Trying War

by S. D. Gentill

  Lycon frowned. “Why would Oenone want to help us find our sister?”

  “In memory of Paris, I think.”

  “But she let him die,” Lycon turned, his eyes glittering resentfully. “She might have saved him.” All too well he remembered Paris’ last agonised days as the Hydra’s blood spread its slow murder.

  Machaon studied his youngest brother. “It was complicated, Ly.”

  Lycon shook his head. “I know what Paris did, Mac, but he didn’t deserve to die for it.”

  “Paris didn’t blame Oenone,” Machaon replied. “He spoke well of her in the end, and in his way, he always loved her. She regrets denying him… I think she has since the moment he died.” He told his brothers of the burns, of how the healer had thrown herself upon the pyre she thought was Paris’.

  “Where is Oenone now?” Cadmus asked thoughtfully.

  Machaon’s eyes moved to the cliff top on which the black cypress grew. A cloaked figure stood beside the tree silhouetted against the blushing sky. His brothers followed his gaze.

  “And this wolf?”

  “Lupa. She is Oenone’s companion.”

  “And she’s the same…”

  “Yes. It seems.”

  “Kind of old for a wolf.”

  Machaon raised his brows.

  Cadmus grinned. “Should we call her mother, do you think?”

  Lycon sighed. “You’re an idiot.”

  THE HOLD OF THE Phaeacian ship was filled with food and wine. Oenone brought with her the herbs and instruments of her craft. Cadmus eyed the long blades and needles suspiciously, for despite what Machaon had said, he remained unsure of the nymph.

  Lupa he regarded with less trepidation. Perhaps some bond still existed between the wolf and the young men she had suckled as infants. Certainly she treated them with the maternal affection of a mother for her litter. She did not fawn or cringe in the way of hounds but bore herself over them with a kind of indulgent authority. All the sons of Agelaus were surprised by the kindling of forgotten love they felt for the beast, and the comfort they received from the protective warmth of her body.

  Lycon had painted their travels onto the walls of their father’s cave, an account of their journey across the world in search of wily Odysseus. With sorrow and pigment, he’d depicted the abduction of Agelaus’s daughter and then, because he could not bear to leave the story there, he’d drawn the return of the Phaeacian ship from the land of the Amazons with Hero at its prow.

  Cadmus had watched him wordlessly for a while, surprised and moved by his brother’s skill. He’d studied the last image which recorded an event that might never be. But he’d said nothing—hoping silently that Lycon was a seer.

  Kelios had ensured that the ship was stocked well with arms. The Herdsmen had no shortage of these, as for ten years the plains of Troy had been littered with the weapons of those who had gone early to Hades. The little hold was also crammed with hides and furs, for the lands beyond the Black Sea were known to be bitterly cold in the half year that Persephone spent in the Underworld.

  Machaon studied the star maps that would allow them to know where they were at sea, and they spoke to Kelios of what lay ahead for both them and their people.

  “We will wait for you,” Kelios assured them.

  “And if we die?”

  “I suppose that’s likely, but try not to.”

  “Listen for word of Scamandrios,” Cadmus said quietly.

  Kelios nodded. “Be careful—watch out for the gods.”

  Machaon laughed. “The gods have never noticed us, Kel… unless you count Pan.”

  Kelios snorted in a way that indicated he probably didn’t. “Nevertheless,” he said, “the Amazons are beloved of Ares. He is not a god you wish to cross.”

  “As opposed to the others?” Lycon murmured.

  Machaon clapped Kelios on the back. “We have no intention of taking on the Pantheon… unless, of course, Hero’s managed to summon them all to her aid…”

  Cadmus smiled wryly. “Would Hero survive the shock if the gods actually answered her prayers?”

  Grasping Machaon’s uninjured shoulder, Kelios regarded the three of them intently. “Hero does not need the gods; she has the sons of Agelaus.”

  And so, with the blessing of their people, Machaon stood at the prow of the Phaeacian ship and thought of Hero, and the Amazons. The faithful craft shuddered, but she leapt obediently into the waves like a steed under whip. Machaon put his hand on the living prow and whispered comfort for he knew she was frightened.

  The Herdsmen howled farewell from the shore, and Lupa joined the sons of Agelaus as they raised their heads and replied in kind from the sturdy deck. Oenone stood, her pale arms wrapped around the mast, watching silently as Troy slipped into the distance. The ship of Pan once again bore them across the sea. The flaming chariot of Helios descended to their left and the constellation they called Agelaus appeared on their right in the night sky. The breeze was gentle, a mere sigh on the sea, and yet they made steady progress in the wondrous Phaeacian craft.

  They passed the time on the boat in subdued company. The sons of Agelaus discussed how they would retrieve their sister, concocting and rejecting scheme after scheme. Oenone said very little, watching with an unspeaking stillness that unnerved them all.

  “She’s waiting for an opportunity,” Cadmus whispered.

  “An opportunity for what?”

  Cadmus drew his finger across his throat and said no more.

  Machaon smiled, but he too found the healer unsettling. The vulnerable woman who had sobbed in his arms seemed to have retreated into a hard shell. Oenone had said she was an Oread—a mountain nymph. Nymphs were closer to the gods than they were to man, and the gods were unpredictable at best. He wondered if he should have agreed to take her with them.

  They allowed Oenone to have the small cabin, and slept instead on the open deck, taking turns to keep vigil. The murmuring wind became chilled and the azure waters seemed to grey as they approached the Black Sea. The sons of Agelaus wrapped their wool cloaks about them as their breath clouded in the cold salt air. Lupa lay with them at night and they shared her like a blanket.

  The moon bloated. It seemed larger here, but blue as if it too were cold.

  Oenone still insisted they bathe each day in the icy sea water. They did so under protest, though it was clear by now that the healer knew her art. They would reach the Black Sea as whole as if they had never been wounded. How long they would remain that way was another matter.

  The Phaeacian ship turned east as they entered the long narrow straight beyond the Hellespont. The country on either side of the strait became increasingly rugged. Amethyst mountains capped with snow soared up from the beach towards a clouded sky.

  “What now?” Cadmus said as the ship navigated the canal that divided the lands which had once belonged to Troy from the country of the Northern tribes.

  Machaon pulled his cloak closer and looked out at the ranges. “The Amazons rule the Pontus, in the kingdom of Kolchis,” he said, nodding east. “We need to reach the farthest end of the Black Sea at the edges of the known world. Hopefully the ship will know when to stop.”

  “Do you think it’s true what they say about Kolchis?” Cadmus asked, raising his eyes to the shrouded peaks.

  “That it’s a land of sorcerers and magic?” Machaon frowned. “I don’t know, Cad… maybe.”

  “They might kill us before we ever find the Amazons.”

  Machaon nodded. “They might try—we’ll have to make sure they don’t.”

  Lycon dropped down from atop the mast. “Gods, it’s cold up there,” he said, blowing on his palms and trying to rub the feeling back into them. “No wonder the Amazons are so grim!” Lupa nuzzled his hand and he buried his fingers in the thick fur of her neck.

  Oenone emerged from the cabin. She was wrapped in the hide of a bear. Her face was kissed red by the biting wind, but unlike the Herdsmen she did not shiver with the cold.

 
She took Lycon’s hand and, without a word, proceeded to bind his arm with long strips of cloth. She wrapped it from the elbow to where the fingers joined the palm. She did the same to his other arm. “This will protect your hands from the cold,” she said curtly. “The mountains are bitter. If you do not prepare you will all be dead long before you reach your sister.”

  Machaon agreed. They would need more than cloaks to walk into these mountains. And so the herdsmen wrapped their hands as Oenone had done for Lycon, and did the same for their legs and feet. For men accustomed to the short, light tunics of warriors it was cumbersome. Winter did come to Mount Ida, and even snow was not new to them, but the brittle, frozen landscape of the lands east of the Hellespont was unfamiliar and disorienting.

  In time the ship of Pan sailed into a shallow strait. The vessel sank lower in the water and the sons of Agelaus knew they were entering the Black Sea, which was said to pull the hulls of ships more strongly towards its depths.

  Cadmus motioned to his brothers. “We’d better arm ourselves,” he said tensely. He pointed to places on the banks where movement had caught his eye—shadows that lurked in the ice. “We’re being watched.”

  “Who do you think it is?” Lycon strapped a sword to his back and a shorter blade at his hip.

  “The servants of Aietes, King of Kolchis.” Oenone stood behind them. “He suffers no trespass into his kingdom and he watches all the lands around the Black Sea.”

  Machaon loosened the strips around his hands and tested his sword grip as he spoke to the nymph. “What do you know of Aietes, Oenone? Can we make an ally of him?”

  Oenone glanced at Cadmus who was cursing at the binding on his own hands, which had somehow become tangled. She seized his forearm impatiently. “Just hold still,” she snapped as she adjusted the wound cloth. “Many years ago a Greek sailed here in a boat much like this, though he had many rowers. The Greek robbed Aietes.”

  “What did he steal?”

  “A fleece from the sacred grove of Ares… and Aietes’ children.”

  “Gods, why?” Lycon muttered. Royal children were always being stolen but why would anyone risk war for a sheepskin?

  “The fleece was golden,” Oenone replied. “The Greek was on some sort of quest.”

  Machaon shook his head. The Greeks loved quests. They charged all over the world in search of trinkets that were useful for nothing. The Herdsmen had always considered it absurd.

  “The Greek fled Kolchis with the princess Medea and the infant prince, Absyrtus.”

  Cadmus flexed his hand to check its movement in Oenone’s binding. “What happened to them—the Greek and the children?”

  “The princess Medea was not a child. She loved the Greek with all the passion and devotion of a woman’s heart.” Oenone paused, her eyes wide and fixed as if the story were playing out before her. “Aietes pursued the Greek to recover his fleece and his children.” The nymph shuddered.

  “Did he succeed?” Machaon prompted.

  Oenone closed her eyes for a moment before she replied. “The child, Absyrtus, was slaughtered and dismembered. His limbs were flung into the Black Sea to slow Aietes, who abandoned the chase to collect his son’s body. And so the Greek escaped.”

  Machaon looked to his brothers. They were accustomed to the ruthless brutality of the Greeks, but the story was disturbing nonetheless. “And the princess… Medea?”

  “She loved the Greek—she married him and bore him children.” Fleetingly the healer’s eyes narrowed, her lips twisted. “He abandoned her for a princess of Corinth, and Medea returned to Kolchis to find her father had lost his throne.”

  Cadmus saw the brief change in Oenone’s features that mention of the Greek’s betrayal wrought… a transitory glimpse at an unhealed wound. He tried to ignore it.

  “When she returned, Medea murdered the usurper, and restored the kingdom to her father.”

  Machaon rubbed his brow thoughtfully. “So Aietes is no friend of the Greeks. Fortunately we are not Greeks.”

  “Aietes no longer welcomes visitors of any kind,” Oenone warned. “It will be difficult to appease him.”

  “We have no quarrel with Kolchis,” Lycon said.

  Oenone sighed, regarding them as if they were perplexing, difficult children. “You must not allow your courage to make you witless,” she said curtly. “Human sacrifice is the custom here. Aietes is a powerful sorcerer and the son of Helios who drives the chariot of the sun. The princess Medea is a priestess of Hecate.”

  “And Hecate is…” Cadmus started.

  Oenone looked disdainfully at him. “Hecate’s realm is magic. She is the three-faced goddess of crossroads who presides over ghosts and witchcraft.”

  “Oh…”

  “The princess… Medea, she’s a witch then?”

  “Yes. And a goddess in her own right.”

  Machaon groaned. Amazons were one thing but the gods were dangerous. He raised his eyes to meet Oenone’s. “What do you think we should do?”

  “Mac…” Cadmus began, alarmed. The healer made him uneasy.

  Machaon didn’t take his gaze from Oenone.

  The nymph’s green eyes flashed. “Tell Aietes that you are Trojan. Ask for sanctuary from the Greeks.”

  “He will grant this?”

  Oenone shrugged. “Aietes hates the Greeks. Medea too has reason to be unhappy with them. Nothing ensures friendship like a common enemy.”

  “Mac…” Cadmus warned again.

  Oenone smiled. “Your brother doesn’t trust me, Machaon.”

  Machaon nodded. He wasn’t sure he trusted Oenone either, but he didn’t know what else they could do at this stage. They were in the waters of Aietes’ kingdom and they were being watched. “We shall have to be Trojan it seems.”

  “And Oenone?” Lycon glanced pointedly at the healer.

  “She can stay with the boat,” Cadmus murmured.

  Oenone turned her back on Cadmus and addressed Machaon. “You may tell Aietes that I am your sister or your wife.”

  Cadmus snorted.

  “Sister,” Machaon replied quickly. “That at least was true once.”

  “I am trying to help you,” the healer said resentfully. “If I wanted you to die then I would have cut out your heart when I removed the dagger from your body, and left you to drown in your own blood.”

  Machaon smiled faintly, his brow raised slightly at the macabre detail of her words. He wondered whether the nymph had considered it. “We will tell Aietes that we are Trojan refugees, and work it out from there. Oenone will be our sister for now.”

  Such then were the wondrous works that the craftsman-god Hephaistos had fashioned in the palace of Aietes. He wrought bulls with mouths of bronze, from which they breathed out a terrible flame of fire.

  Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, Book 3

  BOOK VI

  THE SONS OF AGELAUS STOOD together at the prow of the Phaeacian craft. The Black Sea was cast in a cloying mist. They stood closer than they otherwise might have, for the cold was bitter, and they wished to keep their murmured conversation from the sharp ears of Oenone, who slept in the cabin at the ship’s stern.

  “We’ll have to watch Oenone,” Cadmus warned. “She could be leading us to our deaths.”

  Machaon bit his lower lip thoughtfully. “I don’t know, Cad, it’s an elaborate way to kill us when she could just have let us bleed to death.”

  Lycon frowned. “We would have been all right, Mac, even without Oenone. We were among our people—they may not have healed us as well or as quickly but they would not have let us die.”

  Cadmus was quick to agree. “She may just be waiting for the right time.”

  Lupa raised her head from the deck where she slept. The she-wolf gazed at them for a moment and then sighing loudly, she let her head drop to rest again. Somehow Machaon found the beast’s calm presence comforting. He was still unsure of Oenone, but instinctively, he trusted Lupa.

  Cadmus knelt to stroke her. “Do you think me un
fair, Lupa?” he asked, looking into her yellow eyes.

  Machaon leant back against the ship’s side. “We’ll be careful,” he said finally.

  The city of Aea in Kolchis first became visible as a few jewelled spires piercing the swirling mist that blanketed both sea and shore. As the ship came closer it seemed to materialise, a metropolis of interconnected bastions built right up to the icy water. There was no port to speak of. A canal from the sea led into the heart of the largest fortress.

  Cadmus whistled low. “It is a good strategy,” he murmured to his brothers. “It’s almost impossible to moor without first sailing into the midst of their stronghold and the canal is wide enough for two boats abreast at most. If Troy had been built like this the Greeks would never have taken it.”

  Perhaps it was due to the swathing mist, that even the sharp eyes of the Herdsmen could not detect the inhabitants of the city. Occasionally they thought they saw some movement on a turret or battlement but they could not fix their gaze on a man. Horns sounded, deep and resonating, and in the background the faint rhythm of a chant.

  Machaon put his hand on the trembling prow. “Steady, my friend. Let us all be worthy of Hero.”

  Oenone emerged from the cabin as the ship turned into the canal. In her arms she bore a carved wooden casket.

  Lupa stood, her hackles raised as they came within the walls of Aea. There was a strangeness here.

  The nymph stopped close to Machaon and allowed the chest to land heavily on the deck before her. She was slightly out of breath with the exertion of carrying it. “Speak to Aietes of the night Troy fell—he will not doubt you were there.”

  Machaon nodded, staring at the ebony chest.

  “Tell the king that Priam entrusted this casket to you, that he asked you to return it to the Amazons,” she whispered.

  Machaon looked sharply at the first wife of Paris. “What’s in it? Why would it move Aietes to allow us egress onto his lands?”

  Oenone’s face was solemn, but her eyes sparkled. “The casket contains the remains of Pentheselia, Queen of the Amazons, who fell at Troy.”