If the accusation of cowardice was not bad enough, the fact that it had come from Eurylochus was unbearable. The king’s cousin had never forgiven Eperitus for being made captain of the guard – a position Eurylochus had always coveted for himself, despite the fact that he was a spineless fool who was only ever to be found skulking at the rear of any battle, where the corpses provided rich pickings. Eperitus caught the man’s small black eyes staring at him from over his snout-like nose and multiple chins – maintained along with his ample stomach, despite ten years of camp rations – and felt hot needles of shame driven through his chest. But there were more important things than Eurylochus’s mockery to be concerned about.
Uncertain of how they were to scale the walls, his instinct for command took over and he ran up behind the press of Ithacan warriors.
‘Stay out of the ditch! Front two ranks kneel and raise your shields; rear ranks, throw your damned spears at those bastards on the wall.’
In response to his orders, the Ithacans began casting spear after spear at the defenders, sending many toppling backwards into their comrades. But more took their places, and among them were the archers who had been massed behind the city walls. With the armies of Ithaca, Argos and Phthia smashing themselves against the battlements, they had been ordered on to the ramparts to shoot directly down into the mass of attackers. But at the same time, Little Ajax had brought his Locrians closer up the slope, where they could pour an equally deadly fire into the crowded Lycians and Dardanians. Many fell screaming into the ditch below, where they were quickly silenced by the hacking swords of the frustrated Greeks.
Then a ladder rose up from the ditch where the Ithacan assault parties were massed. To Eperitus’s surprise, as he crouched behind his great shield to avoid the murderous rain of arrows, he saw that the top of the ladder reached just above the parapet. Another ladder of the same length followed it, and then another, and it was only as men began to dash up them with their shields held over their heads and their swords at the ready that Eperitus saw the answer to the riddle: someone was lashing ladders together with leather belts around the middle rungs, giving the extra length needed to reach the ramparts.
‘Odysseus,’ he said with a grin.
At that moment, he saw Aeneas appear on the walls above the Ithacan army. His rich armour flashed in the sunlight and left no one in doubt of his presence, as his bright sword cleaved the head of one of the attackers from its shoulders and sent the body plunging down into the press of men below. Eperitus’s eyes were not on the Dardanian prince, though, but on the warrior who accompanied him. He stood a head taller than the men around him, who moved quickly aside at the sight of his powerful physique, battle-scarred face and dark, merciless eyes. He placed his hands on the stone parapet and, ignoring the Locrian arrows, looked out over the seething mass of soldiers below, sweeping his hard gaze across their upturned faces until it fell on Eperitus. The faintest flicker of a smile touched Apheidas’s lips as he met his son’s eyes.
Chapter Three
THE TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS
For a moment Eperitus was aware of nothing but the face of his father watching him. The spears, stones and arrows that were sending men to their deaths on both sides of the struggle were no longer a concern. The clash of weapons and the screams of men faded from his hearing, just as the figures moving all around him and on the walls above became colourless blurs, like shadows in a dream. Now all that mattered was the face on the ramparts, the closeness of the man who had haunted his nightmares for two decades, whose death he had wanted for so long that the desire to kill him seemed to have tormented his thoughts for ever. And now, after ten years of searching for his father across the battlefields of Ilium, he was suddenly and unexpectedly a spear’s cast away. All he needed to do was pull back his arm and hurl his weapon and all the hatred and shame would end.
And yet he was unable to move. For the first time in many years he felt afraid. It was not the churning of his stomach before every battle, which soon disappeared after the first arrow was fired or the first spear was thrown; it was the fear of confronting something so integral to his existence for so many years that in destroying it he might destroy himself. Who would he be if his father was gone? Apheidas had murdered his own king to usurp the throne, and when Eperitus had refused to join him he had sent his son into exile. The shame of that treachery was the driving force behind Eperitus’s desire for honour and glory; his anger at his father’s terrible acts gave him his ferocity in battle; and the knowledge that the old traitor had given his service to Troy kept Eperitus’s own loyalty to Greece focused and sharp. Indeed, Apheidas made Eperitus what he was.
He looked up at the battlements and into the dark eyes that had controlled him for so long, and despite the fear and the doubt that were tearing at his insides he knew he must kill his father. It was the only way he could be free to discover his own self, to move on from his dark past and become whatever the gods had intended him to be. With heavy limbs he drew back his spear and threw it at the crowd of defenders on the walls above. The black shaft seemed to quiver as it flew straight at its target. For an unbelievable moment Eperitus thought it would strike home, then Apheidas leaned to one side and the bronze head thumped into the chest of a Lycian archer behind him. It tore through the man’s tunic of layered cloth, split open his heart and came out through his back, just below the shoulder bone. As he fell, one of his comrades stepped forward and aimed an arrow directly at Eperitus, but before he could release it Apheidas grabbed him by his shoulders and threw him from the walls, to be hacked to death by the attackers below.
With his spear cast, Eperitus felt the heaviness lift from his limbs and the old anger return. He drew his sword and barged through the ranks of soldiers who stood between him and the walls. Leaping into the ditch, he ran to one of the ladders and pulled aside a pale-faced soldier who was about to mount. A large stone thumped into the earth beside him and arrows whistled past his ears, but he raised his grandfather’s heavy shield over his head and began to climb.
The rungs were slippery with blood and his progress was awkward without the full use of his hands, but as more stones bounced off his shield and the points of half a dozen arrows nudged through the four-fold leather he felt no fear, only an iron-like determination to reach the top and get among the defenders. On either side of him as he ascended he could see the length of the ditch filled with the dead and the living. Doubled ladders lashed together with belts were being raised at every point now and under the cover of the Locrian archers hundreds of men were renewing the attack on the walls.
‘Eperitus!’ boomed a voice from a neighbouring ladder.
It was Polites.
‘Where’s Odysseus?’ Eperitus shouted back.
Polites shrugged and pointed to the battlements above, before resuming his ascent in silence. Eperitus looked up from beneath his shield and saw the parapet just ahead of him. As he watched, a pair of hands seized the top of the ladder and tried to push it sideways. The flimsy structure wobbled and Eperitus’s body tensed as he struggled to keep his balance, but a moment later he heard a scream and a body fell past him to the ditch below. The ladder straightened again and he quickened his ascent, steadying himself with his sword hand on the rungs before his face. As he reached the top a spear point jabbed through his cloak and scraped across the back of his leather cuirass. Eperitus hooked his shield over the parapet and instinctively lashed out with his sword. The obsessively sharpened edge found flesh and bone and a bitter cry of pain followed; his attacker’s spear fell down to the ditch below, a severed hand still gripping the shaft.