The Eighth Arrow

by J. Augustine Wetta

  “Ajax killed himself when you beat him!”

  “That was a matter of honor. It was Achilles’ armor, after all.”

  He grunted. “So I guess some things are that valuable after all.”

  “To the crows with you,” I snapped. Lately, it seemed he was contradicting everything I said. “It wasn’t about the armor, it was about the honor.”

  “Honor, eh? Just like you honored your wife?”

  I turned to him with my hand on my sword. “Mention my wife again in that tone, and I’ll cut your tongue out.”

  “Threaten me again,” he answered, stepping closer, “and I’ll cut off more than your tongue.”

  “Boys! Boys!” said Helen. “Stop this nonsense. We have places to go. Come now.” She took Diomedes by the hand and led him up the path.

  I took a deep, trembling breath and followed them. Worse than the insult to my honor, worse than seeing Diomedes walk hand in hand with Helen of Argos, worse even than being bullied by my best friend was the dawning suspicion that he could be right about me. And the more I thought about it, the more I had to agree with him, which rather undercut my anger. I’d never really understood what people meant when they used the word “honor”. At some point early in my life, I had come to the conclusion that it could be measured in wealth; so I did everything I could to acquire it.

  But what good had Achilles’ armor done me in the end? I’d lost a friend over it. Dear Ajax wanted it so much, he’d killed himself for grief when I took it away. And did I use it even once? No, it was too large for me to wear, so I stuck it in a storeroom, where it sat rusting till the day I died. Sat rusting. Now I looked down on all those souls struggling against the weight of their stones and felt . . . well . . . a kinship with them.

  “I suppose you’re right,” I answered ruefully. “There is much about my life that I regret.”

  Diomedes groaned, “There you go again. When did you start having regrets?”

  “In Limbo, I think. When I realized what I’d done to Penelope.”

  “Give it up, Odysseus. Self-pity doesn’t suit you.”

  “It’s not self-pity, Diomedes. It’s regret. But since you’ve brought up Achilles’ armor, I think I am sorry I fought Ajax for it.”

  “Why?” asked Helen.

  “Because I didn’t really need that armor, did I?”

  “Food and sleep are the only things a man will ever need,” said Diomedes, “and he won’t need much of either.”

  “That’s exactly it,” I said. “Ever since I talked to that old bard, I’ve been asking myself if all the horrible things I did in my life were really necessary. Did I need Achilles’ armor? Or King Rhesus’ horses? Or the Palladium or the Cicones’ gold or the Cyclops’ sheep?”

  Helen shook her head. “Like you said, it was never about the things themselves. It was about the honor they brought us.”

  “Honor. Glory. Timē. Kleos. Call it what you like. In the end, I can’t see how we’re much different from those fools in the pit. We never stopped to question whether we needed all the things we took, and we never let anything stop us from taking them.”

  “Now you’re exaggerating,” said Diomedes.

  “Am I, though? When we saw something we liked, we stole it. When we fancied a woman, we took her. When we saw a man we didn’t like, we killed him. And I don’t recall ever turning down a meal or a cup of wine my whole life.”

  “Well now,” said Helen, “that’s just being alive, Odysseus.”

  “But don’t you think we let ourselves be ruled by our passions?”

  Helen fell silent then, but Diomedes spoke up. “Speak for yourself. I was always in control.”

  “I see. You just never chose to restrain yourself. Well, it seems to me that we might not be where we are today if we’d shown a little moderation.”

  Helen sniffed. “We were heroes. We had big lives to live.”

  “Listen. When I arrived back in Ithaca after twenty years away and found those suitors in my home . . . you don’t think my reaction was just a little excessive?”

  Diomedes stopped and turned to face me. “Those men had it coming. They mistreated you in your own home. They were courting your wife. Any man would have done the same.”

  “And the twelve maidservants I hanged?”

  “They were sleeping with your enemies.”

  “So I had them executed. And you don’t think that was excessive.”

  “Not excessive, heroic. It was what was expected of you. Remember, we were lords of Achaea, Odysseus. Heroes.”

  “But the maidservants, Diomedes! How blameworthy could they have been?”

  Helen nodded thoughtfully, but Diomedes continued, “The household needed to be purified. They were unfaithful to their master.”

  “They were slaves. Women,” said Helen.

  “I hanged all twelve of them,” I continued. “Even out in Apulia, you must have heard the story. All twelve of them. Strung up like doves on a snare. Some of them were just girls.”

  “They had it coming,” said Diomedes.

  “And the goatherd?” I added. “Was he more guilty than the others?”

  Diomedes shrugged. “I don’t know why I’m defending you all of a sudden, but yes. If the stories they told about that goatherd were true, then yes. He was one of your household. He should have known better than to join with those thieves.” He gave his shield a thump for emphasis, but the words fell flat. I wondered if he was really defending me or if perhaps he was thinking of some of his own “heroic” deeds.

  “Diomedes,” I said, “I cut off his nose and ears.”

  Helen winced. “To be fair, was it not your son who did that?”

  “Oh, now we’re talking about what’s fair, then? Telemachos did it under my supervision—at my insistence. Lopped off the slave’s nose and ears, his hands, his feet, his genitals . . . and I praised him for it. How long do you think it took that man to die out in the yard behind my house?”

  “Fine, then,” conceded Diomedes. “It was excessive. But it was also heroic. Your name—your reputation as a hero—was at stake.”

  “Reputation,” I gasped. “Kleos. Who wants a reputation for that? It wasn’t heroic, it was monstrous. And you were no better. None of us was—you, me, Ajax, Achilles, Agamemnon . . . We ate, drank, fought, and rutted the ground like animals. Our lives were an endless string of excess. We glutted ourselves on blood and glory. The only thing separating us from those miserable souls in that pit there is the goodwill of the gods.”

  Diomedes growled and rapped his knuckles against the rim of his shield. “I’ve heard enough,” he said. “I’ve given up too much already. Now you want me to give up my honor?”

  “If those acts define your honor, then yes, I think so.”

  “Then what’s left?” said Helen.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Some other kind of honor, maybe. Something you can’t measure in gold.”

  That shut them both up, which made me feel rather good at first. But then the absurdity of what I was saying struck me. If you couldn’t measure honor, then what was the point of it? I was reminded of poor Cassandra, the prophetess of Troy whose curse it was to predict a future that no one would believe. Was this to be my punishment, then—to be cursed with an honor that no one could see?

  CHAPTER 19

  A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

  WE WALKED ON for some time without speaking until we arrived at the far side of the pit. But the light grew dim here, and the path, once wide and smooth, now became narrow and steep. It was given to sudden dips and turns, and for fear of stepping off the edge, I had started tapping the ground in front of me with my sword. We were able to keep up a slow march until, following the trail around another sharp curve in the cavern wall, we met with a familiar—though unexpected—sound: against the distant crack and thud of crashing boulders, I could make out a gentle patter like rain; and sure enough, just ahead . . . the dull glitter of a spring trickling from the cavern wall. It formed a
little stream, which ran along the side of the path opposite the pit on our right.

  The sight of it lifted my spirits, and suddenly I became aware of how terribly thirsty I’d become. I ran up to the stream and dropped my shield, knelt down and plunged both arms in to the elbows. The disappointment was so deep, I actually started to cry.

  “What now?” said Diomedes, standing over me.

  “This cursed place!” I said, shaking my head. And the words themselves seemed to release the full weight of my despair. I slumped over my shield and wept outright.

  “Spare me the self-pity!” Diomedes groaned. “It’s water, isn’t it? Be grateful for that at least.”

  In answer, I lifted my cupped hands from the stream and let the liquid trickle to the ground at our feet. It was black and slimy and gave off an acrid stench. Diomedes put his own hands in the water, then cursed and punched the rim of his shield.

  Helen crouched beside me and stroked my hair. I rested my head on her shoulder.

  “Enough,” Diomedes barked. “We’re in Hades, after all. What did you expect? We need to move on.”

  I lifted my head. It was too dark to see his face, but I hated that tone. “You . . . ,” I said, my voice like gravel on stone. “I blame you for this.”

  Diomedes took a step back. “You what?”

  “I blame you,” I said. Helen backed out from between us. “You always have to contradict me. You haven’t stopped since the moment we set foot in the Underworld.”

  “How does that make it all my fault?”

  “If you had listened to me from the start,” I said, “we’d have been out of here already.”

  “Out already?”

  “We could have opened that little gray door, but you had to have it your way.”

  “You’d rather have faced the three beasts, then?”

  “Ha.” I spit on the ground at his feet. “Three. If only there were three. I’d rather fight a dozen beasts than the myriad horrors we’ve already faced on this hopeless expedition.”

  “But Athena said—”

  “Athena! She told us herself that wasn’t her name. And how do you know it wasn’t she who sent us here in the first place? Athena! You think that was Athena, you sniveling dog? When did Athena ever expect us to grovel like slaves? You sicken me.”

  Helen shifted around behind Diomedes and put her hand on his shoulder. Again, it was the two of them against me.

  “I sicken you?” he said, lowering his voice and crouching so that we were face-to-face. “Your lies landed us here in the first place.”

  “Is that so?” I leaned forward so we were nose-to-nose. “You have followed me about like a schoolboy since you were old enough to walk. Tell me, then, Diomedes, when have you ever had an original idea? When have you ever made a suggestion worth following? All your life you did exactly as your father told you. You believed every pietistic priest and superstitious old washerwoman that ever set foot in Achaea. No wonder the elders loved you so. You believed every lie you were ever told. You, Diomedes, are a fool.”

  “And you, Odysseus, are a coward,” he whispered. “I wonder whom the men of Ithaca scorned more.”

  Helen stifled a laugh.

  That did it.

  I couldn’t see his face in the darkness, but I felt the pop of my fist on his jaw. And it was as though that blow released some dark magic. A thousand years of resentment came boiling up out of the darkness. Beside the black pool, we cracked and thumped one another with our fists, piling spite on spite. We were mad with rage and fear and bitterness and jealousy and despair. Diomedes sprang to his feet. I caught the glint of a drawn sword and pulled my own from its sheath, bringing it up and over my head in a defensive arc. His blade came down with a crash, and a flurry of sparks lit the rage in his eyes.

  Spinning to my right, I brought my sword up and under. But Diomedes knew my moves as well as I knew his. He brought his sword down firmly, lighting the darkness with another spray of transient flashes. The force of that blow knocked the blade from my hand, and as I bent over to pick it up, he kicked me onto my back. Then, clapping his own sword in both hands, he raised it over his head and brought it down against my chest. I had just enough time to pull my shield up, and through another shower of sparks, I watched the point grind across its shell and into the rocks beside the pool.

  I can’t say for certain whether his action in fact set off the chain of events that led to our narrow escape, but the consequent explosion of light was so sudden I had little time to reflect on cause and effect. One moment I was cowering beneath Diomedes beside a foul black pool, the next moment I was on my face before a towering column of yellow flame.

  CHAPTER 20

  A RACE

  IT TOOK ME a second or two to come to terms with what had happened. Here was this sudden column of fire. Here was I, scorched and stunned. Here was Diomedes, running in circles with both hands on fire.

  With both hands on fire! It had to register twice before it shook me out of my delirium. I jumped up and knocked him to the ground, smothering him with handfuls of mud to stop the blaze. When I had finally extinguished it, the two of us just sat in silence, gazing at the great flame, our rage forgotten.

  “I can’t feel my hands,” groaned Diomedes.

  “Do not be silly!” said Helen. “Your hands are covered in mud. You would feel it all right if you were hurt.”

  “Imagine that!” said Diomedes as he scraped off the mud. “A fire that doesn’t burn!”

  “It burns,” I answered, feeling my forehead where my eyebrows had been. “It just didn’t burn your hands for some reason.”

  The cavern was now so brightly lit by the enormous fire we had unwittingly set, one might have thought the sun had arisen on Hell. “Well, this does not solve our water problem,” said Helen, watching the flames leap into banks of black cloud, “but it does save us having to walk in the dark.”

  Together we surveyed our surroundings. The cavern was so bright, one might have mistaken it for daylight if the shadows hadn’t pointed in the wrong direction. Even from where we stood, the heat was oppressive.

  “This isn’t over,” said Diomedes as he slid his sword back into its sheath.

  “No, it isn’t,” I answered. I stood up to look him in the eye. “But now that we have light, I suggest we use it.”

  “You suggest,” he said. All the muscles in his face seemed to be stretched taught.

  Helen took him by the arm. “Let us walk while we have the light.”

  Gradually, the creek widened and the ground began to slope more sharply, turning the gurgling brook into a swift stream. Ahead, we could hear the sound of a waterfall and in time came upon it as we rounded the last turn in our path. There the earth gave way to a cliff, and the river went screaming over the edge in a stinking, black cataract of filth.

  “I have an idea—” said Diomedes, unstrapping his shield.

  I stopped him midsentence. “How about we just use the path?”

  Diomedes, however, had not heard me. Instead he was staring, slack jawed and wide-eyed, over my shoulder. Helen followed his gaze and gasped.

  “Oh no,” I said, registering the mounting horror in their eyes. “Please tell me I’m not about to be swallowed in a tornado or beaten to death by a demon. I just don’t have the strength.”

  “No, Odysseus,” Helen answered slowly, still staring over my shoulder, “but just the same, you’d better have a look.”

  With enormous reluctance, I did. At first, however, I could not see what was bothering them. I was expecting some fleshless ghost to leer at me out of the darkness, or a winged dragon to descend from the clouds, but just as I was about to admonish Helen and Diomedes for their overactive imaginations, I saw it. In the distance, meandering across rocks and boulders, down gullies, and through narrow ravines, the fire we had started back at the spring was following the course of the river. Like a great, shimmering serpent, it wound toward us through the gloom, casting a flickering glow up the walls of our infer
nal prison.

  I turned back to Diomedes. “I suppose we had better see where this waterfall ends. Let’s just hope it’s not somewhere important.”

  “Or flammable,” added Helen.

  This is Hades, I thought. Of course it ends somewhere flammable. But I kept it to myself as I peered over the cliff. To our left, a winding path led down to the next ring of Hell. To our right, the waterfall cascaded into a brown mountain of froth. All, however, was obscured by an inky mist.

  “Do you think we can reach the bottom before the fire does?” asked Diomedes. He cast a nervous glance over his shoulder.

  “Let’s hope so,” I answered, and we began our descent to the river Styx.

  As we made our way down the cliff face and away from the waterfall, the thunderous spit and plash began to give way to another sound even less pleasing to the ear: a dull cacophony of muffled curses. From time to time, when the trail widened enough to allow it, we would stop to rest. It was during one of these infrequent breaks that I was able to have my first glimpse of the river.

  Of course, I had learned something of it from our myths, but had never heard it described as I saw it now, stretching away into the distant vapors of Hell. From high above, it looked as though a wind were stirring its surface, but on closer inspection, I was able to see that the movement came from within. The inky swamp was stirred from below by thrashing arms and legs. The river was full of souls, and so violent were their anguished gestures that at first I thought they might be drowning. What I was witnessing, however, was something more along the lines of a vast undersea battle. In every direction, souls thrashed with their hands, feet, teeth, heads; thumping and screeching, each sought to bring more pain to his neighbor. Here and there an arm or head broke the surface, only to dive back under in pursuit of some unseen enemy. The water itself boiled with screams.

  “How can we expect to cross that?” sighed Helen, leaning over the edge at my side.

  “There ought to be a ferry,” I answered.

  “I hope it’s a fast one,” said Diomedes, inserting himself between us. “When that flaming river makes it to the fall, I don’t want to be anywhere close.”