I
Agamemnon rode into Troy through the eastern gate.
Odysseus had opened it from the inside with Menelaus's Spartans. Greek soldiers stood along the road on both sides, and they went down on one knee as he passed. He didn't look at them. He looked at the shuttered windows and the road climbing ahead of him. There was nobody on it.
Menelaus met him at the top, still in the black cloak he'd fought in.
"Empty," Menelaus said.
"Empty how?"
"Every house. Every cellar my men have broken into. Cold hearths, open chests with nothing in them. A pot still warm on a kitchen fire in the lower town. A few old men dead in the lanes, and that's all." His jaw tightened. "The palace too. Priam's sons, the wives, the baby. And Helen. Her rooms are stripped."
"Gone out of the city?"
"The gates were held. Every one. Nothing came out of them."
