Aristoi Achaion [A the song of Achilles fanfiction] 2

Chapter 25

It was early morning, we'd probably be marching for another raid soon, I headed to visit my mother. Achilles was supposed to come with but he happened to still be asleep. I guess he would see her in the afternoon. I walked towards the usual place where we met in the beach. The Beach of Troy I had gotten so used to over the months.

I didn't have to wait for long until she emerged from the waves. She was wearing one of usual blue sort of see-through dresses with the embroidered sea-cells but what instantly caught my attention is thar my mother wasn't alone. In her arms ,covered by a woolen fabric, was my a-little-over-one-year old nephew. A smile was instantly brought to my face as me and my mother approached one another.
"He's here" she said softly.
"Hello little one" I greeted him. He was very much awake and playfully moving his little hands around.
"Do you want to hold him?"she asked.
"Oh I am not sure I know how too" I don't know if I was scared I might to do something wrong or simply felt weirdly about babies.
"It's easy just make sure to support his head" I nodded and she passed him to me.
He was perfectly healthy and quite big for his age. When I looked into his eyes I realized they were the same as my brother's and his hair was the same warm reddish tone as his mother's. The thought of Deidamia at that moment made my heart ache. I might have got to hold my nephew but that meant she was robbed off him for life. She was a girl practically alone on the world now only aged sixteen.
"What's him name?" I asked as I lifted my gaze to look at my mother.
"His mother choose it, I decided to keep it. Neoptolemus" At least she did that, I thought.
"It's a nice one" I smiled at him again and he laughed softly, he was truly adorable. I wondered how long that will last. No one can stay innocent in this family for long.
"I call him Phyrhus, though. It's shorter" because of his hair I assumed. It was ironic the female equivalent of that was what we called Achilles when we were in Skyros.
"Well Phyrhus, I am your aunt Cippe"
"Cicce"he said laughing playfully, I was surprised.
"Has he spoken before?" Could my name -even if it's a incorrect version of it- be his first word?
"No, not that I know of"
"Come on, you can say it Ci-ppe" I would love him to learn my entire name but I believe the shortened version is a good start.
"Cicce!" He kept saying.
"Ci-ppe" my mother repeated trying to help him too.
"Cicce" he repeated.
"Cicce" I repeated myself, accepting his answer not wanting to "torture" him any longer.
"Come on go back to your grandmother now, aunt has to get ready for battle"I said placing him back in my mother's arms.
"I still remember when you were this little" she remarked.
"I do quite miss when times where simpler"
"How is the war going? Have you been doing alright?"
"I've gotten used to everything I suppose"
"Mother, I really have to go now" time had passed so fast, I had not even eaten breakfast yet.
"Of course, my sweet girl. Take care"
"Tell him that his aunt Cippe loves him"
"I will"

*
Things in the camp were rather quiet, as quiet as it can get in war at least. More raiding that continued for quite long, Every day Agamemnon would climb the dais amidst the day’s plunder and say, “No news.” No news meant no soldiers, no signals, no sounds from the city. It sat stubbornly on the horizon and made us wait.

The men consoled themselves in other ways. After Briseis there was a girl or two on the dais nearly every day. They were all farm girls with callused hands and burnt noses, used to hard work in the sun. Agamemnon took his share, and the other kings as well. You saw them everywhere now, weaving between tents, slopping buckets of water onto their long wrinkled dresses—what they had happened to be wearing the day they were taken. They served fruit and cheese and olives, carved meat, and filled wine-cups. They polished armor, wedging the carapaces between their legs as they sat on the sand. Some of them even wove, spinning threads from tangled clots of sheepswool, animals we had stolen in our raids.
It was a sight I sometimes couldn't bare. Under different circumstances it could have been me, it could have been someone I care about. I tried to imagine their stories, they probably happy lives they had before they ended up here. I pitied them but I couldn't protect all of them, Achilles took as many as he could. Perhaps that is the cruelest part of war, women who suffer for the sake of men. For their pleasure, for their well-being for their wars. Was this war even for Helen? And what will become of her if she is returned? Will she be warmly welcomed or will she be punished for hee supposed infidelity? Did she even run away willingly with Paris?

I could barely watch these girls as they stumbled into camp to be parceled off. Me and Patroclus sent Achilles out to ask for them, to seek as many as he could, and the men teased him about his voraciousness, his endless priapism. “Didn’t even know you liked girls,” Diomedes joked. A brutal accusation to make but it was true.

Each new girl went first to Briseis, who would speak comfort to her in soft Anatolian. She would be allowed to bathe and be given new clothes, and then would join the others in the tent. We put up a new one, larger, to fit them all: eight, ten, eleven girls. Mostly it was I who spoke to them. I killed their families too but at least I am a woman, my presence didn't cause fear.

They spun, and talked in their own language, sharing the words they picked up from us— helpful words, like cheese, or water, or wool. They were not as quick as Briseis was, but they patched together enough that they could speak to us.

It was Briseis’ idea for me to spend a few hours with them each day, teaching them. The lessons didn't happen every day of course, only when I had time after raids and such so they took some time to take effect. It was very helpful for them that I knew their language, so I could translate. Patroclus helped sometimes. Briseis' Greek was quite good now, and more and more I simply deferred to her. She was a better teacher than I, and funnier too. Her mimes brought us all to laughter: a sleepy-eyed lizard, two dogs fighting.
She was one of the sweetest people I had ever met, kind and open-minded. She didn't deserve this, she deserved to be free. They all did.

In the afternoons where I took a break from teaching I would talk with Achilles and Patroclus. About our predictions about the continuation of the war and things we still remembered from Pelion. About how many men we send to the underworld that day.
It seemed fun almost, easy. But this wasn't war, not truly. It had barely begun.