King of Ithaca (Adventures of Odysseus)

They ran headlong through the trees without caring whether they could be seen from the city below. Everything now depended upon them reaching the camp before the Taphians: if Polytherses’s men took the Spartans by surprise, they would be massacred. At a stroke Odysseus would have lost over half his warriors, as well as the element of surprise that was so essential to the success of his plans.

Halitherses’s training regime at Sparta had made the Ithacans fit enough to run all day, but their armour and weapons weighed them down. The heavy accoutrements sapped the strength from their limbs as they struggled to climb the steep slopes, frustrating their progress and making them curse beneath their breath, but as they neared the area of their camp they slowed to a cautious walk. Set in a hollow in the ground and surrounded by a screen of trees and bushes, it was visible only to those on the topmost point of the hill. However, the approaches to the hollow were also obscured to within a short distance, enabling them to come quite close before Halitherses signalled for the group to halt. Eperitus was with him at the head of their file and, leaving the others crouching amongst some rocks, the two men crawled up to a knot of bushes for a better view.

‘I can hear voices,’ Halitherses whispered.

‘Yes, and there’s an armed man over in those bushes. You see him?’

‘My old eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. He must be a sentinel, but is he a Spartan or a Taphian?’

‘He’s neither,’ Eperitus answered. ‘He’s an Ithacan.’

‘Then Odysseus has beaten us back,’ Halitherses said, getting to his feet. He raised his spear to catch the lookout’s attention, then stepped out into the open. Eperitus waved for the others to follow.

The soldier came out to meet them, his face gloomy. ‘You’d better go and see for yourselves,’ he said, pointing back towards the camp.

Eperitus felt a cold weight sink through him as if he had swallowed a stone. Halitherses gave him a look that revealed his own misgivings, and then with reluctant curiosity they pushed through the trees and walked down into the hollow. The others came after, bringing Arceisius with them.

Before them was a scene of devastation. Spartan bodies lay strewn everywhere, intermingled with bits of armour and broken weapons. The dust was stained with blood in many places, not just where the Spartans had fallen, and from that alone Eperitus knew they had killed some of their Taphian assailants before being overwhelmed. Odysseus and the others stood looking at the litter of corpses. At the sight of Halitherses and his men their spirits rose visibly, glad to see they were still alive, though they offered no words of greeting.

‘The shepherd boy told us there were Taphians on the hill,’ Eperitus said, pointing at Arceisius. ‘But how did you know to return so soon?’

Odysseus shook his head in dismay. ‘We slipped over the road between Ithaca and the harbour, hoping to climb the hill to the north-west of the town. From there we saw a ship drifting out of the bay and into the straits; it was one of the Spartan ships that brought us here.’

Halitherses spat in the dust. ‘Treachery then.’

‘They sold us and their own countrymen for a few pieces of silver. It’s my guess Polytherses sent a large force of men to hold the isthmus between the two halves of Ithaca, and some malevolent god led them straight to our camp.’

‘So what do we do now?’ Halitherses asked. ‘We can’t stay here: Polytherses is certain to send up another force at any time. The ship’s captain will have told him how many men were landed, so he’ll know there’s only a handful of us left. At the very least he’ll want to check the bodies to see if you’re amongst them, Odysseus.’

‘We’ll have to find a boat to take us back to the mainland,’ Mentor said, despondently. ‘I can’t see any other choice: if the Spartans killed as many as they lost, Eumaeus will still need to recruit seventy loyal Ithacans before we can match the Taphians man for man. Even then, Polytherses has the advantage of defended walls and a better-equipped force, and we’ve lost the advantage of surprise. Winning back our homeland was always going to be hard, but now it’s become impossible.’

‘None of that matters any more,’ Odysseus said. ‘Look.’

He pointed at one of the Spartan bodies. He had short black hair and a beard and his eyes were closed as if in sleep. The shaft of an arrow stood up from his stomach, where a crimson circle of blood had spread out from the point of entry. Eperitus did not recognize him or know his name.

‘What of him?’ he asked.

‘He was one of the men Diocles assigned to guard Penelope; the other’s over there. They should be back at the pig farm with her. The fact they aren’t means Penelope persuaded them to follow us. You heard her say she would follow me, and that’s exactly what she’s done.’

‘Then she’s been taken by the Taphians?’ Halitherses asked.