‘Of course, wanax, I took the liberty of giving him this answer, already knowing what you would say. They’ll be off on their own way now.’
The Peleset ships paraded past them, one after another, about twenty in all. They turned to the right, heading south. The fog was thickening again and the damp chilled them all to the bone. The last Peleset vessel passed at just a short distance from them, but before it was swallowed up into the mist they heard someone shout from the deck: ‘Achaeans! I am Lamus, son of Onchestus, Spartan. I was made a slave in Egypt! Remember me!’ His words were followed by the sound of blows, moaning and then silence.
Diomedes started: ‘Gods!’ he said, ‘an Achaean like us in such a distant land. . and Peleset. .’
‘And Trojans, and Enetians. .’ said Myrsilus.
Diomedes spun around to face him: ‘What did you say?’
‘There were Trojans and Enetians in the village we visited last night.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me? I could make you pay dearly for lying to me.’
‘Not a lie, wanax, silence. I waited until now to tell you. If I had told you then you would have launched an attack.’
‘Certainly. They are our enemies.’
‘Not any more, wanax. The war is over.’
‘Only when I say so. Did you recognize anyone? Aeneas? Had he been there, would you have recognized him?’
‘Of course, wanax.. But he was not among them. Their chief was an older man with grey hair, but his beard was still dark and his black eyebrows thick. Tall, with slightly bent shoulders. .’
‘Antenor,’ murmured Diomedes. ‘Perhaps you saw Antenor. It was Ulysses who asked Agamemnon to spare him the night of the fall of Troy because Antenor had treated him with respect and had given him hospitality when he had gone that first time to ask Priam to give Helen back. But why here? What does he seek in this land?’
The Chnan drew closer: ‘Something terrible must have happened. Perhaps a war greater than the one you fought, perhaps a gigantic battle, or some cataclysm. The Peleset would never have ventured so far! Those Trojans must have known, and have chosen to seek out a place far away from everything, a tranquil and solitary place.’
‘Do you have orders to give me, wanax?’ asked Myrsilus.
‘We’ll go forward, but stop as soon as you find a suitable place. If we can, we’ll try to free that wretch. Those ships can’t be too far.’
They proceeded until darkness fell, without ever sighting the Peleset fleet. They moored their ships on the beach of a sandy island, low on the surface of the sea, and lit a fire. The coast of the continent was very close. The king called Myrsilus: ‘They must be anchored somewhere near here, on the mainland. Go aground with a group of selected men and see if you can liberate that Spartan. Take the Chnan with you; he understands their language and he’ll be useful to you. I don’t want you to suffer any losses; if the endeavour proves too difficult, turn back.’
As the others went ashore on the island, Myrsilus and the men he had chosen walked to the mainland; since the water was so shallow at that point, they were no more than knee-deep. A breath of wind was picking up from the sea, dispelling the fog and letting a little moonlight through. Myrsilus had never seen such a land in all his days; the coast was a vast expanse of fine white sand that sparkled in the pale glow of the moon. The waves swept across the wide beach and then withdrew with a gurgling sound. Here and there were gigantic trunks, abandoned on the waterline, stretching their enormous skeletal arms towards the sky.
‘There must be a great river near here,’ said the Chnan.
‘Why?’ asked Myrsilus.
‘Those trunks. Only a great river can uproot such colossal trees and drag them to the sea, where the waves wash them back to the shore.’
Myrsilus was once again astonished at the wisdom of this foreigner that they had rescued from the sea; all he knew must come from having journeyed so far and having met diverse peoples with different languages. They walked and walked, so far that the moon had risen by nearly a cubit at the horizon; finally, at the end of a small bay, they saw the Peleset fleet at anchor. The place was completely deserted and there were only a couple of sentinels standing guard near a small campfire. Every so often one of them would break some dry branches from a trunk lying on the sand to add to the fire. Myrsilus and the Chnan crept close, so close that they could hear the crackling of the fire and the voices of the two sentinels.
‘How can we find the man we’re looking for?’ asked the Chnan. ‘We can’t search the ships one by one.’
‘You’re right,’ said Myrsilus. ‘The only way is to make ourselves heard.’
‘But then they’ll all be upon us!’
‘No, not if something is keeping them busy.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like their fleet catching fire.’ The Chnan widened his eyes and shook his head incredulously. Myrsilus turned to his comrades: ‘You go that way, to the edge of the forest, and lure the sentinels away from the fire, then kill them. We’ll take firebrands in the meantime and go set fire to the ships. When the confusion is at its peak, I’ll call him out and we’ll all meet up at the big dry trunk. If you are careful and do as I say, none of us will die, and we will have liberated a long-suffering comrade.’
A small group of men went off towards the woods; soon after there was a sound of branches being broken, followed by the close beating of wings and a loud rustling.
The sentinels turned and stopped talking, straining to hear. More noise, and the two Peleset each took a brand and headed to where the sounds were coming from; presumably a wild animal was roaming about their camp, since the place seemed completely deserted and uninhabited.
As soon as they had left the halo of light of the fire, Myrsilus and his comrades seized blazing firebrands and rushed off towards the ships. They ran barefooted on the sand like shadows, without making any noise at all. Each chose his ship and set fire to it. The pitch and caulking pressed into the seams of the planks ignited immediately. Flames licked at the hulls and dense spirals of smoke curled upward. The two sentinels turned back to raise the alarm but they were stricken down at once by the men hiding in the wood.
In just a few moments, four of the ships were completely enveloped by the blaze. The men sleeping on board flung themselves out through a barrier of flames, yelling for help. Their comrades rushed from the other ships, carrying jugs and buckets of water to douse the flames.
In that confusion of blood-red light and crazed shadows, Myrsilus raised a cry in the language of the Achaeans, knowing that only one man aboard would be able to understand him. He shouted: ‘Spartan! Join us at the dry tree trunk at the seashore!’ In that chaos of cries and laments, Myrsilus’s words floated like the peak of a mountain above the clouds of a storm and Lamus, son of Onchestus, heard them.
He jumped ship and began to run towards the burning vessels where, amidst all the uproar, he slipped away from the area illuminated by the raging fire and took shelter in the darkness, by the great dry trunk. He looked around, seeking the voice that had called him; he saw no one and feared he had imagined the whole thing. As he was about to return to his destiny, a voice rang out behind him: ‘We are Argives and we heard your voice. We have come to free you.’
Lamus embraced them one by one, sobbing like a baby. He could not believe that he had escaped the grievous destiny already marked out for him. Myrsilus urged them all to leave that place at once and to rejoin their comrades, but before they started their march, he was seized by doubt. He felt he had to make the freed Spartan understand that the fate awaiting him might be worse than any he had faced up until then.