not fought and defeated ten thousand Trojans and scores of gods to be frightened by a woman’s bluster.

Odysseus shakes his head. “There must be two hundred of these women, all dressed out in ill-fitting armor, son of Peleus. No Amazons these. They are too fat, too short, too old, some almost lame.”

“Every day,” grumbles dour Diomedes, son of Tydeus, lord of Argos, “it seems we descend into another level of madness.”

Teucer, the bastard master-archer and Big Ajax’s half brother, says, “Shall I advance the camp pickets, noble Achilles? Have them intercept these women, whatever the folly of their mission here, and frog-march them back to their looms?”

“No,” says Achilles. “Let’s go out and meet them, see what brings the first women to venture through the Hole to Olympos and an Achaean camp.”

“Perhaps they’re looking for Aeneas and their Trojan husbands leagues to our left,” says Big Ajax, son of Telamon, leader of the Salamis army supporting the Myrmidons’ left flank this Martian morning.

“Perhaps.” Achilles sounds amused and mildly irritated, but not convinced. He walks out into the weaker Olympian sunlight, leading the group of Achaean kings, captains, subcaptains, and their most loyal fighting men.

It is indeed a rabble of Trojan women. When they are within a hundred yards, Achilles stops with his contingent of fifty or so heroes, and waits for the clanking band of shouting women to come on. It sounds like a gaggle of geese to the fleet-footed mankiller.

“Do you see any high-born among the women?” Achilles asks sharp-eyed Odysseus as they stand waiting for the rattling horde to cross the last hundred yards of red-gorse soil that separates them. “Any wives or daughters of heroes? Andromache or Helen or wild-eyed Cassandra or Medesicaste or venerable Castianira?”

“None of those,” Odysseus responds quickly. “No one of worth, either born to or married into. I recognize only Hippodamia—the big one with the spear and the ancient long shield, like that which Great Ajax chooses to carry—and her only because she visited me in Ithaca once with her husband, the far-traveling Trojan Tisiphonus. Penelope took her for a tour of our gardens, but said later that the woman was as sour as a pre-season pomegranate and would take no pleasure in beauty.”

Achilles, who can see the women clearly enough now, says, “Well, she herself is certainly no beauty to take pleasure in. Philoctetes, go forward, halt them, ask them what they are doing here on the our battleground with the gods.”

“Must I, son of Peleus?” whines the older-archer. “After the libel spread about me yesterday at Paris’s funeral, I hardly think that I should be the one…”

Achilles turns and silences the man with an admonishing glance.

“I’ll go with you to hold your hand,” rumbles Big Ajax. “Teucer, come with us. Two archers and a master spearman should answer for this prickless rabble, even if they turn uglier than they already are.”

The three men walk forward from Achilles’ contingent.

What happens next happens very quickly.

Philoctetes, Teucer, and Big Ajax stop some twenty paces from the obviously winded and gasping, loose-formed lines of armored women, and the former commander of the Thessalians and former castaway steps forward, holding Herakles’ fabled bow in his left hand while he holds his right palm up in peace.

One of the younger women to the right of Hippodamia casts her spear. Incredibly, astonishingly, it catches Philoctetes—ten-year survivor of poison snakebite and the ire of the gods—full in the chest, just above his light archer’s armor, and passes clean through, severing his spine and dropping him lifeless to the red soil.

“Kill the bitch!” screams Achilles, outraged, running forward and pulling his sword from its scabbard.

Teucer, under fire now from wild-cast women’s spears and a hail of ill-aimed arrows, needs no such prompting. Faster than most mortal eyes can follow, he notches an arrow, goes to full pull, and sets a yard-long shaft through the throat of the woman who has cut Philoctetes down.

Hippodamia and twenty or thirty women close with Big Ajax, thrusting spears tentatively and trying to swing their husbands’ or fathers’ or sons’ massive swords in awkward two-handed blows.

Ajax, son of Telamon, looks back at Achilles for just an instant, giving the other men a glance of something like amusement, and then he pulls his long blade, slams Hippodamia’s sword and shield aside with an easy shrug, and lops off the woman’s head as if he were cutting weeds in his yard. The other women, maddened beyond fear now, rush at the two standing men. Teucer puts arrow after arrow into their eyes, thighs, flopping breasts, and—within a few seconds—fleeing backs. Big Ajax finishes the rest who are foolish enough to linger, wading through them like a tall man among children, leaving corpses in his wake.

By the time Achilles, Odysseus, Diomedes, Nestor, Chromius, Little Ajax, Antilochus, and the others arrive, forty or so women are dead or dying, a few screaming their death agonies on the red-soaked red soil, and the rest are fleeing back toward the Hole.

“What in Hades’ name was that all about?” gasps Odysseus as he comes up to Big Ajax and steps among the bodies thrown down in all the graceful and graceless—but all too familiar to Odysseus—attitudes of violent death.

The son of Telamon grins. His face is spattered and his armor and sword run red with Trojan-women blood. “That’s not the first time I’ve killed women,” says the mortal giant, “but by the gods, it was the most satisfying!”

Calchas, son of Thestor and their most able soothsayer, hobbles up from behind. “This is not good. This is bad. This is not good at all.”

“Shut up,” says Achilles. He shields his eyes and looks toward the Hole where the last of the women are disappearing, only to be replaced by a small group of larger figures. “What now?” says the son of Peleus and the goddess Thetis. “Those look like centaurs. Has my old friend and tutor Chiron come to join our effort?”

“Not centaurs,” says sharp-eyed, keen-witted Odysseus. “More women. On horseback.”

“Horseback?” says Nestor, his old eyes squinting to see. “Not in chariots?”