King of Ithaca (52 page)

It was only the slightest twitch of an outstretched arm, but overwhelmed to discover the guard captain was alive Eperitus ran from the Ithacan front rank towards where he lay, determined to bring him safely away from the foot of the walls. But before the Taphian archers could shoot him down, their rain of arrows suddenly stopped and they slipped back into the courtyard. Eperitus looked back at Arceisius, who shook his head in reply.

Then the answer came. They heard the rasping sound of the bar being lifted from the back of the great gates and saw the doors fold outward, ready to unleash the Taphian counter-attack.

As the gates were slammed shut, Odysseus and his companions were hurriedly escorted into the palace by the scar-faced Taphian and four others. There was no time to bind their wrists, but with two guards in front of them and the sword points of the others pressed painfully into their backs, the Ithacans knew any attempt to escape would be futile and swiftly dealt with. The commotion of battle was already starting behind them as they entered the torch-lit passageway that skirted the great hall.

They marched rapidly towards the steps leading up to the royal quarters, but were stopped by the sudden appearance of Mentes from a side passage, his sword held menacingly at his side. When Diocles the Spartan joined him, the guards knew something was wrong.

‘What do you think you’re doing, Mentes?’ asked the leading Taphian. ‘And why isn’t this prisoner with the others?’

Without a word, Mentes plunged his sword into the man’s gut, killing him instantly. Diocles, though unarmed, crumpled the other man with a single blow from his large fist. Five more Spartans joined them from the side passage; two of them picked up the weapons of the fallen men and, with Mentes at their head, rushed at the remaining Taphians. Odysseus, Mentor and Antiphus twisted away from their captors as their rescuers drove them back down the corridor, their swords clashing angrily against each other.

‘Mentes, you traitor,’ hissed the scar-faced warrior.

Mentes replied with a thrust of his sword. His opponent parried the hasty lunge and laid the younger man’s guard open, but in the narrow passage was unable to bring his own weapon up to find the exposed torso. In desperation he resorted to punching Mentes in the stomach, winding him. Mentes slumped against the wall, but before his former comrade could finish him one of the armed Spartans stepped in and skewered the Taphian through the groin. He fell to the ground, screaming with the agony of the mortal wound.

Though the two remaining guards had been pushed back, they showed no signs of wanting to run to the safety of the courtyard. Instead, they stood shoulder to shoulder and raised the points of their swords, smiling grimly at the thought of a fight to the death. Odysseus picked up their dying comrade’s weapon, ready to answer their challenge, but before he could advance on the waiting Taphians Mentes stepped between them and faced his countrymen.

‘Join us,’ he said. ‘We came here to serve Eupeithes, not Polytherses. There will be no dishonour in laying down your arms and refusing to fight, and tomorrow we can return to our beloved homeland.’

The men looked at him with scorn in their eyes. They were warriors, proud men who were ready to die in battle; they had also come to prefer Polytherses’s brutal style of leadership to the soft indecision of Eupeithes, and had every intention of fighting for the new king of Ithaca. One of them spat into the dirt at Mentes’s feet.

Odysseus wasted no time in rushing at them and severing the sword arm of one with a single blow. Shocked, he fell backwards clutching at the gushing wound, and Odysseus finished him with a stab through the throat. The other man was engaged by a Spartan and quickly slain, the victor savouring revenge for the massacre of his comrades the day before. The scar-faced warrior, still groaning, was quickly dispatched, but Mentes insisted they spare the life of the man Diocles had knocked unconscious.

As they tied his hands and feet with belts taken from his dead comrades, Odysseus explained the desperate situation at the gates to the others.

‘It troubles me to fight against my own countrymen,’ Mentes said, gagging the prisoner with a strip of cloth torn from a bloody cloak. ‘But, equally, I hate Polytherses and the way he is putting good soldiers to ill use. If I help you open the gates, maybe the gods will bring some of them to their senses and they will join with us against our true enemy.’

Odysseus thought of the two guards they had just slain and doubted whether many, if any, of the Taphians would switch allegiance. They were too proud, even for Greeks. But he was nevertheless glad of Mentes’s continuing loyalty, and knew if he could help them open the gates there would still be a slim chance of victory. Something else concerned him, though, and he could no longer restrain himself.

‘Diocles, where is Penelope? I know she was with you when the camp was ambushed.’

‘She was captured with us, but we were separated the moment they brought us inside the palace walls.’

‘Then I have no choice,’ Odysseus announced. ‘Diocles, I want you and your men to open the gate. Antiphus and Mentes will go with you. They won’t be expecting an attack from within the palace so you’ll have the advantage of surprise, but you still have to open the gates and hold them until Halitherses can reach you. When he does, then you must do what you can to defeat the Taphians inside the courtyard.

‘As for Mentor and I, we will search the palace for Penelope. Any victory will be a hollow one for me if my wife is harmed, so I must be sure of her safety. Then, if the new king is anywhere to be found, I’ll make sure of him too. But first I must find where Eupeithes is being kept.’

‘He was imprisoned with us in a storeroom, down there,’ said Diocles, pointing to the passageway from which they had emerged earlier. ‘Have pity on him, Odysseus.’

‘May the gods be with you,’ was Odysseus’s only response, then with Mentor he went to find the man who had brought so much trouble to Ithaca.

The corridor was lit by a single torch, which Odysseus freed from its holder and took with him into the storeroom. For a moment they could see nothing but large clay jars amidst the flickering shadows cast by the flame. Then, as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they distinguished a man in the far corner, his legs sprawled out before him. They stepped closer and held the torch up, causing the man to squirm away from the light, cowering and whimpering as he covered his eyes with his forearm.

It was Eupeithes, though only just. His once proudly fattened physique was diminished through starvation, and his previously clean-shaven, fleshy cheeks were drawn and covered in a scrawny beard. So this was the man who had deposed Laertes, and for fear of whom Odysseus had taken the palace guard across the Peloponnese to Sparta. He lowered the torch.

‘Let’s go.’

‘And leave him?’ asked Mentor, shocked. ‘You’ve wanted to kill this rat for the past half-year; surely you aren’t going to turn your back on him now? He deserves death, Odysseus!’

‘Maybe,’ Odysseus answered, ‘but I haven’t the heart to murder such a pathetic creature.’

He turned and, without a further glance at the former king, walked back out of the room to the main corridor. The others had gone already and, with no time to waste, Odysseus flung the torch into the dirt at his feet and pulled the sword from his belt.

‘Come on, old friend,’ he said, looking at the steps to the royal quarters. ‘Let’s see this thing to its finish.’

They mounted the steps two at a time to the floor above, where they turned to scan the dimly lit corridors for guards. Seeing none, they moved cautiously to the point where an intersecting corridor ran to the right. Both men knew the palace intimately; the turn led straight to the royal quarters.

Odysseus had been born and brought up here. This was his territory, the very heart of his home, where he, his parents and his sister had lived in happiness for as long as he could remember. The sight of the familiar walls and doors, the faded murals and the worn mats on the stone floor made Odysseus suddenly realize the depth of the offence that had been caused to his family. That he had been forced into exile, his father taken to the northern tip of the island and his mother and sister imprisoned in their own home; that their enemies were now enjoying the food from their own kitchens, cooked and served by Laertes’s slaves; that foreigners bathed, dressed and slept in their own rooms, filled him with a murderous anger. Gripping the hilt of his sword until his knuckles were white, he turned the corner.

Two guards lay propped sleepily against the door jambs of his parents’ room. The first barely saw Odysseus as he clove his head open to the base of his neck. Though the second threw the shaft of his spear up as a defence against Mentor’s sword, he was killed by the follow-up thrust that split open his stomach.

They jumped over the corpses and into the large room where his mother sat gripping the edge of the bed. Beside her stood Koronos, the traitor who had deceived the Kerosia into sending the palace guard to Sparta. He held a sword in his hand, but appeared calm and collected before the unexpected appearance of Odysseus and Mentor.

‘So, the fledgling has returned to the nest,’ he scoffed. ‘But a little too late to save your darling wife, I fear.’

Suddenly another guard leapt at them from the near corner of the room. Mentor, whose sword was in his other hand, instinctively held up his forearm to ward off the blow. The force of the Taphian’s blade cut through the flesh and bone of his wrist, severing his hand and spraying blood across the smooth floor. He fell against the bed, shouting with pain and clutching the stump of his hand beneath his other arm.

Simultaneously, Koronos launched a ferocious attack on Odysseus. Their swords clashed noisily as the prince checked the traitor’s well-aimed swing. For a moment they stood face to face as their momentum pressed them together, their blades crossed between them. Then they withdrew again, their weapons rasping as they slid apart. Koronos renewed his attack, lunging skilfully at the bulk of his opponent, but Odysseus was quicker than he seemed, easily twisting away from the deadly thrust and in the same movement swinging his blade around to slash at Koronos’s exposed flank.

The older man’s reactions were equally good. He straightened up from the lunge that had so nearly skewered his opponent, and then lithely stepped away from the arcing point of the counter-stroke. In the same instant, the Taphian guard jumped over his wounded opponent and joined Koronos in pinning Odysseus back against the corner of the room. The prince retreated under their alternating cuts and thrusts, twice being wounded on the sword arm as he narrowly beat aside blows that would have split open his belly. Then, with all the strength his great arms would lend him, he not only stopped their advance but began to beat the two men back.

A single opponent could barely have withstood the ringing blows. Odysseus slashed from side to side, forcing the two men onto the defensive. They gave ground before him and became quickly exhausted by the effort of parrying his blows. Then the Taphian slipped in Mentor’s blood and fell at the foot of the bed. Though wounded, Mentor used the last of his strength to pluck a dagger from the unconscious guard’s belt and slashed open the man’s throat. He died with a final blood-choked sigh, just as Mentor collapsed with exhaustion.

‘What did you mean by “wife”, Koronos?’ Odysseus grunted as he renewed his attack on the old man.

‘Don’t try to fool me,’ Koronos laughed. ‘Penelope told us she was your wife as soon as she was captured. She seemed proud of the fact, though I wonder whether she will show such arrogance when she’s a widow.’ He beat aside a sudden probing jab from Odysseus. ‘When you’re dead, Polytherses intends to make her his plaything.’

Odysseus lunged angrily, but was checked and had to defend against a rapid return thrust from Koronos.

‘Penelope would die before she gave him the pleasure,’ he snarled.

‘Really?’ Koronos retorted. ‘The king enjoys a good hunt. Says it makes the meat taste better. She’s with him now, you know, down in the great hall with four Taphians. Do you think that if they want to satisfy themselves with her, she’ll be able to stop them?’ He parried another angry thrust. ‘Perhaps if I kill you now, my reward will be a turn with your wife, too.’

Odysseus resisted the impulse to throw himself into another furious attack. Koronos was easily his match in swordsmanship, if not in physical strength; he was also a cunning man, and Odysseus sensed that he was deliberately trying to provoke his anger. Already his lapses of concentration had nearly allowed the older man inside his guard. He stepped back and eyed him with caution.

‘You know I have Laertes held prisoner in my home?’ Koronos continued. ‘Before you arrived I was telling your mother how he begs to see her again. I find his pleas very moving. If I die, though, my slaves have orders to kill him. Is that what you want?’

Odysseus sensed an undercurrent of desperation in Koronos’s calm voice, the voice that had once persuaded him to leave his family undefended. Now it was trying to convince him that his wife would be raped and his father murdered. And yet for all his skill and power, the old man could not conceal his fear from the prince.