Heroes Read online

  Myrsilus and his comrades began to sprint along the beach, and when they were out of danger, past the little promontory that closed off the bay, they looked back. The burning ships were destroyed; all that was left of them were their fiery masts which sank sizzling into the dark water. Around them, many tiny black shapes scurried in every direction, like ants whose nest has been devastated by the farmer’s hoe.

  The king awaited them, standing vigil at the fire, alone. All of the other comrades, done in by their hard labour at the oars, had succumbed to sleep in the ships, or stretched out on the sandy beach. When he heard the men splashing through the shallow water that separated the beach from the island, he went out to meet them.

  ‘We’ve brought back a Spartan,’ said Myrsilus. ‘The one who made his voice heard in the midst of the fog. We told him that perhaps he would be better off staying with the Peleset, but he decided to join us nonetheless.’

  The man advanced towards the fire, then threw himself at Diomedes’s feet and kissed his hand: ‘I thank you, wanax, for having liberated me,’ he said. ‘I fought at Ilium as you did, and I never would have thought I would see other Achaeans in this desolate place, in this land at the ends of the earth.’

  They remained near the fire at length, and Lamus told of how he had ended up in Egypt. During a great battle, he had fallen into the sea grasping on to a piece of flotsam. He was fished up by the Peleset, who intended to sell him in the first city they landed at. But the wind had pushed them north for days and days until they had ended up in that sad, dreary place.

  ‘What do the Peleset plan to do?’ asked Diomedes.

  ‘They want to return to their home territory, but they fear facing the winter sea. Perhaps they will seek a place where they can pull their ships aground, where they can find food and water to drink until the season changes.’

  ‘Your king. .’ Diomedes asked again, ‘King Menelaus. . did he survive?’

  ‘He was alive when I last saw him, but I have heard nothing more since then. Oh wanax, the gods blew us out to the sea, and our small vessels were tossed to and fro, on to the shores. . the gods toy with our lives like a boy playing in a pond who pushes his boat back out whenever the waves bring it close to shore. .’

  ‘The shore. .’ said Myrsilus. ‘Perhaps there are no longer shores where we can land. In this place the water, the earth and the sky are all mixed together. We are returning to Chaos.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Diomedes. ‘Are you afraid, helmsman?’

  ‘No,’ replied Myrsilus. ‘I feel no fear. Grief, sorrow. . melancholy, perhaps. Not fear. It’s as if we were fleeing from life, descending into Hades before our time and without a reason.’

  The king turned again towards the Spartan: ‘What do you know of this land?’ he asked. ‘And of its inhabitants, if there are any?’

  ‘Very little, wanax. In the many days we’ve navigated here we’ve never seen another human being. Those who were sent inland reported that there is, first, a thick, nearly impenetrable forest of pine and oak to cross, populated by boars and huge wild bulls, but then an open plain as vast as the sea beyond. I know no more than this.’

  The Chnan approached their Spartan guest and asked: ‘Did you see the strange signs in the sky as well? What did the Peleset have to say about them?’ A shiver of fear was visible in the man’s eyes. ‘Did you see them?’ insisted the Chnan.

  ‘We saw them. The Peleset tell a story that they learned from an old man who lives in a hut in the forest.’

  Silence fell, and they could hear the heavy breathing of the men sleeping inside the ships and the light murmur of the tide lapping at the sand.

  ‘What story?’ asked the king.

  ‘The old man stayed with them nearly three months, but I do not know how well he managed to learn their language. He too had seen the strange lights in the sky, and he spoke of a terrible thing that wiped out the inhabitants who lived on the plain, one village after another. He claimed that the chariot of the Sun had fallen to earth not far from here, near the great river.’

  ‘The chariot of the Sun? What kind of a story is that?’ protested the Chnan. ‘The chariot of the Sun is still in its place and every day crosses the vault of the sky from east to west.’

  ‘Maybe they saw something similar to the sun falling on to the earth. The old man spoke of a specific place, not far from the mouth of the great river, but no one has dared to go near there. The waters of the swamp boil up, incomprehensible sounds are heard. Laments, like the weeping of women, fill the night. .’

  Another long silence followed, broken by the solitary screech of a scops owl in the distance. The Chnan started: ‘Someone may have mistaken the cry of a night animal for the shrieking of mysterious creatures. This land breeds ghosts.’

  ‘We will soon learn what land we’ve reached,’ said the king sharply, ‘and we’ll know whether the chariot of the Sun has truly fallen into these swamps.’ He raised his eyes to the ship which transported his weapons and his horses. ‘I can harness the divine horses to that chariot, the only ones who could draw it. .’ There was blind, stubborn conviction in his voice. ‘But we must sleep now,’ he added. ‘The nights are long, but the dawn is no longer far off.’

  They lay down near the fire, leaving a sentinel to stand guard, but the king was pensive. The cry of the owl seemed even sadder now, in that immense silent night, and reminded him of when as a boy that screeching would keep him alert in the palace of Tiryns as he stared out open-eyed into the endless darkness. That boy believed that there were creatures whose eyes were made to see in the gloom, creatures with eyes of darkness who saw the other half of the world, the half that the sun never visited. But those were times in which he thought he saw centaurs descend from the mountains in the golden twilight, and chimeras flying among the rocky gorges with shrill screams. Now he felt those empty eyes staring at his men and at his ships from the wooded shore on the mainland, and he was afraid, as he had been then, long ago.

  The next day they resumed their journey. Myrsilus made a wide turn towards the open sea to avoid engaging the remaining ships of the Peleset fleet in battle. Towards midday, they met with a rather strong eastern wind and so he hoisted sail and hauled back towards land. The sky was covered with clouds and the air was biting cold but the sea was calm and made for clear sailing. All at once the look-out at the prow shouted that he could see something which looked like the mouth of a river. Myrsilus had a jug dipped into the water; when it was full, he hoisted it aboard and tasted the water with his finger: ‘It’s fresh water, wanax,’ he said, handing the jug to Diomedes. ‘We’ve reached the mouth of the Eridanus!’

  ‘I told you that I would bring you to a new land,’ said the king. ‘It is here that we shall stop and build a new city.’ He asked the helmsman if the wind was strong enough to allow the ship to sail upstream.

  ‘Yes, wanax,’ replied Myrsilus. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then let us go,’ said the king.

  He took a cup and filled it with strong red wine, the same that he would drink before battle in the fields of Ilium. He poured it into the river current, saying: ‘I offer you this libation, oh god of the waters of Eridanus. We have fled our homeland, after suffering all that men can suffer in a long war. We seek a new land and a new era and a new life. Show us your favour, I beseech you.’ He threw the precious silver cup into the water as well; Anassilaus had melted it and engraved it with supreme art one day long ago at Lemnos, never imagining how far away it would end up.

  He went to Lamus, son of Onchestus, the Spartan that Myrsilus had freed from slavery: ‘Could you recognize the place where the old man said he had seen the Sun fall?’

  ‘I think so. But why do you want to know?’

  ‘If we want to remain here, I must know every secret of this land. You show me the place, as soon as you see it, and do not fear.’

  The ship began to sail up the river; it was immense, so wide that the banks could barely be seen from the centre of the current, and the ta
llest oaks seemed mere shrubs.

  ‘A river like this receives many rivers, and descends from mountains as high as the sky, always covered with ice, in the winter and in the summer, higher than the mountains of Elam and Urartu,’ said the Hittite slave, Telephus.

  ‘You are right,’ said the king. ‘And perhaps one day we shall see them.’ The wind picked up from the west and north, and the ships had to counter its thrust with their helms, so as not to run aground on the river’s southern shore. They crossed a dense forest from which immense flocks of birds would suddenly rise, blocking out the pale autumn sun like a cloud, and then finally entered the open plain. Every so often they would meet with big wooded islands whose gigantic trees stretched out their branches to touch the surface of the water. Every puff of wind snatched a host of brightly coloured leaves from those branches; yellow, red and ochre, they whirled through the air before alighting on the current.

  To their left and right, instead, the land was bare, with scattered groups of trees here and there. The Spartan pointed to a place in which a branch of the river broke off from the main current, crossed a large pool and then headed south towards the sea. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘this is the place the old man told us about; where the pond water is sparkling.’

  Diomedes ordered them to stop the ships. One after another they furled the sails and cast anchor. The king armed himself with only a sword and set off on foot, taking a small group of warriors inland with him: Licus, Eumelus, Driop and Evenus, all from Argos, as well as Crissus and Dius of Tiryns.

  The sun was already low, and transformed the still water of the marshes into mirrors of gold. They would stop every so often and listen: silence, everywhere, wringing their hearts and chilling their souls. They had never felt anything similar, not even in the midst of the fiercest fray on the field of battle. Even the birds were still and all they could hear were the small sudden thuds of the frogs jumping into the water.

  They advanced as far as the shore of the pond and Diomedes signalled for his men to wait under an oak that stretched its bare branches towards the water. He went on alone, as the dusky light dimmed and the sun sank into the mist that veiled the horizon.

  He stopped all at once, vaguely sensing that the place was infested by a powerful, dark presence; he glanced back at his men, who had so often faced death on the open field. They were glancing about helplessly, seized with dismay.

  Just then he thought he heard something: a sound, or a moan, perhaps, was that the voice that Lamus, son of Onchestus, had spoken of? The cry of wailing women? He looked at the surface of the waves and heard the sound even more distinctly. It was a wail, yes, a chorus of weeping as if many women were grieving over the slain bodies of their sons or brothers or husbands. Diomedes the hero sought the voice of his own mother in that chorus, the voice of Aigialeia, his lost bride, but he could not hear them. He drew even closer to the pond which had swallowed up the chariot of the Sun and he saw a shiver run over the water although the wind had calmed and the air was still and stagnant. And as the sky darkened the surface of the pool stretched and curved as if pushed upward by the back of a monster. To his left the sun disappeared with a last tremor of light and the sky suddenly blackened above the pale layer of fog. A gurgling rose from the pool and beneath the surface, deprived of its golden reflection, Diomedes could see a shape, like a wheel. . the wheel of the chariot of the Sun? The water gurgled again and the wheel dissolved in the rippling waves. Diomedes turned towards his companions: ‘I don’t need you any longer,’ he said. ‘But I’m going to stay here, I want more time.’

  ‘Come back to camp with us, wanax,’ pleaded the men. ‘These are unknown lands.’

  ‘Go,’ repeated Diomedes. ‘This place is deserted, can’t you feel that? Nothing can harm me, and the goddess Athena will watch over me.’

  The men departed and the rustling of their passage through the swamp reeds could be heard for a while, until silence descended once again over the pond. The hero leaned against the trunk of a colossal willow that wet its branches in the water. The ground had become as dark as the sky.

  Time passed and the cold become pungent but he continued to stare at the surface of the water, black as a burnished mirror. He had nearly decided to return to the ships when he saw a pale flash of light animate the bottom of the swamp. He turned his eyes to the sky, thinking that the moon had emerged from behind a bank of clouds, but he saw nothing. The light was emanating from the bottom of the pool. The surface of the water arched again, becoming a dark globe which covered something that continued to remain invisible. The hero could not believe his eyes. The water did not fall; it adhered to the bulging beneath like a fluttering cloak. The light flashed again, stronger and brighter, and struck the clouds of the sky which quivered as if pervaded by lightning in a storm. These were the lights that had accompanied them since they had left the land of the Achaeans, sailing over the sea, these were the unexplainable flashes that had frightened the men at the oars and filled the helmsmen with wonder. He was afraid to stare at the light, which now seemed directed towards him. How could his body resist a bolt that could penetrate the clouds of the sky? The light darted now from the hub of the wheel like a sunburst, and when the ray struck him, the veils that prevent us from seeing that which has existed before us and that which will exist after us, fell suddenly from his eyelids. The hero saw, as if in a dream, the origin of his life and of his human adventure.

  He saw the war of the Seven against Thebes; he could distinctly hear the neighing of the horses and the cries of the warriors. It was there, in that blind massacre, that everything began. War of brother against brother, blood of the same father and of the same mother. He saw his own father, Tydeus, scaling the walls and hurling the defenders down from the bastions, one after another. Shouting, shouting louder and louder for his comrades to join him and follow him. It was at that moment that the spear of Melanippus, flung with great force, stuck into his belly. And his father, Tydeus the hero, ripped the spear from his flesh, holding the bowels that burst from the wide wound with his left hand, while with the other he whirled the mighty two-edged axe. Melanippus took no care — how could a dying man find the strength to harm him? — and the great axe was whirled and then flew through the air. It fell on his neck, cleanly chopping his head off.

  His mutilated body collapsed to the ground shaking and kicking but his head rolled away, far from the bastions, and ended up between the feet of the warriors facing off in frenzied battle. Diomedes’s father, Tydeus, dragged himself over the stone, leaving a long wake of blood; he reached the severed head of Melanippus, seized it and bashed it on the stone with both his hands, forcefully, until he split open the robust skull. He neared his mouth and devoured the still warm brain. And the goddess Athena who had rushed to aid him, to heal his wound, turned away in horror, closing her eyes so she would not see. Tydeus died alone, breathing the last breath of life on that stone, far from his bride and his son. The goddess shouted out with her eyes closed and full of tears: ‘This is your stock, Diomedes! This is your race and your blood!’

  Diomedes turned and shouted out himself: ‘Did you see that? Did you hear?’ But he had forgotten that his companions had all gone. He himself had ordered them to go.

  The mysterious power that loomed in those waters forced him to look again into the rays of light. And he saw Amphiaraus, the father of his friend Sthenelus, fleeing on his chariot, fleeing over the plains in a cloud of dust, whipping his horses cruelly, fleeing Thebes to flee the Fate of death.

  But the earth suddenly opened beneath the hooves of the horses and the infernal Furies emerged, spouting flames from their mouths; their hair was woven with poisonous serpents, their eyes veined with blood, their skin red and scaly. They grabbed the reins of his fiery horses — who tried desperately to get free, rearing up and neighing wildly — but the Furies dragged them under the ground, and Amphiaraus with them. The voice said: ‘And this is the race of Sthenelus, the blood of your faithful friend!’

  ‘S
thenelus!’ shouted Diomedes. ‘Where is he? Where is he?’

  But there was no answer. He knew in the bottom of his heart that Sthenelus was dead, long dead; he had felt his vital force vanish from the world like smoke, like the vapour of the morning mist is dispersed by the sun.

  He collapsed against the tree and said: ‘Oh god, you who inhabit these waters and make the clouds throb with your gaze, I have seen what was. I have seen that the blood of my race is like poison. Now let me see what will be. If there is still a way to bend a bitter destiny.’

  He mustered up his courage and advanced to the edge of the pond. He stood still in its blinding light. The globe trembled and the water which covered it began slowly to drip and then to pour downward, raising splashes from the surface of the pool. The light quivered, the wheel turned and he could once again hear the chorus of laments.

  Diomedes sensed that there was someone at his back and he turned: he saw a warrior wrapped in a cloak advancing towards him from the depths of the darkness. A white crest swayed on his helmet, a Trojan sword gleamed in his hand. The warrior came closer, surrounded by silence and by a halo of fog, and he was enormous to see, much larger than a real man. Only when he came into the ray of light was his face recognizable. His eyes blazed with hate and revenge: it was Aeneas!

  Diomedes drew his sword. ‘This is destiny, then! This is the future, the same as the past!’ he shouted and he hurled himself at his adversary, but the sword pierced an immaterial shape, an empty image. He spun around, still shouting: ‘Where are you? Fight and let’s finish this forever! It’s either me or you, son of Anchises! How many times did I force you to flee on the fields of Ilium? Show yourself! I’m not afraid of you!’

  He dealt blow after blow, until he collapsed, exhausted, on to his knees in the damp grass.

  The lights in the sky had gone out and the surface of the pond was once again still. A hand touched his shoulder: ‘Let’s go, wanax.. This land breeds nightmares. Let’s go back to the ships.’