The Lost Books of the Odyssey - By Zachary Mason Page 0,33
the dark hulls ground on the sands of Ilium, Death’s country, the white sails were furled, and they leapt down onto the shingle with weapons in hand. The sand crackled underfoot—Odysseus scooped up a handful and saw that it was made up of ground bone, tiny fragments of tooth, skull and vertebrae. They pitched their tents on the shore in the shadow of Ilium’s tall jagged walls and the odor of the charnel smoke rising from its towers. The augurs stared forlornly at the birdless sky.
The next morning the Greeks mustered to attack. As they drew near Ilium’s massive gate and spike-surmounted walls they wavered, even Agamemnon hesitating, but Menelaus was indifferent both to his men and to terror and he led the way, eyes shining, without looking back to see if they followed. Passing the black tree growing before the gate of Ilium, Menelaus struck the gate three times with the pommel of his bronze sword.
A fog came down on them just as they were bringing up their battering ram—on that much, everyone afterwards agreed. From there, the stories diverged. Some spoke of stumbling out of the fog onto an endless plain of frost where they wandered for days without seeing any evidence of living things except, sometimes, their own footprints. Some found a palace woven of giant bones from which rushed grey warriors with grim faces who shrugged off even the cruelest blows. Others spoke of a grey devil sitting on a stone who sang dirges in answer to their shouted questions.
Many Greeks died in battle but some of them came back to take their places in line with the living, their wounds still open but no longer bleeding. Menelaus did not like it but he did not fall short of men. Sometimes Death’s army sallied forth from Ilium, full of rage, but their passion was quickly spent and often his soldiers would stop in the middle of battle as though transfixed by a sudden inspiration, their gazes fixed on the horizon, motionless, even as the rejoicing, vindictive Greeks hacked them to pieces.
The high walls of Death’s city became the ubiquitous background of the Greeks’ dreams. There was a universal sense of oppression to which only Menelaus was immune—he fought with delighted abandon, never giving ground, always attacking. He would face a thicket of spears alone if his men’s courage failed, but he was never wounded or even tired. His tent was the only one in camp from which laughter was heard and his recklessness and apparent contempt for his enemy gave heart to his soldiers. Agamemnon strove to follow his brother’s example, and though he could not be as careless he fought valiantly against the soldiers of Death—he cursed and roared, hacked through cold flesh, caught them and bound them and burned them in pits.
As for Odysseus, Quickness carried him. When he was a child he had seen her frequently—she had played games with him in the woods behind his father’s house and instructed him in the use of the bow. She had been more reticent since he had grown up, only appearing to him when he killed his first man and once after five days of fasting. Now he could always feel her with him, hovering nearby him in battle, turning aside arrows and stones, whispering in his ear when to push the attack and when to flee. One night as he resharpened his sword, dull from hacking through the stiffened sinews of the dead, he asked her why, since she protected him, she did not commit herself fully and blast his enemies with lightning? She said nothing but he could feel her amusement and had the sense that she was biding her time.
The war dragged on. Clouds hid the sun for months at a time and the warriors’ tanned faces turned pale. Not all the apparitions were enemies—Agamemnon swore that when he had been cornered by Ilium’s gates his long-dead great-grandfather had appeared, hefted his old boar-spear and laughed while he spitted the menacing ghouls. Menelaus lost weight and there were black rings under his eyes but he never faltered in his singularity of purpose. As for Odysseus, he woke one morning to a strange sound—he went into the tent next to his and found Karéte, a second cousin on his mother’s side, alabaster pale and drawing each bubbling breath through a long gash in his throat (which had been made by a left-hander, some part of Odysseus’s mind noted, and a strong one). The