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.