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

‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured her. ‘Helenus has foreseen my victory. This will be over in moments.’

‘Helenus is just a boy whose ambitions outstrip his abilities,’ she countered. ‘But you are a warrior, and the last hope of Troy rests on your shoulders. You don’t have to fight this man, Paris.’

‘I do, and the reason I have to fight him is precisely because the hopes of Troy rest on me. There are enough witnesses here to let the whole army know I backed down from an open challenge, even after Helenus predicted my victory. I would lose my authority, and in an army authority is everything.’

He placed his arms about Helen and drew her into an embrace. The muscles of his chest and stomach were firm beneath his tunic and yielded little to her touch, making her feel like a child.

‘What about us?’ she asked. ‘This whole war has been about us, our love for each other. Thousands dead and maimed, thousands more widowed and orphaned. If you die it will all have been for nothing.’

Paris gave a half-laugh and stroked her hair as she lay her head on his chest.

‘The war was never about us, Helen. It was about power and greed and honour and hate. We’re just symbols for all the rest of them to hide behind. We’re unimportant, really.’

‘But you’re everything to me , Paris. If you die, I don’t want to live. I love you.’

She looked up at him but was distracted by a noise on the steps. The guard had returned and now stood awkwardly a short distance away, Paris’s bow and quiver of arrows held in his hands. Paris loosened his hold on Helen and stepped back from her.

‘I love you, too,’ he said.

Then he took the weapons from the soldier and descended the steps to the gate.

‘There’s your new home,’ Halitherses said. ‘At least for the foreseeable future.’

The old man sat on his tired horse and looked down at the city of Sparta, a flash of white halfway across the wide plains of the Eurotas valley. Telemachus was beside him, sitting astride his pony with his hand held across his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun.

‘It’s big.’

‘Of course it’s big. Do you think a powerful king like Menelaus would rule over a little backwater like Ithaca?’

Telemachus turned his green eyes on his ageing guardian.

‘Ithaca may be a backwater, but it’s home and one day I’ll be its king.’

‘Let’s hope so, lad. Let’s hope so.’

Halitherses smiled down at the young boy. He had his mother’s good looks and would inherit her height too, in time. His facial expressions and way of speaking, though, were reminiscent of Odysseus. It seemed strange to the old soldier that Telemachus’s mannerisms should be so like those of the father he had never known, and yet it was also a comfort in dark times. To have a physical reminder of the absent king kept Halitherses hopeful that Odysseus would one day return.

He looked back at the valley stretched out below them. From the heights of the pass that had led them through the Taygetus Mountains they could see the River Eurotas sparkling in the distance as it wound its way from the great city southward to the coast. A thick heat haze shimmered over the farmlands on either side, but the distorted air could not hide the fact the crops were scanty and meagre, a patchwork of swaying stalks that held no comparison to the oceans of corn and barley Halitherses had witnessed here twenty years before. The little farmsteads that dotted the plain were ramshackle and in some cases deserted, while the city itself had lost its golden lustre, if not its size. It was typical of all he had observed on the journey from Ithaca. The whole Peloponnese had grown dull and shabby without the governance and protection of its kings, like a once-beautiful house that had fallen into disrepair. Its inhabitants had become suspicious and unfriendly, while here and there migrants had begun to drift down from the lands north of Greece, resented but not resisted as they built their homes and communities in a country that was not their own. Everything was in decline, and Halitherses doubted even the return of the armies from Troy could reverse the decay that had set in.

‘Come on then, lad,’ the old man said, touching his heels to the flanks of his mount. ‘There’s still a long way to go, and I want to get there before nightfall. The gods have kept us safe so far, but I don’t want to spend another night in the open if it can be avoided.’

‘Halitherses?’

Halitherses turned to see Telemachus had not moved.

‘What is it, lad?’

‘Is my mother safe?’

‘Of course she is,’ the old man answered, trying to disguise his hesitation. ‘Her enemies are becoming more powerful, and they want your father’s throne – I’ve never kept that a secret from you – but they know they can’t get it without Penelope. She’s the key and they need her alive, or I wouldn’t have left Ithaca. And she’s more than clever enough to handle Eupeithes until your father returns.’

Telemachus frowned and looked down at the ears of his pony, twitching randomly in the faint mountain breeze.

‘What if my father never returns?’

Halitherses turned back and laid his large, sun-browned hand on the boy’s head.

‘Don’t worry about that, lad. Ithaca’s like a lodestone to Odysseus. He’ll come home again one day. I promise you.’

‘I wish I had your confidence in him,’ Telemachus said, then kicked back his heels and sent his mount trotting in the direction of Sparta.

Halitherses watched him thoughtfully, then, with a click of his tongue, urged his horse forward to catch up with his young charge.

Odysseus saw Helen appear at the battlements, her perfect face stricken with concern. A moment later he heard the squeal of wooden hinges as the Scaean Gate swung open. The movement raised a thin haze of dust, through which the figure of a man could be seen striding towards them.

‘He’s fallen for it,’ Odysseus said.

Philoctetes shifted nervously and Eperitus placed a hand on his bony shoulder.

‘Don’t be concerned,’ he reassured him. ‘You have Heracles’s bow and arrows that never miss. This is why the gods gave them to you. It’s time to fulfil your destiny.’

Philoctetes nodded but did not speak. Still in the shadow of the walls, Paris was removing the arrows from his quiver and pushing them point-down into the soil by his feet. When a dozen had been planted he tossed the heavy quiver to one side and stood with his legs apart. Helen sobbed quietly on the walls above, while all along the parapet a crowd of soldiers and townsfolk were gathering to watch the duel.

Philoctetes began pulling the arrows from his own quiver and setting them in the ground to his left. After the sixth he handed the leather tube to Odysseus, who replaced the lid and slipped it over his shoulder. There was a tension in the air that reminded him of the nervousness he felt before every battle, but was made oddly more acute by the knowledge he would not be fighting and could, therefore, do nothing to influence the outcome. The thought made him suddenly uncomfortable. The conclusion of the war had been compressed into a single action, to be decided between just two men. If Philoctetes failed, then the siege would drag on and it would be more long years before Odysseus saw Ithaca and his family again; if he succeeded in killing Paris, another barrier would be removed and the prospect of going home would come a little closer. But at that moment, there was little else Odysseus could do to sway his own destiny.

He slipped the thin, grubby scarf from about his neck and looked at Philoctetes.