David Gemmell - Lord of the Silver Bow

Aeneas had grown a lot during those years, but he was now, at fifteen, still below average height, blue-eyed and slender. He wore a knee-length white tunic and his long dark hair was bound back with a strip of leather. Odysseus noticed he kept far from the cliff edge and didn’t so much as glance at the Penelope in the bay far below.

‘So, lad, we have much to catch up on,’ the trader began. ‘Have you fulfilled your ambition yet?’

‘What ambition is that, sir?’ The youth turned ice-blue eyes on him and Odysseus felt his blood run cold. Under the bland reflective surface of those eyes, he sought for a spark of the bright child Aeneas had been.

‘Why, to build the biggest ship in the world. Don’t you remember?’

‘I was just a boy then. Children have strange ideas.’ Aeneas turned away.

Odysseus’ anger, never far below the surface, rose again at the coldness in the young man’s voice.

‘They tell me you’re frightened,’ he said conversationally. ‘Frightened of heights. Well, that’s not unreasonable. Your mother threw herself off a cliff.

You saw it. So you’re frightened of heights. I understand that.’

If he’d hoped for a response from the youth he was disappointed.

‘But,’ he added, ‘I hear you’re picky about your food like a little maiden.

Frightened you’ll swallow a fishbone and choke, frightened you’ll eat bad shellfish and die. You won’t ride your horses any more, frightened, I suppose, that you’ll fall off. You scarcely leave your room, I’m told.’ He leaned in to Aeneas. ‘What sort of life are you living, boy? What do you do in your room all day? Embroidery – like a girl? Is that it? Are you a girl in disguise? Do you dream of the day some ugly man decides to stick his cock up your arse?’

And then he saw it, for a fraction of a heartbeat. A glint in the eyes, the beginnings of anger. It was instantly snuffed out.

‘Why do you insult me?’ asked Aeneas.

‘To make you angry. Why did you stifle it?’

‘It serves no purpose. When we lose control we…’ He hesitated. ‘We make mistakes,’ he concluded, lamely.

‘We throw ourselves from cliffs. Is that what you mean?’

The boy reddened. ‘Yes,’ he said, at last. ‘Though I ask you not to mention it again. It is painful to me still.’

Odysseus sighed. ‘Sometimes pain is necessary, lad. The gods gave me a great gift, you know, for reading the hearts of men. I only have to take one glance to know whether he is a hero or a coward.’

‘And you think me a coward,’ said the youngster, anger once more seeking to take hold. ‘My father tells me daily. I am a milksop, a useless creature. I have no

need to hear it from a foreign sailor. Now are we done?’

‘You are none of those things. Listen to me! Five years ago we hit rocks on the Penelope. Her hull was breached and she was shipping water. She rolled on the Great Green like a hog in a swamp. Her speed was gone and she almost sank. We kept her afloat and made it to port. Then she was repaired. I didn’t judge her as a bad ship. She was damaged in a storm. I judge her by how she sails when her hull is sound. You are like that ship. Your heart was breached when your mother died. And from the heart comes courage.’

The boy said nothing, but Odysseus saw that he was listening intently.

Odysseus moved away from the cliff edge and sat down on a grassy bank. ‘There is no courage without fear, Aeneas. A man who rushes into battle fearlessly is not a hero. He is merely a strong man with a big sword. An act of courage requires the overcoming of fear.’ Raising his hand, palm outwards, he instructed the boy to do likewise. Then he reached out and pressed his palm to the boy’s. ‘Push against my hand,’ he said. Aeneas did so. Odysseus resisted the push. ‘Now this is how courage and fear work, lad. Both will always be pushing. They are never still.’ Dropping his hand he looked out over the sea. ‘And a man cannot choose to stop pushing. For if he backs away the fear will come after him, and push him back another step, and then another. Men who give in to fear are like kings who trust in castles to keep out enemies, rather than attacking them on open ground, and scattering them. So the enemies camp round the castle, and now the king cannot get out. Slowly his food runs out, and he discovers the castle is not a very safe place to be. You built a castle in your mind. But fear seeped through gaps in the walls, and now there is nowhere else to hide. Deep down you know this, for the hero I see in you keeps telling you.’

‘Perhaps there is no hero inside me. What if I am as my father tells me?’

‘Oh, there is a hero, boy! You still hear his voice. Every time your father asks you to ride a horse, or do some daring thing, the hero in you longs to obey him, yearns for a smile from him, or a word of praise. Is that not so?’

The boy’s head dropped forward. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.

‘Good! That is a beginning. Now all you need to do is seek out that hero, boy, and embrace him. I can help you. For I know his name.’

‘His name?’

‘The hero inside you. You want to know his name, so that you can call for him?’

‘Yes,’ answered Aeneas, and Odysseus saw the desperation in his eyes.

‘His name is Helikaon.’

The boy’s face crumpled and Odysseus saw tears begin to fall. ‘No-one calls me that any more,’ he said. Then he angrily brushed the tears away. ‘Look at me! I cry like a child!’

‘Damn, boy! Everyone cries at some time. I wept for weeks when my son died.

Blubbed until I had no strength left. But we are losing the breeze here. You need to find Helikaon.’

‘And how do I do that?’

‘Why, you sally out from the castle and scatter your fears. He will be there waiting for you.’

‘Speak plainly, for there are no castles.’

Odysseus felt sympathy for the youngster, but he realized that the damage caused to him by years of abuse from his father could not be undone with a few fanciful notions. In truth, he thought, it will take years. And Odysseus did not have years to spend on a boy with a crippled heart.

Equally he could not take him on the Penelope and kill him – no matter what riches Anchises dangled before him.

So he had decided on one last gambit. ‘If I asked you to dive from this cliff to the sea, a hundred feet or more below, you wouldn’t do it, would you?’

‘No,’ replied Aeneas, his eyes wide with fear, even at the thought.

‘Of course not. It is a long way down, and there may be hidden rocks there that would dash a man to pieces. Yet that is where Helikaon waits for you, lad. So I am going to give you a reason to make that dive.’

‘Nothing will make me do that!’ said Aeneas.

‘Perhaps not. But I am going to jump from this cliff into the sea. I cannot swim, so if you do not come for me I will drown.’

‘You cannot do this!’ said Aeneas, surging to his feet as Odysseus rose.

‘Of course I can. Helikaon and I will be waiting, boy.’ Then, without another word, he ran to the cliff edge.

Even now, so many years later, Odysseus felt a shiver run through him at the memory. He had looked up at this ledge the night before. It had not appeared so high. But as he had reached it and looked down it seemed to him that the sea was an awesome distance below him. The Penelope suddenly appeared to be a toy ship, crewed by ant figures.

Though he would never admit it to anyone else, Odysseus was suddenly terrified.

‘Please don’t do it!’ shouted the boy.

‘Have to, lad,’ answered Odysseus. ‘When a man says a thing, he needs to find the nerve to follow it through.’

Taking a deep breath he flung himself out into the clear air. Cartwheeling his arms to stay upright he plunged down, the drop seeming to take for ever. Then he hit the sea with all the grace of a pig on a pond.