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

Eperitus’s eyes stuttered open again. The dark, blurry form before him quickly gained focus and became his father, who had planted himself legs apart before his son’s chair. Eperitus tested his arms against the ropes, but was unable to move them.

‘Where am I?’

‘In my garden,’ Apheidas answered with a sweep of his hand, indicating the bushes and fruit trees that provided a cheerful green backdrop in the morning sunshine. He spoke in Greek to prevent the guards from understanding their conversation. ‘You were locked up in one of my storerooms – your wound’s healing fast and I didn’t want to risk leaving you in the great hall – but I thought this would be a much more pleasant place to talk.’

‘I have nothing to say to you. You should’ve just killed me on the battlefield and have been done with it.’

‘That was my first thought,’ Apheidas admitted, his voice hardening. ‘After all, you’ve made your desire to kill me very clear. But I don’t suffer from the same crippling lust for vengeance that you do. Revenge is a meaningless, empty passion that achieves nothing – you of all people should know that. No; when I saw you lying in the dust it struck me the gods had delivered you into my hands for a reason. So, not for the first time, I decided to spare your life.’

‘What do you want?’ Eperitus sneered. ‘My gratitude ?’

‘Don’t be obtuse. I want … I expect your help.’

‘After what happened at the temple of Thymbrean Apollo? After you murdered Arceisius? After you used Astynome to fool me into thinking you’d changed?’

He spat at his father’s feet, who replied by striking him hard across the cheek, almost toppling him from the chair. A silence followed, filled only by the sinister hissing that seemed to be coming not from the garden, but from beneath it. Eperitus sniffed at the blood trickling down the inside of his nostril.

‘Nevertheless, you are going to help me,’ Apheidas assured him. ‘If not, then I will kill you in the worst way you could imagine.’

He knelt down beside a wooden box, on top of which was a pair of heavy gauntlets. He forced his hands into the stiff leather, then lifted the lid. A low sibilating put Eperitus on edge, and as Apheidas pulled out a thin brown snake from the box he felt every muscle in his body stiffen. He strained against the ropes that held him, but was unable to move.

‘Still have the old fear then?’ his father mocked, stepping closer and holding the snake level with his son’s face.

Eperitus felt his hands shaking as he stared at the scaled, lipless creature with its thin tongue slipping in and out of its mouth. He pressed his head as far back as it would go into the hard, unyielding wood of the chair.

‘Take the damned thing away! Take it away!’

‘As you wish.’ Apheidas stood up straight and held the snake to his own cheek, so that its forked tongue flickered against his jaw. ‘You never did master your fear of my pets, did you? I’ve been keeping them again, you know, since I left Greece.’

‘That hissing sound I can hear –’

‘You don’t even want to think about that ,’ Apheidas told him with a knowing grin. ‘But I wonder if your tortured mind has regained any memory of why you fear snakes so much.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You don’t fear them for nothing, Son. It happened when you were very young, perhaps three years old. I’d bred snakes since before you were born, to provide sacrifices for worshippers at Apollo’s temple in Alybas. I kept them in a pit in our courtyard, a courtyard much like this.’

‘I remember it.’

‘Do you remember falling in?’ Apheidas asked, fixing his son’s gaze. ‘Your mother and I thought we’d lost you then. I hurried down the ladder and saw you lying on the wooden platform at the bottom, which I used to stand on to keep me safe from the snakes. If you’d landed anywhere else you would have perished in an instant, but Apollo must have been protecting you that day. Then I saw your leg was dangling over the side, waving about above all those angry snakes. Before I could reach you, a viper sprang up and bit you behind your knee. The mark’ll still be there, if you care to look.’

‘If it bit me, then how did I survive?’

‘It was a dry bite. No venom was released. You were lucky.’

The story did not bring back any latent memories, but neither did Eperitus have any reason to think his father was lying. It certainly explained why he despised the creatures so much.

‘But you won’t be so lucky next time,’ Apheidas added with a sudden snarl.

He threw the snake onto Eperitus’s lap, causing him to jerk backwards in fear. The chair toppled over with a crash, but instead of hitting his head against the ground as he had expected Eperitus sensed a void opening up beneath him. The surprise lasted only a moment as he remembered the snake and lifted his head to stare down at its thin, curling body on his chest. A wave of nausea and dread surged through him. Then a gloved hand plucked it up and tossed it away.

His father’s sneering face appeared above him.

‘That’s nothing to what you’ll get if you don’t listen to me.’

Standing now, Apheidas tipped Eperitus on his side. A black void opened up by his left ear, from which the terrible hissing he had heard earlier rose up like a living entity to consume his senses. Not daring to look, but unable to stop himself, he turned his head to see that he was balanced over the edge of a pit, and in the darkness at the bottom he could see daylight glistening on the bodies of hundreds of snakes. His stomach tightened, pushing its contents back up through his body and out into the hole below.

Then his chair was being pulled up again by four of Apheidas’s men, away from the pit and back to safety in the broad sunlight.

‘ Now are you ready to listen to my proposal?’ his father demanded.

‘I’ll listen,’ Eperitus gasped, ‘but you already know my answer. In the end you’ll still have to kill me!’

Apheidas sighed and raised himself to his full height. He turned and picked up a leather water-skin.

‘Here,’ he said, holding it to his son’s lips.

For the first time, Eperitus realised how dry his throat was and how much his body craved liquid. He opened his mouth and Apheidas squeezed a splash of cool water into it.

‘You shouldn’t be so hasty to welcome death, Son. You’ve plenty to live for, after all. Astynome, for instance.’

Eperitus was almost taken by surprise, but the hint of uncertainty in Apheidas’s voice gave him away. His father was no fool: he knew Astynome hated him and loved Eperitus, despite all that had happened. He must also have suspected his son had forgiven her for betraying him. For a brief instant Eperitus was tempted to admit as much, if only to show Apheidas that his feelings for Astynome transcended the schemes of his father that had divided them. Then he heard a voice in his head – not unlike Odysseus’s – warning him not to give Apheidas anything to bargain with. His love of the girl could be used against him; by threatening Astynome, Apheidas could force him to agree to whatever he wanted, just as he had used Clymene to bribe Palamedes to treachery.

‘Don’t mock me,’ Eperitus said, narrowing his eyes and trying to sound angered. ‘If all you can offer is that treacherous bitch then save your breath.’

‘So you’ll be glad to know you won’t be seeing her again?’

Eperitus felt sudden anxiety clawing at his chest, but kept his silence.

‘Now she’s nursed you back to health, I’ve assigned her to other duties,’ Apheidas continued. ‘I don’t trust her around you, and the last thing I want is for her to smuggle you a weapon of some sort. Clymene will change your bandage later and after that you’ll not need any more tending to, because you’ll either have agreed to help me or I’ll have thrown you to my pets.’