by Glyn Iliffe
Another benefit was a sense of the presence of others. After they had been creeping through the thinly wooded slopes for some time, getting ever closer to the outermost settlements of Ithaca, Eperitus realized that they were being followed.
The trees began to thin out, offering less cover, so they climbed a wall into a vineyard to screen their progress from unwelcome eyes. Here, as the others moved forward, Eperitus ducked down and doubled back to wait behind the chest-high wall. Moments later he heard the sounds of someone approaching with great stealth – a small, light person who made little noise as he reached the wall. Had it not been for his improved hearing Eperitus doubted he would have detected him; but, after a brief pause to listen, their pursuer put an arm on the wall above Eperitus’s head and began to clamber over.
In an instant the warrior was upon him, grabbing him by the tunic and hauling him with a thud onto the ground. He drew his sword and placed the point against his captive’s exposed throat.
And saw that, with his newfound stealth, he had captured a boy of no more than ten years.
‘Don’t worry,’ Eperitus reassured him, withdrawing his sword. ‘I’ll not kill a child. Now get up and tell me who you are.’
‘Arceisius, my lord. My family are loyal to the king. I know you must be a friend of Laertes, too – I saw you with Halitherses.’
‘Is that young Arceisius?’ said Halitherses, returning with the rest of the party. ‘Where are your flocks, boy?’
‘Mostly eaten up by the Taphians, sir. The scrawny animals they’ve left us are back up there on the hillside. Is Odysseus with you?’
‘He is, lad, and if you want to help us stop the Taphians stealing your sheep you’d better answer us a few questions.’ The captain of the guard knelt down so that he was eye to eye with the boy. ‘Don’t exaggerate now, Arceisius, but tell us how many of these folk there are.’
‘Five score and three, not including Polytherses, or Eupeithes, who is his prisoner now.’
‘That’s a very clear answer,’ Halitherses replied, looking up at him and raising an eyebrow. ‘Now, lord Odysseus will want to speak to your father. Where is he?’
‘The Taphians killed him when he tried to stop them stealing his sheep.’
Halitherses tousled the boy’s long hair and stood up. ‘Then we’ll make them pay, Arceisius, don’t you worry. You head back up to your sheep and let us get about our business.’
He turned to go, but the boy tugged at his cloak.
‘The Taphians are paid with wine, partly, but the shipment is a week late. It’s due this evening in a ship from the mainland, and they’re sending some men to escort the wagon back from the harbour. I thought I should tell you because the Taphians are getting angry and Polytherses is scared they’ll take it out on him if the wine doesn’t arrive safely.’
‘Good lad,’ Eperitus told him, understanding the suggestion. If they could somehow stop the wine reaching the palace, perhaps the Taphians would revolt and do their job for them.
‘There’s something else, my lord,’ the shepherd boy said. ‘It’s the reason I was following you. There are Taphians in the woods. They left the city a while ago and headed for the top of the hill. I thought maybe Odysseus was up there.’
‘Zeus’s beard!’ Halitherses exclaimed. ‘They’ll find the camp. Come on. We haven’t a moment to waste.’
Chapter Twenty-eight
TAPHIAN WINE
They ran headlong through the trees without caring whether they could be seen from the city below. Everything now depended upon them reaching the camp before the Taphians: if Polytherses’s men took the Spartans by surprise, they would be massacred. At a stroke Odysseus would have lost over half his warriors, as well as the element of surprise that was so essential to the success of his plans.
Halitherses’s training regime at Sparta had made the Ithacans fit enough to run all day, but their armour and weapons weighed them down. The heavy accoutrements sapped the strength from their limbs as they struggled to climb the steep slopes, frustrating their progress and making them curse beneath their breath, but as they neared the area of their camp they slowed to a cautious walk. Set in a hollow in the ground and surrounded by a screen of trees and bushes, it was visible only to those on the topmost point of the hill. However, the approaches to the hollow were also obscured to within a short distance, enabling them to come quite close before Halitherses signalled for the group to halt. Eperitus was with him at the head of their file and, leaving the others crouching amongst some rocks, the two men crawled up to a knot of bushes for a better view.
‘I can hear voices,’ Halitherses whispered.
‘Yes, and there’s an armed man over in those bushes. You see him?’
‘My old eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. He must be a sentinel, but is he a Spartan or a Taphian?’
‘He’s neither,’ Eperitus answered. ‘He’s an Ithacan.’
‘Then Odysseus has beaten us back,’ Halitherses said, getting to his feet. He raised his spear to catch the lookout’s attention, then stepped out into the open. Eperitus waved for the others to follow.
The soldier came out to meet them, his face gloomy. ‘You’d better go and see for yourselves,’ he said, pointing back towards the camp.
Eperitus felt a cold weight sink through him as if he had swallowed a stone. Halitherses gave him a look that revealed his own misgivings, and then with reluctant curiosity they pushed through the trees and walked down into the hollow. The others came after, bringing Arceisius with them.
Before them was a scene of devastation. Spartan bodies lay strewn everywhere, intermingled with bits of armour and broken weapons. The dust was stained with blood in many places, not just where the Spartans had fallen, and from that alone Eperitus knew they had killed some of their Taphian assailants before being overwhelmed. Odysseus and the others stood looking at the litter of corpses. At the sight of Halitherses and his men their spirits rose visibly, glad to see they were still alive, though they offered no words of greeting.
‘The shepherd boy told us there were Taphians on the hill,’ Eperitus said, pointing at Arceisius. ‘But how did you know to return so soon?’
Odysseus shook his head in dismay. ‘We slipped over the road between Ithaca and the harbour, hoping to climb the hill to the north-west of the town. From there we saw a ship drifting out of the bay and into the straits; it was one of the Spartan ships that brought us here.’
Halitherses spat in the dust. ‘Treachery then.’
‘They sold us and their own countrymen for a few pieces of silver. It’s my guess Polytherses sent a large force of men to hold the isthmus between the two halves of Ithaca, and some malevolent god led them straight to our camp.’
‘So what do we do now?’ Halitherses asked. ‘We can’t stay here: Polytherses is certain to send up another force at any time. The ship’s captain will have told him how many men were landed, so he’ll know there’s only a handful of us left. At the very least he’ll want to check the bodies to see if you’re amongst them, Odysseus.’
‘We’ll have to find a boat to take us back to the mainland,’ Mentor said, despondently. ‘I can’t see any other choice: if the Spartans killed as many as they lost, Eumaeus will still need to recruit seventy loyal Ithacans before we can match the Taphians man for man. Even then, Polytherses has the advantage of defended walls and a better-equipped force, and we’ve lost the advantage of surprise. Winning back our homeland was always going to be hard, but now it’s become impossible.’
‘None of that matters any more,’ Odysseus said. ‘Look.’
He pointed at one of the Spartan bodies. He had short black hair and a beard and his eyes were closed as if in sleep. The shaft of an arrow stood up from his stomach, where a crimson circle of blood had spread out from the point of entry. Eperitus did not recognize him or know his name.
‘What of him?’ he asked.
‘He was one of the men Diocles assigned to guard Penelope; the other’s over there.
They should be back at the pig farm with her. The fact they aren’t means Penelope persuaded them to follow us. You heard her say she would follow me, and that’s exactly what she’s done.’
‘Then she’s been taken by the Taphians?’ Halitherses asked.
‘I’ve no doubt about it, which leaves me no choice in the matter. If there are any that will follow me, I intend to attack tonight.’
Halitherses looked grim. His reply was stiff and tight-lipped.
‘And every man here will attack with you. This island’s their home and there’s not a man amongst them who doesn’t have wives and children to fight for. The only man I can’t speak for is Eperitus. I’ve come to respect you in the time we’ve been together,’ he said, turning to Eperitus, ‘and I would trust you with my life. But you’ve only spent a handful of nights on Ithaca and I’d think no less of you if you returned to the mainland to seek your fortune there.’
‘Yes,’ Odysseus agreed. ‘I owe you my life, Eperitus, and you owe me yours, but I can’t ask you to give it up for the sake of an island you know nothing about.’
‘Know nothing about?’ Eperitus scoffed. ‘Haven’t I heard you and your men talk about every rocky crag, every wooded hill, every olive grove and every young maiden on Ithaca? I know the names of each different place on this island from its homesick warriors, and its sights are so familiar to me I feel like I was born here. Ithaca’s my home now and my allegiance is to its prince. I’ll kill Taphians with you, even if it means certain death, but if you’ll listen to me I have a better suggestion.’
The others looked at him quizzically.
‘The shepherd boy told us something we can use to our advantage. He says the Taphians are getting restless because their wine shipment is late. The only thing stopping them from rebelling against Polytherses is the promise it will arrive today.’
‘That must have been the merchantman I saw coming in as the Spartan ship left,’ Odysseus said.
‘Then we don’t have any time to spare. Polytherses has sent some men to escort the wagon back up to the palace, but if we can kill them and smash the shipment then the Taphians will rebel. We might not even have to fight them.’
‘The boy has brains, as well as brawn,’ Halitherses said, slapping Eperitus on the shoulder. ‘I say the idea’s a good one. How about you, Odysseus?’
‘I say you two should stick to fighting and let me do the thinking. The wine shipment is the key, but we shouldn’t destroy it. On the contrary,’ he said, snapping his fingers and grinning at them, ‘I want to make sure it arrives at the palace safe and sound.’
Odysseus and his men watched the sail of the merchant ship drift out of the harbour. The sun was sinking behind the hills of Samos on the other side of the channel that divided the two islands. Its departing beams set fire to the surface of the water, making it boil red about the charred hull of the vessel as it slipped away northwards, dragging the long, oblong shadow of its sail beside it. After a while the ship disappeared from their view and, released from its spell, they settled themselves for the ambush.
Before long they heard the squeal of an overladen wagon making its way up the road from the harbour. It was the same road they had marched down to the cheers of the townsfolk half a year before, though now the only voices they heard were those of the approaching Taphians, the only sound the occasional crack of a stick on some poor beast’s hindquarters.
Eperitus waited with Odysseus, hiding amongst the poplar trees where he had fought Polybus and knocked him into the town spring. Antiphus and five others were with them, waiting anxiously for the Taphians to appear. The remaining warriors, led by Halitherses and Mentor, were concealed behind a stone wall on the other side of the road, readying their weapons for the fight.
Eperitus’s sword was in his hand and Odysseus had an arrow fitted in the great bow of horn that Iphitus had given him in Messene. Beside them Antiphus slid an arrow from the quiver at his hip and readied the notch in his own bow, to wait with stilled breath for the first soldier to come into view. No sooner had he half-tensed the ox-gut string than a man appeared where the road bent down towards the bay. He was followed in quick succession by two others – all of them were tall and heavily armed – and a pair of oxen drawing a large, high-sided cart. A further two warriors, older and fatter than the others, sat behind the labouring animals. They were backed by stacks of earthenware vessels, placed in baskets to prevent them smashing against each other during the journey and spilling the precious wine.
Nobody moved. The Ithacans had been in enough fights together now to know that the time to strike was still moments away. Before the Taphians had come into sight Eperitus had felt a knot of anxiety in his stomach, but now battle was at hand the tension eased out of him and an intense sensitivity to his surroundings took over. He was aware of every slight movement, every sound and, despite the twilight, every detail of each of his enemies. He could see the redness in their cheeks from sampling the wine, and the light of life in their eyes, shining with cheer because tonight they hoped to drink themselves into a stupor. But for them the night would never come, and their eyes would soon be dark for ever.
Odysseus signalled quietly to Antiphus, pointing at himself and then the driver to indicate his chosen target. Antiphus nodded in reply and indicated the lead Taphian. In the half-light of early evening neither shot would be easy, but Eperitus trusted both men to find their marks. Then Odysseus raised himself on one knee, waited for Antiphus to do the same, and in the same instant their bows twanged.
Both of the chosen men fell. The driver pitched sideways out of the cart, whilst the lead soldier half-raised a hand to his throat – where Antiphus’s arrow had struck – before dropping to the ground. The squealing cart halted and for a brief instant everything was silent as the surviving Taphians looked about themselves in consternation. Then Eperitus leapt to his feet and ran at them screaming, his sword raised above his head. The others followed, yelling insanely as they dashed across the short distance separating the trees from the road.
One man made a clumsy effort to loosen the shield from his back and turn it towards them, but failed to hold its weight in his hurry and dropped it. An instant later Eperitus’s sword had swept his head from his shoulders and sent it bouncing back down the road to the harbour. The remaining man on the wagon burst into tears and threw his arms out in supplication, pleading for his life in a garbled and hideous-sounding dialect. Realizing he had no heart for a fight Eperitus ignored him and looked for the other man, who he saw duck beneath a swathing cut from Halitherses’s sword and sprint up the road to the town.
Antiphus fell in beside his captain and raised his bow to shoot the man down, but before he could release the arrow from between his thumb and forefinger, Mentor and another soldier hurdled the stone wall and dived upon the fleeing Taphian, smashing him to the ground beneath their combined weight. He struggled ferociously, and not until more help arrived did they manage to control him.
Strangely, when the two men were hauled before Odysseus for judgement their attitudes reversed. When Odysseus revealed his identity, the old man who had gibbered insanely for mercy became silent and stared at the prince with defiance; the younger man, however, crumbled with fear and began begging for his life. He fell to his knees before the prince and wrapped his arms about his legs.
‘Don’t kill me, lord,’ he cried, his accent thick and barely intelligible. ‘Spare me and I’ll fight for you against Polytherses. We came here to support Eupeithes, but since he was deposed many of us have lost our reason to be here.’
‘Shut up, you grovelling piece of snot,’ growled his comrade.
Mentor cuffed him about the back of the head, persuading him to silence.
‘I’ll spare you,’ Odysseus said. The kneeling man looked up in surprise. ‘If you help us get into the palace.’
‘Say nothing, Mentes,’ ordered the other Taphian, earning himself another blow. This time blood trickled from one of his nostrils, proof that Mentor’s patie
nce was thinning.
‘What do you say?’ Odysseus persisted. ‘I give you your life, and in exchange you get me into the palace.’
The man seemed suddenly uncertain, but as Odysseus raised the point of his sword and placed it against the soft flesh of his throat he swallowed quickly and nodded.
‘I’ll do it. I can tell you all you need to know about Poly-therses’s defences. If you let me return now, I can open the gate for you in the middle of the night.’
‘Don’t mock me, Mentes,’ Odysseus replied with a frown. ‘I intend to drive this wagon up to the palace gates with you at my side. And in return for your life you’ll not only tell the guard I’m one of the wine merchants, you’ll also see I’m made welcome for the night. Then, when the palace is sleeping, you can help me open the gates so that the rest of my men can enter. I want you close to me the whole time, close enough for me to slit your throat if you show any sign of revealing my name. And only when Ithaca is rid of Polytherses and your countrymen will I spare your life. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, lord,’ Mentes nodded fervently. ‘I’ve told you I have no love for Polytherses – I’ll do all these things you ask, and more if required.’
‘I don’t believe him,’ Mentor said. ‘He’ll say anything right now, when your sword is pricking at his soft neck. But what about when he’s surrounded by his friends, safely tucked away inside the palace with nothing but your dagger to threaten him? The cow-ard’ll find his courage and sense of duty quick enough then – duty to Polytherses! Some god has robbed you of your wits, Odysseus, if you let yourself be led into the palace by this serpent.’
‘I give you my word of honour as a warrior, as all the gods are my witness,’ said Mentes, standing and facing his accuser.
‘I don’t trust the word of a Taphian,’ Mentor replied, sliding his sword out of his belt. He presented the hilt to the Taphian. ‘But if you kill your comrade . . .’
