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

‘Menestheus, check the guardroom,’ Odysseus said, pointing through the archway.

The Athenian king nodded and led a group of warriors into the shadows. Eperitus’s hearing picked up the sound of blades drawn and muffled grunts, but the lack of any other noise indicated the Trojans within the guardroom had barely had the chance to wake before their souls were released from their bodies.

‘Now what?’ Neoptolemus asked.

‘We wait here and hold the gates until the rest of the army arrive,’ Odysseus replied.

‘Not me. I’m going to find my wife.’

Menelaus finished wiping his blade on the cloak of the guard he had killed, then stood and peered into the shadowy archway that led into the citadel. Odysseus side-stepped into his path, shaking his head.

‘You can’t go to the palace alone. It’s too dangerous. Wait for your brother to arrive.’

‘I mean to find her, Odysseus, and you aren’t going to stop me. I’ve waited too long for this.’

‘Then be patient a little longer –’

Menelaus was not interested. He shouldered his way past Odysseus and then through Menestheus and the other Greeks as they emerged from the archway.

‘You’ll get yourself killed and then this whole war will have been for nothing,’ Odysseus called after him.

‘The gods will protect me,’ Menelaus replied with a growl.

Eperitus laid a hand on Odysseus’s shoulder. ‘We have to go with him.’

‘I promised Agamemnon I’d wait here until he arrived.’

‘Neoptolemus can hold the gates,’ Eperitus urged. He looked at Achilles’s son, who replied with a curt nod. ‘ We need to keep Menelaus safe.’

Odysseus hesitated a moment longer before agreeing.

‘You’re right, of course. But it’s not Menelaus’s safety we should be worried about – it’s Helen’s when he finds her. Come on, then, let’s go after him.’

‘Look at all these throats, just waiting to be cut. And we’re tiptoeing around them as if they were mere babies.’

‘Keep your voice down, Ajax,’ Diomedes whispered, staring over his shoulder at the Locrian. ‘Once the gates are open you can spill as much blood as you like, but not before.’

They were picking their way through scores of Trojan warriors, who had made their beds on the main thoroughfare around a large, makeshift fire. The flames had died away but the red glow of the embers lit up the huddled shapes of the nearest, revealing bearded faces that had put behind them the horrors of war and were at peace. Some shared their blankets with wives, slaves or prostitutes, whose smooth faces were framed by tumbles of dark hair. These were the people who had resisted the Greeks so valiantly and for so long, Diomedes thought, and soon their ten-year struggle would be over. As he had climbed out of the belly of the horse, his sword arm had been eager to go to work – more so because Helen’s mocking words had filled him with an urgent, paranoid desire to get home and reassure himself of his wife’s fidelity while he had been away. But as he saw his sleeping enemies and considered the ignoble end that was approaching them, he was moved to an unusual pity. Though he hated them with a passion for prolonging the siege with their bitter resistance, he had also learned to respect them. They did not deserve to die in their sleep or just startled into wakefulness, fooled by the ruse of a clever trickster. To Diomedes’s mind, slaughter in the darkness lacked the glory of a battle under the blazing sun, in which Troy’s walls were scaled or her gates forced by an army of proud victors. But that army had died with Achilles and Great Ajax. The survivors would do anything to see Troy fall – Diomedes included – even if their own honour fell with it.

Diomedes stepped on an outstretched hand, unable to prevent his weight crushing the Trojan’s knuckles against the hard stone beneath. The man groaned and pulled his arm away. Diomedes’s sword was at his throat in an instant, waiting for the eyes to flicker open and see the dozen armed men standing about him. Instead, the man turned over and draped his arm across the woman at his side.

‘Come on,’ Diomedes hissed to the others.

They navigated their way free of the remaining bodies and looked at the dark mass of the walls, just a short way off now. The dense ceiling of cloud acted like a shroud, choking the city streets in blackness and making it impossible to see whether there were any soldiers on the Scaean Gate or the tower above. Even after a night of drunken victory celebrations it was unlikely there would be no guards at all, so Diomedes decided to approach with caution. He signalled for Philoctetes and Teucer to join him, then, telling the others to wait, led the two archers down to the gates. They crept from doorway to doorway until they reached the corner of a mud hovel, from which they could see the tall wooden portals and the guard tower that had repulsed every attack that had ever been thrown at them. The battlements above the gates had been removed stone by stone – just as Odysseus had said they would be if the horse was to be dragged into the city – leaving a wide, ugly gap in the walls. The gates were firmly shut and barred, though, and in the shadows beneath the tower stood four guards armed with helmets, shields and spears.

‘You see them?’ Diomedes asked.

His companions nodded.

‘We have to take them quietly. If just one of them raises the alarm, the rest of the guard will empty out of the tower and prevent us taking the gates. And if they wake the rest of the city, we’ll never be able to cut our way out again.’

‘We understand,’ said Philoctetes, sliding an arrow from his quiver and fitting it to Heracles’s horn bow. ‘We shoot a man each, then draw another arrow, aim and shoot again before the remaining guards realise what’s happening.’

‘And if we miss with either shot,’ Teucer added, ‘we alert the Trojans, get ourselves massacred and lose the war.’

Diomedes nodded and gave an apologetic shrug. Teucer grinned at him, then knelt, drew two arrows and pushed one into the ground. The other he fitted to his bow, pulling it back to his cheek and aiming along its long black shaft.

‘Back right,’ he whispered.

‘Back left,’ Philoctetes answered, ‘then front left. Now!’

The bowstrings hummed and Diomedes saw the two men closest to the gate jerk and fall. His heart beat fast and his throat thickened as he watched the remaining guards turn in surprise, then run towards their comrades. The bows hummed in unison a second time and the last two Trojans fell on top of the two who had died only moments before them.

‘Shots worthy of Apollo himself,’ Diomedes commented with relief, patting Philoctetes and Teucer on their shoulders. ‘Now stay here while I fetch the others. And shoot anyone who approaches the gates.’

He stood to leave, but a hissed warning from Philoctetes brought him back into the shadows. Once again, both bows sounded. Diomedes stared about in confusion, then caught sight of a body falling from the summit of the tower. It turned once in midair before hitting the ground with a crunch where the other corpses already lay. The Argive king scanned the tower and the broad parapets for more guards, but could see none. Then, with a quick nod of gratitude to the watchful archers, he turned again and headed back to where Little Ajax and the others were waiting. They saw him coming and went to meet him. Together they ran down to the gates, passing the humped shapes of many sleeping Trojans who would never now see the light of dawn. They passed Philoctetes and Teucer, still poised with arrows fitted, and sprinted the final stretch to the gates, as if afraid a company of warriors might leap out at the last moment and block their way. But no-one saw them as they jumped the pile of bodies and reached the wooden doors; no-one heard as they lifted away the bar and let it fall with a crash onto the cobblestones; and no-one cried out as they hauled the heavy portals back on their hinges to reveal the dark landscape beyond. And as they peered out into the gloom, no-one was there to meet them.