by Ben Bova
Pointing the blade at his throat, I said, “My gods have heard my prayer. What about yours?”
He stared up at me with the terror of death draining the color from his face. I drove the sword into the dirt next to his head; he squeezed his eyes shut, thinking I meant to kill him. Then he realized he had not been harmed and popped his eyes open again. I reached out a hand to help him to his feet.
The others simply gaped.
Turning to the young officer, I said, “I seek to join your forces, if you will have me.”
He swallowed once, then replied, “You must speak to my father about that.”
I picked up my spear and followed him deeper into the camp, leaving the others muttering and milling about. The youth led me past a makeshift corral where horses and mules stamped and whinnied, raising dust and reek. There was a row of tents on its other side. We went to the largest one, where a pair of men in bronze armor and tall spears stood a relaxed guard.
“Father,” he called as he stepped through the tent’s flap, “I’ve found a recruit for you.”
I ducked through and saw a solidly built man with thick gray hair and a grizzled beard sitting at a wooden table. He was obviously at his noon meal; the table was covered with bowls of steaming stew and fruit. A silver flagon stood next to a jeweled wine cup. Three young slave women knelt in the far corner of the tent.
The man looked oddly familiar to me: piercing jet-black eyes, wide shoulders, and beneath his half-opened robe I saw a broad, powerful chest. His bare arms bore heavy dark hair crisscrossed with white scars. He stared hard at me as I stood before his table, tugging at his grizzled beard as if trying to stir his memory.
“Orion,” he said at last.
I staggered back a step with surprise. “My Lord Odysseus,” I said.
It was truly Odysseus, whom I had served in the siege of Troy. He was older, gray, his face spiderwebbed with wrinkles. He introduced the young officer to me as his son Telemakos.
He smiled at me, although there was puzzlement in his eyes. “The years have been good to you. You don’t seem to have changed a bit since I last saw you on the plain of Ilios.”
“Are we in Ithaca?” I asked.
Odysseus’ face became grave. “Ithaca is far from here,” he murmured “My kingdom is there. My wife.” The steel returned to his voice. “And the dead bodies of the dogs who would have taken my kingdom, my house, and my wife to themselves.”
“The city before us is Epeiros,” said Telemakos.
“Epeiros?” I knew that name. It was the city where Olympias was to be born.
Odysseus shook his grizzled head wearily. “After all the years that I have been away from my home and my wife, the gods have seen fit to take me away once again.”
“The gods can be cruel,” I said.
“Indeed.”
Odysseus bade us both to sit down and share his meal. The slave women scurried out of the tent to bring more food while we pulled up wooden stools to the table. Although I had been a lowly thes when I had first met Odysseus, less than a slave, he had recognized my fighting prowess and made me a member of his house.
Now, as the slaves ladled the hot stew into wooden bowls for us, Odysseus told me his long and painful story.
When he left the smoking ruins of Troy to return to his kingdom of Ithaca, his ships were battered by a vicious storm and scattered across the wild sea.
“Poseidon has always been against me,” he said, quite matter-of-fact. “Of course, it did not help that I killed one of his sons, later on.”
He grew old trying to get back to Ithaca. Ships sank under him; most of his men drowned. One by one his surviving men deserted him, despairing of ever seeing Ithaca again, choosing to remain in the strange lands where they washed up rather than continue the struggle to reach home.
“And all that while, every unmarried swain in the lands around Ithaca was camping at my household door, courting my Penelope, laying siege to my wife and my goods.”
“They acted as if they owned the kingdom,” said Telemakos. “They even tried to murder me.”
“Thank the gods for Penelope’s good sense. She has the strength of a warrior, that woman does!” Odysseus grinned. “She refused to believe that I was dead. She would not accept any of those louts as husband.”
The two of them went into great detail about how the aspiring noblemen behaved like a plague of locusts, eating and drinking, arguing and fighting, cuffing the servants, assaulting the women, and threatening to kill everyone in the household if Penelope did not choose one of them to marry.
“I finally made it back to Ithaca to find my kingdom in ruins and my house under siege by these swine.”
Telemakos smiled grimly. “But we made short work of them, didn’t we, father?”
Odysseus laughed out loud. “It was more play than work. After I felled the first three or four of them the others went dashing away like rats at the sight of a terrier. Did they think that a man who has scaled the walls of Troy and fought real heroes in single combat would be frightened of a courtyard full of fatted suitors?”
“We cut them down like a scythe goes through wheat,” said Telemakos.
“Indeed we did.”
“So the kingdom is safely yours once again,” I said.
His smile evaporated.
“Their kinsmen have demanded retribution,” Telemakos said.
I knew what that meant. Blood feuds, dozens of them, all descending on Odysseus and his family at once.
“Among the slain was the son of Neoptolemos, King of Epeiros. So the kinsmen of the others have gathered together here in Epeiros, preparing to march to Ithaca, take it for themselves, and slay me in retribution.”
Neoptolemos was a name I had heard before: Olympias’ father, if I recalled correctly. But Olympias would not be born for a thousand years. Neoptolemos must be a ceremonial name carried by all the kings of Epeiros.
Unless—
“But we have marched here to Epeiros’ walls,” said Telemakos, “and laid siege to their city. With all of them bottled up inside the city walls.”
The youth seemed rather proud that they had carried the war to their enemies, rather than waiting for them to strike Ithaca.
Odysseus seemed less enthusiastic. “It is a fruitless siege. They refuse to come out and do battle and we lack the strength to storm the city.”
I remembered how long it had taken to capture Troy.
In a rare show of impatience, Odysseus banged the table with his fist hard enough to make the slaves cower. “I want to be home! I want to enjoy my last years with my wife, and leave a peaceful kingdom for my son. Instead the gods send me this.”
How like Philip he sounded. Except that Odysseus seemed to love his wife and trust his son fully.
“I wish there were something I could do,” I said to them. “Some way I could help.”
The ghost of a crafty smile played across Odysseus’ lips. “Perhaps there is, Orion. Perhaps there is.”
Chapter 25
That night I slept outside Odysseus’ tent. Telemakos, seeing that I had nothing except the clothes on my back and the crude spear I had fashioned, ordered his slaves to bring me a cloak and armor and proper weapons.
Strangely, Odysseus interfered. “A cloak only,” he said. “That will be enough for Orion for this night. And tomorrow.”
I did not object. Obviously he had some scheme in mind. Among the Achaians besieging Troy, Odysseus had been the wisest of the commanders. He could fight as well as any man, but he could also think and plan ahead—something that Agamemnon and Achilles and the others seldom did.
Morning broke and Odysseus summoned his rag-tag army before the main gate of Epeiros. Standing in his bronze armor, bareheaded, he raised his spear to the cloud-dotted sky and shouted in a voice powerful enough to crack the heavens:
“Men of Epeiros! Kinsmen of the dogs I slew in my home in Ithaca! Come out from behind your walls and fight! Don’t be cowards. You mean to make war upon me
because I defended my wife and my honor. Here I am! Come and make your war this morning. It is a good day to fight.”
I saw dozens of heads rise up along the wall’s parapet, many of them helmeted in shining bronze. But no one replied to Odysseus.
He raised his voice again to them. “Are you afraid to die? What difference does it make if I kill you here or before the walls of Ithaca? You have declared blood feud against me and my family, haven’t you? Well here is your chance to settle the matter once and for all. Come out and fight!”
“Go away,” a man’s deep voice shouted back. “We’ll fight you when we’re ready. Our kinsmen are back at their cities raising thousands of men to come to our aid. When you see their dust on the road as they march here your blood will turn to water and you’ll piss yourself with fear.”
Odysseus laughed scornfully. “You forget, coward, that I fought on the plain of Ilios against the likes of mighty Hector and his brothers. I scaled the beetling walls of Troy with my wooden horse and razed the city to ashes. Do you think I fear a bunch of lily-livered milksops who are afraid to face me, spear to spear?”
The voice answered, “We’ll see who’s the coward, soon enough.”
Odysseus’ lips pressed into a hard angry line. Then he took a deep breath and called, “Where is Neoptolemos, king of this mighty city?”
No answer.
“Does Neoptolemos still rule in his own city, or have you taken over his household the way you tried to take over mine?”
“I am here, Odysseus the Ever-Daring,” piped a weak, trembling voice.
A frail old man in a blue robe climbed shakily to a platform up above the main gate. Even from the ground before the gate I could see that King Neoptolemos was ancient, withered, wizened, more aged even than Nestor had been, his head bald except for a few wisps of hair, a white beard flowing down his frail narrow chest. His eyes were sunk so deep into their sockets that at this distance they looked like two tiny dark pits. He must have been nearly toothless, for the lower half of his face had sunk in on itself as well.
“Neoptolemos,” said Odysseus, “it is a sad day when we must face each other as enemies. Well I remember my youth, when you were like a wise uncle to me.”
“Well should you remember my son, the companion of your youth, whom you have slain in your bloody fury.”
“I regret his death, King of Epeiros. He was among the suitors who tried to steal my wife and my kingdom from me.”
“He was my son. Who will follow me when I die? His own son is only a child, hardly five years old.”
Craning his neck at the blue-robed figure atop the city gate, Odysseus said, “A blood feud between us can do neither of us any good.”
“Bring me back my son and there will be no need for a feud,” the old man replied bitterly.
“Ah,” said Odysseus, “that I cannot do. Even though I visited Hades himself during the long years of my journey home, he would not let me bring any of the departed back to the land of the living.”
“You saw Hades?”
“Neoptolemos, revered mentor of my youthful days, if you knew the sufferings and toils I have had to endure you might forgive me even the death of your son.”
I stood a few feet away from Odysseus, leaning on my knobbly makeshift spear, and watched him charm Neoptolemos into asking for a recitation of his arduous journey from Troy back to Ithaca.
The sun rose high while Odysseus spoke of the storms that wrecked his ships, of the enchantress Circe who turned his men into animals; of the cave of Polyphemos, one of the Cyclopes, and his cannibal orgies.
“I had to kill him or be killed myself,” Odysseus related. “His father, Poseidon, stirred up even mightier storms against me after that.”
“You know that a father feels hatred for a man who slays his son,” said Neoptolemos. But I thought his thin, quavering voice was less harsh than it had been earlier.
Well past noon Odysseus kept on talking, holding everyone along the wall enchanted with his hair-raising tales. Slaves circulated among us with bowls of dried meat and fruit, flagons of wine. Odysseus took some of the wine, but kept on talking, telling his enemies of the dangers he had risked, the women he had left behind, in his agonizing urgency to return to his home and his wife.
“When at last I saw blessed Ithaca again,” he said, his powerful voice sinking low, “my very own house was besieged by men who demanded the hand of my Penelope, and behaved as if they already owned my kingdom.”
“I can understand the blood-fury that must have seized you,” said Neoptolemos. “But that does not return my son to me.”
“King of Epeiros,” Odysseus replied, “a blood feud between us will bring down both our households. Your grandson and my son will never live long enough to father sons of their own.”
“Sadly true,” Neoptolemos agreed.
“And the same is true for all of you,” Odysseus said to the others along the wall. “You kinsmen of the men I have slain would slay me and my son. But then my kinsmen will be obliged to slay you. Where will it end?”
“The gods will decide that, Odysseus,” said the old king. “Our fates are not in our own hands.”
I was thinking that if Neoptolemos and his grandson are killed in this pointless blood feud, his line will end here in the Achaian age. There will be no descendants to father Olympias, many generations down the time stream. That is why I have been sent here, I realized. But what am I to do about it?
“Perhaps there is a way for us to learn the wishes of the gods in this matter,” Odysseus was saying.
“What do you mean?”
“A trial by combat. Single champions to face each other, spear against spear. Let the outcome of their battle decide the war between us.”
A murmur arose among the men on the wall. Neoptolemos turned to his right and then to his left. Some of the men up there gathered around him, muttering, gesturing.
“A trial by champions would be a good idea, King of Ithaca,” the old man finally replied. “But who could stand against such an experienced warrior as yourself? It would be an unequal fight.”
None of the dandies up there dared to face Odysseus in single combat.
Odysseus threw up his hands. “But I am the one you seek revenge against.”
Neoptolemos said, “No, no, Odysseus. As you yourself said, you faced mighty Hector and broke through the impenetrable walls of Troy. You have travelled the length and breadth of the world and even visited Hades in his underworld domain. Who among us would dare stand against you?”
Bowing his head in seeming acceptance, Odysseus asked, “Would you have me pick another to stand in my place?”
I saw Telemakos fairly twitching with eagerness, anxious to fight for his family’s honor and his own fame.
“Yes, another!” rose a shout among the men on the wall. “Pick another!”
Odysseus turned around as if casting about for someone to select. Telemakos took half a step forward but froze when his father frowned at him.
Turning back toward the gate, Odysseus called up to Neoptolemos, “Very well. We will let the gods truly decide. I will pick this ungainly oaf here.” He pointed toward me!
I heard snickers and outright laughter up on the wall. I must have looked like a country bumpkin in my leather vest and crude wooden spear. No wonder Odysseus had refused me better clothes and weapons. He had planned this ruse from the night before.
They swiftly agreed, and disappeared from the wall’s top while they selected their own champion.
“Orion,” said Odysseus to me, low and very serious. “You can save us all from a blood feud that will end my line and the old man’s as well.”
“I understand, my lord.”
He gripped my shoulder hard. “Don’t make it look too easy. I don’t want them to know that they’ve been hoodwinked.”
Telemakos, who had looked so disappointed a few moments earlier that I thought he would break into tears, was trying hard now to suppress a grin of elation.
At length the gates of the city opened and the men who had been lining the wall stepped out before us. Most of them wore bronze armor and kept a firm grip on their spears. Neoptolemos was carried out on a wooden chair fitted with handles for slaves to hold. They placed his chair on the ground and he got out of it, slowly, obviously in arthritic pain.
Before the fight could begin there were prayers and sacrifices and speeches to be made. It was late in the afternoon before the men cleared a space on the bare dusty ground and their champion stepped forward. He was almost as big as I, with a deep chest and powerful limbs. He wore a bronze cuirass, greaves, and a bronze helmet with nose piece and cheek flaps tied so tightly under his chin that I could see little more of his face than his light-colored eyes gazing out at me.
A young slave boy stood a few steps behind him, holding with both skinny arms a figure-eight shield of multiple layers of oxhide; it was so heavy it seemed it would topple the poor lad over at any moment. Another youth held a handful of long spears for him, their bronze tips glinting in the late afternoon sunlight.
His shield bore the figure of a single eye, and I remembered the eye of Amon that adorned the great pyramid of Khufu in distant Egypt. Was there some connection? I decided not. This was merely a variant of the evil eye that supposedly paralyzed opponents with terror.
I faced their champion with nothing but the crude spear I had hacked from the gnarled branch of a tree. Those pale eyes of his gleamed with the anticipation of easy victory. We circled each other warily, he behind his ponderous oxhide shield, which covered him from chin to sandals. Despite his solid build he was agile, light on his feet. I danced nimbly on the balls of my feet as my senses went into overdrive. I saw him pull his arm back so slowly that it seemed to take forever; then he hurled the spear at me with every ounce of strength in his powerful body.
I jumped to one side at last instant, and the crowd of men groaned as if disappointed that I hadn’t been spitted on the sharp bronze point. My opponent half-turned and his squire handed him another spear. I merely stood my ground until he began to approach me again. Then I jabbed my spear at him, letting its point bang against his oxhide shield.