19. Odette

19

Odette

A fter what felt like forever, the winds swept us onto the shore of another island. I overheard some of the men say they thought it was Ismarus, city of the Cicones. If that was true, there would be people here that should be able to help us repair the damage the ships had suffered.

I was still tied up, but the door to the quarters I was in had been ripped off in the savageness of the storm. Beyond me, I could see the damage to the ship caused by hours of relentless battering from Poseidon’s waves. Ripped sails, the mast splintered, the men soaked and exhausted.

They were yelling at each other, trying to moor all twelve of the boats along the coastline in a uniform manner, but by the sound of things, it wasn’t working. Eventually, I felt our boat settle heavily, the anchor deep in the ocean bed, and then Odysseus’ voice rang out across the ship.

“Men, take only what you need. The Cicones are sure to aid us, as they did in the war, but remember this is their land.”

The men hollered in agreement and I heard them clamber over the ship’s edge and splash into the shallow waters below. The sound of them was carried away, until I believed myself alone. That was, until I heard a set of footsteps walk towards me and I saw Odysseus in the doorway.

Bending down, he finally loosened the bonds around my wrists. I waited for him to demand answers from me again, to look me in the eye, but his attention stayed on my wrists. Eventually, the coarse material fell to the floor between us.

I was about to ask him if I was free to go when his thumb stroked over the angry, deep red marks on my wrist.

“What are you doing?”

“You told me once I didn’t know you,” he murmured, his thumb continuing to stroke my sore skin.

“You don’t.”

“Don’t I?”

I hadn’t realised quite how close we were. My breath hitched and his eyes shot up to meet mine.

“I know you’re grumpy in the mornings,” he murmured, his eyes moving down to my lips. “I know you don’t like to serve fish, because you don’t have the patience for deboning them.”

I shuddered at the thought, and he took the opportunity to cup my cheek.

“And I know that you used to hate me; despise me. Despise us all.”

I tried to turn away from his touch then, but he didn’t let me, instead making sure my eyes were on him.

“But I also know it has not been unpleasant between us. That you were more than just a slave. You were a helpmate to me, and I to you. I know I do not want to lose that between us, Odette.”

When I didn’t trust myself to answer, Odysseus stood.

“Come. The men would have started a fire by now. You need to get warm, dry those clothes, and eat something hot.” He held out his hand.

There was a pause, a moment where the air stilled between us, when we both knew I was making my decision. Power or protection.

Why couldn’t I have both?

Then again, I had just spent an entire storm tied to a wooden pole. I took his hand.

Together, we made our way off the ship. Odysseus was right – the men had lit a fire farther up the shore. The landscape looked very different from the barren fighting ground of Troy’s plains with the citadel walls in the distance. Instead, here, a mountain of lush greenery towered over us.

Moving up the bank, I saw that the Cicones had indeed come out from within that lush forest and were hosting the men on the beach. The women were pouring wine directly into their mouths from goatskins. A couple of slain goats were already roasting on a spit above the fire. There was laughter and good nature, a camaraderie between everyone that the war was finally over. All was well.

I continued to warm myself by the fire while Odysseus walked off, presumably to talk to the captains of his ships about the plan, what items the Ciconian men had already agreed to give them, when we could set sail again. I spent the time thinking about what he’d said, about how his calloused thumb felt against my delicate skin, about how the shudder hadn’t really been about the thought of fish at all.

He was right. I wouldn’t survive this new world if I decided to turn against him now. In fact, to do so would be foolish of me. It was likely we would arrive on Ithacan soil long before I could come up with a way to fulfil my vow. In the meantime, I should solidify my place by his side so that come our docking in Ithaca, I might not be tossed aside.

Dark eyes slammed into mine across the fire pit.

My heart thumped wildly against my ribcage, my body reacting, panicked that he could read my thoughts, that he would ask what the vow was.

Suddenly the fire was too hot.

I turned away, desperate to gulp fresh air into my lungs, to get the feel of a cool breeze across my skin. Walking towards the ocean, I chanced a glance behind me, only to find Odysseus striding towards me. I pivoted, walking along the shoreline, away from the campfires, with a plan to turn back towards the forest trees.

I didn’t need to check again to know that he still followed. I could feel him behind me, like prey that knew it was being stalked. Until, suddenly, he was grabbing my hand.

“Not here,” he muttered in a guttural tone, before dragging me deeper into the tree line.

It took me two strides to keep up with his one. I was out of breath by the time he turned and grabbed my waist, pinning me against a tree, surrounded by enough overhanging branches to give us a modicum of privacy. Not that there was anyone around us at all. Even the wildlife slept.

“What are y—you doing?”

My back was flush against the tree, Odysseus’ hand resting on the smooth bark next to my head. His eyes roamed mine. “Tell me it’s all in my head. Tell me there’s no desire in your eyes right now. That I’m a mad man who is seeing things.”

I should want him driven mad. I should want him on his knees, desperate and sobbing for mercy. I should want that.

I should not want the feel of his hands gripping at the flesh on my hips, or slipping between the folded pleats of my tunic. I should not want to reach out and bite down on that fuller low lip of his, just to see what reaction I would get. I should not be experiencing this heat in my belly, so far from the fire.

But here, away from the men, away from Troy, on land that neither of us belonged to, what if … what if we could just be two people? What if wars and vows, gods and civilizations, didn’t matter? What if it was just me and him?

“Say it. Say it one way or the other, Odette.”

“I—”

He leant forward and my heart stuttered. I could feel it.

“I want it. I want you.”

As soon as I said it, I felt my heart drop down into my stomach and then swoop back up again, as Odysseus’ spare hand reached for my bare thigh and hooked it around his hip, thrusting the bulk of him closer to me.

Now, having to tilt my head up to look at him, he cupped my face with his other hand and then tangled it through the base of my hair.

“Thank you,” he said, before crushing his lips to mine.

I could feel the desperation pouring from his mouth into mine, and from mine into his, until it all seemed to mingle and my tongue flicked against his. Groaning in agreement, he deepened the kiss between us. He ground his crotch against my sex once, twice, then stopped and pulled back, unhooking my leg from around him.

“What is it?” I asked. “Do you not want this?”

“Oh, I want this very much, Odette.”

I knew other men hadn’t always treated their spear-wives as little more than property, especially in their first couplings. That Odysseus knew exactly who he was doing these things to – these things with ; the fact he had just said my name, did something funny to my heart.

But, then he did something that had me forgetting all about that, and riding a new flush of heat that travelled down to my belly, then further, lower, as he got on his knees in front of me.

“But you deserve more than a rough, dry hump against a tree for our first time.”

The man was on his knees for me. If I was still the woman who had made that vow, I would take the opportunity the Fates had given me, snap a branch, and stab him in the neck with it. Except, these branches were too thick, and he would surely catch me.

Then, his hands were back on my thighs, spreading them apart from inside my tunic, and I forgot all about killing and ways in which to do it.

He gave a slow, long lick with his tongue directly between my thighs, before suckling on my kleitorís. That had me inhaling another sharp breath, trying to process all the sensations.

Another suck, another tug, until I cried out in agreement.

He murmured his approval, the rumble vibrating against my thighs, now slick, before his tongue flicked out a playful lick and then delved back in. His hands grasped at my hips more forcefully, drawing me deeper into him, as if he couldn’t get enough.

I relished in the forcefulness, the pain. It made something in me roar to life, and I gripped his hair, pushing him deeper into me.

Again, he murmured in agreement.

When I found myself on the exquisite precipice, where one more flick of his tongue would allow me to fall into that blissful oblivion where nothing beyond my body would matter … he stopped.

“What?” I asked breathily, as he observed me.

He rose up to his feet and kissed me. I could smell myself on his beard, taste myself in his kiss. I tasted … tart. I’d heard about such acts from the other women and had thought it would be revolting. Yet, somehow, with the flavour coating both our tongues, I didn’t seem to care. In fact, I savoured the animalistic-ness of it.

Then I felt his cock press against me and my legs widen even farther to accommodate him, as I sheathed him. His powerful thighs thrust into me in one, two, three strokes. I dug my nails into his biceps. He thrust harder. I cried out in the pain of the pleasure. He crushed his lips to mine once again. Then there was only the sound of our laboured breathing.

The sound of two people, each desperately trying to lose themselves in the other.

Between the leaves of the tree above my head, I could see Artemis had hung a full moon. Somehow we had ended up on the soft moss beneath the tree, on the forest floor. Odysseus’ arm was supporting my head as we stared up at a sky so deeply blue it looked black. I was about to comment on it, to break some of the unease I could feel forming in my bones now that conscious thought and clarity had returned, when a rallying war cry echoed up from the beach.

My attention snapped towards Odysseus’, our eyes meeting for a fleeting moment as he moved fluidly onto his feet. By the time I had scrambled up, he had already put his fighting leathers back on and was storming towards the beach.

“Stay here!”

I immediately went to object.

“Just until I know the danger has passed. I will return for you.”

A silent beat of understanding passed between us, a moment we couldn’t afford. I sent him a brief nod.

That was the last moment of peace we had for a long, long time.

I followed him as close to the forest edge as I could get without being seen, where frantic energy filled the air and rushed towards me. On the beach, the men were fighting with the Cicones. Swords clashed, the men desperately grappling and grasping for their weapons and shields that had been abandoned near the fires. The ambush must have happened quickly, given the chaos I saw scattered along the beach – Odysseus’ men being cut down, blood raining onto the grains of sand below.

I could feel Zeus’ anger, the thunder rolling through the sky from the sea and onto the land. Until I realised it was not Zeus, but footsteps. What sounded like the roar of hordes of men. And horses.

My eyes scanned the scene in front of me desperately, searching for Odysseus amongst the carnage. There he was. Crouching and gutting, his spear a light and deft weapon in his hand as he twirled and stabbed, spun and launched. Always knowing when to press forward. Always knowing when to deflect.

So, this was who he had been on the battlefields of Troy. I could have been mesmerised by the dance of it, had my heart not been beating in the same rhythm as the footsteps that approached, growing ever faster.

Surely he could hear them, I thought. Surely he would force the men to retreat back to the ships soon, knowing what was coming. Feeling them beneath his feet. Then again, in the throes of battle, perhaps he could not hear them. I waited a second too long to cry out. Then I heard it.

“Retreat!” Odysseus’ voice boomed over the chaos, a command that carried across the winds, across the beach, all the way to the trees. Every man heard it. Every man turned and ran for the ships as the Cicones followed.

He wasn’t coming back for me. He couldn’t. And the reinforced ranks of the Cicones were descending down the forest mountainside on all sides of the beach, including mine. There was nothing for it. I would have to run through the battlefield if I was going to have any hope of getting out of here alive.

I stumbled onto the sand, running as fast as I could directly to the shoreline. Men fought all around me, but I was at most of the Cicones’ backs for now. I managed to evade most of them. I wasn’t the only woman on the shore. The others who had been dancing and feasting amongst the fires were there, too. Some were fighting with their brothers. Others were cowering. Some were being dragged by their hair by Odysseus’ men.

One made eye contact with me and flashed her fangs. A fighter. I dug my heels into the sand, forcing myself to run harder, faster, when a hand reached out and grabbed me.

Odysseus.

“Come, we must go. Now. Run, Odette.”

At that moment, a spear passed across my chest, a mere millimetre from where I was. Odysseus roared and lunged, gutting the man who had dared, before pushing me towards the boats. I felt every swish of his spear, every countermove at my back as he continued to drive me forward.

It felt like forever before my shins hit cold water. Wading through it to reach the ship felt like it took even longer. But Odysseus’ strong forearms bolstered me as I clambered up the rope ladder and onto the ship, even as he continued to fight off the bloodthirsty Cicones that had waded into the water after us.

Most, however, stayed on the shoreline, their message clear. Leave our land. You are not welcome here.

With a triumphant surge, those who had made it cast us off from shore. I stood beside Odysseus at the helm, as we watched the Cicones thrust their weapons in the air with another rallying war cry, this one victorious. Beyond them, dozens of Odysseus’ men lay on the beach.

All slaughtered. All unmoving. All dead.

And in the sky beyond, Zeus roared.