Chasing Odysseus

by S. D. Gentill

  “Come on,” whispered Cadmus. “We have no time to watch. We must help them.”

  “We will be badly outnumbered,” said Brontor. “There are three soldiers to every one of us, and then there are the citizens themselves ... none has helped the Herdsmen so far.”

  Cadmus shook his head; his eyes glinted dangerously. “We will not be outnumbered, Brontor. I have an idea.”

  They went back to where the others waited. Silently, they made their way around the vale to the adjoining pasture. The large herd grazed peacefully on the grass of Ida, oblivious to how the world had changed.

  Cadmus laid out his plan. He sent several Herdsmen to round up the beasts. “Stampede them towards the barrier into the vale,” he said. “I’ll open the gate, and we’ll storm them in the midst of two hundred head. Do not stay to fight. The cattle will give us a little time — we will take my father and brothers and then you must return to your caves until we can all decide what to do.”

  The Herdsmen nodded in approval. Some even laughed. The herds they had so long protected would now come to their aid.

  Cadmus turned to Brontor. “Will you take my sister, old man?” he asked with a faint smile. “I have heard that you stay astride a horse almost as well as you do a bull.”

  Brontor’s eyes warmed with the recent memory. He offered Hero his arm and pulled her onto his steed. “Agelaus is raising idiots,” he said quietly.

  Cadmus grinned, and rode to the far end of the pasture which narrowed into a small gorge. Hidden behind branches was a wooden barrier built by the Herdsmen to keep the cattle from the vale.

  Cadmus cut the bindings that held the gate and let it fall to the ground. With the gate down, the herd would run straight into the midst of Scamandrios and his men. The cattle of Ida were not meek and gentle creatures, and the soldiers would not know how to fight, let alone subdue them. They would have no choice but to flee. He tied his horse to a tree away from the path of the herd and positioned himself on a rock above the narrow gap. He could already hear the pounding of hooves, faintly, in the distance.

  Cadmus could not see into the vale from his place on the rock, but for one terrible moment he heard the fall of a whip and the anguished howl of Lycon. And then the herd came through; charging at speed, for the Herdsmen knew how to start a stampede. Cadmus watched for the black bull, knowing the beast would go through the gap alone, for its size would allow no other. He waited until the creature was nearly beneath him and then he dropped down onto its back. The bull barely noticed him, caught in the senseless need to run.

  In the face of the charge, the Trojan soldiers and survivors scattered in terror. When Cadmus loomed, furious and wild, from the back of the largest beast, some knelt to pray, thinking that perhaps the God of War had returned to Ida. The Herdsmen followed on horseback. Cadmus leapt from the bull, leaving the creature free to demonstrate the use of his horns to a line of soldiers. Brontor rode up behind him and Hero slipped to the ground. She saw Lycon first, huddled over the body of their father. She screamed.

  Cadmus knelt by his father as Hero threw herself onto Agelaus’ body. Numb, he pulled Hero away and closed his father’s eyes. He fought panic. He did not know what to do next — Hero was close to hysterical and Lycon just seemed confused. Waves of grief threatened to engulf him too.

  Cadmus seized his brother by the shoulders and shook him. “Ly! Lycon! Where is Mac? What have they done with Mac?”

  Now Brontor dismounted and held Hero as she sobbed and raged.

  Lycon seemed to focus suddenly. When he looked at Cadmus, the pain in his eyes was frightening. “He’s dead Cad ... they beat him to death.”

  “Where is he, Ly?”

  Lycon looked towards a large tree against which they had pushed Machaon when they flogged him. Their brother’s body lay crumpled beneath it, abandoned by the soldiers who had held him. A figure knelt by it — Aeneas. For a moment Cadmus turned away, unable to bear the loss. Machaon was the first of them. They could not do without him.

  Bracing, refusing, Cadmus turned back and ran to his brother’s body. Aeneas looked up as he approached. “He is not dead,” said the prince.

  Cadmus put his ear to Machaon’s mouth. It was true, he still breathed. Cadmus felt weak with relief. He looked upon the bloody welts the whip had left on his brother’s back, and he gasped at the sheer number of stripes. He turned on Aeneas in anger.

  “How could you do this?” he demanded, his voice hoarse and raw. “We have done nothing but serve the people of Troy.”

  Aeneas could not meet his eye. “This was Scamandrios’ command, not mine. He believes the Herdsmen betrayed Troy. He thought that by beating your brother, he could force Agelaus to confess.”

  Cadmus reeled with the horror of his father’s last moments. There was no crueler way to have sent Agelaus’ to his death.

  “Scamandrios would have us all surrender to the Greeks,” Aeneas continued. “He says the Herdsmen have left us no choice.”

  “And what say you?” Cadmus spat back.

  “I cannot surrender what is left of my people,” the prince replied.

  “Then I suggest you get as far as you can from Scamandrios!”

  Machaon was beginning to stir.

  Cadmus forgot about Aeneas. “Mac? Mac ... ”

  Someone fell to his knees beside him. It was Lycon. Cadmus had not noticed that his brother and sister had come to stand behind him. The body of their father had already been lifted upon a Herdsman’s horse.

  Machaon opened his eyes. Gasping and retching as awareness returned, he struggled to get up. Cadmus pulled his brother’s arm over his own shoulders and gently helped him to stand. Brontor and his sons brought horses, and somehow Machaon mounted. Cadmus rode with him, and Lycon and Hero took the other steed. Brontor howled to signal their brethren and the Herdsmen of Ida disappeared into the mountain.

  They returned Agelaus and his children to their home behind the fall of the stream. The caves of the Herdsmen were all well-hidden and connected by natural and hewn caverns. They were hunted now by both the Greeks and those loyal to Scamandrios. To the Greeks, they were the last resistance of their Trojan enemy. To the Trojans, they were traitors.

  They laid Agelaus on the pile of hides and furs on which he had slept in life, and they left his children to their grief whilst they retreated to mourn their own dead.

  Lycon covered Agelaus with a blanket, as if he merely rested, and Cadmus rebuilt the fire. They had not the strength to face their loss just yet. Hero tentatively applied a solution of wine and herbs to Machaon’s back; trying in vain not to hurt him further, terrified by what the people they served had done to her brother. Lycon recounted what had happened.

  He told them of Troy, of the carnage and the terror and of the bodies of Priam and Deiphobus amongst the thousands of others. He described the rivers of blood that ran through the streets. He spoke of what they had done to save those they could, and of the long journey back to Ida. And then he told them of Scamandrios, his appearance in the vale and his accusations. Haltingly Lycon described how Machaon had taken his place under the whip.

  “Gods, Ly ... I’m sorry.” Machaon spoke for the first time when he heard his brother repeat the words by which he denied him. “You are as much a son of Agelaus as I — you are my brother ... I could think of no other way — I couldn’t let them ... ”

  Lycon looked at him. “I know,” he said. “But I would not have you do it again. Watching ... it was worse ... ” He bit his lip and spoke with difficulty. “I thought you were dead, Mac.”

  Machaon put his arm about Lycon’s shoulders and embraced him protectively, strongly, though it cost him to move his battered body. “I am not dead ... ” He looked towards their father and did not finish.

  Cadmus sat by them. “The Trojans think us traitors,” he said slowly. His lip was unsteady. “I don’t know that our father would have survived that, even if they hadn’t killed him with a blade. You know him — he could not have lived with the sha
me with which Scamandrios has branded us.”

  Machaon flinched suddenly as Hero began to tend his injuries a little too vigorously. “Gods, Hero ... ” he protested.

  “Just how many times did they strike you?” she demanded, her voice strained and heated.

  “I don’t know ... I didn’t count ... ”

  “I will kill a Trojan for every mark on your back,” she said furiously. She was again in tears, but they were angry. “The remnants of Scamandrios’ people shall pay for their ingratitude, they shall know the consequences of how they have wronged us ... ”

  Her brothers glanced at each other. Every now and then, the Amazon in their sister burst forth with warlike rage. Often, they had provoked it themselves and laughed at the intensity of her wrath.

  Machaon turned painfully, and pulled his sister to him. “Hero,” he said softly, in a manner that was much like his father’s. “Vengeance and glory are the ways of the Greeks and the Trojans. We are of the Herdsmen.”

  “How can you say that?” she fumed. “Look at what they did to you!”

  Machaon grimaced as he attempted to crane his neck over his shoulder. His back felt raw, flayed. “Well, I can’t really look at it,” he said, “But I felt it and I saw how our father died. Hero, we are defenders. It is not our way to start wars.”

  Hero sobbed bitterly and her brothers closed in about her. “What are we going to do?” she gulped. “They all hate us.”

  “We’re going to bury our father,” Machaon replied sadly.

  They waited until she had stopped crying. Then the sons of Agelaus began to dig the grave into which they would lay the man who had loved them above all things. Though Herdsmen were usually buried beneath the stars, they would rest Agelaus in the earth of his own cave, where neither Greek nor Trojan would find him.

  Machaon dug with his brothers although he was weak and every movement hurt. They worked shoulder-to-shoulder for a time.

  Then Machaon stumbled and Lycon grabbed him.

  “Cad and I can do this ... ”

  Machaon shook his head.

  Lycon looked to Cadmus for help. He understood Machaon’s need to the do this one last thing for their father, but he also knew how badly they had beaten him.

  “Mac,” Cadmus reasoned with him. “Father would not wish you to kill yourself burying him.”

  Lycon held his brother up. He remembered again how Machaon had shielded him from Scamandrios. “Please, Mac.”

  Machaon stared at his brothers, and then he dropped his pick. In truth it was all he could do to stand.

  Hero prepared her father’s body. She anointed his face and hands with oils, and placed coins upon his eyes so that he could pay the ferryman to convey him over the river Styx and into the underworld. She prayed and praised the gods so that they would look kindly on the spirit of her father. She had nothing else, so she took out the dagger that she had purchased in Abydos and sheared off her long hair. She threw the locks into the fire praying that the gods would accept her tresses as a sacrifice for her father.

  Her brothers watched her silently and when she was done, they began the ritual of the Herdsmen. Into the grave, they placed their father’s staff and his bow, and they conveyed gentle Agelaus into the earth with the mourning song of their people.

  Both Greek invaders and Trojan refugees remembered that evening as the night of the wolf, for all Ida rang with the howls of the Herdsmen as they buried their dead.

  “Steersmen are unknown to the Phaeacians, as are steering oars – such as other ships possess. Our ships know instinctively the minds and purpose of our crews. Every city and land is known to them, and they make their way across immense seas, cloaked in mist and cloud with no fear of wreck or damage to slow the swiftness of their passage.”

  The Odyssey Book VIII

  BOOK VI

  HERO WOKE SLOWLY, RELUCTANTLY becoming conscious to a world so changed and frightening. A world without her father. She had woken to this realisation for five days now, but each awakening was the same, just grief renewed. Each day seemed to take Agelaus further from them.

  She could hear voices. The deep murmur of her brothers in discussion ... and another voice, even deeper and strange.

  She opened her eyes, but she did not move.

  Her brothers were around the fire. Machaon stoked the flames. His back was no longer bare and the outrage that Scamandrios had visited upon it was hidden beneath his tunic. Cadmus was sharpening their swords, though in truth the Herdsmen rarely carried blades. Lycon was painting the fall of Troy upon the walls of the cavern. He had been so occupied for days.

  They talked companionably, glancing occasionally towards the dark wall of the cave where sat the other who shared their conversation. It took a moment for Hero’s frail eyes to see he who spoke in tones so rich and unfamiliar.

  He was large — at least twice the height of a man, and his skin was a warm ebony. He was naked, in a manner of speaking. His chest was wide and muscled, his shoulders square and strong. Beneath the waist, however, his was not the body of a man, but a beast. His haunches, which were crossed, one over the other as he sat, were covered in curling black hair and tapered to cloven hooves. His face was ageless, and yet ancient. His chin ended in a pert and narrow beard, and from his forehead sprouted two short horns.

  Hero closed her eyes again, sure that she must be dreaming; but when she opened them once more, the creature remained, talking casually with her brothers.

  She rose to her knees, suddenly afraid.

  Machaon noticed her first. “Oh, Hero, you’re awake ... ”

  Hero could not speak. She gazed at the goat-legged being dumbly.

  Machaon smiled. “Oh, you’ve never met have you?” he said as if all was perfectly normal. “Hero, this is Pan.”

  Hero paled. She felt cold. Pan, the god, Pan, was seated by their fire, and her brothers were acting as if he were some common traveller. Surely he would kill them for their impiety. She flung herself prostrate on the ground. She prayed quickly and loudly, praising the God of Woodlands in a desperate and terrified attempt to undo her brothers’ insult.

  Pan stood upon his cloven hooves, and came closer, ducking his head so that he did not hit the roof of the cavern. Hero was shaking uncontrollably, but she did not stop her devotions.

  Pan looked curiously at her. “What is she doing?” he asked, his voice resonating against the rock walls.

  “She’s praying,” replied Lycon.

  The god pulled back a little startled. “To whom? ... And why?”

  Cadmus put his finger to his lips to silence them, and listened for a while. “She’s praying to you,” he said, with a grin. “She does do it rather a lot ... pray I mean — not necessarily to you ... in fact never to you.”

  Pan stared at her as if she was something quite odd.

  Hero wanted to cry, but she was too scared to stop praying.

  Machaon touched her gently on the shoulder. “Hero, it’s okay,” he said.

  Hero couldn’t understand. They were in the presence of a god. With all her piety, she had never before been so blessed and so terrified, and her brothers could not, even now, seem to show any deference. What was wrong with them?

  Machaon pulled Hero up. “Hero, this is Pan,” he said as if that explained everything.

  The god lowered his huge face to look at her.

  “The poor little thing is frightened,” he said. He looked around at the sons of Agelaus. “What have you boys been telling her?”

  Hero’s eyes welled with tears. She dropped to her knees again and Cadmus rolled his eyes. “My Lord, have we offended you?” she sobbed.

  The black eyes of Pan widened. “Offended me? Of course not,” he said. “Why would I seek out the company of those who offend me? I have come because I loved Agelaus, and I wished to pass the time with his sons.”

  “But you are a god,” stumbled Hero, no less confused.

  “Indeed,” Pan said. “I am the god of the Herdsmen.”

&nbs
p; “Come, Hero,” said Machaon taking her by the hand. “You will frighten Pan with all that praying.”

  “Or he may come to like it,” muttered Lycon, “and then, he shall expect us to do it.”

  Pan chuckled wickedly.

  Hero stayed by Machaon, clutching his hand as if she were a very small child. She felt unsure about everything now. Pan did not seem to understand that he was a god.

  They sat about the fire, over which Lycon had hung a large joint of meat, and Pan showed Cadmus how to get a finer edge to the blades he was sharpening.

  “Has he been here before?” Hero whispered to Machaon.

  “Yes, many times,” he replied. “You were usually asleep. It is deep in the night when Pan gets lonely and seeks company. You need not be afraid.”

  “He is a god!” she said quietly and urgently. “We should all be afraid of the gods.”

  Machaon laughed.

  Cadmus had overheard her. “Pan is god of the Herdsmen, Hero,” he said with a wink. “I told you he does not require such incessant devotion. The ways of the Herdsmen suit him, and he suits us.”

  Hero gasped. Cadmus’ words were close to blasphemy. It was not for mortals to find the gods suitable or otherwise.

  Pan got up and looked closely at her once more. “Whatever you are saying, Cadmus, it is frightening the poor child again. Unless it is particularly amusing, you should stop.” He studied her, and then he ran his large hand over the ragged stubble on her head. “Why have you shorn her?” he asked, bemused.

  Machaon wrapped his arms around Hero who was not coping well with the god’s scrutiny. “Hero sacrificed her hair to the gods when we buried Agelaus,” he said softly. “Our sister is devoted to the greater Pantheon.”

  Pan nodded in understanding. “That is probably wise,” he said holding her with his unfathomable gaze. “I am not a powerful god. It is well that you should hold some sway with the twelve gods of the Pantheon.”

  “We’ll leave that to Hero,” said Lycon. He grinned at Pan. “We’ll make do with you. You’re not so easily offended ... it’s a lot safer.”