“I’m not even going to bother,” Eurymachus drawled. “No doubt it is a practical joke that Odysseus liked to play on his guests. It clearly can’t be done—every man here has tried…”
“Not every man,” Penelope said. “What about the beggar?”
“I assume that your offer to marry the winner of this no longer stands,” Eurymachus strolled—a little unsteadily—away as though the entire proceedings were beneath him.
Odysseus rose and shuffled towards the bow and made a show of walking around it—much to the amusement of the suitors. He stooped, picking up the bow and quiver, examining both as though he were slow-witted. He sat on a bench, placed the quiver next to him and rested the bow across his lap.
And loosened the knot at the top of the draw sting. Not once, but twice. That was the key.
And Eurymachus had been correct—it was a joke Odysseus liked to play as no one ever guessed to loosen the knot; without that, the string was just that much too short.
Without rising, he strung the bow with ease, plucked an arrow from the quiver and paused. Turning to Penelope, he said, “There was once a riddle that won love. It went something like this: Arrows at its core, while rings are its symbol. Though it is sacred, it is sealed by contract…”
Marriage, she mouthed, recalling the riddle from their courtship. All eyes were on him and no one saw, fortunately, for surely their connection would be obvious if one cared to see. Still, Odysseus had to force his face from breaking into a grin when he saw Penelope’s eyes crinkle, which meant she’d understood his word play. Replacing Eros with arrows acknowledged that as soon as his barb went through the rings, their own long-lost contract to each other would be revived.
He notched, drew and shot in a single, smooth motion. The shaft sped true, hissing through the rings that had secured the old weapons to the wall and thudding into the wooden doors.
Silence then. It was a good shot. No, Odysseus corrected himself mentally—it was a great shot—and he whispered a silent prayer to Athena in thanks for only she could have guided the shaft so accurately. As ever, his patroness was with him. And she was whispering for him now to claim what was his.
Odysseus rose to his feet, the beggar’s façade gone, leaving the king in waiting. He gazed across the hall at the men who had raped his home and pissed on his kingship. There were reasons that they had come—of course there were. But they were not blameless—they were men, acting as men. Trying to take that which belonged to another and in so doing enhance their own reputations. Thus it had been with Paris and Helen. Agamemnon and Priam. So it was with these suitors and Penelope.
But men had to learn that there were risks. That there were consequences. That sometimes it was not your reputation that was enhanced but that of your enemy.
That sometimes you lost.
“What trickery is this?” Antinous was the first to speak. “We have been deceived. For years we have been patient men. Because of that fucking whore…”
Odysseus whipped another arrow from the quiver, drew and loosed. The warhead punched into the big man’s throat. He gagged, gouts of viscous blood bubbling from the wound, sticky and hot, soaking his beard and chest. Eyes bulging, he fell to his knees as everyone in the hall watched with shock and horror. Antinous’s chest heaved and he made a strange, mewling noise, trying to scream and beg for his life…but the arrow had sliced out his voice. All he could do was wheeze and gasp, pinkish drool bubbling around his lips. He fell then, lying in a pool of his own blood on the wine-stained stones.
“No man calls my wife a whore,” Odysseus said.
“Odysseus?” Eurymachus stepped to the fore as Odysseus notched another arrow.
“Yes,” he said. “I have returned. To set my house in order.”
“He’s one man!” Eurymachus shouted. “We can take him.”
“We have no weapons!” one of the men cried.
“There are these axes,” Odysseus observed. “Though, which one of you is going to die trying to get to them? I can draw and shoot fast, friends. And I never miss.” He said it with all the cold confidence he could muster.
Then—at last—the doors to the great hall burst open and, with Eumaeus at their head, the old men of Ithaca charged in. They were armed—antique swords, boar spears, staves, cudgels and woodsmen’s axes. They screamed and shouted, cracked voices remembering war cries long unused, and set about the suitors.
War! Despite everything, the king within Odysseus had missed it—the clash of weapons, the shouts of pain and triumph, the smell of the blood and the exultation that came with standing on the brink of death. At that moment, all the guilt and sins of the past fell away from him and he was a man again, a man standing in his own hall, a man who would kill those who sought to take everything from him.
The suitors fought back. Some grabbed the axes but most were unarmed. But their youth, vigour—and no little fear—giving them strength as they wrestled weapons from the older men, striking out and taking lives. Eurymachus stepped towards Odysseus, his hands held out, his eyes wide with panic.
“It’s not too late!” the younger man shouted, shrill desperation in his voice. “We can still talk.”
Odysseus shot him in the chest and he fell. “You’ve said enough,” he murmured.
Amphinomus rushed past—unarmed still—towards the dais, seeking to put his body between the fight and Penelope. Telemachus saw it too. Odysseus shouted a warning, but his voice was lost in the tumult of battle and in a blink, his son rushed up behind the man who loved his wife and rammed a broad bladed boar spear into his back, all the way to the crosspiece.
Penelope’s hands flew to her face and the girl—Danae wide-eyed with horror—held her close as Amphinomus crashed to the floor, screaming in desperate pain as Telemachus struggled to withdraw the weapon. He placed his foot onto the fallen man’s back, the cords on his neck standing out with effort as he twisted the haft and yanked it this way and that, each violent action causing Amphinomus to cry out once more.
From the corner of his eye, Odysseus noted that quick-thinking Danae was leading her lady away from the dais and upstairs to safety, her pretty young face contorted with grief.
Finally, Telemachus freed the blade, staggering back as blood gouted from the terrible wound. The boy looked astounded. Shocked. And then he doubled over and puked all over the fallen man’s back. His first kill, no doubt.
And then, Odysseus was forced to throw up the bow in defense as a man, armed with a cudgel, swung at him. The strength of the blow sent the weapon spinning from his grasp: he stepped in before the princeling could strike again, ramming his head into his enemy’s face, smashing his nose to pulp. He stumbled away, cursing in pain. But not for long. Odysseus grabbed his head and twisted savagely, snapping the bones.
Leaving the corpse twitching on the floor, he grasped one of the ancient, double bladed axes and plunged into the fray, striking men—and those women who had sided with them—down, the righteousness of his vengeance surging through him. The shrilling shrieks of the serving girls—his serving girls—now mingled with the guttural male sounds of battle. The Ithacan men took their cue from him and spared no-one.
A princeling tried to fight with a spear taken from one of the Ithacan men, but Odysseus clove him in two, the old blades shearing him from shoulder to hip. The ripe stench of shit and bile was almost overwhelming as the lad’s innards fell from his body, coiled, rancid and bloody.
There was no guilt in Odysseus, no remorse, no fear—nothing save the exultation of the kill. He didn’t care that most of these men were unarmed and drunk, scarcely able to defend themselves. The violence sustained him, the blood an elixir that urged him to greater prowess, the begging of the vanquished more seductive than the songs of the tortured women on the rocks he’d dubbed Sirens.
His arms—his entire body—drenched in gore was not touched by weariness. His men—his Ithacans—fought like gods, as though his strength had become theirs. In those moments whilst the battle raged
, these men were not farmers or swineherds, carpenters or tanners—they were the warriors they had once been, Ares’s fire filling their bellies and hardening their hearts.
Roaring in triumph, Odysseus grasped Melantho by the hair and forced her to her knees. She screamed and pleaded but he brought the bronze blade down hard on her thin neck, hacking through her, her head coming away in his hands. Traitorous bitch. Such was her end.
Odysseus tossed the severed head away. It rolled across the blood-soaked stones to lay still amidst the detritus of battle. It was as if this last action drew an end to it. He saw Eumaeus slitting a princeling’s throat from behind, the lad on his knees. He fell forward—a prince slain by a pig farmer. Foreign prince. Ithacan pig farmer.
Bodies littered the floor—all the suitors slain but there were Ithacan dead too. “They had a great ending, my king!” Eumaeus’s voice rang out. “One last battle!” And those that survived cheered and hailed him.
Odysseus tried to let the axe fall from his hand, but there was so much gore caked to it that it had stuck fast. He worked his fingers and thumbs till eventually it dropped to the stones with a clash, leaving twines of tacky vileness hanging from him in its wake.
His men—his men—who recently had the aspect of the Ares now looked like a vision from Tartarus. They, like he, were caked in blood. The roaring, glorious cacophony that had driven them in the storm of bronze and iron had now become the keening, desperate cries of the limbless and dying. The stench of shit, bile and that unique copper odor of blood permeated the great hall and in that moment, Odysseus wondered if the place would ever be made free of it.
The men looked around in shock as their exultation wore off, weapons clattering away, some going to their mates, others still putting those that could not be saved out of their misery. Farmers—they knew when a beast was dying and the kindest thing to do was end it.
Because men were beasts—Odysseus had always known it and it was the same after every battle. The guilt that a survivor felt even though his cause had been just. The feeling that so many had died yet he had lived. And the truth that the guilt—like the pain of an old wound or the agony suffered by a woman in childbirth would soon be forgotten and the desire to do it again would prevail.
“Pyres,” he rasped, conjuring visions of the countless pyres for the dead that burned on the shores of Troy. “Pyres for the dead.”
He couldn’t bring himself to look at the women he’d killed in the grip of Ares’s madness. They had deserved it—they had betrayed him and no king could tolerate such disloyalty. But now that the frenzy had departed, he wished he’d stayed his hand and had them executed humanely. As it was, he knew that every man would say that they were caught up on the tumult of war, blameless victims of a desperate fight.
It couldn’t have been avoided they would say. Because everyone knew that in battle, innocents and innocence itself always died first. And because the men knew that they—as well as their king—had been culpable in the slaughter of the women.
Odysseus glanced at the empty dais, whispering a prayer of thanks to Athena that Penelope had not had to witness more of the slaughter. Women would never understand that a man’s honor had to be defended. That a man—a king more so—must prove his strength and his valor. That he must revenge himself on those that slighted him: that there had to be a reckoning.
But women also never understood that it was only they that could keep a man sane after such deeds committed. That coming home to them made it all seem distant and that—for a time—hearth and home, wife and child were the only things that mattered in the world. Good things.
Until Ares called once again. Like he always did. Like he always would.
Odysseus sighed. He would wash the detritus of battle from his body and go to her. Face her as he had faced her suitors. Tell her his tale—most of it at least—and hope that he had been right and that she loved him still.
His eyes were drawn to the corpse of Amphinomus and a part of him wondered if the smitten boy would have made her happy. But—by the gods—it was not to be. Poor Amphinomus was dead. Odysseus was alive.
It was time to put the warrior to sleep and bring back that young man who had charmed and delighted Penelope so long ago. The man that ploughed the fields and made his people strong. The man who had held her in his arms and told her that—above all things—it was she he loved most of all. That thought of returning to her was the only thing that had given him the strength to survive those long years.
He could not tell her the whole truth. She would not want to know it. So he’d spin and weave words like she had spun and woven her tapestries until he had lied enough so that they were both comfortable with it and she would prefer to believe the legend. He’d convince her in the end.
Because, after all, he thought to himself with a sad smile, they didn’t call him “wily Odysseus” for nothing.
Epilogue
Vicky Alvear Shecter
THE HOMECOMING
* * *
PENELOPE
Moonlight from the small opening in the ceiling drenched the room in silver as Penelope rose naked from her marriage bed. She placed a hand on the twisted, gnarled trunk of the ancient olive tree that grounded both the room and her marriage. How was it, she wondered, that the tree still lived?
After moving to a different chamber years ago, she’d assumed that it—like her marriage—had shriveled and desiccated into hollow memory. Her bridal tree-bed had disappeared from her awareness like threads unbeamed from an old cracked loom, tangled and forgotten in the corner.
Penelope ran her fingertips up the craggy bark, her gaze studiously avoiding the nude man sprawled amid threadbare blankets below her.
Eurycleia must have tended the tree during the many years she’d abandoned it. As her fingertips rubbed the surprisingly leathery top of a lance-shaped leaf, she supposed she should be happy the old woman hadn’t suffocated the thing in her over eagerness to keep it—and her master’s memory—alive.
Finally, she sighed and looked down. A barrel-chested stranger—a man she knew and yet did not know—lay in her bed, one arm thrown over his head. Her body, untouched for so long, was both sore and sated. Still, she wondered:
Who are you?
The planes of the face were familiar, and yet not so. The curls on his head were coarser, shot through with threads of white. They were different and yet the sensation of running her fingers through them felt achingly familiar.
The hair on this man’s torso was fuller. She hadn’t known that the sparse mane on men’s bodies grew thicker with age. It left her wondering what change on her body had surprised him. She was softer and rounder than she used to be, she knew, but he seemed to relish that change.
Only the rumbling of his voice as she lay with her head on his chest was exactly as she remembered. Odysseus, her husband, Ithaca’s long absent king, was home.
Still, she had not wanted him at first. How could she? She’d been numb from the shock of the violence she’d witnessed. And then there were the questions: Did you touch the woman you lived with for years like this? Did you love her? Why didn’t you come home to me sooner? Why now?
He spun tales about loss of honor, the agony of losing all his men, the weight of his mistakes, his attempts at redemption. His words did not appease her, would never heal the wound of his absence, but she could feel the truth behind them. And for now, that was enough.
It helped that he’d wanted her. Wept to hold her again. His tears on her skin melted her resistance like a flame on beeswax. And, oh, to be touched again. The profound hunger for skin on skin—a hunger she had denied herself for so long, a hunger that—once satisfied, changed everything.
Staring down at her sleeping husband, she had a strange sensation of loss of time. One moment she was a new bride, sneaking out of bed to stare in besotted wonder at this man whose energy and capacity for humor outshone the sun. The next she was a grown woman, exhausted by loneliness and fear, staring again in wonder—this ti
me tinged with dismay—at the source of all her pain, suddenly returned.
Another memory: of tiptoeing past her young husband as he slept while soothing a fussy newborn. Her son. Now a man. Now a killer of men. She closed her eyes.
Telemachus. Who are you now?
She knew he would be proud of himself because he’d finally taken a man in “battle”—though how anyone could call the carnage in her hall a battle was a mystery. He would imagine she was proud of him. She would never tell him otherwise, but all of it sickened her.
Images intruded unbidden: Her son’s spear arm rearing back. His rage-contorted expression. The blade emerging through Amphinomus’s chest. The shock on Amphinomus’s face as his gaze locked on hers and he mouthed, “Run,” before he fell.
The recollection was constant. Sometimes each action was static, etched in hard lines, like a freeze. Other times, multiple images ran together almost in a blur—of the bloom of blood on Antinous’s neck as Odysseus’s arrow pierced his throat; of Eurymachus, shot through the heart, his body crumpling in an instant; of Telemachus’s foot pressing on a moaning Amphinomus’s back as he twisted and yanked the stubborn spear from his blood soaked body.
So much blood. The deep-throated moans of horror and pain. Danae screaming Amphinomus’s name. The pull of their hands as they took turns dragging each other up the stairs and into their quarters where they bolted themselves into safety. The sounds of weapons clanging as they stared wide-eyed at each other on the other side of the thick, wooden door. Of the sudden, horrible silence when it was all over.
All of it occurring again and again in a blink.
Penelope shook her head to clear it. Her husband had crashed back into her life like an enormous ship breaking apart against her shores in a violent storm. All she could do was pull the living from the wreckage—and release the dead onto Hades with a prayer for safekeeping.
The queen reached for her crumpled tunic on the floor and shrugged back into it. Her husband’s body twitched like a dog dreaming of running—small desperate movements as he fought some monster near the horn of dreams.
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