Vengeance at Aulis (The Trojan Murders Book 2)
Page 19
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I had no sooner said this than I realised how hopeless our mission might be. We had no stake in the funeral of poor Nephele beyond what her devious parents seemed to have arranged for Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Agamemnon and Menelaus, however, seemed dead set on fulfilling the demands of the Goddess, ignorant though they were that those demands were entirely bogus. And they appeared to have brought many of the leading generals of the army to witness the fatal act. Many of whom, starting I assumed with Palamedes and Aias but supported by many of the others who were themselves impatient – or who knew their armies to be so – would stand beside them even if it came to blows. But, I consoled myself, no matter who stood against us, I was in the company of the most fearsome warrior alive and three others who ran him a close second. I had paid little attention to the matter before now, but these thoughts filled my mind as we approached the temple precinct. I glanced at the kings and princes I was riding with. Achilles and Patroclus were in armoured breastplates and backplates, though they were both bareheaded. But they were both armed to the teeth as the saying is. Diomedes and Odysseus were wearing no armour, but both of them had swords and daggers at their belts. And each chariot was carrying half a dozen spears.
We galloped into the precinct side by side and reined to a stop. The whole place was deserted but the last light of day showed us a crowd of people on the stepped slope behind and above the temple. Or, I realised as my vision cleared, two crowds – one gathering round the lower level where Nephele’s funeral pyre had been built just out from the foot of the modest cliff leading up to the higher level where Kalkhas’ helpers had built the altar on which Iphigenia was doomed to be sacrificed. The crowd gathering on the higher level seemed to be wearing much more metal than the group around the funeral pyre. Once again I rehearsed how lucky I was to be in company with four of the deadliest warriors alive.
Both the funeral and the sacrifice were due to commence when the new moon began to rise across the greenish turquoise sky, which was beginning to darken towards sapphire as the shadows of night gathered relentlessly. The crowds seemed dark and amorphous but as we arrived, so the people organising them began to light lamps and little golden earthbound stars leaped into life before those in the sky could reflect them. There was a rumble of expectant conversation which seemed to come and go as the wind gusted gently through the pine-trees on the high western ridge.
Achilles stepped down from his chariot. ‘Right,’ he said, easing his sword in its scabbard. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Spears?’ wondered Patroclus.
‘I think not,’ advised Odysseus. ‘We’re not up against the Trojans yet.’
‘Good point,’ said Diomedes. ‘Sweet reason and sharp swords it is.’
We set off up the slope, pushing through the soldiers sluggishly gathering there in expectant groups. Our urgent footsteps soon brought us level with the first plateau where Nephele’s pyre stood almost as tall and as long as a man but wider than three men with the figure of the poor girl indistinctly pallid in her white wrappings on the top of it. As we passed, I recognised the strange smell from the cold room where we had seen her laid out that morning. ‘What is that smell?’ I asked.
‘Bones,’ answered Diomedes.
‘More specifically, antlers,’ said Odysseus.
I paused, squinting. And there indeed were the golden antlers that had seemingly cost Oikonomos his life, arranged in a kind of crown around the dead girl’s head. ‘But there is so much wood available,’ I said. ‘Why burn bones?’
‘Tradition,’ said Odysseus. ‘It makes the whole matter a sacrifice as well as a funeral. The Goddess should be doubly gratified.’
‘If she actually cares about human life and death,’ I said. ‘Even on the night she’s supposed to come closest to the earth.’
‘Let’s not risk upsetting her, though,’ suggested Diomedes as we strode on past the pyre and the crowd of priests, priestesses and acolytes gathered around it waiting for the moment it would be lit. I shrugged; he was right: better safe than sorry when you’re dealing with easily irritated Olympians. I could see neither Ikaros nor Karpathia, but a tall woman I assumed to be the Oracle stood immediately behind the antlers, her figure swathed in formal robes, the light from her lamp-flame gleaming on the gold and illuminating the sleeping face of the dead priestess. Then we were on the slope that led to the upper level where Kalkhas had had his sacrificial altar built. This was a two-tier arrangement, standing high so that everyone would get a clear view of the proceedings. The altar itself was a waist-high table as long and as wide as a man but it stood on another, wider, pediment that reached knee-high above the dry, scorched grass. This was where Kalkhas stood in his soothsayer’s robes and formal headdress, with the intrepid sacrifice lying still on the altar-top with her grieving parents beside her. All the other witnesses were gathered round expectantly in rows several men deep and this was where our real problems stood assembled.
***
We formed a wedge as though we were indeed going into battle. Achilles was at the point with Patroclus behind one shoulder and Diomedes behind the other. I suspected Odysseus would have been right behind him too had he not positioned himself a little further back to keep a protective eye on me. ‘Stop!’ bellowed Achilles in a voice rivalling that of Stentor our herald. ‘The man that touches the princess dies!’
Everyone turned and looked at him. Even Iphigeneia sat up and stared. He was a sight worth looking at, of course, with his golden hair and golden armour almost as bright as a lamp-flame in the gathering gloom. And there was the fact that he was challenging the better part of fifty kings and princes ranged against him. Long odds, even for the greatest warrior alive.
Odysseus stepped forward. ‘Agamemnon,’ he called, ‘You need to stop this now. You are not the plaything of a vengeful Goddess, you are the victim of a devious trap. The dead girl awaiting funeral down there is the daughter of the High Priestess and her lover Ikaros. Ever since she died they have been working to trick you. First into admitting that you did the deed yourself. Secondly into bringing your most beloved daughter here to sacrifice her to Artemis – who neither knows nor cares about our petty human doings. And thirdly that you and Queen Clytemnestra suffer the grief and loss that Karpathia and Ikaros suffered when you killed Nephele whether or not you did so accidentally.’
Agamemnon swung towards Kalkhas, who stood at the head of the altar with the sacrificial knife gleaming and ready in his hand. Iphigenia was between them, dressed in sacrificial robes, her face a pale glimmer marked with huge dark eyes.
‘That’s not right,’ bellowed Agamemnon. ‘That can’t be right!’
‘The King of Ithaka is mistaken,’ said the soothsayer, his voice ringing through the thickening shadows. ‘I have spent many hours talking with Artemis’ oracle in the temple and I know the will of the Goddess. Were she not at the root of this, how would the wind be stopped? Were she not at the root of this, how would her animals be working her will amongst us? Her bear, her snakes, her boar, all avenging the death of her stag?’
‘The wind is not stopped,’ called Odysseus. I realised then that he was claiming the attention of the High King, the Soothsayer and all the rest while Achilles and Patroclus began to ease themselves surreptitiously round the outer edge of the assembled witnesses, moving relentlessly towards the altar. And they clearly needed to do so, because both Agamemnon and Kalkhas had spoken. Neither of them could afford to back down now. Their pride was worth more than the life of a girl, even a daughter and a princess. Any loss of face would be witnessed by the men they planned to lead into a war. Men whose absolute trust, therefore, could not under any circumstances be compromised.
I had reached this stage in my reasoning when there was a strange kind of roaring sound from behind me. I turned, as did everyone around me, and looked down. Nephele’s funeral pyre had just burst into flames. Shocked breathless, I turned and looked up into the darkening bowl of the sky. And there indeed was the thin white bow of
tonight’s new moon climbing over the southern horizon.
‘Stop!’ came Achilles’ stentorian voice. We all swung back. He and Patroclus had indeed managed to get around the assembled kings and princes. As the Prince of Phthia spoke, so he stepped up onto the raised section of the altar beside Kalkhas, his sword gleaming in the lamp-light. Everything froze for a heartbeat, then another figure appeared. At first I thought it must be Patroclus for it appeared at Achilles’ side. But no. This figure was wearing no armour over the white tunic; no helmet, but a mourning wreath. It was Ikaros, and he was wielding the strangest weapon I had ever seen. At first I thought it was a scythe, with its long handle and angled blade. ‘Ah,’ said Odysseus. ‘That explains Oikonomos.’ And I realised that what I had supposed to be a blade was in fact the tusk of a massive boar. I had seen helmets made of boar-tusk, but never anything like this. ‘Perhaps we should have brought a spear or two after all,’ concluded the King of Ithaka.
Ikaros swung his strange weapon at Achilles and only the prince’s reflexes saved him. He got his sword up in time to save his face, but the point of the thing still scored the golden breastplate, Ikaros recovered instantly and swung the weapon again. Agamemnon took Clytemnestra by the arm and they both stepped down off the altar. Iphigenia lay flat again, well clear of both sword and tusk. Patroclus appeared, ready to join the battle but Achilles called, ‘Leave me! Guard the princess!’
***
Achilles leaped off the altar’s raised surround and the assembled kings fell back to give him fighting room. And they needed to do so, for Ikaros’ makeshift scythe looked sharp and deadly – and it required a good deal of space to deploy it as he was doing now. He swung it fiercely round his head as he advanced and the warlike kings all stepped further back. Achilles fell into his fighting stance but he had no helmet, spear or shield. His only advantage, it seemed, was that incredible speed of his. Once again the vicious tusk swung in towards Achilles’ unprotected head. He raised his sword. Ikaros instantly changed the angle of his attack, The tusk sliced down towards the prince’s thigh. He skipped back, only just avoiding the blow and I realised with a lurch that although he was wearing armour, he had neither greaves nor thigh-guards. As Ikaros was recovering from the near-miss, Achilles glanced over his shoulder and established for himself something that I only just realised as I watched him do it. A couple more passes like that and the prince would be over the cliff-edge close behind him. Ikaros saw it too and approached once more, swinging his strange weapon in a circle in front of him, driving Achilles back another couple of steps. The Prince of Phthia was dangerously close to the edge now and every eye in the place was focused upon him and his strange opponent. Every eye except Odysseus’. ‘Patroclus!’ bellowed the captain. ‘Look out!’
I tore my eyes away from Achilles and swung round. I was just in time to see Kalkhas tumbling backwards off the altar step and another figure rearing in his place. It was all over in a heartbeat, and yet I seemed to see every detail as though Time itself was standing still. The figure in Kalkhas’ place raised its arm. The dagger in its fist gleamed wickedly in the lamp-light as it plunged down. ‘No!’ screamed Queen Clytemnestra. Patroclus reacted instinctively, I suspect even before he realised precisely what was going on. His sword swung round in a vicious arc. Its blade took the strange figure right across the throat. The head seemed to spring from the shoulders of its own accord as a massive fountain of blood followed it upward then downward as the headless body collapsed backward. And in that strange flickering golden light of the lamps and the torches, the head of Karpathia, High Priestess of Artemis landed on the breast of the princess she had just killed with the expert stroke of someone adept at making such sacrifices.
Although he had his back to her, Ikaros screamed at the instant Karpathia died, his agony every bit as intense as if he had witnessed the entire episode. Though, to be fair, he must have known how the desperate act would end. His scream of agony became a roar of madness and he charged at Achilles swinging the tusk straight at his opponent’s face. Achilles threw himself backwards. His shoulders hit the ground at the edge of the low cliff. Smoke and sparks from Nephele’s pyre writhed and eddied around and above him. Ikaros’ charge towards him did not slow, on the contrary, the screaming man accelerated, the strange weapon raised for the killing stroke. But even as he began the downstroke, the apparently helpless man beneath him was in action. With a speed that was scarcely believable, Achilles raised his sword, held in both his fists. By sheer muscular control, he tore his shoulders back up off the ground, curling himself like the tail of a scorpion, with the bronze sting of his swordpoint uppermost. The blade entered Ikaros’ belly just below his belt and vanished up into his chest. The boar’s tusk hit the ground well behind Achilles’ head, chopping a clod of dry earth off the edge of the cliff. Ikaros’ legs weakened, for he was dead, but the great charge he had launched himself into carried on. Achilles rolled back, straight arms rigid and unyielding. Ikaros went over the top of his would-be victim, over the edge of the cliff and, taking Achilles’ sword with him still buried to the hilt, he crashed down into the blazing pyre beside his dead daughter.
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the sobs of Iphigenia’s distraught mother, then the pines along the top of the ridge bowed, as though the Groves of the Goddess were saluting her High Priestess for completing the sacrifice after all, or the thin white curve rising in the night sky over her temple beyond. And a strong west wind began to blow.
Maybe the Goddess is walking near the earth after all, I thought, and she accepts her debt as paid in full.
Or maybe the weather simply changes with a spring tide and a new moon after all.
SOURCES
Major sources:
Iphigenia in Aulis Euripides tr George Theodoridis
Iphigenia (1977 film) dir Mihalis Kakogiannis
The Iliad new Penguin edition tr Martin Hammond
Also tr Caroline Alexander
Also tr E V Rieu
Also tr George Chapman
The Odyssey tr E V Rieu
Online etc:
Michael Wood In Search of Troy (BBC)1:00:09 / 1:29:26
Ancient History Documentary The True Story of Troy An Ancient War.
The Trojan War & Homeric Warfare
The Trojan War - Myth or Fact
The Truth about TROY
Great Battles: Was there a Trojan War? Recent Excavations at Troy8:23 / 10:48:23 / 16:18
The Trojan War Episode 2: Weapons and Armour During The Trojan War
Academic sources:
The Book of Swords Richard Francis Burton
Greek Mythology – The complete guide
Bulfinch’s Mythology Thomas Bulfinch
The War That Killed Achilles Caroline Alexander
The Wooden Horse – The liberation of the Western mind from Odysseus to Socrates Keld Zerundeith
The Wooden Horse - Some Possible Bronze Age Origins - I. Singer (ed), Luwian and Hittite Studies.
Creative sources:
The Silence of the Girls Pat Barker
The Song of Troy Colleen McCullough
The Song of Achilles Madeline Miller
Troy Adele Geras
NB All ‘Songs’ are based on Ancient Greek poems adapted from various translations.