Oracle's War

by Oracle's War (retail) (epub)

  ‘I’ll do more than hit you if you hurt my sister,’ I hiss. ‘I’ll break your face so badly even the crones in the street will hide their faces. If Ctimene is unwilling tonight, and any other night, you will pay.’

  ‘But we must show the bloodied sheet…’

  ‘You won’t be the first to use goose blood. I’ll have it sent up myself.’ I bunch my fist again. ‘Or I’ll use your nose blood.’

  ‘But we’re to… to be br-brothers,’ he stammers.

  ‘You’ll never be a brother to me,’ I tell him in a dark voice. ‘Give me your word.’

  He does, then leaves quickly, bent and craven. Do I trust him to keep it? No. But there’s not much more I can do, short of the sort of acts that would see me exiled.

  The next morning a sheet stained in goose blood is duly displayed, and I get the chance to ask Ctimene quietly how she is, when she and her new husband join the family to break our fast. It seems Lochus left her intact, but I know that’s a temporary solution at best. Mother won’t support my stance. Despite her misgivings, she will expect grandchildren, and so will Father. But at least I’ve purchased Ctimene some time to reconcile herself to her fate.

  The following day, I visit Maeus down at the far end of the island. All the brightness has been stamped out of the poor young man, but the suicidal impulse, whatever caused it, has gone. He seems grimly resolved to endure.

  However, he does give me the fragment of embroidered cloth, with the crest of Syros and the Caryatid nymph depicted on it, which was the central proof of his ancestry.

  ‘But this is your birthright,’ I protest.

  ‘It no longer matters who I once was,’ he says in a defeated voice. ‘Now I’m just a pig-herder, and that’s all I’ll ever be. But if it seems precious to you, that’s good – it’s all I have to thank you with, for saving my life.’

  There’s no refusing that, without wounding him further. Besides, I can keep it safe and maybe even find out more about it.

  Issa sent word the day after the betrothal debacle, reassuring me that she reached home safely, and I’m thinking of joining her this evening, to escape the horrible tension that has contaminated the palace like a sickness. But when I return to my rooms just after midday, I find Hebea perched on my bed, legs crossed and head cocked on one side.

  Except it can’t be Hebea: she’d never take such liberties.

  ‘Don’t look so pleased to see me, Ithaca,’ she says, in Bria’s crisp tones.

  I stop at the door, looking around warily. Bria doesn’t turn up for the luxury of my beguiling company and scintillating conversation. I’m grateful for her recent help, but anything from her comes with a payback. I can be pretty sure that’s why she’s here. ‘Athena’s business, I assume?’ I sigh.

  ‘Clever boy,’ she says. ‘Take a seat.’ She indicates my little writing desk and chair. I comply, and she claps her hands. The door opens behind me, and a towering and head-turningly handsome young man steps inside: Diomedes of Argos. He’s wearing traveller’s gear and is armed with a large xiphos. I rise to confront him.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Bria chirrups. ‘He’s one of us.’

  I’ve already guessed that, but it’s typical of Bria to assume she’s the primary fount of all worthwhile information. At least, with Ctimene married, Maeus spared the death sentence and my attempts to uncover their enemies at a standstill, I can now give him my full attention.

  Diomedes seems to be a typical product of the entitled Peloponnese ruling classes, a warrior born. We eye each other warily – the last champion of Athena that I worked with was Theseus, the once-mighty king of Athens, and that didn’t go well. I’m entitled to my reservations.

  ‘How did you come to serve the Lady?’ I ask gruffly. It’s a fair question. Our patron goddess is virginal, an essential part of her character, and as we are both well aware, virgin goddesses have to poach their theioi instead of breeding them.

  ‘My father Tydeus was a theios of Athena,’ he replies proudly. ‘Though his forbears were descended of Hermes and Poseidon, both he and I have found the call of the Queen of Reason more amendable to our nature.’

  Hopefully, if Athena finds this young man worthy, he will prove more trustworthy than some of her past choices. But then again, she might just be desperate. After all, she took me in, and I’m a bastard son of the most reviled man in Achaea.

  ‘Wasn’t there some mishap with Tydeus?’ I ask, probing for a reaction. Nothing has ever been said openly about Tydeus’s role in that fatal, annihilating battle of the Seven before the walls of Thebes, but the occasional rumour has hinted at something too awful to tell.

  ‘My father was a great hero.’ Diomedes colours, his jaw tightening. ‘One day soon, we will avenge ourselves for their defeat. It’s our destiny, and the Lady has promised her aid.’

  His defensiveness tells its own tale. And I’m not thrilled in the least about Athena’s support for his cause.

  Most outsiders struggle to understand the whole convoluted tale behind the Seven Against Thebes – I know it makes my head spin. The origins go back to Oedipus and his scandalous, sacrilegious marriage to his mother, and matters have only got worse from there. Ten years ago, it flared up again in the war of the Seven, an attack on Thebes led by the Royal House of Argos, which resulted in a whole Argive generation perishing, families broken and many, many innocents losing all they had. If Athena thinks she’s going to draw me into that damnable mess…

  ‘Is Thebes the reason we’re meeting?’ I ask warily.

  ‘Your concerns, Odysseus, may be more entangled with Thebes than you might like to think,’ says Bria. ‘But the immediate reason is this.’ She pulls out a small cloth parcel, places it on my desk and unfolds it carefully to reveal a pile of ashes and charred parchment. ‘I found it in the brazier in Ophion’s guest room. He must have tried to destroy whatever it was when he left, for fear that he might be intercepted and searched.’

  ‘Then you think he really was our sorcerer?’ I ask, glancing at Diomedes to gauge his reaction. He takes the use of the word ‘sorcerer’ without blinking.

  Bria snorts. ‘Of course he was. The real question is, who is Ophion and why was destroying your sister’s marriage to Maeus so important to him? Who is Aiopia – is she really Tycho’s aunt? And who is Ophion’s patron deity?’

  ‘He’s Theban,’ Diomedes growls, as though that explains everything.

  I turn again to the pile of charred parchment and ash, nudging it and watching another fragment crumble. There might once have been writing on it. ‘Why are you showing me this?’

  ‘It’s the product of fire, O all-wise descendant of Prometheus,’ Bria says drily.

  I throw a look at Diomedes, not at all comfortable with Bria naming my true ancestry in front of a virtual stranger.

  ‘Relax, Ithaca,’ Bria drawls. ‘Dio knows.’ She leans forward, a slyly expectant look on her face. ‘Do I need to explain what you have to do?’

  She knows that she does; she just gets a thrill out of getting me to admit ignorance. ‘Of course I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I tell her exasperatedly.

  She indicates the burnt parchment: ‘What fire destroys, you can repair, Ithaca. But it’s hard work, and it requires time and concentration – and a sorcerer’s affinity with fire. Have you been doing those exercises I taught you these past months?’

  ‘I have,’ I retort, shrugging her hand away. I snap my fingers, filling my mind with the heat and brilliance of flame, and a tongue of fire dances on my fingertips without burning me. Diomedes gives a small whistle, but Bria remains unimpressed.

  ‘Very clever, Ithaca. But the page has already been burnt. We need to call the opposing force into play. Sit down, and let me talk you through it.’

  First she gives me an outline of what I’m to achieve: to undo the burning, so that the parchment fragments flow back together. We experiment with a tiny fragment. I try and try and get absolutely nowhere, but just when I’m about to give up it meshes
inside my head and suddenly I have it.

  After that, the task becomes exhausting and exacting, rather than impossible – or so it seems. I slip into a creative trance, aware only of these tiny swirling motes of dust as they dance about each other. To begin with they’re like stars, spinning in infinity, trailing infinitesimal comet trails. Slowly, as my mind works upon them, they circle closer, collide, coalesce, sometimes breaking up again to resume their whirling, eddying paths before I can bring them together once more.

  It seems like an eternity has passed, but at last I can see whole areas of light as more and more of the motes adhere to each other, but now I’m also becoming aware of the looming darkness behind them, a cavernous emptiness that could suck me in, a place so deep I could lose myself and not come out. The force of it is drawing me to it and I am hard-pressed to resist…

  When suddenly an owl calls and I start back into awareness. For a fleeting instant, I see the figure standing over me as a tall, grey-eyed woman, with a silver helm on her head and a spear in her hand.

  Athena!

  Then the image morphs and it’s Bria, shaking my shoulder and calling out my name.

  I blink at the delicate piece of parchment on the desk before me. It has a few, barely discernible ink markings scrawled across it, there are patches missing and the whole is so thin you can’t touch it, let alone pick it up. Bria looks pleased though, as she jots a copy of the markings onto a wax tablet.

  Outside, the evening sun is slanting through the closed shutters. We’ve been cooped up in here for hours. Diomedes is lying on my bed, snoring gently. I hate people taking liberties with my things. But I rub grit from my eyelids and yawn, while Bria leans over my shoulder and reads it out.

  ‘Father, I urge… the Ithacan… fast… You’re needed… Del…’

  The rest is missing.

  ‘Is that it?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, if you’d done a better job we’d have more.’

  She’s a charming little bitch is Bria. ‘It’s meaningless,’ I mumble, too exhausted to defend myself. ‘Perhaps I can try again?’

  ‘You only get one shot at this sort of thing, Ithaca,’ Bria sniffs. ‘Luckily what we have tells me all I need to know. ‘D-e-l is almost certainly the island of Delos, and as it happens, I’ve come here to order you to go to Delos anyway. With luck, we’ll catch up with this “Ophion” along the way.’

  I glance at her sharply, hearing the way she spoke that name. ‘Is Ophion not his real name? Do you know who he really is?’

  She flashes her familiar sideways smile. ‘Let’s just say I have my suspicions, but I hate looking silly, so I’ll keep them to myself for now.’ She stands, hands on hips. ‘I want you and Diomedes, a war galley and enough well-picked men to man it, Ithaca. Athena has need of your service.’

  3 – Pirates

  ‘For in ancient times, the Greeks and the barbarians as well who lived by the sea and on the islands… turned to piracy, led by their most powerful men, who did not fail to further their own interests while nurturing those weaker than themselves…’

  —Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

  South Peloponnese

  Three days later, I’m with Bria, Diomedes, and a crew of fighting men aboard a war galley. We’ve ploughed down the west coast of the Peloponnese and turned eastwards, following the southern coast towards the Aegean. I’m standing in the prow, tapping my fingers to the drummer’s thud-thud-thud as he measures time for the rowers. The north-west winds of the Ionian helped us on our way at first but now they’ve dropped to a fickle breeze. We’ve hung the sail from the yardarm to catch every stray breath, but most of the men are stripped to the waist and hard at work on the oar benches.

  Getting leave from Laertes to take a galley and a crew of his best men was easy – I told him I had a lead on the sorcerer and he gave me whatever I asked for. He’s probably pleased to get me out of the house, because he can see the tension worsening between Lochus and me. There’s going to be blood – lots of it – if we’re not kept apart. I’ve got Tollus with me, fat Pollo who’s proving himself a good, reliable drummer, and other lads who’re pleased to escape haymaking for a few weeks.

  For my part, I’m grateful to be out of the brooding, tragic mess that my family home has become. I’ve got Eurybates as my helmsman, and his presence always keeps me grounded.

  I hear boots behind me on the gangway that runs down the centre of the ship between the oar benches, and half turn. It’s Bria, who abandoned Hebea’s slight frame before we took ship. She left instructions to call in briefly at a port on the coast of Messenia to pick her up, and she’s now inhabiting the body of a tall, brawny woman with strong shoulders and a blond ponytail, one of what I imagine are several she keeps on a string for such purposes. She insists the relationship she has with her hosts is amicable and consensual, but I’m never sure.

  This one is blunt-faced, not pretty but strong of features and body. She’s already punched two of the crew for improper advances, and neither got up quickly afterwards. There’s an eastern cult of female warriors called the Hamazans, which Achaean women have been known to run away to join. Bria must have links to them because this is the third Hamazan body I’ve met her in.

  The other two are dead.

  ‘So, Ithaca,’ she says, in a bullish voice. ‘What’re you thinking?’

  I’m watching the coast, a forbidding wall of precipitous rock riddled with hidden coves from which pirate craft could burst at any moment. ‘That you’ve not told me enough. Why does Athena want us in Delos? What’s going on?’

  ‘The world’s moving, while you’re playing princes on your barren, back-of-nowhere island,’ she jeers.

  ‘I’m not that ignorant,’ I retort. ‘Every trader who comes to Ithaca is full of tales about Troy’s new harbour, and how Achaea’s tin trade is being strangled. I can see it for myself – fewer ore ships are reaching our ports and prices are soaring.’

  ‘While Troy thrives,’ Bria adds. ‘King Piri-Yamu strengthens his walls, and forges new alliances.

  ‘You mean, with the Hittites.’

  ‘Who else? It’s a tricky one, though – seem too strong and the Hittite Empire will feel threatened; seem too vulnerable and it’ll invade.’

  A delicate balance between strength and weakness… I’ve enough training in statecraft to admire Piri-Yamu’s skill if he does pull it off. ‘What about that marriage alliance he’s been trying for?’ I ask, thinking of the lovely Kyshanda, Piri-Yamu’s eldest daughter. Last year, she told me she was destined to marry a Hittite prince. Her face floats before me and I stifle a sigh. Issa has held my body many times but Kyshanda has claimed my heart. Not that I wish to reveal either fact.

  Bria shrugs. ‘No word as yet.’ Her face is bland – I don’t think she’s sensed my feelings for Kyshanda. ‘High King Agamemnon needs to unify Achaea into something dangerous enough to force the Trojans to the negotiating table, but his kingdoms just squabble amongst themselves—’

  ‘I know that,’ I interrupt, riled by her condescending tone. ‘Agamemnon’s delegates even visited our little rock.’

  I don’t envy Agamemnon the task – unifying the Achaeans is like herding ferrets. We all speak the same language, wear the same clothes, sing of the same heroes, but ‘Achaea’ is really just a mass of feuding kingdoms full of ignorant men who can’t think past their honour and their bellies. I still love my homeland, nonetheless.

  I glance down the ship to the stern, where Diomedes is talking to Eurybates, and catch Bria doing the same. I’ve no doubt we’re both thinking about the Seven Against Thebes: seven woefully under-prepared princes of Argos who marched on a mighty walled city. Six of them were slaughtered in battle, leaving a string of fatherless children. Those children – they call themselves the ‘Epigoni’, meaning ‘offspring’ – have been brought up obsessed with the idea they will someday avenge their fathers. Diomedes is one of them.

  Why on earth has Athena told Diomedes she’s giving the Epigo
ni her support? Isn’t Thebes the prime example of the sort of feud we should be ending? Is she trying to bolster Diomedes’s loyalty? Or is she just clutching at straws? And does this have anything to do with our errand to Delos?

  ‘Aren’t Dio and his cousins too obsessed with their own revenge to bother about Troy?’ I ask.

  ‘Among the Epigoni, Diomedes is one of the moderates,’ says Bria. ‘He wants to kill all the Thebans and sack the city, of course. But it doesn’t consume his every thought.’

  ‘More like every third thought?’

  ‘Exactly. That’s practically pacifism, by their standards. His other two thoughts are about food and fornication, naturally – you men are all the same.’

  ‘Then why did Athena recruit him?’

  ‘Why not? He’s a genuine worshipper – he honestly believes himself to be a reasoned and intelligent man, and who knows, under all that pretty brawn he might be. He’s at least as promising as Theseus, and just as handsome.’

  ‘Don’t mention that buffoon Theseus again,’ I growl. ‘He was a menace.’

  And you screwed him without a thought.

  Bria laughs, her eyes just a little too perceptive. ‘Poor Odysseus. Jealous of every man I look at, but unwilling to lay with me when I offer myself.’ She stretches, showing off her curves provocatively. ‘Hey, when we hit land, maybe the three of us could have some fun?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I tell her. Lovemaking is too precious to me to be treated flippantly – and as for having another man present: no. ‘You haven’t told me why we’re going to Delos,’ I remind her.

  ‘Haven’t I? Do you know the new tale the priests are telling of Leto – the goddess from the Luwian lands south of Troy?’

  ‘I heard some bizarre rumour that she’s now supposed to be the mother of both Apollo and Artemis,’ I say, wrinkling my nose. ‘When I was a child on Ithaca, Artemis was Hera’s child and no one knew about Apollo.’

  ‘Yes, funny how the eternal immortals keep changing,’ Bria chuckles. ‘Over the last year or so, Zeus’s followers in the east have been claiming Zeus fell in love with Leto. They’re teaching that Apollo and Artemis are the twins she bore him, and they’re even trying to establish shrines to Leto in Achaea.’