I saw dozens of heads rise up along the wall’s parapet, many of them helmeted in shining bronze. But no one replied to Odysseus.
He raised his voice again to them. “Are you afraid to die? What difference does it make if I kill you here or before the walls of Ithaca? You have declared blood feud against me and my family, haven’t you? Well here is your chance to settle the matter once and for all. Come out and fight!”
“Go away,” a man’s deep voice shouted back. “We’ll fight you when we’re ready. Our kinsmen are back at their cities raising thousands of men to come to our aid. When you see their dust on the road as they march here your blood will turn to water and you’ll piss yourself with fear.”
Odysseus laughed scornfully. “You forget, coward, that I fought on the plain of Ilios against the likes of mighty Hector and his brothers. I scaled the beetling walls of Troy with my wooden horse and razed the city to ashes. Do you think I fear a bunch of lily-livered milksops who are afraid to face me, spear to spear?”
The voice answered, “We’ll see who’s the coward, soon enough.”
Odysseus’ lips pressed into a hard angry line. Then he took a deep breath and called, “Where is Neoptolemos, king of this mighty city?”
No answer.
“Does Neoptolemos still rule in his own city, or have you taken over his household the way you tried to take over mine?”
“I am here, Odysseus the Ever-Daring,” piped a weak, trembling voice.
A frail old man in a blue robe climbed shakily to a platform up above the main gate. Even from the ground before the gate I could see that King Neoptolemos was ancient, withered, wizened, more aged even than Nestor had been, his head bald except for a few wisps of hair, a white beard flowing down his frail narrow chest. His eyes were sunk so deep into their sockets that at this distance they looked like two tiny dark pits. He must have been nearly toothless, for the lower half of his face had sunk in on itself as well.
“Neoptolemos,” said Odysseus, “it is a sad day when we must face each other as enemies. Well I remember my youth, when you were like a wise uncle to me.”
“Well should you remember my son, the companion of your youth, whom you have slain in your bloody fury.”
“I regret his death, King of Epeiros. He was among the suitors who tried to steal my wife and my kingdom from me.”
“He was my son. Who will follow me when I die? His own son is only a child, hardly five years old.”
Craning his neck at the blue-robed figure atop the city gate, Odysseus said, “A blood feud between us can do neither of us any good.”
“Bring me back my son and there will be no need for a feud,” the old man replied bitterly.
“Ah,” said Odysseus, “that I cannot do. Even though I visited Hades himself during the long years of my journey home, he would not let me bring any of the departed back to the land of the living.”
“You saw Hades?”
“Neoptolemos, revered mentor of my youthful days, if you knew the sufferings and toils I have had to endure you might forgive me even the death of your son.”
I stood a few feet away from Odysseus, leaning on my knobbly makeshift spear, and watched him charm Neoptolemos into asking for a recitation of his arduous journey from Troy back to Ithaca.
The sun rose high while Odysseus spoke of the storms that wrecked his ships, of the enchantress Circe who turned his men into animals; of the cave of Polyphemos, one of the Cyclopes, and his cannibal orgies.
“I had to kill him or be killed myself,” Odysseus related. “His father, Poseidon, stirred up even mightier storms against me after that.”
“You know that a father feels hatred for a man who slays his son,” said Neoptolemos. But I thought his thin, quavering voice was less harsh than it had been earlier.
Well past noon Odysseus kept on talking, holding everyone along the wall enchanted with his hair-raising tales. Slaves circulated among us with bowls of dried meat and fruit, flagons of wine. Odysseus took some of the wine, but kept on talking, telling his enemies of the dangers he had risked, the women he had left behind, in his agonizing urgency to return to his home and his wife.