King of Ithaca (Adventures of Odysseus)

‘Well, Odysseus of Ithaca, I doubt very much she’d be interested in you.’

‘Do you?’ he replied tartly. ‘Then why was I the only suitor she spoke to last night?’

‘Perhaps she finds your peasant wit amusing.’

Odysseus scowled. ‘Maybe if your tongue weren’t so sharp you’d have your own suitors, instead of having to disparage Helen’s. It sounds to me like jealousy!’

Penelope stood and glowered at him. ‘How dare you, you . . .’

Unable to finish her sentence, Penelope stormed back into the palace. Odysseus watched her go, feeling the impact of the raindrops increasing on his skin and hearing the growing hiss as they fell into the foliage about him. After a while he stood and left the lonely gardens, stirred by a blend of anger and regret.

The days passed with a feast each night. The Ithacans were quickly drawn into a routine of idleness during the day and drinking themselves senseless in the evening. Whereas they would normally wake at dawn to go about their daily chores, in Sparta they were waited on by the hundreds of slaves at the palace and had little to do for themselves. So they awoke later each day, and if the previous night’s feasting had been particularly heavy then they would not rise until after noon.

Then Halitherses, who was concerned for their fitness and battle-readiness, began to order weapon practice, rousing them at first light and taking them into the courtyard with wooden sticks to rehearse a number of drills he had thought up. It kept them busy. At first the other warriors would come and watch them, standing about in groups or leaning out of the many windows that overlooked the compound. They would cheer and jeer, shout useful advice and suggestions or mock them.

But soon the numerous captains from across the mainland and islands of Greece began following Halitherses’s example. They would drill their men along the lines the Ithacans had adopted, adding or leaving out various moves as befitted their own weaponry, armour and style of warfare. Eventually they practised against each other, until every day the courtyard was filled with men fighting mock battles with lengths of wood.

At other times Halitherses would take his men on marches through the Eurotas valley. They would climb hills or follow small ravines into the mountains, returning each time just before sunset. At first they would rush to have the slaves bathe them before going down to the evening’s feast, where they would meet with Gyrtias and his men, and the others with whom they became familiar during their shared drills. Eperitus would often have a drink with Peisandros, who introduced him to the other Myrmidons so that they became fast friends over the days and weeks. But as Halitherses’s drills and marches became a daily ritual and they struggled to be fit enough for the physical demands they made of them, Odysseus’s men began curtailing their eating and drinking and would usually leave the great hall by the middle of the night to be ready for the following dawn.

Whether it had been part of Halitherses’s plan or not, Eperitus watched with amazement as the band of amateur soldiers became a close-knit unit. Odysseus was always with them during drill and the marches – though he spent the evenings in the separate company of his peers – and he soon became a leader to whom they responded naturally and without question. The authority of Halitherses and Mentor also became more firmly established as the guardsmen learned to react to their orders. Even Eperitus, who had earned the respect of the Ithacans through the battles and hardships they had shared, began to discover his own aptitude for leadership and took on various responsibilities in the training of the men.

It was a role the young soldier enjoyed, a role that was reinforced by the unique confidence Odysseus had placed in him. Not only was he the one man amongst the troop that the prince had not known since childhood – and hence he retained a certain neutrality on any issues concerning Ithaca – he was also the only one of Odysseus’s companions whom Athena had allowed to know her plans. Because of this the two men would often walk together in the evenings, through the garden and sometimes out into the streets of the city to share the dilemmas that faced the prince. At these times Eperitus would listen as Odysseus confided in him about the intrigues, plans and petty squabbles that were an everyday part of the life of the Greek elite. Odysseus would give him his opinions of each man, telling him their backgrounds and their strengths and weaknesses, as he perceived them, and ask for Eperitus’s own observations and what he had heard from the soldiers. One evening he even revealed the secret plans that Agamemnon and Diomedes had for a council of war, which only awaited the arrival of one particular prince, Ajax of Salamis. He was a ferocious giant of a man who, Odysseus said, had been covered with Heracles’s charmed lion-skin as a baby, making him invulnerable to all weapons.