Heroes (formerly Talisman of Troy) (7 page)

‘Come forward,’ she said, ‘I’ve been waiting for you. Did you see my cousin, the queen of Ithaca?’

‘Yes,
wanaxa
, I have met with her.’

‘And what did she tell you? Has she agreed to our requests?’

‘Yes. All will be done when Ulysses returns.’

‘But . . . how? Did she tell you how? The king of Ithaca is the most cunning man on earth.’

‘She is no less able than he. Ulysses will never suspect anything.’

‘What of him, did you see him? Why didn’t you wait for his destiny to be fulfilled?’

‘I waited, but king Ulysses did not return. He should have reached Ithaca no longer than three days after Agamemnon and Diomedes returned. But when I left, a month had passed and there was no word of him.’

‘A month is too long. It couldn’t have taken him so long.’

‘Perhaps his ship foundered. Perhaps he is already dead. While I was in Ithaca, a ship arrived at port and a man came ashore and spoke with the queen. I learned that they were Achaeans and that they had come from Argos, but I could find out no more.’

‘Argos?’ repeated the queen, getting to her feet. ‘Did you see that man in the face?’

‘For just a moment, at the port, as he was boarding the ship.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘He had long blond curls that fell to his shoulders. His eyes were dark, bright and watchful. His hands were strong and his gait was forceful, as if he were accustomed to carrying a weight on his shoulders.’

‘The weight of armour,’ said the queen. ‘Perhaps you saw a king escaping . . . or preparing to return.’ The man shook his head without understanding. ‘My cousin is with us. I am sure of it. And when we have extinguished the mind of Ulysses, the last obstacle will have been brought down.’

The man left and the queen walked out on to the gallery of the tower of the chasm. The clouds were low on the mountains and swollen with rain. Suddenly, Clytemnestra saw a woman wrapped in a black cape leaving from one of the side gates below; she walked swiftly towards the bottom of the valley, and stopped at the old abandoned cistern. There she fell to her knees. She rocked back and forth, gripping her shoulders, and then she lay flat and placed her forehead against the bare stone that covered the opening. Electra. She mourned her father, contemptibly murdered and contemptibly buried, and the gusts of wind raised the soft echoes of her laments all the way up to the bastions of the tower.

*

Meanwhile, on the distant northern sea, Diomedes’s ships advanced in the light of dawn. Their beaked prows ploughed through the grey waves, passing between deserted islands and rugged promontories reaching out like hooked fingers into the sea. Little villages perched high above, surrounded by dry walls like nests of stone. They could see the inhabitants venturing out with their herds of goats, wild men these too, covered in fur like the animals they tended.

That night they found shelter near the mouth of a river, and the night after that as well. At dawn, Diomedes decided to walk upstream with Myrsilus and other companions in search of game. But they were soon to be confronted with the strangest of prodigies. Having gone round a hill and descending on the other side, they saw that the river had vanished. They searched and searched for it, but could find it nowhere. After a long stretch on foot they reached a place where the river reappeared but was immediately swallowed up into the ground, sucked into a sinkhole. Diomedes realized that the hole must lead to Hades and he sacrificed a black goat to Persephone so that she might propitiate his journey. The victim’s blood stained the river water red and disappeared into the ground.

They dared not draw water from the cursed river that fled the light of day like a creature of the night, and so they continued inland in search of game and water. The land opening up all around them was quite different from any Diomedes had ever seen; it was covered by stunted, twisted trees and furrowed by deep gorges and wild, overgrown ravines.

A little group of deer appeared and the hunters closed in. The Hittite and the foreigner were armed with bows and hid behind some brambles; Diomedes and Myrsilus took position opposite them with their javelins. A flock of birds took to the air with shrill cries, startling the deer. As they bolted, Myrsilus hurled his javelin but missed the mark, while the Hittite had had the time to take aim and he hit a large male which collapsed to the ground, dead. The others tied him by his legs to a branch and began to make their way back to the ship. Although the territory they crossed seemed deserted and uninhabited, the eyes of the foreigner kept darting here and there, as though he sensed some presence.

He was not mistaken. One of the men suddenly yelled out in pain and dropped to his knees; an arrow had pierced his thigh. They all turned; behind them, just topping a hill, were a mob of wild-haired savages with long beards, wearing goatskins. They were armed with bows and wielded heavy clubs with stone heads. They ran forward, shouting loudly and waving their bludgeons. Diomedes ordered his men to retreat to a gorge where they would have some hope of resisting, although they were so thoroughly outnumbered. Some of the attackers were letting out shrill, high-toned cries, like those of sea birds. Their cries echoed in the distance, bouncing off the rock walls, the precipices and the caverns; they must have been calls for reinforcement, because the enemy strength soon swelled to an enormous number of men.

The Achaeans continued to fall back but shortly found themselves in a deep, narrowing gully. Their enemies were soon upon them, looming from above at the rim of the steep crevasse and pushing huge stones down below. The stones roared down the rock walls, picking up speed and dislodging others on their way to the bottom of the gully. Diomedes ordered his men to flatten themselves against the walls and then to run as fast as they could in the direction of the sea, but some were struck nonetheless by the stones and crushed to the ground, while others met an even worse fate. That cursed gully was rife with pits and swallow holes, covered with thick bushes and brambles. As they ran, many plunged below to their deaths, while others lay helplessly on the bottoms of the pits howling with pain, their bones shattered.

Diomedes took stock of the tremendous danger and, as the enemies rushed to close off every path of escape, he ordered his men to stop and to seek cover among the bushes and the rocky crags of the gully walls. He glanced around and saw that the ground was all scattered with white animal bones. That was how this fierce people hunted game! By herding them towards that gorge and raining down stones on them from above, just as they were now trying to destroy him and his companions. He, King of Argos and son of Tydeus, was forced to scramble like a wild animal being hunted down by savages, was forced to listen to his wounded warriors’ cries for help without being able to raise a hand for them. They hid among the bushes and waited, perfectly still, although the stones never ceased to fall from above, just barely missing them at times. Thus they waited until nightfall. Then the stones stopped falling and fires were lit on the rim of the gully. Their enemies were not going anywhere. They were waiting for the sun to rise and then they would slaughter them all.

One of his men crept towards Diomedes; it was Cleitus, son of Leitus of Las, who had fought at his side at Ilium. He said: ‘This is the fate that has befallen us for following you! To be massacred by ferocious savages without any chance of defending ourselves, to be stoned to death like beasts without ever drawing our swords. If we had remained at Argos we would have at least been able to fight on an open field in the light of the sun, and we would have died in our own land.’

Myrsilus interrupted him: ‘Hold your tongue. No one forced you to follow the king. You did so of your own will. If you don’t stop whining I’ll break your jaw and make you spit blood. What we must do is find a way to escape while it is dark and they cannot see us.’

Telephus, the Hittite slave, approached him as well, and said: ‘The wind is blowing from the sea, and the ground above us is covered with dry grass and branches. Where I come from, when the peasants want to burn the stubble on their fields, they wait until a strong wind picks up from the east; the whole plain soon becomes a sea of flames.’

‘What do you mean to say?’ asked the king.

‘Listen,
wanax
. While we were running like madmen down this abyss, I noticed that on the left side there was a way of getting back up to the rim. It won’t be easy, but I come from the mountains and I’m a good climber. If any of your men can climb as well, allow them to come with me. When we get up there, we’ll set fire to the grass all around the enemies. The wind will do the rest. There’s no other way, king. If we don’t try it, we will all die and our bodies will lie unburied, like the bones of these animals.’

‘I will come with you myself,’ said the king. ‘As a boy, I often stayed with my grandfather Oineus and my uncle Meleager in Aetolia; I climbed the steep slopes there with no fear. I will take Diocles and Agelaus, Eupitus and Evenus with me; they are Arcadians and lived as boys on the mountains.’

Myrsilus wanted to come as well, but Diomedes ordered him to stay with the others.

They set out and followed the Hittite slave in silence. When they got to the foot of the escarpment, they began their ascent, stopping every time a stone was knocked out of place for fear they would be heard and discovered. As they made their way up, they could hear rowdy laughter and shouting, and the crackling of the fires. When they pulled themselves up over the rim of the gorge, they could see the savages all sitting around the fires, eating roasted meat. They were yelling and belching, throwing bones and pieces of meat at each other.

Diomedes and the others encircled the bivouac and headed for the most isolated fire, slipping behind the men sitting there and killing them before they had even suspected their presence. They seized firebrands then, and spread out. The Hittite slave guided them, just as he had as a boy, helping the peasants set fire to the stubble fields in the immense high plains of Asia. He tested the direction of the wind and touched his brand to the grass and dry branches covering the ground. The flames rose up vigorously and spread, carried by the wind. The other men, lurking in a half circle around the camp, did the same all around their enemies. In mere moments the high plain was a sea of flames and the wind was getting stronger.

The enemies were terror-stricken and yelled out in alarm, as some of them fell, run through by the arrows of invisible assailants. They could see nothing beyond the circle of flames that enveloped them on all sides. Forced back by the unbearable heat, they were soon caught between the yawning chasm and the wall of flames. Some tried to lower themselves down but panic overwhelmed them as they tumbled over and ended up smashed against the rocks, while others tried to run blindly through the fire.

Agelaus caught one of them alive and tied him to a tree, to deliver him over to Diomedes once it was all over.

By dawn the fire had burnt itself out and the ground was covered with scorched bodies. The king leaned over the side of the gorge and shouted to his men: ‘You can come up now! There is no more danger.’

The survivors clambered over the side, but Myrsilus hesitated as he heard groaning coming from the concealed pits. He could barely make out one of the men lying at the bottom of the hole; a fractured leg bone had broken through the skin and gleamed sharp white. His low, constant moaning was laden with pain. Myrsilus cautiously made his way along the narrow-sided gully as far as he could go, bending over the pit as a ray of light illuminated the face of the wounded warrior.

He recognized him: it was Alcatous, son of Dolius. He had long ago left Mases, a town on the coast where he had made his living as a fisherman, dreaming of glory and a rich booty. He had followed Diomedes on this last adventure hoping one day to be among the first in a grand new kingdom, with a place of his own in the assembly. He could never have imagined that destiny would bury his life on the bottom of a dark, miserable pit.

Myrsilus leaned over the edge of the pit and took aim with his arrow, while his dying comrade, who had understood, tried to drag himself to clear ground where he could offer an unhindered target.

The arrow pierced the pit of his throat and he collapsed against the wall. As his soul, groaning, fled his wound, his eyes rolled backwards and he could see within himself, for an instant. He found his native town, the glittering water of the sea and his own boyish steps along the shore, he felt the splashes and the foam, the sand beneath his feet and the heat of the sun on his bare shoulders. He wished he had never left as he descended forever, weeping, into the cold and the dark.

Myrsilus approached another hole but he could not get close enough because the walls were too steep, nor could he see inside because the opening was covered with thick bushes. All he could do was to toss down his knife, a sharp blade of bronze that he had never parted from, in the hopes that another one of the men could retrieve it and put an end to his suffering. He shouted: ‘There’s nothing more I can do for you, my friend!’ Only an echo answered: ‘Friend!’ And he climbed out of the gully and up to the rim with a heavy heart, the last of all of them.

Diomedes came close: ‘How many?’ he asked. ‘How many comrades have we lost?’

‘Alcatous . . .’ began Myrsilus, ‘shattered on the bottom of one of those holes.’

‘Schedius and Alcandrus,’ added another, ‘crushed by their stones.’

Each of the men looked around, naming the companions he found missing. Agelaus drew close to the king, and pointed at the prisoner he had taken: ‘I got one of them alive, and tied him to that tree. Avenge their slaughter on him.’

But Diomedes said: ‘I’ve already killed so many of them . . . what would one more change? Let’s go now, back to the ships. Our comrades will be worried about us.’ He started off, but Telephus and the
Chnan
turned back first to retrieve the deer they had left down in the gorge, so that its meat would not go to waste.

Myrsilus, who had not taken part in the battle but had listened to the cries of his dying friends, lagged behind; he desired nothing but revenge. He waited until the others had gone on and he approached the prisoner. He was a vigorous man, and in trying to get away was shaking the whole tree to which he was tied. Myrsilus came close and tied him even tighter, and then he unsheathed his sword. The man stared at him without trembling, his head held high. Myrsilus cut the straps that held up the goatskin that covered his body, leaving him naked. Then with the tip of his sword he cut his skin just above his groin, making his blood drip copiously between his legs. The man understood the end he was meant for and widened his eyes in terror, trying desperately to twist free with all his remaining strength. He shouted and pleaded in an incomprehensible language but Myrsilus had already gone off to catch up with the others.