Troy: A Brand of Fire

by Ben Blake

Chapter Nine

  Three-Eyed Rats

  Sometimes his mind went back, all the way to his adolescence, when he’d been too young a youth to be allowed to join the hunt in Thessaly. He’d seen hunts before that, of course, even taken part in some, though never with so dangerous a foe as the great boar in the woods that day. Never so far from home, either. His father had wanted him to go so he could meet the other young lordlings of Greece, the men who would lead and shape it in years to come.

  “Ithaca is small,” Laertes had said. “Alone we will be overwhelmed, or at best forgotten, by the rising flood that is Greece. You’ll need friends if you’re to help this kingdom flourish, my son.”

  Well, Odysseus had friends, though not as many as his father would have liked, and perhaps not the right ones. Nestor was a man he trusted, but the king of Messenia was approaching sixty now, and hardly an ally for the future. He liked Menestheus in Attica too; Theseus’ successor was a clever man, behind the square jaw and goatee beard. He seemed like a typical Greek warrior until he spoke, in that slow thoughtful way he had, but he was a good deal more.

  So, few friends, but at least Odysseus had avoided making enemies. He’d become quite good at sitting in some grim hall and smiling in the midst of stupidity or outright boorishness. Most of the Greek kings were one of those things, or both, at least some of the time. Schedius, Agapenor, Leonteus; they were all guilty. But the worst by far were Telamon and the Atreide brothers, Agamemnon and Menelaus, men who understood nothing but pride and sheer force. Odysseus hated spending time with them, but he had to. That was just the reality of life as the king of a small island.

  The truth was that Odysseus was more comfortable in the east, in one of the cities that dotted the coast. He didn’t like to go too far inland: Ithacans were coastal folk, born with the sea in their bones. That still left plenty of choices. Ephesus in Caria, with the pillared library facing the sea; or Miletos, rich with Minoan reliefs and murals brought by the refugees from that poor, broken culture. He might go to one of those before he turned for home, or to both, if time and weather allowed. It had been a long time since they did.

  For now he would settle for Halicarnassus.

  It was three years since he’d sailed into the harbour here too, a deep bay protected by arching breakwaters of stone filled with sand. Since then an island had been added at the end of one pier, with a fortress built on top, two tiers of high walls studded with towers. Anyone trying to raid into Halicarnassus would pay a high price now. Odysseus wondered how much it had cost, and why the king had bothered. Piracy was always a problem on the Greensea, but reavers never struck at a city this big. That castle could only be aimed at stopping fleets of raiders, and that must mean the Greeks.

  He pondered that as his ship eased deeper into the bay. It was unsettling, to see how great the fear of Greek attack had become, even as far away as Halicarnassus. The whole Aegean lay between here and Greece. And if Halicarnassus had done this, what had others done?

  What might they do in the future?

  The thought brought his mind back to Thessaly, to the boar hunt. To Antenor asking for the return of Hesione to Troy, and Telamon’s furious, blustering refusal to even consider it. That had been Odysseus’ first taste of the greed in the nature of the Greeks. They took what they were strong enough to seize – women, wealth, land – simply because they could. They had never wanted to learn to live alongside equals. To them a man dominated, or he failed.

  They gave nothing back. Nothing. Not unless it was wrenched from their hands.

  Once ashore, he and Eliade made their way into the streets, leaving the crew to unload and find buyers for the cargo. Wool and carpets this time, as so often, since it was mostly what Ithaca had. But it was good wool and carpets, as good as those from Troy Odysseus thought, and much less expensive. There were some who would buy Trojan anyway, just for the name, but many more bought Ithacan. He’d learned to be happy with that.

  Halicarnassus was built on a steep hillside behind the bay. There was flatter land just to the side, but it was marshy and prone to flooding, and anyway wet ground meant disease in summer heat. As it was, the marsh served as a defence for the city, a flea-infested moat two hundred yards wide. On the other sides of the city the wall was taller and towers more frequent, and another fortress sat at the top of the hill, guarding the approaches. That one wasn’t new, but squinting up at it Odysseus thought it had been extended, and the walls built higher. Halicarnassus was being very careful.

  Houses in the city were built in rows along the line of the hill, with streets zigzagging their way between them in tight switchbacks. Almost all were built of fired bricks and painted in pastel colours, pale blues and yellows and greens, bright in the sunshine. Window boxes were filled with herbs, rooftops planted with them or else home to clucking chickens. Once Odysseus saw a beehive up there and shook his head in admiration. Ithaca was too windy to try the same thing, its rooftops too exposed to storms, but he had to like the ingenuity.

  “Where first?” Eliade asked.

  Odysseus had thought about that, as he thought about everything, and had his answer ready. “The agora. I want to get a feel for the situation here before we start talking to people.”

  The marketplace of Halicarnassus was unique, as far as he knew. Because of the steepness of the hillside it was built in a series of tiers, each one more than a yard above the next and reached by means of wide steps. Sometimes there was only room for a single row of stalls before the ground fell away again. That made it hard for wagons to reach there, and servants or debt slaves had to carry goods in and out by hand, trying not to drop or break anything as they did. It made the place crowded too, shoppers forced together in tight streams at the steps, so Odysseus tied his money bag on the thong around his neck and tucked it into his chiton before he reached the first stall.

  The agora was full, of course. It always was, at a major city like Halicarnassus, with the Greensea on one side and the roads into Anatolia on the other. Most of the merchants sold everyday goods; grain from the interior or from overseas, figs and olives, raisins and wine and wool. All things which could be found almost anywhere, though not always of a good quality. He wasn’t much interested in that, honestly. If Ithaca needed imports she could find them on her own side of the sea, and for less money too.

  Odysseus was looking for goods from inland, even from far India, brought on wagon trains from the east.

  He found it scattered among the stalls, some here and some across the market. Ivory at a ridiculous price, one he could beat with ease if he voyaged to Egypt, and at that cost he would. A ragtag little stall near the bottom edge of the agora offered faience pottery, beautifully glazed, even better than the clear finish the Trojans used. If he could figure out how that glaze was made Odysseus would make Ithaca rich at a stroke. But nobody knew, and so the prices were extortionate, though no worse today than he’d expected. He did like the intricate paintwork of eastern faience though, and had once bought a set of plates for Penelope. She’d exclaimed over them, and love for the next few nights had been as good as it ever was, but then she wrapped the plates in linen and Odysseus had never seen them since, even when they had guests.

  Women were odd. People said Odysseus was clever, but he was never going to understand females.

  On another side of the market he found two stalls next to each other, one selling lapis lazuli jewellery at quite reasonable prices. Decent quality too, as far as Odysseus could judge. He haggled with the merchant for a while, trying to see how far he could argue him down. Adjacent to that was a trader selling carved figurines, none more than two inches high, allegedly made by holy men in far Persia and imbibed with mysterious eastern magics. Throw them on the soil of a fresh grave, the seller claimed, and any curse you invoke or prayer you make will be answered favourably, guaranteed.

  “Are you really doing this?” Eliade asked, as Odysseus argued prices with the Carian merchant.

  “I seem to be,” he answered. “Wh
y?”

  “They don’t work,” Eliade said, as though talking to an idiot.

  Odysseus broke off the haggling to frown at him. “I know they don’t work. Other people believe they do work, and will buy them. Besides, I’m not really interested in the figurines, as such.”

  “Then why are you bickering with him?”

  “Because I’m interested that the figures are here,” Odysseus replied, “and I want to know what it cost to bring them.”

  He went back to arguing with the seller, who eventually grew so angry that he threw a figure at Odysseus and stalked off to the other end of his stall, where another customer had been watching the discussion with increasing amusement. Eliade snatched the model out of the air and pocketed it, unseen.

  “I thought you don’t believe they work,” Odysseus said.

  Eliade grinned. “Other people believe they do, and will pay for it.”

  He had to laugh.

  They spent half the afternoon crossing to and fro across the market, checking prices on every product they could think of. Even Trojan wool, and Egyptian animal hides, not that there was much of either. The hides in particular were ruinously expensive. Odysseus’ father had owned a leopard hide rug once, complete with head, taken on a raid when Laertes was young, but it had worn out long ago. Odysseus had never replaced it. Wool was what Ithaca made; it looked bad if even the king didn’t use it on his floor.

  “I think I see,” Eliade said finally. They were standing by a stall selling herbs and spices from the east, including tiny pots of pepper for a silver ring each. Odysseus knew it was no good haggling over that price: pepper was, literally, worth its weight in gold. “You’re working out trade routes, aren’t you? What travels which roads, and what it costs.”

  “Yes,” Odysseus said.

  “We came here from Ithaca just to study mercantile methods? Why?”

  “Troy,” Odysseus told him.