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

by Glyn Iliffe

  ‘I’ll help you,’ Eperitus called to him.

  ‘Help someone who needs it,’ Selagos growled, and carried on alone.

  Seeing another man struggling in the water, Eperitus swam to his side and hooked his arm around his neck. Behind him the cove still rang to the screams of the dying, but he accepted there was nothing more he could do. He only hoped Odysseus had not sailed beyond the reach of his remaining strength.

  But rather than sailing away, the king had brought his galley almost to the edge of the harbour’s mouth. Eperitus felt a surge of relief as he saw its hull and the rows of oars resting in the water, knowing that he would see Astynome again and that the gods had permitted them both a little more time together. Then a pair of strong arms grabbed at his tunic and started pulling him from the water.

  ‘Not me. Take him first,’ he protested, wafting a hand towards the man he had brought with him.

  ‘He’s dead,’ said a voice he knew. It took his exhausted mind a moment to recognise that it belonged to Polites.

  He slumped down beside a sack of grain and someone placed a cloak around his body. He fought the tiredness a moment longer and opened his eyes to see Astynome. Someone was shouting at the crew to row and he was aware of the creak of the oars in their leather slings beating an almost frantic pace. Water exploded behind the galley and cascaded down across the deck. More urgent shouts came from the men on the oars.

  ‘Selagos?’

  ‘Yes, we picked him up,’ Astynome answered. ‘And Eurylochus. And another ten at least. Men who would have perished if it hadn’t been for you.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have abandoned them. We could have saved more.’

  ‘He did the right thing, Eperitus. He came back and he stayed as long as he dared.’ Another loud splash was followed by more water. ‘But some of them have seen us and are throwing rocks from the clifftops. Odysseus couldn’t have waited any longer.’

  ‘No. We could have saved more,’ Eperitus replied, his words slurred as he slipped into unconsciousness.

  BOOK

  THREE

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  SWINES OF MEN

  Eperitus woke, his heart pounding in his chest and his breathing tight. A hand was on his shoulder and he felt the heat of a naked body beside his.

  ‘Be still, my love. It’s just a nightmare. Just another nightmare.’

  It was Astynome. He raised his hand from beneath the blanket they shared and took her wrist, lifting the palm of her hand to his lips. It was warm and soft, a reassurance that the horrors of his dream were over. She raised herself on one elbow and looked at him, her black tresses spilling down over his chest and shoulder. It was still dark, blurring her features but not her beauty.

  ‘I love you,’ she said.

  He smiled and ran his hand up her arm. He was conscious of the breakers lapping at the sand and the smell of the tall grass on the dunes that surrounded them. They had made their bed here after landing on the island two days ago, desperate for a place away from the others where they would not be disturbed. A place to find sanctuary in the intimacy of each other’s bodies, to forget for a while the horrors they had faced. And as he looked at her he knew – as he had known when he had rescued her during the sack of Lyrnessus – she was the answer to his life’s quest. What could glory and honour give him that a single glance from her eyes could not? What was a line in a song compared to a place in her heart? For years he had faced his enemies without fear, because there was little to lose and everything to gain in a courageous death. But she had given his life sweetness; made it worth living again.

  He laid his hand on her ribs, his thumb stroking the underside of her breast. Lazily, still half-asleep, she straddled him and lowered her lips to his, her hair falling about his face like a curtain. Then she guided him inside her and they made love again.

  The sun was already up when Eperitus woke to the sound of Odysseus’s voice calling his name. He turned and looked at Astynome.

  ‘Go,’ she said, ‘and not because he is your king. Go because he is your friend.’

  She had a wisdom that his own pride denied him. Where he had felt nothing but anger at Odysseus’s decision to abandon the rest of the fleet, Astynome had done all she could to persuade him he had taken the only option available to him. She had not witnessed the destruction and slaughter within the enclosed harbour, he had told her. He had not seen the bitter anguish on Odysseus’s face, she had replied. When he had insisted that Odysseus only cared about returning home to Penelope and Telemachus – and had sacrificed his men for his own selfish aims – she reminded him that if Odysseus had sailed into the harbour the Laestrygonians would have destroyed his galley and all its crew with it. And if Odysseus cared for his family, did not Eperitus care what happened to her? How would he have felt if she had perished, or worse still if the Laestrygonians had taken her alive? Was Odysseus worthy of contempt because he had understood the futility of helping his countrymen, rather than allowing his heart to command his head? Indeed, the king had not abandoned hundreds of men to their fate; rather, he had saved a few dozen to make it back to Ithaca and preserve the memories of those that had died. And Eperitus had known she was right.

  Odysseus called his name again. He dressed quickly and put on his weapons, then kissed Astynome on the cheek and trudged up the nearest dune. The Ithacan camp was some distance away, a dreary mess of despondent men and their captive women and children, many still sleeping off their exhaustion. The galley lay at anchor in the shallow cove, silhouetted black against the rising sun. Odysseus was on the beach below. His shield was slung across his back and he was leaning on his spear.

  ‘Good morning! You know, you should sleep closer to the camp for safety. We don’t know who or what lives on this island yet.’

  ‘I don’t want to know. The sooner we set sail for Ithaca, the better.’

  ‘I agree, except we don’t know where Ithaca is. And you and I are going to find out if there’s anyone here to tell us.’

  Up to that point only cursory patrols had been sent out to ensure there was no imminent danger of attack, but with the men’s strength starting to recover the king had decided it was time to carry out a deeper exploration of the island. His spear over his shoulder, he walked off towards the wall of trees that hemmed the crescent-shaped beach. Eperitus looked at the mountain rising up out of the heart of the forest, its long arms stretching out in different directions to form undulating, tree-covered ridges. Here and there a spine of rock protruded from the trees like a watchtower, glowing orange in the morning sun. After wondering what new horrors the place would hold, he sloped his spear across his shoulder and followed Odysseus into the shade of the wood.

  It took them much of the morning to walk to the top of the nearest ridge and climb one of the rocky heights. From there they could see they were on an isolated island with no other land for as far as the eye could see. Until that point they had found no paths nor come across any other signs of habitation, but as they looked down into the valley beyond – formed between the ridge they had ascended and another arm of the mountain – they saw a thin column of smoke rising from a circular clearing. It twisted its way innocently upwards, unaware and unconcerned that it was being observed from afar.

  ‘I saw the same thing on the island of the Laestrygonians,’ Eperitus said. ‘What if there are more of those things here? We should go while we still can, Odysseus.’

  ‘Go where? We can’t spend the rest of our days sailing this other-world, from one danger to the next. For all we know, the makers of that fire could be civilised. People similar to ourselves who will help us find our way home. Are you willing to forego the chance? I’m not.’

  He began the descent to the forest. Eperitus followed, though the going down was more treacherous than the coming up, especially with a shield on his back and a spear in his hand. But Odysseus’s footing was as sure as a mountain goat, and Eperitus nearly fell twice in his haste to keep up.

  ‘To march
in on the makers of that fire will be folly,’ he said as he caught up with Odysseus. ‘You act as if you still have Athena’s protection, but you don’t. Everything that’s happened to us since we left Troy has proved it.’

  ‘Especially the massacre by the Laestrygonians? So you’re beginning to think like the rest of the crew. Well, if you’re afraid to come with me then run off back to the camp. I’ll go alone if I have to.’

  ‘Being reckless won’t help. If you insist on investigating the smoke, then at least wait until we have a few more men with us. A couple of dozen should be enough; the rest can stay back and guard the camp.’

  ‘No. Two of us can approach without being… Wait. What’s that?’

  He dropped to one knee, his spear at the ready, and pointed into the undergrowth. Eperitus adopted the same pose and stared hard at the area in the trees indicated by Odysseus. He saw it almost immediately: a stag moving slowly through the scrub, barely visible in the dappled sunlight except for the outlandish shape of its great antlers. It paused and turned towards the two men, and then with a kick of its back legs leapt away in the opposite direction. Odysseus sprang up and hurled his spear. The point hit the creature in the back and with a bark of pain it twisted and fell. The two men ran to where it lay, staring down at the magnificent beast as it kicked out the last of its life.

  ‘By all the gods,’ Eperitus exclaimed. ‘Artemis herself couldn’t have thrown better than that.’

  ‘Perhaps she guided my hand,’ Odysseus said. He knelt beside the stag and stroked its motionless flank as if it were merely sleeping. ‘And you say the gods have forsaken me? I think they sent this animal to prevent us going to that clearing alone. Which means you’re right. We’ll go back to the beach and choose a party of men to come with us.’

  The death of the stag seemed to have cheered him. He pulled his spear free of the carcass and began stripping creepers from around the trunk of a tree, weaving them together and using them to bind up the ankles of the animal. With a grunt, he hauled it up onto his shoulders and set off through the brush, using his spear as a staff. The journey back was long, but he refused all Eperitus’s offers to share the burden – though even his strength was flagging beneath it – until they stumbled out of the trees and found their way back to the camp.

  Throwing the dead stag down in the sand, he looked around at the pitiful faces of his men as they huddled together around their fires, some of them returning his stare with resentment.

  ‘The gods haven’t abandoned us yet, my friends. Even though our comrades are dead and have gone down to the Halls of Hades, are we not alive? And as long as we live, then they live in us – in our songs and the stories we will tell of them when we return home. Yes, home. Or have you forgotten Ithaca in the depths of your pity? Have you forgotten those we left behind, our fathers and mothers, our wives and children?’

  ‘I have,’ said a man to Eperitus’s left. ‘Their faces, at least. And the sounds of their voices. They might as well be dead.’

  Odysseus looked at him for a lingering moment.

  ‘But they’re not, and neither are you. And as long as we still have the blood of life inside us then we should make it our goal to return home. There isn’t a day – barely even a moment – that I don’t think of seeing my family again. Like you, I can barely remember what Penelope looks like; and as for Telemachus, what chance would I have of telling him apart from any other ten-year-old? They’re like spirits to me that flit about at the back of my memory, without face or form or voice. But I know this: without them I am incomplete. And when I succeed in returning to Ithaca, those spirits will take on flesh and fill in the gaps that have existed in my life since we sailed for Troy. Whatever you feel now, whatever emptiness is inside you, I tell you your self-pity and all the wine you can drink will not cure you of it. Only returning to our families and homes can do that. So put your mourning for your friends at an end and make Ithaca your goal, or die in the process. Now, fetch what wine we have left from the ship and use whatever grain has been spared us to make bread. The gods have given us meat. I suggest we eat it instead of dying here of starvation.’

  The stag was large enough to feed all the crew and the Trojan slaves. Though they had finished the last of their provisions, there would be plenty of fruit and game on the island to keep them from going hungry as long as they remained. It also lifted their spirits to eat well, and the last of the Cicone wine – watered down with four parts water – was sufficient to have them singing and dancing around their fires until the light waned and evening dispelled any possibility of scouting out the source of the smoke that day. Again Odysseus had shown wisdom, for the Ithacans were still too broken to face danger again. But if he expected them to be in a much better mood the next morning, he was wrong. After a frugal breakfast of porridge on a beach wreathed in fog, he called his men about him and told them of the smoke he and Eperitus had spied. The very thought that the island was occupied provoked cries of dismay and even tears from some.

  ‘Don’t the gods ever tire of punishing us?’ shouted Perimedes. ‘What will it be this time? More man-eating giants? Another Cyclops? Yet another city of foes to ride us down in chariots bristling with spears?’

  Voices were raised in agreement, especially by the group seated around Eurylochus.

  ‘Listen to me,’ Odysseus commanded. ‘The truth is we’re lost. We have no choice but to find out who lives on this island and whether they know a way back to Greece. But we won’t make the same mistake as last time; we’ll make sure there’re enough of us to deal with whoever or whatever made the smoke, if they turn out to be unfriendly. We’ll split into two groups. One can come with me into the forest to find out who lives there, while the other can remain here to guard the ship.’

  ‘There are some who would have a problem following you, my lord,’ Selagos said, rising to his feet. ‘They say you’re a curse on this voyage, that you bring doom to everyone around you.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Eurylochus agreed, staring down at his sandals and refusing to meet his cousin’s fierce gaze. ‘The men are becoming wary of your leadership. Every decision you’ve made since we left Troy has been wrong.’

  Voices were raised in agreement and some of those who remained silent nodded. Eperitus gripped the pommel of his sword, sensing that the crew had reached their breaking point.

  ‘Really?’ Astynome asked. The sound of a female voice among an assembly of men shocked them into silence. ‘Is that what you really think, after he saved you from the Cyclops? After he won over Aeolus and persuaded him to give you a friendly wind home, only for you to let the other winds out of the bag and drive us all the way back?’

  ‘Quiet, woman!’ Eurylochus shouted.

  ‘Astynome’s right,’ Eperitus said. ‘And if Odysseus hadn’t taken the hard decision to leave the rest of the fleet to perish beneath the rocks and harpoons of the Laestrygonians, we’d all have died with them.’

  He glanced at Odysseus who gave a faint nod.

  ‘Let Eurylochus lead us,’ said Perimedes, his voice tentative and low.

  ‘Aye,’ said another.

  ‘I’m with Eurylochus,’ Selagos said, his usually hard face betraying the satisfaction he felt.

  And to Eperitus’s shock, Odysseus agreed.

  ‘As you wish. We will split in two, as I said. One group will be led by me, the other by Eurylochus; one will stay and guard the camp, the other will go find the source of the smoke. Are we agreed?’

  ‘This isn’t a council of equals,’ Eperitus hissed, leaning in towards Odysseus’s ear.

  ‘It is for now,’ Odysseus whispered back. ‘It has to be.’

  Eurylochus, seeing the chance to establish his authority, nodded.

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Then somebody give me a helmet.’

  A soldier removed his bronze cap and passed it to Odysseus. Picking up two stones from the sand, one dark grey, the other white, the king dropped them into the helmet and shook it gently from side to s
ide.

  ‘Choose a stone, Eurylochus. Whoever’s comes out of the helmet first will lead their group to find the source of the smoke.’

  ‘Grey.’

  The stones rattled and one fell out into the sand. It was grey.

  ‘Eurylochus will take half the ship’s crew to the clearing in the forest and find out what sort of man lives there. The remainder will stay here with me.’

  ‘This is insanity,’ Eperitus protested, keeping his voice low despite his frustration. ‘The man’s an idiot! He’ll either get everyone killed and we’ll be none the wiser about who rules this island, or Selagos will convince him this is his chance to become king and overthrow you!’

  ‘No he won’t, because I’m going to insist that Selagos stays here with me. What’s more, you and Polites are going with Eurylochus to keep an eye on him. After all, it’s likely only a single dwelling. What can go wrong?’