Heroes (formerly Talisman of Troy) (32 page)

‘There’s no place for both of us in this land. It must be either me, or him. You don’t have to tell me where he is; I’ll find him nevertheless, and I will challenge him to a duel. But if you do tell me, you can be certain I won’t attack him from behind, when he least expects it. I will send a herald, and you can accompany him yourself. If you accept, you can return to him and remain with him, if he wins. But if I win, this land will be mine, mine the people who populate it far and wide.’

‘Isn’t the blood you spilled for years and years enough? All those innocents, mown down by death, all those tears . . .’ said the Trojan. ‘Isn’t it enough that your homeland has become a nest of vipers, cursed by the gods? Do you know what has become of the great master of deception? He who designed the trick that defeated us, do you know what fate has reserved for him?’ Eurimachus’s eyes blazed, the veins on his neck stood out.

‘Ulysses! What do you know? What do you know?’ shouted out Diomedes.

‘We met one of his comrades in the land of the Mountains of Fire, in the region of the giant cyclops. The poor wretch had been cast ashore and forgotten; for months he had been living like an animal, eating roots, worms and insects. He seemed crazed when he saw us, he threw himself weeping at Aeneas’s knees, he embraced his knees, do you understand that? He told us what happened to the great deceiver: Ulysses has lost all his ships and wanders the sea aimlessly, persecuted by implacable destiny.’ The Trojan’s eyes glittered with cruel, fearless joy. Diomedes lowered his head and felt anguish invading his soul: Ulysses . . . had not returned. His faithful bride and the little prince still waited for him, gazing out over the distant waves day after day, in vain. Ulysses, the greatest sailor in the land of the Achaeans, had lost his way! Or perhaps he was so shattered by the loss of his ships and his comrades that he dare not return to his homeland to face the elders and the nobles.

‘Do not rejoice too soon, Trojan,’ he said, staring wildly into his eyes. ‘Ulysses will return. Ulysses always finds the way. His mind fears not even the gods; he can win any challenge. But consider now what I have told you. If you accept to take me to Aeneas, you will witness a fair duel. If you refuse, I’ll sell you as a slave, trade you for some food or animals.’

When Diomedes returned to his tent, his bride ran to him. ‘What did Myrsilus show you? There was a man down there; who is he?’ she asked, and her fear was plainly written in her eyes.

‘The past,’ said the king. ‘My past has returned. I must kill if I want to conquer the future. Only then shall we found a city for the living and raise a mound to the dead. Only then.’

*

The Trojan prisoner leading them to Aeneas had lost his way. Autumn was ending, and the weather worsened abruptly. Snow fell heavily on the mountains and covered the trails and the passes. Diomedes tried nonetheless to advance in the direction of the western sea, but peril abounded on the steep windswept summits and in the forests crawling with packs of starving wolves.

One day, as the sun was setting, as the column of warriors advanced along a steep, narrow path in the deep snow, one of Diomedes’s horses stumbled and fell. The steed tried to get back up by digging in his hooves, but the ground crumbled beneath them. He slipped further down, letting out shrill whinnies of pain. And his companion, erect on the rim of the precipice, answered, calling him desperately.

Diomedes plunged down the slope, nearly falling headlong himself, finally reaching him. The magnificent animal could no longer move: his spine was broken. He raised his head, snorting great clouds of steam from his nostrils, his huge eyes wide and full of terror.

Diomedes knelt before him: he couldn’t believe that this had happened. This was one of the divine horses that he had taken from Aeneas in battle after having defeated and nearly killed him.

They understood him, they understood human words, they understood, in the night, the mysterious voices carried by the wind and perhaps, when all other creatures had given themselves up to sleep they spoke to each other in a language that no one could understand. Diomedes pummelled the snow and wept as the horse whinnied weakly, his head falling backwards. The king stroked him gently, at length, then tore off a strip of his cloak and tied it over the horse’s eyes. From above, his comrades watched in silence, while the other horse called his companion frantically, rearing up and wildly kicking the air, whinnying sharply towards the grey, impassive sky.

Diomedes pulled out his dagger and struck the animal at the base of his head. A clean blow. The snow was stained by a scarlet stream and the horse surrendered his life.

The king trudged slowly towards the path. He reached his comrades and silently resumed the march. But the other horse would not follow them. The efforts of Myrsilus and the others to coax him on were futile: absolutely immobile, he stared at them with flaming eyes.

The king turned towards them: ‘Let him alone,’ he said. ‘He has reached the end of his road.’

As they began to march again, the horse turned towards the bottom of the escarpment and began, tentatively, to test the terrain with his hoof. Then, slowly, he began to make his way down. Myrsilus turned around and said, ‘
Wanax!
’ and the king stopped as well. He turned and watched with a swollen heart as the horse descended slowly in the snow up to his breast and finally reached his dead companion. He nudged him with his muzzle, neighing softly, trying to move him with his head, to make him stand up. In the end, he placed himself in front of the other, his head high, nostrils dilated, ears pointed, whipping the air with his tail, scraping the frozen earth with his hoof.

‘It will be dark soon,’ said Myrsilus, ‘the wolves will come.’

‘I know,’ said the king. ‘And so does he. But nothing will separate him from his lost companion. He’ll wait to gallop with him again in the Asphodel fields.’ Large tears lined his bristly cheeks. ‘It’s never cold there; there is no snow, or frost. It’s never dark and night never comes. A divine light shines endlessly over meadows blooming with white lilies and scarlet poppies . . .’ He pulled close the cloak that the icy wind snapped like a tired banner. ‘It’s never cold there, never cold . . .’

In that moment, the darkness was animated by yellow eyes, by rustling noises, by dull snarling, while a shrill whinny broke the silence, raising a challenge as clear as the sounding of a trumpet.

Myrsilus drew closer to Diomedes and fixed him with a firm gaze: ‘You’ll conquer others no worse than these,’ he said. ‘And you will harness them to your chariot. Let us go now,
wanax
, the night is upon us.’

*

At that moment, under another sky, Anchialus jerked awake abruptly and left his tent, searching the darkness in the direction of the mountains and then, opposite them, the beach glittering in the moonlight. He thought he had heard a strange sound, like distant galloping. He approached a guard on watch near the fire, one of the Epirotes marching with Pyrrhus.

‘Did you hear that?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Someone . . . someone approaching on horseback.’

‘You’re dreaming,’ said the guard. All he heard was the sound of the lapping waves, the sleepless motion of the sea. But Anchialus was certain of the sound in his ears and, unsheathing his sword, strode through the camp immersed in sleep. The plain stretched between the mountains and the sea, extending at the end into a narrow sandy strip between the high promontories.

The waves of the sea glistened in a silver wake that led, like a path, to the horizon. To the pale face of the moon. And the sound of the galloping was always closer, more powerful. He heard it, here, and there, striking the hard rocks which rang crackling under the pounding bronze hooves and then beating the compact earth with a dull roar. It came from the right, no, perhaps from the left. He couldn’t say. Suddenly, out of nowhere, it was on him. He heard shrill whinnying, he felt panting, snorting breath steaming from quivering nostrils, he smelled the sharp odour of sweat and then it was behind him, towards the sea. He turned and he heard it pounding the sand and whipping the waves of the sea until the sound died off, amidst the billows, towards the pale light of the moon.

He saw nothing, but remained at length to watch the swells, white with foam like flowing manes tossed by the wind, to watch the shivering silver wake stretching infinitely to the shores of distant Asia and the deserted fields of Ida.

He retraced his steps and sat down on a stone covered with fragrant moss. Whose wild galloping had that been, bursting upon him from the west and fading off over the sea towards Asia? What message were the gods sending him? He closed his eyes and tried to crush an ominous premonition.

The next day Pyrrhus gave orders to turn south along the coast. And thus the son of Achilles left behind the vast plains of Thessaly and Phthia, his birthright, which he had been allowed to see for so brief a time. He was reminded of the suspicion with which old Peleus had questioned him upon his return, and how he had enjoined him to leave his land, his ships and his Myrmidon warriors, whom he was not worthy of. The old man had driven him off, banished him to the sea, forced him to take up his journey again.

But the day would come when he would return, and it was close now. The old man would die, and he would become the most powerful sovereign in the land of the Achaeans.

They marched all that day and all the next, following the coast of Boeotia, the cursed land of Oedipus, of Eteocles and of Polynices, and they reached the borders of Phocis and Locris. There they united with the Locrians, the warriors of Ajax Oileus who had survived the waves of the sea. Many of them could no longer enjoy the peace they had longed for during years of war. The clang of weapons and the sound of bugles had them rushing to join. Pyrrhus’s savage vitality and untiring fervour reminded them of his father, and they would follow him, enthralled, even to the gates of the underworld.

A few days later, they were camped on the Isthmus. No one remembered to offer sacrifice to the sea and to Poseidon, so Anchialus did so, alone. He sacrificed a lamb, thinking of his comrades who perhaps still wandered the seas, and of those who perhaps had not yet found the road of return.

The army soon found itself on the road that ran between the dominion of Argos and of Mycenae. They could see sentinels in the distance, posted on the mountain tops. Smoke signals rose at night, as their passage threw the entire land into confusion and dread. The ferocity of Achilles’s son was legendary; the survivors of the long war in Asia had told many a tale during the long winter nights, to their wives and children gathered around the hearth. They knew that war and slaughter were his reason for living, that he feared neither gods nor men, that the odour of blood filled him with an accursed, inexhaustible energy, sated only by the destruction of his very last enemy. Anchialus asked himself whether Menelaus, having unleashed such an annihilator, would ever succeed in containing him or inspiring him to peace. Anchialus felt such loathing towards him that he had even considered doing away with the monster in his sleep after the war was over, but the possibility of succeeding was remote. He was always guarded by Automedon, his father’s charioteer, and by the bronze-covered giant Periphantes, armed with two double-edged axes.

They finally reached the plain of Argolis one evening as the sun was setting. On one side, to the left, they could see the lights of Mycenae and the citadel, still reddened by the last light of dusk. Beyond Mycenae, still hidden from sight, was Argos, and Anchialus imagined the city immersed in the peace that precedes the evening.

They pitched camp, but suddenly, in the dead of night, the sentinels roused the king who was sleeping in his tent next to his dog. Pyrrhus threw a cloak over his naked body and peered out at the mountains that closed off the Argive plain to the west. On the summit blazed a gigantic fire, spreading its glow over a vast area. Menelaus’s army had reached the mountain top and was ready to descend into the plain. The pincers were about to close.

‘Light a fire,’ said Pyrrhus, and he went back to sleep under his tent.

T
HE WAR COUNCIL WAS
held shortly before dawn in a farmer’s house near Nemea; Hippasus’s sons had secretly made all the arrangements several days earlier. King Menelaus entered first, followed by his nephew Orestes and by Prince Pylades who commanded the Phocian warriors. Shortly thereafter Pisistratus arrived, accompanied by his charioteer; he was covered with bronze and an enormous double-edged axe hung from his belt. He lay it on the table, took off his helmet and kissed Menelaus on both cheeks.

‘My father the king sends his greetings,’ he said, ‘and has told me to tell you that, starting today, one bull from his herds will be immolated to Zeus every day so he may grant victory to our armies. Naturally, he did not fail to say that were he not so old, he would be leading the army himself, and that men today are not made of the same wood they used to be, and we should have seen him that time that the Arcadians invaded his territory to raid his cattle . . .’

Menelaus smiled: ‘I know that story. I think I heard it told one hundred times when we were fighting in Asia. But trust me, there’s much truth in what your father says. They say that when he was young, he was a formidable combatant. I’m sorry he did not come: Nestor’s counsel would have been precious.’

The owner of the house brought a basket of fragrant bread, just baked. Menelaus broke it and distributed it to everyone. Pisistratus gulped down a few pieces, then said: ‘It took quite some effort, from my brothers and me, to convince him to stay home. He wanted to come at any cost. But he is very old now, and weakened by the strain of war. Bringing him with us would have been too risky.’

The noise of a chariot and the pawing of horses came from outside, then the sound of footsteps.

‘It’s Pyrrhus,’ said the king, rising to welcome the guest.

The son of Achilles, decked in his father’s armour, stood for a moment at the open door, filling the space completely with his bulk. His adolescent’s face contrasted strangely with his wide shoulders, his powerful muscles, his disquieting gaze. There was something unnatural about him, as though he had not been born of woman. As though the god Hephaestus had fashioned a soulless exterminator in his forge.