Heroes

6

Myrsilus thought that his last day had come when he saw armed Trojans in such a far-off land. But the Chnan had no fear and he approached the new arrivals, mingling among them, watching and listening to try to understand why they were there.

It was evident that the village chieftain and the man who seemed to be the chief of the Trojans did not understand each other, but that they had become accustomed to communicating using gestures, and even the Chnan could understand these gestures well.

‘I think,’ he told Myrsilus later, ‘that the foreigners want to remain here. They are prepared to exchange bronze for wheat, milk and meat for the winter, and seeds for the spring. They want to settle down in this land.’

‘When Diomedes finds out he will march here with his men and wipe them all out! I am certain he wants no Trojans in the land in which he will found his new kingdom.’

‘Then don’t tell him,’ answered the Chnan. ‘We cannot wage war in these swamps, in this bitter cold, and those wretches mean no harm. They’re just trying to survive the winter. When the seasons change they will sow wheat and, if they manage to harvest it, a new people will be born, in a new land, under a new sky. Let the seeds take root, warrior. This land is big enough to nourish many peoples.’

‘Perhaps you are right, Chnan. There’s only one thing I do not understand; why it is deserted. If we were in the land of the Achaeans, there would be at least six or seven villages in the land that stretches from here to the sea. Here we’ve found nothing but these four huts in an entire day’s journey. And no more, as far as the eye can see.’

‘You’re right. Perhaps the land is inhospitable, perhaps it is infested with wild beasts. Perhaps the people who lived here were driven away by famine or killed off by a plague. Man persists in living everywhere, even if the earth doesn’t want him. Do you know that there are men who inhabit the great sands, where not a blade of grass grows? And men that live in lands covered with ice? But the earth, sooner or later, frees itself of men like a dog scratches off fleas. Perhaps it is best that we rest now. Tomorrow morning we will have to start off for the ships before dawn, or your king will set off looking for us and get all of us into a fine mess.’

‘What about our comrades out there on the plain? They have no shelter; they’ll die of cold when the frost sets in.’

‘I’ll go tell them to come here with us. There’s plenty of room.’

‘No,’ said Myrsilus. ‘Someone must remain outside the village in case something happens.’

‘I understand,’ said the Chnan. ‘I’ll go. .’ He took a pile of pelts from one of the corners and stole away, disappearing into the darkness. He returned not long after. The Trojan camp was lit up by a few scattered fires. The village was just barely illuminated by the ash-covered embers that still burned in the centre of the main clearing.

As he groped around for the entrance to the hut, he felt a heavy hand fall on his shoulder. He spun around and saw that it was one of the women who had looked with longing at the goods he had set out. No one had offered to exchange pelts or food for an amber-beaded clasp for her. But she knew she had something even more precious that perhaps the foreign merchant would appreciate: herself. Tall and buxom, her blonde hair fell loose on her shoulders and a leather cord decorated with bits of bone adorned her white neck.

She smiled at him and the Chnan smiled back. Small and dark he was, and with his short, curly hair he seemed like little more than a boy next to her. She slipped a hand under his tunic to feel for a trinket that she liked, taking his right hand at the same time and placing it on her breast. The Chnan was flooded by a heat he had not felt since he had left his land; he felt like a boy reaching out to gather ripe clusters of grapes from the vine. He put his other hand under her gown and he realized she wore nothing underneath; it was like caressing the soft down of a newborn lamb. He kissed her avidly, and it felt like sucking a honeycomb at high noon in the fragrant mountains of Lebanon.

She left him leaning against the wall of the hut, exhausted, walking away with the supple, solemn roll of a mare and the Chnan realized that he had made the best deal of his entire life. Even if she had carried away all the wealth he had laced under his tunic, what he had had in exchange was worth as much as a herd of horses, as a load of cedar wood, as a caravan of mules laden with all the copper in Sinai.

He entered the hut and by the dim light of a wick stuck in tallow took stock of what was left to him. Oh virtuous woman! The girl had taken nothing but a clasp with three beads of coloured glass, one yellow, one red and one white, streaked blue. In the dark her fingers had recognized what her eyes had desired by the light of sunset.

‘Did you see them?’ asked Myrsilus’s voice in the dark.

‘I did not see much but I felt the earth shake. .’ answered the Chnan as if talking in his sleep.

Two hard, woody hands threw him against the wall. ‘I asked you if you’d seen our comrades,’ repeated Myrsilus, and his voice was a low growl.

The Chnan regained his wits: ‘I did see them and they were dying of cold. Now they’re fine. Better than before, without a doubt. Calm down, warrior, let us get some sleep as well.’

Myrsilus was placated and lay down once again on his mat, pulling up a cover made of sheepskins sewn together. The warmth was soothing, and sleep descended rapidly on his eyelids, but he was soon saddened by anguished dreams. He realized that he had left his homeland for a cold, muddy place where the sky and the ground were always sodden, as if it had just rained or were about to rain. Even his king was changing; he was shedding his splendour with each passing day. The days of Ilium were distant, as if centuries had passed since they had left the shores of the Hellespont.

It was the Chnan who woke him, shortly before dawn. They took their things and left without making a sound. At their backs, a pale sun illuminated a group of hills that rose from the plains like islands in the sea. Myrsilus had not noticed them before, and he had the sensation that they had emerged overnight. And perhaps that is what happened.

They reached their comrades outside the village and they took the road of return towards the sea.

‘The Trojans are not alone,’ said the Chnan abruptly. ‘There are others with them, who followed them across the sea.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Myrsilus.

‘I had awoken before you. I wanted to say farewell to a girl; I owed her a gift. She’s the one who told me.’

‘Who are these people?’

‘Enet, I think. They’re called Enet.’

Myrsilus continued on his way for a while without speaking, as if he were trying to recall something.

‘Enetians,’ he said.

‘What?’ asked the Chnan.

‘Perhaps they are Enetians. A nation allied with the Trojans. Fine combatants, both with spears and with bows. They were almost always drawn up on the left wing; they faced the Cretans of King Idomeneus and Ulysses’s Cephallenians. I never met them myself. I wonder what they’re doing here. And I also wonder why they’re with the Trojans. The gods are truly persecuting us; they have cursed us.’

‘Don’t you know how many peoples have abandoned their settlements in these past years? Didn’t you ever notice those strange lights in the sky when we were out to sea? No man alive has ever heard of or seen such a thing, I’m certain of it. And I’m sure that all this means something, although I don’t know what.’

‘If only the seer Calchas were with us!’ said Myrsilus. ‘He would know how to interpret these signs, and he would know what they meant.’

They journeyed that whole day without seeing a soul, and towards evening came within sight of their camp. Myrsilus reported to the king, telling him everything they had seen without making mention of the Trojans. He did not want to march back inland and start up a war again that he hoped finished for ever. He could not know that it was only a sign, and that a man can not escape the destiny that the gods have placed on his scale.

His comrades offered the food given to them by the villagers and someone lit a fire for their evening meal. There were fish from the sea as well, and partridges and teals that some of the men had downed with their bows.

The sun was setting over the plain and a mist was rising from the ground, looking something like a cloud, a milky foam crossed by whitish streaks. It veiled the sun, and everything that was near the ground was swallowed up within it. The men looked around in dismay. Not even the king, Diomedes the hero, knew what to do or what to tell them.

After a while, only the tips of the tallest poplars emerged from that shapeless expanse that fluttered like a veil. Sounds were muffled and even the birds called to each other with weak laments. A heron, passing over their heads in slow, solemn flight, vanished all at once into the void.

‘What is this?’ the king asked the Chnan. ‘You who have seen so many lands, can you tell me what this is?’

‘I’ve never seen anything like this, wanax,’ said the Chnan, ‘but I think it may be a cloud. I have met men who come from the land of the Urartu where the mountains pierce the clouds, and they have told me that it is like this inside a cloud. But I cannot explain why the clouds weigh on the ground in this land instead of sailing in the sky. It is a strange land indeed.’

When darkness fell nothing could be seen at all, and the men stayed very close together for fear of losing their bearings, and kept the fire burning that whole night. Diomedes thought that that land must be similar to Hades, and perhaps he believed that he had truly reached the limits of the other world, but he neither trembled nor sought to flee. He knew that only heroes and Zeus’s favoured sons can face that which is impossible for all others.

He lay down on his bearskin and covered himself with a fleece. Myrsilus slept nearby.

At dawn the next day, Diomedes gave orders to set sail and the fleet began to navigate slowly through the mist that steamed on the surface of the water, amidst the cane thickets on the shore and the little woody islands that cropped up on the sea.

They advanced in this way for most of the day, when suddenly, they all thought they had heard calls of some sort.

‘What was that?’ asked the men at the oars.

‘I don’t know, but it’s best to stop,’ replied Myrsilus.

The king agreed and went to the bow to scan the foggy expanse in front of them. The other ships stopped as well and the splashing of the oars ceased. In that complete silence, the calls sounded more clearly and then long rostrated ships emerged from the mist slowly, like ghosts. A standard with the head of a lion stood tall at one of the bows, and a red cloth hung loose on the mast.

Telephus, the Hittite slave, approached the king. ‘Peleset pirates,’ he said. ‘They must have got lost in this accursed cloud. Let’s hope they don’t attack us.’

‘Why?’ said the king. ‘I do not fear them.’

‘It’s best to avoid clashing with them,’ said Myrsilus, who had handed the helm over to one of the men. ‘We have nothing to gain, and much to lose. Since they’ve seen us, we must speak with them. The Chnan surely knows their language. Have him come.’

The king nodded and the Chnan succeeded in arranging an encounter. The Peleset flagship and Diomedes’s ship both left their formations and met half-way. They manoeuvred slowly with oars and helm until they were nearly touching, side to side. The Peleset chief and King Diomedes, both armed and carrying a spear in their right hands, faced one another.

‘Tell him to let us pass,’ said Diomedes, ‘and we will do them no harm.’

‘The heavens have sent you, powerful lord,’ said the Chnan instead, ‘to free me from indescribable suffering.’

‘I am glad you speak my language,’ said the Peleset. ‘We’ll have no difficulty understanding one another. Tell him to turn over everything he has and we will spare your lives.’

‘The chief pays you his respects,’ translated the Chnan, turning to Diomedes, ‘and he asks if you have wheat or barley to sell him. They are short on food.’ Then, without waiting for an answer, he turned again to the Peleset chief: ‘If you want my personal advice, you’d best attack these people immediately, because the rest of the fleet will be here at any moment; thirty battle ships loaded with warriors are close behind us. This is just the advance guard. In exchange for this information, I beg of you, take me as your slave! These people are savage and cruel. They have sown death and destruction wherever they have passed, burning down villages and setting whole cities aflame! They subject me to the worst of torments for the mere pleasure of ill-treating a poor wretch. With my own eyes I have seen my master, this man here, at my side,’ he continued, indicating Diomedes, ‘rip the beating heart out of his enemy’s chest and devour it avidly. Free me, I beseech you, and you will not regret it.’

The Peleset chief was dumbfounded, and in Diomedes’s stern gaze he thought he saw all of the terrible things that the slave had warned him of. ‘You can die for all I care,’ he said to the Chnan. ‘We’re going our own way.’

‘We have no food to sell him,’ said Diomedes.

‘Of course, wanax, I took the liberty of giving him this answer, already knowing what you would say. They’ll be off on their own way now.’

The Peleset ships paraded past them, one after another, about twenty in all. They turned to the right, heading south. The fog was thickening again and the damp chilled them all to the bone. The last Peleset vessel passed at just a short distance from them, but before it was swallowed up into the mist they heard someone shout from the deck: ‘Achaeans! I am Lamus, son of Onchestus, Spartan. I was made a slave in Egypt! Remember me!’ His words were followed by the sound of blows, moaning and then silence.

Diomedes started: ‘Gods!’ he said, ‘an Achaean like us in such a distant land. . and Peleset. .’

‘And Trojans, and Enetians. .’ said Myrsilus.

Diomedes spun around to face him: ‘What did you say?’

‘There were Trojans and Enetians in the village we visited last night.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me? I could make you pay dearly for lying to me.’

‘Not a lie, wanax, silence. I waited until now to tell you. If I had told you then you would have launched an attack.’

‘Certainly. They are our enemies.’

‘Not any more, wanax. The war is over.’

‘Only when I say so. Did you recognize anyone? Aeneas? Had he been there, would you have recognized him?’

‘Of course, wanax.. But he was not among them. Their chief was an older man with grey hair, but his beard was still dark and his black eyebrows thick. Tall, with slightly bent shoulders. .’

‘Antenor,’ murmured Diomedes. ‘Perhaps you saw Antenor. It was Ulysses who asked Agamemnon to spare him the night of the fall of Troy because Antenor had treated him with respect and had given him hospitality when he had gone that first time to ask Priam to give Helen back. But why here? What does he seek in this land?’

The Chnan drew closer: ‘Something terrible must have happened. Perhaps a war greater than the one you fought, perhaps a gigantic battle, or some cataclysm. The Peleset would never have ventured so far! Those Trojans must have known, and have chosen to seek out a place far away from everything, a tranquil and solitary place.’

‘Do you have orders to give me, wanax?’ asked Myrsilus.

‘We’ll go forward, but stop as soon as you find a suitable place. If we can, we’ll try to free that wretch. Those ships can’t be too far.’

They proceeded until darkness fell, without ever sighting the Peleset fleet. They moored their ships on the beach of a sandy island, low on the surface of the sea, and lit a fire. The coast of the continent was very close. The king called Myrsilus: ‘They must be anchored somewhere near here, on the mainland. Go aground with a group of selected men and see if you can liberate that Spartan. Take the Chnan with you; he understands their language and he’ll be useful to you. I don’t want you to suffer any losses; if the endeavour proves too difficult, turn back.’

As the others went ashore on the island, Myrsilus and the men he had chosen walked to the mainland; since the water was so shallow at that point, they were no more than knee-deep. A breath of wind was picking up from the sea, dispelling the fog and letting a little moonlight through. Myrsilus had never seen such a land in all his days; the coast was a vast expanse of fine white sand that sparkled in the pale glow of the moon. The waves swept across the wide beach and then withdrew with a gurgling sound. Here and there were gigantic trunks, abandoned on the waterline, stretching their enormous skeletal arms towards the sky.

‘There must be a great river near here,’ said the Chnan.

‘Why?’ asked Myrsilus.

‘Those trunks. Only a great river can uproot such colossal trees and drag them to the sea, where the waves wash them back to the shore.’

Myrsilus was once again astonished at the wisdom of this foreigner that they had rescued from the sea; all he knew must come from having journeyed so far and having met diverse peoples with different languages. They walked and walked, so far that the moon had risen by nearly a cubit at the horizon; finally, at the end of a small bay, they saw the Peleset fleet at anchor. The place was completely deserted and there were only a couple of sentinels standing guard near a small campfire. Every so often one of them would break some dry branches from a trunk lying on the sand to add to the fire. Myrsilus and the Chnan crept close, so close that they could hear the crackling of the fire and the voices of the two sentinels.

‘How can we find the man we’re looking for?’ asked the Chnan. ‘We can’t search the ships one by one.’

‘You’re right,’ said Myrsilus. ‘The only way is to make ourselves heard.’

‘But then they’ll all be upon us!’

‘No, not if something is keeping them busy.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like their fleet catching fire.’ The Chnan widened his eyes and shook his head incredulously. Myrsilus turned to his comrades: ‘You go that way, to the edge of the forest, and lure the sentinels away from the fire, then kill them. We’ll take firebrands in the meantime and go set fire to the ships. When the confusion is at its peak, I’ll call him out and we’ll all meet up at the big dry trunk. If you are careful and do as I say, none of us will die, and we will have liberated a long-suffering comrade.’

A small group of men went off towards the woods; soon after there was a sound of branches being broken, followed by the close beating of wings and a loud rustling.

The sentinels turned and stopped talking, straining to hear. More noise, and the two Peleset each took a brand and headed to where the sounds were coming from; presumably a wild animal was roaming about their camp, since the place seemed completely deserted and uninhabited.

As soon as they had left the halo of light of the fire, Myrsilus and his comrades seized blazing firebrands and rushed off towards the ships. They ran barefooted on the sand like shadows, without making any noise at all. Each chose his ship and set fire to it. The pitch and caulking pressed into the seams of the planks ignited immediately. Flames licked at the hulls and dense spirals of smoke curled upward. The two sentinels turned back to raise the alarm but they were stricken down at once by the men hiding in the wood.

In just a few moments, four of the ships were completely enveloped by the blaze. The men sleeping on board flung themselves out through a barrier of flames, yelling for help. Their comrades rushed from the other ships, carrying jugs and buckets of water to douse the flames.

In that confusion of blood-red light and crazed shadows, Myrsilus raised a cry in the language of the Achaeans, knowing that only one man aboard would be able to understand him. He shouted: ‘Spartan! Join us at the dry tree trunk at the seashore!’ In that chaos of cries and laments, Myrsilus’s words floated like the peak of a mountain above the clouds of a storm and Lamus, son of Onchestus, heard them.

He jumped ship and began to run towards the burning vessels where, amidst all the uproar, he slipped away from the area illuminated by the raging fire and took shelter in the darkness, by the great dry trunk. He looked around, seeking the voice that had called him; he saw no one and feared he had imagined the whole thing. As he was about to return to his destiny, a voice rang out behind him: ‘We are Argives and we heard your voice. We have come to free you.’

Lamus embraced them one by one, sobbing like a baby. He could not believe that he had escaped the grievous destiny already marked out for him. Myrsilus urged them all to leave that place at once and to rejoin their comrades, but before they started their march, he was seized by doubt. He felt he had to make the freed Spartan understand that the fate awaiting him might be worse than any he had faced up until then.

‘Before you join us, consider what you are doing; you are still in time, surely no one will have noticed your escape. You must understand,’ said he, ‘that we shall never again return to Argos and the land of the Achaeans. We fled our homeland where betrayal awaited us, and here we seek a new land where we can settle and found a new kingdom for our king, Diomedes, son of Tydeus, victor of Thebes of the Seven Gates and of Troy.’

‘Diomedes?’ said the Spartan and his voice trembled. ‘Oh gods. . oh gods of the heavens! I fought with you in the fields of Ilium. I was with Menelaus.’

‘Then think about it, I tell you. If you remain with those pirates perhaps you will return home some day, perhaps someone will pay your ransom. It was a storm that drove them here; they have not come of their own free will. We instead have come here to stay. Forever.’

The man was struck by those words. He turned towards the Peleset ships and his face lit up with their scarlet glow. Then he turned towards Myrsilus and his face was sundered by the darkness, as were his thoughts.

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘For you, I am a man, a comrade. Anything is possible for a free man. I thank you for having faced all this danger for me.’

They set off in haste and did not notice that behind them a wounded man was dragging himself through the sand; it was one of the two sentinels whom the men had attacked after luring him away from the campfire. He was bloodied, but alive, and he had seen everything.

Myrsilus and his comrades began to sprint along the beach, and when they were out of danger, past the little promontory that closed off the bay, they looked back. The burning ships were destroyed; all that was left of them were their fiery masts which sank sizzling into the dark water. Around them, many tiny black shapes scurried in every direction, like ants whose nest has been devastated by the farmer’s hoe.

The king awaited them, standing vigil at the fire, alone. All of the other comrades, done in by their hard labour at the oars, had succumbed to sleep in the ships, or stretched out on the sandy beach. When he heard the men splashing through the shallow water that separated the beach from the island, he went out to meet them.

‘We’ve brought back a Spartan,’ said Myrsilus. ‘The one who made his voice heard in the midst of the fog. We told him that perhaps he would be better off staying with the Peleset, but he decided to join us nonetheless.’

The man advanced towards the fire, then threw himself at Diomedes’s feet and kissed his hand: ‘I thank you, wanax, for having liberated me,’ he said. ‘I fought at Ilium as you did, and I never would have thought I would see other Achaeans in this desolate place, in this land at the ends of the earth.’

They remained near the fire at length, and Lamus told of how he had ended up in Egypt. During a great battle, he had fallen into the sea grasping on to a piece of flotsam. He was fished up by the Peleset, who intended to sell him in the first city they landed at. But the wind had pushed them north for days and days until they had ended up in that sad, dreary place.

‘What do the Peleset plan to do?’ asked Diomedes.

‘They want to return to their home territory, but they fear facing the winter sea. Perhaps they will seek a place where they can pull their ships aground, where they can find food and water to drink until the season changes.’

‘Your king. .’ Diomedes asked again, ‘King Menelaus. . did he survive?’

‘He was alive when I last saw him, but I have heard nothing more since then. Oh wanax, the gods blew us out to the sea, and our small vessels were tossed to and fro, on to the shores. . the gods toy with our lives like a boy playing in a pond who pushes his boat back out whenever the waves bring it close to shore. .’

‘The shore. .’ said Myrsilus. ‘Perhaps there are no longer shores where we can land. In this place the water, the earth and the sky are all mixed together. We are returning to Chaos.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Diomedes. ‘Are you afraid, helmsman?’

‘No,’ replied Myrsilus. ‘I feel no fear. Grief, sorrow. . melancholy, perhaps. Not fear. It’s as if we were fleeing from life, descending into Hades before our time and without a reason.’

The king turned again towards the Spartan: ‘What do you know of this land?’ he asked. ‘And of its inhabitants, if there are any?’

‘Very little, wanax. In the many days we’ve navigated here we’ve never seen another human being. Those who were sent inland reported that there is, first, a thick, nearly impenetrable forest of pine and oak to cross, populated by boars and huge wild bulls, but then an open plain as vast as the sea beyond. I know no more than this.’

The Chnan approached their Spartan guest and asked: ‘Did you see the strange signs in the sky as well? What did the Peleset have to say about them?’ A shiver of fear was visible in the man’s eyes. ‘Did you see them?’ insisted the Chnan.

‘We saw them. The Peleset tell a story that they learned from an old man who lives in a hut in the forest.’

Silence fell, and they could hear the heavy breathing of the men sleeping inside the ships and the light murmur of the tide lapping at the sand.

‘What story?’ asked the king.

‘The old man stayed with them nearly three months, but I do not know how well he managed to learn their language. He too had seen the strange lights in the sky, and he spoke of a terrible thing that wiped out the inhabitants who lived on the plain, one village after another. He claimed that the chariot of the Sun had fallen to earth not far from here, near the great river.’

‘The chariot of the Sun? What kind of a story is that?’ protested the Chnan. ‘The chariot of the Sun is still in its place and every day crosses the vault of the sky from east to west.’

‘Maybe they saw something similar to the sun falling on to the earth. The old man spoke of a specific place, not far from the mouth of the great river, but no one has dared to go near there. The waters of the swamp boil up, incomprehensible sounds are heard. Laments, like the weeping of women, fill the night. .’

Another long silence followed, broken by the solitary screech of a scops owl in the distance. The Chnan started: ‘Someone may have mistaken the cry of a night animal for the shrieking of mysterious creatures. This land breeds ghosts.’

‘We will soon learn what land we’ve reached,’ said the king sharply, ‘and we’ll know whether the chariot of the Sun has truly fallen into these swamps.’ He raised his eyes to the ship which transported his weapons and his horses. ‘I can harness the divine horses to that chariot, the only ones who could draw it. .’ There was blind, stubborn conviction in his voice. ‘But we must sleep now,’ he added. ‘The nights are long, but the dawn is no longer far off.’

They lay down near the fire, leaving a sentinel to stand guard, but the king was pensive. The cry of the owl seemed even sadder now, in that immense silent night, and reminded him of when as a boy that screeching would keep him alert in the palace of Tiryns as he stared out open-eyed into the endless darkness. That boy believed that there were creatures whose eyes were made to see in the gloom, creatures with eyes of darkness who saw the other half of the world, the half that the sun never visited. But those were times in which he thought he saw centaurs descend from the mountains in the golden twilight, and chimeras flying among the rocky gorges with shrill screams. Now he felt those empty eyes staring at his men and at his ships from the wooded shore on the mainland, and he was afraid, as he had been then, long ago.

The next day they resumed their journey. Myrsilus made a wide turn towards the open sea to avoid engaging the remaining ships of the Peleset fleet in battle. Towards midday, they met with a rather strong eastern wind and so he hoisted sail and hauled back towards land. The sky was covered with clouds and the air was biting cold but the sea was calm and made for clear sailing. All at once the look-out at the prow shouted that he could see something which looked like the mouth of a river. Myrsilus had a jug dipped into the water; when it was full, he hoisted it aboard and tasted the water with his finger: ‘It’s fresh water, wanax,’ he said, handing the jug to Diomedes. ‘We’ve reached the mouth of the Eridanus!’

‘I told you that I would bring you to a new land,’ said the king. ‘It is here that we shall stop and build a new city.’ He asked the helmsman if the wind was strong enough to allow the ship to sail upstream.

‘Yes, wanax,’ replied Myrsilus. ‘I think so.’

‘Then let us go,’ said the king.

He took a cup and filled it with strong red wine, the same that he would drink before battle in the fields of Ilium. He poured it into the river current, saying: ‘I offer you this libation, oh god of the waters of Eridanus. We have fled our homeland, after suffering all that men can suffer in a long war. We seek a new land and a new era and a new life. Show us your favour, I beseech you.’ He threw the precious silver cup into the water as well; Anassilaus had melted it and engraved it with supreme art one day long ago at Lemnos, never imagining how far away it would end up.

He went to Lamus, son of Onchestus, the Spartan that Myrsilus had freed from slavery: ‘Could you recognize the place where the old man said he had seen the Sun fall?’

‘I think so. But why do you want to know?’

‘If we want to remain here, I must know every secret of this land. You show me the place, as soon as you see it, and do not fear.’

The ship began to sail up the river; it was immense, so wide that the banks could barely be seen from the centre of the current, and the tallest oaks seemed mere shrubs.

‘A river like this receives many rivers, and descends from mountains as high as the sky, always covered with ice, in the winter and in the summer, higher than the mountains of Elam and Urartu,’ said the Hittite slave, Telephus.

‘You are right,’ said the king. ‘And perhaps one day we shall see them.’ The wind picked up from the west and north, and the ships had to counter its thrust with their helms, so as not to run aground on the river’s southern shore. They crossed a dense forest from which immense flocks of birds would suddenly rise, blocking out the pale autumn sun like a cloud, and then finally entered the open plain. Every so often they would meet with big wooded islands whose gigantic trees stretched out their branches to touch the surface of the water. Every puff of wind snatched a host of brightly coloured leaves from those branches; yellow, red and ochre, they whirled through the air before alighting on the current.

To their left and right, instead, the land was bare, with scattered groups of trees here and there. The Spartan pointed to a place in which a branch of the river broke off from the main current, crossed a large pool and then headed south towards the sea. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘this is the place the old man told us about; where the pond water is sparkling.’

Diomedes ordered them to stop the ships. One after another they furled the sails and cast anchor. The king armed himself with only a sword and set off on foot, taking a small group of warriors inland with him: Licus, Eumelus, Driop and Evenus, all from Argos, as well as Crissus and Dius of Tiryns.

The sun was already low, and transformed the still water of the marshes into mirrors of gold. They would stop every so often and listen: silence, everywhere, wringing their hearts and chilling their souls. They had never felt anything similar, not even in the midst of the fiercest fray on the field of battle. Even the birds were still and all they could hear were the small sudden thuds of the frogs jumping into the water.

They advanced as far as the shore of the pond and Diomedes signalled for his men to wait under an oak that stretched its bare branches towards the water. He went on alone, as the dusky light dimmed and the sun sank into the mist that veiled the horizon.

He stopped all at once, vaguely sensing that the place was infested by a powerful, dark presence; he glanced back at his men, who had so often faced death on the open field. They were glancing about helplessly, seized with dismay.

Just then he thought he heard something: a sound, or a moan, perhaps, was that the voice that Lamus, son of Onchestus, had spoken of? The cry of wailing women? He looked at the surface of the waves and heard the sound even more distinctly. It was a wail, yes, a chorus of weeping as if many women were grieving over the slain bodies of their sons or brothers or husbands. Diomedes the hero sought the voice of his own mother in that chorus, the voice of Aigialeia, his lost bride, but he could not hear them. He drew even closer to the pond which had swallowed up the chariot of the Sun and he saw a shiver run over the water although the wind had calmed and the air was still and stagnant. And as the sky darkened the surface of the pool stretched and curved as if pushed upward by the back of a monster. To his left the sun disappeared with a last tremor of light and the sky suddenly blackened above the pale layer of fog. A gurgling rose from the pool and beneath the surface, deprived of its golden reflection, Diomedes could see a shape, like a wheel. . the wheel of the chariot of the Sun? The water gurgled again and the wheel dissolved in the rippling waves. Diomedes turned towards his companions: ‘I don’t need you any longer,’ he said. ‘But I’m going to stay here, I want more time.’

‘Come back to camp with us, wanax,’ pleaded the men. ‘These are unknown lands.’

‘Go,’ repeated Diomedes. ‘This place is deserted, can’t you feel that? Nothing can harm me, and the goddess Athena will watch over me.’

The men departed and the rustling of their passage through the swamp reeds could be heard for a while, until silence descended once again over the pond. The hero leaned against the trunk of a colossal willow that wet its branches in the water. The ground had become as dark as the sky.

Time passed and the cold become pungent but he continued to stare at the surface of the water, black as a burnished mirror. He had nearly decided to return to the ships when he saw a pale flash of light animate the bottom of the swamp. He turned his eyes to the sky, thinking that the moon had emerged from behind a bank of clouds, but he saw nothing. The light was emanating from the bottom of the pool. The surface of the water arched again, becoming a dark globe which covered something that continued to remain invisible. The hero could not believe his eyes. The water did not fall; it adhered to the bulging beneath like a fluttering cloak. The light flashed again, stronger and brighter, and struck the clouds of the sky which quivered as if pervaded by lightning in a storm. These were the lights that had accompanied them since they had left the land of the Achaeans, sailing over the sea, these were the unexplainable flashes that had frightened the men at the oars and filled the helmsmen with wonder. He was afraid to stare at the light, which now seemed directed towards him. How could his body resist a bolt that could penetrate the clouds of the sky? The light darted now from the hub of the wheel like a sunburst, and when the ray struck him, the veils that prevent us from seeing that which has existed before us and that which will exist after us, fell suddenly from his eyelids. The hero saw, as if in a dream, the origin of his life and of his human adventure.

He saw the war of the Seven against Thebes; he could distinctly hear the neighing of the horses and the cries of the warriors. It was there, in that blind massacre, that everything began. War of brother against brother, blood of the same father and of the same mother. He saw his own father, Tydeus, scaling the walls and hurling the defenders down from the bastions, one after another. Shouting, shouting louder and louder for his comrades to join him and follow him. It was at that moment that the spear of Melanippus, flung with great force, stuck into his belly. And his father, Tydeus the hero, ripped the spear from his flesh, holding the bowels that burst from the wide wound with his left hand, while with the other he whirled the mighty two-edged axe. Melanippus took no care — how could a dying man find the strength to harm him? — and the great axe was whirled and then flew through the air. It fell on his neck, cleanly chopping his head off.

His mutilated body collapsed to the ground shaking and kicking but his head rolled away, far from the bastions, and ended up between the feet of the warriors facing off in frenzied battle. Diomedes’s father, Tydeus, dragged himself over the stone, leaving a long wake of blood; he reached the severed head of Melanippus, seized it and bashed it on the stone with both his hands, forcefully, until he split open the robust skull. He neared his mouth and devoured the still warm brain. And the goddess Athena who had rushed to aid him, to heal his wound, turned away in horror, closing her eyes so she would not see. Tydeus died alone, breathing the last breath of life on that stone, far from his bride and his son. The goddess shouted out with her eyes closed and full of tears: ‘This is your stock, Diomedes! This is your race and your blood!’

Diomedes turned and shouted out himself: ‘Did you see that? Did you hear?’ But he had forgotten that his companions had all gone. He himself had ordered them to go.

The mysterious power that loomed in those waters forced him to look again into the rays of light. And he saw Amphiaraus, the father of his friend Sthenelus, fleeing on his chariot, fleeing over the plains in a cloud of dust, whipping his horses cruelly, fleeing Thebes to flee the Fate of death.

But the earth suddenly opened beneath the hooves of the horses and the infernal Furies emerged, spouting flames from their mouths; their hair was woven with poisonous serpents, their eyes veined with blood, their skin red and scaly. They grabbed the reins of his fiery horses — who tried desperately to get free, rearing up and neighing wildly — but the Furies dragged them under the ground, and Amphiaraus with them. The voice said: ‘And this is the race of Sthenelus, the blood of your faithful friend!’

‘Sthenelus!’ shouted Diomedes. ‘Where is he? Where is he?’

But there was no answer. He knew in the bottom of his heart that Sthenelus was dead, long dead; he had felt his vital force vanish from the world like smoke, like the vapour of the morning mist is dispersed by the sun.

He collapsed against the tree and said: ‘Oh god, you who inhabit these waters and make the clouds throb with your gaze, I have seen what was. I have seen that the blood of my race is like poison. Now let me see what will be. If there is still a way to bend a bitter destiny.’

He mustered up his courage and advanced to the edge of the pond. He stood still in its blinding light. The globe trembled and the water which covered it began slowly to drip and then to pour downward, raising splashes from the surface of the pool. The light quivered, the wheel turned and he could once again hear the chorus of laments.

Diomedes sensed that there was someone at his back and he turned: he saw a warrior wrapped in a cloak advancing towards him from the depths of the darkness. A white crest swayed on his helmet, a Trojan sword gleamed in his hand. The warrior came closer, surrounded by silence and by a halo of fog, and he was enormous to see, much larger than a real man. Only when he came into the ray of light was his face recognizable. His eyes blazed with hate and revenge: it was Aeneas!

Diomedes drew his sword. ‘This is destiny, then! This is the future, the same as the past!’ he shouted and he hurled himself at his adversary, but the sword pierced an immaterial shape, an empty image. He spun around, still shouting: ‘Where are you? Fight and let’s finish this forever! It’s either me or you, son of Anchises! How many times did I force you to flee on the fields of Ilium? Show yourself! I’m not afraid of you!’

He dealt blow after blow, until he collapsed, exhausted, on to his knees in the damp grass.

The lights in the sky had gone out and the surface of the pond was once again still. A hand touched his shoulder: ‘Let’s go, wanax.. This land breeds nightmares. Let’s go back to the ships.’

‘Myrsilus! Why are you here? You shouldn’t have left the ship. The ship must always be guarded. With all it contains.’ He got to his feet and walked towards the river bank.

‘Our comrades are guarding the ship, wanax. You can trust them.’

They walked in silence, guided by the light of the camp fire that blazed far off in the night, and by the torch that Myrsilus held in his hand.

‘What did you see in that place, wanax? The others returned in a great fright. They said they saw you shout and wave your sword, chopping down swamp reeds, willow bushes and poplar saplings. They heard sounds and cries and moans but they did not know how to help you.’

‘I saw only what I carry within me,’ said the king.

‘What about the chariot of the Sun? Is it true that it fell into those waters?’

Diomedes did not answer. He was thinking of the arched surface of the water, of that thing that launched rays of light towards the sky and then sank back into the mud and silence.

‘I don’t know. But it is from there that the signs that cross the night sky come. The signs that have frightened so many peoples and scattered them in every direction like crazed ants. The sky should never touch the earth. The storm of the elements will not subside yet for a long, long time. Our suffering will continue.’

‘I know, wanax,’ said Myrsilus. ‘I saw it in your eyes. But let us rest now, for every day has its sorrow.’