The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

Helen watched the soldier run down the stone steps and up the main road towards the citadel of Pergamos. She did not trust Helenus or his vision and it was with a quickening heart that she turned to Paris. The light of the morning sun was resting fully on the city now, drawing the people out of their houses and casting long shadows behind the soldiers on the battlements. Paris was looking at her, but as their eyes met his gaze wavered guiltily for a moment before he could force himself to resist her accusative stare. Then his rugged face with its familiar scar broke into a smile.

‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured her. ‘Helenus has foreseen my victory. This will be over in moments.’

‘Helenus is just a boy whose ambitions outstrip his abilities,’ she countered. ‘But you are a warrior, and the last hope of Troy rests on your shoulders. You don’t have to fight this man, Paris.’

‘I do, and the reason I have to fight him is precisely because the hopes of Troy rest on me. There are enough witnesses here to let the whole army know I backed down from an open challenge, even after Helenus predicted my victory. I would lose my authority, and in an army authority is everything.’

He placed his arms about Helen and drew her into an embrace. The muscles of his chest and stomach were firm beneath his tunic and yielded little to her touch, making her feel like a child.

‘What about us?’ she asked. ‘This whole war has been about us, our love for each other. Thousands dead and maimed, thousands more widowed and orphaned. If you die it will all have been for nothing.’

Paris gave a half-laugh and stroked her hair as she lay her head on his chest.

‘The war was never about us, Helen. It was about power and greed and honour and hate. We’re just symbols for all the rest of them to hide behind. We’re unimportant, really.’

‘But you’re everything to me, Paris. If you die, I don’t want to live. I love you.’

She looked up at him but was distracted by a noise on the steps. The guard had returned and now stood awkwardly a short distance away, Paris’s bow and quiver of arrows held in his hands. Paris loosened his hold on Helen and stepped back from her.

‘I love you, too,’ he said.

Then he took the weapons from the soldier and descended the steps to the gate.

‘There’s your new home,’ Halitherses said. ‘At least for the foreseeable future.’

The old man sat on his tired horse and looked down at the city of Sparta, a flash of white halfway across the wide plains of the Eurotas valley. Telemachus was beside him, sitting astride his pony with his hand held across his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun.

‘It’s big.’

‘Of course it’s big. Do you think a powerful king like Menelaus would rule over a little backwater like Ithaca?’

Telemachus turned his green eyes on his ageing guardian.

‘Ithaca may be a backwater, but it’s home and one day I’ll be its king.’

‘Let’s hope so, lad. Let’s hope so.’

Halitherses smiled down at the young boy. He had his mother’s good looks and would inherit her height too, in time. His facial expressions and way of speaking, though, were reminiscent of Odysseus. It seemed strange to the old soldier that Telemachus’s mannerisms should be so like those of the father he had never known, and yet it was also a comfort in dark times. To have a physical reminder of the absent king kept Halitherses hopeful that Odysseus would one day return.

He looked back at the valley stretched out below them. From the heights of the pass that had led them through the Taygetus Mountains they could see the River Eurotas sparkling in the distance as it wound its way from the great city southward to the coast. A thick heat haze shimmered over the farmlands on either side, but the distorted air could not hide the fact the crops were scanty and meagre, a patchwork of swaying stalks that held no comparison to the oceans of corn and barley Halitherses had witnessed here twenty years before. The little farmsteads that dotted the plain were ramshackle and in some cases deserted, while the city itself had lost its golden lustre, if not its size. It was typical of all he had observed on the journey from Ithaca. The whole Peloponnese had grown dull and shabby without the governance and protection of its kings, like a once-beautiful house that had fallen into disrepair. Its inhabitants had become suspicious and unfriendly, while here and there migrants had begun to drift down from the lands north of Greece, resented but not resisted as they built their homes and communities in a country that was not their own. Everything was in decline, and Halitherses doubted even the return of the armies from Troy could reverse the decay that had set in.

‘Come on then, lad,’ the old man said, touching his heels to the flanks of his mount. ‘There’s still a long way to go, and I want to get there before nightfall. The gods have kept us safe so far, but I don’t want to spend another night in the open if it can be avoided.’

‘Halitherses?’

Halitherses turned to see Telemachus had not moved.