King of Ithaca (Adventures of Odysseus)

‘Damn you,’ Damastor replied, struggling to his feet. The dull sheen of a dagger gave Eperitus a moment’s warning, but it was too late.

Before he could even think to move the point was puncturing his chest. Intense pinpricks of pain spread like fire through his body as the blade sank slowly, smoothly and unstoppably into his flesh, ripping an agonized scream from his throat as every muscle crumpled and he crashed heavily against the dirt floor.

He looked up and saw the dark shape of Damastor towering endlessly above him, seeming to rise higher and higher like a tall tree as Eperitus slipped further and further into the earth below him, thrust relentlessly downward by the gigantic, fiery dagger embedded in his heart. Then he felt the warm, glutinous dampness of his own blood pumping out over his fingers – which were closed motionless about the handle of the weapon – and seeping down across his chest. He felt it infiltrate the material of the tunic Clytaemnestra had given him, making it heavy and pasting it firmly against his skin. And then the downward motion stopped and he lay looking lazily upward through dim, misting eyes, skewered to the floor by the searing blade of Damastor’s knife.

Odysseus appeared at the centre of his vision, leaping like a lion upon Damastor and carrying him out from the borders of his sight. There were distant sounds of a struggle, and then Eperitus felt the dagger lifted out from between his ribs. No longer pinned to the ground he stood with an easy movement that seemed unhindered by his wound, or even the usual grating of joints and groaning of muscle and bone. He turned to see Odysseus on top of Damastor, leaning his full weight down upon the fingers he had closed about the traitor’s throat. Damastor flailed his bloody stump uselessly against Odysseus’s flank as he struggled for air, trying desperately to fight off his attacker and breathe again.

It seemed an eternity before the monstrous arm stopped flapping, and even longer before Odysseus finally extracted his fingers from Damastor’s throat and stood up. Only then did he turn around and look into the darkness for his friend. Eperitus wanted to say something to him, to draw his attention, but the words did not come. Then Odysseus dropped his gaze to the ground by Eperitus’s feet and an agonized groan escaped his lips.

Quickly he moved towards the centre of the room and fell to his knees. He reached out his arms and clutched at something long and heavy, lifting one end onto his lap and bowing his head over it.

‘Eperitus,’ he said, and the young warrior suddenly knew that the words were not directed at him but at the shape on the floor.

A cold sense of apprehension filled him. Outside, far away though it seemed, he thought he could hear the sound of something approaching the temple, something terrible coming at great speed. He felt a compulsion to get out and run, but just as he had found himself incapable of speech he was equally unable to move a muscle of his body.

Desperately he looked down at the shape in Odysseus’s arms. As he began to recognize what it was, as the truth settled upon him with an icy chill, he saw Damastor rise from the floor behind the prince.

But Eperitus felt no panic, no urgent need to draw Odysseus’s attention to him, for like himself the figure of Damastor was but a harmless wraith. They were dead, and the sound of rushing air grew nearer, even to the door of the temple.

Chapter Twenty-six

WRAITHS

Eperitus looked at the entrance. For an instant it was clear, the ghoulish moonlight cracking open the darkness of the temple and teasing him with a final glimpse of freedom. He saw the silvered rocks and the starkly illuminated hillsides outside, the sweet, despairing beauty of a world that was now lost to him. And then the light was extinguished. A tall figure in a black robe, his features as magnificent as they were terrible, filled the doorway, looking first at Damastor and then at himself.

Every soldier understood the fate that awaited him. One day he knew a spear point would pierce his guard, a sword’s edge cleave his flesh, or a bronze-tipped arrow skewer his heart. Then, as his armoured body crashed into the dust of the battlefield, he knew his soul would stand dispossessed. And soon Hermes would come to lead him to the Underworld, the House of Hades; there he would drink of the river Lethe and forget his former life, becoming a shade and passing the rest of eternity in loneliness, without satisfaction or joy.

Damastor saw Hermes and cowered before him. Though he could not speak, a low and baleful moan left his ethereal lungs and his wraith’s limbs shook in terror. At the same time Eperitus, too, was hamstrung with fear. The brief but honeyed tenderness of life was gone, snatched from him before he had barely been able to taste it. Now his spirit would spend perpetuity in emptiness.