Heroes

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘For you, I am a man, a comrade. Anything is possible for a free man. I thank you for having faced all this danger for me.’

They set off in haste and did not notice that behind them a wounded man was dragging himself through the sand; it was one of the two sentinels whom the men had attacked after luring him away from the campfire. He was bloodied, but alive, and he had seen everything.

Myrsilus and his comrades began to sprint along the beach, and when they were out of danger, past the little promontory that closed off the bay, they looked back. The burning ships were destroyed; all that was left of them were their fiery masts which sank sizzling into the dark water. Around them, many tiny black shapes scurried in every direction, like ants whose nest has been devastated by the farmer’s hoe.

The king awaited them, standing vigil at the fire, alone. All of the other comrades, done in by their hard labour at the oars, had succumbed to sleep in the ships, or stretched out on the sandy beach. When he heard the men splashing through the shallow water that separated the beach from the island, he went out to meet them.

‘We’ve brought back a Spartan,’ said Myrsilus. ‘The one who made his voice heard in the midst of the fog. We told him that perhaps he would be better off staying with the Peleset, but he decided to join us nonetheless.’

The man advanced towards the fire, then threw himself at Diomedes’s feet and kissed his hand: ‘I thank you, wanax, for having liberated me,’ he said. ‘I fought at Ilium as you did, and I never would have thought I would see other Achaeans in this desolate place, in this land at the ends of the earth.’

They remained near the fire at length, and Lamus told of how he had ended up in Egypt. During a great battle, he had fallen into the sea grasping on to a piece of flotsam. He was fished up by the Peleset, who intended to sell him in the first city they landed at. But the wind had pushed them north for days and days until they had ended up in that sad, dreary place.

‘What do the Peleset plan to do?’ asked Diomedes.

‘They want to return to their home territory, but they fear facing the winter sea. Perhaps they will seek a place where they can pull their ships aground, where they can find food and water to drink until the season changes.’

‘Your king. .’ Diomedes asked again, ‘King Menelaus. . did he survive?’

‘He was alive when I last saw him, but I have heard nothing more since then. Oh wanax, the gods blew us out to the sea, and our small vessels were tossed to and fro, on to the shores. . the gods toy with our lives like a boy playing in a pond who pushes his boat back out whenever the waves bring it close to shore. .’

‘The shore. .’ said Myrsilus. ‘Perhaps there are no longer shores where we can land. In this place the water, the earth and the sky are all mixed together. We are returning to Chaos.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Diomedes. ‘Are you afraid, helmsman?’

‘No,’ replied Myrsilus. ‘I feel no fear. Grief, sorrow. . melancholy, perhaps. Not fear. It’s as if we were fleeing from life, descending into Hades before our time and without a reason.’

The king turned again towards the Spartan: ‘What do you know of this land?’ he asked. ‘And of its inhabitants, if there are any?’

‘Very little, wanax. In the many days we’ve navigated here we’ve never seen another human being. Those who were sent inland reported that there is, first, a thick, nearly impenetrable forest of pine and oak to cross, populated by boars and huge wild bulls, but then an open plain as vast as the sea beyond. I know no more than this.’

The Chnan approached their Spartan guest and asked: ‘Did you see the strange signs in the sky as well? What did the Peleset have to say about them?’ A shiver of fear was visible in the man’s eyes. ‘Did you see them?’ insisted the Chnan.

‘We saw them. The Peleset tell a story that they learned from an old man who lives in a hut in the forest.’

Silence fell, and they could hear the heavy breathing of the men sleeping inside the ships and the light murmur of the tide lapping at the sand.

‘What story?’ asked the king.

‘The old man stayed with them nearly three months, but I do not know how well he managed to learn their language. He too had seen the strange lights in the sky, and he spoke of a terrible thing that wiped out the inhabitants who lived on the plain, one village after another. He claimed that the chariot of the Sun had fallen to earth not far from here, near the great river.’

‘The chariot of the Sun? What kind of a story is that?’ protested the Chnan. ‘The chariot of the Sun is still in its place and every day crosses the vault of the sky from east to west.’

‘Maybe they saw something similar to the sun falling on to the earth. The old man spoke of a specific place, not far from the mouth of the great river, but no one has dared to go near there. The waters of the swamp boil up, incomprehensible sounds are heard. Laments, like the weeping of women, fill the night. .’

Another long silence followed, broken by the solitary screech of a scops owl in the distance. The Chnan started: ‘Someone may have mistaken the cry of a night animal for the shrieking of mysterious creatures. This land breeds ghosts.’

‘We will soon learn what land we’ve reached,’ said the king sharply, ‘and we’ll know whether the chariot of the Sun has truly fallen into these swamps.’ He raised his eyes to the ship which transported his weapons and his horses. ‘I can harness the divine horses to that chariot, the only ones who could draw it. .’ There was blind, stubborn conviction in his voice. ‘But we must sleep now,’ he added. ‘The nights are long, but the dawn is no longer far off.’

They lay down near the fire, leaving a sentinel to stand guard, but the king was pensive. The cry of the owl seemed even sadder now, in that immense silent night, and reminded him of when as a boy that screeching would keep him alert in the palace of Tiryns as he stared out open-eyed into the endless darkness. That boy believed that there were creatures whose eyes were made to see in the gloom, creatures with eyes of darkness who saw the other half of the world, the half that the sun never visited. But those were times in which he thought he saw centaurs descend from the mountains in the golden twilight, and chimeras flying among the rocky gorges with shrill screams. Now he felt those empty eyes staring at his men and at his ships from the wooded shore on the mainland, and he was afraid, as he had been then, long ago.

The next day they resumed their journey. Myrsilus made a wide turn towards the open sea to avoid engaging the remaining ships of the Peleset fleet in battle. Towards midday, they met with a rather strong eastern wind and so he hoisted sail and hauled back towards land. The sky was covered with clouds and the air was biting cold but the sea was calm and made for clear sailing. All at once the look-out at the prow shouted that he could see something which looked like the mouth of a river. Myrsilus had a jug dipped into the water; when it was full, he hoisted it aboard and tasted the water with his finger: ‘It’s fresh water, wanax,’ he said, handing the jug to Diomedes. ‘We’ve reached the mouth of the Eridanus!’

‘I told you that I would bring you to a new land,’ said the king. ‘It is here that we shall stop and build a new city.’ He asked the helmsman if the wind was strong enough to allow the ship to sail upstream.

‘Yes, wanax,’ replied Myrsilus. ‘I think so.’

‘Then let us go,’ said the king.

He took a cup and filled it with strong red wine, the same that he would drink before battle in the fields of Ilium. He poured it into the river current, saying: ‘I offer you this libation, oh god of the waters of Eridanus. We have fled our homeland, after suffering all that men can suffer in a long war. We seek a new land and a new era and a new life. Show us your favour, I beseech you.’ He threw the precious silver cup into the water as well; Anassilaus had melted it and engraved it with supreme art one day long ago at Lemnos, never imagining how far away it would end up.

He went to Lamus, son of Onchestus, the Spartan that Myrsilus had freed from slavery: ‘Could you recognize the place where the old man said he had seen the Sun fall?’

‘I think so. But why do you want to know?’

‘If we want to remain here, I must know every secret of this land. You show me the place, as soon as you see it, and do not fear.’