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

by Glyn Iliffe

  He passed its outstretched arm, barely daring to look at the huge hand that had dashed Hippasos to death and torn Mydon in half. He focussed himself on the great eye, now lidded, and as he advanced he felt a piece of skull crunch beneath his sandal. The bulge of the monster’s pupil moved left to right beneath the brown, leathery skin – quick movements that showed Eperitus’s approach had been sensed. Dreading that any moment the lid would rise like a sail to reveal the repulsive eye beneath, he called on the last of his courage and raised his sword high over his head.

  A hand grabbed his wrist, blocking the blow he had meant to deliver.

  ‘You can’t kill him,’ Odysseus hissed.

  ‘This is our only chance! If we don’t kill him now he’ll devour us one by one.’

  Odysseus prised the weapon from his hand.

  ‘Come away before he awakes.’

  As they retreated into the shadows, Antiphus, Polites and Ophelestes appeared beside them.

  ‘Why did you stop him?’ Antiphus demanded.

  ‘It ate Mydon and Hippasos,’ Ophelestes added. ‘You should have let Eperitus kill it in its sleep.’

  Polites drew his sword from its scabbard. ‘I don’t know why you want that thing alive, Odysseus, but you can’t stop all of us.’

  ‘There was a time when you trusted me,’ the king said, looking at each of them in turn. ‘Well, go ahead and kill him. He deserves to die and our friends should be avenged. But before you hack off his head or whatever you plan to do, tell me this: when the Cyclops is dead, how are you going to move that rock from the cave entrance?’

  They looked at the colossal stone that blocked the only exit from the cave, and at last Eperitus saw what Odysseus must have seen from the very start. Polites returned his weapon to its sheath and bowed an apology, while Antiphus and Ophelestes looked from the stone to the monster and silently pondered the impossibility of their situation.

  ‘I suggest we all find some hole or cranny to hide ourselves in and get as much sleep as our nightmares will allow us,’ Odysseus said. ‘Perhaps the morning will bring new hope, if the gods haven’t forsaken us entirely.’

  The others slunk away into the shadows and Eperitus followed Odysseus back to the overhang where they had left Elpenor. He was still there, his knees tucked into his chest as he stared at the sleeping monster.

  ‘Tell me that great mind of yours has a plan to get us out of here,’ Eperitus said quietly. ‘I agree we can’t kill the Cyclops without dooming ourselves, but if we do nothing he’ll eat us all. I’d rather murder him than face that.’

  ‘Do you realise how long it would take us to starve in this place?’ Odysseus said. ‘The animals and cheese alone would last us for weeks, and after that we might start eating each other. And all the time in almost complete darkness, slowly awaiting the inevitable. I’d rather be eaten than face that.’

  ‘But the others would come looking for us, wouldn’t they?’ Elpenor suggested.

  Odysseus shook his head. ‘I told them to leave without us if we don’t return within two days. They might disobey me and send out a search party, but I fear for anyone who finds us shut in here. Even if they could somehow move the stone, the noise would surely bring the other Cyclopes down upon them.’

  ‘Other Cyclopes?’ Eperitus asked.

  ‘You saw the caves up on the hillsides, beyond the trees? And you remember the voices we heard shouting to each other last night? Yes, there are more of them.’

  The thought left Eperitus cold. What if the other Cyclopes found the galley in its sheltered cove? The consequences were unthinkable, and in desperation for Astynome’s safety he voiced the first half-formed idea that entered his mind.

  ‘Perhaps if we were to wound the Cyclops so that he called out for help before we killed him, then the others would answer his call and remove the stone for us.’

  ‘Then we would have a dozen giants to deal with instead of one,’ Elpenor answered. ‘Even I can see that.’

  Eperitus could not deny the folly of his suggestion, even if Elpenor’s arrogance piqued him. He looked at Odysseus, expecting to see the sympathetic expression he usually gave in response to his more ridiculous ideas. Instead he found the king gazing thoughtfully at him, as if ruminating over something. After a moment he shook his head and looked across at the sleeping Cyclops.

  ‘No, the last thing we want is to bring the rest of his tribe down on us. Besides, I don’t want him dead yet if I can avoid it. There was something he said that caught my ear, a name he mentioned: Aeolus. Only Aeolus can tell us the way home.’

  ‘Who’s Aeolus?’ Elpenor asked. ‘Another Cyclops?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but I’m going to find out. Cyclops or not, if this Aeolus knows the way back to Ithaca then I want to know who he is and where I can find him. At least then Mydon and Hippasos won’t have given their lives in vain. And now I suggest we all get some sleep.’

  With that, he threw his cloak about his shoulders and lay down on the bed of dried dung. Elpenor crept back into the farthest recess of the overhang and covered his face with his hands. Soon, both men were snoring gently. Eperitus looked at the one-eyed brute that had so easily slaughtered two Ithacan warriors, then lay down. He doubted he would dare to even close his eyes, let alone sleep.

  He woke with a start. In his dream he had pictured Odysseus on a rooftop, looking over lush woodland towards an azure sea where seagulls cawed and swooped majestically, while all the time a figure with a drawn knife was approaching him stealthily from behind. He had called a warning but no sound had left his mouth. Whether it was the anguish of being unable to help his friend that had woken him, or the sound of bleating and the smell of woodsmoke, he could not say. Then he remembered the Cyclops and sat up.

  Odysseus and Elpenor were already awake, sitting crouched beneath their cloaks in the darkness with the weak glow of the hearth reflecting on their faces. Both were staring at the Cyclops, who was sitting on the boulder he used for a chair. He had rekindled the fire and fed it more wood so that it was now ablaze and spitting merrily in that place of utter gloom. Only a thin beam of grey light coming in through the gap at the top of the stone door signified that day was approaching outside. The goats and sheep were pressing around their owner, impatient for their turn to be milked. One by one his fingers gently pulled at their udders before lifting out the young and placing each against its mother to feed. Eperitus glanced around the cave, spotting the other Ithacans in the shadows, entranced by the calm routine of the shepherd at his work, but knowing that those same hands – with such horrid strength – had last night torn their comrades to pieces. As the terrible moment came when the last lamb was plucked from its mother’s teat and returned to its pen, and the Cyclops stood and rolled the stone away from the entrance – flooding the cave with light and momentarily blinding the Ithacans – Eperitus saw a movement among the flocks as they crowded towards the opening. He gripped Odysseus’s arm and pointed at two men, Ophelestes and another he could not identify, crouching low among the herd. Both had pulled fleeces from the Cyclops’s bed and thrown them over their backs. They only had to stoop to reduce themselves to the height of the abnormally large creatures surrounding them, and as the great flock pressed forward they moved with them.

  ‘They’ll never do it,’ Elpenor declared, standing and gnawing at his bottom lip.

  ‘Yes they can,’ Odysseus said.

  Only a slight widening of his eyes signified the tension inside as he watched the two men push forward, almost lost to sight among the jostling animals. But when the Cyclops had rolled the stone aside, he turned and planted his enormous legs either side of the entrance. His single eye stared down at the flock, counting each one as they passed beneath him.

  ‘Somebody should warn them!’ Elpenor urged, though not having the courage to stand and call out himself.

  ‘No. That’ll destroy any chance that remains to them,’ Eperitus said. ‘Their fate is in the lap of the gods now.’

  ‘Palla
s Athena, help them,’ was all Odysseus could bring himself to say.

  Ophelestes glanced up from beneath his fleece and saw the giant standing sentinel over the exit to the cave. He lost his nerve and tried to push his way back through the crowd of sheep and goats. The Cyclops saw the hide slip from his back and, leaning forward, plucked him from the herd. Ophelestes had already drawn his sword and, despite the crushing pain of his captor’s grip, slashed desperately at his hand. The Cyclops winced, then with his other hand he closed finger and thumb about the man’s head and pinched him out of existence. The sword fell to the floor with a clang and Elpenor turned aside to vomit.

  ‘Look!’ Eperitus whispered. ‘The other one’s passing through. The Cyclops hasn’t seen him.’

  ‘But who is it?’ Odysseus asked. ‘Polites? Antiphus?’

  ‘By all the gods! No!’

  As the Cyclops buried his teeth into Ophelestes’s corpse and the blood oozed between his fingers, he suddenly stopped and looked down. In an instant he had snatched up the second Ithacan, whom, as his fleece fell away, Eperitus recognised as Paion, a brave warrior who had often fought beside him at Troy. Paion barely had time to scream before the Cyclops’s mouth closed over him and tore away his head and one of his shoulders. Odysseus lowered his face so as not to witness any more. Eperitus, unable to turn away, watched both men devoured limb by limb and mouthful by mouthful, until nothing remained but a matt of gore on the herdsman’s beard. Then, when the last of his flock had left the cave, he rolled the stone back across the entrance and plunged the surviving Ithacans back into darkness.

  Eperitus sat motionless, listening to the Cyclops’s whistles fade into the distance as he herded his sheep along the beach and up to the hills above. Then a figure stood up in the darkness at the back of the cave and with a despairing cry ran at the boulder that imprisoned them. Antiphus threw his shoulder at the stone, only to be flung back onto the thick carpet of dung. Immediately he rose again and pressed both his hands against the rock, grunting loudly and pushing with all his might. He was joined by Polites, Omeros and a squat, muscular soldier named Drakios, all of them straining against the sole barrier to their freedom. Soon, Elpenor and the other two Ithacans were with them, crying out with the effort of their impossible task. Eperitus felt the tension in his own limbs, as if charged by the claustrophobia of his comrades, and ran over to thrust his weight against the cold, unmoving stone.

  ‘It has to move!’ Antiphus groaned. ‘It has to move!’

  ‘Keep pushing,’ Polites said.

  ‘You told us it would take fifty men to move this thing,’ Omeros reminded him.

  ‘I was wrong. It needs a hundred, but keep pushing anyway.’

  Eperitus’s feet slipped in the dung and the loose pebbles beneath. He turned his back to the rock, braced his shoulders against its rough, uneven surface and pushed with all the strength his thighs could lend him. Through the sweat pouring into his eyes, he saw Odysseus by the pens where the lambs and kids were kept. He was examining a long beam of wood. Eperitus stopped pushing and stood.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s the trunk of a young olive tree. It’s not seasoned yet, so the Cyclops didn’t bring it here for firewood. A staff maybe? Here, Polites, Antiphus, Drakios: I need your help.’

  Their fruitless efforts to shift the stone had already petered out. Antiphus and the others walked over and, following Odysseus’s instructions, picked the bole up between them. Even with Polites’s great strength it was too unwieldy, so Eperitus joined them and took the far end.

  ‘What do you want us to do?’ he asked. ‘Batter the door down?’

  Odysseus laughed, a strange sound in that place where the blood of their comrades was still fresh on the rocks.

  ‘No. I want you to smooth the wood – leaving those branch stumps there and there – while I sharpen this end. And then I need four men to join me for a task that will put us in the greatest peril.’

  ‘I’m with you,’ Antiphus said, followed by all but Elpenor, who remained ashen-faced and quiet.

  The four men were chosen by lot: Antiphus, Omeros, Drakios and Polites. When their work on the pole had been finished to Odysseus’s satisfaction, they hardened the point over the flames of the fire and then hid it beneath a pile of dung. Another lamb was slaughtered and the Ithacans helped themselves freely to the Cyclops’s cheese. This time Eperitus was glad to share their meal as they swapped tales of their adventures together. They spoke as men on the threshold of great danger, reminiscing about the battles they had fought together and recalling their achievements. They could even laugh at the trials they had endured, though they had been less inclined to mirth when going through them. And they thought of home, too, each adding some memory to the tapestry they were weaving together. When the last had spoken they fell silent and each succumbed to thoughts of the homeland he had not seen for ten years. After a while their conversation revived and looked to the future, as if they were not prisoners of a man-eating terror but free men on their homeward voyage, with Ithaca just over the horizon. Eperitus declared he would marry Astynome the day after they returned and that they would start a farm together and raise a large family. Polites decided that, as Eperitus was going to leave the royal guard, he would offer his services to Odysseus as captain. Odysseus replied that he was not sure he would let Eperitus leave his service, but either way he would gladly yoke Polites to another ox and have him plough his fields for him. Omeros claimed to be the luckiest of them all, as he had seen enough of the world to keep him in songs for the rest of his life. He would travel all the courts of Greece, singing songs of the great war and highlighting the deeds of whichever king was his host. Antiphus said he did not have the heart to look into the future, but if the gods would grant him one prayer it would be that he could return home and see his father one more time. There was a finality about his tone that reminded them of their predicament.

  When their talk had died down again, Odysseus explained his plan to them. They listened in sober silence, and then, after a few questions about detail, slipped away in ones or twos to the hidden corners where they had slept the night before. Only Odysseus and Eperitus remained. While Odysseus played idly with a wooden bowl he had emptied of curds and washed clean – though for what purpose he did not say – Eperitus listened for telltale signs of the herdsman’s return. As the thin light from the gap above the door began to fade, he felt a tremor in the stone beneath him, then another. Before long he heard the bleating of sheep and goats. The Cyclops was coming back.

  ‘If we were out there, Odysseus wouldn’t just abandon us to our fate,’ Eurybates protested.

  Selagos was unmoved. ‘He ordered us to stay here.’

  Eurybates kicked the sand in frustration.

  ‘What if they’re in trouble? I say we send out a party to look for them.’

  ‘Say what you like. Odysseus told us to wait two days then leave without him. That was his command and I intend to fulfil it at dawn tomorrow.’

  Selagos’s assumed authority was backed up by nods and murmurs from the crew. At Eurybates’s request, they had formed a circle on the beach, but very few showed much inclination to search for their king. Eurybates held out his hands to them, imploring their support.

  ‘We all saw those fires in the woods last night, the shadows moving in the flames. We all heard the shouts. What if whoever lives up on the clifftops has taken Odysseus and the others prisoner? Are we just going to leave them to be tortured and murdered? Where’s your loyalty?’

  ‘Yes we saw them,’ said a man standing beside Eurylochus. ‘Great big shadows like giants. And we heard them calling to each other in voices like thunder. If they’ve got Odysseus then there’s not much we can do to rescue him.’

  ‘So this is what we’ve come to, is it? The great Ithacan army, bane of Troy, is afraid of shadows in the dark.’

  ‘We fear nothing,’ Selagos said. ‘But we haven’t forgotten that Odysseus’s greed led us into a massacre at Ismarus
. Why should we follow him into a new disaster now? It’s not cowardice to turn back in the face of folly.’

  The agreement of the rest of the crew became more vocal, and at its height Eurylochus – who until that point had said nothing – stepped forward and proposed a show of hands in favour of sending out a party to find the king. Barely a dozen men raised their arms, and with a half-hearted cheer the assembly began to break up into little groups and drift apart.

  Astynome, sitting on a grassy ridge at the top of the beach, watched Eurybates turn dejectedly away to converse with his few supporters. They did not even have a fire to comfort them in their failure, as the Ithacans did not dare risk attracting the attention of the spectral figures they had glimpsed the night before. With the twilight failing fast, the men now gathered into small groups and were served bread and cold meat by slave women, which they washed down with wine. Astynome rested her chin on her knees and pondered the implications of the debate. Eurybates was right: Eperitus, Odysseus and the others should have returned by now. That meant something had happened to delay them and that they were probably in danger – though she had a strong sense that Eperitus, at least, was still alive. But if they did not come back by first light then Selagos would see that the galley returned to the rest of the fleet. He was also certain to convey Odysseus’s orders that they should assume he had perished and find their own way back to Ithaca.

  But what would she do, she wondered? Slip away into the hills before the others could force her aboard and wait until Eperitus returned? Go looking for him herself? And if he and the others had perished, would she wander the coastline alone until she starved to death or fell into the hands of the savages that inhabited the hills above? Or should she go with the Ithacans and never see Eperitus again, forsaking his protection and doubtless falling prey to the slowly reviving lust of Eurylochus? Though the effects of the lotus had left him distant and even more lethargic than usual, there were signs that the old Eurylochus was returning. More than once she had caught him staring at her, his eyes alive with more than just a desire for the lotus fruit. She shuddered at the memory and looked up. Neither Eurylochus nor Selagos were anywhere in sight.