Glyn Iliffe - King of Ithaca (Adventures of Odysseus)

‘Pallas Athena,’ he said aloud, his voice filling the dusty confines of the temple. ‘The journey you sent me on is over. Now the time has come to prove myself in the final battle, as I know you always intended me to. Tomorrow I embark for Ithaca.’

Damastor stood in the shadows at the back of the temple, the torchlight gleaming dully off the drawn blade of his sword. He had removed his sandals and left them outside so that he could enter the temple without making a noise, and now, as his prince knelt before the effigy of the goddess, he took two steps nearer.

Odysseus continued. ‘Mistress, you’ve always guided my spear in battle, as in the hunt. You’ve kept me safe from harm. It was you who saved me from the boar that tore open my thigh, and you who sent Eperitus to aid me in my trials. You made him swear service to me in your presence, after you gave me the gift.’

Damastor had crept two paces closer and was bringing his sword up to hack down on Odysseus’s neck when he heard the strange words. What gift could he be talking about? Was Odysseus suggesting he had seen the goddess? Damastor had heard of such things, though the tales were treated with scepticism and the tellers often mocked. But Odysseus had no one to lie to here.

‘And it is your gift I’m concerned about, mistress.’ Odysseus pulled the clay owl from his pouch and held it up before the figurine. ‘I’ve carried it with me everywhere, and it’s here with me now, but the time is near when I’ll use it to summon your help. Tomorrow I take my men to Ithaca, to win back my father’s kingdom. But you know how weak we are, mistress, how few compared to Eupeithes’s hordes. That’s when I intend to break the seal and pray for your help.’

Damastor looked at the clay owl and his quick mind half-guessed what it was. In an instant he had questioned whether it would work for himself; he considered the possibilities it might offer him after he had plucked it from its dead owner’s fingers; and in his black, ambitious heart he saw himself as the new king of Ithaca, divinely appointed by no less a god than Athena herself.

‘So I ask now that you will be swift to honour your promise to me,’ Odysseus continued. ‘Come quickly into the battle when I call you, mistress, unless every plan and every hope you ever pinned upon me be cut down by a Taphian spear.’

‘Or an Ithacan sword,’ Damastor said, and raised the weapon high over his head.

Eperitus stood up and left the circle about the fire, and as soon as he was out of earshot of the camp he began to run. Following the sound of the river on his left he stumbled like a blind man over the pitted and rock-strewn road, constantly looking up and to his right for sight of a temple on a hill. The light was failing fast and he was beset by fears that he had already passed it, until, after some time of doubt and increasing panic, he was ready to turn back and retrace his steps. Then he saw it.

The very last of the evening light was spread like a purple mould along the low black humps of the mountains. But there in its watery light, barely distinguishable amidst the rocks and twisted figures of leafless trees, was framed the upright silhouette of a building. Despite the darkness he quickly found a path leading up the hillside and began to pick his way along it. But at that moment he was struck by a sudden sense of dread. Looking up he saw, or thought he saw, a figure standing by the temple. It stood between the building’s outline and the stump of a dead tree, the sky burning with purple flames behind it as it looked down the hill. Eperitus froze, not wanting to be seen, but then the figure was gone. He did not see it go and could not say whether it had entered the temple or left it; he was not even certain he had seen it at all. And then panic contracted the muscles of his heart and he knew he must run, run without care for the path or the rocks at his feet, because if he did not Odysseus would be dead.

Even in that blunting darkness, going uphill with his heavy sword in his hand he found a speed he would not have dreamed possible. Instinct took over and it was as if he had been lifted in the hand of a god and carried across the boulders and loose stones. He bounded up the slope to the porch of the temple, where he found Odysseus’s sword and a pair of sandals. The temple had no door and through its open portal, as the last of the sunset disappeared from the evening sky, he could see the glow of torchlight. The sound of a hushed voice drifted out into the night air and brought him back to his senses.

Heedless now of any need for caution, Eperitus ran to the doorway and looked inside. The scene before him froze his blood. He was too late.

Against the far wall Odysseus knelt in prayer before an altar and a rough effigy of Athena. Damastor stood just behind him, his sword raised high above his head and ready to fall. An instant sooner and perhaps he could have done something, but instead he had failed Odysseus and the goddess who had entrusted him to protect his master. But as despair forced his spirit down, it found there was a place beyond which he would not retreat. His self-condemnation clanged against the bronze core of his character, where it found a new resolve. All was not lost, he told himself; not while Odysseus lived.

Something held Damastor’s arm from delivering the fatal blow. At the same time Odysseus’s words were slurred and far away in Eperitus’s hearing. Almost to the surprise of his conscious mind he found himself running into the small room and timing the swing of his own sword to strike Damastor. In that same moment the invisible grip on the traitor’s arm broke and he threw the blade down into a deadly lunge that would cut through the skin, bone and sinew of Odysseus’s neck. Odysseus, finally aware he was not alone, began to turn his head. But Damastor had already failed.

The edge of Eperitus’s sword thumped into his arm above the elbow, the force of the blow biting through flesh and bone to send the lower part of his limb, weapon still gripped in its frozen fingers, spinning through the air into one of the dark corners of the temple. Blood spouted from the maimed stump in sporadic arcs, raining large droplets over Odysseus and the altar at which he prayed. Damastor spun round, partly from the impact of Eperitus’s sword, and looked with wide-eyed disbelief at his butchered limb, and finally at his attacker.

And then the torch went out.

Everything was sucked into the sudden blackness. For a moment Eperitus was blind and disorientated. Robbed of his sight, he froze and retreated back upon his hearing. But the shock of the darkness had imposed an equally confusing silence within the temple, and in that sensual void only the faint hiss of the dead torch and the red glow of its stub gave any point of focus.

There was a scuffing sound close by and Eperitus took a step backwards. By now his eyes were adjusting to the faint light from the doorway and he could see the dim blue outlines of shapes in the temple. Damastor had fallen to his knees, hugging the remnant of his arm to his side and beginning to sob. Eperitus saw Odysseus stand and retreat against the altar.

‘Is that you, Eperitus?’ he whispered.

‘Yes.’

The sword felt heavy in Eperitus’s hand, pulling at the relay muscles in his arm, and for a time he was unsure whether to finish Damastor off or spare his life. Two steps forward and a sweep of the great blade would end for ever his treachery and send his spirit to ignominy in the Underworld. But there was something about the horrific sight of his shattered limb, spraying gore across the altar in a mockery of human sacrifice, that took away any heart Eperitus had for more bloodshed.