‘It was seen not far from here, in a glade to the east,’ Talthybius informed them.
‘No. It’s moving north,’ Eperitus announced, after a moment’s consideration. ‘That way.’
Agamemnon looked doubtful. ‘Are you sure? This might be the only chance we get – we can’t afford to follow whims.’
‘He’s sure,’ Odysseus assured him. ‘I’d trust Eperitus’s senses above my own hunting dog’s.’
Without any further hesitation, the five men set off in a northeasterly direction. The ground began to slope away before them and the trees grew denser, stifling the gauzy yellow light that had managed to penetrate the thinner woodland they were leaving behind.
‘Look!’ Eperitus said after they had been running for a while.
He pointed to a branch hanging from a tree. The shards of the broken stem were still fresh and white, indicating it was recently broken. There was no sound or sign of the other hunters, and with a flush of excitement they realized it could only have been snapped by a tall animal passing that way a short while before.
They increased their pace, moving deeper into the wood until they reached a narrow stream. They splashed across and followed its winding course for a while before Eperitus veered suddenly to the left. They followed in his wake, crashing on into the dense heart of the wood until Talthybius could hold the pace no longer and began to slow, gasping for breath.
‘Shhh!’ Eperitus hissed, suddenly slowing to a crouching walk and pressing his finger to his lips. ‘It’s close.’
Menelaus and Odysseus instinctively raised their spears, holding the shafts lightly in their cupped palms. Agamemnon slipped an arrow from the quiver and fitted it to his bow, drawing it to half-readiness as his eyes scanned the gloom. Eperitus sniffed the thick air, his eyes narrowing as he judged the different smells captured in his nostrils.
‘It’s here,’ he whispered.
The hunters halted and slowly lowered themselves into the cover of the crowded ferns, so that their eyes were just above the curling fronds. For a breathless moment they heard nothing, not even a bird in the closely packed branches above, then a twig snapped and they turned to see a magnificent, pure-white deer trot into a small clearing ahead of them. It stood beside the upturned roots of a fallen tree, bathed in a single shaft of golden light that penetrated a gap in the canopy above. It looked about itself, completely unaware of the men only a stone’s throw away, then bowed its antlered head to chew at the rich undergrowth.
‘He’s mine,’ Agamemnon whispered, drawing the bowstring back to his cheek and preparing to stand.
But before he could move, his brother stood and launched the long spear from his hand. It spun through the air, its imperfect shaft twirling behind the bronze tip as it flew towards its target. A moment later it skimmed the shoulders of the hart and buried its point in the mud-caked roots of the tree.
The hart raised its head, saw Menelaus and bolted in the opposite direction. Odysseus stood and cast his own spear, aiming at the flashing white of the animal’s hindquarters as they disappeared through the undergrowth. It fell short.
Agamemnon also stood, but unlike the two spearmen knew he had a few moments more to take aim and release his shot. Closing his left eye, he squinted down the shaft of the arrow and focused on the triple-barbed point, aiming it slightly ahead of the fleeing deer. Snatching a half-breath and holding it so that the movement of his lungs would not disturb his aim, he released the shaft.
The bow hummed and Agamemnon leaned his head to the left, hoping to see the white form stumble and fall, but the animal had already disappeared among the trees.
‘Missed it,’ Menelaus announced, almost gleefully.
‘Thanks to you, you buffoon. I told you to leave it for me.’
‘What? And let you take all the glory, as usual, King of Men?’
‘Quiet,’ Eperitus ordered, momentarily forgetting he was talking to the two most powerful men in Greece. ‘I can’t hear its footfalls any more. It’s stopped running.’
‘No man could hear that well,’ said Talthybius.
‘Come on,’ Odysseus said. ‘Let’s see if you’ve hit your mark, Agamemnon.’
They dashed into the undergrowth; twigs snapped loudly beneath their sandals and brittle stems whipped against their shins. They ran past the spears of Menelaus and Odysseus and forged on to the place where they had last seen the hart’s white flanks. The trees were thinner here, allowing more sunlight to illuminate the woodland floor, but they could see nothing.
‘You were wrong, Eperitus,’ Agamemnon said, with clear disappointment in his voice. He stopped and looked about himself. ‘It’s gone. The glory will go to no man now.’
But Eperitus merely shook his head.
‘No, my lord, I’d still be able to hear its feet beating the ground now. And I can smell fresh blood.’
Odysseus, who had continued following the course of the deer, suddenly called for them to join him. He stood near to the edge of the wood, where the trees filtered out into open fields and the light was almost unbearable to look at. As they ran to join him they saw the carcass of the white hart at his feet, shining like silver through the screen of ferns. Agamemnon’s arrow still protruded from its neck.
Eperitus knelt and ran his hands over the soft, warm fur, feeling the ridges of the ribcage beneath his fingertips. This close, the animal was as magnificent in death as it had been when he had seen it in the small clearing, bathed in golden sunlight. He looked up and saw Agamemnon standing above him. The face of the sun glittered in the intertwined branches behind his head, and with the richly decorated breastplate he wore he looked like a god.
‘A magnificent shot, my lord,’ Eperitus said, reaching to stroke the still-warm flank of the hart.
Agamemnon laughed, a triumphant look gleaming in his sunken eyes as he smiled down at his prey. ‘Artemis herself could not have done better!’
And as the words left his lips the sunlight about them seemed to flare out brightly for a moment, then shrink back again. Though they could not yet see it, grey clouds were massing rapidly on the eastern horizon. Before long they were rolling across the skies like a conquering army, swirling and twisting in their tortured agony as they crossed the blue expanse. By the time the men emerged from the wood with the dead hart over Agamemnon’s shoulders, the first grey outriders of the approaching storm had blotted out the sun altogether. The hunters looked up in fear and the hills echoed with a boom of thunder.
book
THREE
Chapter Nineteen
THE STORM
The rain lashed furiously against the forest of tents, drenching the flaxen sheets until they hung heavily upon the wooden poles beneath. Inside, men shivered against the unseasonable cold and pulled their woollen cloaks tighter about their shoulders, longing for the day when the unending storm would lift and allow them to sail for Troy. But if any man opened the flap of his tent, all he could see was grey clouds from horizon to horizon, pressing down on the camp like the belly of a great monster as the rain fell and the wind howled.
It had been this way for three weeks. Night flowed into day and day back into night, so that the only change was from Stygian blackness into melancholy gloom and back again. The only real light any man saw was the glitter of lightning inside the ever-shifting mantle of cloud, or the occasional bolt stalking across distant horizons. And all the time their ears were assailed by the monotonous groaning of the wind as it passed between the avenues of tents, tearing at pennants and tugging at guy ropes, a constant worry to the men inside. Many a shelter was blown away in the storm, and most others were made unbearable by the wind that whistled through the gaps in the walls. Once inside, it would drive out any warmth until the flesh of every soldier was chilled to the bone and each man was ready to give up the expedition and return home. But with their ships wind-bound in the straits below, they had no choice but to sit tight and pass the time grumbling against the gods and, above all, their leaders.