The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) (16 page)

“The real key, brother, was the Trojan palladium,” Caleb said.

“Which is what, exactly?”

“Just as icon comes from a word meaning likeness, a palladium has come to mean protection,” Dolgoruki explained. “The goddess Athena was called Pallas Athena because she’d defeated the titan Pallas and wore his skin as armor.”

“Wore his skin?”

“It was a primitive time.”

“Long before she was the patron of Athens,” Caleb contributed, “Athena was a protector of far more ancient Troy. That city was rich and powerful because it controlled the mouth of the Dardanelles and thus the straits between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Ilus, who founded the city, prayed to the gods for favor. In response, a wooden statue of Pallas Athena fell from the sky.”

“The gods were much more addressable in those days.”

“Troy kept the statue as a protective icon with supernatural powers. When a temple fire threatened the statue and Ilus saved it, he was blinded for having the temerity to touch the divine.”

“That’s the trouble with old stories. Every time someone begins to get ahead, something goes horribly wrong. Reminds me of me, actually.”

“Admit you don’t know the story of the Trojan War, brother.”

“I’ve forgotten a detail or two.”

Dolgoruki resumed as pompous lecturer. “Because Troy was so rich it was envied, and the abduction of Helen gave the Greeks a convenient excuse to try to sack the place. One of the Greek heroes of the war was Diomedes, King of Argos. He captured and interrogated a Trojan noble who revealed the palladium’s existence and its role in protecting the city. So Odysseus disguised himself as a beggar to gain access to Troy, and lowered a rope to the stronger Diomedes. The two Greeks stole the wooden statue.”

“Why weren’t
they
blinded?”

“Because this allowed prophecies of Trojan doom to be fulfilled. The Greek gods could be capricious and inconsistent.”

“Or the storytellers didn’t fill all the plot holes. In any event, go on.”

“The stage was set for the Trojan horse, and Troy fell and was burned.”

“But it wasn’t the hollow horse trick, it was this wooden statue that was key to the Greek victory?”

“Correct. The
Odyssey
and the
Aeneid
made the horse better known, but the palladium had to be captured first.”

“Isn’t that the truth of it? Ben Franklin liked to say applause waits on success, but the truth of the matter is one needs the right biographer. Pity that this palladium lacked a better poet. That’s my problem too, I suppose.”

“Diomedes supposedly made off with the palladium after the sack of Troy, and there the myth gets muddy,” Caleb said.

“Putting the emphasis on the word ‘myth.’”

“Actually, brother, the most interesting thing is that this palladium is said to have worked its charm again and again Some say it was present at the founding of Athens, making that city great. Then to Sparta, which prevailed over Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Then to Italy and Rome’s Temple of Vesta.”

“Vesta? Izabela based her design on one of that goddess’s temples.”

“She, too, has heard these legends. In any event, Rome prevailed against Hannibal when the palladium was in Roman hands. Another Roman, Marcellus, is said to have been blinded when he again rescued the icon from fire.”

“A devil of a way for Athena to reward her rescuers, but then I’ve had my own problems with women.”

Astiza poked me.

“The statue protected Rome for nearly a thousand years. And then Constantine the Great brought the statue with him when he founded his new city of Constantinople on the Bosporus Strait between Europe and Asia. He secreted the relic under the Column of Constantine. The Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium ruled supreme for another thousand years.”

“Until the Turks came along,” I objected. “They conquered the place a few centuries ago, as you’ll recall, and Europe’s been fighting them ever since. I believe you were on the way to join in, Prince Dolgoruki, when you diverted to attack us at Pulawy.”

“These relics have the potential of being a thousand times more important than another Turkish skirmish,” Dolgoruki said.

“My point is that this wooden statue—which should have decayed away a couple thousand years ago, by the way—didn’t save Constantinople. And that it should be in Turkish hands.”

“Yes, except they’ve never claimed so,” Dolgoruki said. “Some speculate the palladium was displaced by rampaging Crusaders who sacked Constantinople on their way to the Holy Land in 1204. Byzantium dramatically declined after that, and the city fell to the Turks two and a half centuries later. Some believe the statue is still in the Ottoman capital, but forgotten. Some believe new adventurers stole it. What if Izabela, who scoured Europe for relics to buttress Polish pride, learned that Dalca has it? What if it can be found and seized? What if it could make invulnerable whichever nation possessed it?”

“That’s a lot of ifs, my Russian treasure hunter. Why would this Carpathian hermit have it?”

“It’s only a rumor that he does. Or that he knows where it is. Or that he can confirm its existence. Dalca has sent emissaries on secret searches around the world. We captured and tortured one at the Peter and Paul prison. Hard man to break. Descended from the Huns.”

“So you knew of this palladium before coming south? And the tsar knew as well? Did Czartoryski know too?”

“Yes.”

“Now we have our answer, husband,” Astiza said. “We’ve been manipulated not just to deliver the Grunwald swords but to search for this second prize as well. Your friend Adam was sending us not on one mission, but two. It’s all been a trick from the beginning.”

“For fabulous reward,” Dolgoruki justified.

“Can we clarify just what this reward might be?” I asked. “I’ve been promised titles and palaces and all I have is saddle sores.”

“Any reward is ultimately up to He Who Gives,” the prince said, meaning Tsar Alexander.

“So we’re dependent on royal whim.”

“It’s not even that simple, brother,” Caleb said. “Another ruler has also heard of this palladium and is pressing his own claim and offering his own reward. We might as well share that truth with our Russian partner here.”

“What claim?” Dolgoruki demanded. “What ruler?”

“Napoleon Bonaparte,” I said. “My brother Caleb secretly works for him, and Caleb rescued me and my family for that emperor, not yours.”

The Russian was horrified. “You’re an agent of the tyrant?”

“Which means, my friends,” I blithely continued, “that we’re a fellowship riding into the Carpathian wilderness with two of its fellows diametrically opposed to each other. Caleb is working for France and the prince for Russia. I’m still pursued by Prussia, for all I know. While the woman who gave us this mission is a Polish patriot. Which leaves us with an awkward question: Which monarch gets this palladium?”

There was a moment’s silence, Caleb and the prince eyeing each other.

“First we have to find it, which means finding Cezar Dalca,” Dolgoruki finally said. “Let’s see which of us survives the encounter before deciding whose master gets the spoils.”

“A cheerful solution,” I said. “And it’s just possible that the Gage family will wait in the village while you, Caleb, risk your life for Napoleon, and you, prince, risk your life for Alexander. We’ll watch you climb Dalca’s mountain and toast your health on the way up.”

“I’m afraid that won’t work, Ethan,” Caleb said.

“You’re always the fool,” Dolgoruki added. “It amazes me that you’ve survived this long, Gage, given your naiveté.”

“I’m naïve? You’re the one who bungled an ambush and blundered into a battle at Pulawy you couldn’t win.”

“A blunder contrived to bring your wife here, American imbecile. The outcome of the fight was decided before it ever started. It was staged for Astiza. Izabela was expecting us. We had to have Astiza propose the parley and accede to the bargain to ensure she’d come along.”

“Me? What have you been keeping from us?” Astiza asked.

“I’m afraid you’re the key to Dalca,” Caleb told her. “You’re the only way we can get to him.”

“My wife? I’m the one Czartoryski and Napoleon recruited.”

“As useful as you occasionally are, Gage, you were never the reason our elaborate scheme was put in motion,” Dolgoruki said. “By all reports, the only person who can actually penetrate Dalca’s stronghold is Astiza. The monster is obsessed with beautiful women with witchly powers. You were allowed into the Russian court by the foreign minister so we could use her.”

Vesuvius
, Czartoryski had warned me. “Are you mad? Why would I allow my wife to go to the castle of a monster?’

“To get back your son.”

“Harry?” I twisted in my saddle to look back at the pony, even as Astiza moaned. But there was my boy, riding on his fine pony, quiet and erect as—

A palladium. His hood fell back to reveal a small figure made of straw.

Horus was gone.

And then a blow hit my head and all went black.

CHAPTER 19

Harry

T
he Pig Man told me that if I went high up in his castle, I could watch for Mama. So I do. The bad soldier squats next to me, a chain from my neck to his belt. He has bowlegs, a scraggly beard, dark skin, and puffs a pipe like a dragon. He smells bad because I don’t think he washes. He has a knife as long as my arm, and his boots ring from hobnails.

I don’t know what happened. I fell asleep with the Russian prince and woke up tied to the saddle of the bad soldier’s horse. My head hurt. The bad soldier talked ugly words I couldn’t understand. We climbed and climbed and climbed until it got so cold that I shook. He finally tied a dirty sheepskin on me. When I cried he hit me, so I made myself stop crying.

The clouds were dark and thundery. When we got to the castle I didn’t think anyone would live here because half of it has fallen down. The windows are like dead eyes. A creaky bridge leads across a deep canyon to a castle gate made of rusty bars. The gate squeals. All the bad soldiers are short and thick, with tight caps on greasy hair.

I heard an animal howl when we arrived, but there was no animal. Instead there was a tube flag like a filthy sock. It is sewn to look like a wolf’s head with a body as long as a snake. When the wind blows it fills and a wolf call comes out.

I hate this place. It smells dead. All the carvings are of dragons and bears and demons. Every corner is dark and dirty. The soldier who chained me won’t say why he’s mean, so I asked him why he lives here.

For a long time he didn’t answer. Then he said, “It’s home.”

We still don’t have a home. I don’t understand why we had to leave Russia, or Izabela’s palace, or why Mama and Papa left me alone. I’m glad Mama is finally coming.

We went downstairs to where it was dark except for torches. There sat the ugliest man I’ve ever seen. I thought of him as Pig Man.

“I will beat you if you’re bad,” the Pig Man said. He’s fat, with shaggy hair and squinty pig eyes so sunken that I can hardly see them. His teeth are pointy, and his voice sounds like a big drum. “I, Cezar, am your master until your mother comes to my banquet.”

“I’m hungry,” I said.

“Maybe we will fatten you.” But all I got was potato and lard.

The bad soldier is named Decebal. He put me on his chain and yanked me like a dog. He always seems mad.

I started to cry again. They said Mama is coming.

We wait. The wolf flag howls and howls.

CHAPTER 20

“I
t was the only way, brother,” Caleb said.

“You’d never agree to let Astiza go alone,” Dolgoruki added.

“We have a plan,” Caleb repeated.

“That requires all of us,” the Russian assured.

I was dazed and bleeding, a bandage wrapped around my head and a rope tying me to a chair. We were in a rude hovel in the village of Szejmal, somewhere below Dalca’s lair in the mountains above. It was a vile hamlet, or at least I was in a vile mood. The villagers I spied out a tiny window seemed to scuttle rather than walk. All the men were bearded as bears, their hands tough as roots, their squint suspicious. All the women were stolid and homely, scarves wrapped like a wimple around faces as wrinkled as old vegetables. Our room was dim as a cave, and there was this odd distant howling which didn’t sound real. “What happened?” My tongue was as thick as my mind.

“A strategic decision,” said Dolgoruki.

“You couldn’t be reasoned with,” Caleb added. “Astiza will distract the enemy.”

My head pounded where they’d clubbed me. “Where’s my wife? Where’s my son?”

“Conferring with Cezar Dalca.”

“Conferring? I thought he was a madman.”

“He’ll listen to women,” Dolgoruki said. “He’s fascinated by them.”

“And women always go to their children,” Caleb added.

“We hated our choice, but it’s carefully calculated.”

“Astiza will keep him occupied while we sneak up from behind.”

As realization rose, so did my fury. This was the worst treachery I’d ever encountered, engineered by my own brother! I wrestled my bonds, the chair banging up and down. “You sent my wife
alone?”

“As soon as you agree we’ll go get her,” Caleb said. “We’ll take Dalca by surprise, grab the palladium, and vanish. Much better than fighting our way.”

“It was all planned from the beginning, Gage,” the prince said. “I know we haven’t shared everything, but discretion was necessary. The castle is too strong for the three of us to assault directly. There’s also no way for we men to win Dalca’s trust. He’ll only admit women who intrigue him. We sent word of Astiza’s learning and powers, and it turned out he’d heard of her. Your wife has her own fame. She agreed to rescue Harry.”

“And what in Hades did you do to my son?”

“Drugged and sold to a Szekler guard, who you thought was a shepherd. Dalca has to believe we’ve turned on you.”

“Believe? Betrayal is exactly what you’ve done!”

“I know this looks callous,” Caleb said. “But without Harry held captive, Astiza might never have agreed to meet Dalca alone. And even if she had, you might have forbidden it.”

“So we relieved you from having to choose,” said Dolgoruki. “She’s to help let us in the back way. We have another informant.”

I roared and rocked furiously, the chair crab walking across the dirt floor. “By all that is holy and profane, I’ll kill you both!”

“You
need
us both,” Dolgoruki said.

“We’re the only hope of getting your family back,” Caleb added.

I toppled over, gasping. The ropes cut my flesh. My head pounded, and my hands were numb. I was sick at my own stupidity.

I saw it now. My jealous brother told by the French of long-lost Ethan and his fabled wife—a brother still grasping at revenge for a wrong I’d committed decades before. If Caleb couldn’t have his life’s love, I wouldn’t have mine. The jailing at Jelgava and the skirmish at the Sibyl Temple had all been part of an elaborate ploy to get us within range of Cezar Dalca and risk Astiza in the brigand’s clutches. All for a preposterous legend.

Did Czartoryski know of this monstrous plan? Parts of it, perhaps. Izabela had heard of this Trojan icon, and suddenly men at odds with each other politically were united by greed to seek the palladium. My boy kidnapped, my wife sent to hideous peril, and myself knocked unconscious. What bitter irony that in escaping villains in St. Petersburg and Jelgava, we’d traveled with even worse ones to the Carpathian Mountains. And now I couldn’t stop any of it.

I looked at them balefully. Their return stare was cool and firm.

“There’s no other way into his castle, Ethan,” Caleb said. “Its drawbridge is guarded by a hundred henchmen.”

They knew how badly they’d crossed me, and must be calculating how many hours I’d be incapacitated by rage before I’d relent and help them rescue my family. But my memory was long, too. Yes, I’d wronged Caleb many years ago. But that was a stupid tryst, and this calculated plot put my wife and son in mortal danger. Could I kill my own brother? It had now become a possibility. Cain and Abel had turned from fable to instructive history.

Yet I was trussed and helpless.

“I know you hate me right now, brother, but work with us for the next perilous hours. All can triumph if each does his part. Work with us to rescue Astiza and Horus and fetch the palladium, and we can live happily afterward, rich and satisfied.”

“You can’t even agree which nation gets it.”

“The highest paying one,” Caleb said.

“Russia will show the most gratitude,” the prince added. “You’ll get your title and I’ll be first among equals to the tsar.”

Dolgoruki I could kill without pity. Caleb with fury.

But suddenly a new realization flooded in and I looked at the two of them in horror and amazement. I’d been used, all right, but far more diabolically than I’d thought.

“Wait. Dolgoruki, it wasn’t the tsar who told you to fetch the notorious Ethan Gage and his family to Russia after we fled Bohemia, was it? The tsar would scarcely have remembered me after the disaster of Austerlitz. But you rode back to Napoleon’s lines with me, and you remembered being played the fool by the French emperor and the renegade American. And as revenge, it was
your
idea to bring me to Russia. You, Dolgoruki, the royal Russian fool. The man I dismissed as an arrogant idiot. You plotted this for months. Plotted with Czartoryski. Steps ahead of us all.”

“Finally you begin to see, Gage. Having wrecked my reputation, you’re going to help me restore it. After the battle I was wracked with despair. How to redeem myself? And then I heard a legend of an ancient relic that conveyed invincibility, and remembered your devious greed, and heard of your reputation as a treasure hunter with a remarkable wife. I knew you’d trust Czartoryski in a way you’d never trust me. And then the minister secretly contacted the French, and the French your brother. So yes, everyone has manipulated you from the beginning. I thought a hundred times it could all go wrong. I thought you’d drown in the Neva, or be captured by the Prussians. But no, your reputation for dumb luck is well deserved. Perhaps you’re invincible yourself.”

“This is a sin, using us. You’re tempting Satan.”

“All sides worked to bring you here, Ethan,” Caleb said. “You know that Astiza believes in fortune and destiny. This was destiny tripled. It’s good luck what’s happened, not bad.”

My mind whirled, trying to piece back just how I’d been directed. “You left the skis to point our course to Russian pursuit,” I said to Caleb. “Izabela knew the Russians would come to the Temple.”

“I needed a battle so I could desert my command with a good excuse,” Dolgoruki said. “My men will report I was forced into a temporary truce to save their lives. I’ll return a hero.”

“Some of those men dead or wounded.”

“Destiny has its casualties.” He looked impatient at my reluctance to forgive all and merrily press on. My wife and son in danger, treasure waiting, companions primed for action. Fait accompli.

“This Dalca and his women,” I finally said. “Why? Is he some kind of lovelorn obsessive? A wicked de Sade? I thought you said people who went there never came back. Do only women go there? Do they never return?”

“Men have tried to gain admission without success,” the prince said. “It’s only pretty young women he’ll entertain. But not, we think, for sex.”

“You think? My God, you’re the most scabrous scoundrel, a pit of iniquity, a moral monster! Both of you! Why would any woman go near that place if not coerced by the abduction of her child?”

Caleb picked up a knife and eyed its point, and at first I was afraid of what he might do. But he was eyeing my bonds. “Your indignation is understandable, Ethan. But we’re wasting time now that you’re awake. It hardly matters why they go there. The point is that they never come back. So Astiza has entered his lair and we must rescue her.”

“But they must always come of their own free will,” added Dolgoruki. “It has to be, or he won’t accept them. He invites them to his banquet.”

“He promises them immortality.”