The Voyage of Odysseus (The Adventures of Odysseus Book 5)

by Glyn Iliffe

  ‘Put your backs into it!’ Baius hollered.

  Ignoring the pain in his wounded shoulder, Eperitus thrust the oar into the waves and pulled.

  They stayed on the island for two days and two nights, repairing the sails and the damage to the ships but mostly sleeping. The men were exhausted, and Odysseus – also heavy with fatigue – let them rest and regain their strength. Even then he resented putting two more days between himself and Ithaca. He was already furious with his decision to raid Ismarus, a folly undertaken in the belief it would give him an easy victory and plenty of plunder. In truth he was ashamed of the little that had been allotted to him from the remnants of Troy’s wealth. But he should have realised that no quantity of gold, silver or slaves could compensate them for what they had lost. Could Penelope ever love him again like she did when they were young? Could Telemachus come to love the father he had never known? Could his people ever trust him as king again, after they had spent so many years governed by the Kerosia? Not all the wealth in Troy – let alone his paltry share – could purchase back what the war had stolen from him. Only time and patience would restore such things, and each day away from home was invaluable.

  But though he was anxious to depart, he had no choice other than to let the men rest. Eperitus and Eurybates had counselled him not to hurry them. A mutinous temper had settled over the army, fuelled by the disastrous raid on Ismarus. Few cared that every man was twice as rich as before, and it was their own drunkenness that had led them to being ambushed. But in their tired minds Odysseus had led them to a defeat in which seventy-two of their comrades had died, and so there would be little to gain from pushing them before they were ready.

  He consoled himself with the thought that he needed them at their best for the return home. With the prevailing north wind and a favourable current, two days’ sailing south-west would bring them to Euboea, where the Greek fleet had gathered for the attack on Troy ten years ago. From there they would pass through the channel that separated Euboea from the island of Andros, then on to the southern tip of Attica and finally the eastern coast of the Peloponnese. Here they would round Cape Malea before heading west on the once familiar route to Ithaca. With fair weather, a little over a week’s sailing was all that was needed.

  On the morning of the third day they set sail. The cloudy skies and rain that had followed the storm lifted and they were able to see the white peak of a mountain on the western horizon. They sailed towards and then past it, and when the afternoon saw the return of a low belly of cloud – which grew blacker towards the south – they found a headland and took shelter for the night. After the chaotic retreat from Ismarus, the crews had returned to their own galleys and Eperitus had rejoined Odysseus’s ship. As it lay at anchor and the men had gone ashore to eat and sleep, the two old friends remained at the helm and discussed the course that would take them home. After nightfall it began to rain, a fine drizzle that quickly soaked their woollen cloaks and left them cold to the bone. Further south, lightning was flickering across the invisible horizon, though too far away even for Eperitus to hear the report of the thunder.

  ‘The gods are angry with someone,’ he commented.

  Odysseus nodded, but did not reply.

  The next day they set sail again under clear skies and with a strong wind filling their sails. The coastline of northern Greece was just visible in the west, while ahead of them were the clustered islands of the Sporades. They passed to the east of these and in the afternoon saw the outline of Scyros on their left. The island was home to King Lycomedes, whom Odysseus knew would not give him a warm welcome. They sailed on until the rugged coastline of Euboea came into view. And with it the first corpse.

  For some time Odysseus had watched pieces of wood drifting past the hull, guessing at what they signified, but it was Eperitus whose sharp eyes saw the body floating towards them. It was a man in a brown tunic lying face down over a broken spar, his limbs pale against the dark water as he swept towards them. Two of the crew tried to reach him with an oar, but as if reluctant to be disturbed he moved away from the outstretched blade and passed on. As the rocky shore came closer they saw more driftwood and, dotted among it, the bodies of more sailors.

  ‘By all the gods, do you see that?’ asked Eperitus.

  It was some time before the king was able to make out the wreckage of a galley on the distant shore, its hull impaled upon a black rock and its broken mast pointing upward at an angle. Before long they could see another, and then a third. The crew’s silence as they watched the ghastly flotilla of drowned sailors pass by was ominous. Though they did not know them, they knew that but for the whims of the gods their fates could have been the same. One night less on the island – as Odysseus had wanted – and they might all have been caught up in the same storm that had destroyed the unknown fleet whose remains they were now passing. A fleet, Odysseus thought, that had endured ten years of strife at Troy only to be destroyed by the gods on their return. It was a grim omen.

  Omeros called out from the bow where several of the Ithacans were gathered.

  ‘Odysseus! My lord, come quickly.’

  The crowd of men parted to let Odysseus and Eperitus through. Omeros was leaning against the bow rail, pointing to a body floating in the water. It was of a short, stocky man whose milky eyes gazed out from his pale face, a face that Odysseus recognised immediately. The sight shocked him.

  ‘Get an oar and pull him out, now!’

  But for all the efforts of the crew, Little Ajax’s body refused to be coaxed towards the galley. After the fourth attempt, one of the blades hit him in the face and his corpse rolled under the water and disappeared.

  ‘A shame for the men who perished with him,’ Omeros said. ‘Better to have died in battle with glory and honour than to be swallowed up by the sea.’

  ‘One death is much the same as another,’ Eperitus replied.

  Odysseus nodded. ‘Either way, they’ll never see home again and their families will be left watching and waiting.’

  They passed easily through the straits that separated Euboea and Andros, sped on by the current and the north wind, and by nightfall were dropping their anchor stones in a sheltered bay at the foot of Mount Ocha. Ten years before, Odysseus and Eperitus – in the company of Menelaus – had spent the night here on their return from the failed embassy to Troy, before entering the Euboean Straits the next morning and sailing to Aulis. For most of the Ithacans it was the first time they had touched Greek soil since the start of the war. Yet their mood was strangely subdued as they made campfires along the shore and prepared the evening meal. They sang songs of home – melancholy tunes filled with sentiment – while the women and children gazed into the fires and remembered Troy. Now they were in the land of their enemies they were forced to accept they were no longer free. Those of high birth who had owned slaves pondered the fickleness of the gods; the rest prayed that their new masters would treat them with kindness.

  Odysseus kept himself apart from the rest, even Eperitus, wandering along the wooded shoreline and through the trees to the foothills of Mount Ocha. In a clearing on top of a knoll he gazed up at the stars. The full moon hung low and bloated above the spurs of the mountain. Its light strangled out the eastern constellations, but above him they still shone brightly. He wondered whether Penelope was looking at the same stars, and as he thought of her, a tightness gripped his stomach. Soon, gods willing, they would be together. It was the one thing he had longed for all these years, fighting each day of the war in the hope it would be the last and that he would soon be restored to his family. But now their reunion was within his grasp he felt sick at the thought of it. Was it the same nervousness that had blighted him ever since they had turned their prows away from Troy and towards home: that he would arrive home only to be rejected by Penelope, Telemachus and his people, whom he had deserted for the war? Yet the more he pondered it, the more he knew it was not that. What he actually feared was far worse. Something weighed on his spirit, something terri
ble and beyond his control, a feeling that his own fate was being slowly prised from his fingertips. Unbidden, the words of the Pythoness came back to him: the wide waters will swallow you. For the time it takes a baby to become a man, you will know no home. As the words mocked him he knew the baby was Telemachus, the son he had left behind, who would not be a man for another ten years.

  ‘You’re wrong!’ he shouted at the stars.

  But the stars were gone. A bank of cloud had slipped quietly across the night sky, shrouding everything in darkness. Odysseus felt the first spots of rain on his face and the winds of change fanning his cheek.

  The next morning was grey and wet. The sunrise was sensed more than seen, a faint lessening of the blackness that had settled over the land and the sea. The Ithacans took to their oars and pulled the galley out into the choppy waters of the bay, all the time the thin sheets of rain settling over them like watery cobwebs. It soaked everything and chilled them to the marrow of their bones. Their only good fortune was that the northerly wind continued to prevail, filling the sails and taking them southward at as great a speed as they could have hoped for in the restless seas.

  Eurybates was at the twin rudders, his face a mask of concentration as he steered the galley across the waves and silently fretted about the increasing strength of the wind. They sped over the sea in a south-westerly direction, the western shore of Attica a dark line on the western horizon, steadily growing closer. Before long they approached a large island and, after skirting around its northern tip, saw a spur of land jutting out into the sea ahead of them.

  ‘Cape Sunium,’ Eurybates announced, as if Odysseus needed telling.

  The southernmost tip of the Attican peninsula was a familiar sight to any Greek sailor, being the final marker on the return voyage to the Peloponnese. Despite the persistent rain and the oppressive clouds, a great cheer greeted Cape Sunium as the men realised they were passing the threshold of their home waters. With a friendly wind, Ithaca would be no more than two days’ sailing away.

  ‘Only Cape Malea to go,’ Eurybates added, his voice so low he could have been speaking to himself.

  His grudging comment echoed Odysseus’s own thoughts. Malea was the final test in their journey, the pivot from which they would swing from south-east to north-west and skirt the coast of the Peloponnese for home. But Malea was also treacherous and unpredictable. It was such a narrow point of rock that the northerly winds that swept a galley down towards its tip would meet it again on the other side. As the vessel turned the Cape its crew had to somehow claw its way north-west against the same force that had taken them there, and either succeed or be driven southward and out to sea. For one ship alone it was a perilous task, for twelve it would take all their skill and every last drop of their luck. But the challenge was unavoidable and they had to overcome it.

  The galley forged on across the expanse of grey water, driven by a near gale-force wind to whatever fate the gods had prepared for them. They reached the easternmost point of the Peloponnese, the lands of the Argolis where Diomedes ruled and from which he had drawn his vast army. Odysseus wondered whether his friend had made it safely home, and whether he, too, would have reached Ithaca by now, had he not headed back to return the Palladium to the ruins of Troy.

  ‘The wind’s too strong,’ Eperitus said, joining his king in the stern. ‘Shouldn’t we find somewhere to shelter until there’s a change in the weather?’

  ‘That could be a while,’ Eurybates answered. ‘The summer’s gone and the best of the weather with it. We’re on the cusp of winter, and the winds around the Cape are strong at the best of times. Hesitate now and we could be waiting for days, even weeks.’

  He looked at Odysseus as he spoke. He had offered his opinion as helmsman, but given it knowing the decision lay with the king. But it was not an easy one. Both men were right: the force of the winds, mixed with the already dangerous current around the Cape, would make successfully weathering it difficult; but if they tarried and the winds decided to worsen, their chance might not come again for a long time. The thought of the already unruly crews penned up in a small cove on an inhospitable coast was not one he savoured.

  ‘Keep going,’ he commanded. ‘If we stay on this heading we should reach the Cape in good time before sunset.’

  They turned south with the wind now full behind them. On their right they could see the mountains of the Peloponnese like a distant wall. As they drew closer, Odysseus could pick out the details of the hostile shoreline, where waves crashed continuously against the rocks to form a white mist. Had there been any sun he would have glimpsed circular rainbows in the spray; but the sun had not shown its face all day long, adding to the heaviness in his heart. They passed a final peninsula – a shoulder of rock thrusting upward from the sea that offered their last chance of shelter – then saw the bleak hump of Malea ahead of them. The sight of it filled the whole crew with anticipation.

  Odysseus moved to the prow, followed by Eperitus. Shielding his eyes against the westering sun, he gazed at the white-capped waves beneath the Cape, where different forces drove the waters into a frenzy and smashed them against the rocks in great arcs of spray. As he watched he felt the wind building in strength behind him, forcing his cloak against his legs and blowing his hair in long strands before his face. It howled like the Furies, catching the sail with a bang and almost lifting the vessel over the crests of the waves. Eurybates shouted for the sail to be hoisted halfway, aware that a sudden gust could tear it in half and leave them at the mercy of the currents. Odysseus turned, squinting against the wind and spray, and looked at his fleet. They were closing in on each other, huddling together like sheep in a storm, but as he watched their sails half furled, he knew they were still under control. Like many Ithacans, their captains and helmsmen were used to the sea in all its treachery, and if anyone could master it, they could. But the Cape would test them to their limits.

  ‘There’s an island on the horizon,’ Eperitus said, his voice barely audible amid the gale.

  ‘It’s Cythera. We need to claw our way up the channel between the Cape and the island. Pray these winds calm down enough to allow us.’

  ‘And if they don’t?’

  ‘Then we’ll beat them all the same,’ Odysseus answered. ‘Come on.’

  They returned to the helm, Odysseus ignoring the anxious looks on the faces of many of his men. Eurybates’s teeth were gritted as he struggled with the steering oars.

  ‘What do you want me to do? Head out into the channel before we turn her?’

  Odysseus nodded. ‘When the time comes, make the turn as smart as you can. We don’t want to lay across this wind any longer than we have to.’

  They were approaching the eastern flank of the Cape now. Odysseus glanced over his right shoulder at the tip of the peninsula, rising tall and grey beside them. It reminded him of a short, angry man, sitting on his haunches as he glared out at the sea. Shredded clouds flew low past its western cheek, an indicator of the winds that were awaiting them on the other side. Eurybates called out an order and several men moved to the stays. A second order saw the rest of the crew lifting the long oars up onto their knees, ready to feed them out into the choppy waters on either side of the galley. Odysseus stood firm on the deck, watching the crew and resisting the urge to bite his fingernails, knowing that it would be an outward sign of nervousness and indecision. He also refused to look over his shoulder at how the rest of the fleet were coping. It would not help them to show he was worried about their fate.

  The deck was rolling uncomfortably beneath his feet now. The Cape had sheltered them briefly from the worst of the wind, but as the galley moved past it he could feel the gale picking up rapidly again. Out in the channel where the battle would be fought, he could see the white crests of the waves like the shield walls of a distant foe. At last, Eurybates gave the order.

  ‘Turn her about!’

  Until then the wind had been their ally, sending them coursing south-west over the choppy waves.
Now it became their enemy. As they turned, a furious gust caught the wooden flank of the galley and drove them sideways over the water. The crew fought to master it but failed, and the vessel swung back to continue in the same direction. Again, Eurybates gave the order. It was all Odysseus could do not to repeat it or to rush to one of the stays and throw his own strength into the battle. Behind him he knew the helmsman’s muscles would be straining at the twin oars, desperately trying to make them count in the confused waters below. Again the ship refused to turn, caught once more by a fierce gust that turned it back to the south-east. Odysseus ran back to the helm and wrested the oars from Eurybates’s grip, signalling for the helmsman to join the men on the ropes. He looked out at the waves and felt the wind on his cheek, letting his sailor’s instincts guide his mind as he waited for the right moment to give the order.

  ‘Now!’ he hollered.

  He leaned upon the twin oars and immediately felt the strain on the wood as they fought against the sea’s resistance. His arms ached under the tension, but as the galley turned he felt the force of the wind catch her and try to spin her back again. He battled against it with all his strength, making the oars vibrate so much he feared they would break. If they did, or if his strength gave first, they were lost. The gale would drive them one way onto the rocks of Cythera, or the other way onto the equally dangerous shoreline of Crete beyond the southern horizon; or between the two into the open sea. Then, as he felt his muscles begin to weaken, one of the stays parted and the sail began to swing round. He was losing mastery of the ship. Calling on the last reserves of his strength, he fought to regain control. At the same time, Eperitus seized the tail of the severed rope and with a handful of others hauled the sail back round into the wind. Eurybates shouted for the oars to be lowered into the sea and slowly – painfully slowly – the crew began to pull the ship around. The wind resisted them, but they fought back ferociously. Odysseus began to feel the tension easing from the blades of the steering oars. Then the turn was complete and they were facing into the wind.