Heroes

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘Myrsilus! Why are you here? You shouldn’t have left the ship. The ship must always be guarded. With all it contains.’ He got to his feet and walked towards the river bank.

  ‘Our comrades are guarding the ship, wanax. You can trust them.’

  They walked in silence, guided by the light of the camp fire that blazed far off in the night, and by the torch that Myrsilus held in his hand.

  ‘What did you see in that place, wanax? The others returned in a great fright. They said they saw you shout and wave your sword, chopping down swamp reeds, willow bushes and poplar saplings. They heard sounds and cries and moans but they did not know how to help you.’

  ‘I saw only what I carry within me,’ said the king.

  ‘What about the chariot of the Sun? Is it true that it fell into those waters?’

  Diomedes did not answer. He was thinking of the arched surface of the water, of that thing that launched rays of light towards the sky and then sank back into the mud and silence.

  ‘I don’t know. But it is from there that the signs that cross the night sky come. The signs that have frightened so many peoples and scattered them in every direction like crazed ants. The sky should never touch the earth. The storm of the elements will not subside yet for a long, long time. Our suffering will continue.’

  ‘I know, wanax,’ said Myrsilus. ‘I saw it in your eyes. But let us rest now, for every day has its sorrow.’

  7

  Myrsilus went to rest under the ship’s stern, but he stayed awake for some time listening to the voice of the river. He thought of the lofty mountains of ice which must have generated such an enormous current. Perhaps the Hyperborean Mountains or the Rhipaean Mountains he’d heard tale of as a boy. It was there, in a deep grotto sustained by a thousand columns of ice, that the cold wind of the north was born, to upset the waves of the sea and bring snow to the earth during the winter.

  He was thinking of what the king had seen in the swamp; something that had troubled his mind, moving him to rage against the swamp reeds and bushes. The same thing had happened to Ajax Telamon! He had slashed the throats of sheep and bulls, sure he was killing his enemies. But Myrsilus did not fear that the king had lost his mind. In his eyes he had seen suffering and terror, but not madness. Diomedes was still the strongest.

  But Lamus the Spartan, son of Onchestus, crept close to the king: ‘Was the chariot of the Sun really there, wanax?’

  The king was not sleeping. He was leaning against his shield. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘If it truly fell from the sky, it is trying to get free now, to return whence it came. Those flashes of light flung towards the sky are like a cry for help, cries that no one can understand, only fear. The earth no longer bears fruit, peoples are abandoning their homelands. .’

  ‘And you still want to proceed inland? Isn’t that cry — that lament — a sign from the gods to make us understand that we must stop challenging fortune? I beg of you, let us turn back. King Menelaus is alive, I’m sure of it, and so are nearly all my comrades. They are bound once again towards our homeland. I’ve heard that you lost your city, but if we return he can help you; he’ll ask Agamemnon, the great Atreid, to join forces with him to retake Argos and restore your command. This land is cold and deserted, not gracious and warm like our land on the banks of the Eurotas. Like your land, with abundant harvests and grazing flocks. Let us return, wanax, the kings will fight for you, and so will we. .’

  Diomedes turned towards him, but his eyes seemed to stare beyond, into the dark night. ‘Perhaps you should have stayed with the Peleset,’ he said. ‘We’ll go forward, as far as the Mountains of Ice if need be, or the Mountains of Fire, until we have found a place to establish a new city and a new kingdom. For years we suffered all the pain and fear of a cruel war. We have already gone beyond the bounds of fear. This land is worthy of us because it is unlike any other. It is barren, like our hearts, cold, like our solitude. It is austere and immense; we will conquer it and settle here, a new people.’

  Lamus walked away, his soul heavy with sadness, fearing that he would never again see his city and his father, already so advanced in years. Diomedes called him back: ‘Spartan!’

  ‘Here I am, wanax.’

  ‘One day we will return to the sea, and you can decide then whether to leave us or stay with us. But for now you must do your part; we must be able to count on your help.’

  ‘You can be sure of it,’ said the Spartan. ‘My king loved you as a friend and honoured you as a god. What is right for him is right for me.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Diomedes again, ‘while we were navigating towards this land we met up with a savage people who were marching along the coast towards the south. I sent a ship to warn the kings of the threat to the Achaeans; the comrade piloting it was Anchialus, one of my best men, whom I would have wanted with me. It’s not I who have forgotten my homeland. It’s my land that has refused me. Understand?’ Tears quivered on his eyelids, but the ardour of his gaze dried them before they could descend to his cheeks.

  ‘I understand,’ said Lamus, and walked away.

  King Diomedes thought of Anchialus and his ship; he imagined that it had already reached the land of the Achaeans and had cast its anchor in the sandy bay of Pylus. Anchialus would have made his way to the palace of Nestor and would be enjoying his hospitality. Diomedes would have liked to be in his place, warming himself before the blaze of a big fire, eating roasted meat sliced into big pieces by the carvers, drinking wine late into the night and then lying beside a white-necked, soft-eyed maiden. He imagined this to be the privilege that his companion Anchialus was enjoying in that moment, and he stretched out with a sigh.

  But the immortal gods were otherwise inclined.

  After Anchialus had brought the ship about as he had been ordered by his king, he did not go far forward, because the wind was against him and the night dark. Having reached the closest island, he had dropped anchor in the shelter of a small promontory. He thought he would wait in that place until the wind had changed direction and could push him south towards the land of the Achaeans. He had stretched out on the bottom of the ship to look at the sky and the stars that would guide him. His heart was assailed by conflicting feelings. He was sorry to leave his king, whom he had fought with for years, who had saved his life in battle time after time. But he was also filled with joy at the thought of seeing his land again, and his old mother and father, if they were still alive. He thought that Nestor and the other kings would thank him, and give him rich gifts in exchange; weapons, garments and perhaps a beautiful, high-flanked woman to take to his wedding chamber.

  He waited ten days. On the eleventh the wind changed and began to blow from the north, violently, raising wild waves. Anchialus waited until it had expended its energy, then hoisted the sail and began his voyage. The wind had shifted direction and was blowing aport so that the pilot had to frequently compensate with oars and helm to keep from being dragged westward into the open sea.

  They proceeded the whole day and stopped for the night near a promontory on the coast. The place was deserted; the only dim lights to be seen were a few isolated huts up on the mountains at quite a distance. He chose Frissus, a man from Abia, to stand guard, and told him to wake a companion, whoever he preferred, to relieve him when the stars had covered a quarter of their course across the sky. He himself went to rest.

  But Frissus was deceived by the peace that reigned in that place and by his own weariness, and he fell fast asleep. He saw no danger gathering, he heard no sound, because the murmur of the wind and the splashing of the tide were like a soft, reassuring voice, like the lullaby that invites a child to sleep. He started awake shortly before dawn when the cold stung his limbs and the shrieks of the seagulls brought sudden anguish to his heart.

  He got to his feet, but Anchialus was already standing opposite him, his sword in hand and a look of stupor in his eyes. He was not looking at him, but at something behind him. Frissus turned and saw a host of white wings in the sky and
a host of black sails on the sea, barely distinguishable from the black of night by the pale glimmer of dawn.

  The others awoke as well and ran to the ship’s side, looking at each other in silent dismay.

  ‘We must flee,’ said Anchialus. ‘If they reach us, it’s all over. No one journeys by sea in this season and at this time of day, with so many men and so many ships, unless he is forced to. They can only bring us harm.’

  ‘Hoist the sail!’ he shouted. ‘Man the oars!’ The crew swiftly obeyed, the ship left its mooring and thrust forward. Anchialus flanked the pilot aft, to aid him in governing the ship. But the bulk of the island had hidden part of the fleet from view, and no sooner had their ship left shore that they found four vessels bearing down on them at full tilt. One tried to bar their way, but Anchialus managed to dodge him by veering towards shore. The two ships were briefly side to side, so close that the Achaean warriors could see their adversaries in the face. They were dark-skinned, with black, tightly curled hair like the Ethiopians, armed with bronze swords and leather shields, and they wore leather helmets as well. Their commander spoke a rough Achaean. He yelled out: ‘Stop or we will sink you!’ But Anchialus only urged his men to row harder.

  ‘Who are they?’ asked the pilot.

  The enemy commander leaned overboard, hanging from the stays by one hand and grasping a sabre in the other. ‘Shekelesh!’ he shouted. ‘And I’ll chop off your nose and your ears when I catch you!’

  ‘Siculians!’ said Anchialus to the pilot without losing sight of the enemy. ‘Oh gods. . what are Siculians doing here? Put about!’ he ordered the pilot. ‘Put about, get the ship to the other side of that rock.’ The pilot obeyed and they pulled away from the Shekelesh ship, which disappeared from sight briefly behind a little rocky island.

  ‘I’ve been to their island, when I was once a ship-boy on a merchant vessel carrying wine. They were said to have come from nearby Libya, populating the island even before Minos ruled Crete. They are poor people, renowned for their fierceness; they will fight for anyone and against anyone. Their name itself sounds like the hissing of a snake! We must out-distance them. If they take us, they’ll sell us all as slaves in the nearest market.’

  They rounded the island, but soon found two more ships on their left.

  ‘It’s a trap!’ shouted Anchialus. ‘If they wedge us between them, be ready to draw your arms.’ One of the light Shekelesh vessels had already caught up with them and was cutting them.

  ‘Ram it!’ shouted Anchialus. The crew struck the sail. ‘Now!’ he shouted again. The oarsmen increased their pace and the pilot veered left, colliding full force with the enemy vessel. The little ship was rent and foundered instantly, but the others had the time to draw up alongside and board the Achaean ship. The Shekelesh clambered over the sides of their ships, shouting and wielding swords and daggers. The Achaeans abandoned the oars and launched an armed assault on their enemies. Anchialus shouted ‘Argos!’ with all the breath he had, as they would once shout on the plain of Ilium at the moment of unleashing their attack. ‘Argos!’ he shouted. And the melee spread like wildfire, filling the ship with screams and blood. The Achaeans fought with desperate energy, killing many and throwing many overboard, but they were outnumbered when a third ship drew up to join the battle.

  The pilot spotted Anchialus in the midst of a group of enemies; he swung his double-edged axe, chopping the head clean off one of the Shekelesh and shearing another’s arm, but it was evident that he would soon be overwhelmed. He burst into the circle, pushing them aside with great force, and hurled himself at Anchialus, shouting: ‘Save yourself! The king gave you an order!’ The pilot threw him into the sea, before he was surrounded and massacred by a swarm of assailants.

  The other comrades were done in as well, one after another. The Shekelesh took only two of them alive, and tortured them all that day to avenge the heavy losses they had suffered without any advantage, for there was nothing on the vanquished ship worth plundering.

  Anchialus gripped a piece of planking; he could hear the cries of his comrades and he bit his lips bloody in rage, but he could do nothing to help. His pilot had given his own life to save him and allow him to carry out the task that Diomedes had given him. He had no choice but to try to survive and go on his way.

  His limbs numb from the cold, Anchialus swam to the island and from there, before nightfall, to the mainland. He was drenched and starving, and the chill of the night would surely have killed him had not fortune finally come to his aid. He found a little shack made of sticks and dried branches, a shelter for animals.

  There were no animals, nor even a bit of hay, but there was plenty of manure. Anchialus took off his clothing and buried himself naked in the pile of dung, whose warmth kept him alive that night.

  The next morning, he bathed in the sea and put on the clothing which had dried overnight. The Shekelesh ships could just barely be seen at the horizon; the wind was carrying them west, towards the land of Hesperia, where king Diomedes was directed or perhaps had already arrived.

  He was cold, for he had lost his cloak, so he ran southward all that day, to keep warm and to dismiss thoughts of hunger and fatigue. He ran, his heart heavy with pain, thinking of his lost comrades lying on the sea bottom, food for fish. He feared that he would never succeed in reaching the land of the Achaeans, to launch the alarm so that the kings could prepare their defences.

  He would stop every so often when the path touched the seashore and collect molluscs and little fish, eating them raw to assuage his hunger pangs, soon resuming his journey. When he crossed a forest, he would gather snails and larva attached to the shrubs in their winter slumber. When night fell, he sought shelter in a little cave, lining the floor with dry leaves which he also used to wall up the mouth. He fell asleep disparaging such a pitiful existence, more similar to an animal’s than to a man’s. In just one day, he who was the commander of a ship with fifty Achaean warriors had lost everything, and was reduced to a brute who slept in animal dung and ate raw meat. He clenched his jaw, closing his wounded soul between his teeth; he knew that if he gave in to despair, his world would be engulfed and annihilated by that horde of barbarians that scoured land and sea with no end in mind. More desperate, perhaps, than he was, more lost, even, than his king Diomedes, who sought a kingdom in the mists of night. Perhaps an entire world would continue to exist, with its labours and hopes, if he, Anchialus, found the strength to go on.

  The next day, as he left his shelter with his limbs aching and his eyes puffy, he saw a woman, standing before him. She was covered with hides from head to foot and was bringing a flock of sheep to pasture. He looked at her without saying a word and she did not draw back; she was not frightened by his wretched appearance. She had him stretch out next to one of her goats and squeezed the animal’s teats into his mouth, satiating him with the milk.

  She took him that night into her hut near a stream, a shelter made of stakes and branches and covered with mud, where she lived alone. She milked the sheep and goats, making a curd which she shaped into cheese and placed on grates hanging over the hearth. She fed him smoked cheese and flat millet bread roasted on the embers and gave him milk to drink. When they had finished eating, she took off her coarse garment and stood before him nude, in silence. Her hands were large and cracked and her nails were black, her hair was dirty and tangled, but her body seemed lovely and desirable in the glow of the fire. Strain and exertion had marked her face, but had not erased an austere, simple grace; her nose was small and straight, her deep, dark-eyed gaze modest, nearly frowning.

  Anchialus drew close and took her into his arms. He lay with her on the sheepskins which covered the floor near the fire. She caressed his hair and shoulders with her dry, rough hands as he entered her moist, warm belly and her ardour blazed within him like the heat of the embers.

  He spent the whole winter with her. He helped her to tend to the animals and milk the goats and sheep. They hardly ever spoke and, when the snow fell to whiten t
he mountains and the valleys, they would sit in silence watching the big flakes whirling in the cold, grey sky. And so Anchialus survived and waited for the season to change, so he could begin his journey once again. He was certain that not even the Dor or Shekelesh could proceed when the snow covered the ground and the storms raged at sea.

  One evening at the end of winter, she crouched near the fire and took some bones out of a little sack, shook them in her fist and then threw them on to the floor, three times. She suddenly stopped, looked at the knuckle bones scattered over the ashes, and raised her tear-filled eyes to his. She knew that the moment had come to let him go. The next morning she filled a sack with food and gave him a skin with fresh water drawn from the stream, pelts to protect him from the chill of night, and a walking stick. Anchialus took his smoke-blackened sword from the wall and departed. When he reached the mountain ridge that had closed off his horizon towards the south for so many days, he turned back. She was small and very far away, a dark figure standing in front of a solitary hut. He waved his hand but she did not move, as though her grief and the cold wind which blew from the mountainside had changed her into a statue of ice.

  Diomedes left the mouth of the Eridanus and sailed yet another day up the river, taking advantage of the wind blowing from the east which swelled his sails, without finding any signs of human presence. The men heaved the ships aground on the southern side of a bend in the huge river. They had cast their nets before going ashore and caught a great deal of fish, which they roasted on the fire. Some of them were so big that they had had to run them through with their spears to stop them from destroying the nets.

  The next day the king decided to venture inland. He had a trench dug and a palisade built for the men who would remain to guard the camp and the vessels. He had them unload the ships’ cargo so that maintenance work could be done on the hulls. He had the crew put ashore the chest that he always kept tied to his ship’s mast and disembark his horses, the ones he had taken from Aeneas after he had fought and wounded him on the fields of Ilium. He appointed Myrsilus to take command in his absence. He instructed his escort to wear battle gear and to take enough food rations for three days. They departed, following what seemed to be a torrent that strangely took water from the river instead of feeding into it. They marched the entire first day along the little stream, and towards evening they sighted a village. It was surrounded by a wide moat fed by the canal that they had been following all day. Within the moat was an embankment topped by a palisade, beyond which the roofs of a great number of large dwellings could be seen, apparently all quite the same, arranged in orderly, parallel rows. A wooden footbridge had been lowered over the moat at the entrance to the village: a door of tree trunks flanked by two towers, made of tree trunks as well and covered by roofs made of branches. The fields all around revealed the signs of man’s labour, yet seemed to be abandoned; they were scattered with patches of stubble and with piles of hay, now soaked through and covered with whitish mould. Rotten or dried fruits hung from trees planted in lines along the borders of the cultivated lands; the ground at the base of the trunks was thick with fallen fruits. Not a wisp of smoke rose from the rooftops of the village houses, nor could a single sound be heard: not a voice, not the bleating of a sheep nor the lowing of a calf.