King of Ithaca (24 page)

Larger hills loomed ahead of them now, blocking everything that lay beyond from sight. They continued between outcrops of rock and boulders that had toppled from the peaks above, until before long they could hear the sound of flowing water. It came from a low valley that intersected the road and lay between themselves and the larger range of hills. Mentor ran ahead and was soon calling for Eperitus to catch up with him.

‘A river,’ he said. ‘The road starts again on the other side.’

Eperitus looked down into the valley. The waters were wide and fast, swelled by the recent rains falling in the mountains to the east, but nothing like the obstacle they had encountered a few days before. At least it was shallow enough to ford and would not delay their progress. Then, as his gaze crossed to the opposite side where the road to Messene continued, he noticed a lone figure crawling about amongst the stones. Ducking behind the bole of a weather-beaten olive tree and signalling Mentor to get out of view, he looked across to see if Damastor and Antiphus had seen the man. To his dismay they had not, and were already making their way down to the ford.

‘There’s someone on the other side of the river,’ he told his companion. ‘I think he’s alone, but can’t be sure – and the others haven’t spotted him yet.’

Mentor nodded. ‘I’ll go and warn Odysseus. In the meantime, see if you can stop the others giving us away.’

‘Tell Odysseus he’s carrying a bow,’ Eperitus shouted after him as he sprang off in the direction by which they had come.

Seeing that the mysterious figure was still on his hands and knees, searching for something in the mud of the road, he began the descent as quickly as he could. The scree slope was treacherous, made more slippery by the rain. He had no hope of reaching the river before Damastor and Antiphus, but in his haste sent a cascade of small rocks tumbling down to the road below, catching the attention of the man on the opposite bank. He stood and looked across the flowing waters, just as the others reached the road. They were as surprised as he was to find anybody else in the small valley.

Eperitus sprang down the last stretch of the hill to join his comrades, where they stood eyeing the young man with silent curiosity. He was small and pale with hardly the bulge of a muscle upon him, looking more like a living skeleton than a human being. His head was crowned with a sheaf of black hair, and a thin, juvenile beard sprouted from his bony chin. He wore no armour and his only weapons were a dagger that hung loose in his belt and a bow of white horn slung across his back.

The magnificent bow was much too big for such a skinny lad, and Eperitus knew it must be the weapon Athena had told Odysseus to make his own. He walked across to Antiphus and asked what he thought of the stranger.

‘A child with the weapon of a god,’ the archer replied, eyeing the horn bow greedily.

Damastor agreed. He raised his voice above the cacophony of the river and called out to the stranger, who had been looking back at them with wary interest.

‘What’s a boy doing with a man’s bow? Did you steal it from your father, or did he give it to you in the hope it would make you a man?’

‘What would a bastard such as you know about a father’s gifts?’

The young man looked so meek and pathetic that Eperitus was shocked, as well as amused, by his feisty retort. For a moment Damastor was flabbergasted at the youth’s audacity, but when he realized he had been humiliated his temper quickly got the better of him. He set his jaw and narrowed his eyes, then advanced into the river with his spear levelled above his shoulder. Mirroring his advance, the archer on the far bank unslung his bow, fitted an arrow and waded out to meet him. Unless the younger man was an appalling shot, there was little doubt about the outcome of the fight. Eperitus even felt concern for Damastor, though the Ithacan’s rudeness had deserved an insolent reply. In contrast, Antiphus was laughing at his friend’s vexation and appeared completely unfazed by the encounter.

‘Give me the weapon, lad, and I promise not to kill you,’ Damastor shouted.

His answer was the twang of the great bow. Antiphus choked on a new wave of laughter as the arrow plucked Damastor’s bronze cap from his head and carried it clean beyond the river to clatter amongst the rocks behind them. Damastor was so shocked that he fell back into the water with a great splash. This brought tears of laughter to the eyes of his comrades on the river bank, followed by more shouts of laughter from the road behind. Eperitus turned to see the rest of the party arriving, led by Odysseus and Mentor, of whom only Odysseus was not touched by the hilarity of Damastor’s situation.

Instead he threw down his weapons and waded out into the water, past his floundering comrade and out to the young man with the bow. A new arrow was already primed and aimed at his chest, but Odysseus showed no fear. He stopped a spear’s length from the stranger and looked first at the lad, then at the tall weapon in his hand.

‘My name is Odysseus, son of Laertes of Ithaca,’ he said, looking the archer in the eye and smiling. This surprised Eperitus, as he had expected his friend to announce himself as Castor, son of Hylax of Crete. However, he was not to be wholly disappointed by Odysseus’s deceptive nature. ‘I’ve come to Messene to recover three hundred sheep stolen from my islands, and I’ll reward any help you can give me.’

The man wavered in thought for a moment, then, to the relief of all, lowered his weapon and stepped forward to offer his hand in friendship.

‘I am Iphitus of Oechalia. My father is Eurytus the archer, favourite of Apollo. As for your sheep, well,’ he shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands apologetically, ‘I’ve never seen a country with so few of the creatures. But maybe you can help me?’

‘If I can,’ Odysseus replied, placing one of his oversized hands on Iphitus’s bony shoulder and leading him across to the far bank of the river.

‘I’ve lost some horses.’

‘Lost
them?’

Iphitus smiled. ‘Not exactly. My father and brothers think Heracles stole them.’

At that point Damastor regained his feet and came splashing through the river towards the young archer. Iphitus saw him and, with a quickness of mind that echoed his earlier sharpness of tongue, waded out to meet him. He thrust out his hands, palm forward.

‘My apologies, friend. I’m sorry for our misunderstanding, which was entirely my fault. I took you for a brigand without realizing you must, in fact, be a man of noble birth.’

Damastor was taken aback by the unexpected show of friendship, but after a moment’s thought chose to accept the apology. The incident was laughed off in a face-saving show of camaraderie.

The others waded across, leading the mules with their loads of supplies. Mentor handed Damastor his cap and returned the arrow that had plucked it from his head to Iphitus.

‘Is it true you’re hunting Heracles, lad?’ he asked, proving that rumours were already spreading amongst the men of what they had overheard.

Iphitus was about to reply, but Odysseus spoke first.

‘If there’s a tale to be told, and there surely is, then let’s hear it in full and in the right place. For now we should find an inn at Messene where we can eat and restock our provisions; our friend can tell us the whole story then. And perhaps he will tell us about this bow – I’ve never seen its like before. What do you say, Iphitus?’

‘The trail’s already cold,’ he answered, ‘so perhaps I can find some inspiration in a cup of wine. I’ll come.’

Messene was a city hidden in the foothills of the western mountains, lying on the opposite side of the plain from the more lofty Taygetus range. It consisted of a collection of unimpressive hovels on the outskirts, followed by an inner ring of better-made craftsmen’s houses, which in turn encircled a core of progressively larger, more substantial homes belonging to the merchants and nobles of the town. Its crooked streets were muddy with the rain and deeply rutted from the heavy goods carts that occasionally creaked their way up or down the narrow thoroughfares. Despite the chill, naked infants ran about between the houses, happy to be free of their homes again now that the rain had stopped. Mostly their mothers ignored them, preferring to gossip with neighbours in doorways or too busy with the daily chores to concern themselves with noisy children. And everywhere the air smelled of cooking fires, food and dung, the comforting aroma of civilization that reminded the Ithacans of their own distant homes.

The sight of armed men was not uncommon in Greek townships. However, the wounds the newcomers bore showed they had been in a recent fight, and the locals eyed them with suspicion and hostility. Nobody spoke to them, and if they approached them they would either turn away or tell them they could not help. Despite this they eventually found their way to an inn, where the patron was happy to sell them food and wine, and for an additional price provided them with a large room with straw mattresses for all. They gave the mules into the care of the innkeeper’s son, then returned to the main room of the house.

In the late afternoon the inn was empty but for themselves and a few old men, left there by their families to sup wine and keep warm by the large hearth in the centre of the room. It was a low-ceilinged place lit only by the fire and the last of the afternoon light slanting in through the open doorway. Noisily, the Ithacans crowded onto the benches and began discarding their armour and weaponry like snakes shedding skin, leaving great flakes of leather, ox-hide and bronze about the floor. The old men broke off from their story-swapping and watched the newcomers with silent interest, perhaps recalling the days when their own bodies were filled with enough youthful strength to carry breastplate, spear and shield.

By the time they had settled down a huge woman brought in two earthenware bowls filled with cold water, followed by the innkeeper with two more. Moments later, as they were cleansing their hands and faces of the day’s dirt, the couple returned carrying a large krater of wine between them which had already been mixed with two parts of water. The soldiers wiped their hands dry on their tunics and filled wooden bowls with the wine, drinking deeply to slake their thirst whilst baskets of bread were passed. These were followed by plates of tough goat’s meat and dishes filled with salad and pulse. There were large numbers of tasteless barley cakes too, the likes of which had formed the mainstay of their rations on the journey to Messene.

There was no ceremony about the meal and they did not hold back in satisfying the hunger that days of marching, fighting and hard rations had inspired in them. There was very little conversation as they filled their ravenous stomachs, until finally they were using the last wafers of bread to wipe up the grease and fat from the plates. Then Mentor demanded more wine and the talk began to flow as their tongues were loosened.

At first they were polite to Iphitus, asking general questions about his home and his family. But the subject was turning with slow certainty to Heracles. They had all of them heard the youth tell Odysseus he was hunting horses allegedly taken by the most famous warrior in Greece, and there had been an undercurrent of excitement ever since the name of Heracles had been mentioned. Eperitus had already heard endless tales of his unmatchable strength, his prowess in battle and his seemingly endless sexual conquests. Some said he had diverted rivers with his own hands, others that he had slept with fifty maidens in one night, and all that he had killed a gigantic lion with his bare hands. These tales made the man a living legend, though until Iphitus’s brief mention of him the warrior from Alybas had no idea he was still alive. His nurse had told him stories about Heracles when he was a mere infant, so to him he was a figure more from myth than reality, a man from a past age who could hardly belong in their own fallen era.

But live he did, or so Iphitus testified. Neither did he need their encouragement to tell them the full story of Heracles’s visit to his home in Oechalia. The wine encouraged openness to their questions and soon the words were tumbling from his lips, which the Ithacans drank up like cattle at a trough. Even Odysseus leaned in over his cup to hear what their new companion had to say, though Eperitus noticed that his eyes continuously strayed to the bow leaning against the wall.

Long ago, Iphitus’s father Eurytus, king of Oechalia and a renowned archer, had offered his daughter in marriage to any man who could outshoot him. As Apollo himself had tutored Eurytus in archery he had every right to be confident of his marksmanship and was justly proud of his skill with the bow. Indeed his reputation was so widespread that few had bothered to take the challenge and his beautiful daughter, Iole, was in danger of becoming a spinster.

At that time Heracles was the king’s friend. Eurytus had taught him to shoot when he was young, and their bond of friendship had remained. But Zeus’s wife, the goddess Hera, bore a grudge against Heracles and induced a madness in him that caused him to slay his own children. When he regained his sanity he rejected his wife Megara and, upon the instruction of the Pythoness, served penance as a slave to King Eurystheus of Tiryns.