Heroes

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Here and there, marshes glimmered on the ground, and the land would suddenly become soft and spongy under their feet. Thick oak groves sheltered groups of boars rooting about in search of acorns and tubers. Deer with majestic horns would stop suddenly at the edge of a wood and stare at the intruders, blowing little clouds of steam from moist nostrils.

  They walked and walked until they could see a wisp of smoke rising in the distance, as the western sky began to redden in a muted sunset. There was a little town of grass-roofed wooden huts covered with mud. There also seemed to be a camp at a short distance from the settlement.

  ‘If we had brought our arms we could have had food and women!’ said Myrsilus.

  ‘Instead, we’ll go to them and ask for their hospitality; that way we’ll find out where we are. You don’t say a word. I know better how to deal with them.’

  They got closer and saw that around the little town were droves of small, black swine and flocks of sheep. Ducks and geese dipped their bills into the mud on the shores of a little marsh. A group of children swarmed towards them and a dog started barking, soon joined by others. Several men came forward then as well; the Chnan raised his hand and told Myrsilus to do the same. The men got closer and were staring at them. Their legs were covered with tanned skins and they wore long-sleeved tunics of thick wool, belted at the waist with a strip of leather decorated with carved pieces of bone. They carried no arms, at least, none that could be seen. They spoke among themselves for awhile and then one approached and said something.

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Myrsilus.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been around these parts before.’ The Chnan loosened his belt, raised his tunic and slipped out something he wore against his skin: a long string wound several times around his waist, strung with brightly coloured glass beads and bronze clasps adorned with amber or glass.

  Myrsilus looked at him in surprise: ‘Where did you find all that?’ he asked.

  ‘This is my personal treasure; I always carry it with me. I was wearing it when you pulled me from the sea.’

  The men instantly drew closer and behind them, Myrsilus noticed some women as well. They raised up on tiptoe to admire the wares that sparkled in the hands of the Chnan. Soon they were all chattering away, each in his own language, and it seemed that they could all understand each other well enough. The Chnan moved his hands with the skill of a juggler as his face assumed a great variety of expressions; he soon was directing all his attention towards the women and ignoring the men. He would place the shining clasps on their rough-hewn woollen clothing, and those little trinkets seemed to light up the beauty of those coarse, wild women, much as a bare stone is brightened by the colours of a little springtime flower.

  The Chnan gave up a couple of the clasps and a few beads in exchange for hospitality for the two of them and for the comrades who were waiting just outside the village, in addition to a sack of barley bread and five whole cheeses for their return journey.

  He and Myrsilus ate in the house of the man who seemed their chief, the only one who had bought ornaments for himself, his wife and his eldest daughter. His arms hung on the walls of the only room that made up the house: a long bronze sword, a studded shield and a dagger. The floor was made of flame-hardened dirt.

  The Chnan spoke during the whole dinner and it was evident that as time passed, he was rapidly learning to understand them and make himself understood. At times he accompanied his words by drawing signs with his knife in the barley loaf in front of him or on the curdled milk in a bowl in the centre of the table. The dogs lay near the entrance, waiting to lick the bowls once the meal was finished.

  After a while, they heard low noises outside the door, the sound of hushed words; the reflection of flames flashed under the door. The door then opened and a man entered, to speak with his chieftain.

  ‘Could you understand what they were saying?’ Myrsilus asked the Chnan.

  ‘Not much of it. But I think I’ve convinced him that I understand much more than I really do; that’s what’s important. No one would talk to a man who understood nothing.’

  Myrsilus shook his head: ‘So what’s happening now?’

  ‘Someone has just arrived. Perhaps from the camp we saw as we were approaching.’

  The Chnan followed the chieftain out of the house and saw a group of men gathered in a nearby field. They were carrying lit torches and were dressed in a style he did not recognize. He turned to ask Myrsilus whether he had ever seen similar people, but his companion had drawn back, into the shadows behind the door. The Chnan turned back. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t you coming to see the new arrivals?’

  ‘Trojans,’ said Myrsilus in a low voice, his head down. ‘They’re Trojans and we are unarmed.’

  5

  The night that Menelaus disappeared, many wondered how such a thing could have happened. Some said that a sudden wind had pushed him south, sweeping him away for days and days, until he was cast ashore in Egypt, or at the mouths of the Nile. But on the other hand, at that very same time, at the end of the summer, Nestor had reached Pylus safely and without difficulty, Diomedes had landed on the beaches of Argos and even Agamemnon had seen Mycenae again, although it would have been better for him to have died in Ilium.

  It is hard to believe that only Menelaus met with hostile winds. And it is difficult to believe that none of the sixty ships that accompanied him found their way home. An entire fleet does not disappear like that unless preordained by the gods. Things went quite differently, I believe.

  Those years were cursed. Something unknown and relentless, perhaps the will of the gods, perhaps some other obscure force, drove many peoples from their homes. In some places, the land grew dry and the sprouts were scorched by drought before they could ripen, while oxen collapsed all at once under their yokes, dying of hunger and strain. Other animals became sterile or stopped reproducing; if they did bear young, the monstrous creatures they engendered were hurriedly buried at night by terror-stricken farmers and peasants.

  Elsewhere, the earth was scourged by storms of wind and rain, flooded by torrents and rivers that overflowed their banks, inundating the countryside with mud that rotted when the sun rose over the horizon. That decay generated an endless number of repugnant creatures: toads, salamanders and serpents that spread everywhere, infesting the fields, the pathways and the dwellings of men. Animal carcasses were abandoned by the rivers to rot along the shore as the waters subsided, attracting crows and vultures which filled the sky with their shrieking by day and jackals which let out their mournful howls by night.

  Only the sea seem to be spared these disasters: her clear waters continued to nurture every kind of fish, as well as the gigantic creatures of the abyss. And trade continued as well on the paths of the sea, albeit greatly diminished. Thus, many peoples entrusted their destinies to the sea, preferring to face the unknown rather than wait in their own lands to die of starvation, hardship and disease. Others, who already inhabited the seas, gave themselves over to raiding and piracy.

  A sort of coalition was formed, joining the Peleset and the Shekelesh, the Lukka and the Teresh, the Sherdan and the Derden, and many other peoples as well. They were warmongers, desperate, ready for anything, and they decided to try their luck against the richest, most prosperous and powerful nation of the earth: Egypt. They did not know that the land of the Nile had been stricken by the same scourges, although there the wisdom of the priests and the architects, the patience of the people, and the strength of their sovereign had managed to attenuate the frightful effects.

  They say that a group of Achaeans joined forces with this coalition as well; these were the Spartan warriors of Menelaus that a strange destiny had dragged to those distant regions.

  The night in which they had disappeared from sight, Menelaus’s ships sailed in the direction of Delos. His men were told that the queen had convinced him to consult the oracle of Apollo, the god who had protected the Trojans during the war. The king s
ought to know what sacrifices of expiation he must perform for having taken part in the destruction of the city, in order to escape the ire of the god who would otherwise have annihilated them.

  Apollo had answered that they would have to offer a sacrifice in the land of Danaus, and then consult the oracle of the Old Man of the Sea on the deserted shores of Libya. The land of Danaus was Egypt; Menelaus decided to set sail at midday along with his entire fleet, and thus he left the land of the Achaeans behind him, as his brother Agamemnon went to his death.

  The gods who know all and see all perhaps allowed Menelaus, lost in the arms of Helen, to hear the last gasp of his dying brother; perhaps they passed on, in a cold shiver, the stab of the sword that cut the throat of the great Atreid. And when the king abandoned himself to the act of love, he was invaded by the same chill of death, by the same terror of infinite emptiness.

  The fleet crossed the sea, sailing with favourable winds for eight days and eight nights until they came within sight of the coast, near the western mouth of the Nile. But as fortune or chance had it, in those very days a multitude of other ships were present there. The Peoples of the Sea; the Peleset and the Lukka, the Derden and the Teresh, the Shekelesh and the Sherden, were attacking Egypt as allies of the Libyan king Mauroy.

  Pharaoh Ramses, the third of this name, decided boldly to counter-attack rather than to wait for the clash with the enemy; he sent out his fleet from the western branch of the Nile and from the eastern branch of the Nile and moved them out to sea on both sides, exploiting the land wind of the early morning. Menelaus’s army, finding themselves in that place by mere chance, were attacked from the west before they could establish any contact, and they were forced to defend themselves. His warriors, accustomed to years and years of fierce fighting, drove back the attackers several times, but a steady stream of Egyptian ships continued to descend from the mouth of the Nile. To their left, a group of Sherden vessels full of warriors with round shields and conical helmets adorned with ox horns were battling tenaciously against a number of Egyptian ships which manoeuvred with great expertise in the shallow waters along the coast. In the skirmish that ensued, the Sherden ventured too close to the shore and ran aground on the shoals. They were shortly surrounded on all sides and massacred.

  Menelaus could not understand what was happening: wherever his gaze fell, the sea teemed with ships and warriors from every nation. But although their number was enormous, they were thrown into confusion because they could not communicate; there was no one giving precise orders that could be heard by all. The Pharaoh’s fleet, on the contrary, moved with supreme skill in those treacherous waters. They separated into squads, only to join back together again like a phalanx on a battlefield. Most of the heavy Egyptian warships continued to fan out towards the open sea; their crews exchanged signals by hoisting cloths of various colours on their ladder masts and by sending flashing light signals using their gleaming copper shields.

  His men tried to convince Menelaus to engage in battle with all he had; they thought that if the coalition were victorious they would be able to divide up the booty and return to Sparta with immense riches, but Menelaus feared the loss of his fleet in those dangerous waters and signalled for his crews to get out as soon as it became possible.

  Those who could did so, but some of the ships had penetrated too far into the enemy formation, and were forced to fight so as not to succumb. Some ships were set aflame by incendiary arrows and had to be abandoned. Their crews perished or ended their days in slavery, labouring over the construction of colossal monuments in the land of Egypt. Menelaus attempted to break through the encirclement with the surviving ships, but his was a hopeless endeavour. A vigorous sea wind had picked up and it drove his ships, together with the vessels of the coalition, towards the shore and against the sandy shoals. The Egyptian fleet, which had taken advantage of the morning land wind to move out to sea, now had the sea wind aft and closed in on the invaders like a pair of pincers, forcing them into the shallow waters of the delta.

  Menelaus managed to save his ship thanks to the strength of his rowers, who struggled against the wind and propelled the ship against the Egyptian fleet. They rammed the side of a great vessel and sank it, then led the surviving ships of their fleet out to sea through the breach. The helmsman, an old sailor from Asine, realized that the sea wind was shifting west, and he had the sail hoisted immediately, as the other crews followed his example. The ships picked up a certain speed and, although they risked capsizing aport, they held their course until they reached an island where they could take shelter.

  Meanwhile, the Peleset had succeeded in breaking through the encirclement on the east side of the formation, and escaping to the open sea. Some ships put out to sea, while others, most of them, retreated to the Chnan coast and settled between Gaza and Joppa. They gave this land the name of Palestena.

  But the rest of the coalition fleet found no way out; driven on to the sand and the mud of the delta, the hulled ships ran aground while the light Egyptian craft, nearly all made of papyrus, easily drew up alongside them. The bundled stems used to build the pharaoh’s ships were soaked with water and would not catch fire. Their high prows and high sterns allowed them to navigate the waters of the sea, while their flat bottoms and pliable structure let them slip over the shallowest of shoals with the agile movements of a water snake.

  The weather did not change until sunset, when a strong wind picked up from the desert and blasted out over the sea, dragging with it the remaining coalition ships and casting them into the high waves; the Teresh and Shekelesh were scattered in every direction.

  That very evening the pharaoh was already celebrating his triumph over the invaders. He had the great royal parade vessel put out to sea, and he himself, standing at the prow, drew his bow and ran through the shipwrecked sailors still floundering in the waves. His concubines, stretched out on soft cushions, watched with admiration and called out with glee each time his arrows hit their mark. The wretches who sought to escape along the banks of the river were sucked up into the mud or ended up devoured by scaly monsters with webbed paws and huge mouths full of sharp teeth.

  The Libyan chieftain, Mauroy, managed to save himself, but his end was no less terrible. They say that once he returned home, his own people impaled him and left him to rot, preyed upon by crows and vultures.

  At nightfall, Menelaus walked to the beach on the little island where they had taken refuge and looked out towards the coast. The glow of the fires still quivered on the horizon; from the darkness descending over the water came the cries and laments of shipwrecked sailors whom the wind was dragging into the open sea to sure death. He suddenly perceived, along with the smell of burning wood and scorched bodies, the scent of his queen and he turned. Helen was at his side, staring steadily at the horizon without blinking. The wind pressed the light fabric of her Carian gown to her high breasts and slender legs. She observed the corpses crowding the expanse of sea with the same firm, proud gaze he had once seen on her face as she watched her suitors competing to win her favour.

  The moon was rising between the lotuses and papyruses of the delta. The king thought he heard a low groaning; he turned, and saw that it was coming from a man dragging himself on to the shore, bleeding copiously from many wounds. He saw him raise both his arms towards the disc of the moon, he heard him pray, weeping, in one of the hundred languages of the great defeated coalition. And he saw him fall face down with a loud thud. He was no longer the man who had departed from his city or village one day, leaving his wife and his children. He was a dark, shapeless thing that the sea rolled in the mud with its incessant swell.

  Menelaus’s fleet was hauled aground by the men for the winter, and for months they all laboured on the ships to repair and restore them, so they would be ready to put out to sea as soon as the conditions were favourable for navigation. They were mistaken about that. They were forced to remain in that forgotten place for nearly three years. First, an epidemic broke out; many died and many s
hips were deprived of their crews. Then, impetuous northern winds beat down on the sea all the next spring and summer, bringing with them storms and squalls, gales and torrential rain. When the weather gave them a little respite, they attacked passing ships, or fished or hunted in the interior, but they never ventured on to the open sea. When the third springtime arrived, Menelaus departed with his ship and several of his men to sail to a place on the coast where he had heard he could consult the oracle of the Old Man of the Sea. He sought to know his destiny, which seemed more dismal and incomprehensible with each passing day.

  The oracle struck dread into the hearts of men. Few had ever seen his face. Sometimes his voice was said to issue from the mouths of animals who lurked in his cave; jackals or foxes or even marine animals that lived in his lair. At other times, the cave was deserted, and his voice came from the flames of the sacred fire that burned in the brazier. For this reason he was known as the ‘ever-changing’ one.

  When Menelaus disembarked, he found a deserted beach scattered with the bones of men and animals, and with the remains of shipwrecked vessels.

  He left his men at the ship, laid down his sword on the sand and entered the cave alone. The walls were painted with scenes of fishing and hunting; men in long pirogues chasing huge sea cetaceans, others in groups, armed with bows and arrows, hunting fabulous beasts with long spotted necks, and short-maned asses or mules with black and white stripes. A sudden barking startled him and an animal that was half dog and half fish ran off towards the sea, rolling on fins that took the place of his legs. The king had heard say that the Old Man used similar beasts as his guard dogs.