The Anger of Achilles

by Peter Tonkin

  Aias didn’t even get that far, preferring to head straight for his command tent – as did Achilles and Patroclus, all of whom were also expecting to get reports on the state of their prisoners. Odysseus went to join his Cephallenians and oversee the headcount as soon as he finished speaking. But not before Elpenor handed Perimedes the blazing torch he had held over Odysseus while the captain examined the dead guards. ‘Go to bed, lad,’ he said, seeing me frowning at the prospect of missing what was going on down in the camps. ‘Go while you can still walk – Perimedes and I don’t want to have to carry you!’ As he spoke, he glanced at Briseis – a promise to carry me was a threat to hoist her up, willing or not. I was truly chilled to the bone and utterly exhausted and so I needed no further prompting. Briseis also capitulated, a sign that she was also beginning to wilt. So we followed Perimedes and the flaming torch willingly enough through the city, into the citadel and the palace itself, where he left us as he hurried back to his king and commander. There were torches in the passageways and so it was easy enough for the princess to find her quarters while I went in to the little complex of rooms I shared with Odysseus and his men when they were in the palace as opposed to their tents in the Cephallenian camp.

  I entered my own sleeping quarters in near-darkness therefore, pulling off my damp clothes as I felt my way towards my bed. Looking back on it now, I am surprised that nothing warned me. I must have been so exhausted that my faculties – limited at the best of times – had effectively ceased to function. Whatever the reason, when I finally pulled back the covering to my bed and discovered the hot, soft body of a naked woman lying in wait for me, the surprise was absolute.

  6: The Pyres

  i

  She wrapped her burning body around me like the flames embracing Posidaeia’s mast. Suddenly I was no longer so exhausted. Surprised, yes; shocked, even, but by no means reluctant. This was the first time I had been with a woman since the attack on the dockside at Troy and I was relieved to discover that there were parts of me below the waist that still appeared to function perfectly even if my legs no longer did so. I suppose the depth of the shadows helped. Ever since my partial recovery from the brutal assault I had assumed that the sight of my battered nakedness was likely to arouse scorn or sympathy rather than desire, especially in a situation where I found myself surrounded by innumerable examples of masculine perfection, epitomised of course by Achilles. Now I found the darkness to be my friend, for if I could not see her then she could not see me either and, as was my current experience, what I could feel was more than satisfactorily arousing.

  ‘Khloe?’ I whispered. But it seemed she was too intent on kissing me to reply.

  There seemed to be no tell-tale blemishes on the smoothness of her skin; no remarkable elements of size or lack of it or firmness or lack of it that might make the body I was so eagerly exploring unique enough to offer the chance of identifying it by sight in the morning if my companion persisted with her anonymity. Even if the field of possible partners was limited. The fingers exploring me with equal ardour were calloused – but then so were mine. In any case I would have expected to find roughness on the hands of anyone except those of royal blood. Although I toyed with the idea for a thoroughly pleasurable moment, I knew my companion could not possibly be Princess Briseis. Leaving all other considerations aside, while the princess tended to be perfumed with myrrh both as fragrance she wore and as a medicine she handled, my current companion smelt sweetly of rosemary.

  ‘Khloe?...’ It was the last articulate sound I uttered for quite some time.

  Our activity was vigorous, though nearly silent, and repeated. Our whispered endearments were too soft to disturb anyone, had there actually been anyone nearby; too garbled to betray accent or identity and, perhaps strangest of all, did not in the end involve an exchange of identities. I assumed she knew who I was – she had found my bed and waited within it for me after all – but she seemed set on maintaining her own namelessness, even in the face of my whispered enquiries. At last we both fell back, warm and satisfied. My mysterious lover lay wordlessly at my side, one arm beneath my neck cradling my head, the other resting lightly on my breast, one thigh across my loins. The length of her body, from lips to toes pressed gently against me, all warm softness of breast and belly; lingering fire of hips. Sated, I allowed sleep to sweep over me at last and I still hadn’t exchanged one coherent word with her.

  I jumped awake some time later to see Elpenor stooping over me holding a three-flame lamp. I sat up at once, looking around a little wildly but the massive oarsman seemed to see nothing beyond the understandable confusion of someone abruptly woken from a deep sleep. He was half way through an explanation that he came fresh from Odysseus at his camp beside Thalassa before it really registered that he found me alone. My anonymous lover had departed as mysteriously as she had arrived and so I awoke not only to surprise and confusion but also to an unsettling chill of loss. I said nothing of my adventure in the night; a simple enough task as Elpenor hardly let me get a word in. Indeed, the only thing that stopped me believing that I had dreamed the whole episode was the need to wash myself particularly carefully before I put on a clean loincloth and dressed in my tunic, ready to answer Odysseus’ summons.

  Elpenor had woken me because Odysseus wished to discuss the day’s plans with me over breakfast. He wanted to do this because he proposed to make me a part of them. Elpenor had arrived so early and so vociferously because those plans were due to start soon after first light when it would finally be safe to follow the tracks left by the pilfered horses and chariots laden with the stolen gold; horses and chariots ridden by men responsible for at least four murders and maybe more. Once I was washed and dressed, therefore, I went out into the corridor leading to the megaron. As I passed Princess Briseis’ quarters I noticed that things were also astir here despite the fact that it was still the last of the night rather than the first of the day. I bumped into Hepat as she bustled past the guards out into the corridor and took the opportunity to tell her about my torn and soaking himation. She promised to send someone to see to it for me, so there was every chance it would be mended, clean and dry if I was required to perform again that evening.

  It seemed as we parted that her gaze lingered on me for a heartbeat or two longer than usual and I wondered for a moment whether it could have been her who visited me last night. This was a thought I found a good deal less arousing than the notion that it might have been Briseis. But I soon overcame my qualms – her square and muscular figure was nothing like my lissom visitor of last night. And Hepat’s scent was, if anything, an oddly metallic odour mixed with the scent of the honey cakes King Euenos seemed to like so much – far removed from either myrrh or rosemary.

  With my mind settled on that score, I proceeded to the table, my thoughts busy. However, they were still not concerned with the prospect of following the thieves’ tracks but with the quest to identify the woman who had visited me during the dark hours. My attention was so firmly focused on this conundrum that I realised with a sudden shiver of shock as I entered the megaron that there might indeed have been more to the incident than met the eye – blinded by shadows as it had been. I began to wonder whether the visit had in fact been arranged with the specific purpose of distracting me from the task in hand. But no sooner did I begin to follow that line of reasoning than I found myself uneasy with it because it seemed to turn upon the assumption that I had far more insight and influence than I actually possessed.

  But then the thought which replaced it, and stopped me in my tracks just behind Odysseus’ seat, was this: that if someone could sneak into my bed so easily in order to seduce, confuse and distract me, it would be equally easy for someone to do so in order to slaughter me like Mnestheus the physician and young Timaeus with half a face. The fear that had been lurking at the back of my mind for some time now suddenly resurfaced, like the legendary Kraken.

  ***

  A small army of us went out through the East Gate a little later to
join the Locrian trackers. These were two skilled soldiers on horseback, though every now and then they would dismount to study the ground more closely. Aias explained that they had already followed the hoofprints and wheel marks from the plundered Locrian paddock, right round past the northern city walls to our meeting point outside the East Gate. They had managed to follow the robbers’ tracks this far in the grey light of pre-dawn. It appeared that the Locrian prince was impatient to get on with things and had sent them out early so he could have his fill of flat bread, cheese and figs. Aias stood in a chariot borrowed from Achilles who was staying to oversee the erection of the pyres, even though it was the Locrian prince’s duty as King Idas had been his man. But then, the missing horses and chariots also belonged to him – and he had a fair claim on the gold as well. Odysseus rode in his chariot with Elpenor at the reins, Briseis rode with Odysseus and I rode with his second in command, Eremanthus the king of Zakynthos whose chariot was being driven by Perimedes. The two Cephallenian chariots moved side by side so that the kings could talk to each-other. Aias sometimes joined them and sometimes surged impatiently ahead to join his two riders tracking the stolen chariots and guiding us as we followed close behind.

  Although Aias made his disapproval of our presence loud and clear, Odysseus observed that, as it was Briseis and I who had discovered what actually happened last night, we had earned our place at the forefront of the pursuit. He believed we were more likely to speed things up than to slow them down with our observations and insights. We were at the forefront of a considerable pursuit, in fact. Behind us, units of Locrian and Cephallenian troops quick-marched out of the East Gate, all armed and ready for when we caught up with our quarry. Aias agreed with his trackers that the murderous thieves could hardly have dared to travel fast or far in the darkness without running the risk of crippling their horses and foiling their own escape. The rest of us believed that too, to begin with, at least.

  Behind our soldiers, Patroclus led teams of Myrmidons who brought carts rather than chariots and carried axes instead of swords, ready to cut the wood that would form the pyres which would be ceremoniously ignited later in the day to the sound of many prayers and lamentations. After the discussion between Odysseus and Achilles, the woodsmen also had a squad of Myrmidons, armed to protect them from any wild animals their mission might disturb – or, indeed, any enemies who might be hiding in the forest and planning an ambush. For, in truth, only the city itself, occupied by our troops, was safe. Everywhere else was effectively enemy territory.

  The beginning of our progress was particularly grim, for it lay between the black mounds of recently-cremated corpses organised by Odysseus the day before to clear the city streets of carrion and vermin. Even so, they were still suffering the attentions of those airborne and earthbound scavengers not put off by charred black flesh and naked white bone. I for one found the dazzle of the sun rising out of the distant treetops still far ahead of us a welcome distraction as it blinded me to a great deal of the horror. It could not save my nostrils, however, from the rich stench of scorched meat, which seemed to linger everywhere despite the dead calm of the windless morning. But beyond the piles of incinerated bodies, we entered a broad area of farmland and my vision began to clear. On either side of us, to north and south, almost to the coast in the west and as far as the edge of the forest to the east, there were fields and pastures, growing to seed and ungrazed. Little farmhouses and storage buildings, all emptied of the farmers, their families and their produce and their possessions. All put to the torch like the dwellings behind the city walls. War was a cruel mistress, I thought. And it was through this pathetic wasteland which, to be fair, was only registering on my mind now, that the tracks left by the murderous thieves led.

  As often happened in my experience, the fact that my vision was not working optimally as we set out seemed to sharpen my other senses and I paid close attention to my sense of hearing rather than to that of smell. ‘So,’ said Odysseus as we began to move through the piles of bodies and into the desolate farmland. His voice rang clear above the rumble of wheels, the jingle of tack and the steady tread of the soldiers’ feet behind us. ‘You were correct in all your assumptions, Princess. Our headcount last night proved that it was Gul-Ses and his priests who have vanished and who therefore are the likeliest culprits. Some of them moved the treasure in the boat having killed the two aboard Idas’ ship and set it all on fire to distract us while others killed Aias’ guards, stole the chariots and met them on the beach. They loaded the gold into one of the chariots while the boat was returned in the hope that we would not notice it had been used, so we would find it hard to work out how the gold was made to vanish. Something they hoped would slow any pursuit. Then they made their escape, coming round the north and east of the city – as far away from our camps as possible. Aias’ men have tracked them up to this point and we will all pursue our quarry from there.’

  ‘Just the priests?’ asked Briseis. ‘No-one else?’

  ‘No,’ answered Odysseus. ‘Somewhere along the line we seem to have lost sight of Demir, King Euenos’ major-domo.’

  ‘Do you think Demir was part of the priests’ plan?’ asked the princess.

  ‘You know him better than I do,’ admitted Odysseus. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think there was little that happened in the palace which he did not know something about.’ Briseis said.

  ‘So the priests could not have succeeded in their plans as effectively as they seem to have done without his knowledge,’ observed Odysseus. ‘Perhaps even his complicity?’

  ‘Had the gold been stolen from the palace that would certainly be true,’ nodded the princess. ‘However, it was stolen from King Idas’ ship, so there is room for doubt.’

  ‘But,’ I added, ‘if what the princess says is true Demir must have been at least aware of everything else that did in fact happen in the palace. The poisoning of the princes for instance, the escape of King Sarpedon’s cousin Prince Glaucus, perhaps even the stabbing of King Mnestheus in the blood room.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Odysseus. ‘And that is where everything begins to overlap, I think.’

  ‘How so?’ demanded Briseis.

  ‘Because I am beginning to believe that whoever killed young Timaeus in order that he could murder Mnestheus is the same man who killed the men guarding the horses and the chariots. Perhaps not those aboard the burning ship but certainly those beside the Locrian paddock. In that case he used one neat cut to the left side of one guard’s throat and one much wider, slicing the throat of his companion wide open. I had very limited chance to examine the corpses on the burning ship but they both appeared to have had their throats slashed wide. However, the guards by the paddock established in my mind that the murderer had used a particular technique to kill them. One that he had used before. And logic now appears to suggest that the murderer is either a priest or someone closely associated with them.’

  ii

  Between the eastern edge of the farmland and the edge of the forest, a belt of grass in need of grazing yielded to a scrub of bushes and then to trees that stood taller and darker deeper in the forest which clothed the gathering slope of the first inland hills. The tracks of the escaping thieves led unerringly eastwards out of the fallow fields across this, as though they had planned to find shelter among the trees. The grass was shedding the grey of winter now, the bushes apparently covered in tiny jewels of jade and emerald as new leaves were bursting forth. These seemed particularly vivid against the background of dark trunks, deep green pine-needles and fathomless shadows. As Patroclus led his men straight into this in search of dry wood for the pyres, I noticed that the young prince was limping. It was a slight thing, as though a pebble had got into his left shoe. I wondered whether anyone else had noticed, but no-one else remarked on it so I dismissed it from my mind. Instead, I concentrated on the task in hand as we turned right, following the tracks which now ran southwards towards the territory that would belong to Sarpedon and his army once
we withdrew to Troy once more.

  ‘Whether they are heading for enemy territory or not,’ observed Odysseus, reclaiming my attention, ‘they would have had to turn one way or the other. South is the logical choice as there is nothing to the north but a wasteland of ruined farms, then Thebe with its occupying Achaean troops. Troy lies further north beyond Thebe; however Agamemnon’s entire army, except for the men we have in Thebe and Lyrnessus, is standing in the way. Then, they could never take horses and chariots into the forest so it is highly unlikely they ever planned to continue their escape further eastwards. And of course they have just escaped from our camps along the shore beyond the city to the west.’

  ‘The woods are probably wild,’ I added, thinking of my experiences in the forested hills behind my home in Aulis when Agamemnon’s entire force of more than a thousand ships had been trapped in the bay by contrary winds followed by a dead calm, ‘there will be boars, bears, wolves and perhaps even lions. They would all be drawn to the sound and the scent of the intruders. And to the brightness of their fire if they dared light one.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ said Aias, visiting just long enough to interrupt me and to join in the conversation - pointedly addressing Odysseus as though Briseis was not even there, ‘is how they could get this far at night, especially laden with the chest of gold.’

  ‘The moon was near-full last night and the skies were clear. There were no clouds and no wind. It was dead calm and icy cold but unusually bright.’ I offered these observations, only to find that I didn’t exist either, as far as the Locrian prince was concerned. To be fair, though, he had been out and about as much as I had last night, though he had not managed to get as wet as I had or notice as much as I did.