The king hung it from his baldric and adjusted it on his side. Before donning the helmet, he turned to the bride and said: ‘I am facing death for you. Do not disdain me in your heart.’ He descended the slope with slow heavy steps until he was facing his adversary. The Achaean warriors, who had received no orders, all drew up into three long rows on the hillside, holding their shields and grasping their swords. When the king grasped his own and began to brandish it, looking for a gap in his enemy’s defences, they shouted: ‘ARGOS!’
Nemro’s warriors shouted out something as well, but no one understood except the
They had yelled out: ‘LIFE!’
Diomedes observed him carefully, exploring every detail of the gigantic figure. He wore a conical bronze helmet and a great shield which protected him from his chin to his knees. He gripped a javelin and a long sword hung at his side. He was readying for the battle as well, weighing the javelin to balance it before striking. The air had become much colder than the earth after the storm, and a light mist crept through the grass and covered the field until it lapped at the foot of the hill where the Achaean warriors were lined up. The combatants, under the glow of the moon, were waist deep in it now. Nemro swiftly hurled the javelin, aiming at his enemy’s forehead, but Diomedes saw the blow coming and raised his shield. The weapon penetrated the rim and its point stopped just a palm from his face, although the hero’s eyes never so much as blinked.
A roar arose from the edge of the clearing. Diomedes dislodged the javelin from his shield by knocking it against the trunk of a tree, and he resumed his impenetrable stance. Nemro made to unsheathe his sword but just as he was lowering his arm to his belt, his shoulder was bared. Diomedes threw his spear, which ripped into his enemy’s shoulder-plate and lacerated his flesh. Blood gushed down the warrior’s arm but the blow had not severed his tendon; the muscle was intact, and he lunged forward, brandishing his sword.
The utter silence of the little valley was rent by the din of hand-to-hand combat. The clang of bronze striking, suffocated cries, jagged breath. The two men faced off in fierce, incessant fighting, without a moment of respite.
Diomedes suddenly delivered an unexpected blow from above, surprising Nemro’s arm in an awkward position; the warrior lost his sword. Diomedes reacted swiftly, forcing back his unarmed opponent. Nemro turned and began to run, then stopped all at once and grabbed a tree trunk which was lying on the ground. He wheeled around and thrust it out like a battering ram towards his enemy, still in swift pursuit. As his men raised a cry of fear and surprise, Nemro charged forth holding the trunk in both hands and hit the running Diomedes full in the chest, knocking him to the ground. Cheers of joy came from the edge of the forest, while the rows of Achaeans on high seemed to dissolve like shadows in the fog which rose towards the summit.
Nemro dropped the trunk and picked up a boulder emerging from the grass. He stood above his fallen enemy, raised the rock high above his head and crashed it down upon him with all his might. But Diomedes had come to his senses; he twisted his torso and dealt a deep upward thrust with his sword. The boulder fell at his side without harming him as Nemro dropped to his knees, holding both hands to his wound. Gritting his teeth, he wrenched the sword from his ribs and lunged forward to strike his enemy with the blade red with his own blood, but his strength abandoned him and he collapsed, dying.
Diomedes rose to his feet and took off his helmet. Nemro raised a hand towards him and said something that the king could not understand, but the tone of that hoarse, sorrowful voice penetrated deep into his soul. He knelt over him, and when he had breathed his last, Diomedes closed his eyes.
He did not strip him of his armour as was his right. He picked up the spear and returned to his own men, who awaited him in silence, drawn up, unmoving, on the hillside. As he advanced through the tall, damp grass he heard a song rise up behind him and he shuddered. It was the same lament he had heard in the swamp at the mouth of the Eridanus; an inconsolable weeping, an endless sighing. The voice of a dying people. He turned slowly towards the forest and in the moonlight he saw a group of men approaching the lifeless body of the fallen giant. They gathered him up gently and carried him in their arms to the torrent. They washed away his blood and sweat, recomposed his limbs and adjusted his weapons, before covering him with a cloak. They fashioned a stretcher out of supple hazelnut branches where they laid him and stood vigil over him all night.
At the break of dawn they began walking. Diomedes stood on the hill and watched as they made their way with a slow step carrying the rough litter of their fallen king.
They soon disappeared from sight, but for a long time the funeral dirge could still be heard over the whole breadth of the plain, drifting towards the horizon, still oppressed by large black clouds.
They walked, stopping neither by day nor by night, until they reached the shores of the Eridanus and then beyond, until they reached the place where the rest of their people were camped. From there they proceeded to the Lake of the Ancestors, guided by the elders who had always known the way. When they reached its shores they laid Nemro’s body in a hollowed log and pushed him into the deep, in keeping with the ancient rite of their fathers. The Great Waters welcomed the son who had returned after so long a time and rocked him at length in the sun and wind before burying him in the liquid darkness of the abyss.
Diomedes resumed the march towards the Blue Mountains with a heavy heart. Victory had given him no joy, and the land they were passing offered no place suitable for founding a city. They saw more square villages surrounded by moats and cultivated fields, but they were naught but islands in a sea of wild nature that had taken possession of all the territory. Many of the villages appeared to be deserted, as if the inhabitants had left, taking their things with them.
Boundless cane groves marked the slow snaking of the water over the earth. It seemed that a number of frightful floods had devastated the work of men, and that immense, prolonged fatigue had finally crushed the will of the village communities to withstand the constant onslaught of the elements. Everywhere they found signs of work begun and abandoned half-way: embankments, dams, canals. .
The weather had begun to change and the high sun warmed the air and the earth. At first this brought welcome relief, but then the heat became intolerable because the water that flowed on the ground mixed with the air and produced a sense of suffocation and oppression. Only towards evening was there any respite. The land seemed to change; the sun setting behind the Blue Mountains enflamed the clouds in the sky and set alight the marshy expanses at their feet. The water glittered between the canes like molten gold and the wind rose to bend the grass on the plains and rustle the green foliage of the oak and ash trees. The poplars shivered silver at every breath of the wind and the new leaves of the beeches shone like polished copper. At the edges of the forests grazed great horned deer and does with their newly born young. Packs of boars snuffled under aged oaks, and the sows called to their striped-back little ones with soft, continuous grunts. Sometimes, in the thick of the wood, they would glimpse the shiny pelt of a huge bear.
When darkness fell, an incessant choir of frogs would rise from the waters, joined by the chirping of crickets in the meadows and the solitary warbling of the nightingale in the forest. At that hour, the king would go down towards a nearby river or stream to bathe; he would throw his chlamys over his shoulders and remain in silence to contemplate the evening. Memories would overwhelm him then, of the furious battles fought under the walls of the city of Priam. His companions: Achilles, Sthenelus, Ulysses, Ajax. . all dead. . or lost. How he would have liked to sit with them and speak of the toils of the day, drinking wine and eating roasted meat. .
For many years he had desired to return to the peace of his home and the love of his bride and now, incredibly, he regretted that the war had ever finished. Not the blind clashes he’d had in this land, but the loyal combat of the past, where two phalanxes would draw up in broad daylight on the open field, front to front. And where the gods could clearly choose whose side they were on, where a man could show what he was worth. He remembered the blinding glare of bronze, the din of the combat chariots launched in unrestrained attack against the barrier of the enemy infantry. He recalled deep sleep under his tent, and endless torpor. And he remembered how continuous familiarity with death made him appreciate enormously every aspect of life, no matter how humble or poor.
Now, for the first time in all his life, he was afraid. He was afraid of seeing his men die one by one, snared like animals in traps, betrayed at night, surprised in the shadows. He was afraid that he was marching, at the cost of great sacrifice and exhausting strain, towards nothing. This uninhabited wasteland was no land at all; it was a limitless, boundless magma that had already annihilated the people who had tried to settle it.
The bride who had come from the Mountains of Ice began to understand the language of the Achaeans, because Telephus and the
