Chapter 207: The Second Day

No horns at dawn.

Lysander stood on the northern wall. Paris beside him. Both waited for the sound that always came.

It didn’t come.

"Second day," Paris said.

"I know."

The Greek camp looked the same as yesterday. Fires. Tents. Men moving between them. No formation. No ladders being carried.

Paris squinted at the horse lines. "There’s something back there."

"Where."

"Behind the horses. Shapes. Under cloth."

Lysander looked. He could see them too — long shapes, low to the ground, covered in canvas. Twelve of them, spaced in two rows.

"Supply carts," he said.

"That big?"

"Water tanks, maybe. Or grain wagons. They’re not attacking anything. They’re storing something." He looked away from them. "If they wanted to hide a weapon, they wouldn’t leave it in plain sight."

Paris kept looking at the shapes for another moment. Then he shrugged and looked back at the empty beach.

Lysander didn’t look again.

Hecuba sat in the courtyard with her weaving.

Third day of watching. Her hands moved the shuttle without thinking about it. Her eyes did the real work.

At the ninth hour, one of the three crossed the courtyard.

Nothing unusual in the walk. Nothing unusual in the pace. But the direction was wrong. The supply office was north. This path went east, toward the old records corridor that hadn’t been used in months.

Hecuba kept weaving.

The figure disappeared around the corner. Came back four minutes later. Continued north, toward the supply office, as if nothing had happened.

Four minutes in an empty corridor that led nowhere useful.

Hecuba set the shuttle down. Picked it back up. Kept her face empty.

One thing is one thing, she told herself. Twice is not proof. Twice is a pattern beginning.

She needed a third.

She stood, gathered her weaving, and walked slowly back toward her chambers, the way an old woman walks when she has nowhere urgent to be.

The Greek command tent.

Odysseus stood over the map table. Agamemnon sat.

"Four days is too long," Odysseus said. "The men are asking why we’ve stopped. Troy will start to think we’ve given up."

"We haven’t stopped. We’re building."

"They don’t know that. And the longer it looks like nothing, the more it looks like weakness." Odysseus tapped the table. "We need something in front of the walls tomorrow. Something that isn’t the platforms."

"What."

"A challenge. Single combat. One champion, one duel, in front of both armies."

Agamemnon looked up. "Achilles."

"No."

"Why not."

"Because if Achilles fights and wins, it means nothing — everyone expects Achilles to win. If Achilles fights and loses, it breaks the army in half." Odysseus shook his head. "Send someone smaller. Someone who can lose without costing us anything, or win and give the men something to cheer about while the carpenters finish the axles."

Agamemnon considered this.

"Who."

"Ajax’s second cousin. Big man. Slow, but strong. He’s been asking for a chance to prove himself since we landed."

"And if he dies."

"Then we send another. It costs us nothing either way." Odysseus rolled the map closed. "The point isn’t the fight. The point is that both armies are looking at one man on a field instead of twelve shapes under canvas."

Agamemnon nodded once.

"Send the challenge."

The messenger came at midday. Same white branch. Same posture, hands open.

"The High King requests a champion," he said. "Single combat. Tomorrow at dawn, on the plain, before both armies. Winner’s side takes the field for the day. No further terms."

Hector stood at the gate, arms crossed.

"Who does he send."

"A warrior named Periphas. Cousin to Ajax of Salamis."

Hector said nothing for a moment.

"Tomorrow at dawn," he repeated.

"Yes."

"You’ll have an answer within the hour."

The messenger bowed and left.

The council was short. Hector didn’t call the full room. Just Lysander, Antenor, two commanders.

"They want a show," Lysander said. "Something to keep both sides watching the field instead of the walls."

"Why does that matter to them," Antenor said.

"I don’t know yet. But it’s not vanity. Agamemnon doesn’t waste days on vanity."

Hector looked at the map. "Do we accept."

"If we refuse, it looks like fear," one of the commanders said. "The city needs a win. Any win."

Hector nodded slowly. "Who volunteers."

Silence for a moment.

Then a voice from the back of the room. "I will."

Asterion stepped forward.

Big man. Wrestler’s shoulders, scarred forearms, a nose that had been broken more than once and set wrong each time. He wasn’t a nobleman. He’d come up through the garrison ranks, the kind of soldier nobody wrote songs about until the day they needed him.

"You’ve never fought a Greek champion," Antenor said.

"I’ve broken every man in this garrison who’s tried to hold me down." Asterion’s voice was flat. Not boasting. Stating. "I don’t know if that’s enough. I know I’m not afraid to find out."

Hector studied him for a long moment.

"You understand what tomorrow is," Hector said. "Not a duel for pride. A duel to hold their attention while we figure out what they’re really doing."

"I understand."

"If you die, it changes nothing in the war."

"Then I have nothing to lose by winning."

Hector almost smiled. "Get some sleep."

Asterion nodded and left the room.

Lysander watched him go.

"He’s not what I expected," he said.

"No one ever is, until the moment," Hector said. "That’s usually how you find out who they are."

That evening, Asterion stood alone at the edge of the training yard, running a whetstone down the edge of his sword.

He looked toward the Greek camp. Fires. Smoke. Thousands of men he would face one of tomorrow.

He didn’t know the name Periphas. He didn’t know what the man looked like, how tall, how fast, which hand he favored.

He knew one thing.

Tomorrow at dawn, he would be the only thing either army was looking at.

He kept working the stone along the blade, slow and even, and somewhere in his chest a small cold feeling sat that he did not have a word for, and did not try to name.