Ithaca (24 page)

Then she shrugged unconcernedly and pushed me off. “You could be good, you know,” she said. “You're quick and you think. You might end up better than me, one day.”

That was praise, for her.

“What's it like in a real fight?” I asked as we packed the next morning. It was our last day of travel. The sea lay ahead.

Polycaste looked at me in astonishment, then laughed her raucous laugh. “How would I know?” she asked. “I've hardly ever left Pylos before. I'm a girl.”

But we both found out the same evening.

As dusk fell, we dropped down into the little town by the shore where we'd originally planned to pick up a guide. Looking down from above, we could see a few lights winking among the dark rooftops, and smell fires. The sea spread out black toward the south.

“There's Pylos,” Polycaste said, pointing. “We might as well stay in the town tonight. We can stay with that guide.”

But the house where we'd asked for him before was closed up. We rattled the shutters and called, but no one answered, and there was no smoke from the chimney.

“There was that tavern,” Polycaste said.

“Or we could go on and camp.”

“What's the matter, are you scared?”

“No,” I said.

We retraced our steps to the tavern. No one was sitting outside, but the alleyway was filled with the reek of grilled fish, and from behind the shutters we could hear a murmur of voices. Polycaste opened the door. Inside there was a fug of smoke from a charcoal brazier in one corner. Through it, we could just make out a table at the back and some upturned barrels with men sitting around them. The place stank of stale
wine and the oily fish sizzling on the brazier. A man in a dirty apron stood by it, sweat pouring down his face as he prodded the fish with a fork.

Everyone stared at us as we came in. The conversation died away.

Polycaste walked confidently forward into the room. “We need somewhere to spend the night,” she said in her loud, clear voice.

“I'll give you somewhere to spend the night,” muttered one of the men. The others laughed. I put my hand on the hilt of my sword. Instinct. Straightaway I wished I hadn't—I knew what it meant to men like these.

Polycaste looked scornfully at them. “I'm Polycaste, the daughter of Nestor, chief of Pylos,” she said.

“This isn't Pylos,” said the man by the brazier, who I assumed was the tavern-keeper. “Nestor don't rule here.”

Suddenly the atmosphere was wrong. The men were veterans. There were four of them. One had a splint strapped to his leg; another, a knotted sleeve where his left arm should have been; and a third, a coat made from the belt of a bear. I knew they were dangerous. They might have been less skillful at fighting than the young men at home on Ithaca, but they were just as savage. Their leader had a thick black beard. The left-hand side of his face was covered with a clumsy tattoo, a sea monster.

I stepped forward, letting go of my sword. “All we want is somewhere safe to spend the night,” I said as reasonably as I could. I kept my eyes on the tavern-keeper. “Maybe you've got a stable at the back. We can sleep there.”

“What's in the bag?” asked the tattooed man. He was talking to Polycaste, who had her saddlebag slung over her shoulder.

“Our things.” She spoke bravely, but I could tell she was nervous.

“Open it up, then. Let's see what you've got.” He glanced at his friends, who laughed.

“No.” I had to draw a line, otherwise the men would push us back and back until we were helpless—I'd seen Antinous do that. I glanced around the room. The tavern-keeper had turned his back and was pretending to cook the fish. Two other men, in the far corner, had shuffled their stools around to look the other way. We were on our own.

I had to think fast. Our best chance was that the men would think us too-easy prey. They'd never expect a girl to fight. Four against one, they'd reckon, and me only a boy. They'd come for me first, thinking me the only threat, then have Polycaste to themselves. I don't know exactly what happened next. Fury frothed up in me. We were going to fight, and I
wanted
to fight. I'd had enough of negotiating, compromising, hiding. I wanted to hurt them.

Suddenly my mind left behind its first instinct of fear, almost as if it wasn't part of me, and began working smoothly, as if I could see how things were going to unfold. There was an alcove by the door, just enough room for me to take one step back. The saddlebag on my left arm masked my sword—
Hector's
sword—and the thought gave me a surge of confidence. I could swing the saddlebag into their faces and draw my sword in the same motion. Swing at them hard enough, and I could use the momentum to knock a second man off balance.

They had to move first. That had been Polycaste's lesson. Keep them guessing. Make them commit.

I took a step sideways. “Look,” I said. “There's nothing valuable in the bags. We're travelers. We're asking for hospitality.” Talking distracted them while I took up position. I weighed the saddlebag in my left hand. “If you want them, you'll have to take them,” I said.

The men came at me in a rush. There was no science in it. As they surged forward, I swung the bag at the man on my right, sending him blundering into the man next to him. At the same time I pulled out Hector's sword. Instead of lunging, I let the third man, the leader, run onto it with his own weight. The shock jarred my arm. There was a sickening moment as I felt the sword enter his body, but I kept my arm steady. The man grunted in surprise. For a second I seemed to be holding him up. His breath stank, filling my nostrils. His face, the tattoed monster rippling across it, seemed pressed right against mine, with the brown eyes first surprised, then suddenly glazed. But I didn't have time to think about that. My mind was still working fast. I looked right, at the man with the empty sleeve, who was holding a short, bent dagger. Before he could strike at me, though, he twisted in shock and agony. Polycaste had stabbed him from the side, and in the stroke slashed at the second man, who was beginning to recover his balance. I shoved the leader's body at him and circled into the room, shoulder to shoulder with Polycaste. It was only then I registered the wrench as I'd pulled my sword from the body. When I glanced down at it, the first hand's breadth was glistening red.

There was a moment's shocked silence. The one-armed man was groaning on the floor, clutching his side. The other two, unharmed, stood with their backs to the door, panting. They looked down in shock at their leader's body, and then up at us. Then, with a glance at each other, they were gone. The door banged open. Their footsteps receded down the alleyway.

The tavern-keeper turned his fish, which hissed fat into the brazier. Only then did one of the men in the corner look around.

“They'll be back,” he said without expression and turned back to his cards.

We led our mules quickly down the street. There was still enough light in the sky to see the beach, the flat, dark sea, and the distant promontory of Pylos. There were no lights in the town behind us. We followed the beach westward, then cut inland up a narrow gully choked with weeds and prickly pear. At the end of it we found a hollow under a rock face, where we tore out weeds to make space for a camp. We didn't light a fire.

“Are you all right?” Polycaste asked. They were the first words either of us had spoken since leaving the tavern.

“Yes.”

“Sure?”

“Of course I'm all right,” I snapped. “Why?”

“Because you're shaking.”

“I'm not.” I sat down on the hard ground and hugged myself. I didn't know what I was feeling. “I killed someone.”

“He was going to kill you.” Polycaste sat down next to me and put her arm around my shoulders. “You were brilliant. I didn't know what to do until the fighting started. You didn't stop thinking.”

I shook my head. It was like I couldn't make my mind absorb what had happened. Even putting it into words didn't make it real. “It was the way he looked at me.”

“The man you killed?”

“In the stories . . . in battles between fighters . . . they don't stop to think about killing . . . They just do it . . .” I was shivering. “He was a person,” I said.

“A bad person.”

“Does that make any difference?”

“I don't know.”

There was a moment's silence, then Polycaste nudged me. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have made us go in.”

“It doesn't matter.” It did. I just didn't want her to feel bad. “I said I needed to learn how to fight . . .” I could still see the
man's startled eyes staring right into mine, then suddenly losing . . . what? Like a candle snuffed out, or the flame dying on a log; like the last edge of the sun vanishing behind the horizon; like the emptiness after a thunderclap. Gone.

“Anyway,” Polycaste said more briskly, “you didn't have a choice.” She stood up and went to the head of the gully. The bushes were just shadows now. The first stars were appearing overhead. “One of us ought to stay up and keep watch. We'll take it in turns.”

I took the first watch. I knew I wouldn't sleep. I sat at the end of the track, wrapped in my blanket. Polycaste was soon asleep. To take my mind off it, I tried to picture Ithaca, my mother, Eurycleia, the nurse. But all I could think of was the man's dirty face with the tattoo of the sea monster on it and the sudden weight, so completely dead, as he slumped against me. Suddenly I found myself shaking, with tears pouring down my cheeks. I was ashamed of myself for crying. I hated what I'd done. I was confused. But at the same time, somehow, it felt as if I'd appeased that anger I'd discovered in myself, that sulky rage, like a stubborn and ill-tempered fire smoldering on an altar. I'd fed it, stilled it. I lived in a world where men fought. And I would fight too.

As I'll fight when I reach Ithaca, even though I know I've little hope of surviving. Not for the first time I wonder how the confrontation on Ithaca will start. I'll make a formal announcement of my father's death, and then what? I know what it will mean to Antinous and the others. No risk of the husband's return; no need to pretend Ithaca doesn't need a new chief because the old one's still alive. So—two prizes to snatch. One point in my favor: from the moment I declare my father dead, the young men are going to be at war with each other. But that's as far as the good news goes. Come tomorrow morning I'll be their rival for chief of Ithaca, and
I'll be in the way when it comes to snatching Penelope. Best dead, on both counts.

Factions will form. There's a fight brewing between Antinous and Eurymachus, although they've managed to work together until now. There's even a chance I can get Eurymachus to support me and eliminate Antinous. But only for a price: my support in marrying Penelope; my support in making him chief of Ithaca. I can pull that off if I want—Odysseus's son will still have some power in a town meeting—but I won't. My mother's freedom and the freedom of our island—they're the two things that matter most to me. I won't sacrifice them just to save my own life. That's why I'm steering through the night toward Ithaca, looking up at the stars and thinking I'll never know peace like this again. It was bred into me, the fight that's coming. The glory of the fighter's caste, and its end, crushed in one corner of the great hall with another man exulting over my body.

They'll attack me sooner rather than later. I'm guessing they won't want a public fight—people might run to help me. More likely an ambush somewhere quiet, or an accident, something that would cover their tracks from the charge of killing their host. A fall from the cliff, or a drowning at sea, the most common islander's death of all. A drowning at sea.

I peer ahead into the night. The dark masses of land ahead are starting to take shape. The deserted islet of Asteris, half a mile offshore, has pulled clear of Nirito's bulk. We're close enough to make out the wink of fires on shore. The light on the hillside must be from home, in the big house—maybe it's the brushwood brazier that keeps the guards warm at night. The light below must come from the little shack where fishermen smoke mullet and sardines on a beach littered with fish bones and sawn logs. For a moment, remembering childhood visits, I picture the gush of hot
smoke when its rickety wooden door is opened and the fish hanging in silver rows inside. They had to build it under the cliff because everyone in town objected to the stench.

Over to the left there's another fire I can't place. It looks as if it's on the islet of Asteris, but no one's ever lived on Asteris, which is just a rocky mound with a few trees and enough sand to beach a ship. Perhaps a ship has pulled up there—but why would anyone land on Asteris with the harbor of Ithaca just around the point? Unless they were keeping a watch out to the south. But who would be looking out to the south? And why can't they keep watch from the house itself, which commands views all over the Ionian Sea? Unless they're trying to intercept a ship coming from the south. The only ships from the south, though, are merchants and traders.

And me.

Suddenly I'm wide awake, fingers tense on the steering oar. A ship from the south. A drowning at sea. I try to stop my mind racing ahead. I've nothing to go on but one fire on Asteris. The rest might be just imagination—fear, nights awake thinking through exactly this, even the delayed shock of the fight in the tavern. I make myself think calmly back through it all, trying to make allowance for the night, for being tired, for fear. Same result. There's a fire burning where I've never seen one in my life.

“Mentor!” I whisper his name, even though we're still a mile from shore. It takes a moment to rouse him. “There's a fire on Asteris.”

“I don't see anything.” His voice is still thick with sleep.

“Down by the water. There must be people there. A ship.” My mind is moving fast now. “Wake the crew.” I don't stop to think that Mentor's thirty years older than me, but I'm giving the orders. “Get them to the oars without making a noise. Get the sail down. Quickly.”