Heroes (formerly Talisman of Troy) (19 page)

Although it was already late in the spring, it continued to rain hard and long every day. But he never stopped; he walked all the same through the tall grass and reeds that had overrun the fields once flourishing with crops and rich pastures for numerous flocks. He would rest now and then in a deserted village or an abandoned house when the inclemency of the elements prevented him from going on. And then he would take up his journey once again.

After seven days he reached the swamp where the seed of destruction had fallen. He was exhausted with fatigue, hunger and pain; his hands and feet were full of sores, his legs attacked by leeches. And yet he thought he heard the gentlest dirge, like the soft wailing of women grieving for their lost husbands. He followed that song, dragging himself to the shores of a large pool with a surface as smooth as a bronze mirror.

He leaned over to peer inside and saw his own image reflected in the shiny black water, nothing else. Only his own thin, dazed face. He moved all around the liquid mirror, forcing a passage between the thick reeds, the willows and millet stalks.

The wind rustled in the boughs of colossal poplars, filling the air with their white down, but not a bird took wing, not a chirp could be heard, nothing but the ancient lament that still echoed very faintly in the misty undergrowth.

Utterly disheartened and defeated, the old priest let himself slip to the ground and sat propped up against a big trunk, uprooted like a little twig by some immense force. He had hoped not to abandon life before learning the truth, but now he felt his energies forsaking him on the shores of that dead water, although nothing had happened. No vague idea had formed in his mind, no sign had appeared before his eyes. His weariness weighed so heavily upon his eyelids that sleep finally overcame him and he sank back, head lolling and arms outspread. In his uneasy sleep he saw the deserted cities of his people crumbling into ruins, one after another; the canals filling with reeds, the palisades rotting away, swarms of rats invading the roads. A turbid grey sky covered all, swollen with disease. His closed eyes filled with tears and his heart brimmed with anguish.

But then he saw the black lagoon fill slowly up with mud and sand, becoming a swamp, first, and then a marsh, until it became solid ground and was covered by a forest of aged oaks. And over that land he saw that the sky was blue again, and the sun shone, and a new people descended from the wooded mountains to occupy the deserted plain. Many, many years . . . but one day life would flourish again in the great valley of the Eridanus; the newcomers would mix with the last descendants of his unlucky people.

He saw men tilling the earth, digging canals and building cabins. Ripe wheat rippled in the summer sun and exuberant grapevines stretched their cluster-heavy shoots towards the sun.

He did not see the warrior of the flaming hair who had passed twice between the severed heads without harm, but he felt his shadow vanishing beyond the wooded mountains, beyond the blue summits.

The old man never stirred again, and the wind covered his wasted body with white down, like a larva in its cocoon. But his spirit was soaring with great butterfly wings over the sea of swaying reeds, over the waters of the Eridanus, high above the swollen grey clouds, through the pure, transparent air, towards the infinite light.

D
IOMEDES ADVANCED WESTWARD WITH
his warriors, journeying up a muddy little river in the hopes of finding more welcoming lands and less hostile skies, but as soon as he had left his refuge and ventured on to open land, he immediately felt the presence of a hidden enemy who seemed to be everywhere.

By day the men would hear distant sounds, like animal cries, in the midst of the plain or the deep of the forests. By night, fleet, faint shadows passed in the glimmer of the moon; shapes, similar to beasts or fantastic birds, appeared out of nowhere before the sentinels who stood watch in the darkness, only to vanish like the creatures of a dream.

Telephus, the Hittite slave, warned everyone to stay alert; to take care not to be lured away from the camp or guard post. He said that he wouldn’t be provoked by a shadow; crossing swords was the only way to challenge him. No flimsy shade could frighten him; he had never heard of anyone being killed by an apparition or a ghost. Only a good span of bronze or iron would do that job.

‘You don’t believe in invisible creatures and gods, then?’ the
Chnan
asked him one evening as they were roasting a wild pig they had snared in a trap.

‘I believe in the gods of my land when I am there, but here . . . who could ever desire to live in a place like this? There can be nothing but the spirits of animals or of trees here; nothing that can worry us. Stay within call and within reach, always, and no harm can come to you. I commanded a chariot squadron in the Hittite army, but I’ve had to patrol the mountains and forest of Toros and Katpatuka on foot, as well. Those places are crawling with fierce, treacherous savages. We simply watched each others’ backs; no one ever went out alone to look for water or forage for the pack animals.’

As he was saying this a shrill sound whistled through the air and one of the sentinels on guard at a short distance collapsed with a sigh, run through by an arrow. The king was notified immediately, and he rode out on horseback with fifty armed men to encircle the area the arrow had come from, but the darkness and the rough terrain protected the aggressors. They never found a trace of them, as if they had never existed.

The king returned to the camp in the middle of the night, full of impotent rage, and stopped beside the dying warrior: his name was Hippotous, from Lerna. He had been only sixteen when they left for the war. His father Phaillus had been among Tydeus’s most faithful friends and Diomedes had always loved him like a younger brother. His comrades had brought him close to the fire, and the
Chnan
was wetting his lips with a linen cloth. He was delirious.

‘They’re attacking!’ he would shout out, trembling and trying to lift up on his elbows. ‘Deiphobus and Aeneas, on the right! Beware,
wanax
! Watch your left side! The Maeonian chariots are upon us, those cursed bastard dogs . . .’

The king knelt beside him and placed a hand on his burning forehead. The
Chnan
had managed to cut the arrow shaft with a knife blade, but he had not been able to extract the tip.

‘Rest now, my friend. The enemy has been routed. They’ve taken to their heels.’

‘Really,
wanax
? And what will I have? What spoils will be mine?’

‘A pair of horses: two superb sorrels, still be to broken in,’ said the king, stroking him tenderly. ‘A helmet; it’s beautiful, decorated in silver and . . . two spears . . .’

But the god of eternal sleep opened the youth’s eyes for an instant and he saw the truth in his king’s mournful gaze. ‘I’m dying . . .
wanax
. To no purpose.’

His head dropped back and his still eyes were filled with death. The fire was going out, and its bluish reflection made the pallor of his forehead look like marble. The king bit his lip and wept.

*

After that night, Diomedes tried to be even more prudent; he would send Myrsilus forward with a small group of his fastest men: Evenus, Agelaus, Krissus and even Lamus the Spartan, son of Onchestus. After long days of bewilderment, Lamus had finally recovered his spirit and determination. He seemed to feel that any moment in which the column was not moving was a waste. He was never ready to stop in the evening, and in the morning he was the first to awaken and to stir up the fire.

At their sides, the king posted two small squads of Argive warriors from his personal guard. He himself marched in front of the main body of the column and posted a small rear guard behind, at a good distance. His wooden chest was at the centre of the column on a little cart pulled by a couple of mules. Alongside the chest, sitting on a bench and protected by a shelter of intertwined wicker, was the bride come from beyond the Mountains of Ice. She was as yet untouched by man.

But even in this way, Diomedes continued to suffer losses: clusters of arrows would suddenly fall from the sky like hail, although the men could not understand where they were coming from. Or the earth would open beneath their feet, plunging the warriors into pits studded with sharp spikes which pierced them through like fish that a sharp-eyed fisherman runs through with his harpoon. Sometimes, as they slept, their entire camp was inundated with water, so that they had to abandon their sleeping mats, gather up the supplies and run to repel the danger that loomed in the shadows, spending nights awake, eyes stinging with fatigue, bowels gripped by cramps.

The king always showed his men the same dauntless expression, the same imperious gaze, but those who were closest to him, Myrsilus and even the
Chnan
, often saw the muscles of his face quivering uncontrollably under his skin, his eyes blinking rapidly and a light sweat beading his forehead, whether it was hot or cold. The king was suffering and his pain worsened with every passing day.

The bride would raise her head, sometimes, and the king exchanged glances with her, but that contact gave him no comfort or warmth. Her eyes were like a cold springtime sky, continually crossed by light and shadow, cloudy and clear practically at the same moment. The king could not speak to her. He tried, sometimes, in the intimacy that at night his men left to him in respect of his rank and because of their fondness for him, but he obtained no response. But the
Chnan
noticed that when Diomedes seemed most alone and despairing, when it seemed that fate and events did naught but torment him, then, it seemed to the
Chnan
, then her eyes would flicker a look like a furtive caress.

And the
Chnan
would notice that the king would suddenly turn his head then, as if someone had touched him.

‘All they want is the girl,’ said Telephus, the Hittite, one night. ‘If we let her go, this persecution will stop. We can no longer bear up under this strain. If we go on like this, we will all die. Someone has to tell him,’ he said, nodding towards the king, who was standing alone near his horses. ‘We’ve been marching for days and days and we’ve never seen their faces, but they are murdering us. How many men have we lost? Ten, maybe fifteen, I’ve lost count. And how many of them have we killed? Not one. They’re different; they will never agree to face us on the open field, phalanx against phalanx. They don’t think there is anything shameful or wrong about attacking us in secret, at night.’

‘You don’t think he already knows?’ replied the
Chnan
, indicating the king as he advanced through the mud, leading the horses by their reins. ‘They say that he once wounded a god in battle, but here there is no one to cross swords with, not even a savage or a shepherd . . .’

‘Why is he doing it then? I know he is a generous man. How could he sacrifice his people this way?’

The
Chnan
walked at length without answering. In the distance was a low line of bluish mountains.

‘See those mountains? Perhaps that is where this accursed land ends. The king believes that if we manage to leave this place, we’ll finally be able to build a city and raise a temple. He thinks we will be invincible then, and that this girl will give him sons, and a dynasty. And that he’ll get other women for his warriors; that’s what he’s thinking. He knows there is no alternative. We can’t turn back, and facing the enemy is impossible. We have no choice but to go onwards . . . hoping that some of us remain, in the end.’

‘But why won’t he give back the woman? He’ll find other women, more beautiful ones.’

‘He wants this one. If she was sent to regenerate the tribe of Nemro, she must bear a great life force within her. This is what he thinks. And perhaps he loves her. Have you seen how he looks at her?’

‘I have. But we will all die, this I know. Those mountains are still too far away; how many of us will fall before we get there?’

The column had stopped because Myrsilus had found a dry clearing, a large grassy knoll protected on one side by a group of ash and oak trees, just turning green with new leaves, and on the other by a torrent that edged it on three sides like the ocean around a peninsula. Gigantic clouds were gathering over the mountain peaks, shot through by blazing bolts of lightning.

‘We must inflict heavy losses on them,’ said the
Chnan
, ‘and convince them to withdraw.’

‘Or resolve it by fighting a duel,’ said Telephus.

The
Chnan
watched the big storm clouds clustering over the mountains: ‘The west wind is pushing them this way,’ he said. ‘They’ll be here right after dark.’

‘Yes. And the rain as well.’

‘There will be lightning; these tall trees may very well attract the bolts.’

‘Do you mean to say we should camp elsewhere?’

‘On the contrary. Perhaps they’ll attack tonight, and we may manage to wipe them out, or at least to strike out hard. If the storms in this land move like the sea . . . and if the king will listen to me . . .’

As he moved off the surrounding forests began to echo with calls, like animal cries.

The
Chnan
went to the king: ‘Your men say you have armour of gold.’

‘They have told you the truth,’ said Diomedes without turning.

‘Is the shield made of gold too?’

‘Yes, the shield as well.’

‘Give it to me. If these cries from the forest are not night birds, as I don’t imagine they are, they will attack again tonight.’

‘Invisible and unfindable, as always.’

‘Not any more,
wanax
. Give me a man who can help me light a fire on the highest part of the hill. Telephus, the Chetaean, will do. And give me your shield, enclosed in its case. The storm will be here soon, just as darkness falls. Sit down and eat now. Rest and gather your forces because I will soon make your enemies visible. Order the archers to draw up and to be ready with their bows, for they will have to aim and shoot as swiftly as the blink of an eye. Order your warriors to remain in their armour and to keep their hands on the shafts of their spears.’