Valerio Mafredi - The Oath

‘If that is so, leave immediately to fetch him and be back as soon as you can.’

‘I will, wanax. I’ll leave tomorrow.’

I fitted out my ship, chose my most trusted men, including Eurylochus and Elpenor, and set sail at dawn. In all those years, I had only taken my ship out for brief stretches, usually along the Thracian coast to buy wine for the army. The sea greeted me like an old friend who hadn’t shown his face in a long time. My ship ploughed the waves like it had on its maiden voyage. There was a light breeze from the north that we had to compensate for at times with the helm and at times with the oars. The smell and taste of the salty air made me remember home. Time after time, I realized that, without meaning to, I was calculating how many days it would take me, sailing at that speed, to reach Ithaca.

Scyros was in the middle of the sea, at an equal distance from Troy and Euboea.

It took me only two days to get there and I easily guided my ship into the main port. I had myself announced, and King Lycomedes greeted me with all due honours. The fame of our interminable assault had reached lands far and wide, been distorted, expanded, broken into a thousand different stories that the minstrels had seized upon and happily related, travelling from one palace to the next, one village to another. The king had a huge banquet prepared, inviting the notables of his island and the ones nearby. I was asked many questions, which I answered in part and avoided in part. Finally, after all the guests had gone home and the servants had begun to clear the tables, the king drew close and said: ‘What is the reason behind such an unexpected visit?’

‘Achilles is dead. I’ve come to get the boy.’

‘I knew that,’ said the king, without adding anything else.

‘Does he know?’

Lycomedes nodded. ‘He wants to avenge him, and to surpass the fame and valour of his father.’

‘When can I see him?’

‘Better tomorrow. He’ll be with his concubines now. When I heard you’d arrived, I was hoping you’d come to take him away. He has become impossible to live with. It’s like having a wild animal roaming your home. If he weren’t my daughter’s son and if I hadn’t been prevented from doing so by the bonds of blood, I would have got rid of him long ago. He’s indomitable, irascible, violent. I can barely manage to hold him back.’

‘Sleep easy, wanax, tomorrow I’m taking him away with me.’

I saw the boy at dawn. He had dived into the sea and was swimming like a dolphin, slapping his chest on the strong surf that the night wind was still heaving against the cliffs guarding the port. Then he returned to the shore and began to run down the beach, faster and faster, until I could barely distinguish the movement of his feet, so swift were they. He looked as if he were racing against an invisible adversary.

His father.

I waited until he stopped. I could feel the energy that he gave off, as if I were standing before a big raging fire. His shoulder-length hair was the colour of flames while his eyes were the colour of ice. His arms were powerful, much more massive than on any boy of his age. But his hands, strangely enough, were long and tapered, with big blue veins showing under the thin skin.

‘I’m Odysseus, king of Ithaca.’

‘A man who uses his tongue rather than his sword, from what I hear tell.’

I drew my sharp bronze blade and pointed it at his throat before he could blink an eye. When he pulled back I kept up the pressure until it drew blood.

‘Next time I’ll cut the tendon in your neck so you’ll keep your head down for the rest of your life, in front of men who are worth much more than you, and in front of men who are worth much less as well. I’m the man your father respected most in the whole army. He begat you but I’m the person who made you what you are. It was I who established how you were to be educated, trained and punished whenever it was necessary and even when it was not. Where are your instructors?’

‘Both of them wanted to test what I’d learned from them. They’re both dead.’

I didn’t let the slightest emotion show on my face at hearing that news. I didn’t so much as blink. I said: ‘Prepare your things, we’ll set sail in an hour.’

We exchanged very few words during the whole voyage. He never asked me anything about his father, showed no desire to visit his tomb or to sacrifice to his shade. When we arrived within sight of our destination and the city appeared on the hill, he pointed at it. ‘Is that Troy?’

I nodded.

‘And in ten years, with one thousand ships and fifty thousand warriors, you haven’t succeeded in conquering it?’

‘No. As you can see. That’s why I came to get you. You’ll have your father’s chariot and his horses, you’ll wear the armour that your father lent to Patroclus and that he himself stripped from Hector after he’d killed him.’

‘He had another set,’ replied the boy. ‘The one he was wearing when they killed him. Where is it?’

I could never have imagined that he would know so much.

‘In my tent.’ And when I answered I looked him straight in the eye. He didn’t say anything more.

The same evening that we arrived he was presented to the assembled army wearing his father’s first suit of armour, on a podium illuminated by eight large braziers and by tens of lit torches. The warriors honoured him by shouting out his name seven times and pounding their spears against their shields twenty times, creating a deafening din.

When he passed in front of me I said: ‘Tomorrow you’ll be in the front line at the head of your Myrmidons.’

He fought the whole day, until nightfall, on the chariot driven by his father’s charioteer, Automedon, or on foot. He never rested, took no food or drink. His appearance served, as we had hoped, to strike terror into Trojan hearts. They thought it was Achilles himself they faced, brought back to life, and they knew they could not withstand his assault. Aeneas himself risked losing his life in a clash with him.

The boy pushed all the way to the perfidious Skaian Gate and he nearly succeeded in forcing open the doors, which had been drawn shut but not yet bolted. The enthusiasm of our army was immeasurable. But the Trojans reacted by multiplying their defences and attacking less frequently on open ground. When they did attack, they immediately honed in on Pyrrhus’ position and kept him in the sights of one hundred archers, forcing him to adopt a defensive strategy.

We were at a stand-off once again. The rumour started to circulate that Troy would never fall because the gods did not want the war to ever finish.

If the men began to believe this, it would be the end of everything we had struggled for. But the days passed and if on the one hand Pyrrhus’ presence had given the army the strength and desire to stay in the fight and bring the war to a close, on the other hand our lack of success was reinforcing their fear that not even the formidable energy of the son of Achilles could win the war.

What was worse, Pyrrhus was impossible to control. He tolerated no discipline, and would often attack alone at the head of his Myrmidons, who would have followed him straight to the Underworld, had he ordered them to. One night, he even decided to scale the walls of Troy alone and bare-handed, risking a fall that would have shattered all his bones. He came close to succeeding. But if there was one thing he couldn’t bear it was failure; he became hateful and aggressive with all of us, even his closest comrades. I began to ask myself whether the idea that I’d had all those years ago when I’d sailed to Scyros at the head of my men and my ships, still shy of Troy, had been the right one.

I became convinced that somehow I had to find a solution. Athena had given me the strength to fight on the front line alongside the greatest warriors, but above all she had given me a mind capable of meditating, reflecting and generating new ideas. What idea could I possibly come up with? Even at night, when I was sleeping, my mind sought a solution. Very often when I woke in the morning, I felt convinced that I’d found a way. My heart filled with joy until the plan vanished along with the fog of sleep.