Penelope's Web

by Christopher Rush

  The javelin caught him just where the buckles of the belt fastened and the corslet overlapped. It came out below the navel. He stopped running and looked down at it in surprise, stopped in his stride. The second spear hit him slightly to the right of the first, and he sank to his knees, holding on to his bowels with both hands, fiddling with fretful fingers, as if he could somehow get them back in place. He needn’t have worried. Achilles came up and sliced off his head with one slash of the sword, and Polydorus fell dead and headless on his back, the hands still clasping, the intestines seeping through the blind twitching fingers.

  When Hector saw his youngest brother die like this, he saw red and ran at Achilles, roaring and shaking his spear. He made the perfect throw. He’d have speared him like a fish, but like greased lightning Achilles bent and scooped up a nearby shield and whipped it in front of himself – just in time to stop the hurtling bronze. Its song of death ended with a sudden thud, and Achilles wrenched it out of the shield and took aim.

  ‘Try it out from this end, cunt-face!’

  But Hector had already retreated into the lines. He didn’t fancy facing Achilles with two spears of his own as well as the weapon he’d just lost. Achilles yelled after him.

  ‘That’s right, run, you cur! Dodging down the corridors of war as fucking usual, fucking evading me, that’s your game! But it’s only a matter of time now! I’ll nail you soon, you cunt!’

  And he went on to kill Dryops and Demuchus.

  Dryops didn’t even know it was coming. He woke up to find Achilles’ spear suddenly sticking through his neck, sending him gurgling into the dust. Demuchus, a big handsome bastard, got it in the knee first of all – a well-aimed boulder, shattering the kneecap. He fell clutching the ruins of his leg and screaming in agony. Not for too long, though. Achilles ran up and stabbed him in the belly with his long sword, then in the neck and eye, rendering him well and truly extinct. And not so handsome now.

  Achilles looked around calmly for his next targets. He picked out Laogonus and Dradanus, the sons of Bias, tumbling them from their chariot, the first with a short spear-cast, quick and simple, the other closer up with a fast savage slash of the sword, reaping the head like another poppy under the scythe.

  Young Tros was next. He saw it coming and saw how he’d fucked up – wrong place, wrong time. He could easily have been elsewhere. And he did the wrong thing too. When you see Achilles advancing on you, you can either fight if you feel lucky, or you can run away. What you don’t do is stand and beg. Which is what Tros did. He came right up and clasped him by the legs, behind the knees, begging for mercy. Achilles could take him prisoner. Or just spare the poor cunt instead, on account of his age. He was only a slip of a lad, after all, hardly worth killing. But as the slip of a lad spoke, Achilles bent slightly, and without a word slit open his belly. The liver ran loose, drenching the boy’s legs and darkening his lap. Achilles kicked him away with a snarl.

  ‘You blackheads want your kids to grow up? Don’t dress them up as fucking soldiers. It’s a man’s game. I’m not in the mercy vein today.’

  And he left the youngster to die where he lay, and selected his next kill.

  That was Mulius. Achilles drove in hard through one ear and out the other. The javelin jammed briefly in the brain. The eyes widened for a split second as if in disbelief. Achilles laughed.

  ‘Yes, a bit sudden, wasn’t it? Sorry about that. Better check out the damage.’

  He threw him to the ground, wrenched out the spear, and stabbed him again twice, this time in the back of the skull. The whole head came apart.

  Achilles whipped round and saw Echelus behind him.

  ‘You want some?’

  Echelus had been aiming at Achilles’ naked back but wasn’t fast enough. He still had his javelin arm bent back when Achilles ran up and chopped at his head. The long blade sliced it open.

  ‘Too fucking slow.’

  Out of the corner of his eye he caught Deucalion driving at him. He stopped the thrust with his own spear, piercing his opponent’s fighting arm and destroying the elbow tendons. Deucalion looked at his arm, suddenly weighed down by the heavy spear and dangling uselessly at his side.

  ‘Fuck!’

  Then he looked up again and stood there stupidly, waiting for the death he knew was coming. One second, one sword-chop – and the wait was over. Achilles’ reaping cut sent the head flying, and it went rolling away under the chariot wheels. The trunk still stood there stupidly, spouting blood and marrow from the neckbone.

  ‘Take a rest!’

  Achilles kicked it flat. The juice continued welling up from the vertebrae and spilled glistening on the ground.

  Rhigmus, son of Peiros, was next. Driven by his squire, Areithous, he came up on Achilles at a mad gallop just as he was killing Deucalion, obviously reckoning that the distraction made him an easy and unsuspecting target. He should have thought harder. Achilles turned and hurled, tumbling Rhigmus from the chariot with a spear in the chest. The driver was terrified and wheeled the horses round, trying to escape. Then he gave a gasp, looked down in surprise and saw the bronze blade sticking out of his chest. Achilles had driven right through between the shoulder blades. He joined Rhigmus in the dust, and the horses bolted. Achilles clenched both fists, threw back his head, shook his long bloodstained hair, and screamed at the sky. The bastard had gone stark raving mad.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The blackheads were on the run, a mass retreat. When they came up as far as Xanthus, Achilles split them in two. One lot he sent scurrying back to the city. The rest he cornered in a bend of the river where the waters ran deep. He left his spear standing propped up against a tamarisk tree and leapt into the water with one long loud murderous fucking yell.

  He was nobody’s fool. Being naked, he moved easily among the enemy, all of them heavily armed and armoured and many of whom drowned in the depths even without his assistance. They scattered like small fry while he thrashed the waves and committed unchecked butchery. A great spectacle. It would have taken only six men to surround him and cut the courageous cunt down. But each of those six would have had to be a man ready to lose his life for the others and for the cause. And not one fucker fancied that prospect. So they died retreating instead. Screams filled the air. Lopped limbs and heads bobbed briefly, brightly, on the surface. The river ran red.

  Some he didn’t kill. Just as he said he would, he took twelve alive, a selection of the youngest. With his Myrmidons, he tied their hands behind them and ordered them to be taken back to the ships. Then he returned to the slaughter.

  He could hardly believe his eyes when he saw Lycaon, one of Priam’s sons, struggling out of the water. They’d met before, on a night raid, and Achilles had taken him alive and put him on a ship bound for Lemnos. He was ransomed by a friend from Imbros, who got him safely away to Arisbe. But the silly cunt ran away from his protectors, fuck knows why, and made his way back to Troy. No place like home, I suppose, even when home’s a fucking battlefield. Anyway, bad decision. He’d been back in the war just eleven days. This was the twelfth, the day on which he found himself staring into those terrible green eyes for the second time in his life. For a moment, though, he relaxed and grinned happily. Achilles was smiling, the green eyes actually crinkling with laughter and recognition. And Achilles even extended his hand, helping the poor bastard out of the water and onto the bank.

  An irresistible scene? For Penelope – of course.

  Achilles laughed out loud.

  ‘Will you look at this? Wonders will never cease, will they? It’s you again – a dead man dodging destiny, taking on the whole heaving sea to die a second time. Is every Trojan I’ve captured and ransomed going to turn up again? As if the high seas were no obstacle at all to determined homecomers.’

  It was true that this had happened before to Achilles – ransomed prisoners reappearing, gluttons for punishment.

  ‘But I’ll tell you what. As the sea clearly gives up its dead, let’s give it another go, make
it a little harder for you next time, increase the challenge. You’ll win a medal if you can meet it. Let’s see. Let’s see if an earth-grave can finally hold down this plucky little fighter of fate.’

  Lycaon stopped smiling.

  ‘What I’m going to do is this. I’m going to try sending you not to Lemnos this time but to Hades. And we’ll see if you come back so easily as you did from sacred Arisbe. Or will the good old promiscuous earth, who hugs and cuddles so many brave young soldier lads in her lap, manage to hold you down at last, I wonder, in her long loving embrace?’

  Achilles lost his grin and made his thrust. But Lycaon ducked the spear and ran in under it, grabbing Achilles by the knees.

  ‘Wait!’

  ‘They all say that,’ laughed Achilles. ‘Funny, isn’t it? So predictable.’

  ‘No, wait, before you strike, listen to me, please! You took me alive once, kept me alive, fed me, ransomed me, broke bread with me, enriched yourself. We sat together at your table. And now I’m back in your hands after only eleven days with my family.’

  ‘Ironic, isn’t it. So?’

  ‘It’s almost as if it’s meant – you know, in a funny sort of way, as if fate intended us to be together.’

  Achilles made an impatient gesture.

  ‘No, but listen. My mother Laothoe’s father is old King Altes, leader of the Leleges. Right now he’s high up in the old fortress of Pedasus by the banks of the river Satniois. You’ve already butchered my brother, Polydorus. Leave my mother one son, I beg you!’

  Achilles frowned. ‘What makes you think I find your family history so interesting? Why do you think it will make any difference? For let me tell you right here and now, it won’t.’

  Lycaon reached up and touched Achilles’ chin. ‘Yes, but what I really want to say, what I should have stressed in the first place – Priam’s my father, yes, agreed, but my mother is not Hecuba. You see?’

  ‘Um . . . no.’

  ‘What I mean is, what I’m trying to say is that the belly and the breasts that nourished me and fed me never fed Hector. We’re not really brothers. As a matter of fact, I don’t even like him all that much. He’s an arrogant bastard if you want to know the truth. And an obnoxious bugger.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  Achilles shook his head. ‘Really. Well, well. So you’d deny both Hector and Hecuba then. What sort of a son and brother are you?’

  ‘That’s the very point I’m trying to make, you see – I’m not a son or brother. I’m neither. I’m not from the same womb as the one that bore Patroclus’s killer. We’re practically unrelated.’

  ‘Enough!’ roared Achilles, his anger rising. ‘You’re only making it worse for yourself. And if you think I’m going to stand around here all day listening to the story of your life and lineage, you can think again. I don’t need it, and it changes nothing. You’re a child of Priam, a Trojan, and that’ll do for me. I tell you, if you were a beetle crawled out from Troy, crept out from under the Scaean Gate, I’d crush you underfoot without compunction, though in general I’ve nothing against beetles. But Trojan beetles – that’s another thing. It’s enough that you’re tarred with the Trojan brush. And for that black mark, I’m going to kill you.’

  Lycaon still didn’t give up. He clutched him all the tighter around the knees.

  ‘I’m pleading with you, Achilles.’

  ‘I know. But why? Why?’

  For a moment Achilles looked almost wistful and Lycaon’s heart leapt. Achilles reached out and stroked him softly on the cheek with one finger.

  ‘Why, dear boy, why? Why make such a meal out of it? It’s common fare, the cup we all sup from. We’ve all got to die, every one of us, me too. Look at me. What do you see? All you see is your killer. But you’re looking at a doomed man. For all my strength and stature and physical beauty – forgive my immodesty – I too have a date with destiny. And it will be soon. Yours is just a little sooner, that’s all. But it’s fate, my friend, it’s unavoidable. So be a man and accept what must be, and what was always going to happen.’

  Lycaon knew it was useless, but he stretched out his arms anyway, spreading them wide, as if awaiting the cut while still making a last appeal. Achilles ignored it. He thrust at the collarbone near the neck. The blade disappeared deep into the tender flesh. Lycaon sank slowly forwards, his forehead touching the dust, as if in prayer, as if in further useless entreaty, as the dark blood poured out of him, discolouring the dust.

  Lycaon went into the long dark.

  Achilles picked him up easily by one leg – he’d been a light-footed lad – and swung him into the river.

  ‘You should have stayed in Lemnos, lad. But you couldn’t, could you? Your fate lay here, long awaited. You had an appointment to keep at Xanthus. Well, you can bed down with the fishes now – they’ll kiss your wounds all right. And the Scamander can send you out to sea to rock you in her bosom tonight. Your mother won’t, that’s for sure. And the deep-sea finned ones will nibble your kidneys and finish you off.’

  Lycaon’s last farewell.

  And that was pretty much how he ended his life – though with a lot less talk, certainly on Achilles’ side. Not that Achilles wasn’t a great gabbler. He could talk. But when he needed to kill a man he didn’t have much to say. Doubtless Lycaon must have died wishing in his last moments that he’d stayed in Lemnos, drunk wine in Arisbe and lived to tell his grandsons the story of how he’d been captured by the great Achilles, no less. But he’d tempted fate. And on the second occasion fate was less than kind to him. Goodnight then, Lycaon. Your war is over.

  Coming out of the water now, further down the bank but in full armour, Achilles saw Pelegon’s son, Asteropaeus. Another perfect scene for the loom, since Pelegon was a lovechild of Periboea, the first and loveliest daughter of Acessamenus and the river-god Axius, the spirit of the wide Swirling Stream. When Periboea let fall her robe and stepped naked into the river to refresh her delicate white limbs, the river-god gasped at her loveliness. He couldn’t contain himself and caressed her intimately where she stood among the reeds, licking her between the legs with liquid tongue, and so arousing her until she lay with him willingly and conceived Pelegon.

  He turned out to be such a strong swimmer that everybody in that region said his father had to be the river-god, it was so obvious. He had only to leap into the water and the waves parted for him. It was clear too that his son Asteropaeus had inherited this divine power. And he had not floundered in Scamander when Achilles turned it red but had swum to safety. Now, however, he left the water where he had felt secure and decided to try his luck against Achilles on dry land. First error of judgement.

  Achilles looked at him in disbelief.

  ‘Who the fuck are you, wet boy? You look as if you’ve just been fucking born! You can’t be serious. And what’s with the two spears?’

  Asteropaeus was holding a spear poised in each hand, ready to throw simultaneously. It was a favourite trick of his. He was also encouraged by Achilles’ apparent defencelessness. Another error of judgement.

  He spat out his defiance bravely enough.

  ‘You ask me who I am? I’m the lucky cunt who’s going to stick you – twice! And you seem to be the newborn one, by the way.’ He laughed, gesturing at Achilles’ genitals with one of the spears. ‘Apart from that, I’m a son of Pelegon.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Well you’re hearing from his son. He could eat your fucking spears, Argos-arse! And a top swimmer he was too. Those who saw him swim said he was fathered by Axius.’

  ‘People will say anything,’ snorted Achilles. ‘And I don’t give a fuck who fathered you. Or who fathered your father. But what’s it going to be, river-boy? Are you going to show me your breaststroke? Or stand there and jabber? Or are you going to fight at last?’

  Asteropaeus threw both spears at once.

  ‘Ambidextrous too? Multi-talented. Guess what? I’m unimpressed.’

  The spearman’
s strength was divided, and neither spear had the power or speed to inflict a fatal injury. The flashy trick had failed to pay off. Not only was Achilles unharmed, he even responded with a trick of his own by catching one of the two spears in flight. The other nicked his right elbow. Neither had flown accurately enough. He held up the arm.

  ‘A graze, I’m afraid. Time for you to join your ancestors now – right in the fucking river!’

  Asteropaeus managed to swerve and avoid the cast, and the spear hit the riverbank with such force and at such a speed that it sank in up to half the length of the shaft. There was still time for Asteropaeus to make one last error of judgement. And he did. He turned and tried to pull the thing out. Impossible. He turned back again, this time in sheer terror, to find Achilles already over him with his sword, which he thrust into the belly, twisting it savagely from side to side. He pulled it out and stabbed hard again, this time to the right, and then again to the left, twisting it so that the entire entrails uncoiled and slithered out into the dust.

  ‘Bowels out. You should have stuck to swimming, river-boy.’

  Achilles laughed and kicked the screaming Asteropaeus away from him into the river, where the screaming changed to a muffled gurgle. The body stained the water red and brought all the little eels crowding round in eager attendance. The bigger fish were quickly there too, joining the eels, ripping into him, nibbling the organs, gorging on the fat.

  After that, the mad bugger killed seven men in quick succession, shearing and slashing, wasting no words, hurling them into the river, dealing out death and dismemberment like some insane engine, some terrible killing machine.

  It was at that point that a colossal storm broke loose – thunder and lightning, rain, howling winds, the whole fucking catastrophe. Easy to interpret. Easy to depict.

  And so there he is, the river-god himself, fearful Scamander, rising in protest over the amount of slaughter and ordering Achilles to desist – his channels were so choked with corpses and his clear streams so fetid and greasy with the slithering innards of men. Achilles heard the order but refused to stop the bloodbath. Mad and brash enough even to take on the gods, he threw himself on more Trojans, polluting the god’s proud habitat. Scamander decided he would take no more.