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

‘Bats,’ he said, his voice a little higher than normal. ‘Just bats.’

He continued his advance and the others followed. The air seemed colder as they turned the corner and the torches struggled momentarily to throw out any light, as if the darkness itself was suffocating them. Then the flames grew again, running in ripples up the fat-soaked cloth and throwing back the shadows to reveal a flagstoned floor and stone walls. The end of this new passageway was not yet visible, but as Odysseus stared into the blackness Eperitus touched him on the shoulder and pointed. Odysseus looked again and finally saw what his captain’s keen eyes had already picked out. Something was lying on the ground several paces ahead of them: a grey ball at the foot of the left-hand wall, a bundle of rags a little further back, and the glimmer of something metallic beside them. Eperitus moved past Odysseus and knelt down by the first object.

‘What is it?’ Odysseus asked, his voice hushed but urgent.

‘A skull,’ Eperitus replied, staring down at the empty eye sockets and the open jaws that were still set in a silent scream, long after life’s last breath had passed between them. ‘The body’s over there.’

Odysseus joined him and saw the humped shape of a ragged cloak in the shadows, torn in many places and heavy with dust. Grey rib bones were half visible through the holes in the wool, while two skeletal arms reached out into the circle of light cast by their torches. A short sword lay on top of the body.

Diomedes lifted the cloak away with the point of his blade. The material crumbled with the movement, revealing the grey skeleton beneath.

‘The shoulder bone’s the same colour as the rest. This isn’t Pelops.’

‘It’s the body of a grave robber,’ Odysseus said.

Eurybates picked up the sword. ‘These black stains are blood. But if the weapon was dropped on top of the man’s cloak after he was decapitated, then who killed him?’

‘One of his companions?’ Eperitus suggested. ‘They found something of value and argued over it. Typical of their kind. The victor then left the tomb with his treasure and closed the entrance behind him. Perhaps that’s all this curse is: human greed in the face of untold wealth.’

‘I pray to the gods you’re right,’ Odysseus said, though his instincts told him otherwise. ‘Now, let’s find the sarcophagus and hope these men didn’t have a taste for ivory.’

A little beyond the remains of the robber, the tunnel turned right. With Odysseus leading again, they advanced into the blackness for a few paces until another passage opened on their left, noticeable only by a deeper darkness and the faint, cold movement of air on their cheeks. The king ignored it and, with his fingers still tracing the right-hand wall, plunged on into the depths of the maze. Almost immediately the wall bent right and then another right, leading the huddled group of warriors shortly afterwards to a dead end. Without taking his hand from the wall, Odysseus followed it left and left again, back the way they had come until it turned right twice to lead them once more to the opening they had passed only a few moments earlier. He did not hesitate, but pressed on with his torch held before him in his free hand. The wall led him left to another choice of ways – an opening that went straight on or a passage that headed right. Knowing he must stick to the plan he had worked out the evening before, Odysseus turned right and traced the wall in a zigzag pattern until it bent sharply back to the right again. He turned the corner and stopped so suddenly that Eperitus and Diomedes almost walked into him.

‘Another body,’ he announced.

He raised his torch upwards so that it shed a pool of orange light over the curled up form of a second skeleton. This one wore no cloak and the remains of its short tunic were nothing more than a few lengths of rag clinging to the ribcage and the angular protuberances of the pelvic bone. Its head remained attached to the spinal column, but the handle of a knife stuck out from its back.

‘If these men died because of an argument,’ Diomedes began, ‘why were they both killed from behind? The first could have been fleeing, and I didn’t see that he was armed; but this one’s holding a dagger – look.’ He pointed to a dull blade lying beneath the rib cage, the bony fingers of the dead man still bent around its handle. ‘Why didn’t he turn and defend himself?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Odysseus responded. ‘Something tells me this man died long before the other – see how the clothes are more decayed – but if they weren’t killed by their fellow-robbers, then I don’t know how they died. I’ll say this much, though: they were thieves, lightly armed and with no training in how to fight. We are warriors, veterans of a long and bloody war. Whoever, or whatever, stalked these men through the black confusion of these tunnels won’t find it so easy against sixteen of us!’

He stepped over the body and forged on into the darkness. The others followed, many of them drawing their swords and throwing uncertain glances over their shoulders. The tunnel twisted again and again, leading them deeper into the maze as the cold blackness numbed their senses and left them feeling ever more disorientated. Time was drawn out so that moments that would have passed briefly in the daylight were stretched by confusion and growing fear into long periods that offered no hope of ending. They stumbled into each other constantly as they bunched ever closer, afraid of becoming separated in the dark. Despite the light of their brands they soon felt themselves entirely reliant upon Odysseus’s hand as it trailed along the stone walls to his right. Even Eperitus’s senses, Odysseus guessed, must have lost their edge, deprived of the sounds and smells of the outside world and confused by the deceptive shadows cast by the clustered flames of their torches. He realised that, but for his plan to follow the right-hand wall of the maze, they would be completely lost in a place without features and seemingly without end. He only hoped he had been correct in his deduction.

After a long time, twisting and turning and meeting at least two dead ends, he stopped and raised a cautioning hand. There, ahead of them in the shadows, was another body. Like the others, it lay front-down on the flagstones, nothing more than a skeleton beneath the rags of its former clothing. Then he saw the handle of a long knife protruding from its back.

‘It’s the same body we passed before,’ Eperitus said behind him.

‘It can’t be!’ Diomedes declared, pushing past him and staring down at the crumpled form. He kicked at the collection of bones and sent them rattling across the floor. ‘Damn it, Odysseus, your ridiculous scheme has been leading us in circles!’

His voice rose above the oppressive air that had previously dampened every sound they had made and rang out through the tunnels, echoing back on itself so that even Diomedes forgot his anger and glanced about in concern.

‘This sort of thing is to be expected,’ Odysseus replied firmly. ‘If you’d looked before kicking it to pieces, you’d have noticed we’ve approached it from the opposite direction. It’s the nature of a maze to lead back on itself in places and, if anything, coming here again shows my deductions were correct.’

He moved on before Diomedes could challenge him, knowing that if he was to concede his own doubts they might refuse to follow him altogether. Diomedes might even insist that they split up – something which Odysseus now felt certain would be disastrous for all of them. As it was, they followed him without question. Ever since Diomedes’s outburst, they had felt an increase in the malevolent atmosphere of the maze, as if the evil that had been slumbering there was now awake and conscious of their presence. They shrank against each other as they passed openings to other passages, or baulked as their heightened hearing detected the sounds of rodents or bats ahead of or behind them. Polites, whose great bulk brought up the rear of the file, was constantly glancing back over his shoulder and even Odysseus felt compelled to draw his sword and hold it loosely in his right hand as he traced the wall with the tip of his forefinger. Then, after many turns that had them feeling as if he had descended far beyond any hope of finding a way out again, they came upon the remains of another man. The skeleton had been dismembered and its bones spread across the tunnel, and for an awful moment Odysseus thought they had returned to the body Diomedes had kicked apart in his anger. Then he realised this was a third victim of whatever had killed the other two robbers, and that its arms and legs had been torn off by force while still alive and left littered around the torso. No-one spoke as they stepped over the bones, but Odysseus knew every man was thinking the same as himself. What terrible creature possessed the strength to tear a man limb from limb ?