15. Οdysseus

15

Οdysseus

I recruited Epeius, a master carpenter, to build the wooden horse. With him as the men’s instructor, we managed to complete the statue within five days. When we were done, we watched as the remaining men and those we had gathered during our time at war boarded the ships. Our tents had been taken down; we’d left the burnt pyres of our dead standing. A few dead men remained on the shore. All to convince the Trojans that we had retreated. And left the dead horse in our place.

To the Trojans, it would look like a solid structure, an offering to one of the gods for our safe passage and return to Greece. On the inside, it was hollow.

As I watched Odette board my ship, the waves lapping at and rocking the boat, a shawl pulled tightly around her shoulders and the moonlight shining down on her, I felt my own ribcage hollow.

Whatever was to happen now was at the mercy of the gods.

Odette and my men would sail around the bay, just beyond the peak of the mountain, and wait. I, and forty-nine others, would remain inside the horse. We had left one, Sinon, who waited outside.

It took the Trojans a day to find us. No doubt they had wondered why their scouts hadn’t reported us marching forward on the battlefield as we had always done, come the dawn. Instead, we had rested inside the belly of the wooden beast for the long night under the light of a full moon, a positive omen from Artemis that our plan – my plan – would come to fruition. Now, we were wide awake and alert, listening for the slightest hint that the Trojans knew we were inside.

“What is it?” one of them asked Sinon.

“Isn’t it obvious? It is an offering to Poseidon, to give them safe passage,” another Trojan accent answered his friend.

Another man snorted. “We should burn it then.”

I could hear my own ragged breathing and clamped my hand over my mouth, an active reminder to myself and the men around me to make as little noise as possible.

We had accepted the risk that they might choose to burn the horse.

“No, it is a gift to Athena,” Sinon told them. “The Greeks admit that Troy is impenetrable. So they have given a gift to the Goddess of War, for her wisdom in helping to create such a city. A citadel that cannot be beaten. It is the ultimate place for her warriors to reside. You should take it as a reminder. Troy will always remain impenetrable.”

“Why should we believe you?”

I felt my heart hammer in my chest. This had been the other calculated risk – to leave Sinon outside the horse. It slightly negated the chance that the Trojans would outright burn the horse, but it would be Sinon’s silver tongue that would determine what they would do next. It was exactly why I had chosen him.

“My commander, Odysseus, left me here to rot, knowing that you would most likely kill me. All because I called him out in front of everyone, that the Palladium he stole showed him that we would never win, no matter what any of the soothsayers said. He had told us we were coming here for honour and glory, but all we got was death and disease. What loyalty should I have to him now?”

“Why did you stay with the horse?”

This time, a female voice asked the question. That was unusual – highly unusual.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” Sinon mumbled. I could hear his feet scuffing against the sand, and I could imagine his head bowed as he said it. A young man, no more than ten and nine, no doubt attempting to look like the petulant child that needed taking in, especially if there was a woman present. He should be able to play on her weakness, her need to save and nurture.

“We should take the offering into the citadel. Offer it to Athena ourselves as thanks for driving the Greeks from our shores,” one of the Trojan males said.

“No, you shouldn’t. If you do, Troy will burn,” the female voice warned them, turning sharp. A reprimand.

“Luckily, I don’t take my orders from you, Cassandra.” I could hear the smirk in the unknown man’s tone. “Why don’t you go back to the temple and make your ominous declarations to someone who will listen? Apollo, perhaps?”

Another man outside the horse sniggered.

I grinned at the soldiers around me. Despite the darkness, slivers of light snuck through some of the gaps in the wooden panelling. Not enough that the outsiders could see in, but just enough to keep fresh air circulating. I was grinning because Cassandra was known for her declarations. No one ever believed her prophecies, which was just as good as cementing our cause.

“I agree with Cassandra. We should set fire to this monstrosity.”

Suddenly, we all felt the ground shake. Risking a peek out of one of the slits in the horse, I watched as the earth around one of the men cracked open. It was as if a seam in the soil opened up directly to the Underworld itself. The jagged rocks around the chasm looked like teeth as the man began to fall into it. There was a crunch as he fell face first against the rocks, his scream strangling the air. “I can’t see! I can’t see! Oh gods, I’ve gone blind – help me!”

No man made a move to help him. Neither did Cassandra. They all watched on, for this was no freak act of nature – this was a clear act of a god. Or goddess, I considered, given that Sinon had mentioned Athena. And to insult Athena’s intelligence was a fool’s move.

Eventually the earth stopped shaking and one of the men dared to help the fool to his feet.

“I suggest we all take Laocoon’s lesson here to heart. He has clearly been punished for doubting this young man’s words, for suggesting we mutilate a gift that has now been claimed in Athena’s name. She clearly cares for this offering. Let us wheel it into the citadel and present it to King Priam.”

“Agreed,” one of the other generals seconded.

Cassandra said nothing.

Laocoon continued moaning.

And that was that.

There was uncomfortable jostling as they rigged the horse up onto the wheel pulley system. The men and I bumped against each other, trying not to grunt as we swayed between flesh and wood, one way and then the other. We might’ve been bruised, but this was it – our chance to get behind those Trojan walls. Victory was so close, we could almost taste it.

We waited in silence throughout the long journey across the battlefield where our brothers’ blood had been spilled.

We waited in silence as the soldiers called for the gates to the city to be unlocked. As those gates we had never been able to penetrate slowly swung open.

We waited in silence as our horse was pulled through the streets of Troy. As cries of joy and false victory rose around us.

Let them celebrate. Let them have this one last moment.

Celebrate through the night they did. Drums beat throughout the city. Music played, ale flowed. We could hear giddy young Trojan women laugh joyously as soldiers cheered and danced with them. Every time one of them would get too close, the men and I would close our eyes and hold our breaths. Until, eventually, the flutes and other instruments drowned out our breathing.

The night went on. The celebrations only quietened when King Priam made his speech thanking his people for standing steadfast, telling them to enjoy this era of peace that the Trojan Horse – as they called it – brought with it. A hurrah went up into the air, and they spent the evening dancing and weaving ribbons on the horse in celebration. Throwing garlands of flowers on it.

Until they were all exhausted with joy, drowsy from the exertion, and dawn – as she always did – came to claim them. They slept.

The trapdoor in the horse was in the right leg flank. We had considered putting it under the belly of the horse, but we figured that would be the first place the Trojans would look for a trap, if they’d been smart enough to look. Instead, we’d built little ledges into the right leg flank. I went first, climbing up the leg, unlatching the hinge, climbing out and then shimmying down the leg as one would a tree trunk.

One by one, the Greeks slipped into the shadows behind me until fifty of us stood deep in the heart of Troy’s citadel. After years of bloodshed, it had come to this.

We moved silently towards the gates, sticking to the dark, for surely Priam hadn’t been foolish enough to let every guard go. I was right. There were still sentries at their posts. We dispatched them expeditiously, steel slicing through flesh, our hands muffling their dying gasps. No alarms raised. Then, we lit the fires. They flared bright, a signal to our comrades from the ships, now cutting across the plains, the Greek Army ready to storm in.

Troy’s fall came quickly after that.

I left a handful of men at the gate as the rest of us spread out, igniting fires around the outer perimeter. The flames funneled the panicked citadel folk inward, forcing them towards the palace of Priam and his sons, where my third group waited, poised to slaughter every man who entered. Women and girls would be spared, but no Trojan man would live. We would end this war.

The smoke thickened, the horns blared, and the city stirred. Footsteps thundered, shouts clashed with screams, and the first of their soldiers ran straight into our blades, impaling themselves as they tried to defend what little they had left. Panic reigned. The women shrieked as we advanced, their pleas falling on ears dulled by a thousand sieges before.

These Trojans were no match for us, soft and unprepared for the fury we brought. We moved through them like a wave, drowning any resistance in blood. They buckled quickly, crumbling under the pressure. With every smoky breath they became more docile, helpless beneath our boots.

Menelaus, Pyrrhus – Achilles’ son – and I fought our way through the mass of Trojans, now swarmed by Greeks as our brothers poured through the gates. We pushed up the main road, the path our great horse had been dragged up only hours before, now slick with blood and littered with cut-down bodies. Ahead, the palace doors were open, a flood of desperate citizens surging inside, seeking sanctuary. They would find none.

Foolish Priam.

The fight was brutal, but not in its physicality. Most of Troy’s soldiers were still drunk, sleepy, or hungover. Only a few fought like they had on the battlefield. No, it was brutal in its decimation. At one point, I passed a woman who lay weeping over the dead body of a man I assumed was her husband. Two of our men were hitting her across her back with their spear butts.

“Pick her up, gods damn it, and take her to where the rest are,” I barked at them. If these had all been my men, they would have known that I didn’t accept the beating of women. As I reminded my men, war trophies and prizes were to be treasured, polished, and protected if you wanted them to maintain any worth, which the men always did. But these were not all my men; they were from each army that had gathered for the Greeks.

There was no need for this animalistic ritual, this slaying. If only the Trojans would come quietly. If only our men weren’t so desperate to get home that they would do anything to achieve it.

If only I hadn’t played a hand in forcing this war with my blood vow over Helen. Stupid.

Each thrust of my spear after that felt like the heaviest blows I’d had to deliver in these last ten years. Each new death was more difficult than the last, harder to execute, harder still to pull each man from my spear again and watch him fall. I used to be able to watch the eyes of the man I was killing, to honour his final breath, but now all I felt with each stab, each twist, each thrust and grunt, was shame.

I thought there was no more shame in my bones left to give, until I finally made it the naos? 1 of the palace. At the end of the long marble room, with its large columns, each one with an intricate carving and dedication to each of the Olympians, where Priam had undoubtedly hosted his war counsel, his sons, his daughters, his family, his royal meetings, was the altar. There, lying across it, was King Priam himself, and Pyrrhus stabbing him up under his ribcage with a smile on his face.

It was the grimmest part of the war, for me. The victory.

The screams quietened by daybreak. The smoke was beginning to clear as I and the other generals examined the royal women who remained at the gates of Troy. They’d been dragged here, to the holding pen the men had formed, by force.

Polyxena. Andromache. Hecuba. Cassandra. Helen.

Most of the women in Troy had come kicking and screaming, dragged by their limbs – and in some cases, their hair – by our soldiers. These five royals had not. They held their heads high and now stood before the Greek generals in a semicircle, guards holding them in place.

Myself, Agamemnon, Menelaus, and the rest of the generals stood opposite them. Most of us had our arms crossed as we regarded them, but when I glanced at the others, I saw Pyrrhus puffing out his chest while casually swinging his sword like a child. Agamemnon was leering at Cassandra. Meanwhile, Menelaus appeared like a bull, his breathing heavy and laboured, practically rubbing his heel into the dirt, ready to run towards Helen and drag her back off to where they’d come from.

I shifted my posture, preparing to speak.

One of our men, Talthybius, spoke. “Women of Troy, may I present to you Lord Odysseus, King of Ithaca.”

“We recognise no such king.” The woman in the middle spoke for them all.

Her voice was like Odette’s was when I had first met her: rich and thick in a way that broadened the e’s, stressing the last syllable of each word and the only noun in her statement – ‘king’. I recognised that it made her declaration sound more ominous than she perhaps intended.

“Queen of Fallen Troy, Hecuba. The generals have gone to a great deal of effort and trouble to decide where each of you shall be placed now that your husbands, brothers, uncles, and cousins are dead,” Talthybius continued.

The unspoken words sat heavy between us all; they had to be placed with a male. They couldn’t hope to run a city without one. The thought was laughable, though not, it appeared, to the women standing in front of us, who scoffed.

Talthybius hesitated, so I stepped forward a foot, everyone’s attention turning to me. “Polyxena, daughter of Priam and Hecuba, seeing as you were requested by the great Achilles and he is now dead, you will be given to the gods at his tomb.”

The girl, no more than four and ten years of age, would have buckled on long legs to her knees had the two women either side of her not caught her by the elbows and kept her on small, shaky feet.

Her death would be a waste, for her skin was pure ivory, her hair a shade of raven braided across the crown of her head. She had large eyes, a good nose, pleasant lips. She was, by all standards, the truest definition of beauty to most men, and undoubtedly a virgin as she was not yet married. But, honour for honour’s sake had to be taken into account, at least at Pyrrhus’ insistence for his father, and so she would die. I had not been able to convince the men otherwise.

“Andromache,” I continued, for I could do nothing but. “As Hector’s wife, you will be given to Pyrrhus as a token of your husband’s rivalry with Achilles.”

“Was his death not enough?”

Andromache’s voice was as cold as Hecuba’s. She would have made a wonderful Queen of Troy. But where the Queen was dark and slim, with round honey-coloured eyes, a long nose, and a calm demeanour, Andromache was shorter with blondish hair and fuller features.

“No,” Pyrrhus interrupted. “It was – is – not. We should have every Trojan man killed, even the boy carried in a mother’s womb.”

A collective gasp fell from the group.

“It’s not as if we need to throw children from the battlements of the city,” I said quietly.

“What an excellent idea!” King Agamemnon boomed.

“You wouldn’t” Andromache breathed.

“No, we wouldn’t,” I confirmed, staring down Agamemnon.

“Well, there is one that must die,” Pyrrhus said, his beady eyes lighting up in delight.

“Who?” Agamemnon demanded.

My heart sunk into the pit of my stomach as I realised who exactly Pyrrhus was speaking of.

“Who?” Andromache echoed the king’s question.

When no one offered an answer, I took on the task. “A Trojan prince, even a babe, cannot be allowed to live.”

“No.” Her voice trembled but did not break. Impressive.

“Odysseus is quite right,” Agamemnon bleated. “It is the way of such things in war time. If you do not agree to hand the boy over, we will not allow him his burial rites. Now, where is he?”

“You are monsters,” Hecuba spat as she held Andromache in her arms.

“We are Greeks, taking what is rightfully ours. So say the gods by granting us this victory. You’d do well to obey them. Take the mother of the prince. Have her bring him back from whatever hole they’ve hidden him in,” Agamemnon barked at the guard behind Andromache, who grappled with the woman trying to shrug him off before forcefully grabbing her hair and pushing her back towards the smouldering city.

“As for the rest of you – what are we doing with them again, Odysseus?”

“Hecuba, Queen of Troy, will come with me back to Ithaca.”

“Of course it is my lot to be a slave to a vile and treacherous man,” she muttered, just loudly enough for it to carry across our strange group.

I clenched my jaw at the insult. In truth, the reason I’d requested her was because I saw a lot of Penelope in her. My wife would find a great friendship with Hecuba. Who better for a queen than the one who had ruled by her husband’s side for more than fifty years?

“Cassandra,” I continued, “has been requested by King Agamemnon.”

I looked at the woman, the one who it was said spoke false prophecies, yet had that clear-cut warning in her voice when I was in the belly of the wooden horse. She was the shortest and bulkiest of all of them, round-faced too, but with a noble nose and shrewd dark eyes that did not match her straw-coloured hair.

She didn’t say anything, which would have surprised me the most had it not been for the small quirk of her dark brow. That was the only indication she gave me that she had even heard the directive.

“And Helen,” – the woman we had pinned this war on – “will return to Menelaus.”

The women were led from their falling city and herded across the desert plains, where they had once watched their men battle from the safety of their keep. Myself and the generals stayed with the royal group, our subordinates taking care of the rest of the Trojan slaves that would now travel like cattle in our ships back to Greece.

The royal entourage was mostly silent, except for Andromache’s muffled sobs and Hecuba’s insistent hushes. It reminded me of Odette’s group, when we’d rounded them up from that pathetic village that was really no more than a dirt square with a drinking fountain, bordered by houses and some fields of crops.

The women’s steps were small, unsurprisingly, given their stature and fate. None we had collected over the years had been eager to stride into slavery. Still, it irked the men. Even seasoned generals could behave like children, and more than once I caught Menelaus nipping at Helen’s calves with the flat face of his sword. They were desperate to get home, anyone could smell it on them. And though no one actually let out a breath, there was a collective sigh from the Greeks when our group could eventually see the ocean.

For the women, the ocean watered down their resolve. It was a brutal slap in the face from their reality, for whichever way they looked spelt a new future. Poseidon had never been a kind master to females. On the horizon, lands they didn’t know of or didn’t want to return to, unsure of what to expect. Behind them, remnants of a life they’d never have again.

The realities of war.

Andromache was openly weeping now. Hecuba had stopped her hushing. Polyxena began crying in earnest as Pyrrhus grabbed her roughly around the arm and led her away. The others in the group didn’t so much as get a chance to say goodbye before she would be sacrificed at Achilles’ tomb. Some would say that was cruel of him, but honestly, the extended farewells were worse. Letting them linger in their heartbreak only amplified a woman’s feelings.

Better to get it over with.

One of Pyrrhus’ soldiers tried to grab Andromache and follow after the young general, but Hecuba clung to her forearms. We all watched him attempt to pull them apart for a moment before I stepped in behind the former Queen of Troy and forced her to relent, crushing her delicate wrists with bruising force.

“Bastard,” she hissed at me.

I ignored her.

Instead, I led her away from the pack of royals and towards the ships where my men were setting up our tents once again. We would stay now until the rest of the Trojan spoils were divided up between our counsels, which meant replanting ourselves in the sand.

Just like we had all those years ago.

We were on the easternmost border, which meant we would be some of the last to leave through the Mare Aegeum when the time came. But, for now, it gave us the long-grass hills, the less damp sand, and I was grateful we were away from the rabble of the beaches as we climbed, Hecuba’s wrist still in my grasp.

At the top of the hill I spied Odette, her figure outlined against the fading light as she busied herself instructing the men to set up a campfire in that practical way of hers I had come to love. No doubt the men had grumbled of hunger and rather than listen to them gripe, she had set them to work. Things had changed; the men had come to occasionally listen to the women that took care of them. I hoped Hecuba would be able to see that.

I glanced sideways at her. She pressed her lips into a thin line, her gaze sharpening as she took it all in.

“Odette was once a slave,” I remarked.

“And what is she now, Lord?” Hecuba replied, disdain dripping from her thick accent.

I snapped my mouth shut when I realised I didn’t have an answer. Not one I could say out loud. Eventually we reached where the men were gathered around the campfire, and I thrust Hecuba towards Odette.

“Get the former queen cleaned and settled into a guest tent,” I grunted.

Odette’s eyes widened, a small but telling gesture. It was her only giveaway that she still thought me a brute, though she said nothing. Instead she nodded her head, curtsied to Hecuba, and held out her hand. To my surprise, Hecuba took it graciously.

“You don’t have to curtsy to her. She is no longer queen,” I grumbled.

“Because my city is destroyed?” Hecuba turned and faced me.

Odette watched me too, her head cocked.

“And who, King of Ithaca, is making sure your kingdom still exists? Do you even know? Are you even king any longer?” Hecuba continued. She gave a wry smile at my lack of reply. “Or does your wife keep your seat warm? Surely not, for a woman can’t rule a city on her own. You and your comrades laughed at that notion only this morning.”

“Just take her to get clean and settled,” I muttered. “Feed her, too. She must be hungry.”

“Certainly,” Odette said with a smile. “Come, my lady, let us freshen you up.”

“Thank you, my child.”

1 ? The inner sanctuary of a temple, a most sacred area, often inaccessible to the general public and reserved for religious activities, such as prayer and offerings to the gods.