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

‘Stay your hand, Philoctetes!’

The archer felt the strength in his arms weaken, forcing him to relax the bowstring and lower the weapon. He looked about himself, searching for the owner of the voice in the fog. Down on the rock shelf below him, Eperitus, Diomedes and Antiphus looked around in confusion, while Odysseus tipped back his hood and glanced discreetly upwards. Then Eperitus gave a shout and pointed to the cliffs above, where a giant figure stood silhouetted against the swirls of white mist.

‘Who are you?’ Diomedes called, feeling instinctively for the sword he had left by the boat.

‘Silence!’ commanded the newcomer. ‘The gods speak only to those whom they choose, and I have not left the halls of Olympus to waste words with you, Diomedes, king of Argos. I have come to talk to Philoctetes.’

The archer lurched forward to lay across a boulder, from where he could scrutinise the figure in the mist.

‘Heracles!’ he exclaimed after a moment, his eyes growing wide with shock and wonder. ‘Then you did become a god after your death, just as the priests declared. And now you’ve come back to save Philoctetes from these liars and cheats! See, lord: he’s looked after your bow and arrows for you; everything just as when you gave them into his care.’

‘Looked after them?’ Heracles scoffed. His features were impossible to discern, but the outline of his famous lion’s pelt was visible on his head and over his shoulders, as was the thick club that hung menacingly from his fist. ‘You’ve no more looked after them than if I had entrusted them to one of the sheep you were tending that day you lit my funeral pyre! You’ve used it for nothing more than shooting down seagulls, when it should have been on the battlefields of Ilium killing Trojans. And when Odysseus and Diomedes offer you the chance to use them for your own glory – and for mine – what do you do? Complain and bemoan your lot!’

‘Forgive your faithful servant!’ Philoctetes groaned, burying his face in his hands. ‘Command him, lord, and he will repay your trust.’

‘Philoctetes,’ the booming voice ordered, ‘you know full well what you have to do. Take my bow and arrows to the killing fields of Ilium. Use them as the seer, Calchas, directs you and reap the glory that is rightly ours. Go with Odysseus and do not hold on to your hatred for him, but be thankful that he saved your life and returned for you.’

With that, having spoken more words than Eperitus could remember him putting together in all the ten years he had known him, Polites slipped away into the mist and headed back to the boat.

Chapter Four

R ECONCILIATION AND H EALING

Odysseus must have known they would fail to persuade Philoctetes to give up his hatred and return to the army. He must have known it from the moment he had heard Calchas’s prophecy, hence his plan to disguise Polites as Heracles using an oversized club and Agamemnon’s lion’s pelt. He must have planned every detail during his whispered conversations with Polites on the voyage to Lemnos, knowing that the one man whom Philoctetes revered and respected above all others – and whose command he would obey – was Heracles. Eperitus realised all of this the moment Polites had been swallowed up by the fog, and though the deception did not sit easily on his conscience he could not deny that Odysseus’s foresight had saved their lives. What was more, it had ensured Philoctetes would come back with them to Ilium and bring the end of the war one step closer.

Philoctetes was the first to speak after Polites had gone. He pulled himself up to lean against the nearest boulder, and as he turned to the men below it was no longer the face of a man half deranged by pain and loneliness that stared down at them. Suddenly his eyes seemed full of life, lifted from their despair and given purpose and meaning once more.

‘Odysseus,’ he began, ‘will you help a cripple down from these treacherous rocks? And will one of your men fetch the rest of Philoctetes’s arrows … no, my arrows from the cave above? It is the god Heracles’s command that I return with you to Troy, and it is with pleasure I will fulfil his wish.’

Odysseus and Diomedes ran forward to help him, followed closely by Eperitus and Antiphus. As the kings took Philoctetes by his arms, Antiphus picked up his bow and the clutch of arrows he had brought with him – handling them with reverence – while Eperitus sprang up the rocks towards the mouth of the cave. He passed Eurylochus on the way, still hiding behind the large boulder where he had fallen, though whether out of fear of Philoctetes’s arrows or Odysseus’s wrath Eperitus could not say. He ignored him and quickly reached the entrance to the cave. Here the stench was at its strongest, where Philoctetes had holed himself away for so many years, gnawing on his bitter memories as he waited between the bouts of pain that would paralyse him for long moments at a time. For Eperitus, whose sensitive nostrils were almost overwhelmed by the stink, he felt as if he were standing at the entrance to the Underworld, that place of deepest misery where a man’s soul was condemned to spend infinity in loneliness, forgotten by the rest of the world. Indeed, that was where Philoctetes had been the last ten years of his life. How had he endured such an existence without hurling himself onto the rocks below, Eperitus wondered? And the answer had to be hope – hope of rescue and returning to the world of men. To have taken his own life would have been to have damned himself to an eternity in the halls of Hades, where even hope did not exist.

Eperitus stepped into the darkness and immediately felt something crunch beneath his sandal. Another step brought the same sensation, as if he was walking on small, brittle sticks. Looking down, he saw that the cave floor was carpeted with bones, the scattered skeletons of countless birds that Philoctetes had shot and eaten to eke out his squalid existence. It was like the lair of some ancient beast, and there was no way through except to tread on the littered bones. He carried on, one step at a time, deeper into the gloom until the ceiling of the cave forced him to stoop. Eventually he was able to pick out a pale circle on the floor ahead of him. It was Philoctetes’s bed, made entirely of seagull feathers. They had been compacted down by his weight over the years and the pus from his wound had permeated them so that the stench in that confined space was now unbearable. It took all of Eperitus’s self-discipline not to turn back. Finally, just when he thought he could not bear to take another step, he saw the leather quiver lying on the edge of the bed. Eperitus snatched it up and ran out of the cave.

He stood atop the cascade of boulders and took several lungfuls of the clean sea air. On a clear day he would have been able to see far across the Aegean, and the approach of the Ithacan galley would have been obvious a long time before its arrival. But the fog had shrouded everything, leaving only the tips of treacherous rocks, appearing and disappearing among the white billows like the humps of great sea monsters. Below him, barely distinguishable in the mist, were the figures of the others gathered on the rock shelf. Eperitus swung the quiver onto his shoulder and picked his way down between the tumble of boulders.

The array of expressions he met at the bottom was almost amusing, and were it not for the fact he wanted to vomit from the smell of Philoctetes’s wound, Eperitus would have smiled. Eurylochus looked like a whipped child, his usually ruddy jowls now flushed crimson and his eyes fixed firmly on his sandals. Odysseus, who was normally able to prevent his feelings from spilling out into his features, wore a rigid look that was as much to do with the foul stench of Philoctetes – who he was carrying on his back – as it was his anger with Eurylochus. As for Philoctetes, the archer’s face was as bright as a breastplate as he clung to Odysseus’s shoulders, staring around at the dark cliffs that had been his home for a decade and beaming triumphantly. Antiphus was passing the length of Heracles’s bow up and down through his fingers, his wide eyes oblivious to everything else, while Diomedes was almost green as he tried manfully to hide his nausea in such close proximity to Philoctetes’s foot.