Achilles' Heel

Briseis' cattlehide sandals are falling apart, strips of leather rifting onto the peat moss and cement. The tears in her eyes keep falling and she is screaming goodbyes to her dead lover sprawled out across the bloody sealant. Other bodies are bleeding, swords through their hearts, punctures in their chests. She was with him, they were making love to each other over a gaping, listless corpse. In a second that moment had dissolved into the shale under their blistering feet. And Briseis can still remember that gilded arrow through his heel, his yelping, his helpless hands pining for a spear.

Paris yanks her by the arm. "Keep running, Briseis!"

"Achilles, Paris! You killed Achilles! Have you no shame? No onus?" Briseis shouts, pulling her arm back. "Does killing him reinstate your honor, Paris? You remember? You knelt on that cold war sand, clearly defeated by the righteous Menelaus, quivering away on your hands and your aching knees because you are a coward. Your dead brother, my cousin, would give up his own dignity just to save someone as worthless as you. It doesn't change a thing, you're still spineless, weak."

Paris grabs her shoulders and forces her against the crag. His face is red, teeth clenched over an imbrued tongue. "He was not righteous, Briseis. He did not and does not deserve Helen. She is a Princess of Troy, now."

"This has nothing to do with Helen, or Troy, or Sparta for that matter." Briseis parts her lips, tears running in rills down her face. "But, this has everything to do with you."

"Me? How does any of this nonsense concern me?" Paris asks.

"Peace, Paris. You and Hector went to Sparta to negotiate peace, bringing back Helen caused a change reaction. Menelaus' death, Patroclus' death, Hector's death, and now Achilles." Briseis looks away from his eyes. "Achilles is dead. I loved him. He was a Spartan and his men are barbarians, but I loved him in ways that no one will ever understand."

Paris drives his fist into the blockade on either side of Briseis' head, he's crying too and his tears glisten and glitter in the fire buring down Troy. He's shaking with all kinds of emotions thrumming through his bones. "I didn't mean to hurt anyone. I swear by the Gods, I didn't mean to."

She puts her fissured lips to his ear. "Tell that to your brother's ashes," Briseis hisses.

He strikes her, his closed fist against her nose. The punch knocks her head against the crag, she can feel blood teeming from her scalp and flared nostrils. She is sliding, further and further down that stonework against her back. Two of Paris melding into one, then two again. She can't tell. His face is still red and he's crying out of disssent, or maybe the repentance sewn into his faded skin.

Briseis crawls back on her palms. "I'm already cut, bruised, broken. Why not hit me another time, Paris?" She can feel a loose tooth in her mouth and almost chokes on her solder blood. Briseis shakes her head. "You are not the man I thought you were. You are not half the man I thought you were!"

"Get up, Briseis. Please, just get up." Paris turns around, quickly shooting an arrow into the leg of a pudgy Spartan. He falls, groaning in agony, grovelling across the slippery mortar. "Get up, Briseis."

Her hands brood for something, anything to pull her up. Paris pulls her hand and nearly drags her away behind him. "Let me go. Let me go." Briseis' drawling tone is clipped short by Paris' blatant aggrevation. "Let me go. Let me go back to Achilles. Let me drape myself across his wounded body, let me be his sheath, his linens. Allow me to die as he had died."

"You are not going to die, Briseis," Paris snaps. "You are going to live a long, prosperous life. Forget about Achilles for a moment, would you? You will find another, someone of Troy, someone who–"

Her eyes narrow. "Someone of Troy? How hollow do they make them, Paris? How canting are you, Paris?" Her head is spinning, wheeling. She muses over the thought of Paris' words. "Helen is not from Troy. Why did you go through so much trouble to have her?"

"I thought this wasn't about Helen."

Briseis ignores him. "I love you, Paris. You are my family, my cousin, the son of my uncle. I will always love you, but you bring so much friction, the kind of friction between the chafing thighs of a warrior."

"Thank you for your ignorance, Briseis."

"Leave me, leave me be, Paris." She sifts her feet into the moss and dry land. "Leave me here, please." Briseis throws herself onto the ground, holding vines and sprigs and whatever else she can cling to.

Paris throws his flatbow and arrows to the dirt. "It's a cold, lonely world out there for a girl like you. If you stay behind, they will take you, make you into someone that you would never want to be. Do you know what they do to their slaves? Their drudges?" Paris' tears run over his slipt lips. "I would die if I saw you like that, to see them win is to see death." Paris wipes his eyes on the back of his hand. "This war was well fought, devised brilliantly with the minds that I didn't know Sparta even had. But, it is not over yet."

Paris scrapes the broken pieces of Briseis into his arms and kisses her hair, the gentle ringlets pour over into his hands. He walks with her to the secret tunnel and keeps walking because it's the only way to find freedom.

"Paris, let me stay," Briseis murmurs, her voice like the angels singing and playing harp lutes.

He disregards her pleads.