Then the girls left—giggling again—and there was silence except for muttered exchanges between the guards outside the tent and the crackle of brazier flames keeping those guards warm. That and monstrous snoring from Achilles’ sleeping chamber. I hadn’t heard Patroclus leave, so either he or the golden hero sounded like he had a deviated septum.
Now I lie here and consider my options. No, first I morph out of Phoenix’s old form—damn the consequences!—and lie here as Thomas Hockenberry and consider my options.
I have my hand on the QT medallion. I can jump to Helen’s sleeping chambers again—I know for a fact that Paris is out beyond the trench here, miles from the city, waiting for dawn to join Hector in the final slaughter of Greeks and the burning of the Achaean ships. Helen might be happy to see me. Or she might have no further use or amusement from the night-visitor named Hockenberry—how strange that someone here other than another scholic knows my name!—and she might call her guards. No problem with that; I can always QT away in an instant.
To what destination?
I can give up this mad plan to change the course of the Iliad, abandon my goal—formed on the night that Agamemnon and Achilles first quarreled—of defying the immortal gods, QT to Olympos, apologize to the Muse and to Aphrodite when they decant her, ask Zeus for a personal audience, and beg for a pardon.
Uh-huh. What are the odds that they’d forgive and forget, Hockenbush? You stole the Hades Helmet, the QT medallion, and all your scholic gear and used them for your own purposes. You fled from the Muse. Worst of all, you hijacked a flying chariot and tried to kill Aphrodite in her healing tank.
My best hope after apologizing would be that Zeus or Aphrodite or the Muse would kill me quickly, rather than turn me inside out or cast me down into the murky pit of Tartarus, where I’d probably be eaten alive by Kronos and the other barbarous Titans banished there by Zeus.
No, I’ve buttered my bread and now I have to lie in it. Or however that phrase goes. In for a penny, in for a pound. No guts, no glory. Better safe than sorry. But while I’m struggling for a cliché, any cliché, a profound realization settles over me in a profoundly unprofessorial but absolutely convincing phrasing—
If I don’t think of something soon, I am well and truly fucked.
I can go reason with Odysseus.
Odysseus is the sane one here, the civilized man, the wise tactician. Odysseus may be the answer tonight. I’ll have a better chance convincing Odysseus that an end to this war with the Trojans and common cause against the all-too-human gods is an option. To tell you the truth, I always enjoyed teaching the Odyssey to my students more than the Iliad ; Fitzgerald’s sensibilities in the Odyssey are so much more humane than the rough bellicosity of Mandelbaum’s and Lattimore’s and Fagles’s and even Pope’s Iliad. I was mistaken to think that I could find the fulcrum of events by coming here with the embassy to Achilles. No, Achilles isn’t the man to approach this night—what’s left of this night—but Odysseus, son of Laertes, a man who might understand a scholar’s pleas and the compelling logic of peace.
I actually rise and touch the QT medallion, ready to go find Odysseus and make my plea. There’s only one little problem that keeps me from QTing in search of Odysseus: if Homer was telling the truth, I know what’s happening elsewhere while I’ve been lying in this tent and brooding. Agamemnon and Menelaus can’t sleep for their own brooding on the course of events, and some time around now, or perhaps in the last hour or so, the older and more royal brother calls for Nestor and asks for ideas that might stave off the massacre that seems so imminent. Nestor recommends a war counsel with Diomedes, Odysseus, Little Ajax, and some of the other Achaean captains. Once these leaders are gathered, Nestor suggests that the boldest among them should sneak behind Trojan lines and divine Hector’s intentions—will the Trojans and their allies try to burn the ships in a few hours’ time? Or is it possible that Hector has had enough blood and victory for now, and will lead his hordes back into the city to celebrate before opening further hostilities?
Diomedes and Odysseus are chosen to go find out, and since the two have come to this counsel from sleep, without their own weapons, they’re given gear by the guards, including a bull’s-hide helmet for Diomedes and a famous Mycaenaean boar’s-tusk helmet for Odysseus. With the skin of a lion that Diomedes has thrown across his shoulders and Odysseus’ black-leather helmet studded around with white teeth, the two warriors are terrifying to look upon.
Should I QT to that conference and observe it?
There’s no reason. Diomedes and Odysseus may already have left on their commando raid. Or Homer might have been lying or mistaken about this action, just as he was with Phoenix’s speech. Besides, it won’t help with my problem right now. I’m not a scholic anymore, just a man trying to find away to survive and end this war—or at least turn it against the gods.
Although there’s another part of tonight’s action elsewhere that comes to mind and chills my blood. When Diomedes and Odysseus venture out, they discover Dolon—the spearman whose body I borrowed just two nights ago when I followed Hector into his meeting with Helen and Paris—who’s been sent behind Achaean lines to spy for Hector. Dolon’s carrying a reflex bow and wearing a cap made of weasel skin and he’s sneaking carefully through the field of newly fallen dead in the dark, hunting for a way across the trench and past the Greek guards on the line, but sharp-eyed Odysseus sees him coming in the darkness and he and Diomedes lie among the corpses, surprise Dolon, and disarm him.
The Trojan begs for his life. Odysseus will tell him—if he hasn’t already—that “Death is the last thing you have to worry about”—and then calmly, quietly pumps the young spearman for specific information about the disposition of Hector’s Trojans and their allies.
Dolon tells all—the location of the Carians and Paeonians and Leleges and Cauconians, the sleeping areas of the crack Pelesgians and the stolid, faithful Lycians and the cock-strutting Mysians, the whereabouts of the camp of the famed Phrygian horsemen and the Maeonian charioteers—he tells everything and begs for his life. He even suggests that they tie him up and keep him prisoner until they see for themselves that his information is correct.
Odysseus will smile, or perhaps he already has, and will pat the shaking, terrified Dolon on the shoulder—I remember the muscled balance of Dolon’s body from when I was morphed as the boy—and then the son of Laertes and Diomedes will strip the young man’s cap and bow and wolf pelt—Odysseus softly telling the terrified boy that they’re disarming him before bringing him to camp as a prisoner—and then Diomedes will hack Dolon’s head off with one savage blow of his sword. Dolon’s head will still be shrieking for mercy as it bounces across the sand.
And Odysseus will hold up the boy’s spear and bow and weasel cap and wolf-pelt, and will offer them to Pallas Athena, crying—“Rejoice in these, Goddess. They’re yours! Now guide us to the Thracian camp so that we can kill more men and steal their horses! Those spoils, too, will be yours.”