Chapter Text
Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.
-Sun Tzu
In his dreams, Patroclus was home. The fields he dreamed of swayed in the midsummer breeze, stirring gently with it as soft as a mother’s touch. Leagues of golden grain, the scent of sweet grass, and fertile earth fresh within his memory were all the things he turned over anew every night. Patroclus lay in the grove of fragrant olives, the shade and morning dew cool against his skin. Patroclus dipped his feet within the streams, palming rocks shined by the lazy current that were as precious to his childhood as any token of gold. He tilled the land with his father, rendering it perfect for the birth of new crops and nourishment. The sky was nearly blindingly blue, nothing a match for its most perfect hue as the world above met the world below in perfect harmony. The only peace Patroclus had were in these dreams, surely brought to life by his own longing, and he savored them as a man dying of thirst did water.
Patroclus had been naïve, he often thought to himself during the long nights awaiting sleep to take him. Perhaps it was in his nature to be so. He had never left the farm which his family had cared for in return for their place in the world. He had never had any desire to see the rest of the world, for Patroclus had always been happy enough with his means. He had been happy the farmlands he had grown up in, never knowing of strife or danger or furious anger. Patroclus believed there was no place where the gods lived more vibrantly and fully than in the fields of his birth. Patroclus was a simple boy, from a simple family of simple means. He had always believed the gods were simple as well. His family had sacrificed to the gods for good harvests and they had reciprocated. And perhaps that simpleness had shielded him, for now he knew that when it came to the fates of men far greater than himself, the gods threw themselves into discord and that discord turned the whole world to grief. Perhaps it was still nativity which allowed him to still dream, even as the grief of his father’s passing not even a year into the war was still heavy upon him.
His dreams corrected reality, for no longer was nature beautiful. The ground of the flat plain before Troy was beaten down and muddy, watered with blood and fertilized by flesh-rot which led the odor to cling sickeningly on every inch. Horror hung in the air, only punctured by bellowing trumpets and bursting screams of men and horses. It was chaos, crashing dizzying chaos, foot soldiers and heroes thirsty for glory, country-men and foreigners roused into a fever pitch violence. Patroclus couldn’t help but be disgusted, disgusted at how easily these men who led the charge fought not for land or anything else besides honor. Honor which was the death of many a farm-boy like himself. And death was always there, just around the borders of his vision, ready to take him to the underworld to join his father. But at least in his dreams he found safe haven and harbor from daily horror.
And yet Patroclus did not die. Somehow, he did not. Death courted him furiously, a spear only skimming his shoulder, a sword which nicked his neck, and a groove in the ground he fell over and because of this missed the kick of a desperate horse. Nine years and he still lived, taking an odd refuge among the bowmen in the line. He had used a bow before the war only in hunting to supplement a tenant farmer’s diet, but after nine years many commanders found him to be competent enough to not wish to lose. And he was still able to dream of those verdant meadows, which was as good of a reason to live as any he could see.
But it was in his ninth year at battle when everything changed. It was then that Patroclus had a different dream than the empty farmlands of his longed for home.
The sky was just as vibrant, the fields just as golden. However he was not alone, instead, a long figure stood between the rows. He approached cautiously, and when the figure turned to greet him Patroclus stood as still as stone.
“Patroclus,” a man called to him, standing amongst the golden grain and yet outshining all Patroclus could see. His hair was like golden fire and his eyes black as night. Not a man, this could not be a man. Patroclus fell to his knees, his legs suddenly unable to support the weight of his body. He stared at the ground, unable to bring himself to look the divine being in the eye. “Child of man, you are wise to bow before me. Your pious nature has led me to favor you. Look up.”
“Me?” Patroclus couldn’t help but croak in surprise. “But I am nothing.”
“And yet you will be something, rise and stand before Apollo,” the god demanded with a grand gesture and Patroclus stood woodenly. He stared at the being, unable to help his faintness. Apollo, lord of the sun, was piercingly and hauntingly beautiful with smooth skin and cut features that no human could have. His beauty lingered like blind-spots in the eye when one gazed upon something far too bright. Patroclus felt delirious, fever-washed like the men of Greece as Apollo struck them down with illness only days before. Apollo would strike him down too, surely, if he was displeased. But Patroclus struggled to think of how he could ever begin to please a god.
“Speak,” Apollo ordered lazily. “I allow you too.”
“What would you have of me?” Patroclus gasped, his words scarcely more than breath and pitch, his hands shook violently as if his whole body was being rocked at sea.
“You know of my righteous anger,” Lord Apollo told him his lip twitching in a snarl. “My priestess was taken, disrespect has been heaped upon me. I shall balance scale, however, with Aristos Achaion at the side of the plunderers my plans for their defeat are complicated.”
Best of the Greeks, Patroclus thought. Achilles son of king Peleus and the goddess Thetis. Patroclus had seen him in battle, watched the way he savored the carnage and butchery of war. He reaped men like one reaped grain, twenty heads in easy swipes of sword. Achilles nearly bathed in their blood, his laughter in the pleasure of fighting echoing across the battlefield like a terrible omen. Seeing him had always made Patroclus’s skin crawl as the inhumane nature of his conquest always struck too close. Patroclus had surely only ever survived because he had never met the man on the field, and had little desire to change that.
“What would you have me do?” Patroclus asked again, clenching his fingers and attempting to stop their desperate shaking. “I am not a demigod as he is, there is nothing that I can do to stop him. I have barely managed to live this long.”
“He has no match in battle,” Apollo said seriously, black eyes burning through Patroclus with their knowledge of deeper things than Patroclus could ever know. “So I shall give him a match.”
“How could I ever?” Patroclus half-begged, willing the god to see reason, even though he knew such a thing would be in vain.
“You shall become the challenge, you shall become Achilles’ labor. Do you commit to what it is that I am asking of you?” Apollo asked him, his smile full of bared teeth which glinted off the sunlight like a knife.
“Commit?”
“If you do what I say, you shall be rewarded by me,” Apollo promised him firmly as he crossed his arms over his chest. “You will be rewarded greatly.”
“If I do what you say…” Patroclus said, licking his dry lips. “Will you protect my mother? My father died…I cannot remember either of their faces nor give either of them comfort. But please…will you protect her? She will be alone if I am to be that which Achilles must overcome.”
“That is truly all you wish? Not fame, not riches, not anything eternal?”
“There is nothing else I should presume to desire,” Patroclus told him.
“An honorable bargain is struck,” Apollo said before giving a vicious grin. “For Troy.”
Apollo reached out to him, seemingly across all matter of space, and pushed him. Suddenly there no longer any ground to receive his fall. Patroclus screamed, desperately trying to grab anything but nothing was there to stop his free fall. He pitched and then he was caught by water, dark and frigid. He desperately tried to swim but there was no end he opened his mouth to call for help but found his lungs filling with water that lit his insides on fire. He sank, seeing only black but feeling himself shudder uncontrollably, black as night, black as Apollo’s burning eyes—
Patroclus awoke soaked through with sweat, bursting up from his ragged blankets with a scream caught in his throat. For a moment he sat there, blurry and feeling oddly light as if a layer of his own flesh had been removed. He gasped, his head spinning from the nightmarish visions. A fellow soldier opened his tent washing his skin with fresh air. He stared at Patroclus, skin pallid and sallow looking from as many years as he upon the front line.
“Patroclus…we have to get going,” the soldier said quietly. “The Grecians are preparing for an assault.”
Patroclus winced, and reached for his armor.