I saw the movie Troy last weekend and was greatly angered that Paris, the one person who should have died, did not die. I am serious. I was crying when Achilles died. I never cry. It was way sad, and then Paris got away with that ditz Helen and it pissed me off. It's much better this way. Trust me.
Discordant screams and curses filled the air, echoing through the alleys and roads, between the buildings of the burning city. Smoke blotted out the moon and stars, but the light of the fires was sufficient to see by as the Greeks slaughtered the Trojans in the shattered peace of their homes.
Achilles did not stop, either to aid or hinder the carnage, as he raced through doomed Ilium, trying to locate a single person in the chaos. He was trying to find a needle in a haystack whose straws kept squirming around.
He shouted her name in the vain hope that somehow she might hear the lone voice of reason in the sea of the cries of the dying and shouts of the victors. �Briseis!�
He wasn�t even entirely sure why he was bothering with trying to find her. Achilles didn�t believe in any nonsense like love at first sight, or two bodies sharing the same soul, etc. She had just been different. Beautiful without seeming fake; that is, beautiful even after two weeks as a captive sequestered from her makeup box...not that Briseis had been wearing any when she was taken. It wasn�t a priestess� place.
And intelligent, and kind. Achilles had actually been able to have a conversation with her, though their views were admittedly divergent. He felt that, based on past experience with women, he would be unlikely to find one such as Briseis again.
And then, he was Achilles. He didn�t know how to fail.
�Briseis!� he bellowed. He was coming up on the open-air temple now. It had not yet been set aflame, and what better place to find a priestess than an altar? As he bounded up the stone steps, he caught a glimpse of movement between the lion statues which rose in two rows along the temple�s sides. He arrived at the top just in time to witness Agamemnon�s dying gurgle as Briseis slit his greedy throat.
Before Briseis noticed him, before he had a chance to shout to her, Achilles heard the clatter of armour, and two Greek soldiers leapt at Briseis between the statues. She had taken Agamemnon by surprise with her knife, and would not be so lucky this time. Her resigned expression as the men rushed at her showed that she realized it, too. Her death approached, and if not her death, then even worse: her enslavement.
Suddenly motivated to join the battle for Ilium, Achilles finished them quickly.
Briseis� shock was evident in her voice as she stammered out, �A-Achilles?� as the second soldier fell off the indomitable warrior�s bloody sword. Too relieved to reply, Achilles just looked at her gratefully and grabbed her in an enthusiastic bear hug.
Never one to waste time in a critical moment, but reluctant to let Briseis go so quickly after having found her again, Achilles murmured, �Briseis, we have to get out of here,� into her thick, dark hair. �Follow me, and - � A sharp pain in his ankle cut him off.
Looking down and twisting to see behind him, Achilles beheld an arrow running straight through the back of his ankle. Achilles was no stranger to injury; after all, one didn�t become the greatest warrior in the known world if one was afraid of being wounded; and it took him not one second to recognize that the tendon had been severed. The ankle would not support his weight; he could not possibly rise; he was crippled. He now had one option. He could crawl quickly on his hands and knees and try to reach a place where he would be sheltered from further shots, and trust to the archer�s so far shoddy aim to protect him until he got there. Using Briseis as a shield did not even occur to him.
All this went through his mind in a split instant. He reached his decision with a speed which would have impressed a computer.
Achilles stood up. An arrow pounded into his chest. He shifted his grip on his sword, knowing that it was not meant for what he had in mind and that his ankle would be damaged permanently. He might never walk again. Assuming he even survived the shaft now protruding from his breastplate.
Briseis found the archer before Achilles. He was standing partially behind a column across the way from the temple, using it as a shield. She couldn�t imagine what he thought Achilles was going to do that he felt he needed one. His face was covered in shadow, but when he changed his position slightly to reload, light from a nearby fire revealed him to her. Briseis was stunned to recognize him as Paris, her cousin.
�Paris!� she shouted, trying to gain his attention. He seemed not to hear as he unloaded into Achilles once more.
�PARIS!!! Don�t!� Briseis screamed at him, but to no avail. Another arrow thudded home, and then a fourth, as Briseis sobbed in anger and disbelief. It was a miracle Achilles was still standing.
Paris leaned out from his cover and was about to put a fifth arrow into Achilles� chest as, in one smooth, perfectly controlled and balanced motion, Achilles hurled his sword at Paris through a red cloud of pain. You would never have guessed that Achilles was injured. One end over the other, the blood-drenched length of razor-sharp metal whirled through the air, slicing Paris open from the top of his ribcage to below his belly. He tumbled to the ground, dead.
Unable to halt his momentum, Achilles also fell. Crying, Briseis caught up his head in her lap. The last thing Achilles saw before he lost consciousness was a single star, high in the heavens, cold, implacable, eternal, far above the death throes of Ilium and the myriad personal dramas playing out for the last time in her wide burning thoroughfares, impersonal and great; and yet this star was shining with an unparalleled joy and love, a joy in itself and its life and a love of the entire meaningless but beautiful world, and of the other star beaming next to it. The star was him.