The hillside below the entrance was strewn with rubble as if its inhabitants had heaved huge boulders out of the cave like shot-put stones. As we picked our way around them, the soldiers griped at the weight of the wine skins, but Lopex overruled them. “To arrive empty-handed would be an insult. Noble families exchange guest-gifts as a gesture of respect.”
“Good for them, Lopex, but what does it do for us?” grunted a wiry, sharp-nosed soldier, pausing with his foot on a boulder. It was Deklah, one of the two men who had carried Ury’s brother back to the camp outside Troy. Beside him, the other men took the chance to rest, putting down their loads.
Lopex turned. “What it gives you, Deklah, is honour. The honour of xenios, of the gift-giver. Just as it will honour the people who live here.”
There was a sudden flapping of wings from up the hill. Startled by our approach, a white partridge had taken flight from the scrub bushes near the cave. Lopex spun on his heel and pointed to it, shielding his eyes from the sun as it flew over our heads. “Mark you, men. Did you see where that bird flew from?” He pointed up the hill. “There. The right side of the cave. Can anyone doubt this omen of luck from immortal Zeus?”
He had to be kidding. My grandmother used to reminisce about it, but nobody who still had their own teeth believed in bird flight augury any more. Did they? To my amazement, the Greek soldiers were nodding. Even Pharos was rumbling his approval. Lopex’s lips twitched in a quick half-smile, and I wondered again whether he believed anything he said.
All the same, as the men started up the hill again, I heard Deklah muttering to himself as he passed. “That’s great. Let’s just hope it’s an omen for us, not them.”
From up close, the cave looked more than ever like a mouth, the half-circle of stones an out-thrust jaw. A huge, mossy boulder stood guard beside the entrance. I walked in reluctantly behind the others and waited for my eyes to adjust, nerves fluttering uneasily in my stomach. But if I’d known what was to come, I would have been screaming.
“Sweet Apollo!” someone muttered. The mouth was big, but the cave inside was enormous, its ceiling so high that our footsteps echoed on the rock floor. Around us, food lay in every direction. Circles of cheese as big as cartwheels lay in heaps along one wall. Farther in, stacks of huge baskets overflowed with grapes the size of hen’s eggs, the bunches still trailing ragged lengths of vine. Deeper along the left wall a herd of young goats were corralled, while high overhead, smoked goat and mutton hung in clusters like giant bats from beams below the cave ceiling. Overlaying everything was the persistent, throat-catching smell of sheep dung.
“By the name! Look at all this food! You know, just how many men live here?” came Deklah’s voice.
“And how do they get those down?” someone else wondered, eyeing the dangling carcasses. I glanced up. The beams were far too high to reach, even with a ladder.
“Come on, ” another soldier said urgently. “They’re all out. Let’s grab what we can carry and get away before they come back.”
Lopex had ventured a little deeper. He held up his hand, his back to us. “We are warriors. Not house thieves. We will wait for the people who live here.”
The men looked at each other. “But Lopex, ” began Deklah, “what if they’re not so friendly? You know, not everybody we meet is all honey breath and sweetbreads.” There were mutters of agreement.
Lopex turned and walked back to them. “Are you the men who ravaged Troy? Or a mudhole of croaking frogs?” The men shuffled awkwardly as he walked past them, staring into each man’s eyes in turn. “If you steal now, you dishonour Zeus’s augury to us. We wait.”
Although he wouldn’t let them steal, he consented to their eating some of the massive store of food, so long as they made sacrifice first. How that was different I couldn’t see, but with this much food I doubted anyone would notice. Encouraged, several soldiers began hacking chunks from the giant slabs of cheese, while others slaughtered three young kids from the pen. The cave roof was so high that the smoke from their cooking fire disappeared above us.
Once again, what they sacrificed to the gods was a bundle of thigh bones hidden in fat, keeping the meat and internal organs for themselves. More proof, it seemed to me, that their gods weren’t that bright. But it wasn’t up to me to tell them they were getting the smelly end of the fish.
As always, I was hungry, and the smell of roasting goat was so good it made me itch. I squatted against the rough rock wall as I waited, trying to ignore that maddening odour. Looking around for a ladder or pole that might reach the hanging meat, my gaze stopped at a shallow crevice in the wall. The late afternoon sun didn’t reach it, but it was now fitfully lit by the flickering fire. Something inside caught my eye.
It was a piece of flattened bronze standing on end, a little taller than a man and battered into a crescent. The curved outer edge showed the scratches of periodic sharpening, while the inner edge was lined with a thick piece of well-worn, dark wood. If it weren’t so large, it would look almost like—I rubbed my eyes, stinging from the smoke, and looked again, a knot forming in my stomach.
Nearby, Lopex was chewing on a haunch of roast goat, his foot on a rounded stone. “What are you looking at, boy?” he asked.
I pointed, and Lopex glanced up. Suddenly his eyes narrowed and he peered hard for a moment, then straightened and stepped up on the stone.
“To me, men!” he called out. “Drop what you’re doing. We’re leaving right now. The people who live here are not what we think. In fact—”
A noise came from the mouth of the cavern. Something was blocking the setting sun. Something large.
Momentarily in shadow, we reacted as one, darting farther into the cave and ducking behind a huge boulder. As a slave and the smallest, I was pushed to the edge. Half exposed, I could see something huge crawling in through the cave entrance.
A low rumbling came from it. It took me a moment to recognize it as speech, a strange, knotted form of Greek. “In cave, who?” it rumbled to itself, bending down to peer at the Greeks’ cooking fire. “Eaten goats, somebody.”
“Sweet Apollo, ” someone muttered. “What is it?”
No one had an answer. We watched as the giant creature stood up inside the cave mouth and ushered a huge herd of sheep and goats inside. It turned and ponderously pulled the massive boulder across the entranceway, sealing it closed.
The thing bent down to blow on the embers of our cooking fire, then threw what looked like a small tree into the pit. As it flared, we saw the creature’s face for the first time.
It was hideous. A thick, slab-sided head squatted atop its massive shoulders like the peak of a mountain. At the centre of its forehead, a solitary eye peered out from a bony socket like some brooding cave animal. Below it swelled a clay-lump nose pierced by a ragged nostril, from which something yellow trickled into a lipless mouth. A name surfaced from my grandmother’s stories: Cyclops. The wheel-eyed monster.
Several men gasped and began to mutter prayers. The noise caught the creature’s attention and it scrambled to its feet. Even crouched beneath that huge ceiling, it was as tall as an oak.
“Ah ha!” it growled, stumping closer as we cringed against the wall. “Thieves in cave, see you now!” It bent down to peer at us, its broad belly spilling over the edge of its crude loincloth. “Eat my goats? Now eat you!” Its hands shot out and grabbed the two soldiers on either side of me like children’s dolls.
We watched in horror as the creature smashed their heads against the wall of the cave and dropped their bodies onto a stone ledge high above us. Seizing the crescent knife I’d spotted earlier, it began hacking the bodies into grisly chunks. Gobbets of flesh and fragments of bone rained down to spatter the cave floor around us. The creature ate them raw, its massive teeth crunching through their bones like pine nuts to leave only their heads. Finished, it washed the meal down with noisy gulps of water from a huge urn near the door before wiping its hands on its filthy loincloth. A shattered head rolled from the le
dge and clattered to the stone floor nearby to stare up at us with its remaining eyeball.
I felt sick. Behind me, men were retching. The thing looked up from its gruesome meal, the skin around its lipless mouth bloody. “Again I ask, give your name!”
I watched in astonishment as Lopex stepped out from behind the rock and strode boldly up to it. No one could doubt his courage. As he approached from the side, he paused for a moment, then waved one arm. The beast took no notice. Lopex moved closer and waved again. Once more there was no reaction. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing—did he want the thing to eat him?
Finally he spoke, his hands cupped around his mouth. The creature’s head jerked around.
“We are Achaeans, destroyers of the city of Troy. The gods chose to blow us off course and bring us to your island. We came to your cave to exchange such guest-gifts with you as civilized men do. But it is clear that you are a stranger to such customs. Beware, O Cyclops. All-powerful Zeus, who avenges the ill-treatment of travellers, even now has his eye fixed upon you. Let us go free, and he may yet spare you.”
The creature stared at him and belched, a rumbling, rolling sound that filled the air around him with the smell of raw flesh, then bent to reply.
“Gods on high I heed not, even less the laws of men. But if tell what I ask, gift-of-guest I will give, even so.”
Lopex folded his arms. “Ask, then.”
“Came you how, thief of goats? Your ship, where? And your name, what be called?”
Lopex didn’t hesitate. “We arrived by sea, returning from a heroic war with the city of Troy. Because of us, the crows now feast where the palace of Priam once stood.
“As for our ship, it is lost. The rocks that guard the western end of your island ground it to dust when we chanced upon them in the fog two nights ago.” As always, the lies came to him as naturally as breathing.
The Cyclops grunted and seemed to think for a moment, holding up first one finger, then two, frowning at them. “Answers two, ” it growled at him. “Where is last? Tell your name.”
This time Lopex hesitated for an instant. “Very well. I will give you my name.” He paused again. “My name, O Cyclops—is Nobah. Nobah, of the venerable Achaean family of—Djee. Now, I have answered your three questions. Deliver your gift.”
The creature put its lipless mouth down near my master’s face and whispered, a stentorian rumble that carried through the cave.
“Gift-of-guest, Nobah Djee? This it is, yours alone. Feast shall I, on your men. Trap in cave, two by two. But of you, I eat last. This I give, as gift-of-guest.” Its laugh was a hot blast of sound. Lopex staggered backwards as a mast-thick finger jabbed him in the chest.
Chapter 15
ONLY LOPEX SLEPT that night, as the snores of that massive thing thundered through the cave like an avalanche. I spent a restless night on the stone floor until the narrow rays of morning light slipping around the boulder at the cave mouth roused the creature.
As it unfolded its massive limbs and stood up, I scuttled for the back of the cave along with the others, but this morning it was paying us no attention. Snatching up one of its cartwheel-sized cheeses, it sat down across from the stock pens to gnaw on it. Lopex spoke up, keeping his voice low.
“Now listen, all of you. That creature is a Cyclops. As you’ve seen, they’re big and strong, but not smart, and they eat anything. But all creatures beneath the gods have a weakness. Even mighty Achilles, as we saw before the gates of Troy.” He paused and nodded toward the beast, now finished its meal and waddling toward the stock pens. “The Cyclops will have to let its flocks out to graze. I want two squads, one beside the corral and the other on the far side by that large urn. When it rolls the stone away, choose your time and run in twos as the flocks are going out. Last night I showed you that it can see only what is directly in front of it. Stick to the edges of the cave mouth and it won’t see you. Once you’re outside, split up and find cover. Now move!”
Keeping my distance from Ury, I followed Lopex, slipping into his group as they took position behind a large urn.
We had expected the creature to push the entrance wide open as it had last night, but it was smarter than Lopex thought. This morning, it heaved the boulder aside just far enough to create a narrow gap. The sudden light made me wince, and I squinted, dismayed, as I watched the creature kneel beside the entrance, scrutinizing the jostling beasts one by one as they trotted out. There was no way we could escape without being spotted now.
The creature stood up to follow its flocks out, but turned back to face our way for a moment. “Cheese in morning. Hungrier tonight, ” it grunted. “Eat well, thieves in cave.” It turned and squeezed through the gap, rolling the huge stone closed behind it.
Sealed again into the tomb-like darkness, some of the men began to whimper. “Gods, now what do we do? We’re all going to die here!” Other voices were rising. “What did we come here for anyway? This is all Lopex’s fault!”
Sitting on a rock spattered with scraps of brain, Lopex seemed lost in thought. After some time, he stood up. Bits of gore stuck to the back of his purple cloak.
“Listen here, men, ” he said. “The Cyclops will be back tonight with its flocks. We can’t kill it. That boulder is too big for us to move by ourselves and we can’t dig around it, the cave mouth is solid rock. We must even our chances. If you do what I say, we can get out safely.”
“It’s going to come back and eat us, and you’re just sitting around!” Deklah’s voice carried a note of hysteria. “Plans? By the Name, we might as well make plans against an earthquake! Maybe we should give you to it for getting us into this!”
Lopex’s bright sword was at Deklah’s throat so fast I didn’t even see it move, the edge pressing a deep furrow into Deklah’s skin. Unlike most of their weapons, it was shiny, uncorroded—and very sharp.
“Is that really the path you want to go down, Deklah?” Lopex asked softly. “If being eaten alive is your fear, I can solve that for you right now.” He paused. “Or would you prefer to listen?”
Deklah said nothing. It looked like he was trying to nod without moving his neck. Lopex lowered his sword.
“Right. It’s very simple.” His eyes narrowed as he looked around at the men. “When that thing comes back tonight, we’re going to blind it.”
We spent the rest of the morning getting ready. Searching in the gloom, Lopex uncovered a long, straight piece of dark olive wood in a timber heap near the animal pens and hacked off a ten-pace length with his sword. After carving a tapered point at one end, we buried it under the straw again.
“Even blind, the Cyclops will have to open the cave to let its flocks out, ” Lopex explained. “When it does, we can easily escape without being spotted. So once it’s asleep tonight, we will heat the end of our stake in the fire and stab it through the eye.”
“But Lopex, what if it wakes up before we stab it?” came a tremulous question.
Lopex glanced over. “Leave that to me.”
With the stake ready, I crept off quietly before Ury could spot me and settled down behind a pile of half-rotted cross-posts. Back here, the pleasant scent of mouldering wood almost overcame the ever-present smell of dung, and I lay back, wriggling my shoulders against the gravel. A black cave ant struggled to drag a fleshy lump to its nest in the woodpile.
I’d tried to pretend I didn’t understand when Kassander had told me he knew who Ury was looking for, but he’d just shaken his head. “You haven’t been careful enough to hide your limp, especially when you’re tired. And it was clear Deklah and Takis were lying about the great warrior that killed Brillicos the night Troy fell. That, and a few things you’ve said about your sister.”
I began a denial but he brushed it aside. “Look, Alexi. I’m not going to expose you. You did us all a favour—Ury is brutal, but his brother was brutal and bright. Just be careful what you say about your sister. As a fellow slave, I know you a lot better than the Greeks, but if I can make these connections, other
s may too. And as you love life, don’t limp.”
Beyond the woodpile, several of Ury’s scowling cronies had fallen to arguing. Knives flashed in the narrow sunbeams that squeezed past the boulder. There was a furious shout and something shiny came spinning my way to sink point-first into a rotting log beside me. I reached over to throw it back, but my attention was caught by the engraving on the handle.
I stared at it, caught in a sudden wash of memory. Someone seemed to be shouting from a long way off. As I stared at the dagger, the image of Mela’s crumpled body overwhelmed me. My heart raced as the memory of that night closed in on me again.
Suddenly two hulking soldiers were looking down at me. “Are you deaf or just stupid, boy? I said hand it over, ” one growled, snatching the knife away. Pinned by my insistent memories, I couldn’t answer. He gave me a vicious kick in the ribs and both soldiers walked away, shaking their heads.
This time the spell didn’t last as long. As I came back to the present, I scrambled over the pile of logs without thinking. “That dagger—where did you get it?”
The soldier who had taken it turned around. It was Sophronios, one of Ury’s accomplices, a scowling man with a livid slash across his broad nose. “What do you care, slave boy?” When I didn’t answer, he shrugged. “Took it off some Trojan bint. By some steps.”
Someone made a brief, choked-off noise. The soldier looked down at me, a nasty smile creasing his ugly face. “Someone you knew, was she?”
My expression must have answered, because he glanced over at the other soldier and winked. His smile broadened as his fingers stroked the gash on his nose. “Well now, isn’t that a funny thing, me talking to you about her. I have some bad news about your girlfriend, slave boy. Don’t plan on ever talking to her again. Know why?”
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