The Bow

by Catherine Mayo

  “But I didn’t.” He flinched. “I told Diomedes you were wonderful.”

  “And that’s why he sent me to scrape filth off the barrack latrines? And be beaten?”

  His face went pale. He’s going to cry on me, she thought in disgust. Let him.

  “I didn’t know.” He wiped the back of his hand across his nose. “I looked all over the fortress for you.”

  “The barracks are in the town.”

  “They wouldn’t let me down there. And then, after I met you on the ramp, I tried to speak to Diomedes. But he was too busy.”

  “I don’t believe you. You must’ve said something you’re not telling me about.”

  “No, I didn’t. Except Diomedes thought you should be my mistress,” he said, trying a half-smile. “I had to talk him out of that.”

  “You did a good job.”

  “I had an excuse. I’d just had an archery lesson with Stenelos and he’d thrown me out because he thought you and I had, um, you know. He’s fixated with bodily purity.” He tried smiling again.

  An archery lesson? With Stenelos? This boy was so chock-full of pig manure, it reached right to the top of his gullet. “You went there to clean stuff.”

  “That’s what we wanted people to think.”

  She paused, her mind in a jumble. Of course. He wasn’t a servant. And that was why he could shoot so well. She could still feel that Heketas man’s hands squeezing her throat, see the arrow thudding into his neck. This horrid boy had saved her life. Even so … She glared at him. “I wouldn’t have run away if you hadn’t wrecked everything.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t understand what went wrong.”

  “And you still want me to trust you?” She put her hands on her hips. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “Olli.”

  “That’s not a proper name. What’s your real one?”

  He shook his head. “It’s too dangerous.”

  Her anger surged up yet again. “Dangerous for me, or you? Look, if I swore not to say, I’d bite my tongue off before they got it out of me.”

  He stared at her aghast. “Yes, I think you would. But I can’t.”

  She turned away in disgust, and he grabbed her wrist. “There’s one thing you can believe,” he said. “I swore to Athena and Demeter to protect you and I will. We’ll see you safely home.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Odysseus propped himself on his elbows to gaze out over the great plain. In the distance, the evening drift of cooking fires marked out a large town, while fingers of smoke showed where the smaller villages were. Beyond the plain, the mountains gathered again, layered dark against the fading sun.

  His stomach was content, if not exactly full. Today they’d caught a pair of young martens, a hedgehog and three grass snakes – a strange but welcome feast after the scant commons of the last six days. They even had a little food left over.

  He glanced at Skotia, lying flat with her chin perched on her clenched fists. Her progress through the hills had been slow and painful. He’d kept waiting for Eury to say something that echoed his own stifling impatience. Without her, they would have travelled so much faster, even with the gold. But Eury had held his tongue, and Skotia had kept hobbling along with her eyes fixed on the ground. She’d worn her silence like armour, even through the day and night they’d spent hidden under a rock while soldiers searched the narrow valley below.

  When, last night, they’d looked out over the Arkadian plain he could only guess at her feelings. This was her homeland, and that town must be where she’d been sold into slavery. So he was surprised when she turned her head and smiled. Not meant for him perhaps. Tomorrow she’d be back with her family.

  “Which is your village?” he asked.

  She pointed. “In a valley a little way north, on the edge of the mountains. There’s a few fires burning so someone’s there.”

  “We’ll take you.”

  “If you’re heading west, you’ll need to travel south first, to find a way around the mountains.”

  “What if your family has left?”

  “My aunt lives in a mountain village a day’s walk away. I’ll go to her.”

  Odysseus gazed again across the wide plain. “I won’t feel happy till I’ve seen you safe.”

  “Safe?” She laughed. “What’s that?”

  He smiled and shrugged. “Tell me about the flood.” The questions were gathering themselves now she’d started talking. “I can’t see any rivers.”

  “They come out of the mountains in springtime and disappear into the ground.”

  “You mean, they dry up. Like that one in Argos.” He felt himself flushing. It had been an easy mistake to make, coming from Ithaka where there were no rivers to speak of.

  “No.” She wrapped a grass stem round and round her finger.

  “So what do they do?”

  “They pour into huge holes. Our village is near three of them. They say the water feeds the great lake in the Underworld.” She shivered. “The village was supposed to keep the holes clear but the men were lazy and let them block up.”

  “What with?”

  “Tree trunks and stuff. The spring floods bring them down. My father asked the others to help but they refused. The holes are massive and he couldn’t do it on his own. So when the snowmelt came, the whole plain drowned.” She broke the grass stem in half. “I already told you the rest.”

  They crept across the plain in darkness, reaching Skotia’s village not long after first light. Many of the huts were empty, with doors gaping and roofs starting to sag. But as they made their way up a stony lane, Odysseus could feel eyes watching them, and hear the stir of movement. The skin on the back of his neck crawled.

  If there were eyes in those shadows, what would they see? Not the two fat women and the bob-haired girl who’d killed the Heketas. Three new disguises, pieced together from what they carried, had produced a tall, dark-skinned man with close-cut hair and a sack over his shoulder; a short, stout youth in a broad-brimmed leather hat holding a bow and with three arrows stuck through his belt; and a slim young woman wearing a full-length dress, her long black hair tied up to show she was married.

  Odysseus smiled to himself. It had been hard to talk Skotia into wearing his wig and putting on Eury’s gown, but she’d seen the point of it in the end. And Eury had agreed to carry their near-empty food bags and waterskins in the sack, so they weren’t as fat-looking as they had been.

  At the far end of the village, Skotia stopped before a one-roomed hovel. “This is our house,” she whispered, peering into the empty darkness inside.

  “I’ll go in with you,” said Odysseus.

  It was clear no one had been here for a while. Drifts of dead leaves cluttered the earth floor and cobwebs hung from the roof beams in grimy curtains. “They’re long gone,” he said.

  Skotia ignored him, poking into corners and sifting through the leaves. Suddenly, she gasped.

  Odysseus leaned over her shoulder. “A lamp,” he said. “With its wick.”

  “Of course it’s a lamp,” she snapped. “I’m not blind.” But then her eyes filled with tears. “My father made it for me when I was small. See, they left it burning where I used to sleep, here, against this wall.” She pulled a fold of her dress around it, tucking the cloth into her belt to make a pocket. “My mother wouldn’t have bothered.” She turned to face Odysseus, eyes shining. “My father’s still alive.”

  Well, it was just possible.

  They emerged from the hut to find a thin, weasel-faced man staring at Eurybates from behind a broken wall. Odysseus felt Skotia stiffen as soon as she saw him. Perhaps he was one of the men who had refused to help clear the flood holes.

  “What are you doing here?” the man demanded, frowning at Skotia.

  “Where’s my family?” she replied, her voice edged with anger. Clearly they knew each other; clearly there was no love lost between them either.

  “Gone.”

  “Which way?�
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  The man spat on the dusty ground. “Who cares?”

  “And my father?”

  “Dead.”

  The colour faded from Skotia’s face. But then her chin came up. “Where’s he buried?”

  “Usual place,” the man said, eyeing the three of them again. With that he swung on his heel and hurried off.

  “I don’t trust him,” said Eurybates. “And where’s he gone now in such a hurry? The sooner we leave here the better.”

  “Do what you like,” said Skotia. “I’m finding my father’s grave.”

  “Then we’ll go with you,” said Odysseus. He drew one of the arrows from his belt in readiness. “I don’t trust him either.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The cemetery lay on a low ridge above the village, surrounded by a tangle of wild rose bushes. Some graves were paved with stone but many of them were marked only by mounds of reddish earth, the slabs that should have covered them lying nearby.

  “It looks like half the village is buried here,” Eurybates said to Odysseus as they watched Skotia search around. “And the other half left before the ground settled enough to put the slabs back on the graves.”

  “Skotia,” Odysseus called out. “How will you know where your father’s grave is?”

  “He’ll be with my grandma,” Skotia said. She paused, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “Her grave was by a pomegranate tree – Papa planted it for her. But I can’t see it anywhere.”

  Odysseus clenched and unclenched his hands. He couldn’t tell her to hurry up, even though Eurybates’s nerves were catching – even the slightest noise was making him jump.

  “Here it is,” she cried at last, pushing the grass aside to reveal a splintered stump. “The evil bastards! They blamed Papa for the floods. Now they’ve chopped his tree down.”

  “Skotia,” called Eurybates, “we don’t have time to worry about a damned tree.”

  But she had already dropped to her knees beside a grave mound, sobbing as she dug her fingers into the soil. “Papa,” she cried. “Dear Papa. Why did the gods hate you so much? Why did you have to die?”

  Eurybates grabbed Odysseus’s arm. “Tell her to be quiet. Someone’s coming.”

  “You’re right,” Odysseus exclaimed. “And more than one.”

  “Horses,” said Eurybates.

  “And a chariot. You can hear the wheels rattling on the stones. Foot soldiers too, from the sound of their boots, though they’re still a way down the track.” He ran over to Skotia and pulled her to her feet. “Armed men, coming up the track from the village.”

  “What?” She clapped her hands to her face, smearing dirt into the tears. “We can hide in the forest.”

  “They’ll catch us before we reach the trees.”

  “Not if we run.”

  He shook his head. Skotia still didn’t know about the gold and its crippling weight. “That’s too predictable,” he said. “We’ll fool them by heading back towards the village.” He kept his voice level, but his heart was pounding in his throat. It might work. Or it might not. “Quick.”

  They hurried to the start of the track and ducked behind a rose bush. Odysseus pulled the three remaining arrows from his belt and notched one as a chariot rounded the bend below them. It clattered up the slope and came to a stop not far away.

  The weasel-faced man emerged from a cloud of dust behind it. “They must be hereabouts,” he called up to the two soldiers in the chariot.

  “Hold these,” said the driver, throwing him the reins as he dismounted. “There were two others with her?”

  “Yes, a tall man and a boy with a bow.”

  “And yet it was women who killed the Heketas,” the driver said to his companion.

  “That’s what the captains thought.” The second soldier stepped down, hitching up his shield and shifting his grip on his spear. “But a report came in last night suggesting they mightn’t be women after all.”

  “So what are they?” The driver gave a hoarse laugh.

  “It seems Laertes’s envoys have left Tiryns. One of them is tall and the other’s short. Same as these alleged women.”

  From down the track the tramp of hobnail boots grew louder. Odysseus felt his palms sweat. He had to kill these two before the foot soldiers arrived, but the rose bush was in the way.

  “Man or woman, it doesn’t make much odds,” said the driver. “From all accounts, the short one can shoot the eye out of a sparrow.” He glanced nervously around.

  “Not if he’s dead, he can’t.”

  They edged into view, shields up and spears poised. Odysseus took careful aim. Back at the burning hut, he’d had surprise on his side. But both these men were fully alert. If he was too slow with his following shot, the surviving soldier would have time to attack, the bow useless at close quarters. And then the foot soldiers would arrive …

  Now or never. He drew back the bowstring and fired.

  The arrow hit the driver between his shoulder blades, punching through the thick leather corselet and sending him sprawling on his face. Odysseus already had the next arrow notched as the second soldier swung round, teeth bared and spear arm flung back as he searched for a target. The arrow struck him right in the mouth, so hard the arrowhead burst clean through the back of his skull.

  Eurybates leaped from behind the bush, grabbed the driver’s spear from the dust and hurled it at the weasel-faced man standing open-mouthed by the horses. He jumped over the man’s writhing body and started hacking through the chariot harness as the horses bucked and shied. “We can ride faster than we can run,” he called over his shoulder.

  “We need weapons.” Odysseus slung the bow over his shoulder, thrust the last remaining arrow through his belt and climbed into the swaying chariot, clutching the rail to keep his balance. The weapons rack should be on the other side – yes, there it was. Empty. Confound it.

  He turned to jump down again when a bulging satchel caught his eye. Food? Water? He tossed the satchel and their own sack up to Eurybates, already mounted on one of the horses.

  The tread of marching feet was very close now. Somehow Odysseus hoisted Skotia onto the second horse as it plunged about, while Eurybates hung frantically onto both sets of reins. How to get up himself? The horse, unused to being ridden, backed towards the chariot in a scrabble of flailing hooves. Odysseus grabbed its tail, clambered onto a chariot wheel and scrambled up behind Skotia.

  He seized the reins from Eurybates and kicked the horse into a gallop. “Hold onto the mane and grip with your knees,” he said in Skotia’s ear. “If we fall off, we’re dead.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  As the two horses came hurtling round the corner, the soldiers halted, mouths agape and hands groping for sword hilts. Odysseus tightened his arm round Skotia’s waist and braced himself for the impact. Behind him, he could hear Eurybates yelling at the top of his lungs.

  The jolt almost pushed him off as the horse collided with a soldier and sent the man flying. Another man grabbed at their legs and he felt Skotia slither sideways. He kicked out and almost lost his seat again as his foot slammed into the man’s face.

  Then they were through, pelting down the track and into the village.

  Skotia twisted her head round. “There’s a cave,” she shouted over the pounding hooves. “We can hide there.”

  “But we’ve just captured two good horses.”

  “They’re bound to chase after them.” She grinned. “Except we won’t be on them.”

  Clever. He grinned back. Clever for a girl, anyway. And how far could their horse gallop with both Skotia and himself on its back? The extra weight of the gold he was wearing inside his leather jerkin was making things even worse. Already its sides were heaving. Besides, they needed breathing space to work out what to do next. “Where’s the cave?”

  “The path’s right here.”

  Odysseus brought the horse to such an abrupt halt that it reared, sending them slithering backwards off its rump.

/>   Eurybates swerved round them and skidded to a stop. “Have you lost your wits?”

  “New plan. Get down, quick!” Odysseus broke a branch off a nearby shrub as Eury dismounted. “Go on, shoo,” he hissed, whacking the horses’ rumps. Off they galloped in a scrabble of hooves and stones.

  The path twisted across a field and plunged into a grove of oaks. They had just reached the shelter of the trees when their pursuers came running down the road. Skotia waited till the last trooper had disappeared before pushing through the undergrowth to a small clearing. In the centre, surrounded by gravel, a large stone slab had been set flat to the ground.

  Odysseus stared round in confusion. “Where’s the cave?”

  “Under your feet,” said Skotia. She tugged at the slab. “You’ll have to help,” she panted.

  They heaved at the rough edges, working the slab sideways until a narrow, inky gap was exposed. Skotia slid through and they wriggled after her as best they could, cursing the bulky jerkins hidden under their tunics.

  As Odysseus’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he realised they had climbed through the roof of a large cavern and onto the very top of a rocky slope that plunged steeply away, though a large boulder blocked much of the lower cave from view.

  “We have to close the slab,” Skotia said. “In case someone comes.”

  At first the task seemed hopeless. But then they found if they pushed up as well as sideways, they could work the great block slowly across till it left only a blade of light.

  “I’m done,” said Eurybates, slumping against the boulder. “No one’s going to come.”

  Odysseus joined him. “Probably not.” Now he had time to pause, that familiar aftershock of nausea and regret had come crowding in on him again. He’d just shot and killed two more soldiers, as fast and efficiently as sending two arrows into a straw target.

  Their bodies sprawled before him, almost as clear in his mind’s eye as they were up at the cemetery, a feathered shaft protruding from the back of one, and as for the other … it was just as well Odysseus’s stomach was empty, otherwise he would have vomited its contents down the side of the boulder.