Late that night, Sam, Joe, Lothar and the Achaean, Odysseus, walked to their huts after the victory celebration. Sam’s throat was dry from all the talking. He had tried to squeeze out of the Achaean all he knew about the siege of Troy and his wanderings afterward. He had been told enough to confuse, not enlighten, him.
The Troy that Odysseus knew was not the city near the Hellespont, the ruins that Terrestrial archeologists called Troy VIIa. The Troy that Odysseus, Agamemnon and Diomedes besieged was farther south, opposite the island of Lesbos but inland and north of the Kaikos River. It had been inhabited by people related to the Etruscans, who lived at that time in Asia Minor and later emigrated to Italy because of the Hellenic invaders. Odysseus knew of the city which later generations had thought was Troy.
Dardanians, barbarophones, lived there; they were related to the true Trojans. Their city had fallen five years before the Trojan war to other barbarians from the north.
Three years after the siege of the real Troy, which had lasted for only two years, Odysseus had gone on the great sea-raid of the Danaans, or Achaeans, against the Egypt of Rameses III. The raid had ended in disaster. Odysseus had fled for his life by sea and had indeed gone unwillingly on a journey that took three years and resulted in his visiting Malta, Sicily and parts of Italy, lands unknown then to the Greeks. There had been no Laestrygonians, Aeolus, Calypso, Circe, Polyphemus. His wife was named Penelope, but there were no suitors for him to kill.
As for Achilles and Hector, Odysseus knew of them only as the principals in a song. He supposed both of them to have been Pelasgians, the people who lived in the Hellenic peninsula before the Achaeans came down out of the north to conquer it. The Achaeans had adapted the Pelasgian song to suit their own purposes, and later bards must have incorporated it in the Iliad. Odysseus knew The Iliad and The Odyssey, because he had met a scholar who could recite both epics from memory.
“What about the Wooden Horse?” Sam said, fully expecting to draw a blank with his question. To his surprise, Odysseus not only knew of it but said that he had indeed been responsible for it. It was a deception conceived in desperation by madness and should have failed.
And this, to Sam, was the most startling of all. The scholars had united in denying any reality to this story, saying that it was patently impossible. They should have been correct, since the idea did seem fantastic, nor was it likely that the Achaeans would be stupid enough to build the horse or the Trojans stupid enough to fall for it. But the wooden horse had existed, and the Achaeans had gotten into the city by hiding inside the horse.
Von Richthofen and Joe listened to the two talk. Sam had decided that, despite the Ethical’s warning to tell no one about him, Joe and Lothar should know of him. Otherwise, Sam would be doing so many things that would be inexplicable to anyone closely associated with him. Besides, Sam felt that his taking others into the secret would show the Ethical that Sam was really running things. It was a childish gesture, but Sam made it
Sam said good night to all but Joe and lay down on the cot, Although very tired, he could not get to sleep. The snores issuing from Joe like a maelstrom through a keyhole did not help soothe his insomnia. Also, his excitement over tomorrow’s doings made his nerves ripple and brain pulse. Tomorrow would be a historic day, if this world was to have a history. Eventually, there would be paper, ink, pencils, even a printing press. The great Riverboat would have a weekly journal. There would be a book which would tell of how the hole was deepened by exploding rockets captured from von Radowitz’s ships. Perhaps the iron would be exposed tomorrow; it surely must.
And there was in addition his worries about King John, the jesting slyboots. God knew what that insidious mind was planning. It was doubtful that John would do anything treacherous until the boat was built, and that would be years from now. There was no need to worry yet, none at all. Despite which, Sam worried.