Ben Bova - Orion and the Conqueror

Odysseus laughed scornfully. “You forget, coward, that I fought on the plain of Ilios against the likes of mighty Hector and his brothers. I scaled the beetling walls of Troy with my wooden horse and razed the city to ashes. Do you think I fear a bunch of lily-livered milksops who are afraid to face me, spear to spear?”

The voice answered, “We’ll see who’s the coward, soon enough.”

Odysseus’ lips pressed into a hard angry line. Then he took a deep breath and called, “Where is Neoptolemos, king of this mighty city?”

No answer.

“Does Neoptolemos still rule in his own city, or have you taken over his household the way you tried to take over mine?”

“I am here, Odysseus the Ever-Daring,” piped a weak, trembling voice.

A frail old man in a blue robe climbed shakily to a platform up above the main gate. Even from the ground before the gate I could see that King Neoptolemos was ancient, withered, wizened, more aged even than Nestor had been, his head bald except for a few wisps of hair, a white beard flowing down his frail narrow chest. His eyes were sunk so deep into their sockets that at this distance they looked like two tiny dark pits. He must have been nearly toothless, for the lower half of his face had sunk in on itself as well.

“Neoptolemos,” said Odysseus, “it is a sad day when we must face each other as enemies. Well I remember my youth, when you were like a wise uncle to me.”

“Well should you remember my son, the companion of your youth, whom you have slain in your bloody fury.”

“I regret his death, King of Epeiros. He was among the suitors who tried to steal my wife and my kingdom from me.”

“He was my son. Who will follow me when I die? His own son is only a child, hardly five years old.”

Craning his neck at the blue-robed figure atop the city gate, Odysseus said, “A blood feud between us can do neither of us any good.”

“Bring me back my son and there will be no need for a feud,” the old man replied bitterly.

“Ah,” said Odysseus, “that I cannot do. Even though I visited Hades himself during the long years of my journey home, he would not let me bring any of the departed back to the land of the living.”

“You saw Hades?”

“Neoptolemos, revered mentor of my youthful days, if you knew the sufferings and toils I have had to endure you might forgive me even the death of your son.”

I stood a few feet away from Odysseus, leaning on my knobbly makeshift spear, and watched him charm Neoptolemos into asking for a recitation of his arduous journey from Troy back to Ithaca.

The sun rose high while Odysseus spoke of the storms that wrecked his ships, of the enchantress Circe who turned his men into animals; of the cave of Polyphemos, one of the Cyclopes, and his cannibal orgies.

“I had to kill him or be killed myself,” Odysseus related. “His father, Poseidon, stirred up even mightier storms against me after that.”

“You know that a father feels hatred for a man who slays his son,” said Neoptolemos. But I thought his thin, quavering voice was less harsh than it had been earlier.

Well past noon Odysseus kept on talking, holding everyone along the wall enchanted with his hair-raising tales. Slaves circulated among us with bowls of dried meat and fruit, flagons of wine. Odysseus took some of the wine, but kept on talking, telling his enemies of the dangers he had risked, the women he had left behind, in his agonizing urgency to return to his home and his wife.

“When at last I saw blessed Ithaca again,” he said, his powerful voice sinking low, “my very own house was besieged by men who demanded the hand of my Penelope, and behaved as if they already owned my kingdom.”

“I can understand the blood-fury that must have seized you,” said Neoptolemos. “But that does not return my son to me.”

“King of Epeiros,” Odysseus replied, “a blood feud between us will bring down both our households. Your grandson and my son will never live long enough to father sons of their own.”

“Sadly true,” Neoptolemos agreed.

“And the same is true for all of you,” Odysseus said to the others along the wall. “You kinsmen of the men I have slain would slay me and my son. But then my kinsmen will be obliged to slay you. Where will it end?”

“The gods will decide that, Odysseus,” said the old king. “Our fates are not in our own hands.”

I was thinking that if Neoptolemos and his grandson are killed in this pointless blood feud, his line will end here in the Achaian age. There will be no descendants to father Olympias, many generations down the time stream. That is why I have been sent here, I realized. But what am I to do about it?

“Perhaps there is a way for us to learn the wishes of the gods in this matter,” Odysseus was saying.

“What do you mean?”

“A trial by combat. Single champions to face each other, spear against spear. Let the outcome of their battle decide the war between us.”

A murmur arose among the men on the wall. Neoptolemos turned to his right and then to his left. Some of the men up there gathered around him, muttering, gesturing.

“A trial by champions would be a good idea, King of Ithaca,” the old man finally replied. “But who could stand against such an experienced warrior as yourself? It would be an unequal fight.”

None of the dandies up there dared to face Odysseus in single combat.

Odysseus threw up his hands. “But I am the one you seek revenge against.”

Neoptolemos said, “No, no, Odysseus. As you yourself said, you faced mighty Hector and broke through the impenetrable walls of Troy. You have travelled the length and breadth of the world and even visited Hades in his underworld domain. Who among us would dare stand against you?”

Bowing his head in seeming acceptance, Odysseus asked, “Would you have me pick another to stand in my place?”

I saw Telemakos fairly twitching with eagerness, anxious to fight for his family’s honor and his own fame.

“Yes, another!” rose a shout among the men on the wall. “Pick another!”

Odysseus turned around as if casting about for someone to select. Telemakos took half a step forward but froze when his father frowned at him.

Turning back toward the gate, Odysseus called up to Neoptolemos, “Very well. We will let the gods truly decide. I will pick this ungainly oaf here.” He pointed toward me!

I heard snickers and outright laughter up on the wall. I must have looked like a country bumpkin in my leather vest and crude wooden spear. No wonder Odysseus had refused me better clothes and weapons. He had planned this ruse from the night before.

They swiftly agreed, and disappeared from the wall’s top while they selected their own champion.

“Orion,” said Odysseus to me, low and very serious. “You can save us all from a blood feud that will end my line and the old man’s as well.”

“I understand, my lord.”

He gripped my shoulder hard. “Don’t make it look too easy. I don’t want them to know that they’ve been hoodwinked.”

Telemakos, who had looked so disappointed a few moments earlier that I thought he would break into tears, was trying hard now to suppress a grin of elation.

At length the gates of the city opened and the men who had been lining the wall stepped out before us. Most of them wore bronze armor and kept a firm grip on their spears. Neoptolemos was carried out on a wooden chair fitted with handles for slaves to hold. They placed his chair on the ground and he got out of it, slowly, obviously in arthritic pain.

Before the fight could begin there were prayers and sacrifices and speeches to be made. It was late in the afternoon before the men cleared a space on the bare dusty ground and their champion stepped forward. He was almost as big as I, with a deep chest and powerful limbs. He wore a bronze cuirass, greaves, and a bronze helmet with nose piece and cheek flaps tied so tightly under his chin that I could see little more of his face than his light-colored eyes gazing out at me.