The Eighth Arrow

by J. Augustine Wetta

  “I don’t think this roof will hold,” shouted Diomedes. We were close enough for our foreheads to touch, but I could hardly hear him over the screeching wind. “Should we really be staying here?”

  “Do we have a choice?” I yelled back.

  Diomedes was opening his mouth to speak again when our shelter was flooded with a piercing scream, and his shield, struck by some mass of airborne debris, slammed against him, knocking him over sideways. In the dark, it was hard to tell what had hit him, and as quickly as it blew into our shelter it was sucked back out again.

  Diomedes righted himself, wiping his face on his sleeve. “Funny,” he shouted, propping his shield back up and refastening his chin strap. “The rain is salty.”

  “No, you’re wrong,” I shouted back, scooping up a handful of hail. “You can’t make ice from saltwater. You must have bitten the giant when you fell over.”

  “Not funny,” answered Diomedes. “I’m telling you, I’m covered in saltwater.” He held out one arm in the dim light. I could see that he was dripping wet. But it was not rainwater that covered him, for his hand was drenched with some darker, thicker substance like honey or . . . well . . . looking into Diomedes’ eyes, I could see the realization dawn. “I’m hurt, aren’t I?” he said. Although I could not hear the words, I watched him mouth it through the darkness. A moment of grim desperation passed between us before he closed his eyes. We knew from experience that the most serious battle wounds could not be felt. On the journey home from Troy, one of my crew had drunk himself stupid and fallen from a rooftop. He lay on his back, bleeding into the moonlight, his spine twisted cruelly, and even as he gasped his life away, he swore that he was feeling just fine. “I’ll be up in a moment, boys,” were his last words.

  “Hold still,” I shouted. I looked him over, but there didn’t seem to be any wound.

  “Go ahead. Tell me,” he said, and his eyes held the grim resolve of a man condemned.

  “I hate to disappoint you,” I called back through a fresh spray of rain, “but you’re in excellent health. I don’t know where the blood came from, but it isn’t yours.”

  I had no sooner spoken than another cracking thud sounded at the wall of our hut, then another outside the opening—and this time it was I who was covered in gore. We hardly had time to react when another shrieking figure slammed into an overturned pillar, caught on its capital, then whipped back into the air with a shrill cry. It paused long enough for us to recognize the creature as human, and our eyes were opened to the carnage around us. Caught up in the whirling chaos of the storm, the citizens of this ruined realm dwelt in a desperate tangle of humanity, hurled indiscriminately by every contrary wind.

  Diomedes and I looked on in horror as another body tumbled into the fallen pillar outside our shelter. A woman. But as the wind seized hold, her robes caught on an outcrop of stone and held her. To our astonishment, it turned out to be someone we knew. She was soaked and spattered with mud, her hair in tousled knots, but even in that condition, she was lovely. I, Odysseus, man of the world and master of the art of love, had never in my life seen a woman so beautiful. The nymph Circe with her lustrous braids was never so magnificent as this woman, and the Sirens never so tempting. Here was the great prize and pride of Achaea, Helen herself. As much as I despised her for the pain her infidelity cost me at Troy, even now, in the midst of the howling storm, I had to admire her beauty.

  Well, she was beyond beauty, really. To look at her was to come face-to-face with a force of nature. Her beauty had the strength of a cyclone or tidal wave. To be in her presence was to desire her in the most fundamental sense. Not to love her, exactly. No, love, I have come to believe, is something more complex, subtler—a tapestry woven on the warp of time from threads of patience and sacrifice. No, this was more immediate, more primal—like panic or rage. In the presence of Helen of Argos, men became beasts.

  As I watched her writhe in the spattering rain, I flushed with desire. O Zeo! To see her now after three thousand years of solitude—well, you understand why both Diomedes and I might have acted a little irrationally. And you’ll understand why, initially, we simply stared while she was battered by the storm. Her sudden presence was like a drug, ripping fantasy and memory from our hearts by force.

  There was a time, you see, when both Diomedes and I had competed for Helen’s hand. Now, shivering in that damp hovel, I relived those fevered days of my youth when a woman’s affection was worth dying for—when a woman’s face could launch a thousand ships.

  Ah! And was she ever a woman to die for! Many, many did, though it would be unfair, or at least inaccurate, to blame the war on her alone. The suitors’ oath was my idea. I dreamt it up the summer that Helen came of age—that summer when the youth of Achaea descended on King Tyndareos’ house like wolves, slinking, stalking, circling one another, sniffing the close summer air. I wanted Helen for myself, of course, but I was tired of waiting, crowded into the king’s banquet hall with all those sweating, belching bullies; it made me sick to watch them drink and scheme, one hand on their swords, the other wrapped around a bowl of unmixed wine. I knew I would take her by guile long before any of them took her by force. Besides, I had never been one to fight over women. For that matter, I had never been one to fight at all if I could help it, and I felt pretty certain that if I used my wits, I could have Helen of Argos without lifting a finger.

  Diomedes, by contrast, was willing to slaughter every suitor in the hall if he had to, and I didn’t doubt for a moment that he would give it a try. The funny thing is, I think he may have been the only man there who didn’t much care for Helen. He never seemed to have anything positive to say about her, and when she would make one of her infrequent appearances to the gathered suitors, he would usually find something else to do. As far as I could tell, he was in it for the competition. And what’s more, he may well have won. So I made the novel suggestion that we allow the lady to choose for herself. It was such an astonishing proposal that no one could come up with a reason to oppose it. Thus, with great pomp and ceremony, Helen was led into the hall, where she herself picked out her mate. I knew I would win, you see, because I had met her once already.

  Seen her, actually. From a distance. It was at the festival of the wine god at Thebes. “Every man should see the Bacchanalia once,” said my father, winking to make a point I did not catch, “and never see it again.” I’d hiked for three days to make it there in time for the opening rites and arrived just as the sun was setting. As I looked about the clearing, I began to understand what he meant. The Thebans had built a great fire in a clearing on the slopes of Mount Cithaeron, and the whole countryside smelled of pine.

  I’d never seen anything like it in my life—the wild dancing, the shrieks and howls, and loud, drunken laughter . . . But what moved me most were the drums—the deep, thumping cadence of the Phrygian drums. Thoom! Thoom! Thoom! The air shivered with their thunder, and I felt my own heart fall in with the rhythm. Every face I looked into was hot with wine. Thoom! Thoom! You would have had to be a stone not to dance—and once I’d had my fill of that Theban wine, dance I did, spinning in circles, twisting, leaping like a Cretan before a bull—I was a leopard, a lamb, a wild mountain goat. Thoom! The hot Theban air wrapped us all in a warm embrace till the sweat ran rivers down our necks. Thoom! Thoom! Thoom! Arms, legs, swinging hair, and hands held open to the starry sky. I felt young and perfect. No gray hairs, no broken bones, no scars but one. I’d never felt so full of strength and life—never would again, I suppose. Then, through that mist of wine and sweat, I saw her, the lithe beauty. Through a forest of flailing arms, my eyes touched hers.

  I already knew her name. Every man in Greece knew it. And she’d been watching me dance. I grinned when our eyes met. I howled, and she gave a little leap like a startled doe. Then she turned away, threw her arms over her head—and danced. By all the gods of Olympus, I could see only her back, but I felt as though the soles of my feet had been pulled up through my throat. I also remember�
�and only because later it would take on a particular significance for me—that her sister had been there too, and had also been watching me. She was standing just behind Helen, and when I turned my eyes to hers, she blushed deeply, pulled her veil up over her face, and turned away. Years later, I would learn her name too. It was Penelope.

  So this was another reason to assume that I had an edge over the other suitors. But like many of my most brilliant schemes, it did not fall out as planned. The way I figured, if my considerable charm had not already won her over, the mere fact that it was I who gave her the choice was sure to win her affection. But instead, she pointed to—of all people—Menelaos, that sniveling, weak-minded, redheaded stealer of sheep. Not even the oldest son of his family. I tell you, the demon Discord had her nimble fingers in that decision, though I ought to have seen it coming. Beautiful women always have had the most inexplicable attractions. But even so, Helen’s choice caught me off guard. She might have picked swift-footed Achilles or the giant Ajax or even little Teucros, skilled with arrow and bow. But she chose Menelaos.

  She might as well have spanked me and stuck an onion in my mouth for all my astonishment, and I could see that every other man in the room was equally appalled. By then, however, we had taken an oath to defend her decision to the death (an idea, mind you, that was supposed to save my life if any of the losers left with hard feelings). We were all so dumbfounded, there was nothing we could think to do, so we abandoned Helen to her grinning groom. And all of us might have finished out our lives in peaceful tedium if Paris hadn’t turned up and stolen her away to Troy.

  “That’s her,” gasped Diomedes. His words, strangely audible through the howling wind, pulled me back from my memories. “That’s her,” he said again, and I nodded dumbly.

  She didn’t seem to notice us at first. Then a lull in the storm gave her a moment to look about. When she spotted us in our little shelter of stone, she cried, “Odysseus! Diomedes! Save me!” Loud as the storm was, the music of her voice carried across to us on the wind. Her damp dress fluttered, and everything in me longed to be out there with her. Back in my homeland, we refer to our women as “deep breasted and lithe”. The phrase came to me now as I watched her straining against her clothes. The longing felt like a clenched fist in my gut—like a rope pulled taut. She was so lovely, I could have wept.

  “Save me!” she cried again, and—Aiki!—her voice was like honey and cream.

  Of course, I should have wondered how she could say anything at all, given her condition—or how her voice was so strangely audible. I should have wondered how she had made it through this tempest without sustaining a single bruise, without even tearing her cloak. But my attention had shifted to Diomedes, whose posture gave every indication that he was going after her. He was going to rescue the girl and take her for himself. Looking back at her, I understood the risk. Hades might not be so terrible if it were spent with that woman. But even as I watched the damp and diaphanous clothing tremble over her curves—even as I plotted to outrace Diomedes into the storm and take her for myself—something held me back. It was an unfamiliar feeling, that moment of restraint. I’d never turned down a beautiful woman in my life. But something about the attraction struck me wrong. I had felt this way off the coast of Capri when, tied to the mast of my ship, I listened to the deadly music of the Sirens. And perhaps that is what saved me from throwing myself into that storm of lust—that, and the memory of my wife, whose sober countenance still lingered in my brain.

  Diomedes, however, grew increasingly agitated as he looked on, and though I tried to warn him that we did not have the strength to save her, I could see by his demeanor that he was about to lose control. For safe measure, I wrapped one end of his armor belt around my wrist.

  I had only just done so when he lunged out into the raging storm. The wind caught his shield and ripped the two of us from the safety of our shelter into the chaos of the squall.

  CHAPTER 14

  HELEN OF TROY

  WE DIDN’T GET FAR. The giant had anticipated my foolishness just as I had anticipated Diomedes’. He had a tight grip on my ankle, and although I felt like I was being torn in two, I couldn’t help feeling a measure of gratitude, even amid all the sleet and thunder. I shouted to Diomedes, who had been shaken from his trance by the battering rain, “Let go of your shield!”

  “I can’t,” he cried. “You’re holding the strap!” And so I was. But I had dealt with forces of nature before—tacked against the wild winds of the Aegean in little more than a skiff.

  “Turn it into the wind!” I yelled, but now Diomedes was looking at Helen again, and she, arms outstretched, fluttered just beyond his reach. “Diomedes!” I shouted. “You can’t save her! Turn your shield into the wind!”

  Still there was no answer. I reached back with one hand and drew my sword from its sheath, then struck him—hard—with the flat of the blade. Just then, his hand caught the hem of Helen’s gown.

  “Turn your shield into the wind!” I cried for the last time, and now Diomedes complied. Together, he, Helen, and I were catapulted into our shelter by the combined force of the wind and the giant’s strength.

  “Great,” I sighed once my head stopped spinning. “Now we have a woman to look after.” I sat up and knocked the water from my ears. Helen, Diomedes, and the giant were piled up against the back of the shelter.

  “It could be worse,” said Diomedes from where he lay. Helen was sprawled full length atop him.

  “Thank you,” she said without rising. I had to give her credit. The woman knew her strengths. “Thank you for not leaving me out there.” She untangled herself from Diomedes, then slid over opposite me and sat cross-legged with her back against the wall.

  “This does not please me,” groaned the giant. He rolled Diomedes off and sat up. “Mortals!” he grumbled. “Forever slaves to your flesh. Why the Authority loves you so much I shall never understand.” Then he looked from Helen to me and growled, “The next time you go courting, ask my permission.” He bent his head to his breast and said no more. I didn’t have the will to respond. I was too busy staring at Helen.

  Now, I know what you’re thinking. You want to know what she looked like, the siren of Troy. You want me to describe the face that launched those thousand ships. And I suppose if I had to, I’d say she had eyes like wells of blue spring water and hair that rolled in golden waves like honeyed wine. Perhaps I’d say that her skin was pale and smooth as polished ivory, or that her cheeks glowed like love. I’d say there was the light of something smart and dangerous in her eyes . . . But that wouldn’t do her justice. And besides, if you asked Diomedes, he would tell you something altogether different. He’d say her eyes were dark as onyx beads and her hair a chestnut brown. He’d say that her face was as innocent as a doe’s and that her cheeks were sharp and angular like those of an Eastern princess.

  No, Helen’s beauty was beyond description. Every man saw something different in her. That was her gift—to be all things to all men. What you desired, you saw.

  “Thank you for saving me,” she said again, with a coy smile.

  “Thank Diomedes,” I answered, looking away. “He wanted to help you, not I.”

  “Still angry, then, Odysseus? After all these years?”

  I didn’t answer. I’d lost some good friends at Troy, and if anyone was to blame, it was she.

  “Penelope wanted you more than I did. That is the long and short of it. I would have chosen you, but she was smarter.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Helen cocked her head to the side, then opened wide her eyes and laughed. “You still don’t know?”

  “Don’t know what?” I asked. I had the feeling I was about to learn something unpleasant about myself. For all her beauty, Helen did have a knack for bringing out the worst in men.

  “Penelope never told you, did she? She never told you why I chose Menelaos.”

  Now she had my attention.

  “Amazing! And you, famous the worl
d over for your wit. Outwitted by a woman—and still you do not suspect.”

  “Suspect what?” I shouted. Much as I hated to succumb to her taunts, she’d finally driven my curiosity over the edge. Even Diomedes and the giant were listening now.

  “Penelope arranged the whole thing.”

  I still wasn’t making the connection, but clearly Diomedes had, for he let out a muffled laugh from his corner of the shelter.

  “That night, before I made my choice among the suitors, I told Penelope that I had decided on you. After all, it was your idea to give me the choice in the first place. How many men in Greece would have done that? But Penelope sat up all night listing your vices. You were dishonest, she said, and lazy. You were too short and too pale, and your ankles were too thick. She warned me that if I chose Odysseus of Ithaca, I was sure to end my days frustrated and alone. I ought to have suspected what she was up to, but she needled me all night. ‘You want someone strong and simple and wealthy,’ she said. ‘Menelaos is the man for you. His wealth will not distract him, and his power will not corrupt him.’

  “So that was the man I chose. Three days later, Penelope was on her knees before my father, begging him to arrange a marriage with—of all people—Odysseus, the Ithacan.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Penelope,” I gasped.

  “Penelope indeed,” said Helen.

  “That scheming fox.”

  “Scheming fox indeed. I got stuck with that limp-willed cattle thief. I never spoke to my sister again, and I vowed that the first chance I got, I would run from that clod and never look back—which I did. I might have been happy in Troy if you all hadn’t come tramping over with your swords in your teeth to drag me back again. That wife of yours ruined my life.”

  “That wily, sneaky, double-dealing, scheming fox!” I said. I’d always assumed I was given Penelope as a sort of consolation prize—a thank-you gift from her father for helping straighten out the situation with Helen. “That scheming fox!” I said it once more in spite of myself. I couldn’t tell whether I should feel betrayed or pleased.