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

Oenops shook his head.

‘Impossible. The throne will be held for Telemachus until he’s of age. He has the right of succession.’

‘The ancient laws of Ithaca allow one exception,’ Eupeithes corrected him. ‘It’s an echo of the old days when kings were chosen through the female line, as they still are in some cities. If the king dies before his sons are old enough to assume the crown and the queen marries again, then her new husband will become king ahead of all other claimants.’

‘You want me to marry Penelope?’ Antinous exclaimed.

Oenops shook his beard dismissively. ‘She’s Odysseus’s through and through. She’ll never marry another, not even if you were to bring her Odysseus’s bones in a box.’

‘Don’t be so sure, my old friend. Women are fickle things; given the right incentives they can be bent to anyone’s will. Now, here’s what I intend to do –’

The storm had passed with unnatural quickness after the departure of the goddess, allowing the galley to reach the coast of the Peloponnese in safety. Seeing a huddle of stone huts overlooking a small, natural harbour a little below the mouth of the River Alpheius, Sthenelaus had guided the ship into the pocket of calm water and ordered the anchor stones to be thrown overboard. But when Diomedes and a handful of Argives had rowed ashore, they found their joy at being back on the soil of their homeland dampened. The old fishing hamlet had been deserted long ago.

‘Doesn’t bode well,’ he said later that evening, speaking to Odysseus and Eperitus as they sat by a fire overlooking the harbour, while the rest of the crew and the other Ithacans were busy bedding down in the abandoned houses. ‘This village should have at least fifty people in it, but by the looks of it no-one’s lived here for years. And yet the sea’s teeming with fish, there’s plenty of fresh water just a short walk to the river, and they’d have had a good crop of fruit and olives from all the trees around here. There’s only one reason can explain why they left. They were afraid of something.’

Odysseus, who had been drawing strange patterns in the dust for most of the evening and studiously following them with a stick, raised his head.

‘Bandits,’ he said. ‘With the kings and their armies away in Troy there are barely enough men left to protect the cities, let alone these small villages. I fear for what we’ll find in the morning.’

They rose again at the first light of dawn, though this was nothing more than a pale suffusion among the dark clouds that covered the skies. After they had breakfasted on barley broth, flatbread and fresh olives picked from the trees that surrounded the village, Odysseus called his Ithacan comrades to him and ordered them to put on their armour. Their greaves, leather cuirasses and helmets felt heavy and awkward after so many days aboard ship, where they had only needed their tunics and cloaks, and the feel of the shields on their arms and the spears in their hands gave them all a sense of impending danger, though none knew in what form it might come. Diomedes chose twelve of his best warriors for the expedition, leaving the remainder to guard the galley under the charge of Sthenelaus. Then, with small bags of provisions and skins of fresh water hanging over their shoulders, they sloped their spears and tramped off in double-file under the silent gaze of those left behind.

The River Alpheius was but a short distance north from the harbour. It was broad and fast-flowing as it poured out into the sea, and in the distance they could see the mountains from which it harvested its waters. The low, fumbling peaks seemed to prop up the hanging canvas of cloud that brooded with dark intent in the east, but as they walked with the river on their left Eperitus’s thoughts were not on the threat of rain but on the dilapidated state of the country around them. The land on both sides of the Alpheius was choked with weeds and long grass, where once it must have been filled with crops irrigated from the river. The pastureland on the hills that rose up behind was also overgrown. Though there were occasional sheepfolds, the tumbledown walls were empty and there was no sign of the flocks that had once occupied them. Even the road they were walking along was almost lost beneath a sea of knee-high grass and was only recognisable by the wheel ruts left by the farmers’ carts that had trundled along it in happier times. Most notable to Eperitus’s mind, though, was the lack of people. He and his companions were the only travellers on the road and there were no boats passing up or down the river. Like the fishing hamlet they had first encountered, all but one of the villages they passed through had been deserted for some time. The exception was a huddle of pitiable cottages, surrounded by narrow strips of farmed land where the heads of the barley bowed beneath a gentle west wind. The doors of all the other dwellings they passed had been thrown from their hinges to reveal lifeless and empty interiors, but here they were firmly shut against the strange soldiers who had wandered up from the direction of the coast. A doll made from wood and rags lay abandoned in the middle of the road, kept company by a single sandal that Eperitus guessed had slipped from a woman’s foot as she hurriedly scooped up her child and swept it back into the house. It was a poor village – too poor, perhaps, for the bandits who had forced the other villagers to flee – and the Argives and Ithacans passed through without pausing.

At no point during the rest of the journey did Eperitus’s sharp senses tell him they were being watched, even from a distance. It was eerie and unsettling and hardly a word was spoken as the band of warriors trudged through the unhappy country. For the first time they were witnessing the hidden cost of the war against Troy, and it seemed Odysseus’s guess of the evening before was right. Without the protection of their kings, the people had withdrawn to the walled towns and cities for safety from the groups of armed thieves that roamed the countryside. The land had been abandoned and trade would have all but died out, to be replaced by poverty, hunger and disease. And if the war lasted for much longer, there would be no Greece to return to.

After a while they passed through a knot of trees and came to a place that Eperitus felt was vaguely familiar. The river was broken by a series of rocks and the soft sound of the water now became a roar as it crashed against them. In the centre, where the river was deepest and the current quickest, three boulders stood up like black knuckles, while a shelf of rock jutted out from the nearest bank to make the passage by boat perilous indeed.

‘Recognise the place?’ Odysseus asked.

Eperitus gave a laugh and nodded. ‘Of course, this is where we crossed the river on our way to Sparta twenty years ago. Didn’t we build a raft further upstream from here, where the waters are calmer?’

‘We repaired an abandoned ferry so we could get those mules across, do you remember? Then one of them panicked and knocked old Halitherses into the river. You dived in after him, before he could be battered to death against these rocks.’

‘That’s right,’ Eperitus said, more solemnly.

He vaguely recalled the cold, fast water and the sight of Halitherses, the former captain of the guard, being taken along by the current ahead of him.

‘We pulled you both out of the water by that shelf of rock,’ Odysseus added. ‘We were so young then, and old Halitherses seemed like such a relic to us. Now we’re not far off the same age that he was.’

They gave the rapids a final glance and then followed in the wake of the others. They passed a small, rotten jetty where boats could be moored rather than risking the peril of the rocks, and shortly after entered the shade of a wood that skirted the banks of the river. Its cool, green gloom was a pleasant relief after the growing heat of the morning, but they were soon out in the open again, trudging along the rutted, overgrown track that would eventually take them to Pisa. Their footsteps grew heavy and they felt the sweat running in rivulets beneath their close-fitting armour, but for men who could fight all day long under a Trojan sun there was no need for rest. And both Odysseus and Diomedes were determined to reach the tomb as quickly as possible.