The Oath

32

The two men guarding the pen who had been struck down by Ajax did not survive the attack. This made Ajax’s act even more repugnant in the eyes of those who had stood there watching and judging, without bothering to ask themselves why he had done such a thing. Agamemnon wanted him buried like carrion, but I fought to have him given the honours of a pyre: a hero’s funeral. My standing up for him reflected no particular merit on my part, but it did help to assuage my remorse.

‘He took his own life with his sword. What more could he do to redeem his shame? He had always fought, all these long years, like a lion. Isn’t that enough to earn him flames instead of worms?’

‘He thought he was killing us as he was slaughtering those poor animals.’

‘Well, he must have had a good reason, don’t you think? It was clear that he’d lost his mind. If he hadn’t gone mad he wouldn’t have been killing sheep, goats and cows, he would have been killing us, the kings of the Achaians, the comrades of a thousand battles. Because we betrayed him. But then a god made him come to his senses in time for him to experience unbearable shame and the worst pain of his whole life. Now he’s dead and we’ve lost our greatest combatant, one of the last of his kind.’

I had my way. And thus we celebrated funeral rites for Ajax, son of Telamon, prince of Salamis, as we had celebrated those of Patroclus and Achilles. Only then did we realize how much we had loved him. We each recollected a certain moment spent together, each one of us added something of our own onto the pyre. It was I who ritually bent Ajax’s sword, the cruel blade that had belonged to his enemy. He succeeded where his enemy had not, in driving it into his heart.

We chose a spot on the Rhoetean promontory to bury his ashes, then raised a high tumulus there so he would be forever remembered.

We had never felt so alone as we did after his death, we had never felt so sad. But we knew we had to react and regain control of the situation. Our army had to believe that we were still certain of victory. Ajax had descended from Zeus himself, and we needed to replace him with another warrior of his same stock. A fighter as strong and passionate as he had been.

‘The son of Achilles!’

‘But he’s only a boy,’ said Agamemnon.

‘He’s seventeen years old,’ I replied. ‘He’s perfect. He has no children, no wife and no homeland. He grew up on an island far away from the land of his ancestors, whom he has never seen. He never met his grandfather Peleus; he only saw his father once when he was too young to remember. All he knows about Achilles is what he has heard, and his only goal is to surpass him in fame. He has been raised for one single thing: combat. He has no loved ones, no roots, no feeling or memories to share with another. He’s an animal of war.’

‘How do you know all these things?’

‘When we left Aulis to cross the sea, Achilles and I stopped at Scyros to take on food and water, but mostly because he wanted to see his son. It was I who gave King Lycomedes instructions on how he was to be educated. We put him in the charge of two of Achilles’ own Lapiths to be trained in the art of war. I suppose I foresaw that this day might come.’

‘If that is so, leave immediately to fetch him and be back as soon as you can.’

‘I will, wanax. I’ll leave tomorrow.’

I fitted out my ship, chose my most trusted men, including Eurylochus and Elpenor, and set sail at dawn. In all those years, I had only taken my ship out for brief stretches, usually along the Thracian coast to buy wine for the army. The sea greeted me like an old friend who hadn’t shown his face in a long time. My ship ploughed the waves like it had on its maiden voyage. There was a light breeze from the north that we had to compensate for at times with the helm and at times with the oars. The smell and taste of the salty air made me remember home. Time after time, I realized that, without meaning to, I was calculating how many days it would take me, sailing at that speed, to reach Ithaca.

Scyros was in the middle of the sea, at an equal distance from Troy and Euboea.

It took me only two days to get there and I easily guided my ship into the main port. I had myself announced, and King Lycomedes greeted me with all due honours. The fame of our interminable assault had reached lands far and wide, been distorted, expanded, broken into a thousand different stories that the minstrels had seized upon and happily related, travelling from one palace to the next, one village to another. The king had a huge banquet prepared, inviting the notables of his island and the ones nearby. I was asked many questions, which I answered in part and avoided in part. Finally, after all the guests had gone home and the servants had begun to clear the tables, the king drew close and said: ‘What is the reason behind such an unexpected visit?’

‘Achilles is dead. I’ve come to get the boy.’

‘I knew that,’ said the king, without adding anything else.

‘Does he know?’

Lycomedes nodded. ‘He wants to avenge him, and to surpass the fame and valour of his father.’

‘When can I see him?’

‘Better tomorrow. He’ll be with his concubines now. When I heard you’d arrived, I was hoping you’d come to take him away. He has become impossible to live with. It’s like having a wild animal roaming your home. If he weren’t my daughter’s son and if I hadn’t been prevented from doing so by the bonds of blood, I would have got rid of him long ago. He’s indomitable, irascible, violent. I can barely manage to hold him back.’

‘Sleep easy, wanax, tomorrow I’m taking him away with me.’

I saw the boy at dawn. He had dived into the sea and was swimming like a dolphin, slapping his chest on the strong surf that the night wind was still heaving against the cliffs guarding the port. Then he returned to the shore and began to run down the beach, faster and faster, until I could barely distinguish the movement of his feet, so swift were they. He looked as if he were racing against an invisible adversary.

His father.

I waited until he stopped. I could feel the energy that he gave off, as if I were standing before a big raging fire. His shoulder-length hair was the colour of flames while his eyes were the colour of ice. His arms were powerful, much more massive than on any boy of his age. But his hands, strangely enough, were long and tapered, with big blue veins showing under the thin skin.

‘I’m Odysseus, king of Ithaca.’

‘A man who uses his tongue rather than his sword, from what I hear tell.’

I drew my sharp bronze blade and pointed it at his throat before he could blink an eye. When he pulled back I kept up the pressure until it drew blood.

‘Next time I’ll cut the tendon in your neck so you’ll keep your head down for the rest of your life, in front of men who are worth much more than you, and in front of men who are worth much less as well. I’m the man your father respected most in the whole army. He begat you but I’m the person who made you what you are. It was I who established how you were to be educated, trained and punished whenever it was necessary and even when it was not. Where are your instructors?’

‘Both of them wanted to test what I’d learned from them. They’re both dead.’

I didn’t let the slightest emotion show on my face at hearing that news. I didn’t so much as blink. I said: ‘Prepare your things, we’ll set sail in an hour.’

We exchanged very few words during the whole voyage. He never asked me anything about his father, showed no desire to visit his tomb or to sacrifice to his shade. When we arrived within sight of our destination and the city appeared on the hill, he pointed at it. ‘Is that Troy?’

I nodded.

‘And in ten years, with one thousand ships and fifty thousand warriors, you haven’t succeeded in conquering it?’

‘No. As you can see. That’s why I came to get you. You’ll have your father’s chariot and his horses, you’ll wear the armour that your father lent to Patroclus and that he himself stripped from Hector after he’d killed him.’

‘He had another set,’ replied the boy. ‘The one he was wearing when they killed him. Where is it?’

I could never have imagined that he would know so much.

‘In my tent.’ And when I answered I looked him straight in the eye. He didn’t say anything more.

The same evening that we arrived he was presented to the assembled army wearing his father’s first suit of armour, on a podium illuminated by eight large braziers and by tens of lit torches. The warriors honoured him by shouting out his name seven times and pounding their spears against their shields twenty times, creating a deafening din.

When he passed in front of me I said: ‘Tomorrow you’ll be in the front line at the head of your Myrmidons.’

He fought the whole day, until nightfall, on the chariot driven by his father’s charioteer, Automedon, or on foot. He never rested, took no food or drink. His appearance served, as we had hoped, to strike terror into Trojan hearts. They thought it was Achilles himself they faced, brought back to life, and they knew they could not withstand his assault. Aeneas himself risked losing his life in a clash with him.

The boy pushed all the way to the perfidious Skaian Gate and he nearly succeeded in forcing open the doors, which had been drawn shut but not yet bolted. The enthusiasm of our army was immeasurable. But the Trojans reacted by multiplying their defences and attacking less frequently on open ground. When they did attack, they immediately honed in on Pyrrhus’ position and kept him in the sights of one hundred archers, forcing him to adopt a defensive strategy.

We were at a stand-off once again. The rumour started to circulate that Troy would never fall because the gods did not want the war to ever finish.

If the men began to believe this, it would be the end of everything we had struggled for. But the days passed and if on the one hand Pyrrhus’ presence had given the army the strength and desire to stay in the fight and bring the war to a close, on the other hand our lack of success was reinforcing their fear that not even the formidable energy of the son of Achilles could win the war.

What was worse, Pyrrhus was impossible to control. He tolerated no discipline, and would often attack alone at the head of his Myrmidons, who would have followed him straight to the Underworld, had he ordered them to. One night, he even decided to scale the walls of Troy alone and bare-handed, risking a fall that would have shattered all his bones. He came close to succeeding. But if there was one thing he couldn’t bear it was failure; he became hateful and aggressive with all of us, even his closest comrades. I began to ask myself whether the idea that I’d had all those years ago when I’d sailed to Scyros at the head of my men and my ships, still shy of Troy, had been the right one.

I became convinced that somehow I had to find a solution. Athena had given me the strength to fight on the front line alongside the greatest warriors, but above all she had given me a mind capable of meditating, reflecting and generating new ideas. What idea could I possibly come up with? Even at night, when I was sleeping, my mind sought a solution. Very often when I woke in the morning, I felt convinced that I’d found a way. My heart filled with joy until the plan vanished along with the fog of sleep.

Time passed.

One evening at the beginning of autumn, weary from a long day of combat and disgusted at the senseless ferocity of Pyrrhus and the macabre trophies he insisted on carrying back from the battlefield, sad over Ajax’s death, the thought of which never abandoned me, I found a place on the seashore where I could sit and listen to the timeless voice of the waves coming in. It lulled me, calmed the chaos in my heart and allowed me to think clearly. I was waiting for the moon to appear for my daily appointment with Penelope. I knew in that moment she would think of me and I would think of her.

I heard a voice: ‘Wanax Odysseus. .’

‘Eumelus.’

He sat down next to me. He hadn’t even taken off his armour yet; I could smell his sweat and hear his heart beating in its daily struggle against death. He seemed hard to me, as if he were carved in wood, and the grey evening light made him look very pale.

‘Do you still think of your parents?’ he asked me.

‘Always.’

‘Mentor? Do you think of him sometimes?’

‘As if I’d just seen him yesterday.’

As he was talking I noticed that he’d slipped his hand into the belt at his waist. He pulled something out.

‘This? Do you remember this?’

I smiled incredulously: he was turning in his hand the little horse I’d sculpted in wood so many years before and given to him so he’d know he could trust me.

‘You still have that! I can’t believe it,’ I said.

‘It’s one of the most precious things I have. It’s my good luck charm.’

‘It’s only a wooden trinket.’

‘Yes, but inside this wooden horse is the heart of the king of Ithaca, Odysseus, the thinker of many thoughts. My friend. What were you thinking about, wanax?’

I took the little horse from his hands and turned it over in my own.

‘I was thinking. .’ I said, ‘I was thinking it’s time to go home.’

Eumelus gave me a perplexed look. ‘Yes, of course. But not before we’ve accomplished what we set out to do,’ he said.

‘Not before then,’ I said.

Eumelus’ horses, unyoked, had come looking for him.

‘They’re used to me feeding them from my hands,’ he said, and went off after them.

I was overcome by a strange anxiety and I felt a chill. It wasn’t the wind. It was the same feeling I’d had the night I’d slept at my grandfather Autolykos’ hunting cottage. I knew what it meant.

‘Where are you?’ I said, looking around to see her.

‘Here,’ said a voice inside of me. ‘Here, in your heart.’

That same night I let Agamemnon know that I needed to talk to him, and that he should convene a restricted council with Nestor and, afterwards, with the camp’s master blacksmith and craftsman, a Locrian named Epeius.

‘What I’m telling you here tonight,’ I began, ‘must remain secret. I am about to reveal to you how we can win the war in a short time.’ Agamemnon and Nestor started. ‘How much time depends on what Epeius will tell us. The real plan will only be known to the three of us; we’ll ask Epeius if he is capable of making what we require, but we won’t let him know the real reason we need it.

‘Listen, then. We will build a gigantic horse of wood, so big that it will have an internal cavity large enough to hold thirty men, whom I will choose personally, one by one. They will only be informed on the night we execute the plan.

‘First, we will spread the rumour that we’re going home because the city of Troy is unassailable and because the gods are against us, and that we are building a votive gift, a horse, an animal sacred to Poseidon, to propitiate the blue god and win his favour for our sea crossing. When Epeius’ horse is ready, we will weigh anchor, but not to return home. The fleet will hide behind the island of Tenedos, where a few of our men will climb to the highest peak and wait for a signal.

‘We will leave the horse on the beach, along with a man whose hands are tied behind his back: one of my men, a trusted, very clever friend. His name is Sinon. When the Trojans come out from behind their walls and find him there, he’ll say that he’s a fugitive; that he ran from us because we wanted to sacrifice him to the marine gods, and he’ll ask them for exile and protection. In exchange, he will tell them about the horse, explaining that it is a powerful votive gift for Poseidon, built to guarantee our safe return. He will tell them that our plan is to cross the sea, to join up with another, even bigger army, which is already waiting for us, and then to return to Troy in the spring.

‘Nothing will be left to fortune. Every moment of the plan will be carefully thought out and executed. Nothing of what we are about to do can fail. From now on, I, and only I, will do all the thinking; you two must cast thoughts of this plan from your heads so that the gods who oppose us cannot see them. At this moment, I am sure that none of them are listening to us. . and so I’ll succeed in tricking them as well. All of them, except one.’

A long silence followed. More of amazement, it seemed to me, than disbelief. Things had to proceed at once, and so I called in Epeius, telling him about our plan for a votive gift and exhorting him to speak with no one about it, although I knew that after the first two or three queries, at most, he would give in. That evening in the council of the three kings he swore repeatedly that for no reason in the world would he let slip the merest suggestion of what he was being asked to do. I explained the characteristics of the gigantic gift to Poseidon that he would have the honour of building. A horse thirty feet tall, thirty-seven feet long, twelve feet wide. The tail and mane would be in real horsehair, artfully intertwined, and the horse would be set upon a platform.

‘I think you are the only man capable of building such an object,’ I flattered him. ‘Am I wrong?’

‘No, wanax, you are not wrong. I will build it exactly as you have described it to me.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘A month, wanax.’

‘I can give you ten days. Not one more. And all the men you need.’

He hesitated an instant, then replied: ‘Ten days, wanax Odysseus.’