Trying War

by S. D. Gentill

  “How long?” Machaon asked.

  Cadmus scowled. “Two days, maybe three.”

  Machaon looked back out to the vaulting waves.

  Cadmus twisted his staff into the sand. “What are we going to do, Mac? Do you have any idea?”

  “The lands of the Amazons are in the east, beyond the Black Sea. Perhaps that’s where they have taken Hero.”

  “But we can’t be sure.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The ship will find her.”

  “I just wish she knew we were coming for her.”

  “She knows, Cad—how could she think we’d do anything else?”

  “Do you think they’ll hurt her?”

  Machaon frowned. “They seemed to want her alive and unharmed. They wouldn’t have let us live otherwise.” He sheathed his sword suddenly. “No, the Amazons need her for something… if we only knew more about them, we might be able to figure out what.”

  “No one knows much about the Amazons, Mac. Something to do with their tendency to kill everybody.”

  Machaon looked over to the charred stone and rubble where once stood the holy citadel of Troy. “Not everybody. They fought for Troy against the Greeks. They were good allies.”

  Cadmus lowered himself stiffly to the sand. “How are we even going to get near the village? No man’s ever been into the Amazonian stronghold and gotten out alive.”

  Machaon sat down beside him. “Agelaus did,” he said quietly. Their father had somehow entered the village. He had known Pentheselia, the Queen of the Amazons, and had lived to accept the son she bore him.

  “Did he ever tell you how he did it?”

  Machaon shook his head.

  “I don’t suppose it’ll matter to them that you are Pentheselia’s son?” Cadmus asked.

  “I don’t know.” Machaon kept his eyes on the horizon as he wondered about his mother. It was said the Amazons exposed their sons and left them to die unwept, but perhaps that was myth. Pentheselia had brought not just her own child, but Cadmus and Lycon to Agelaus. It could be that his brothers’ mothers still lived.

  Lycon ran over to them from where he had been helping with the treatment of the Phaeacian craft.

  “How’s the ship?” Cadmus asked.

  “Emotional.”

  “Can Oenone heal her?”

  Lycon nodded. “Pan’s ship will be well enough in a couple of days.”

  “Oenone has been good to us,” Machaon noted. His voice betrayed his surprise.

  Lycon smiled. “She wants the two of you to walk into the sea.”

  Cadmus laughed. “Now that’s the Oenone we know.”

  “It’s something to do with making sure you heal properly, but I’m sure she quite likes the idea as well.”

  Machaon glanced towards the ship. Oenone was watching them, her hands on her hips. “Come on then… let’s not upset her now.” He stood, fumbling to remove weapons and unfasten his cloak with his uninjured hand. They had already bathed in the salt sea once that day. It was not pleasant but they would need to be whole and strong to retrieve Hero.

  Cadmus groaned and grumbled but he followed Machaon into the waves, convinced that the sting of the water served only to satisfy the healer’s enduring need to avenge Paris’ neglect by torturing his brothers.

  THE HERDSMEN OF IDA gathered that evening in the cave of Agelaus. Their numbers had so dwindled since the fall of Troy that it was possible to contain the entirety of their people in the large cavern. Many of the men walked wounded since doing battle with the Amazons. They leant on their women as they had always done. Several joints of meat were hung on a spit above the central fire and rounds of dough placed on the rocks to bake. Kelios had called the Herdsmen together to hear how the sons of Agelaus had discovered the truth of the Greeks’ victory over Troy.

  Lycon told the tale of how they chased Odysseus, the wily King of Ithaca, as he drifted from land to land. He told them of the Lotus-eaters, the Cyclopes, the cannibals of Laestrygonia and the beautiful witch who had turned him and Cadmus into wolves. He described their journey to the Underworld where they had met Agelaus once more, as well as Paris and Brontor who had been the father of Kelios. Lycon explained how they had been separated from Hero and captured by Odysseus. His voice became heavy as he described how Hero had found them and rescued them from the sea, how she had protected them from the monster called Scylla who devoured men. Finally, he told his people of the land of the Phaeacians, of the Princess Nausicaa and the blind bard Demodocus who had goaded Odysseus into revealing how the Greeks had entered Troy.

  “The horse,” he said into the expectant silence. “The wooden horse we thought was a tribute from the Greeks was Odysseus’ greatest trick. The Trojans brought it into the citadel. It contained forty Greek warriors, Odysseus among them, within its belly. It was they who opened the gates and breached Troy…”

  There were questions of course. The quest and fate of Agelaus’ children had weighed on the minds of the Herdsmen since the day that the four had embarked on their pursuit of Odysseus. Most of their people had never been beyond the plains of Troy.

  The sons of Agelaus had questions of their own.

  “Where is Scamandrios?” Machaon asked.

  Kelios answered him. “Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, took Scamandrios with him.”

  “Is he a prisoner?”

  “Surely he must be.”

  For a moment Machaon said nothing, and then tensely he revealed to his people the treachery of the last prince of Troy. “It was Scamandrios who told Odysseus how to work the mechanism which operated the gates. Without this knowledge the warriors who were hidden in the horse would have been unable to let in the thousands who laid waste to Troy.”

  “And so when he had you flogged, our fathers killed…”

  “He knew the Herdsmen were innocent.”

  Kelios’ face became stony. Until now he had thought Scamandrios was merely misguided.

  Faintly, Machaon smiled and glanced at his brothers. “Let us get Hero back first—she wishes to deal with Scamandrios herself.”

  Many Herdsmen smiled at this. Hero’s anger had always been strongly expressed.

  “Neoptolemus claimed the wife of Prince Hector as his spoils,” Kelios said quietly to Machaon, as the Herdsmen murmured reminiscences of Hero’s fury.

  Machaon shook his head. The wife of Troy’s slain champion had suffered much in the wake of the war. Her child had been torn from her arms and flung from the walls of Troy, for the Greeks would not allow Hector’s heir to live.

  “Could you not help her, Kel?”

  “We tried. It cost us two men but we reached her with a route and means for escape.”

  “What happened?”

  “She spat on us as traitors. Scamandrios had convinced her that Troy lay in ruins because of our betrayal.”

  “And Aeneas? Did he too go with the Greeks?” Aeneas alone had spoken for the loyalty of the Herdsmen.

  Kelios shook his head. “Aeneas and some of his people remained in hiding for a time. When the beaches were finally cleared of Greeks, they built a fleet and sailed themselves.”

  “For where?”

  Kelios shrugged. “I don’t know, Mac. Aeneas had some mad idea about founding another Troy.” He shook his head. “It’s likely the sea has claimed them all by now.”

  The evening fell to storytelling in the customary way. The meat and bread was shared as was a single precious wineskin. A few Herdsmen began beating rhythms on the walls of the cavern and for a time the brethren sang, like wolves at song, and danced as they had before the fall of Troy. The wild abandoned spirit of the mountain herders had not yet been completely subdued.

  Machaon watched for a while, smiling as Kelios’ pretty daughter took Lycon’s hand in dance. Lycon, still shy with women, coloured and fumbled, suddenly clumsy and awkward. Cadmus, too, joined the rite despite his injured leg. And he was not shy. Machaon slipped silently out of his father’s cave.

  He sat on the rock ledge f
rom which he and Lycon had watched the Trojans drag a giant wooden horse within the walls. It seemed a lifetime ago now. Wincing, he lay back gingerly. His arm was no longer bound, but any careless movement was still painful. On his back beneath the broad night sky he could see the constellation they had been calling Agelaus. It was Orion the Hunter of course, but they would always know it as Agelaus. Just as the gods had placed the greatest heroes amongst the stars, so had they placed their father.

  “For what do you search the heavens, Machaon?”

  The voice startled him. He had thought he was alone on the ledge.

  “Oenone.” Machaon sat up sharply. The healer stood over him, her face almost hidden by the cowl of her cloak. Still, he was aware of the luminous green of her eyes. She had appeared silently, a graceful shadow in the starlight.

  Oenone pushed back the hood and gazed at Machaon, intensely and without guile. She sat down beside him, wrapping her ivory arms about her knees.

  “What do you hope to find in the heavens, Machaon?” she asked again.

  “The only thing I want to find is Hero,” Machaon replied. “But my sister is not in the sky.”

  Oenone nodded. “Your ship will be able to sail the day after tomorrow.”

  “Then that is when we shall go.”

  The healer leant towards him and eased the tunic away from his shoulder. She examined the stitched wound, placing the flat of her hand over the site to feel if there was any fever in the skin. “You will be ready by then,” she said.

  “Thank you, Oenone,” Machaon said quietly. “I know that my brother wronged you.”

  Oenone stared into him and smiled longingly. “I can see Paris in your face, you know.”

  Machaon laughed. “Paris and I share no blood.”

  “You are alike nevertheless. Agelaus put something in the hearts of all his sons. It marks their features as clearly as any commonality of blood.”

  Machaon shrugged. He had heard comment before of this accidental physical similarity between all the sons of Agelaus. He had never given it much thought.

  The healer removed her palm from his wound and stroked his face, her eyes moist with the memory of Paris.

  “Why do you help us, Oenone?” Machaon asked, pulling his tunic back into place.

  Oenone sighed. “Do you remember the day that your brother Paris died?”

  Machaon nodded. “Yes, of course.” His eyes darkened. He had loved Paris.

  Oenone looked down at her hands. “Do you remember how he died?”

  “An arrow… its tip was poisoned.”

  “Hydra’s blood,” Oenone agreed. “It is a slow-acting poison. It took your brother three days to succumb.”

  Machaon was silent. Paris had come back to Ida before he died. He had been as close to death as a walking man could be, pale and agonised by both his wound and a realisation of what he had done in stealing Helen from the Greeks. He had died in Agelaus’ arms, and then they had returned Paris’ body to Priam, the King of Troy, who was his natural father.

  “Paris came to me first,” Oenone said, her voice hoarse. “He knew that I could heal him.”

  Machaon turned to look at her. He had not known this.

  “I refused him. I told him to return to his stolen harlot… to find healing in the Greek arms for which he had forsaken mine.”

  Machaon hesitated. Paris had said nothing of this as he lay dying. They had talked of other things, including Oenone, but he had said nothing other than that he had treated her badly.

  She pulled open her robes. He inhaled sharply. The healer’s breasts and neck were seared, the skin thickened, the once creamy softness angrily puckered and discoloured.

  Oenone closed her eyes. “When I heard that Paris had died, the world broke. I went into Troy to find him.”

  “How did you get in?” Only the Herdsmen knew the tunnels that led under the walls.

  “The gates were opened to call the warriors back to their prince’s funeral. Paris’ pyre was ablaze when I arrived.” She sobbed suddenly, weeping with a grief that was raw with remorse.

  Machaon stared at her burnt chest in horror, realising what she had done in her sorrow.

  “But Helen would not even allow me that,” the healer stammered. “I was dragged from the flames before I could join Paris in the Underworld.”

  “Oh, Oenone.” Machaon was moved by pity for the woman. He put his arm gently about her shoulders and allowed her to weep into his neck. “Paris was not on that pyre. The body of a soldier lay in his place.”

  Her eyes were large and bewildered.

  “Priam returned Paris’ body to Agelaus.”

  “But why?”

  Machaon tried to explain. “Priam had been forced to beg the Greek, Achilles, for the body of Hector, his eldest son. He did not wish to deny Agelaus a father’s right to bury his child. Paris was a prince of Troy, and as such honoured by the Trojans, but he was loved by the Herdsmen.”

  Oenone stared at him, trembling.

  Machaon pointed to a cliff upon which grew a lone black cypress. The moon cast the tree into silhouette but it was clearly visible from where they sat. “We buried Paris there, under the stars in the way of the Herdsmen.”

  The healer gulped and heaved as she gazed at the cliff. “No one told me.”

  “I’m sorry, Oenone. We didn’t know you still loved Paris, and it was necessary that we kept this from both the Greeks and the Trojans. Paris wronged you—we did not know that you had found the strength to forgive him.”

  “It was not his fault,” Oenone said bitterly. “Helen’s beauty is irresistible to men. She is a daughter of Zeus, a child of the gods.”

  Machaon’s smile was wistful. “They say that about every pretty girl, Oenone,” he said. “No, Paris wronged you… but he was my brother nonetheless. I am sorry that you did not heal him, but I do not condemn you for it.”

  Oenone placed her palm again over the wound she had stitched. “I am glad, Machaon, to have helped you and your brothers.”

  Suddenly, Machaon stiffened as he caught a yellow gleam in the darkness. Slowly, with no jagged movement, he reached for his sword. Oenone turned to where his eyes were fixed. The wolf was now in view, standing just a leap away. It was a large beast, proud, its fur well greyed with age. And yet its chest was broad, its haunches powerful.

  Machaon moved to place himself between the wolf and the healer. The Herdsmen had no quarrel with wolves but the animal was too close to allow retreat.

  Oenone put her hand on his arm and laughed through her remaining tears. “Machaon, do you not recognise Lupa?”

  The wolf did not advance. It cocked its head, studying him.

  Oenone whispered to it. “Yes, Lupa, this is Machaon, one of your own boys.”

  In confusion, Machaon stopped. Oenone seized his hand and held it out to the wolf. The creature stretched its neck to sniff his fingers.

  “More than twenty years ago, I first brought Lupa to Agelaus,” the healer crooned. “Pentheselia, Queen of the Amazons, had brought Agelaus a child, a tiny baby boy. Lupa suckled him like her own cub and he survived and grew strong.”

  The wolf now came forward and tentatively explored Machaon’s face with her long muzzle.

  “Three boys did my Lupa suckle for Agelaus, three brothers for my Paris.”

  Machaon looked incredulously into the wolf’s eyes. He had known he and his brothers had been suckled by a gentled she-wolf, but he had thought the creature long dead. “Lupa,” he spoke the name with a kind of grateful awe, a creeping recognition, as she licked his ears.

  “Oh, there you are, Machaon.” Pan loomed over them, grinning broadly. “I wondered where you had got to. Your brothers are looking for you.”

  Machaon smiled. He could hear the songs, the howling of his brethren and the pounding rhythm of the dancing from within the cave of Agelaus. He doubted his brothers were looking very hard.

  Pan sat allowing his downy hoofed legs to dangle over the ledge. The wolf, Lupa, trotted over to
him and the god stroked her absently as he looked down to the beach below, where his ship lay at rest. “You will go soon then?”

  “The day after tomorrow,” Machaon replied.

  Pan nodded. “Oenone will go with you.”

  Machaon started. “What?”

  Pan sighed. “I worry about you and your brothers, Machaon. The Amazons are brutal. I fear you will need Oenone’s skill from time to time.”

  “This is our quest, Pan.”

  “I am not an interfering god, Machaon, but neither am I a powerful one. I cannot protect you from the will of the greater gods, or even from other mortals… I will be comforted to know Oenone is with you.”

  “Oenone’s place is in Ida, in the woodlands, not on the sea.”

  The healer spoke. “I am the daughter of the river-god, Cebren, whose waters flow into the sea. I am not mortal, Machaon, but an Oread, a nymph of the mountains.”

  Machaon looked at her, surprised. “You want to come with us?”

  “I denied Paris because I was angry, and in doing so I lost him. Perhaps in helping you find your sister, I too may get back what I have lost.”

  “Paris is gone, Oenone. He can’t come back.”

  “Still, I will come with you.”

  Machaon looked helplessly at Pan.

  “Take her.” The horned god grinned. “I decree it.” He giggled merrily. “You dare not disobey me. At the very least, Oenone will look after my boat.”

  Throughout the night Paris lay without sleep: neither leech nor salve gave him relief. Only Oenone could save him from death’s doom, if so she willed. Now he obeyed the prophecy, and he went—loathe, but forced by grim necessity to face the wife he had so cruelly forsaken.

  Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica, Book 10

  BOOK V

  “YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS!” CADMUS was less than enthusiastic. “She’ll slit our throats while we sleep!”

  “Pan wants us to take her.”

  “Pan has some stupid ideas!”

  “The boat belongs to him, Cad.”

  The sons of Agelaus stood on the ledge outside their father’s cave, watching as Eos raised her crimson palms in homage to the coming day.