“After Paris’s death in an archery duel, Helen had been given in marriage to another of Priam’s sons, Deiphobos, whom the people of Ilium called ‘the router of the enemy’ but whom we Achaeans referred to on the field as ‘oxen-buttocks,’ but her new husband was not at home this night and Helen slept alone. I woke her.

“I don’t believe I would have killed Helen if she had cried for help—I had known her for many years, you know, both in my role as guest in Menelaus’ noble house and, before that, as one of Helen’s first suitors when she became eligible for marriage, although this was just a formality, since I was happily married to Penelope even then. It was I who had counseled that Tyndareos should take an oath of the suitors to acquiesce to Helen’s choice, thus avoiding much bloodshed from the losers’ bad manners. I think Helen always appreciated that advice.

“Helen did not cry out for help that night I awakened her from her troubled sleep in her home in Ilium. She recognized me right away and hugged me and asked after the health of her true husband, Menelaus, and of her daughter so far away. I told her that all were well—although I did not tell her that at this point in the war, Menelaus had been seriously wounded twice on the battlefield and moderately wounded half a dozen times, including his recent arrow in the hip, and was in a surly mood. Instead, I expressed to her how much her husband and daughter and their family in Sparta missed her and wished her home and well.

“Helen laughed then. ‘My lord and husband Menelaus wishes me dead, and you know it, Odysseus,’ she said. ‘And I am sure that he will do the deed himself when the great walls and Scaean Gate of Ilium fall away soon, as Cassandra has prophesied.’

“I did not know this particular oracle—Delphi and Pallas Athena are the only seers of the future who have my ear—but I could not argue with her; it seemed probable that Menelaus would indeed slit her throat after all the bitter years of her disloyalty in the arms and beds of his enemies. But I did not tell Helen this. Instead, I told her that I would intercede with Menelaus, son of Atreus, convincing him to spare her life, if Helen would not betray me this night, but would help me find a way into Priam’s palace and instruct me on how to choose the true Palladion.

“ ‘I would not betray thee anyway, Odysseus, son of Laertes, true and crafty counselor,’ said Helen. And she told me how to pierce the palace defenses and how to know the real Palladion when I saw it amongst its imitators.

“But it was almost dawn. Too late to complete my mission that night. So I went out and down the streets and up and over and down the wall through the gaps I had left by killing the watchmen, and I slept late the next day, and bathed, and ate and drank, and had Machaon, the son of Asclepius and the finest healer in the army’s pay, dress my flog wounds and apply a healing salve.

“The next night, knowing that I would need an ally since I could not fight and carry the heavy Palladion stone at the same time, I enlisted Diomedes in my plan. Together in the deepest hour of the night, the son of Tydeus and I went up and over the wall—killing this sentinel with a well-placed arrow. Then we moved quickly down the streets and alleys—no dumb show as flogged slaves this night, but, rather, efficiently and silently killing any who challenged us—and made our way into Priam’s palace via a hidden sewer drain that Helen had told me how to find.

“Diomedes, a proud man like so many of those thick-skulled heroes from Argos, did not like wading through a sewer for any purpose, not even to ensure the downfall of Ilium. He grumbled and bitched and pissed and moaned and was in a truly foul mood by the time we added insult to injury by having to climb up through a hole in one of the ten-man crappers in the privies of the palace basement, where Priam’s treasure vaults were located in the midst of his elite guard’s barracks.

“We were stealthy, but our stench preceded us and we had to kill the first twenty guards we encountered in those corridors; the twenty-first showed us how to open the treasure-vault doors without tripping alarms or deadfalls, and then Diomedes cut that man’s throat as well.

“In addition to tons of gold, mountains of precious stones, deep pools of pearls, stacks of inlayed fabrics, chests of diamonds, and much of the rest of the wealth of the fabled East in those vaults, there were forty or so statues of the Palladion arrayed in niches. They were alike in everything except size.

“ ‘Helen said to take only the smallest,’ I said to Diomedes, and I did so, wrapping the Palladion in a red cape I had taken from the last guard we’d killed. We had the downfall of Ilium in our hands. All we had to do now was escape.

“This is the point when Diomedes decided that he wanted to loot Priam’s vaults then, that night, at once, immediately. The lure of all that plunder was too much for the greedy, brainless bastard. Diomedes would have traded ten years of our blood and toil for a few hundred pounds of gold.

“I . . . dissuaded him. I will not describe the fight we had when I set the red-wrapped Palladion on the floor and drew my sword to stop the son of Tydeus, king of Argos, from ruining our mission through his greed. The fight was over quickly, won by stealth. All right, if you insist, I’ll tell you—no noble combat here. No glorious aristeia here. I suggested that we remove our reeking tunics before fighting, and while the great lummox was disrobing, I threw a ten-weight lump of gold at the great ox and knocked him cold.

“In the end, I ended up fleeing Priam’s palace with the heavy Palladion in the crook of one arm and the heavier, naked Diomedes slung over my shoulder.

“I couldn’t carry him over the wall like that, so I was ready, willing, and on the verge of leaving him by the cesspool of sewage where the great drain let out near where the river ran under Ilium’s walls, but Diomedes regained consciousness right then and agreed to leave the city with me. We departed quietly. Very quietly. He did not speak to me again that day, nor again that week, nor after the fall and plunder of Ilium, nor during our preparations to sail for home.

“Nor have I spoken to Diomedes since that day.

“I should add that it was shortly after that, after I bore away the Palladion to our Argives’ camp where we hid it well, sure now that Troy was in its final hours, that we began work on the gigantic wooden horse. The horse had three purposes—first, as a ruse, of course, to carry me and a carefully chosen band of my staunchest fighters into the city; second, as a means to have the Trojans themselves remove the great stone lintel over the Scaean Gate in order to let the votive offering pass into their city, since prophecy said that these two things had to come to pass before Ilium would fall—the loss of the Palladion and the destruction of the Scaean lintel; and third, and finally, we crafted the great horse as a gift to Athena to make up for the loss of her Palladion, since she was also known as Hippia, ‘horse goddess,’ since it was she who had bridled and tamed Pegasus for Bellerophontes and she who took such pleasure in riding and exercising her own horses at every opportunity.

“And this, my friends, is my short tale of the theft of the Palladion and the downfall of Ilium. I hope the telling pleased you. Are there any questions?”

Ada caught Harman’s eye. This was his short tale ? she thought, and saw her lover catch her thought like a blown kiss.

“Yes, I have a question,” said Daeman.

Odysseus nodded.

“Why do you call it Troy some of the time and Ilium the rest of the time?” asked the pudgy young man.

Odysseus shook his head slightly, rose, took his scabbard and short sword from the sonie, and walked off into the forest.