Eperitus lifted Astynome to her feet and allowed her to rest her head against his shoulder, where her tears fell on to his breastplate and mingled with the spatters of dried blood. As her arms wound round him and he stroked her sea of dark hair – watched by the envious eyes of the men in the burial parties – he noticed a young woman leaning over the body of a man, laid out among his dead comrades beneath the shadow of the walls. Her shoulders shook with a slow, mournful sobbing, and despite her red eyes and tear-stained cheeks it was clear she had a powerful beauty. Other than Astynome, she was the only woman present.
‘Who’s she?’ he asked.
Astynome lifted her head and gazed across at the stricken woman. More tears came to her eyes and she shook her head pityingly.
‘It’s Briseis,’ she answered. ‘Daughter of Briseus the priest. And that’s her husband, Mynes, she’s weeping over, with his brother Epistrophus beside him. They were princes of Lyrnessus and proud men in life.’
‘And brave men in their deaths,’ added a soldier, stooping beside them and lifting a corpse on to his shoulders. The dead man’s arms hung limply down the soldier’s back as he turned to look at Eperitus and Astynome. ‘Those two were at the heart of the rearguard, refusing to surrender or admit defeat. But Achilles slew them both and now Briseis is his captive.’
‘Was it a hard fight?’ Eperitus asked.
The man nodded. ‘It was worse here than at the walls, a real bloodbath. That Sarpedon commanded the rearguard while Aeneas got the majority of the Dardanians and Lycians out through the gate. And they fought like Furies! If it hadn’t been for Achilles they might’ve held us to a stalemate. But we beat them in the end,’ he added, patting the corpse over his shoulder as he saw Astynome’s chin raise a little. ‘Sarpedon only escaped at the last moment, and Achilles, Patroclus and Diomedes have gone out in pursuit of him and the remainder of his men. He’ll be a rich prize if—’
‘What about Odysseus?’ Eperitus interrupted.
‘He was in the thick of it too, as usual, but Achilles asked him and Little Ajax to stay here and put down the last pockets of resistance. They were surrounding a group of militia not far from here, last I heard.’
The soldier pointed in the direction of a column of smoke billowing up from behind a line of ramshackle dwellings to the west, then, with a final glance at the Trojan girl, turned and carried his burden towards the lines of dead.
‘Come on,’ Eperitus said, taking Astynome’s hand and heading towards the smoke.
The battle must indeed have been a brutal one, Eperitus thought as they weaved a path between the bodies of the fallen. The sun-baked, dusty earth was dark with innumerable bloodstains and here and there he could see small fragments of human remains: several hands; arms severed at the elbow; a sandalled foot; even a cleanly lopped ear lying in a wheel rut. As they passed the gates a wagon laden with bundles of wood squealed its way through the gates.
‘For the funeral pyre,’ Eperitus explained, seeing Astynome’s look of confusion. ‘We stopped burying the dead years ago – it took too much time and effort, and by the time we’d dug the pits the carrion birds had already taken the eyes and the softer parts.’
Astynome squeezed his hand tightly and he shut up. Before long they heard the crackle of fire and turned a corner to see a large, two-storeyed house surrounded by at least three score of warriors. Long orange flames flickered up from the windows and sent spirals of dark, ember-filled smoke up into the air. More smoke wafted out into the street, but Eperitus recognized Odys-seus’s squat, triangular form through the fine haze, with the colossal figure of Polites beside him. As he watched, two men appeared on the flat roof of the building. They were unarmed, but their scaled breastplates and plumed helmets marked them out as warriors. Both were waving their hands before their faces and choking on the smoke. They stumbled to the edge of the low wall that surrounded the roof and looked down at the Ithacans below. Odysseus shouted a command and a moment later there was a loud twang. One of the men staggered against the wall, clutching at the black shaft protruding from his groin, before slowly curling forward and plunging to the floor below. He landed with a dull thud and lay still. His comrade shook his fist blindly at the surrounding Greeks, then retreated into the consuming smoke.
Suddenly there was a hoarse shout and several men ran out from the doorway of the house. They were half-blinded by the smoke, but the dull gleam of their weapons showed they had no intention of surrendering. Odysseus, who had been awaiting their appearance with calm patience, now sprang into action, dashing forward and knocking a man’s head from his shoulders with a swift slice of his sword. Polites followed, a captured two-headed battle-axe in his right hand, and within a moment the rest of the Ithacans were behind them. The battle was brief, bloody and uneven, and with Astynome at his side Eperitus felt almost ashamed as he watched the massacre. Then, when the ringing of weapons and the shouts of men were over, he saw Odysseus come striding out with his bloodied sword hanging at his side. He looked strangely savage in the sunlight: his face grimed with ash and spattered with gore; his normally bright and thoughtful eyes red-rimmed from the smoke and filled with a forbidding anger. In his left hand he held a cloak which he had torn from the shoulders of one of his victims, and with which he was slowly wiping the mess from his blade.
‘Odysseus,’ Eperitus called.
The king looked at him in confusion for a moment, as if startled from a dream, then dropped his sword back into its scabbard and walked towards his captain, forcing a smile.
‘Eperitus!’ he answered, almost sighing as a great tiredness seemed to press down on his shoulders. ‘Thank the gods you’re all right. I was concerned for you.’
‘Since when have you needed to worry about me?’
‘It’s a king’s prerogative to worry about his subjects,’ Odysseus replied, wiping the sweat from his brow and leaving a streak of clean skin through the accumulated dirt. He looked at Astynome. ‘I see you’ve gained a captive during your absence.’
Astynome drew closer to Eperitus, eyeing the king of Ithaca with distrust.
‘She captured me, I think. I saved her from being raped and now she’s placed herself under my protection.’
‘Well, girl, the gods must favour you,’ Odysseus said, speaking to Astynome in her own tongue and looking at her with kindness. ‘Of all the thousands of men in the Greek army, you were found by the one warrior who still retains a scrap of decency and honour. Anybody else would have left you to your fate – or added to your misery.’
Astynome frowned but said nothing.
‘And what of Apheidas?’ Odysseus continued in Greek, addressing Eperitus. ‘Did you find him?’