He stood before the young man as if he was awaiting a verdict. Orestes looked up at him: his red eyes held an expression of dazed heartache, his face was deeply creased, his chin trembled imperceptibly and his mouth twisted in agony. Orestes got to his feet as well, and stared into his eyes for a moment, then burst into tears and clasped his uncle close.
They remained thus for some time, both wounded by the same pain, tormented by the same obscure fears. In the end, the youth pulled away and stepped back: ‘For that which they have done,’ he said, and his voice was cold and ruthless, ‘no mercy.’
14
The mountains seemed to have no end in the land of Hesperia, just as one day, long ago now, it had seemed to Diomedes and his men that the plains were without end. The Achaeans managed to avoid the Teresh who controlled the region to the west by journeying along the crests of the mountains, but they ended up in the land of the Ombro, where they had to struggle to force their way through, although the Chnan at times tried to negotiate with them. Their small communities were very belligerent and mistrustful, and they were scattered everywhere, behind every corner. The Achaeans were often forced to seek shelter in the forests, so that too many men would not be lost. Whenever they neared a town in search of food, Diomedes’s men were often attacked and forced to engage in unsparing combat.
The Ombro inhabited a splendid land, made of gentle hills and valleys full of flowers of every colour, edged with sparkling torrents. But it was a poor land, and very far from the sea; the Pica lived in the intervening territory, on the eastern side of the mountains. They were quite similar to the Ombro, cultivating the earth and raising animals in wooden pens. They burned their dead on woodpiles, then put their ashes into clay jars which they buried with a few humble belongings.
The Pica were dangerous because they knew the art of crafting metal, and they made spears, axes and knives and sometimes even laminated bronze vases which the Chnan considered with great interest, carrying off as many as he could when they managed to seize a town. Their women were beautiful, with long, smooth braided hair; they wore gowns woven at the loom in bright colours.
In the chiefs’ huts they sometimes found abundant quantities of amber, which certainly came from far away, perhaps from the fabled Electrides islands celebrated by sailors in every one of the Achaean ports.
At the centre of each village, the Pica planted a pole topped with the image of a woodpecker, their sacred animal or perhaps their god. They took their name from him. Their land was very bare, suited mainly to grazing sheep and goats. Sometimes the sea could be seen in the distance, a sea as green as the meadows and edged with white foam. But the coast was completely uniform and there was not a port to be seen; no promontories from which one could gaze into the horizon, no coastal plains that could be cultivated. Myrsilus claimed that that was the same sea that they had crossed years earlier when they had left Argos to head north, and that if Anchialus had lived, he would be looking for them along that coast. He wondered what fate had befallen their homeland, since Anchialus had surely died in the hands of those bastard Shekelesh without ever delivering Diomedes’s message of alarm.
One day, having pushed on in the direction of the eastern sea, Myrsilus returned with little objects of no value, but that he was never to part with; they were small vases and drinking cups that came from the land of the Achaeans. He showed them to the king, saying: ‘See, wanax? Someone from our land has ventured this far. That must mean that nothing terrible has happened to them. If we succeed in founding a city one day, we can make contact with merchants who come from our land and have news of it whenever they come out this way.’
The king had taken those humble little objects into his hands and caressed them, so Myrsilus gave him one to keep for himself.
Diomedes still tried to breed confidence in his men, but he realized as time passed that they were living from hand to mouth. They always ate as though it were their last meal, slept with a woman as though it might be the last time they ever made love. It was sad, and made him sick at heart, but there was nothing he could do to change it.
Ros, the bride from the Mountains of Ice, loved him after all the time they had spent together, but she had not given him a child and this instilled a dark foreboding in Diomedes’s soul; if that woman had been summoned from lands far away to restore life to a dying people, then he must be the one who bore the seeds of destruction and annihilation within him. He realized that Aphrodite’s revenge would persecute him to the very end, to any corner of the land or sea. He had wounded her on the fields of Ilium and she punished him by extinguishing life wherever he now tried to sow it.
At times, in the dead of night, he would awaken suddenly when a wolf or a jackal howled from a mountain top or wood, because he had become convinced that in that land the gods made themselves heard through the voices of the animals. Why else had they so often found signs of animal worship and votive offerings?
One evening he returned to his tent after a raid, covered with dust and sweat. He lay down his weapons and poured a jug of water over his head. Just then his bride appeared, and he saw deep sadness in her eyes, or compassion perhaps. Or pity.
He had not seen himself in a mirror for years, but it was enough to see those eyes and that gaze to understand everything.
‘A goddess once mounted my chariot and fought at my side,’ he said. ‘Do you believe me?’
The girl came closer. ‘If you believe it then I believe you,’ she said.
‘No, you don’t believe me,’ said Diomedes. ‘For the man you see before you is not the same, and this land is not the same and not even the sky is the same. I feel the weight of the end. I passed between the severed heads: did you know that?’
‘Yes. But that will not be the cause of your death.’
‘My comrades follow me because I promised them a kingdom, a city with houses and families. And I’ve given them nothing but hardship, grief and death.’
‘Your comrades love you. They are ready to follow you anywhere. And after all, didn’t they suffer with you when you fought under the walls of that city so far away?’
‘Don’t you understand? This is why my heart aches! Then we knew what our sacrifices were for, then we lived in a world where we knew the rules and the confines. Not any more. I don’t know where to lead them. Years have passed since we reached the mouth of the Eridanus. We have crossed plains and mountains and forests, we have forded swamps and swirling rivers. We have fought with many peoples but we have conquered nothing. This land saps our strength from us day after day, robs me of my comrades, one after another. How many have I buried until now?’ Tears brimmed in his eyes but his voice was firm and strong. ‘I remember them all, each one of them. I remember their names, their families, their cities. But they no longer exist. No one will ever take an offering to their tombs, no one will pronounce their names on the anniversary of their deaths. I had hoped that one day, when I had built a city and a kingdom, I would be able to raise a lofty cairn to them, with many steles of stone, each one carved with a name. Every year I would have offered a sacrifice and celebrated funeral games. Even for the Chetaean slave who died as a warrior to save my life.