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

‘Come on,’ he said to Hecabe, his voice rasping from the dryness in his throat.

They staggered on down the street, grey from the dust and ash, and reached the steps that led up to the ramparts. Odysseus placed a foot on the first step, but Hecabe held back.

‘Not up there,’ she said. ‘Down here.’ She pointed to a shadow-filled alley that ran between two houses to their left. ‘It leads to the temple of Apollo, next to Apheidas’s house.’

Odysseus peered cautiously into the alley. Everything was silent and black, but as he stared he thought he saw a movement, the faintest glimmer of polished metal in the gloom. Pushing Hecabe behind him, he drew his sword.

‘Who’s there?’

He was answered by a roar of anger. A figure dashed at him from the darkness, a blade gleaming in its hand. Odysseus raised his shield, blocking the thrust aimed at his head. He replied with a low sweep of his sword that was met by his attacker’s shield. They swapped more blows and in the confusion Odysseus could hear the man breathing heavily as he manoeuvred for advantage, guessing he was already at the end of his strength. With a grunt, the man swept Odysseus’s sword aside with his half-moon shield and followed by driving his sword at the Ithacan’s throat. It was a skilful attack and might have succeeded, if the arm that delivered it was not already weakened and sluggish. Skipping aside, Odysseus kicked out at his exposed flank and caught the man in the stomach. He cried out in pain and staggered back against the nearest house, the sword falling from his hand. The next instant, Odysseus had him pinned to the wall with the edge of his weapon pressing against the man’s neck.

‘Who are you? Greek or Trojan?’

‘He’s my son,’ answered a voice from further down the alley. ‘Aeneas, prince of the Dardanians. I am King Anchises.’

‘Aeneas?’ Odysseus said with surprise, peering closer at the grimed and bloody face of the man who had attacked him.

‘Kill me if you have to,’ Aeneas replied, his voice weak with exhaustion. ‘You’ll succeed where many have failed and gain your share of glory from it. But spare my father and son, I beg you. And if you’re willing, see them safe to Dardanus and you’ll be rewarded with greater riches than you will find among the pickings of Troy.’

Odysseus lowered his sword.

‘I don’t want your blood, Aeneas. Tell Anchises and your son to come out into the street. I won’t harm them.’

Aeneas spoke in the Trojan tongue and his father, a man as old as Priam but more bent with age, emerged from the alleyway. He was followed by a small boy of perhaps three or four years, who stared at Odysseus with eyes that had already seen immeasurable horrors. Odysseus stepped back from Aeneas and studied him in the fiery half-light reflected downward by the clouds. Judging by his bloodstained armour and the scars on his arms and legs, the Dardanian must already have fought in several battles that evening.

‘Hecabe!’ Aeneas said with delight, noticing the Trojan queen and moving forward to embrace her. ‘Then … then where’s Priam?’

‘Slain,’ she answered. ‘By Achilles’s son. And where is Creusa? Where’s your wife?’

‘Your daughter is lost,’ Aeneas answered, putting his hand to Hecabe’s face as fresh tears fell from her eyes. He turned his stern gaze on Odysseus. ‘So what do you intend to do with us?’

‘You can’t fight your way out, not in your state. But if you surrender, then you, your father and your son will be put to death.’

‘Even little Ascanius?’

Odysseus nodded. ‘Agamemnon’s orders are that every male is to be slaughtered, but I’ve had enough of his slaughter. I’m willing to help you escape, Aeneas, and I know a secret way out.’

Aeneas looked at his father and son. The boy stared back at him with blank eyes, but Anchises slumped back against the nearest wall.

‘I’ve had enough, Son. Let me die here – I’ll only burden you.’

Aeneas shook his head, and, weak though he was, bent down and lifted his father onto his back.

‘Lead the way, Odysseus.’

The Ithacan nodded and led them up the steps to the battlements. A few bodies littered the ramparts, but no living soul stood in their way. To the east, the sky was beginning to lighten with the first hint of dawn, while below them to the west the great bay was filled with the sleek, black shapes of the Greek fleet, illuminated by the flames rising from the city. Signalling for the others to stay close, Odysseus followed the course of the walls to the place Helen had showed him only a few nights before.

‘This is your only hope,’ he said, indicating the hole through which he had escaped with the Palladium. ‘It doesn’t smell pleasant, but it’s only a short drop to the rock shelf below and from there you’ll be able to find your way to cover on the banks of the Simöeis. You should go, too, Hecabe.’

The old woman shook her head.

‘I won’t add to Aeneas’s load. Besides, I can’t leave without knowing whether any of my sons or daughters have survived. I will remain with you and let the gods decide my fate.’

Aeneas lowered his father from his back and peered down the hole in the alcove that acted as a latrine for the guards. He wrinkled his nose at the smell, then looked back at the burning city and listened to the shouts and screams still rising from it.

‘It’s better than going back into that nightmare,’ he said. ‘But I have one question before we part, Odysseus. We’ve been enemies for ten years, and if we’d met on the plains you would have done your best to kill me, and I you. So why are you helping me now?’

‘I’ve been responsible for the deaths of too many brave men already,’ Odysseus replied, ‘and not all of them honourably. It was because of me that Great Ajax killed himself. I’ve contrived the deaths of others, too, just to shorten this war and be able to go home. Worst of all, I’ve even dared to defy the gods so I can see my family again. These things must be atoned for, Aeneas, and maybe by helping you I’m taking the first step on a long journey back to virtue. Perhaps you will plant a new Troy – here in the ruins of the old or somewhere far away, but one that will last a thousand years and with a people that will preserve the honour of their ancestors. I don’t think that would be a bad thing. But now you must go, before the sun rises and exposes you to unwanted eyes.’

Cassandra lay between the feet of the statue of Athena, where the Palladium had once rested before the Greeks had stolen it. She was curled up in a ball, crying like a child as the sounds of murder and rape echoed around her from the walls of the temple. All night she had lain there, hiding from the drunken taunts of the Trojan revellers and yet fearing the moment when their celebrations would end and the belly of the great horse would open. And there she had remained, even when the dreaded clamour of destruction began to slowly filter through the closed doors of the temple. What else could she do? Her instincts had told her to run and hide, but her inner-vision told her there was no point. The thing that was destined to happen to her would happen here – Apollo’s prophetic gift had revealed it to her in all its horrific detail. There had been a time when she had tried to change the course of her visions, but the outcomes were always the same. Exactly as she had pictured them through the dark prism of her second sight.

And so she had waited, trembling with fear and stiff with the hard coldness of the stone. She had flinched when the doors of the temple had burst open and women and their crying children had come flocking inside, and yet she had not moved. And none had seemed to notice her, a small bundle of black clothing at the foot of Athena’s statue. Perhaps they had thought her dead, or more likely they had not cared for anything other than what their own fate would be. They soon found out. The crash of bronze from the portico, the shouts of dying men – a fight more ferocious than any on the battlefields of the previous ten years, as Trojans fought in defence of their families. The awful chattering of weapons had entered the temple, and from some of the female screams that followed Cassandra knew they had taken their own lives rather than be captured. And now, with the Trojan men overwhelmed, came the sounds of what it meant to be captured. Boys put to the sword. Girls screaming as their mothers and older sisters were brought down beneath packs of laughing soldiers. The sound of clothes being torn, men grunting and women sobbing. And then, at last, the thing she had foreseen happened.