Valerio Manfredi - Heroes

Myrsilus whipped his stallions’ backs with the reins. The steeds raised a long whinny into the air, distantly echoed by Aeneas’s horses, then broke into a gallop. ‘I’ll take you right into him; you’ll have him directly in front of you, but just for an instant,’ shouted Myrsilus. ‘Careful! Weigh it both left and right before you throw!’ When he was at the calculated distance, he swerved violently with his right horse, widening and then narrowing on the left at the last moment while Diomedes crouched low, holding on to the rear handles and leaning in to the other side, to keep the wheels gripping the ground.

Aeneas’s charioteer was disoriented by the move and Diomedes re-emerged from behind the parapet with his javelin tight in his fist. He found Aeneas right in front of him then, for just an instant, and he hurled the weapon at his neck, at the collar bone. The javelin missed its target by a hairbreadth because Aeneas’s chariot gave a jolt, but the bronze still cut into his skin above the shoulder. And while his adversary rode off, Diomedes turned and shouted: ‘First blood, son of Anchises!’

But Aeneas’s charioteer took him by surprise: he did not halt the horses, but widened their path in a full curve without diminishing their speed. When Myrsilus had started his team running again after having stopped at the end of the field, they were already upon him, racing at full tilt. Just an instant before he let his javelin fly, Diomedes realized that Aeneas was aiming to strike his charioteer. He raised his shield to protect Myrsilus, but this threw him off balance and he missed his throw.

‘Thank you, wanax ,’ said Myrsilus. ‘But you’ve lost your third javelin. Now you must do battle on the ground with your spear and sword.’

‘It would have been worse to lose my charioteer and end up in the dust,’ said Diomedes with a smile. ‘You were magnificent. Sthenelus could not have done any better.’

Myrsilus set the horses off at a trot and turned back, then stopped at a short distance from their adversary. Diomedes and Aeneas descended from the war-cars, and the charioteers handed them their spears. The sun was already high over the mountains and was turning south, sparkling on the waters of the great river.

The two heroes faced each other warily, protected by their shields, spears in hand. The speed of the horses could no longer be added to the force of their arms. Now ability counted as much as strength. Diomedes chose not to throw his spear from a distance, but engaged Aeneas in hand-to-hand combat, crossing his ashen shaft with his enemy’s. Wood and bronze crackled in the close assault, bronze points seeking out a gap in the other’s defences, a space between the joints of the breastplate, a brief opening between the edge of the shield and the visor of the helmet. The whole valley resounded at length with the din of the battle.

Myrsilus stood pale on the chariot while the horses tranquilly browsed on the grass. He abruptly started: with a sudden surge of energy, Aeneas had leapt backwards to dodge a blow, crouched down and hurled his spear from the ground, shearing off one of the shoulder plates on Diomedes’s armour. Blood reddened the chest of the son of Tydeus, who managed still to cast his own spear. The point of bronze struck the side of Aeneas’s helmet with such force that the Dardan hero wavered and nearly fell. Diomedes raised his sword to finish him off but Aeneas reacted, lifting his shield against the furious raining of blows. He moved backwards and, one step after another, he regained his composure, stood tall again and drew his own sword.

They stopped for an instant, panting heavily, then attacked each other with renewed violence.

Myrsilus was astonished: he could not understand what mysterious energy upheld Aeneas’s arm against Diomedes’s fury. He watched the sun as it continued to rise in the sky. Perhaps Aeneas was truly born of a goddess, as he had heard, and he prayed to Athena to hastily infuse new vigour in the arm of Diomedes.

The ferocious battle went on. It went on and on, until their swords were blunted and deformed by the blows. They were useless now. The charioteers approached them and offered the double-edged axes. The two combatants were disfigured by the tremendous struggle. Blood dripped from innumerable wounds; sweat blinded them and they burned with thirst and fever. As he handed him the axe, Myrsilus looked the king full in the face: ‘There’s still enough fire in your eyes to burn a city. Strike him down, wanax , no one can stand up to you. You’ve already beaten him once, and forced him to flee.’

And the charioteer of Aeneas also spoke to his lord as he handed him the sharpened axe: ‘His energies are waning. He’s desperate. You have a son, a people with women and children. Strike him down, son of Anchises. You will be the one to see the dawn tomorrow.’

And the battle resumed with the axes: long, exhausting, cruel. Their shields were shattered, mangled by their blows, the straps holding their helmets and breastplates were ripped to shreds. At the end, the heroes faced each other, offering their undefended bodies to the axes. Skin and bone against bronze.

But a god, perhaps, took pity on them. As they attacked each other for the final time, even the handles of the axes split, and the two warriors remained on their feet, gasping, soaked in bloody sweat.

Diomedes spoke first: ‘Son of Anchises, the gods have granted victory to neither one of us. See? Our weapons are broken and useless; we have nothing but our teeth with which to wound each other. It would not be worthy of us to attack each other like dogs. I. . I believe that the gods have sent us a sign; is it not a miracle that we are both still alive? Look, the sun is already descending towards the sea. We have fought this entire day. Perhaps this is what the gods want: that there be peace between us.’ Aeneas regarded him in silence. Only the rhythmic rising and falling of his chest accompanied his panting breath.

Diomedes spoke again: ‘Listen. Achilles is dead. Hector is dead. You and I are the strongest warriors in the world. But neither of us is stronger than the other. Let us forget our ancient animosity. Let us unite our peoples in this land and form a new, invincible nation. Listen, son of Anchises. I am willing to share with you the greatest of my treasures, the most precious talisman of your lost homeland.’ Aeneas listened with a look of deep apprehension. ‘On the night in which we conquered the city, I managed to slip into the sanctuary and abduct the Palladium, the sacred image of Athena which had made Ilium the greatest and most prosperous city in the world. I knew where it was kept; Ulysses and I had stolen into the citadel some time earlier and we were the only ones to know where it was. I’ve been carrying it with me all these years. I was waiting for the day in which I would found a new city. I would have placed it in a beautiful temple and there I would have built a new kingdom. And now I offer it to you, so we can build this kingdom and this nation together. Enough blood and enough tears. Enough.’ He bowed his head and awaited Aeneas’s response in silence.

The Dardan hero stared at him without saying a word. There was no longer hate in his eyes, but rather melancholy and pity. He said: ‘Son of Tydeus, I fought for years to defend my homeland and I fought you now in the hopes of destroying the last shadows of my past before beginning a new life here, in the land of Hesperia. The gods wanted our last encounter to end this way, and now let us separate, so that each of us may take his own road. Too much hate and too much blood have divided us. Our wounds are still bleeding.

‘What you believe to be the talisman of the Trojans is nothing. It is nothing but a false image, one of the seven replicas that King Laomedon had made to mask the true idol. All of you searched for it that night, blinded by the dream of endless power: you, Ajax Oileus, Agamemnon. Ulysses himself. Cassandra fooled you all. She alone knew which one was the true idol, and that night she revealed the secret to me. I returned unseen amid the flames which were still devouring the city and recovered it, and I took it with me, to Mount Ida. It was the smallest and poorest image of them all; just two cubits tall, I could easily carry it in my arms.