The Anger of Achilles Read online

  ‘A moment’s thought would suggest that they had lamps or torches that they could shield from general view,’ said Odysseus. ‘All the other elements of the affair seem to have been well-planned so far. So we might expect a vanguard of men with torches held low to the ground, who lit up a path safe enough for the horses to tread and the chariots to follow. I believe the piles of burned bodies, the ruined farmsteads and some care would have been enough to hide the brightness from everyone except the watchmen on top of the watch-tower. They were your men, Aias. Did they report seeing any lights?’

  ‘No,’ said Aias shortly.

  ‘Ah,’ said Odysseus, the syllable stretching just long enough to contain the faintest accusation that Locrian watchmen were not the most reliable – wakeful or sober – of witnesses. ‘Progress would have been painfully slow,’ he concluded. ‘But still – progress.’

  ‘Until the torches were all consumed, at least,’ added Briseis.

  ‘An excellent thought, Princess,’ said Odysseus. ‘As soon as they began to run low on torch-light they would have had to stop and make camp – use the last of the torch-flames to light a fire for warmth and protection. Though, as has been observed, not in the forest unless they were truly desperate. And I’m certain none of the burned-out buildings on the farmland would have offered any protection at all. Though it is something of a surprise I must admit to find they have managed to come this far.’ Odysseus’ pointed courtesy to the princess and myself combined with his unspoken questioning of the Locrian watchmen’s efficiency was sufficient to anger Aias even more. He grunted, slapped his charioteer’s shoulder and gestured the man to drive back to join the trackers.

  That word warmth struck me on two levels as I watched the Locrian prince departing. First, it brought last night’s visitor vividly back to the forefront of my mind. Secondly and more importantly it reminded me of my himation and how cold I had become when it was soaked. I sent a silent prayer of thanks to the gods for Hepat’s efficiency at mending and laundering. Then I began to reassess my thoughts about the necessity of lighting a fire. Most of the men we were tracking, with the probable exception of Demir if he was actually one of them, had been drenched to the skin if Briseis and I were correct and they had controlled the laden boat by wading out and pushing it. They would indeed have needed to keep warm – even more urgently than I had. I had at least been in the palace while they were out here under a clear sky with no roof between them and the stars; no walls but the trees.

  ‘They had to come this far,’ I said. ‘They had to do one of two things. They had to find a spot well hidden from Lyrnessus or they had to come far enough away to make sure none of the guards or watch-keepers in the city or in our camps could see them. If this was as well-planned as we suspect, they may even have discovered somewhere safe and planned to set up camp there. A number of them were soaking and freezing. They had to light a big fire in order to get warm and dry but could not risk doing it too close to the city. Nor, as we have already observed, would they have risked lighting such a large fire in the forest where it could have attracted the attention of the animals or, indeed, spread out of control in the dry brush that Patroclus and his men are collecting at this very moment.’

  ***

  It didn’t take us much longer to find it. And it seemed to me that I was correct – they could not have come upon the place and made use of it in the way they had simply by luck or accident. As with the carefully-planned escape route, this was the result of meticulous preparation. The sun was still low in the eastern sky when we crested a low ridge to find a gentle, uncultivated slope immediately ahead which led down to the broad bank of a river. The remains of a fire were obvious – though the flames had clearly been doused some time ago. It was surrounded by footprints, hoofprints and wheel-tracks all starkly obvious in the sandy mud.

  But that was all. At the edge of the water, the prints, the tracks – everything - stopped.

  The trackers waded their horses straight across. The man on the left splashed swiftly through relative shallows, his horse sure-footed stepping off a low bank onto a smooth, solid riverbed. The one on the right, however, was slowed by a steeper bank sloping into a pool, the water coming up over his mount’s belly to wet the rider’s sandals past the ankle. The braided ripples on the surface running around a sizeable rock which seemed to stand on the crest of the underwater slope, showed where the riverbed dropped suddenly from shallow to deep and, presumably, deeper still downstream. Upstream, the low bank stretched for some distance and the one on the far side mimicked it. No sooner had the trackers crossed than they turned and came straight back to report that there were no chariot-tracks on the far bank, and the hoofprints of only two or three horses.

  ‘Achilles’ two scouts riding south to warn us about Sarpedon’s approach,’ said Odysseus. ‘Followed by Glaucus on the stolen Pedasos, perhaps.’

  The rest of us stopped and dismounted to take a closer look at the place where our quarry had disappeared, men, horses, chariots, gold and all.

  ‘They’ve gone into the river,’ said Odysseus as he stood looking down at the labyrinthine mess of tracks, hoofprints and footprints. ‘They’ve followed its course to conceal their tracks.’

  ‘But which way?’ demanded Aias. ‘Upstream or down?’

  ‘Surely,’ I answered, ‘they would have gone upstream. The trackers have already proved that the water downstream from here is too deep to allow chariots to progress. Upstream, however, the river-bed seems flat and solid. The banks on either side are low and fairly free of vegetation. They would no doubt be able to find a way to travel for some distance and then get out of the water and head on south if that is their objective.’

  ‘Well observed,’ said Briseis. ‘But…’

  ‘If we wish to follow the gold, we should explore upstream,’ interrupted Aias as though he had worked this out himself, unaided. The slave girl Briseis did not feature in his elevated world except as a body he wished to ravish and abuse and as a source of growing frustration that he could not do so. He gestured to his trackers and they moved off at his command. Then he too set off, officiously remounting his chariot and gesturing for the Locrian contingent to follow him. There was undergrowth reaching towards the riverbank up there for the river issued from the forested hills further inland, but there was enough room for his chariot to proceed along the bankside in the wake of his trackers and the men marching obediently behind him were able to keep their feet dry, even if the men they were hunting had used the river as a secret road. In a matter of moments, they had vanished round a bend.

  Odysseus lingered over the maze of tracks on the riverbank, occasionally glancing towards the far side of the river. Then he joined King Eremanthus. The Cephallenian leaders stood thoughtfully, looking upriver and down. The squad of men they had brought with them were standing at their ease further up the bank, watching their leaders idly. Briseis and I joined the two kings, our toes almost in the water and looked from left to right. Upstream, the river flowed between low straight banks for some distance. Downstream, however, it twisted and turned as it flowed down towards the nearby coast. The bank downstream was as clear of vegetation as it was upstream except for the first meander on our right. Here the river’s edge thrust out into the steady flow, rising in a low hillock with a pile of shaggy bushes on its back. The bushes were little more than scrub but they were still high enough to conceal what lay beyond it. Something struck me as strange about the bushes there. It was spring. The days were hot and the nights, like last night, windless and cold. Even though there had been little rain recently, I had been impressed by how green the bushes along the forest’s edge had been. However, these bushes, in a far better position at the riverside, looked parched and drooping; sufficiently so to draw more than just my attention. Without further thought, I walked up to them for a closer look and saw at once that they had been torn from the ground and piled there, roots lying naked on the mud. I looked down at the destruction for a moment wondering what was goi
ng on here and then I looked up and understood. The low mound on which I was standing was the last bend of the river before the coast. Had the dying bushes not been piled there, Odysseus and the rest of our contingent would have been able to see the sea.

  Then it occurred to me that, had the bushes not been there – as they had clearly not been there last night before someone moved them to their current position - then anyone keeping lookout from a boat at the river mouth would have been able to see the fire. As with the rest of the strategy so far, it seemed that Gul-Ses and his companions had planned even this part of their escape with care and foresight. They had used their fire not only for warmth but as a signal, then moved the bushes to conceal the fact.

  ‘I don’t know about the horses and the chariots,’ I called, ‘But I think I know where the gold went. And the priests along with it, I suspect.’

  Odysseus and Briseis were at my side before I had finished speaking. Odysseus nodded grimly. ‘We keep underestimating Gul-Ses and his band of robbers,’ he observed.

  ‘Band of murderers,’ insisted Briseis.

  ‘So, Captain,’ I said to Odysseus, ‘If there was a ship waiting at the mouth of the river, could they send a boat up when they saw the fire to collect the treasure chest and the men who brought it?’

  ‘Easily,’ said Odysseus. ‘We’ve already seen how simply the treasure can be moved in a boat big enough to carry the weight. And getting it aboard another vessel at the river mouth would be no more difficult than getting it off King Idas’ ship into the boat you found last night. The river is clearly deep enough to accommodate a much larger boat than that one up as far as the big rock there, though I suspect the gold and the men with it would have been transferred into a larger ship out at sea if they planned to take it any further.’

  ‘But where would they take it, even aboard this larger ship?’ I wondered. ‘Straight to Sarpedon?’

  ‘I don’t believe this gold was ever destined for Sarpedon,’ said Odysseus.

  ‘Then where?’ I wondered. ‘Who was it destined for?’

  ‘For the old god Teshub, perhaps,’ he answered. ‘Given the involvement of Gul-Ses and his priests. But I believe its destination is less important than its purpose.’

  ‘Lesbos!’ said Briseis. ‘Whatever its purpose, its destination must be Lesbos if the priests have anything to do with it. The greatest of all Teshub’s temples is on top of the cliffs at Myteline on Lesbos!’ She stood, straining her eyes as though, like the Goddess Theia, she could see far into the distance. ‘It is directly across the sea to the west of here. Not just the island, but the temple itself. How long would it take to get there?’

  ‘From here,’ said Odysseus, ‘you’d be lucky to make landfall on Lesbos in less than two days unless the wind is steady behind you – which it isn’t. In a dead calm like this, they’d only be able to make any real progress in a ship like Thalassa and even then, only if they had a crew of oarsmen like Elpenor and Palamedes. Remember how completely we were becalmed at Aulis until the reliable south-westerlies began to blow.’

  ‘Until Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter from what I’ve heard,’ said Briseis, her tone dark.

  ‘Does that mean Thalassa could catch them before they got there?’ I wondered.

  ‘Possibly,’ said Odysseus. And he might well have said more had Aias not returned then. ‘We found the horses and the chariots,’ he announced, gesturing back at four battered-looking chariots with eight weary horses in the traces. ‘They were a little way upstream hidden in a grove. My trackers went to the far bank. There were some footprints there. Difficult to say how many; and they vanished into the undergrowth. Nothing to concern us. However, we also found this floating face down in the water.’ And he pushed a dead body off his chariot where it had been lying at his feet by giving it a hefty kick.

  The corpse fell onto the riverbank with a soggy thud and rolled onto its back, eyes wide and staring at the sky; the left side of its throat also open and long-drained of blood.

  ‘Gul-Ses,’ breathed Briseis.

  ‘Gul-Ses,’ confirmed Odysseus. ‘Though I was expecting Demir, I must admit!’

  iii

  ‘Of course we must take him back to Lyrnessus when we go,’ said Odysseus. ‘Quite apart from anything else, he was high priest to a powerful god. He might even warrant a pyre of his own if we have time to stage yet another ritual before Sarpedon gets too close.’

  ‘Powerful and unforgiving,’ added Briseis. ‘Like your Achaean gods Apollo and Poseidon.’

  ‘And Artemis,’ I added. It was Artemis to whom Agamemnon had been forced to sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia when his fleet was becalmed in Aulis, as Briseis had just observed. Most people believed that he had done so in recompense for killing her sacred deer - in the hope of forgiveness and following winds that would blow his fleet to Troy.

  ‘Well, you may do as you wish,’ said Aias. ‘If it was up to me, I’d either leave him for the crows or give him back to the fishes. Waste your time in whatever pointless superstition you fancy. The only rituals of any real importance are those for our dead heroes and as soon as they are complete I and my Locrians are setting sail for Troy’ He pulled himself up to his full height, looking south across the river. ‘But I wouldn’t waste too much time if I were you. You wouldn’t want still to be out here doing whatever it is that you want to do when Sarpedon does actually arrive.’ And with that, he and his men turned away.

  Odysseus watched them vanish. ‘He has a point,’ he said. ‘But Sarpedon is not likely to arrive unannounced – not with our scouts out by land and sea keeping watch for him. I think we might risk a little time on a closer examination of the body before we take any further action, not least because this gives us the best chance so far of examining such a death closely and in detail.’ He crouched beside the body, eyes busy, hands still.

  ‘Such a death,’ repeated Briseis. ‘So you believe this death is the same as the others you have been seeking to examine more closely?’

  ‘I do.’ Odysseus glanced up at us. ‘But this body in this situation and at this time gives us the best opportunity so far to conduct a close and detailed examination.’

  ‘So,’ I said, extending the princess’s thought – or so I supposed. ‘You believe whoever killed Gul-Ses has been responsible for other deaths as well?’

  ‘It is possible,’ nodded Odysseus. ‘And I believe that Gul-Ses’ corpse will give us vital information.’

  ‘But how can that be?’ I wondered, coming to a point that had been occupying my mind for some time. ‘All slit throats are very much alike, surely? One stab wound indistinguishable from another?’

  ‘On the surface, perhaps,’ nodded Odysseus. ‘But there are similarities and differences here. And they are beginning to look like a pattern.’

  ‘Similarities and differences? What do you mean, old friend?’ asked King Eremanthus, becoming fully involved for the first time that morning.

  ‘That these deaths are similar to each-other and different from most of the others,’ Odysseus replied, leaving Eremanthus, Briseis and me hardly any the wiser.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked the old king.

  ‘Allow me to explain,’ said Odysseus. ‘Or rather, let me allow you to explain my young friends.’ He stood up and looked at us, his eyes narrow. ‘Can either of you tell me in detail what we are looking at here?’

  Eyes first and most, I thought as I began to describe what I saw. ‘There is no doubt that the body is that of High Priest Gul-Ses, though it looks as though the fish have been at it. Gul-Ses is lying on his back in a puddle spreading across otherwise dry mud, arms and legs spread. He is dressed in priest’s robes which cover his body to the wrists and to the knees. He is wearing sandals of an unremarkable and common design with a matching belt I can see no pouch and nothing round the neck. Before Prince Aias kicked him off his chariot I was able to see his back, and there seemed nothing particularly remarkable about it, except that it was soaking. So if I can proceed to describe
the front…’

  ‘The left side of Gul-Ses’ throat has been cut,’ Briseis took over as I paused for breath. ‘Opened, I might say, for the wound seems neat and precise. If we take a line directly down from his left ear past the angle of his jaw and then bisect it with a line reaching directly back from the point of his chin, that is where the blade went in.’ She stopped and took a deep breath and it struck me then that the manner of Gul-Ses’ death was unsettlingly similar to the manner in which her brothers had all died.

  Almost automatically, I pushed the tip of my left index finger into the spot on my neck that the princess described. I could feel a strong, steady pulse there. ‘The point of the blade was pushed in just where the princess said,’ I observed, retrieving the narrative. ‘But then it seems to have been pulled forward from there,’ I dropped my hand back to my side. ‘Not a lot, but noticeably so. It has made a deep wound wide enough to allow a great deal of blood to stain the left shoulder and breast of Gul-Ses’ robe. It must have been a huge amount in fact for so much still to remain after a period in cold water. There are more bloodstains just discernible on his robe and forearms nearest to both wrists. But not, as I observed, the back. His hands are also covered with blood but I see no obvious wounds on them. He had a moment or so, therefore, of clutching at his throat in an attempt to stanch the blood.’

  ‘A vain attempt. That amount of blood makes me suspect that death was almost instantaneous,’ said Eremanthus, unwilling to be outdone by a slave and a rhapsode. And to be fair, adding the wisdom of experience to the discussion. He was as practised a warrior as Odysseus himself and must, therefore, have seen a good number of men die from a range of wounds at various speeds. ‘I would judge that this man bleeding out of this wound, for instance, would have been unconscious within five heartbeats; dead in twenty.’