by Glyn Iliffe
The first attacker had abandoned his spear and now rushed at Eperitus with a dagger. Eperitus caught the man’s wrist and dropped his own weapon as he struggled to prise the blade from the Cicone’s hand. For a moment their faces were so close he could smell the wine on the man’s breath. Pushing him away, he aimed a punch at the side of his head. The Cicone blocked it with his forearm, then closed quickly and butted Eperitus in the face. Stunned, Eperitus staggered back and caught his heel on the boy who was still clinging to his leg.
He fell heavily, pulling his assailant on top of him. The point of the dagger was now pressing against Eperitus’s side, held back only by the thick leather armour that had turned so many other blades in his years of fighting. The man grunted something, his bearded cheek pressed against Eperitus’s face as they matched their strength against each other. In desperation, Eperitus bit into the exposed flesh, driving his teeth through the hair and skin until he felt the warm blood burst into his mouth. The Cicone tore himself away with a bellow of pain and rage, releasing his hold on the dagger and wrenching free of Eperitus’s grip as he pressed his hands to the wound. Eperitus spat out the flesh he had torn off and drove his fist into the man’s face, sending him rolling aside in the dust. Grabbing his discarded spear, he stumbled to his feet ready for the next attack, only to see his adversary staggering off through the confused melee. Then an instinct warned him of danger. Turning, he saw the boy who had pleaded for mercy with the abandoned dagger in his hand. Eperitus instinctively raised his weapon, impaling the boy as he leapt. His body slumped to the ground, the spear buried in his chest.
‘Eperitus!’ Antiphus was beside him, an arrow fitted in his bow. ‘We need you.’
Without waiting, he ran towards the town. The last of the Cicones were being dealt with by the Ithacans, so Eperitus followed the archer to the walls. These were low and poorly maintained, but they were still twice the height of an ordinary man and the Ithacans had brought no ladders. Polites crouched with his back against the wall and his hands cupped beneath Odysseus’s foot. Then, standing to his full height, he threw the king up towards the ramparts. Odysseus caught the top of the wall with both hands and began pulling himself up. A lone figure appeared and ran along the top of the battlements towards him, his woodman’s axe raised over his head. Antiphus’s bow twanged and the man fell backwards, his dying scream silenced by the arrow in his throat. Odysseus spared the archer an appreciative glance before hauling himself onto the parapet. Another Ithacan stepped up to Polites and was thrown upwards in the same manner, but before the next man could follow, Eperitus pulled him back by the shoulder and placed his foot into Polites’s hands. A moment later he was being launched up towards the ramparts, catching hold of the rough stone and hoping it would not crumble away before he could pull himself onto the battlements.
Two pairs of strong hands grabbed him under the armpits and lifted him up.
‘All we need to do is open the gates and the city is ours,’ Odysseus said. ‘This way.’
He pointed to a flight of stone steps leading to the town below. A quick glance showed Eperitus several dozen stone buildings, the streets between them filled with people fleeing towards another gate on the far side of the encircling walls. He pulled his sword from its scabbard and followed Odysseus and the other soldier to the top of the steps. Below them a handful of Cicones were leaning their weight against the town gates, trying to relieve some of the pressure on the crossbar. The Ithacans sprang down the stairs and attacked them, killing a man each before they could draw their weapons. Eperitus stooped and pulled the shield from the back of his victim, slipping it onto his arm just in time to fend off a blow from one of the remaining Cicones.
‘Greek pig!’ the man said, speaking in a barely intelligible form of the Trojan tongue. He spat into the dust and pointed to the left side of his face, where the cheek was hideously scarred and the ear missing. ‘A Greek gave me this at Troy. Now you can pay for it!’
He threw his weight onto his front foot and thrust the point of his sword at Eperitus’s chest. Eperitus knocked the attack aside with his shield, fell onto his right knee and swung his own weapon in a low arc at his opponent’s legs. The blade sliced through his ankle and the man – a look of disbelief frozen onto his face – fell sidelong onto the dusty flagstones. Eperitus dispatched him with a sword thrust to the heart. Odysseus and the other Ithacan had already finished the two remaining Cicones and were lifting the crossbar from its brackets on the back of the gates. At once, the doors were pushed inward by a surge of Ithacans. Eurylochus and his Taphian henchman, Selagos, were at their head.
‘The town’s ours, lads,’ Eurylochus called out, not noticing Odysseus. ‘Take whatever you want – gold, women, wine!’
The men behind him cheered and flooded into the streets, already littered with the flotsam of a population that had fled for their lives. Odysseus leapt halfway up the stairs to the battlements and called out in a booming voice, stopping the Ithacans in their tracks.
‘I command this army, not Eurylochus. No-one is to get drunk. I will not have a repeat of what happened at Troy. Captives are valuable and will be treated with respect. All plunder – women, children, wine, gold, anything – is to be taken down to the beach for fair distribution among the ships later.’
‘Fair by whose standards?’ Eurylochus challenged. ‘The standards of kings? We saw how Agamemnon shared out the plunder from Troy – half for him and half for everyone else!’
‘We want what we’ve fought for,’ another voice shouted to murmured agreement.
‘So long as I’m your king you’ll follow my orders!’ Odysseus said. ‘And if anyone else wants to question my authority let him do it at sword point or keep his silence. That includes you, cousin.’
He stared at Eurylochus, who met his gaze with a glimmer of rebellion in his eyes. Selagos stood behind him like a tower of rock, his face hard and fearless. Eperitus tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, sensing trouble. But at the moment before Eperitus thought Odysseus’s patience would break, Eurylochus broke eye contact and turned to the men around him.
‘Come on, lads. We have our orders. No wine. No women. Your reward is to collect the king’s plunder, won for his glory alone.’
They began to disperse in groups, some of them grumbling aloud, others casting sullen looks over their shoulders as they went. Eperitus joined Odysseus on the steps.
‘Did you hear him? He speaks as if the army’s his, not yours.’
‘Eurylochus is a fool,’ Odysseus replied. ‘It’s the men I’m worried about. Too many were ready to take his side.’
‘The war has got to them. We’ve been too long away from home, paid too high a price.’
‘It’s true. And no man should be exposed to his king for too long. They begin to see his weaknesses. But this is more than war-weariness, Eperitus. This is the beginning of Athena’s curse. Their disobedience will grow in time, and as it does they will turn to Eurylochus for leadership.’
‘Well, better him than someone with intelligence, I suppose. But I still can’t believe they’ll choose him over you, not after all you’ve brought them through.’
Odysseus sheathed his sword. ‘If the gods make them tire of me then they’ll follow anyone with a shred of legitimacy. And Eurylochus has royal blood.’
‘But he’s a buffoon.’
‘Maybe so, but he’s being guided by someone with a sharper mind.’
‘You mean the Taphian, Selagos?’
Odysseus put a hand on Eperitus’s shoulder and led him down the steps.
‘Come on, I need to see the captives are being well treated.’
‘You realise, of course, there won’t be anyone left but the old and the crippled,’ Eperitus said with a smile. ‘The ones worth capturing left through the other gate while the battle was going on, taking their wealth with them. Hardly worth taking the long route home, in my opinion.’
‘Perhaps you were too busy fighting old men and children to notice E
urybates and a hundred warriors going around the hills to the northern gate,’ Odysseus said, returning Eperitus’s smile. ‘After all, there’s always another gate to any town. Unfortunately for the Cicones, Eurybates will have been waiting for them when they left.’
They moved into the press of single-storey mud brick houses, following a narrow street lined with empty animal pens and the abandoned stalls of farmers, fishermen, potters, sandal makers and other merchants. The smells of woodsmoke, raw fish and freshly baked bread told Eperitus their attack had caught the townsfolk completely by surprise. He had not been this close to normal, civilised life for a long time and regretted his part in frightening away the men, women and children who should have been thronging the streets. In his youth he had disdained everyday human existence and thirsted for the excitement and glory of battle. But here, in this place that had only a short while before been filled with life, he understood what men really fought for. Encamped beyond the walls of Troy he had only known a war of honour and renown, not the war of preservation that the Trojans had fought. And their war was the more honourable one. If the achievements of Hector and Paris had earned them glory, it was for the love of their homes and families that they had fought. Could there be any better reason for a man to take up arms and kill his enemies?
Of course, Odysseus had known that all along.
The sights and sounds of a city in turmoil were becoming rapidly more obvious. A jar flew out of a doorway and smashed against the wall opposite, splattering it with olive oil and shards of clay. A chair followed, followed by a peal of laughter. Further along the street, wooden stalls had been turned over and the goods on them left to spoil in the dust. From the alleys on both sides came shouts and sounds of destruction. Odysseus picked up a wheel of flatbread, brushed away the dirt and tore off half for Eperitus.
‘We should be thankful the battle wasn’t harder,’ he said. ‘The men would have been torching the place by now and looking for blood.’
As the king spoke, a woman’s scream tore the air. Eperitus’s muscles tensed and he drew his sword.
‘Leave it,’ Odysseus said. ‘We need to find the other gate and see to the safety of the prisoners.’
‘Let Eurybates take care of them,’ Eperitus replied, trying to calculate where the scream had come from.
‘You can’t save every woman that falls victim to a lust-filled warrior.’
The woman screamed again.
‘Well, I can save this one,’ Eperitus said.
He ran off down a side alley. Footsteps behind him told him Odysseus was following. The narrow passage twisted confusingly between recently deserted hovels, crossed a street filled with Ithacans and continued on the other side.
‘You’ll never find her,’ Odysseus called after him.
The woman screamed again, just a little way ahead now, and was followed by the wail of a child. Eperitus stumbled into a small square surrounded by large houses with porticoed entrances. A walled well was at the centre. On the floor was the body of a man dressed in white robes. A soldier stood over him with his sword drawn, while by the well was a half-naked woman, her chiton hanging in shreds about her waist. She was clutching a small boy to her chest, but another soldier tore him from her arms and flung him aside. As the woman cried out, a third soldier seized hold of her and pressed his mouth to hers, his hand fumbling against her bared breasts.
It was a sight Eperitus had seen many times before, but the woman’s scream had reminded him of the shriek from the ships as the first volley of arrows had overshot the beach. All he could think of was whether the scream had belonged to Astynome, and the thought enraged him. With a shout, he raised his sword and ran at the Ithacan standing over the dead man. The soldier turned with an expression of confusion, then fear, as he saw the sword in Eperitus’s hand. Eperitus swung with all his strength, intending to kill the man, but before the blade could slice through his neck a shield blocked its path.
Odysseus threw Eperitus’s sword back and turned to the three soldiers.
‘Go, before I kill you myself.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ said the man whose life he had saved, before scuttling away with his comrades.
As they fled, the woman ran to her child and took him in her arms, comforting him with her kisses. Eperitus took control of his rage and sheathed his sword.
‘Odysseus, I’m –’
‘Don’t be,’ the king said, kneeling by the dead man. ‘They deserved death, but if news of it had reached the other men… Zeus’s beard, he’s alive!’
The man, who had been lying on his front covered by his white robes, coughed hoarsely and pushed himself up onto his elbows, his forehead still resting in the dirt.
‘Maron!’ the woman shouted.
She ran over with the child still clutched in her arms, then held back out of fear of the red-haired warrior kneeling over her husband.
‘Go to him,’ Odysseus said in the Trojan tongue, which she seemed to understand.
The man sat back on his heels and raised his head groggily. There was a wound on his bald scalp and blood had trickled down in dark rivulets over his face. As he saw his family he burst into tears and opened his arms to receive them. The woman kissed his forehead repeatedly and then began to fuss over his wound. After a while the man spoke to his wife, who moved away with the child still in her arms.
‘Why did you save us?’ he asked in Greek, looking at Eperitus.
‘I… I heard a scream and –’
‘We were told to look for you,’ Odysseus interrupted, winking surreptitiously at Eperitus.
‘You were told to look for me?’ Maron asked.
‘We were sailing home from Troy when I saw the smoke from your city. I ordered my galleys to attack at once, but as we prepared to land a voice spoke to me. It said the city would be given into our hands as a punishment upon its people. They’d neglected their sacrifices to Apollo –’
The bald-headed man looked up to the heavens and groaned.
‘I told them to sacrifice the best of their herds, but they didn’t listen. They thought they could cheat Apollo with a few scrawny offerings, and now they have paid the price.’
‘But not you,’ Odysseus said. ‘You are Maron, son of –’
‘Son of Euanthes. Yes, that’s me.’
‘Apollo has ordered me to spare you because of your faithful service. In return he said you would reward us with rich gifts.’
Maron stood and laid his hands on Odysseus’s shoulders.
‘My friend, you will have gold and silver worthy of a king. And something better than gold and silver.’
Eperitus laughed. ‘What is better than gold or silver?’
‘A dozen jars of my best wine, that’s what. The gold and silver for my life and the greatest wine in all of Ismarus for the lives of my wife and child. When you taste it you’ll agree it’s better than any precious metal. And it’s potent, too.’
‘Then take us to your house and we’ll celebrate your deliverance,’ Odysseus said, placing his arm around Maron’s shoulders.
‘My home is beside a sacred grove on that hillside,’ the fat priest said, pointing to one of the low peaks that surrounded the walled town.
Eperitus saw a thin trail of smoke rising up from a ring of trees close to the summit.
‘It’s a long way, Odysseus,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t we stay here and watch over the men?’
‘Eurybates will take charge,’ Odysseus replied. ‘They won’t miss us while we escort Maron and his family back to the safety of their home.’
Eperitus listened to the sounds of destruction and revelry from the middle of the town, but knew Odysseus would not be parted from Maron’s promise of treasure. He shrugged his shoulders and nodded his agreement.
Chapter Ten
SACRIFICES ON THE BEACH
The cart’s axle had been well greased with pig fat and barely made a squeak as the two oxen pulled it slowly along the road that led down to the town. Out of boredom, the slave on the bench
between Odysseus and Eperitus whacked his stick across the beasts’ backs. He was an Aethiope, tall and thin with grey hair and a face that seemed incapable of expression. Ahead of them the sun had almost disappeared behind the hills, leaving a trickle of red gold visible through the trees. The town was in shadow, but the plain to the south was alight with scores of campfires. Eperitus could see hundreds of figures moving between them and smell the familiar aromas of roast meat, freshly baked bread and woodsmoke. The Ithacan galleys remained where their prows had bitten into the sandy beach, though the sails had been stowed and the masts were bare.
‘The city would have been safer,’ Odysseus said. ‘We still don’t know who else inhabits this country.’
‘It’s getting close to dusk, too,’ Eperitus agreed. ‘A good time to attack, if anyone had a mind to.’
‘I can’t see guards on the walls.’
‘There aren’t any,’ Eperitus confirmed. He glanced at the slave, whose face was as impassive as ever. ‘But Eurybates is sure to have posted lookouts on the hills.’
‘I hope so.’
Nobody had stopped them, though, Eperitus thought, looking back up into the trees they had left behind. He watched the shadowy boles, half expecting to see enemy warriors moving stealthily between them. The only sign of life was the thin trail of smoke coming from the hearth in Maron’s house, hidden behind the rise of the slope above.
He looked into the back of the cart. Beneath the tarpaulin were seven talents of gold, a silver mixing bowl and twelve jars of the priest’s wine. Maron’s boasts about its potency had not been exaggerated. One cup, heavily watered down, had been enough to convince Eperitus he should drink no more, despite the powerful desire to taste it on his lips again. Odysseus, too, had resisted all Maron’s attempts to get them drunk, knowing as well as Eperitus that for all his rich gifts the man was still an enemy whose people they had slain or taken into slavery. Eperitus’s spirits still felt light, though they had drunk the wine at midday, and even now the smell from the jars made his mouth water for more.