Glyn Iliffe - The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

‘Then your desire is granted,’ Agamemnon seethed. ‘You will not stand by and watch him killed. You will be the one to kill him !’

‘Never,’ Eperitus snapped.

‘I order you to do it!’

Eperitus spat on the ground and drew his sword. Several of the kings reached for the hilts of their own weapons, while the guards behind Nestor and Menelaus raised their spears and aimed them nervously at the Ithacan. Then, seizing the long tail of hair behind his neck, Eperitus sawed through it and tossed it at Agamemnon’s feet.

‘I don’t answer to you any more, Agamemnon. None of us do. The oath we took has been fulfilled and you’re no longer the King of Men. You’re just the king of Mycenae now, and I’m not a Mycenaean!’

‘Eperitus is right, he doesn’t have to follow your orders any more,’ Diomedes said. Then, slipping a dagger from his belt, he sawed off the long mane of hair that had not been cut since the start of the war and flung it onto the dirt. ‘And neither do I.’

Agamemnon was speechless with rage and his fury only seemed to increase as one by one the other kings, princes and captains who formed the Council began cutting away the tails from the back of their own heads and throwing them into the circle. When, at last, Menelaus and Nestor did the same, he finally realised that his hegemony over the Greeks had ended.

‘This doesn’t change the boy’s fate,’ he said. ‘You, the Council, decided that he should die, not me alone. And if none of you has the courage to do it, then I will throw him from the walls myself.’

Eperitus stepped forward to protest again, but Odysseus pulled him back to his seat.

‘Agamemnon’s right. The decision was taken by the whole Council; you can’t defend the boy against all the kings of Greece.’

‘Give Astyanax to me,’ Neoptolemus announced before Eperitus could react. ‘If he’s going to grow up to avenge his father, then as Achilles’s son I’m the one who stands to lose the most if he lives. Besides, Andromache is my woman now; I don’t want her pining for a bastard child when she’ll be bearing sons for me.’

‘And do you think she would ever forgive you for killing him, Neoptolemus?’ asked Odysseus. ‘More likely she’ll put a knife into you when you’re sleeping. No, I’ll kill the boy.’

Eperitus watched incredulously as his king crossed the circle and picked up the small child, wrapping his faded purple cloak about him.

‘Odysseus, no!’ he said, rushing forward and seizing his forearm. ‘ What are you doing ?’

Suddenly Odysseus’s face transformed with rage and he shoved his captain hard in the chest, sending him staggering backwards to collapse between Little Ajax and Teucer. He tried to get up again, but the two men held him fast.

‘I’m a father,’ Odysseus said, tight-lipped as he faced the Council. ‘This is not something I do with pride; I do it with shame. But I’ll do it because it has to be done – not for you, Agamemnon, nor the Council, but for the future of Greece.’

He pushed his way out of the ring of commanders and walked slowly towards the Scaean Gate, turning once to stare back accusingly at the members of the Council. They looked away guiltily and Agamemnon picked up the tablet from where he had put it down in the grass.

‘We have unfinished business,’ he said, looking down at the markings on the tablet. ‘Yes, here we are. The weight of gold found in Troy was –’

His words faded into the background as Eperitus tried to see Odysseus through the ring of seated men, but Little Ajax and Teucer kept him pinned between them. They would not let him go, he realised, until Odysseus had reappeared on the walls and thrown Astyanax down to his death. Quickly his mind scanned back over what had happened, wondering if there was anything he had not understood, some statement that could justify Odysseus killing a child. But there was nothing, nothing at all. He felt numb, unable to comprehend what was happening. Once again, he was lying helpless while a child he had tried to protect was murdered.

A woman’s scream shook the Council from its half-hearted dissection of the plunder list. All heads turned to the walls, then higher still to the top of the tower that protected the Scaean Gate. There stood Odysseus, Astyanax held high above his head. The child’s white clothes blew in the westerly wind, and then with a howl of anger Odysseus hurled him down to perish on the stones below.

Chapter Forty-seven

T HE D EAD C HILD

Shaking off Teucer and Little Ajax, Eperitus sprang to his feet and ran from the shocked assembly towards the gates. The child’s body lay among the wreckage of stone beneath the tower, his head dashed in but with surprisingly little blood spattered over the huge blocks on which he had fallen.

‘Wait!’

Eperitus turned to see Peisandros’s stocky physique sprinting towards him.

‘What are you going to do?’ the Myrmidon commander asked as he caught up with him. ‘I mean, if you’re going to confront Odysseus about this, then give me that sword first.’

‘We’re old friends, Peisandros,’ Eperitus replied. ‘You know me better than that by now.’

‘Angry men have been known to do rash things.’

Eperitus shook his head, but handed Peisandros his sword anyway. ‘I just want to know why . Why would he do that?’

Peisandros stared down at Astyanax’s body. ‘I don’t know, but I’m coming with you.’

They ran through the gate and entered the doorway that led into the dark interior of the tower. Eperitus’s eyes adjusted quickly and spotted the wooden ladder ascending to the next floor. The two men climbed it but found the room above empty except for a pile of spears in one corner and shields stacked against the foot of the wall. A dusty shaft of grey light fed into the gloom from a hatchway above and without hesitation Eperitus continued climbing. He reached the top of the tower and saw Odysseus standing against the parapet, looking out at the smoking ruins of Troy. As he clambered through the narrow square in the wooden floor, half-followed by Peisandros, Odysseus looked at them both and raised a finger to his lips. The angry words that Eperitus had been about to hurl at his king fell dead.

‘Are you alone?’ Odysseus asked them.

They nodded, mystified, and then Odysseus leaned across and tipped the stack of shields forward to reveal Astyanax, alive and smiling at them. Peisandros almost fell back through the hatch.

‘But –’ Eperitus said. ‘But –’

‘You saw me throw him from the walls?’

Peisandros rushed back to the opposite wall and looked down at the body still on the stones below.

‘Come back from there, you fool,’ Odysseus ordered. ‘Do you want the Council to see you?’

‘But how’s it possible?’

Odysseus raised his eyebrows. ‘Most things are possible, with a little deception. After you tried to save Astyanax, Eperitus, I remembered there was the body of an infant on the rocks by the gate – he was thrown down from the walls just as the Council was convening this morning. When I took Astyanax through the gate, I simply picked the boy’s corpse up as I went past. Once inside the tower, I swapped Astyanax’s princely garments for the plain sackcloth the dead child was wearing, then threw him down from the top of the tower. The head was already a mess, but I’m hoping nobody will look too closely at the body. The hardest part was carrying them both up the ladder – Astyanax under my cloak, and the other dangling by his ankle.’

Peisandros knelt by the child and offered him a thick, dirty finger. Astyanax took it and pulled, laughing at the Myrmidon.