1183 BCE - Troy's Southern Gate.
Agamemnon pushed Kassandra into the arms of two of his soldiers and lunged at Odysseus with his spear. Athena threw her spear at Adresteia, and then charged at her shield first. Diomedes, Ajax, and Teucer charged at Aeneas, and Greek soldiers poured down the street, trying to reach the wailing infant.
Helen walked up to the two men holding Kassandra, smashed their helmets together hard enough to knock them out, and threw Kassandra into Menelaus’s arms as many of the Greek troops turned and ran back towards them.
“What are you doing?” Menelaus said, confused.
“What Paris did wasn’t Kassandra's fault,” Helen said, “She and her family were always good to me, even when they knew the fate I would bring. I’m not letting Agamemnon or Athena take her.”
While Odysseus danced with Agamemnon, Adresteia traded blows with Athena. She dodged Athena’s spear, but no sooner had it whistled past Adresteia’s head, than it appeared back in Athena’s hand. Adresteia, still somewhat drugged by Aphrodite’s poison, narrowly dodged being gored by the weapon. She slashed at Athena with her claws, the talons skipping off of Athena’s helmet and shoulder armor.
Athena brought her shield up and tapped the button to activate the gorgon effect. The image on the shield flickered but didn’t flash. Athena pressed the button repeatedly, but nothing happened.
Adresteia spun a blue ball of electricity in her hands, “Oh,” she taunted, “Did your batteries die?”
Athena roared and began striking more aggressively, stabbing with her spear and slashing with her shield. Adresteia smacked her ineffectually with the charge stolen from the shield and then dodged. She kept dodging, searching for an opening to do real damage, but no opportunity came. Even fighting like this, Athena wasn’t reckless, she was calculating and careful. Just when Adresteia thought she’d gotten Athena’s rhythm, Athena rushed to the side, sprinted off the wall, and thrust her spear behind her. Adresteia tried to duck, but Athena skewered Adresteia’s other wing, inflicting considerable pain.
“HEY, HELMET HEAD!” Helen shouted, “Pick on someone your own size!” She grabbed one of the Greek soldiers and threw him at Athena like a discus.
Athena knocked the flying body aside with her aegis, and charged at Helen. Odysseus shoulder-charged Agamemnon and sent him tumbling right in front of Athena’s feet. She tripped on him in turn, stumbled, and ran face first into Helen’s fist. Helen hammered her with blows, but Athena recovered and began blocking with her indestructible shield. Adresteia glanced down the street and saw Aeneas was being overwhelmed by the three Greek heroes and the mob of soldiers behind them.
Adresteia grabbed Athena’s cloak from behind and spun her around into a wall, “Helen! Help Aeneas!”
“Gently, Helen! Ajax and Teucer are still our friends! ” Menelaus shouted, and then grumbled, “Diomedes can go to hell, but whatever.” Menelaus pushed Kassandra in front of him so that she was behind his shield, “Come on kid, stay close to me and I’ll get you to your family.”
While Helen went one-on-one with Ajax in a surprisingly even match of strength, Menelaus weaved through the melee with Kassandra, pulling her back and forth as men tried to grab her. In the midst of it all, he finally ran into Teucer, who blocked his path, bow leveled at his head.
“Really?” Menelaus said, holding his shield higher to cover the girl.
“No,” Teucer sighed and relaxed his bow, “I’m really sick of this damned war. The only reason anyone is still fighting for Agamemnon is to preserve the Grecian League, but you know what? I’m sorry, Menelaus, but fuck your brother and fuck Mycenae. We don’t need him to keep our alliance.”
“Teucer you beautiful man,” Menelaus said, “Sparta’s doors will always be open to you if you can get Ajax to leave with you.” As Menelaus said that, Ajax went flying through the air, nearly hitting Athena.
“Damn. I’m good,” Teucer joked as he ran after his dazed half-brother.
Many of the Greek soldiers now seemed uncertain of what they were doing. A Spartan among them blocked Menelaus, “The King of Mycenae says the girl goes to Athena.”
“And the King of Sparta, your king, says she doesn’t,” Menelaus said. Once, he wouldn’t have needed to point that out. It was time to start reminding people who was in charge.
“Well, you’re not my king,” one of the Mycenaean soldiers said.
“But I am your king’s brother,” Menelaus said, “Do you believe the reward for bringing him this girl will outweigh the wrath he’ll bring down upon you if you harm me?”
The man immediately backed off, along with the other soldiers. Menelaus took the girl to Andromache and the others, “Is there a way out?” he shouted, “I thought the gates were blocked?”
“Odysseus says he has ‘someone’ working on it,” Andromache said, clutching Astyanax close to her chest.
Menelaus shook his head and began pulling the crossbars away, so that whenever Odysseus’s ‘someone’ arrived, the doors would be ready to open from this side.
Aeneas and Helen were keeping Diomedes busy, but despite outnumbering him and overpowering him, they couldn’t match his skill or his steel spear. He fought like a pack of wolves, his spear seemingly striking from every angle at once, and deflecting every blow.
“You!” He shouted at Helen, “You cost me ten years of my life!”
“Well maybe it wouldn’t have been ten years if you were a better soldier!” Helen shouted back and took a swing at his head. Diomedes ducked and slashed her arm, then grazed her ribs as she tried to fall back from him.
Aeneas lunged at him with his mother’s steel knife in one hand, and his own bronze sword in the other. Diomedes locked the bronze sword under his arm, and with the strength Athena had given him to kill Ares, he bent the bronze sword until it broke. Aeneas brought the knife down toward Diomedes’s neck, but Diomedes blocked the stab with his shield, dropped his spear, and reached up under Aeneas’s helmet to hit the activation button. The armor clattered to the ground, and Diomedes drove a knee into Aeneas’s exposed abdomen, knocking the wind out of him. Helen charged at Diomedes from behind, but Diomedes saw her reflection in the back of his shield. He grabbed Aeneas’s wrist, twisted it over his shield and turned, thrusting his steel knife into Helen’s shoulder. Helen cried out in pain and tumbled away. Diomedes dropped his shield to better control Aeneas’s knife and swung his leg over the Trojan’s shoulder. He forced him to the ground, and began to drive the man’s knife back towards his throat.
“Who’s going to save you now you son of a whore? You’re all out of women to protect you.”
There was a loud thud outside the gate. Dust rained down from the cross beams as something shook the doors. Menelaus pulled the last of the cross bars away, and jumped back. With a final impact, the doors blew in, sending a hail of splinters, saw dust, and bronze scrap raining down the street. Blue lights and glinting silver cut through the dust cloud as an armored figure emerged from the debris cloud.
Odysseus cheered. Everyone else present stared with shock – it looked exactly like Achilles, right down to the shield and broken spear he’d carried after his fight with Hector, except the figure under the armor was distinctly feminine and pear-shaped.
The silver helmet slid away to reveal Briseis’s face and brown curly hair, “Alright you sons of bitches, I’m pregnant, I’m angry as hell, and the god of war is in my head telling me to kill all of you mother fuckers, so if you want to live, run for your fucking lives.”
One of the Greek soldiers rushed at her. She casually blocked his attack with Achilles’s shield and stabbed him through the throat with the broken spear. She kicked him back into his friends, spear still lodged in his neck. She snapped her fingers and the spear flashed back to her hand, blood spurting from the man’s wound. His comrades dropped him and ran.
Diomedes still had Aeneas down, threatening to slit his throat. He started to say something pithy, but Briseis kicked Aeneas’s compressed armor like ball, sending the golden cube straight at Diomedes’s head with enough force to stun the man. Aeneas threw Diomedes off, grabbed the cube, and redonned the armor as he rolled over to Briseis’s side and stood up. He was unarmed, but his fists were raised, ready to brawl.
“Looking good Aeneas,” Briseis smiled.
Aeneas smiled back behind his golden helmet, “Too late to kidnap you?”
“Better late than never, lover boy.”
Diomedes scrambled to his feet, grabbed his spear and shield, and started to charge at them, but Helen grabbed him by the back of his cuirass and threw him back down the street, through the second story window of a building half a block away.
Adresteia, Athena, and Odysseus were still locked in a three-way brawl, but Agamemnon and his troops had retreated.
“We’re winning!” Aeneas shouted.
“Agamemnon’s gone for reinforcements,” Menelaus said, “Your city’s lost – your only chance is to get to Briseis’s ship!”
Aeneas looked around – Andromache and Kassandra were already gone, along with most of the refugees.
“Come on Aeneas,” Briseis said as she raised her helmet again, “It’s a long run to my boat, with a lot of dangerous shit out there. They need us.”
“But… Troy…”
“This is how we save Troy, Aeneas.” Briseis dragged him through the wreckage of the door, and out into the darkness.
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