‘She’d be getting on by now, wouldn’t she?’ Laas asks. ‘That old Calydonian Boar Hunt was decades ago.’
Bria smiles grimly. ‘She’s a tough old bird, and she could still outrun you fat-arses; and plug you in the back before you knew she was there.’
‘Go on, then,’ Philapor says; the first words he’s said for days that aren’t prayers. ‘Tell us the tale.’
I guess he wants to know what to pray about.
‘I’ll tell it,’ I put in. ‘My father, Laertes, was there and I’ve heard it many times.’ Some of them might suspect that Laertes isn’t my father, but they all listen in. ‘It was almost thirty years ago, before my father became King of Ithaca. Back then, princes often journeyed about; it was before that bloody feud between the Houses of Atreus and Thyestes, and travel between kingdoms was easier. So when the Boar appeared, men banded together.’
‘What was so special about this boar?’ Ceraus asks sceptically. ‘I’ve killed a few in my time, and they’re nothing a good man can’t handle on his own, if he knows what he’s doing.’
‘Not this one,’ I respond. ‘It was huge. Father says it was thrice the normal size, barely natural.’
‘It wasn’t natural at all,’ Telmius puts in. ‘It came from this realm. My father Hermes hand-reared it, but Artemis stole into this place and fed it something to drive it mad. Petty revenge for some slight, it was. She led it to a gateway out of Hermes’s realm, somewhere up in Aetolia, and unleashed it into your world.’
‘It destroyed a series of farmsteads, but it would vanish before the hunters arrived,’ I tell them, taking up the narrative again. ‘Once it became apparent this was no ordinary beast, the local king, Oeneus—’
‘My grandfather,’ Diomedes interrupts.
‘—who was also on Artemis’s shit-list, assembled a hunting party of thirty, mostly his kin; though for years after, I’ve heard men claim to have been there, some of whom weren’t even born. Twenty-nine men – and one woman, Atalanta—’
‘But isn’t she a champion of Artemis?’ Laas asks. ‘I’ve always wondered why she would hunt the very creature her mistress loosed.’
‘A few reasons,’ Bria puts in. ‘Artemis knew she was pissing everyone off, so she wanted one of her own to clean things up, once her point was made. And she wanted to tweak the noses of those that said that a woman couldn’t compete in a man’s world. She knew Atalanta’s presence would cause arguments, and so it did.’
‘It certainly did,’ I say loudly, piqued that others keep jumping into my tale. ‘Some refused to hunt with her; others stole the hide once it was killed. She’d wounded the boar first, and by rights it had been awarded to her. Fighting broke out and many of Oeneus’s kin were maimed or killed. The hunters caused more harm to each other than the boar ever did.’
‘What happened to Atalanta?’ Agrius asks.
‘Well—’
‘She married Hippomenes, a prince of Arcadia,’ Diomedes interjects. ‘I remember my father telling me this! She’s actually kin of mine! She and Hippomenes bore Parthenopaios, my great uncle.’
‘I’m sure if you explain that to her, she won’t shoot you,’ I say acidly. Trying to tell this lot a tale is like trying to get the dawn chorus to shut up and listen to you sing.
‘She boasted that she’d never marry a man that couldn’t outrun her,’ Diomedes goes on excitedly. ‘But Hippomenes tricked her into picking up golden apples during the race, so he could win.’
‘Aphrodite supplied the apples,’ Bria adds. ‘She wanted Atalanta porked, so that she’d lose some of her power as a virgin of Artemis. The whole running race thing was to prove that Artemis women were better than men, but the Clamshell can’t stand virgins. Atalanta was never as strong after that, but she’s still formidable.’ She looks at me meaningfully. ‘She’s a shapechanger, she and Hippomenes both. They can turn themselves into lions.’
The four Mycenaeans – sheltered fellows that they are – scoff in disbelief, but I’m remembering the shape-changer at Pytho who almost killed me, two years ago. ‘Thanks for the warning,’ I tell her. ‘But remind me never to try and tell a story to you lot again. Couldn’t get a bloody word in edgewise. Shall we go?’
Telmius takes us across the ford to the little eyot, and sure enough there’s a ring of stones there, similar to the ones on the tor. The ritual to open the gate is much the same as the previous one – as before, we don’t actually step through anything; instead the world is transformed around us. Immediately the cold hits us. It’s a frigid night, and after the balmy conditions in Hermes’s realm, that’s a shock.
We wade to the bank on the far side through the now-icy water, the river already swollen by the start of the spring melt; it’s waist deep and about forty yards across, all told. Once over, we dry off, wrap ourselves in our cloaks, and set off. The night is clear and the moon is almost full. We’re seven miles from Pisa, and the festival of Ploistos is tomorrow.
9 – The Rites of Ploistos
‘If all the best of us were gathered together … for an ambush, it’s then that men’s bravery would be shown up most clearly; the cowardly man and the brave man revealed. For the coward’s skin changes, now to one colour, now another; he can’t sit quietly without trembling, or control his feelings; he shifts his weight from leg to leg, from one foot to the other; his heart hammers mightily against his ribs as he forecasts his doom, and his teeth start to chatter.
But the brave man’s skin doesn’t change colour, nor is he greatly frightened, from the first moment he takes his place in the ambush, whenever that might be, but prays to join in the grim business of fighting as soon as possible.’
—Homer, The Iliad
Pisa, Western Peloponnese
The faint glow in the sky behind us announces the oncoming dawn, silhouetting the jagged heights of the mountains. We’re crouching in a dense cluster of oleanders, not far from the edge of Artemis’s sacred grove. I breathe slowly and deeply, preparing myself mentally for the deed we must do. If it all goes to plan, we’ll get away clean, and lure Tantalus straight into Agamemnon’s force, with surprise on our side.
But what if it doesn’t go to plan? What if Amolus hasn’t brought Agamemnon’s force through Hermes’s realm safely? What if we’re hotly pursued, and they’re not in position by the time we reach the foothills? We’ll be trapped between the mountains and a vengeful Tantalus – just as the Argonauts were caught between Scylla and Charybdis.
Bria, myself, Diomedes, Laas, and the two brothers are going right in to the clearing at the heart of the grove, half a mile away; the other two Mycenaeans will stand by, just outside the grove, ready to back us up the moment we break from cover. Agrius’s ribs are still giving him trouble, but Bria has applied some herbs she collected while we were still in Hermes’s realm that have eased his pain and hastened the healing process somewhat, so he’ll still be handy enough in a fight.
Telmius has already left us, to find Amolus and help guide Agamemnon to the agreed ambush site, a place not far upstream from the main ford and the eyot of Hermes’s gate, where cliffs bound both sides the River Alpheios.
I sidle up to Bria. ‘Are you ready?’ I ask.
‘I’m always ready, Ithaca,’ she drawls. She runs a sharp eye round the group, assessing us, then leans in. ‘Diomedes will seize Clytemnestra, not that she’ll need much seizing. She’ll be pretty desperate to be rescued from that evil bastard Tantalus. I’ll grab her child, and you cover us with your bow, your eyesight being in a damn sight better state than Dio’s, right now. Ceraus and Pseras close in as soon as we have them, and guard our retreat.’
I’m brought up short – I’ve truly not thought too closely about the baby, an heir of Tantalus but an innocent barely birthed. I’d assumed we’d just leave it behind.
‘Why do we have to take the child?’ I ask her.
It’s a brutal fact of life that when a king is overthrown, their male children are often murdered with them. The bloodiest tales of Achaea ar
e revenge stories, intergenerational feuds that bring kingdoms to their knees, producing the fractured Achaea of today. But surely a newborn deserves a life.
She reads me easily. ‘Don’t go soft, Ithaca. If we kill Tantalus, then it’s up to Agamemnon to decide. If we don’t, then we’re going to be neck-deep in kopros, and the baby’s a hostage, a bargaining point.’
I don’t like what she’s saying, but she’s right. Agamemnon is somewhat unproven, still on the young side, but he’s not merciful; this may well be the last act in the bloody feud between his father Atreus and Thyestes, and he’ll have the whole weight of its history on his shoulders.
If he lets the baby live, the boy could well grow up to take his revenge in turn on Agamemnon and whatever offspring he might produce. But there are other ways to break this whole ghastly cycle. ‘I will plead the child’s case before the High King,’ I tell her. ‘He can always be anonymously adopted. It’s a time-honoured solution to such matters.’
She shrugs. ‘On your head. Look what happened with Oedipus.’ She turns to the others. ‘Come on, it’s time.’
Pseras and Ceraus ready their bows, I string the Great Bow and loop it over my shoulder beside a quiver of arrows. Those of us going in for the ambush loosen our blades in their sheaths, making sure all metal is covered. Diomedes blinks in the dim light, insisting his vision is much improved, despite his swollen, blackened eye.
Philapor begins another prayer and I shush him. ‘Is this grove akin to Hermes’s realm?’ he asks, indignant.
‘It’s in our world,’ Bria tells him. ‘But I’d still my lips if I were you; sound carries further at dawn. There’ll be watchers in the wood, and we can’t afford to raise the alarm on the way in. Atalanta will be on full alert, and she can smell blood a mile off. And when we run, we don’t wait for anyone.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Agrius growls.
‘Because I’ve been here before, obviously,’ Bria tells him. ‘I got myself in and out again just fine, but that time I didn’t have a bunch of clodhopping men slowing me down. Now shut up and follow.’
Those encouraging words delivered, she leads us towards the grove via an overgrown gully, before ghosting through clumps of wild olives and a field of tangled vines that take us into the shelter of a steep ridge. Beyond this, she’s informed us, lies the wood, with the sacred grove deep inside. She stops us with a raised hand and a finger over her lips, as though we weren’t being as silent as possible already. Away to our right, a slender figure is half-silhouetted against the skyline – a huntress of Artemis.
‘New girl,’ Bria breathes. ‘Careless.’
She leads us forward, slithering on hands and knees and sometimes even on our bellies through low scrub, past the place the sentry overlooks. Bria presses her mouth to my ear ‘Note her position,’ she whispers. ‘On the way out, she’s going to be putting arrows in our backs.’
I pat the Great Bow. ‘I can shoot too.’
‘Don’t get cocky – you’re no Artemis,’ she tells me.
We’re about to negotiate the short distance left between us and the grove when a strange coughing sound reaches our ears, borne by a light breeze from the west. In the growing light I glimpse movement – something large, prowling across our path. As it moves between two trees, it pauses and turns its head towards us, eyes glinting. A lioness… My skin pricks.
‘It’s her, Atalanta,’ Bria breathes in my ear.
The boar-tusk scars on my thigh begin to itch.
I’m convinced she’s going to come our way, and I stealthily remove the Great Bow from my shoulder. But we’re downwind of her; she can’t smell us. Eventually, she pads away to our right, and we all breathe again.
‘Could just be a wild lioness,’ Philapor says hopefully. He certainly picks his moments to be an optimist.
Once we’re sure she’s gone, we creep through the remaining scrub and move silently into the grove itself, where the scent of cat is heavy in the air. From here, according to Bria’s description, the trees must stretch roughly a mile to the far edge, with the sacred clearing more or less in the middle. We’re only a few yards in when we hear horses whinnying, somewhere off to our left. Bria gestures to us excitedly and we gather around her.
‘Change of plan,’ she whispers. ‘The important women must have come by chariot from Pisa – why bother using your legs when you’ve got wheels? They’ll have left them at the start of the main path into the grove. Those horses will come in very handy if we’ve a lioness at our heels, assuming we can get our hands on them. Agrius, Philanor, you work your way over to where they’re tethered. Kill the attendants and ready the horses for riding, but don’t make an almighty racket doing it. We’ll bring Nestra to you.’
The sky has lightened perceptibly as we set off again, making it easier to avoid treading on fallen branches, but increasing the risk of being seen. The trees are mostly deciduous, and starkly bare, with only the merest smudge of pale green, here and there, to show that spring is beckoning. Their leaves are soft and rotting on the ground, deadening our footfalls as we glide from tree trunk to sheltering tree truck. The ground is undulating, rather than flat, but that’s a blessing – the contours will give us more cover. The sun will be up soon, and I’m beginning to fear we’ve left our approach too late, when I hear a distant female voice, singing.
‘Not far now,’ Bria murmurs, leading us toward the sound. Then she crouches, and we all follow suit, as a thickset woman appears a little way off, stalking left to right, an arrow already nocked and the string half-drawn. ‘Wait, she’ll be gone in a moment.’
She’s right – the sentries are maintaining a mobile perimeter, and the woman soon disappears into the trees again. Presumably there’ll be another along shortly – as we get closer, the security is tightening. But though the women seem alert, I get the impression they’re going through the motions – Bria says that no one has dared disturb the rites here in decades. We should have surprise on our side.
The sound of the singing swells. ‘That’s the nobs arriving,’ Bria murmurs. ‘They’ll all be just over this next rise, in the dell below, a few dozen women, that’s all. They’re all just pampered upper-class types – it’s the huntresses in the woods we need to watch.’
The next sentry stalks past, but this one’s slack, her gaze turned inwards to the dell, and she’s even murmuring the song. She passes from sight, as the sunlight brightens – it must have just cleared the mountains behind us, and the voices rise.
‘Now,’ Bria whispers, and the six of us glide forward up the rise and drop to the ground, overlooking the dell.
Below us, at the bottom of a shrub-covered slope, a circular stand of cypress trees have been planted, their trunks towering high. Among them, gathered in front of a stone altar, stand roughly forty women, clad in white; most of them holding young babies. I can see individual faces, and easily pick out the queen – she’s in the middle, garlanded with winter roses and wearing a gold circlet and neck chain.
Clytemnestra is not the unearthly beauty that her half-sister Helen is. She’s older, dark-haired like her father Tyndareus, with no divine theioi blood. During my years in Lacedaemon, I knew her as a quiet, stubborn girl, lacking Helen’s dazzling charm. She has a fleshy face and a stocky body which is still carrying the weight of her recent pregnancy. If she was just a villager, no one would notice her. But her face is radiant as she looks down at the babe in her arms. Whatever she feels about the man who abducted and raped her, she loves the child, and that endears her to me, even as I ready an arrow and prepare for chaos.
Ceraus and Pseras remain on guard, while Bria, Diomedes, Laas and I advance down the slope, weaving through the shrubs. Diomedes and Bria take the front; I follow, my bow string drawn, sweeping the bow around, seeking a target, with Laas covering my back.
It takes a few breaths before anyone notices us, and when they do, there’s a moment when Bria’s presence and my bow makes them think we’re part of the security. The women hush and murmur
, there’s alarm at the presence of men but not outright fear.
Then Laas slams a fist into the face of an archer woman who comes to meet us with a puzzled look on her face. Bria hammers a priestess in the belly and she folds to the ground, and the remaining women emit frightened gasps.
Diomedes thrusts his way through the women, right up to Queen Clytemnestra who’s standing in front of the altar, open mouthed and wide-eyed, clutching her baby. ‘Who…? What…?’ she stammers, eyes widening further.
Diomedes has been indoctrinated to think exactly like a hero of legend, so he drops to one knee before her, arms outstretched. ‘Princess Clytemnestra!’ he announces. Clearly he’s decided that her marriage to Tantalus doesn’t count. ‘Odysseus of Ithaca has led us here to rescue you!’
The women gasp then fall silent, staring intently as Bria and I arrive behind him. Babies wail, and from the woods around us I hear a horn blare in alarm.
Clytemnestra gapes at the kneeling Argive, then opens her mouth and screams her lungs out.
Oh fuck, I think. Maybe she doesn’t want to be rescued at all…
* * *
I’m shocked, but Diomedes is utterly stunned. Noble soul that he is, he has no idea what’s really happening, and lets the ashen-faced queen back away. There’s a shout from the rise above us – Ceraus, his voice urgent. ‘They’re coming!’ he yells.
Bria reacts. ‘Move, you kopros-headed oaf!’ she shouts at the kneeling Diomedes, steps forward and snatches the baby from the queen’s arms. As Clytemnestra recoils in horror, Bria lands a roundhouse punch on her jaw with her left fist, and she goes down like a sack of beets. Laas shoulder-charges a woman who tries to aid the queen, then hammers her head with his sword hilt when she doesn’t heed him.
My brain catches up. ‘Grab Nestra!’ I roar at Diomedes, who’s still gaping. ‘Now!’
Sacred Bride Page 13
