The Eighth Arrow

by J. Augustine Wetta

  He cocked his head to the side, stood up, and gripped the handle of his sword. Bending one knee, he held the palm of his hand to the ground and closed his eyes. “There’s an army coming,” he whispered.

  “You’re just saying that so I’ll quit fooling around,” I said, but then I could feel it as well: a slight tremor in the soil.

  “It’s an army,” he whispered. “They’re moving fast. I don’t think we want to meet them.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “We’ll look at the rest of these later.” I slid the arrows back into the quiver, took up my helmet, and pulled it down over my temples, framing the world in bronze. Then I slung the great shield on my back.

  We set out at a jog—which wasn’t easy, and if you’ve ever tried to run in full armor, then you know what I’m talking about. The greaves cut into your ankles, the breastplate rubs against your armpits and hips, the helmet slips around on your head as you sweat, and you can’t brush the sweat from your eyes because you need both hands to keep your sword and quiver from flopping about—to say nothing of the bow. Meanwhile, the shield smacks your lower back with every stride, your sandals cut neat grooves into your shins, and the bag (which seemed the least of your worries when you tied it to your belt) slips around to the front and clocks you in the crotch. Plus, the armor is heavy. Really heavy. Like carrying a twelve-year-old on your shoulders.

  The worst of it was that Diomedes didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, I think he enjoyed the exercise. Luckily, we had run a short distance when he decided to stop again.

  “We’re not taking a break so soon, are we?” I said, adjusting my shield strap. Already my neck was chafed.

  “They’re coming on too fast. We need to hide.”

  I didn’t much like taking orders from Diomedes, but I liked running even less. I nodded toward a great heap of charred rubble about a stone’s throw away on our left. We set out for it at once—Diomedes at a sprint, I at a brisk waddle—then skirted the base of the mound and climbed about halfway up, laying our shields flat. We sat with our backs to the slope and waited.

  “Assuming they don’t spot us,” said Diomedes, chewing his helmet strap, “where do we go from here?”

  “Stop that,” I said. “Three thousand years old, and you still have to keep sticking things in your mouth.” When he wasn’t sucking his thumb, he was chewing his helmet strap; and on formal occasions when neither seemed appropriate, he would chew the inside of his cheek. Our friends actually found it endearing, which may be why he never quit doing it—and why it bothered me so much.

  He spit out the strap. It looked like a piece of wet jerky. “So? What now?”

  “Believe it or not, I’ve passed this way before,” I answered. “Circe—the witch I met on my return from Troy—she showed me the way.” She hadn’t, actually. It was a sort of drug-induced hallucination at best, but I couldn’t have Diomedes questioning me now. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I have a plan.”

  I didn’t.

  The clamor of the approaching army grew steadily louder until it was so close I could make out individual voices. The noise was, in fact, distinctly unmilitary. It lacked the rattle and clang of armor, the underlying thrum of synchronized step, the stern calls of commanding officers. This was an army en route, not an army on the march.

  “They’re making the strangest racket,” I said to Diomedes. His eyes were closed in prayer. “And what is that humming noise? Can you hear that? Like a chorus of horns.” It had an unnatural, almost mechanical quality, and the longer I listened, the more it vexed me, until finally, overwhelmed by curiosity, I rolled over to my stomach and lifted my head.

  Indeed, the source of the noise was immediately revealed. But at the same time, so was I. The shouting ceased, and all together the faces of a hundred thousand men turned to meet my gaze. I ducked back behind the mound, but a great cry echoed across the valley, and the din of running feet rose to a roar.

  “They spotted us!” I shouted.

  “Curse your curiosity!” Diomedes growled. “I should have left you when I had the chance!”

  He was right again. My wit had always been a two-edged sword. I’d cut myself on it as often as anything else, and poor Diomedes had usually been nearby when things took a turn for the worse. Now, with the seed of hope newly planted, he was about to die a second time.

  “Make for the top of the mound!” he cried.

  I expected a throng of enemies to come pouring over the summit at any moment, but when at last we arrived there, breathless and bewildered, the sight of the “army” took away what breath we had left. Stretching across the barren landscape in a winding column was a great host of wild and bloody men. At the head of the procession, a long gray flag snapped in the wind. It bore no markings of any sort yet seemed to hold some strange power over the multitude, for despite their curses, the crowd neither turned to face us nor in any way deviated from its course. From where we stood, we were also able to make out the source of the unnatural hum that had so provoked my curiosity: on every side, a roiling cloud of wasps enveloped the souls in an angry swarm. Here or there, a bloody face, a welted arm, a clawing fist would emerge, then disappear.

  Most curious of all, however, were the solitary figures that moved on either side of the mob like towers of living flesh. Stone-gray giants—solemn and unswerving as guards at a tomb—strode along the edges of the column with clenched fists. I could not make out their faces, but there was something about the way they swung their enormous arms, and something about the way the crowd spun out of their path wherever they turned, that reminded me of wind. Looking more closely, I could make out black, withered wings between their shoulders, but still I could not see their faces, and although my deeper instincts told me to keep my distance, a yearning curiosity drew me closer. Before I knew it, I was climbing down the opposite side of the hill to have a better look. Behind me, Diomedes’ protests were lost among the echoes.

  I made my way to the base of the mound, where I was able at last to discern faces in the crowd. By then, it was clear enough to me that this was no army at all and that, moreover, the throng numbered both men and women. But even from this vantage, I could not make out the faces of the giants. It was like reading a word in a dream: whenever I focused on them, their features seemed to shift and melt, but when I looked away again, I could swear I saw a face out of the corner of my eye. The leather-winged creatures paced back and forth along the margin as though herding a restless flock. And sure enough, as I turned to signal Diomedes, a deep voice boomed to me from the other side of the crowd, “You there. You with the bow. Put that back where you found it. Get in line.”

  I turned to face my accuser and spotted one of the giants lumbering toward me. “Sorry; wrong man,” I answered. “I’m not one of this bunch and don’t intend to be.” But the giant pushed on till he stood directly before me, bending his burly frame forward to look me in the eye. Giant though he was, this was no Cyclops, and I could almost meet his gaze if I stood up very straight—an altogether disconcerting experience since, as I mentioned, he had no face.

  There was a long silence between us, during which I kept my hand on my sword. At last, he straightened and shook his head. “You are not one of us. Where do you come from?” His voice was hard and low, like distant thunder.

  I looked about for a moment, thinking that if this situation wasn’t begging for one of my famous “lying tales,” then I was a goat’s brother. “I am a messenger of the goddess Athena,” I cried. “I come with commands from Olympus. Bow before me, for I shall bestow upon you a task of highest honor for which the gods themselves will repay you in full.”

  “You lie,” said the giant, and he seized me by the shield strap. Somewhere, I thought, there’s a goat running around with my family name.

  The giant made as if to drag me away, but by now Diomedes had caught up with us. “Sir!” he said. “I apologize for my friend here.” This irked me, but I was hardly in a position to complain. “Odysseus doesn’t know any better,
sir. He’s a liar and a cheat, but he means well.” Again, I felt I ought to be insulted, but his words did the trick. The giant set me down and turned his attention to Diomedes. “Look,” he continued, “we’re at your mercy. We’re here, we’re lost, and we’d be very grateful if you could help us.”

  At this, the giant seemed to tremble a little. He took a step back and turned his face toward the fleeing crowd, the tail end of which was just now passing us by. He turned back again. The gray of his skin seemed to lighten a little. “Mercy?” he said. “How do you speak of mercy in this place? Do you not know where you are? This is the vestibule of the Abyss. That is the Army of Cowards. We of the withered wings are angeloi, called into being before the dawn of man. We are unfit for any world because we will not choose a side in the Great War. Even Hades spits us out. If there is one place you will find no mercy, it is here among the small souled. No, Son of Adam. Abandon all hope. Despair and die.”

  “Son of a what?” I said as he turned away.

  But Diomedes called after him, “Wait. Please. In the name of Athena, stop. In the name of the Parthenos!”

  And then the giant did stop. “Where have you heard that name,” he growled, “and how dare you speak it here?” Despite his tone, the giant’s gaze remained fixed on the disappearing mob.

  Diomedes took another step forward. “She is the one who sent us.”

  The giant folded his arms and looked down at Diomedes, who took a step back again. “The name you speak commands obedience,” said the giant, “and until now, I had never heard it uttered in this realm. Even so, I am not a creature like you. I do not exist in time. Only mortals may change their minds, and only while they live. Here, no one turns back. No one repents. There is no past or future. We exist only in the now. What we decide, we do. And when it is done, it is thus forever. Perhaps there is hope for you, mortal, but I am pure spirit. I will not choose, and so I am damned.”

  “Wait just a moment,” I said, stepping in front of Diomedes and dismissing him with an elegant flourish. The first principle of rhetoric, after all, is to establish a physical presence. Given that I’m rather on the short side, this has been a challenge for me, but I find ways to compensate. “Giant, you have undermined the basis of your own argument, for if, as you say, we are not in time, and, what’s more, you are not capable of turning back, then, by necessity, you are already committed to helping us, for you have just now left that mob behind. You cannot go back on that decision. By virtue of the very fact that you are standing with us now, you prove that when you chose your fate, you chose us to be part of it. Deny, then, what you see before you. Live or dead, here we stand; and you, giant, stand with us.”

  Normally, I would have concluded the argument by locking my adversary in an iron gaze, but since the giant had no face, I locked eyes with Diomedes instead. The lower half of his countenance froze into a sort of desperate grin. The upper half frowned. He waved his hands in a gesture that might have been an attempt at a rhetorical flourish, then stomped his foot and shouted, “Ha!” then as an afterthought, “Yep.” It was no way to end an argument.

  The giant looked down at Diomedes’ foot, then looked back up at the two of us. He folded and unfolded his arms. He looked back again at Diomedes’ foot. His broken wings twitched. He cast a glance after the fleeing mob. Then he leaned all the way forward and pounded one clenched fist into the sand. “What do you want from me?”

  Diomedes gasped. “Huh?”

  “What . . . do . . . you . . . want?”

  Diomedes looked to me for an answer.

  “A guide,” I said, and held out my hand.

  CHAPTER 4

  OUR GUIDE TO THE UNDERWORLD

  I AM ODYSSEUS,” I said, my hand hanging empty in the air before me, “Son of Laertes. King of Ithaca.”

  The giant turned his gaze to my hand as though he had just noticed it. “Yes, you are.”

  I lowered my arm. “Right . . . well . . . like I said . . . I’m looking for a guide.”

  “A guide to what?”

  “Acheron,” I said, “the river. There’s a certain spot where a ferry takes souls to the Underworld.”

  “This way,” said the giant. Then he turned his back on us and set off with long, slow strides.

  I looked at Diomedes, who stared after the giant with a frown. “Might as well follow,” he said.

  I wasn’t especially pleased with the way that scenario had played out. In fact, I think I felt a little jealous of Diomedes. I was supposed to be the master strategist. I was the Man of Winged Words, who sweet-talked Achilles out of his bride, won glory in the assembly, and awed the Trojans in their own banquet hall by the sheer force of my personality. When it comes to winning an argument, I like to think I have an edge over the common man; and frankly, Diomedes was never known for his wit. Yet his awkwardness had triumphed where my rhetoric had clearly failed.

  I quickened my pace and fell in step alongside the giant, who, for all I could tell, did not even notice I was there. “Hail and long life to you!” I said, flashing a smile that would melt the heart of a Lycaean princess—or a Trojan warlord, for that matter.

  The giant did not acknowledge my presence.

  “This land is foreign to me,” I said, abandoning the formal language of my fathers. “I am unfamiliar with your customs. Perhaps I introduced myself poorly. You’ll forgive my uncultured ways. In Achaea, we always introduce ourselves to strangers, you see. We go through our family histories together to see if some bond of friendship exists between our fathers. Quick way to an easy meal, if you know what I mean.”

  Still there was no reaction.

  “I’ve seen it happen in the most unlikely places, even between mortal foes! My friend here—his name is Diomedes—once discovered that his grandfather was the guest-friend of an enemy he met on the battlefield. They ended up swapping armor. The catch was, this other guy’s gear was pretty beat-up, but Diomedes’ armor was inlaid with gold. Gold! Can you believe it? Diomedes swapped his own gold armor for bronze.”

  The giant strode on, looking neither left nor right. I cast a glance back at Diomedes.

  “Very well, then,” I said, opting for a more aggressive approach. “You don’t like small talk. I can see that. But at least tell us your name.”

  “I am nobody,” said the giant.

  “Oh, come now,” I replied. “Show a little courtesy at least.”

  “And what place might courtesy have in the vestibule of Hades?”

  It wasn’t much, but it was a start. He was talking. “Eu legeis, my friend! Excellent point! I keep forgetting that I’m dead, you see. You would have thought I’d grasped the implications by now. But courtesy notwithstanding, don’t you think your name might have some practical value for us?”

  “No,” he answered, and picked up his pace.

  I couldn’t let this slide. I had finally made a little headway and needed to make the most of it. “As you say, O giant of the silent stride, this is no place of courtesies, so what if we need further help? What if we are ambushed by brigands? How do we get your attention? I can see you’d be a good man to have in a fight.”

  “I would indeed,” he answered, “if I fought. But I do not fight. And I have never fought. And I never will fight. In the greatest of all battles, I stood idle. That is why I am here. I would not fight for the Authority Himself. Why would I fight for you?” And the giant lapsed back into his stony silence.

  “Very well, then, tell me this at least: Why did you listen to my friend when he asked for help? What did he say that was so convincing? Answer me that, and I’ll shut my mouth.”

  “If you will be silent, I will answer your question.”

  “Very well, then. Silent shall I be. Silent as the summer sun. Silent as a mouse hole. Silent as a stone in a crypt. Just tell me what he said that was so convincing.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Honestly, you’ll have to do better than that,” I answered, feeling cheated.

  “Nothing he said c
hanged my mind. Nothing he could say ever would. His foot convinced me.”

  “His foot?”

  But that was all I could pry out of the giant, so I fell back in step with Diomedes. “You hear that?”

  “Heard it.” He pursed his lips as though he were holding back a smile.

  “Your foot, though. He said your foot convinced him to help us.”

  “What did you expect?” answered Diomedes, now smiling into the distant darkness. “You didn’t think it was my eloquence, did you?”

  “No, of course not. But then, I don’t see what’s so exceptional about your feet, either.”

  Diomedes smiled broadly. “I have very nice feet.”

  “If you ask me, they’re rather ordinary. A little veiny, even. Or was it one foot in particular? Which foot did you use? Is it the way you walk?”

  Then I saw it. “Diomedes, stop.”

  He froze and drew his sword. “What is it?”

  “Your feet,” I answered.

  He scowled and sheathed the sword. “I thought we discussed this.”

  “No. No. Look.”

  He looked at his feet and shook his head.

  “Look closely,” I said.

  He leaned over and squinted.

  “Take a step back.”

  He stepped back and caught his breath. “Footprints!”

  “That’s right.”

  “We’re not shades.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “We’re alive!”

  I nodded, “Or at any rate, not quite dead.”

  In retrospect, I can see there was more truth in that last phrase than I could have known. To be sure, we weren’t quite dead, but then neither were we entirely alive, and I know now that it had something to do with the nature of evil. You see, three thousand years in Hell have made this much clear to me: evil is nothing. It’s a vacuum. It’s a space where something should have been but isn’t. Cowardice is the absence of courage. Malice is the absence of love. Falsehood is the absence of truth. And so on. My point is this: the more attached you are to evil, the less you actually are. So I was only half-right when I said we weren’t quite dead. The truth is, we weren’t quite alive because we had filled our lives with emptiness.