As he was saying this a shrill sound whistled through the air and one of the sentinels on guard at a short distance collapsed with a sigh, run through by an arrow. The king was notified immediately, and he rode out on horseback with fifty armed men to encircle the area the arrow had come from, but the darkness and the rough terrain protected the aggressors. They never found a trace of them, as if they had never existed.
The king returned to the camp in the middle of the night, full of impotent rage, and stopped beside the dying warrior: his name was Hippotous, from Lerna. He had been only sixteen when they left for the war. His father Phaillus had been among Tydeus’s most faithful friends and Diomedes had always loved him like a younger brother. His comrades had brought him close to the fire, and the Chnan was wetting his lips with a linen cloth. He was delirious.
‘They’re attacking!’ he would shout out, trembling and trying to lift up on his elbows. ‘Deiphobus and Aeneas, on the right! Beware, wanax! Watch your left side! The Maeonian chariots are upon us, those cursed bastard dogs. .’
The king knelt beside him and placed a hand on his burning forehead. The Chnan had managed to cut the arrow shaft with a knife blade, but he had not been able to extract the tip.
‘Rest now, my friend. The enemy has been routed. They’ve taken to their heels.’
‘Really, wanax? And what will I have? What spoils will be mine?’
‘A pair of horses: two superb sorrels, still be to broken in,’ said the king, stroking him tenderly. ‘A helmet; it’s beautiful, decorated in silver and. . two spears. .’
But the god of eternal sleep opened the youth’s eyes for an instant and he saw the truth in his king’s mournful gaze. ‘I’m dying. . wanax. To no purpose.’
His head dropped back and his still eyes were filled with death. The fire was going out, and its bluish reflection made the pallor of his forehead look like marble. The king bit his lip and wept.
After that night, Diomedes tried to be even more prudent; he would send Myrsilus forward with a small group of his fastest men: Evenus, Agelaus, Krissus and even Lamus the Spartan, son of Onchestus. After long days of bewilderment, Lamus had finally recovered his spirit and determination. He seemed to feel that any moment in which the column was not moving was a waste. He was never ready to stop in the evening, and in the morning he was the first to awaken and to stir up the fire.
At their sides, the king posted two small squads of Argive warriors from his personal guard. He himself marched in front of the main body of the column and posted a small rear guard behind, at a good distance. His wooden chest was at the centre of the column on a little cart pulled by a couple of mules. Alongside the chest, sitting on a bench and protected by a shelter of intertwined wicker, was the bride come from beyond the Mountains of Ice. She was as yet untouched by man.
But even in this way, Diomedes continued to suffer losses: clusters of arrows would suddenly fall from the sky like hail, although the men could not understand where they were coming from. Or the earth would open beneath their feet, plunging the warriors into pits studded with sharp spikes which pierced them through like fish that a sharp-eyed fisherman runs through with his harpoon. Sometimes, as they slept, their entire camp was inundated with water, so that they had to abandon their sleeping mats, gather up the supplies and run to repel the danger that loomed in the shadows, spending nights awake, eyes stinging with fatigue, bowels gripped by cramps.
The king always showed his men the same dauntless expression, the same imperious gaze, but those who were closest to him, Myrsilus and even the Chnan, often saw the muscles of his face quivering uncontrollably under his skin, his eyes blinking rapidly and a light sweat beading his forehead, whether it was hot or cold. The king was suffering and his pain worsened with every passing day.
The bride would raise her head, sometimes, and the king exchanged glances with her, but that contact gave him no comfort or warmth. Her eyes were like a cold springtime sky, continually crossed by light and shadow, cloudy and clear practically at the same moment. The king could not speak to her. He tried, sometimes, in the intimacy that at night his men left to him in respect of his rank and because of their fondness for him, but he obtained no response. But the Chnan noticed that when Diomedes seemed most alone and despairing, when it seemed that fate and events did naught but torment him, then, it seemed to the Chnan, then her eyes would flicker a look like a furtive caress.
And the Chnan would notice that the king would suddenly turn his head then, as if someone had touched him.
‘All they want is the girl,’ said Telephus, the Hittite, one night. ‘If we let her go, this persecution will stop. We can no longer bear up under this strain. If we go on like this, we will all die. Someone has to tell him,’ he said, nodding towards the king, who was standing alone near his horses. ‘We’ve been marching for days and days and we’ve never seen their faces, but they are murdering us. How many men have we lost? Ten, maybe fifteen, I’ve lost count. And how many of them have we killed? Not one. They’re different; they will never agree to face us on the open field, phalanx against phalanx. They don’t think there is anything shameful or wrong about attacking us in secret, at night.’
‘You don’t think he already knows?’ replied the Chnan, indicating the king as he advanced through the mud, leading the horses by their reins. ‘They say that he once wounded a god in battle, but here there is no one to cross swords with, not even a savage or a shepherd. .’
‘Why is he doing it then? I know he is a generous man. How could he sacrifice his people this way?’
The Chnan walked at length without answering. In the distance was a low line of bluish mountains.
‘See those mountains? Perhaps that is where this accursed land ends. The king believes that if we manage to leave this place, we’ll finally be able to build a city and raise a temple. He thinks we will be invincible then, and that this girl will give him sons, and a dynasty. And that he’ll get other women for his warriors; that’s what he’s thinking. He knows there is no alternative. We can’t turn back, and facing the enemy is impossible. We have no choice but to go onwards. . hoping that some of us remain, in the end.’
‘But why won’t he give back the woman? He’ll find other women, more beautiful ones.’
‘He wants this one. If she was sent to regenerate the tribe of Nemro, she must bear a great life force within her. This is what he thinks. And perhaps he loves her. Have you seen how he looks at her?’
‘I have. But we will all die, this I know. Those mountains are still too far away; how many of us will fall before we get there?’
The column had stopped because Myrsilus had found a dry clearing, a large grassy knoll protected on one side by a group of ash and oak trees, just turning green with new leaves, and on the other by a torrent that edged it on three sides like the ocean around a peninsula. Gigantic clouds were gathering over the mountain peaks, shot through by blazing bolts of lightning.
‘We must inflict heavy losses on them,’ said the Chnan, ‘and convince them to withdraw.’
‘Or resolve it by fighting a duel,’ said Telephus.
The Chnan watched the big storm clouds clustering over the mountains: ‘The west wind is pushing them this way,’ he said. ‘They’ll be here right after dark.’
‘Yes. And the rain as well.’
‘There will be lightning; these tall trees may very well attract the bolts.’
‘Do you mean to say we should camp elsewhere?’
‘On the contrary. Perhaps they’ll attack tonight, and we may manage to wipe them out, or at least to strike out hard. If the storms in this land move like the sea. . and if the king will listen to me. .’