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

by Glyn Iliffe

  The walk to the cave was quicker than he expected despite the thick shingle underfoot, and the sun had not yet reached noon by the time they arrived at the wall. They paused by the only opening, where a tall picket gate with leather hinges had been left half open. The carpet of dung on the pebbled floor inside and the sound of bleating coming from the mouth of the cave told them the enclosure was nothing more than a pen for livestock. And yet the scale of the high walls and the yawning blackness of the cavern – like a giant mouth waiting to swallow them up – had a belittling, oppressive effect that made Eperitus feel uneasy.

  ‘It’s even bigger than it looked from the ship,’ Antiphus said, staring in awe at the huge blocks of stone and the roughly trimmed tree trunks stacked lengthways on top of them. ‘Do you think someone lives here?’

  ‘Someone or something,’ Eperitus replied.

  ‘A shepherd judging by the bleating coming from the cave and all these animal droppings,’ Odysseus said.

  Eperitus sniffed the air and nodded.

  ‘I can smell cheese and fresh milk – it could be a shepherd’s grotto. But it doesn’t feel right, all the same. And what do you make of that?’

  He pointed to a flat stone disc leaning against the cliff beside the cave entrance. It had been hewn from a single piece of rock and was as big as the mouth of the cave itself. A deep rut in the ground suggested the stone had once covered the entrance. The sight of it caused muttering among the rest of the men.

  ‘No man could move that,’ said Elpenor.

  ‘Fifty men couldn’t,’ Polites corrected him.

  ‘It would take a god or a titan to shift it,’ Omeros said.

  ‘Well the titans were locked up in Tartarus long ago and a god can be reasoned with, so I’m going to see if anyone’s home,’ Odysseus said. ‘Come if you want, or wait here like frightened children.’

  He crossed the dung-littered yard towards the cave. Despite the apprehension grating at every nerve, Eperitus followed at his shoulder. The crunch of pebbles behind them told him the others were not going to be left behind either. The mouth of the cave loomed over them, its apex as high as a galley’s mast. A laurel tree rooted on one side had grown so tall that its trailing boughs hung like a beard over the entrance. Odysseus brushed them aside and walked through. As Eperitus entered he was met by a wall of cold shadow. The daylight barely penetrated more than a few paces into the gloom and for a moment his senses fumbled for purchase in the void. As his eyes adjusted to the faint light he saw the grey bodies of animals crowded in wooden pens to his left: spring-born kids and lambs nearest the entrance; the summer generation neighbouring them; and the newborns almost lost in the shadows at the back. The cave floor was thick with dung and the stink of it mingled with the smells of cheese and damp rock. As the rest of the party stumbled into the cave – their spears and swords at the ready – the animals became agitated and jostled against each other, bleating nervously until the cave reverberated with their clamour.

  ‘Is anyone here?’ Odysseus called out. His words echoed back from the distant walls and high ceiling. ‘We mean no harm. We’re travellers trying to find our way home.’

  ‘The place is empty,’ Eperitus told him. ‘If there was anyone here I’d have heard them.’

  ‘Then why are you whispering?’ Odysseus chided him with a smile. He turned to Elpenor. ‘Light a fire and make some torches. I want to look around.’

  Antiphus had walked over to the folds where the lambs and kids were settling down again.

  ‘Look at these,’ he said, leaning over a row of baskets against the wall of the cave. ‘Cheeses the size of anchor stones and bowls full of whey and butter.’

  ‘We should take them back to the ship,’ said one of the others. ‘The animals, too. I haven’t had a bite of fresh cheese for months, and a haul like this’ll be a handsome return for half a day’s work.’

  ‘Hippasos is right,’ said another. ‘I’d give my share of what we took from Ismarus for just half of one of those cheeses.’

  ‘We’re not here for cheese, Mydon,’ Odysseus reminded him. ‘We’re here for information, and if you want to taste Ithacan cheese again you’d better pray to the gods we find someone who’ll tell us where we are. Where’s that fire?’

  Elpenor found a pile of ashes surrounded by a ring of blackened stones not far into the cave. With Omeros’s help he struck a spark and kindled it into a small flame at the centre of the hearth. After adding wood from a stack they had found at the side of the cave and dried dung from the floor, the flame was soon nurtured into a blazing fire. It churned sparks up into the darkness and threw back the shadows so that here and there the gleam of rock could be seen from the edges of the cave. Odysseus wrapped scraps of wool around lengths of wood to make torches and shared them with Eperitus, Polites and Hippasos. They lit them in the flames and ventured into the darkness at the back of the cave. Eperitus had heard nothing but the dripping of water on stone since entering, but above the odour of animals, cheese and wet rock he could smell something that unsettled him. It was the stench of sweat and faeces. It reminded him of Philoctetes’s lair on Lemnos, but it was too powerful to belong to one man. As he walked slowly into the depths of the cave the reek became stronger, forcing him to hold a corner of his cloak over his face. Then Hippasos gave a shout of dismay, which was followed by the sound of retching.

  ‘What is it?’ Odysseus asked, rushing to join him.

  Eperitus and Polites followed. By the shimmering glow of the torches they saw a recess in the wall of the cave where layers of broken branches had been laid over the pebble floor and covered with sheepskins. Around the pile of skins were heaps of animal bones, some yellow with age and others still matted with fresh gore.

  ‘It looks like a bed,’ Polites suggested, covering his nose and mouth against the stench.

  ‘A bed?’ Hippasos said, wiping away a string of vomit with the back of his hand. ‘You could sleep twenty men on that, easily. And that smell –’

  He turned aside and began to retch again.

  ‘It’s a bed alright, but not for one man or twenty,’ Eperitus said. ‘Whoever or whatever lives in this place, we should get out before it returns.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Polites agreed. ‘Odysseus, let’s take some cheeses and a few lambs and go. We can’t gain anything from staying here.’

  The orange light from the king’s torch cast deep shadows in the lines of his face.

  ‘You talk like this is the lair of some monster, but ask yourselves this: what sort of monster keeps sheep and goats? What kind of bloodthirsty fiend takes time to milk his flock for cheese and whey? Have you ever met a dangerous goatherd or shepherd? And what are we here for? To steal a few wheels of cheese? To rustle a dozen lambs and kids? Or to discover where in Zeus’s name we are! Until we find that out we’re lost, and I don’t intend wasting any more time drifting from one landfall to the next, hoping the gods will take it upon themselves to bring us home. We can’t even navigate by the stars any more, since they’re not the stars we used to know in the world we came from. So we need to find someone who can tell us where this place is and how we get back to Greece, and the only chance I see of doing that is waiting here until whoever lives in this cave turns up. Is that understood?’

  Polites and Hippasos nodded sheepishly and slunk away to other corners of the cave, busying themselves with exploring the bare nooks and alcoves of its rough walls. Eperitus remained.

  ‘And if this shepherd does turn out to be a monster?’

  ‘Then we find a way to kill it or die in the attempt. And I’m sorry for losing my temper.’

  ‘Don’t apologise. They should be focussed on getting back home, not filling their bellies with cheese. Sometimes it seems they’re more interested in what they find along the way.’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ Odysseus said with a sigh. ‘Not for them but for myself! That raid on Ismarus nearly cost us everything, but for what? I should have been the one thinking
of home, but I gambled everything on a last quest for glory. I told myself the plunder we brought back from Troy wasn’t enough for the lives and the years we wasted there – as if more gold and slaves would make everything worthwhile. But I knew it couldn’t. So perhaps it’s something worse, like when you risk your life needlessly in battle – when some madness in you wants to singe Hades’s beard, to look over the edge into the depths of his Underworld and step back at the last moment. And with the war over and Ithaca near enough to touch, part of me keeps wanting to run away. I’m not waiting to see if whoever lives in this cave can tell me how to get back to Ithaca; I’m testing the Fates again, to see whether it truly is my destiny to return home.’

  Eperitus looked at him concerned. He knew the temptation to risk life or limb in some pointless act of bravery. What warrior had not, in some heady moment when his blood was up, tried to coax fate and prove to himself he was invincible? But for Odysseus to gamble everything he had fought for over the last ten years on some mad test of destiny?

  ‘If that’s what this is about, then let’s leave now.’

  The king shook his head and smiled. His moment of self doubt had passed.

  ‘And yet we still don’t know where we are. We’ll wait until the shepherd returns and see what he can tell us. If he observes xenia perhaps he’ll give us a few of these cheeses as a guest-gift.’

  He added the last with a wink, but Eperitus could see there was more bravado than humour in it. They returned to the fire where, to Eperitus’s horror, the others were seated in a circle passing around large chunks of ripe cheese.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he barked. ‘Put the damned thing back.’

  ‘Put it back?’ Mydon scoffed. ‘This is the best cheese I’ve eaten in ten years! And if you think I’ve braved Trojan spears and arrows and a thousand other dangers just to fret about offending some poor shepherd then think again. Besides, there must be three dozen of these things behind those pens. He won’t miss one.’

  Eperitus felt the anger surge through his veins and balled up his fists, ready to knock some discipline back into the insolent soldier. But Odysseus laid a hand on his arm and held him back.

  ‘Forget about it,’ he said. ‘What’s done is done. Let them eat their fill. Perhaps we can pay our unwitting host back with a little wine.’

  He patted the goatskin hanging at his side then took the piece of cheese offered to him by Antiphus and sat down. A loud bleating was followed by the appearance of Hippasos with a lamb under his arm. He was accompanied by another guardsman, Ophelestes, who had his knife ready. Odysseus held up a hand and shook his head.

  ‘If you’re going to kill the beast, then at least let me offer it to the gods first.’

  ‘And you expect this shepherd to observe xenia after you’ve helped yourself to his possessions?’ Eperitus demanded. ‘You should remember that a bad guest is as much an affront to the gods as a bad host.’

  He turned his back on the warmth of the fire and the pungent smell of the broken cheese and walked out of the cave. Outside, he was surprised to see the chariot of the sun already descending towards the sea. After watching it for a few moments he leaned back against the stone disc and slid down onto his haunches. He soon forgot the laughter and the smell of roast lamb and let his anger subside into thoughts of Astynome and what awaited them on their return to Ithaca. He could barely recall what the island looked like, apart from a few details that his memory had clung on to over the years. And perhaps it was the weakness of his recollections that made it so difficult to imagine being home again. But then he was already finding it hard to remember Troy, or even the faces of the men he had fought beside for so long. Maybe it was the isolation of being lost at sea, in a world where the stars were different and everything else felt different with them.

  A rustle of branches announced Odysseus’s appearance. He held a piece of meat in one hand and a lump of cheese in the other.

  ‘You should have some of this cheese, Eperitus. Ambrosia couldn’t taste better.’

  ‘When it’s offered by the man who made it, I’ll eat it. Not before.’

  ‘But you’ll happily take something if you’ve murdered its rightful owner first?’

  ‘I won’t sneak into his home and rob him of his property when he’s not there like some thief in the night.’

  ‘As proud and as stubborn as ever, then?’

  ‘That’s the price you pay for loyalty, Odysseus. Men who can steal from a stranger’s home when he’s not in can’t be trusted.’

  ‘Would you say that of Antiphus and Polites?’ Odysseus asked, laying the food on a slab of rock. ‘And me, after all we’ve been through? Say rather it’s the curse of the gods on all of us. Now, don’t waste the cheese.’

  He patted Eperitus’s shoulder and returned to the cave, welcomed by a peal of laughter as the leafy curtain was brushed aside. Eperitus picked up the cheese, took a long look at the ripe yellow flesh and then hurled it into a far corner of the compound. As it exploded into pieces against a rock, Eperitus’s senses suddenly sprang to life. He had felt a pulse pass through the rock beneath him. He felt it again and then again, one tremor after another forming a slow rhythm like a giant heart beating in the earth. He heard the distant bleating of sheep and goats and picked up their scent on the breeze, pierced by the same odour of stale sweat he had found in the cave. Eperitus ran out into the compound and stared at the tree-covered hills above. Then he saw it: a movement high up in the foliage, shaking the leaves. Something tall and black was striding between the shadowy boles of the trees, its form lost in the gloom and yet terrifyingly large as it descended the hillside towards the beach. Eperitus glanced at the entrance to the compound and then back at the cave where his comrades were eating meat and cheese in blissful ignorance. He thought about running to the beach and drawing whatever it was away, but that would risk leading it towards the cove where the galley and Astynome were hidden. It was also possible it might not see him at all and would walk in on the Ithacans unexpectedly. No, he only had one choice.

  He ran towards the cave, slipped on the pebbles and regained his footing. The first animals had reached the beach behind him and were followed by the thud of a heavy footstep. He pulled the screen of branches aside and stared at the dull glow of the fire, a mere ember in the all-consuming darkness. Several dimly lit faces looked up as he entered.

  ‘Hide! Hide now if you want to live!’

  They heard the fear in his voice, paused, then leapt to their feet and scattered into the shadows on either side. Eperitus risked a glance over his shoulder. Through the mesh of leaves he could see the sun setting beyond the compound wall. Then a figure blundered across his vision, blotting out the sun so that all he could see was the silhouette of something immense and terrible. He turned and ran into the cave, retaining wits enough to pick up a bowl of whey and toss it onto the flames. As he snatched up the spit with the remains of the lamb and threw it into a corner of the cave, he blundered straight into Elpenor.

  ‘What is it?’ the lad demanded, frightened and yet driven by an even more urgent curiosity. ‘What did you see?’

  Eperitus threw him onto his shoulder and ran into the darkness. Guided by his instincts, he sensed the approach of the cave wall and threw himself and Elpenor down onto the dung-covered floor. There was a low recess in the rock, which he slid back into, pulling the young Ithacan with him.

  ‘Why are we –?’

  ‘Be quiet!’ Eperitus hissed.

  He clapped his palm over Elpenor’s mouth just as a large hand pushed through into the mouth of the cave and pulled the screen of laurel branches aside. Several fat sheep and goats trotted in, spreading out across the cavern floor and filling the enclosed space with their bleating. The lambs and kids pressed against the sides of the pens, calling out for their mothers as they pushed up against the wooden rungs or onto each others’ backs. The entrance to the cave was now full of the largest sheep and goats Eperitus had ever seen, some of them spilli
ng towards the side wall where he and Elpenor lay hidden. Then the hand that held the branches aside was followed by an arm and a great black head as the giant herdsman stooped to enter his lair. Elpenor stiffened and let out a muffled whimper before going limp. Taking his hand from Elpenor’s mouth, Eperitus stared up in horror at the immense form silhouetted against the mouth of the cave. Even at a stoop it was as tall as four men, with thickset limbs covered in wiry hair that caught the light of the sunset through the laurel curtain. His features were in darkness, but it seemed to Eperitus that the monster was naked, his thick hair acting in the place of clothing as it hung like a pointed beard between the arch of his crooked legs.

  Chapter Twenty

  THE HERDSMAN

  Laertes sat on a rock beside a row of vines. He wore a faded and patched tunic, leather gaiters tied about his shins with cord, and a pair of thick leather gloves. His pruning knife was still in his hand and his wide-brimmed goatskin hat was crushed firmly down on his head so that his eyes were but a gleam in its shadow.

  ‘Well, go on lad, don’t stop there. What did you tell the little strumpet to make them run off like that?’

  Telemachus grinned at the memory.

  ‘I told her a message had arrived that morning from Sparta, that the war was over and the kings were returning. They haven’t been near me since.’

  Laertes let out a thin crowing sound and slapped his gloved hand against his thigh.

  ‘That’s the finest thing I’ve heard since Eumaeus set his dogs on Melanthius. It’s even funnier than you punching Eurymachus. Best of all they’ll have told Eupeithes; I bet the old fool hasn’t had a peaceful night’s sleep since.’ He rubbed his hands with glee at the thought of his old enemy’s discomfort. Then, looking thoughtfully at Telemachus, he added, ‘Your father would have been proud of that one, you know. Now, pick up that basket, will you, and follow me.’