Sacred Bride

by Sacred Bride (retail) (epub)

  Love, every time. Tiresias was a murdering scheming, treacherous liar.

  I take a deep breath, then recite it all.

  ‘“The Lion lurks in his den, waiting for the Third Fruit. The Wolf crouches in his lair, slavering over his mate. When the Stallion rears, both shall bare teeth.

  ‘“The Sky caresses the Earth with light, planting dreams. The stones listen, the soil awakens, gazing at the blood-red dawn in new hope.

  ‘“Swift comes the storm, striking the forest. Branches break, lightning sunders the trunks and they fall. Withered the vines that bound them, gone the leaves that caught the wind, scattered the branches, broken the Crown.

  ‘“Golden eggs of the cuckold, caged birds born to sing together. Possess the twain and rule. But beware the tongue of flame that consumes, burning all that it touches.”’

  She’s a trained sorceress and seer; I watch her pretty face frown in concentration as she commits it to memory. She’ll know the references better than I. When she’s got it, she chuckles drily. ‘All right, clever man… what were the questions?’

  ‘Those you have to earn,’ I tell her. We share a smile, and I reach out to stroke her breast, her hip and then cup her mound, and she shivers. ‘Gods, I’m still battered,’ she groans, but she has a twinkle in her eye, as she artfully rolls over and wriggles her behind into my groin. ‘This way?’ she suggests. ‘Be gentle,’ she adds, looking over her shoulder with a lascivious smile, ‘but not too gentle.’

  I press myself to her back, aroused once more.

  And that’s when her mule whinnies again. We freeze, straining to hear any sound over the steady drumming of rain on the ground outside. There’s a crack – a breaking branch, still some distance away. And then another, a little closer…

  * * *

  We curse, rising swiftly and hauling on our clothes. I heft my blade while she darts outside.

  What’s she doing? Is she planning to ride away and leave Damastor and me to our fate?

  I stop at the door, peering out into the gloom. The wind is strong, the rain still steady and the night sky pitch dark, but I can see three men weaving up the path through the forest, each bearing a fiery torch to light their way.

  Kyshanda is just outside the hut, standing beside her mule and clutching a bow and quiver. I sheath my xiphos, snatch the bow from her and string it, then reach for an arrow.

  ‘Please,’ she says, laying a hand on my arm. ‘It’s my brother. I didn’t think he could find me, but he’s been growing more skilled. Let me talk to him, before you shoot.’

  ‘Will he believe you, if you go to meet him and say no one’s here?’ I ask.

  She meets my eye. ‘No. But it’ll give you time…’

  Skaya-Mandu… there’s no reasoning with that prick anyway. And I have Damastor to worry about as well. I shake my head. ‘He’s going to kill me, and probably you too. He’ll guess immediately what we’ve been doing.’

  Her face fills with despair, because she knows I’m right. In his eyes, she’ll have just lowered herself to something worse than a whore. ‘I have to try,’ she says bravely.

  ‘No – it’s a waste of breath,’ I tell her. ‘And if it comes down to him or me, I know who I’m choosing.’

  I brush her hand away and snatch the quiver, nock an arrow and aim at the approaching torches, sighting along the shaft.

  ‘Can’t you just run?’ she pleads.

  I set my jaw. ‘I can’t abandon Damastor.’

  She clutches my shoulder, her face fervent. ‘Odysseus, there is a way out of this – without bloodshed. There’s another thing I was going to share with you: Mother supports the offer I once made you: Marry me.’

  This confirms what Tiresias has already told me. But in one essential way, the prophet was wrong. Or lied – it comes to the same thing. Now I’m certain Kyshanda’s offer comes from her love for me, not from any political calculation.

  ‘Come to Troy,’ she continues to plead, ‘take an oath to Father and Mother, and we can be as one. Just say yes, and Skaya can’t touch you. No one can. We will be together forever.’

  I can marry the woman I love? A princess of Troy?

  My mind reels. I’ve been longing for her, dreaming of her, but I’ve always known that she’s as far above me as the sun above the earth, that our one dalliance on Delos was a chance alignment of the stars, something that could never happen again. This night has been a miracle, lightning striking the same place twice.

  To marry her, and make such joy a permanent part of my life: it’s my dearest desire.

  But to bind myself to Troy is unthinkable. I would be swearing away my loyalty to Achaea, and therefore to Athena, to my family, to Ithaca – to everything and everyone I hold dear.

  But perhaps I could be Achaea’s agent in Troy… I could work for Achaea, to maintain peace and protect my people from their enemies…?

  ‘I… I…,’ I stammer, caught in utter indecision. Then I finally blurt, ‘I love you…’

  Her whole face and body lights up.

  ‘But I can’t marry you,’ I finish, in a wretched voice. ‘My people are Achaean, and I cannot betray them.’

  Her face collapses, but she doesn’t give up. ‘Odysseus, in our tales, Troy was an Achaean colony, in an earlier age. That’s why our gods are so aligned. We’re nearly the same…’

  ‘No – you’re of the east, we’re of the west.’

  ‘You’re wrong! Why must you see difference? This isn’t conquest my father purposes but reunification. Please, you and I can still fight for peace, but from the inside. Please my love!’ She drops to her knees in the mud. ‘Please.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I groan, and then my temper rises, because surely she knows this is impossible. I’ve got three men coming to kill me and she says this now? ‘Here’s my counter-offer: marry me, and become a princess of Ithaca.’

  Her lovely face twists in agony. ‘You know I can’t do that. It’s impossible. My parents would never consent. They’d send an army to bring me back.’

  ‘Let them come,’ I snarl, returning my attention to the oncoming men. ‘It’s no more impossible than trying to turn me into a Trojan.’ Then I say the most stupid thing I’ve ever said in my life. ‘If you truly loved me, you’d come back with me to Ithaca.’

  I hate myself, the moment the words are out there. And then fucking Skaya-Mandu gets close enough to call out, and all chance to deny my words is gone. ‘Sister!’ he shouts, from behind the leading soldier. ‘Is that you? Who are you with?’

  Kyshanda’s still kneeling, looking up at me with a look of betrayal on her face, mingled with indignation. ‘I do truly love you,’ she says in a hurt voice. ‘I love you, but I can’t go to Ithaca. It would be stupidity and it would bring the whole world down on us.’

  She’s right again, and that just makes me angrier – with life, with manipulative kings and gods, with greedy Hittites and conniving Trojans and most of all, right now, with my stupid self.

  And her damnable brother…

  I turn away from her, sight again and shoot: my arrow takes the first Trojan in the middle of the chest, and he slumps to the ground. I’m already aiming again, as the other two burst into motion. I glimpse Skaya’s narrow, snarling face and I fire…

  …but he’s a blasted theios, and he lunges sideways. Luckily for him: not so great for the man directly behind him though – he takes the arrow in the throat and collapses in a heap, his torch hissing and dying as it falls in a puddle.

  But Skaya-Mandu’s charging straight at us. He’s on me before I can nock another arrow and draw, his scimitar slashes down and all I can do is raise the bow, while Kyshanda screams at us to stop.

  The bow is cloven in two, but the blow has been absorbed. I toss the ruined weapon aside, lunge for my xiphos, barely grasping it before he batters me against the hut’s wall, almost breaking my arm. I see his sword flash and parry – just – and his next blow strikes my xiphos squarely, breaking my blade a hand’s length from the hilt. I’m t
hrown sideways, straight into Kyshanda as she’s coming to her feet, shrieking at us to stop.

  Skaya-Mandu aims another blow, which I’ve no chance of blocking or evading.

  I do the only thing possible, and seal my fate. Our fate.

  I throw my left arm around Kyshanda’s shoulder and twist her round in front of me, placing the broken blade against her throat and shouting, ‘Stop, or your sister dies.’

  Kyshanda screams, ‘No, don’t—’ and I jam my forearm into her mouth to silence her. I don’t want her to betray what we’ve done. I want her blameless in his eyes, if the worst comes to the worst.

  But Skaya-Mandu’s spits derisively. ‘You’re not going to kill that slut,’ he jeers. ‘You’re too much in love for that.’ He scowls at his twin, his voice turning to venom, an outpouring of what to me sounds like jealous rage. ‘You think you’re the only one, Ithacan? She fucks a different man every night at home, like a common whore. She rents herself out to brothels, and couples with dogs in the alley.’ He jams his torch into a gap in the hut’s walls and raises his blade. ‘You’re not going to kill her, you swine. But I’m going to kill you.’

  4 – Mercy

  ‘I’ve got some nasty plans for him: hit him with both fists, knock every tooth out of his jaw onto the ground like a pig that’s been rooting up the crops…’

  —Homer, The Odyssey

  Epirus

  He’s absolutely right – I can’t kill Kyshanda and I never intended to. As he hurls himself at me, I fling her aside, hating myself for manhandling her but an instant later his blade slashes through the space she occupied – and slams into my broken blade, smashing the rest of it and leaving me weaponless. Instead of trying to dart from reach, I do the opposite: stepping in, grabbing at his sword-arm and slamming my forehead into his face.

  It would have worked better if he wasn’t wearing a bronze and leather helm with a nose-guard. I gash my brow on the guard, but his head rocks back and I slam a fist down onto his wrist, and jolt the scimitar loose. As it drops into the mud, I batter my knee at his groin while trying to hook my other arm around his, and wrench.

  Had the ground been dry, I’d have had him pinned – but my standing foot slips in a puddle and gives way. Instead of him crashing to the ground beneath me, we both flail for balance, and he’s able to backhand me away, while his left hand grasps his curved dagger, unsheathing it in a flash and sweeping it toward my throat.

  ‘Stop!’ Kyshanda shrieks, her voice snatched away by the wind and rain. But I can’t take my eyes off Skaya’s blade, as he darts at me and slashes with vicious speed. I’m forced to give ground, almost tripping on the abandoned arrow quiver, dropping to a crouch and hurling my now useless sword hilt at his face, while grabbing a handful of arrows and blocking the knife blow, trying to close on him again.

  He’s good, damn him – he pirouettes away, flashing a blow at me that I have to contort to avoid, only to realise he’s switched dagger-hand. The weapon slices across my chest and I reel back. He snarls triumphantly as lightning cracks overhead and Kyshanda wails, grabbing at her brother’s shoulder just as he aims another blow.

  ‘No, Skaya!’ she screams.

  That she still wants to protect me is heartbreaking.

  But Skaya-Mandu batters a forearm across his twin sister’s chest and knocks her back into the mud, barely losing an instant. But that tiny respite gives me a chance to regain composure, though my chest is gashed and my tunic splattered with blood. I’ve got to get that dagger off him, and fast. He’s taller than me, and he’s a theios of the Hittite war-god Ishtar, and armoured in leather and bronze. So mere fists aren’t going to hurt him.

  He attacks again in a blur of slashing metal, and I must give ground. I duck round a thorny bush and leap onto a handy boulder, switching half the arrows to my left hand while leaving the rest in my right, stabbing at his face as he comes into reach, forcing him to pause. Not for long – he comes on again as I retreat, drawing back my right arm and hurling a cluster of arrows at his face. Most fly wide, but one rakes his pretty face and he yells in fury. He recovers quickly, leaping at me, as I push my foot into another load of mud, slither and drop my guard.

  Deliberately.

  His dagger rips at my throat, but instead of trying to duck away I throw myself into him, my left arm coming up under his blade hand and striking the wrist while my right fist drives into his face, smashing into his cheek and almost lifting him off his feet. He staggers and I spin and slam the rest of my arrows into his right forearm, hard enough that his hand splays and the dagger spins away.

  He strikes back, slamming a fist into my jaw, and we both reel. But I’m more solidly built, and can take a blow. I go for him, striking with my fists, elbows, forearms and feet, and then hammer into his torso and we both crash around in the morass of mud we’ve churned up, fighting with all our bodies.

  In Achaea, we have a sport we call the pankration: it’s a form of unarmed combat in which almost anything goes. In Troy, they just fence, box and maybe wrestle. So though he’s taller than me, it’s now a handicap for him – being low-built and compact, I have more leverage, and I hit him like a runaway chariot, mauling him with fists and kicks and headbutts, careless of my own body as I seek to break his. He panics, flails at me and I duck beneath, lunge in like an eel, grip his helm and rip his head aside, then slam him face down into the mud and bludgeon his pretty nose into the ground.

  His next breath is full of water and mud. He thrashes and tries to throw me off, but I wrap my arm round his throat and slam my knees into the small of his back. Bronze and leather aren’t enough to stop me knocking the breath out of him and I do it again, and yet again, while I hammer his face into the ground until he goes limp.

  ‘Nooo!’ Kyshanda howls, grabbing at me. ‘No!!! He’s my brother, my twin!’ Her mud-splattered face is a tortured mask, her big eyes pleading. ‘Please, Odysseus!’

  Absurd as her concern for him seems, after he called her a whore not so many moments ago, it’s enough to make me pause. I relax my grip, but even as she thinks me done, I haul up his head and smash my fist into his jaw once more, hopefully breaking it, and knocking whatever shreds of consciousness he has left into tomorrow. That done, I haul him onto his side as she claws at me, still shouting at me to stop.

  He doesn’t look nearly as pretty as he did. I roll him back on his face and stand.

  ‘I have stopped,’ I pant. ‘I just needed to make sure he was out cold.’ I grab her flailing arms and pull her to me, pinning her arms to her sides. ‘Shh, I’m done, I’m done. I won’t kill him, I promise.’

  I see anger, relief, terror and betrayal on her face. She’s bedraggled, her dress is soaked in mud and half-torn, and she’s gasping for air and shaking like a leaf. Skaya’s as motionless as his two dead guards. The rain is easing a little, thankfully, but I’m utterly soaked, the blood from my chest wound mingling with the water and running down my leg greaves in red streaks.

  ‘He wasn’t going to stop,’ I tell her. ‘Did he hurt you? Let me look—’

  Her head quivers in denial, or refusal. ‘Let me go,’ she sobs, but she doesn’t pull away, instead collapsing against me and bursting into tears. For a long time we just cling to each other.

  And then I hear a distant shout. Down on the forest path, a trail of lit torches gleam in the night.

  No, I groan. Give us this moment! Give me time to think!

  ‘It’s Parassi,’ she sobs, grabbing at me again. ‘He’s here with us. Don’t run! Stay! I swear to you, we have Mother’s blessing, and Parassi knows. He won’t let his men harm you, I swear. Skaya… he lost control. It won’t happen again.’

  I’m struck mute by the choice.

  By every god, I want her so much. The passion we share feels all-embracing. I love her mind, I adore her body, our souls share the same vision and the love we made just moments ago makes everything she does seem enchanted. Even soaked and bedraggled I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful. I don’t want a life wit
hout her.

  But I also know that to Queen Hekuba, I’m not Odysseus, the lover of her daughter – I’m the Man of Fire, the one person who in the oracles consistently comes up as a fly in the Trojan ointment. Hekuba doesn’t want me as a son, she wants me neutralised, and she’s prepared to use her daughter to enable that.

  I trust Kyshanda, but I don’t trust any other member of her family.

  And even if it’s a genuine offer, I don’t wish to enable the triumph of Troy over my people, however peaceful the process might turn out to be. The thought of seeing them crush Achaea sickens me. I try to imagine some arrogant Trojan prince like Skaya-Mandu installed over my father; or lording it in Mycenae or Sparta, and it fills me with loathing. And when I think about all my enemies among the servants of Zeus, Ares, Aphrodite and the rest, so smugly confident of their eventual triumph, I want to spit.

  I will not join them.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her, pushing her to arm’s length. ‘I love you, but I can’t accept.’

  ‘But, my love—’ She goes to protest, but she chokes it back, seeing something in my face that tells her not to try. Instead she hangs her head. ‘I can’t come to Ithaca. It would be madness.’

  The torchlight is coming closer. ‘I know,’ I whisper hoarsely. ‘I’m sorry I insulted you by insisting. I can be a complete idiot sometimes.’

  Her big eyes melt my heart. I seize her face and we kiss – fiercely, longingly, imparting all that could have been into a one last stolen heartbeat of time. Then I tear myself away and run to the hut. Damastor is still lying motionless in the corner. I roll him up in his cloak and heave him into my arms. By the time I come out, Kyshanda, bless her, has untied her mule and is offering me the reins.

  ‘May your gods go with you,’ she murmurs.

  Beyond the encircling mountains, the first hint of dawn is stirring as I ease Damastor over the beast’s neck, before donning my own cloak and clambering up behind him. There’s a faint trace of another track at the far end of the clearing and I urge the animal towards it. With luck it will take us up into the hills. The rain is easing and there’s just enough light to help me see my way.