by Iliffe, Glyn
‘We repaired an abandoned ferry so we could get those mules across, do you remember? Then one of them panicked and knocked old Halitherses into the river. You dived in after him, before he could be battered to death against these rocks.’
‘That’s right,’ Eperitus said, more solemnly.
He vaguely recalled the cold, fast water and the sight of Halitherses, the former captain of the guard, being taken along by the current ahead of him.
‘We pulled you both out of the water by that shelf of rock,’ Odysseus added. ‘We were so young then, and old Halitherses seemed like such a relic to us. Now we’re not far off the same age that he was.’
They gave the rapids a final glance and then followed in the wake of the others. They passed a small, rotten jetty where boats could be moored rather than risking the peril of the rocks, and shortly after entered the shade of a wood that skirted the banks of the river. Its cool, green gloom was a pleasant relief after the growing heat of the morning, but they were soon out in the open again, trudging along the rutted, overgrown track that would eventually take them to Pisa. Their footsteps grew heavy and they felt the sweat running in rivulets beneath their close-fitting armour, but for men who could fight all day long under a Trojan sun there was no need for rest. And both Odysseus and Diomedes were determined to reach the tomb as quickly as possible.
Shortly after midday, they came upon a bend in the river where the fast-flowing water curved around the spur of a low hill. As they climbed the ridge, Eperitus spotted a flash of whitewashed walls gleaming in the distance. Shielding his eyes against the bright sunshine, he could make out a large town nestled within the fold between two hills, not far from the river. It was surrounded by modest battlements and had a single gateway that he could see, guarded by a tall tower. Two men in armour – the first signs of human life he had seen since leaving the deserted fishing village at dawn – stood watch as an ox-drawn cart struggled along the tree-lined road towards the gate. The town was still a long way off, but in-between was a small wood from which a thin trail of smoke was drifting up into the clear sky. On the opposite bank of the river a domed mound rose like a dark mole on the face of the land.
‘I can see a town,’ he announced. ‘It’s still a good way off, but it has walls and guards and there are signs of more life inside.’
‘That must be Pisa,’ said Diomedes, squinting in the direction Eperitus was pointing.
‘Can you see a temple?’ Odysseus asked.
‘No, but you see the trail of smoke coming from that wood? There’s a small hill on the opposite bank of the river. That could be the tomb.’
A murmur of interest spread through the group of warriors as they strained to see, but a snapped order from Diomedes silenced them again. He led them back down to the level of the river, where the hill was lost to Eperitus’s sight behind the line of trees. They followed the overgrown track to the eaves of the wood. Here the air was heavy with the pungent odour of damp earth and thick foliage, through which Eperitus could faintly discern the mingled scent of woodsmoke and roasted flesh. Before long they reached a small clearing where the glimmer of the river could be seen through the trees a short distance on the other side. In the centre of the clearing was a pile of blackened, smouldering wood, upon which the burnt thighbones of a sheep or goat were gently smoking. To the left of the pyre was a rough table of stone supported by two boulders. This crude altar was covered in a dark circle of fresh blood that was still dripping onto the trampled grass below.
‘Looks like we’ve disturbed someone in the middle of a sacrifice,’ Diomedes said, entering the clearing and poking at the fire with the point of his spear. ‘The gods won’t be pleased.’
‘This must be the temple of Artemis that Athena mentioned,’ Odysseus said in a low voice to Eperitus, as they looked around at the circular clearing in the wood. ‘And if that’s the case then your guess was right – Pelops’s tomb is just through those trees, on the other side of the river. Come on.’
Without waiting for the others, he crossed the clearing and plunged into the undergrowth. Eperitus strode after him and together they were the first to reach the edge of the wood and see the sombre-looking hill on the opposite bank of the Alpheius. It was unnaturally perfect in shape, as if a giant bowl had been upended in the middle of the level plain, and at this range Eperitus could see it was much larger than he had estimated when he had first seen it from the ridge. Its curved flanks were featureless, covered with long grass and thorn bushes, and though the sun was bright overhead the mound seemed to absorb its light and maintain a dreary dullness.
‘Even a hill as big as that can’t hold too large a maze,’ Eperitus said, trying to quell the despair that had crept into his heart at the sight of the mound.
‘The maze will be below ground,’ Odysseus replied, knowingly. ‘That hill is just the earth they dug out to make it. And that should give you an idea of the size of what lies beneath.’
The river was fordable between the wood and the mound and they crossed it in single file with the water rising no higher than their waists. The olive tree that marked the opening was on the other side of the hill, just as Athena had said it would be. Not wanting to let on to the others that the goddess had spoken to him, Odysseus suggested they look for something that might indicate where the entrance to the maze was. Diomedes obliged almost immediately by pointing to the dead tree. After hacking away the brambles with their swords, they scraped at the earth beneath with a combination of flat rocks and their bare hands until they exposed the top of what appeared to be a wall. The rest was soon uncovered, but before they attempted to knock it in and open the ingress to the labyrinth beyond, Odysseus ordered the men to make torches from the materials they had brought – dowels and rags that had been soaked in animal fat – while he made a small fire to light them with. Finally, after the torches were ready and two Argives had been chosen to remain guard on the outside, Polites slid down into the shallow pit they had dug and splayed his massive hands against the stone blocks of the wall. It gave way easily under his great strength, collapsing in a cloud of dust that swept over him and forced him to turn away, choking loudly as he covered his face with the crook of his arm.
The others crowded round the edge of the pit, Odysseus, Diomedes and Eperitus foremost, trying to see through the swirling brown haze into the void that had been created. But even Eperitus’s eyes were unable to penetrate the thick blackness beyond the remains of the wall, and after a moment’s hesitation Diomedes ordered one of his men to light a torch and hand it to him. An instant later he was shouldering past Polites and stooping beneath the low entrance to the tomb, holding the flaming brand before him.
‘What do you see?’ Odysseus called after him.
‘It’s a chamber,’ Diomedes replied from the darkness, his voice flat and stifled. ‘Come and see for yourselves.’
One by one, the others lit their torches and joined Diomedes in the low antechamber, where the stale air was cold and smelled of damp earth. By the light of his struggling torch, Eperitus could see that the floor and walls were of mud and had not been dressed with wood or stone. The ceiling, too, was bare and had been broken in several places by the roots of the dead olive tree on the hillside above. At the back of the chamber, directly opposite the entrance, was a deeper darkness that he knew led down into the depths of the maze. He sensed a faint current of air coming from it, like the breath of something ancient and evil, and shuddered as it touched his skin.
Odysseus approached the passageway with his torch, revealing a roughly hewn arch and a steeply sloping tunnel beyond it. He peered down into the darkness, sniffed at it, then turned to the others.
‘This has to be the way to the maze. It’s too narrow for spears, so bring your swords only. And that old shield of yours will never fit down there, Eperitus.’
Though the half-moon shields of the others could easily be slung across their backs, the heirloom Eperitus had inherited from his grandfather was tall and bulky and woul
d only prove an encumbrance in such a tight space. Reluctantly, he slipped it from his shoulder and laid it with his spear against a wall of the chamber.
‘Why do we need our weapons, anyway?’ said one of the Argives, leaning his spear next to Eperitus’s. ‘It’s just a tomb, after all.’
‘A warrior should never be without a weapon, Trechos,’ Eperitus answered. ‘Even in the houses of the dead.’
‘It’s the curse Odysseus is worried about,’ added another Argive, a veteran warrior called Epaltes who had lost an ear and two fingers during the long years of the war. ‘My wife was from Pisa, and she always said how the tomb was filled with riches befitting a great king like Pelops, but that they were protected by a terrible guardian. There’s someone, or something, down there and Odysseus knows it. Ain’t that right, Eperitus?’
Eperitus adjusted his sword in its scabbard and said nothing. Then Odysseus signalled to him from the archway, where he was waiting with Diomedes.
‘We want you to listen, Eperitus,’ Odysseus said. ‘See if you can hear anything.’
‘Silence!’ Diomedes ordered, instantly stilling the chatter among the men.
Eperitus took Odysseus’s torch and entered the mouth of the passageway, taking a few steps down into the consuming darkness that neither the flaming brand nor the thin daylight from the entrance could penetrate. It reminded him of the Stygian caves of Mount Parnassus, where long ago he and Odysseus had been guided into the presence of the Pythoness, the priestess of Gaia who had prophesied to them in riddles. He shut his eyes and concentrated.
At first, all he could hear was the fizz and sputter of the torches behind him, mingled with the suppressed breathing of fifteen other men crowded into a confined space. Then the sounds faded, pocketed away in another part of his consciousness as he pushed out with his senses. He could feel the gentle breath of chilly air rising from deep below the hillside, drawn naturally towards the comparative warmth that had spilled in from outside. Then, as he reached further and further down into the darkness, he felt the soft, absorbent earth of the tunnel suddenly give way to walls of hard stone. These branched out into narrow corridors that twisted and turned and left him quickly confused. He had found the maze and his senses could penetrate no further, except to register the faint echo of scuffling and scratching coming out of the stillness.
‘Do you hear anything?’ Diomedes asked.
Eperitus nodded. ‘I can hear rats.’
‘That’s all? Then there’s nothing else?’
‘That I can’t say, Diomedes. The tunnel leads down to more tunnels, which my senses cannot follow. The only way we’re going to discover what’s down there is to look for ourselves.’
‘Then let’s not waste any more time,’ Odysseus said, taking his torch from Eperitus’s hand and pushing past him into the tunnel.
Chapter Seventeen
THE MAZE
Not for the first time, Odysseus wondered why the gods had led the Greeks to this half-forgotten tomb, many days sail away from Troy and with no obvious relevance to the war there. As he thrust his torch into the unyielding blackness, he tried to guess at the significance of Pelops’s shoulder bone, and what other things they might find in the subterranean crypt. Eperitus, Diomedes and the others followed him in single file and soon the ground was falling away at a steep incline beneath them, forcing them to advance slowly if they were to keep their footing. As they left the daylight of the antechamber behind and plunged deeper into the earth, they were consumed by an oily darkness that their torches struggled to throw back more than an arm’s length before them. Dense cobwebs caught in the flames and were incinerated, but many more – crawling with long-legged spiders – snagged on their hair, clothing and armour to hang from them like rags. The walls of the tunnel were irregular and confusing to the senses, sometimes widening beyond the reach of their groping hands and at other times suddenly narrowing so that they could barely squeeze their shoulders between them. The ceiling, too, would undulate, rising above the heads of the tallest and then plunging again so that even Omeros, the shortest among them, had to stoop. As their senses grew tired and bewildered, Eperitus shouted a warning and seized Odysseus’s shoulder, pulling him back sharply. Thrusting his torch close to the ground, he showed him a hole big enough to swallow an unsuspecting man. Odysseus shuddered at the doom his captain had saved him from. Picking up a stone, he dropped it into the hole and a few moments later the bunched warriors heard a small ‘plop’ as it fell into unseen waters far below.
After each man had leapt the gap safely to the other side they set off again with Eperitus in the lead, his torch held before him as he probed the darkness with his superior senses. They found no more traps, but when eventually Odysseus felt the ground level out beneath his feet and saw the passage branch into two before them he had lost all sense of time.
‘So this is the beginning of the labyrinth,’ he said, standing beside Eperitus. ‘The first challenge we must overcome if we are to discover Pelops’s sarcophagus.’
‘What’s your plan?’ Diomedes asked.
Odysseus held his torch down each branch of the fork in the tunnel, and to the surprise of all they saw the dull gleam of stone floors and walls reflecting back from the darkness.
‘I don’t have a plan, only an idea,’ he replied. ‘I spent last night drawing out different mazes and trying to see if there was a foolproof method of finding a way through. I drew circular mazes and square mazes, mazes with the object on the opposite side of the entrance, and mazes with the object at the centre of the pattern. And I think I’ve worked out a solution. Unless the architect of this labyrinth was more cunning than I’ve anticipated, then all we need to do is keep our hands on one wall – left or right – and follow every twist or turn until it leads us to our goal.’
The others looked sceptical, especially the Argives, who were less familiar with Odysseus’s sharp mind.
‘Theseus used a ball of twine in the Cretan Labyrinth,’ said Trechos.
‘That was to help him find his way out again,’ Omeros replied. ‘It was Ariadne who told him the correct way in, after she received instructions from Daedalus.’
‘I don’t see how keeping a hand on one wall is going to help,’ Diomedes said. ‘Not that I don’t trust your wits, Odysseus – not after all these years – but it seems to me our best hope is to split up and cover as much of the maze as we can.’
There were concerned murmurs from the others, including Diomedes’s own men. Their instincts had been unnerved by the dark, confining space of the tunnels and their imaginations had had too long already to contemplate the rumours that the tomb was cursed. Odysseus shook his head.
‘I think we should stay together. We don’t know how big this place is, and if we separate we could spend days trying to find each other again. If my suggestion proves wrong, then we can consider something else. Do you agree?’
Diomedes shrugged and drew his sword. ‘Lead the way.’
Odysseus felt a hand on his arm.
‘Be careful,’ Eperitus warned him.
Odysseus hesitated. ‘What do your senses tell you now?’
‘The air isn’t entirely stale. There must be other ways in and out, but only small enough for rats and bats. And there’s something else. A lingering sense of malice.’
‘I feel it, too,’ Odysseus agreed. ‘The evil things Pelops did in life still haunt his resting place. But that’s all it is – a phantom of the past. The sooner we find this bone, the sooner we can return to the daylight.’
He took a few steps down the left-hand passage and paused with his torch raised before him. After a moment’s contemplation, he placed his fingertips against the wall to his right and moved forward. A dozen paces further on he stopped again. There was a large, black opening ahead of him to the right, which his torch seemed barely able to penetrate. He shook his head, as if in denial of the instinctive fear he felt, and entered. At once he stepped back in alarm, covering his face with his arm as black shapes cam
e darting out of the tunnel. A sound like wind tumbling through the leaves of a tree filled the tunnel and small bodies were caught momentarily by the light of the torches as they fled in panic, startled by the unexpected intrusion into their secluded world.
‘Bats,’ he said, his voice a little higher than normal. ‘Just bats.’
He continued his advance and the others followed. The air seemed colder as they turned the corner and the torches struggled momentarily to throw out any light, as if the darkness itself was suffocating them. Then the flames grew again, running in ripples up the fat-soaked cloth and throwing back the shadows to reveal a flagstoned floor and stone walls. The end of this new passageway was not yet visible, but as Odysseus stared into the blackness Eperitus touched him on the shoulder and pointed. Odysseus looked again and finally saw what his captain’s keen eyes had already picked out. Something was lying on the ground several paces ahead of them: a grey ball at the foot of the left-hand wall, a bundle of rags a little further back, and the glimmer of something metallic beside them. Eperitus moved past Odysseus and knelt down by the first object.
‘What is it?’ Odysseus asked, his voice hushed but urgent.
‘A skull,’ Eperitus replied, staring down at the empty eye sockets and the open jaws that were still set in a silent scream, long after life’s last breath had passed between them. ‘The body’s over there.’
Odysseus joined him and saw the humped shape of a ragged cloak in the shadows, torn in many places and heavy with dust. Grey rib bones were half visible through the holes in the wool, while two skeletal arms reached out into the circle of light cast by their torches. A short sword lay on top of the body.
Diomedes lifted the cloak away with the point of his blade. The material crumbled with the movement, revealing the grey skeleton beneath.
‘The shoulder bone’s the same colour as the rest. This isn’t Pelops.’
‘It’s the body of a grave robber,’ Odysseus said.