“Zeus must be jealous of him!”
“Naw, he probably stole it from Zeus!”
I stood there like a bumpkin and let them slap their thighs and roar with laughter. The young officer, though, barely cracked a smile.
“You are not from these parts?” he asked me.
“No. I come from far away,” I said.
“Your name—you call yourself Orion?”
“Yes.”
“Who was your father?”
I had to think fast. “I don’t know. I have no memory of my childhood.”
“Doesn’t know who his father is.” One of the men nudged his nearest companion in the ribs.
“I am a warrior,” I said, realizing that there was no word for soldier in their dialect.
“A warrior, no less!” The men found that uproarious. Even the young officer smiled. Others were gathering around us, making something of a crowd.
I dropped my spear to the ground and pointed to the one who was making all the remarks. “A better fighter than you, windbag,” I challenged.
His laughter turned to a hard smile. He pulled the bronze sword from the scabbard at his hip and said, “Pray to whatever gods you worship, stranger. You’re about to die.”
I faced him empty-handed. Not a man offered me a weapon or made any objection. The windbag was an experienced fighter, I could see. His sword arm was scarred, his eyes focused hard on me. I simply stood before him, hands at my sides. But I could feel my body going into overdrive, slowing down the world around me.
The flex of the muscles in his thighs gave him away. He began to lunge at me, a simple straight thrust to my belly. I saw it coming, sidestepped, and grasped his wrist with both my hands. I flipped him over my hip and twisted the sword out of his hand in the same motion. He landed on his back with a thud like a sack of wet laundry dropped from a height.
Pointing the blade at his throat, I said, “My gods have heard my prayer. What about yours?”
He stared up at me with the terror of death draining the color from his face. I drove the sword into the dirt next to his head; he squeezed his eyes shut, thinking I meant to kill him. Then he realized he had not been harmed and popped his eyes open again. I reached out a hand to help him to his feet.
The others simply gaped.
Turning to the young officer, I said, “I seek to join your forces, if you will have me.”
He swallowed once, then replied, “You must speak to my father about that.”
I picked up my spear and followed him deeper into the camp, leaving the others muttering and milling about. The youth led me past a makeshift corral where horses and mules stamped and whinnied, raising dust and reek. There was a row of tents on its other side. We went to the largest one, where a pair of men in bronze armor and tall spears stood a relaxed guard.
“Father,” he called as he stepped through the tent’s flap, “I’ve found a recruit for you.”
I ducked through and saw a solidly built man with thick gray hair and a grizzled beard sitting at a wooden table. He was obviously at his noon meal; the table was covered with bowls of steaming stew and fruit. A silver flagon stood next to a jeweled wine cup. Three young slave women knelt in the far corner of the tent.
The man looked oddly familiar to me: piercing jet-black eyes, wide shoulders, and beneath his half-opened robe I saw a broad, powerful chest. His bare arms bore heavy dark hair crisscrossed with white scars. He stared hard at me as I stood before his table, tugging at his grizzled beard as if trying to stir his memory.
“Orion,” he said at last.
I staggered back a step with surprise. “My Lord Odysseus,” I said.
It was truly Odysseus, whom I had served in the siege of Troy. He was older, gray, his face spiderwebbed with wrinkles. He introduced the young officer to me as his son Telemakos.
He smiled at me, although there was puzzlement in his eyes. “The years have been good to you. You don’t seem to have changed a bit since I last saw you on the plain of Ilios.”
“Are we in Ithaca?” I asked.
Odysseus’ face became grave. “Ithaca is far from here,” he murmured “My kingdom is there. My wife.” The steel returned to his voice. “And the dead bodies of the dogs who would have taken my kingdom, my house, and my wife to themselves.”
“The city before us is Epeiros,” said Telemakos.
“Epeiros?” I knew that name. It was the city where Olympias was to be born.
Odysseus shook his grizzled head wearily. “After all the years that I have been away from my home and my wife, the gods have seen fit to take me away once again.”
“The gods can be cruel,” I said.
“Indeed.”
Odysseus bade us both to sit down and share his meal. The slave women scurried out of the tent to bring more food while we pulled up wooden stools to the table. Although I had been a lowly thes when I had first met Odysseus, less than a slave, he had recognized my fighting prowess and made me a member of his house.
Now, as the slaves ladled the hot stew into wooden bowls for us, Odysseus told me his long and painful story.
When he left the smoking ruins of Troy to return to his kingdom of Ithaca, his ships were battered by a vicious storm and scattered across the wild sea.
“Poseidon has always been against me,” he said, quite matter-of-fact. “Of course, it did not help that I killed one of his sons, later on.”
He grew old trying to get back to Ithaca. Ships sank under him; most of his men drowned. One by one his surviving men deserted him, despairing of ever seeing Ithaca again, choosing to remain in the strange lands where they washed up rather than continue the struggle to reach home.
“And all that while, every unmarried swain in the lands around Ithaca was camping at my household door, courting my Penelope, laying siege to my wife and my goods.”
“They acted as if they owned the kingdom,” said Telemakos. “They even tried to murder me.”
“Thank the gods for Penelope’s good sense. She has the strength of a warrior, that woman does!” Odysseus grinned. “She refused to believe that I was dead. She would not accept any of those louts as husband.”
The two of them went into great detail about how the aspiring noblemen behaved like a plague of locusts, eating and drinking, arguing and fighting, cuffing the servants, assaulting the women, and threatening to kill everyone in the household if Penelope did not choose one of them to marry.
“I finally made it back to Ithaca to find my kingdom in ruins and my house under siege by these swine.”
Telemakos smiled grimly. “But we made short work of them, didn’t we, father?”
Odysseus laughed out loud. “It was more play than work. After I felled the first three or four of them the others went dashing away like rats at the sight of a terrier. Did they think that a man who has scaled the walls of Troy and fought real heroes in single combat would be frightened of a courtyard full of fatted suitors?”
“We cut them down like a scythe goes through wheat,” said Telemakos.
“Indeed we did.”
“So the kingdom is safely yours once again,” I said.
His smile evaporated.
“Their kinsmen have demanded retribution,” Telemakos said.
I knew what that meant. Blood feuds, dozens of them, all descending on Odysseus and his family at once.
“Among the slain was the son of Neoptolemos, King of Epeiros. So the kinsmen of the others have gathered together here in Epeiros, preparing to march to Ithaca, take it for themselves, and slay me in retribution.”
Neoptolemos was a name I had heard before: Olympias’ father, if I recalled correctly. But Olympias would not be born for a thousand years. Neoptolemos must be a ceremonial name carried by all the kings of Epeiros.
Unless—
“But we have marched here to Epeiros’ walls,” said Telemakos, “and laid siege to their city. With all of them bottled up inside the city walls.”
The youth seemed rather proud that they had carried the war to their enemies, rather than waiting for them to strike Ithaca.
Odysseus seemed less enthusiastic. “It is a fruitless siege. They refuse to come out and do battle and we lack the strength to storm the city.”
I remembered how long it had taken to capture Troy.
In a rare show of impatience, Odysseus banged the table with his fist hard enough to make the slaves cower. “I want to be home! I want to enjoy my last years with my wife, and leave a peaceful kingdom for my son. Instead the gods send me this.”