‘If all the best of us were gathered together … for an ambush, it’s then that men’s bravery would be shown up most clearly; the cowardly man and the brave man revealed. For the coward’s skin changes, now to one colour, now another; he can’t sit quietly without trembling, or control his feelings; he shifts his weight from leg to leg, from one foot to the other; his heart hammers mightily against his ribs as he forecasts his doom, and his teeth start to chatter.
But the brave man’s skin doesn’t change colour, nor is he greatly frightened, from the first moment he takes his place in the ambush, whenever that might be, but prays to join in the grim business of fighting as soon as possible.’
—Homer, The Iliad
The faint glow in the sky behind us announces the oncoming dawn, silhouetting the jagged heights of the mountains. We’re crouching in a dense cluster of oleanders, not far from the edge of Artemis’s sacred grove. I breathe slowly and deeply, preparing myself mentally for the deed we must do. If it all goes to plan, we’ll get away clean, and lure Tantalus straight into Agamemnon’s force, with surprise on our side.
But what if it doesn’t go to plan? What if Amolus hasn’t brought Agamemnon’s force through Hermes’s realm safely? What if we’re hotly pursued, and they’re not in position by the time we reach the foothills? We’ll be trapped between the mountains and a vengeful Tantalus – just as the Argonauts were caught between Scylla and Charybdis.
Bria, myself, Diomedes, Laas, and the two brothers are going right in to the clearing at the heart of the grove, half a mile away; the other two Mycenaeans will stand by, just outside the grove, ready to back us up the moment we break from cover. Agrius’s ribs are still giving him trouble, but Bria has applied some herbs she collected while we were still in Hermes’s realm that have eased his pain and hastened the healing process somewhat, so he’ll still be handy enough in a fight.
Telmius has already left us, to find Amolus and help guide Agamemnon to the agreed ambush site, a place not far upstream from the main ford and the eyot of Hermes’s gate, where cliffs bound both sides the River Alpheios.
I sidle up to Bria. ‘Are you ready?’ I ask.
‘I’m always ready, Ithaca,’ she drawls. She runs a sharp eye round the group, assessing us, then leans in. ‘Diomedes will seize Clytemnestra, not that she’ll need much seizing. She’ll be pretty desperate to be rescued from that evil bastard Tantalus. I’ll grab her child, and you cover us with your bow, your eyesight being in a damn sight better state than Dio’s, right now. Ceraus and Pseras close in as soon as we have them, and guard our retreat.’
I’m brought up short – I’ve truly not thought too closely about the baby, an heir of Tantalus but an innocent barely birthed. I’d assumed we’d just leave it behind.
‘Why do we have to take the child?’ I ask her.
It’s a brutal fact of life that when a king is overthrown, their male children are often murdered with them. The bloodiest tales of Achaea are revenge stories, intergenerational feuds that bring kingdoms to their knees, producing the fractured Achaea of today. But surely a newborn deserves a life.
She reads me easily. ‘Don’t go soft, Ithaca. If we kill Tantalus, then it’s up to Agamemnon to decide. If we don’t, then we’re going to be neck-deep in kopros, and the baby’s a hostage, a bargaining point.’
I don’t like what she’s saying, but she’s right. Agamemnon is somewhat unproven, still on the young side, but he’s not merciful; this may well be the last act in the bloody feud between his father Atreus and Thyestes, and he’ll have the whole weight of its history on his shoulders.
If he lets the baby live, the boy could well grow up to take his revenge in turn on Agamemnon and whatever offspring he might produce. But there are other ways to break this whole ghastly cycle. ‘I will plead the child’s case before the High King,’ I tell her. ‘He can always be anonymously adopted. It’s a time-honoured solution to such matters.’
She shrugs. ‘On your head. Look what happened with Oedipus.’ She turns to the others. ‘Come on, it’s time.’
Pseras and Ceraus ready their bows, I string the Great Bow and loop it over my shoulder beside a quiver of arrows. Those of us going in for the ambush loosen our blades in their sheaths, making sure all metal is covered. Diomedes blinks in the dim light, insisting his vision is much improved, despite his swollen, blackened eye.
Philapor begins another prayer and I shush him. ‘Is this grove akin to Hermes’s realm?’ he asks, indignant.
‘It’s in our world,’ Bria tells him. ‘But I’d still my lips if I were you; sound carries further at dawn. There’ll be watchers in the wood, and we can’t afford to raise the alarm on the way in. Atalanta will be on full alert, and she can smell blood a mile off. And when we run, we don’t wait for anyone.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Agrius growls.
‘Because I’ve been here before, obviously,’ Bria tells him. ‘I got myself in and out again just fine, but that time I didn’t have a bunch of clodhopping men slowing me down. Now shut up and follow.’
Those encouraging words delivered, she leads us towards the grove via an overgrown gully, before ghosting through clumps of wild olives and a field of tangled vines that take us into the shelter of a steep ridge. Beyond this, she’s informed us, lies the wood, with the sacred grove deep inside. She stops us with a raised hand and a finger over her lips, as though we weren’t being as silent as possible already. Away to our right, a slender figure is half-silhouetted against the skyline – a huntress of Artemis.
‘New girl,’ Bria breathes. ‘Careless.’
She leads us forward, slithering on hands and knees and sometimes even on our bellies through low scrub, past the place the sentry overlooks. Bria presses her mouth to my ear ‘Note her position,’ she whispers. ‘On the way out, she’s going to be putting arrows in our backs.’
I pat the Great Bow. ‘I can shoot too.’
‘Don’t get cocky – you’re no Artemis,’ she tells me.
We’re about to negotiate the short distance left between us and the grove when a strange coughing sound reaches our ears, borne by a light breeze from the west. In the growing light I glimpse movement – something large, prowling across our path. As it moves between two trees, it pauses and turns its head towards us, eyes glinting. A lioness… My skin pricks.
‘It’s her, Atalanta,’ Bria breathes in my ear.
The boar-tusk scars on my thigh begin to itch.
I’m convinced she’s going to come our way, and I stealthily remove the Great Bow from my shoulder. But we’re downwind of her; she can’t smell us. Eventually, she pads away to our right, and we all breathe again.
‘Could just be a wild lioness,’ Philapor says hopefully. He certainly picks his moments to be an optimist.
Once we’re sure she’s gone, we creep through the remaining scrub and move silently into the grove itself, where the scent of cat is heavy in the air. From here, according to Bria’s description, the trees must stretch roughly a mile to the far edge, with the sacred clearing more or less in the middle. We’re only a few yards in when we hear horses whinnying, somewhere off to our left. Bria gestures to us excitedly and we gather around her.
‘Change of plan,’ she whispers. ‘The important women must have come by chariot from Pisa – why bother using your legs when you’ve got wheels? They’ll have left them at the start of the main path into the grove. Those horses will come in very handy if we’ve a lioness at our heels, assuming we can get our hands on them. Agrius, Philanor, you work your way over to where they’re tethered. Kill the attendants and ready the horses for riding, but don’t make an almighty racket doing it. We’ll bring Nestra to you.’
The sky has lightened perceptibly as we set off again, making it easier to avoid treading on fallen branches, but increasing the risk of being seen. The trees are mostly deciduous, and starkly bare, with only the merest smudge of pale green, here and there, to show that spring is beckoning. Their leaves are soft and rotting on the ground, deadening our footfalls as we glide from tree trunk to sheltering tree truck. The ground is undulating, rather than flat, but that’s a blessing – the contours will give us more cover. The sun will be up soon, and I’m beginning to fear we’ve left our approach too late, when I hear a distant female voice, singing.
‘Not far now,’ Bria murmurs, leading us toward the sound. Then she crouches, and we all follow suit, as a thickset woman appears a little way off, stalking left to right, an arrow already nocked and the string half-drawn. ‘Wait, she’ll be gone in a moment.’
She’s right – the sentries are maintaining a mobile perimeter, and the woman soon disappears into the trees again. Presumably there’ll be another along shortly – as we get closer, the security is tightening. But though the women seem alert, I get the impression they’re going through the motions – Bria says that no one has dared disturb the rites here in decades. We should have surprise on our side.
The sound of the singing swells. ‘That’s the nobs arriving,’ Bria murmurs. ‘They’ll all be just over this next rise, in the dell below, a few dozen women, that’s all. They’re all just pampered upper-class types – it’s the huntresses in the woods we need to watch.’
The next sentry stalks past, but this one’s slack, her gaze turned inwards to the dell, and she’s even murmuring the song. She passes from sight, as the sunlight brightens – it must have just cleared the mountains behind us, and the voices rise.
‘Now,’ Bria whispers, and the six of us glide forward up the rise and drop to the ground, overlooking the dell.
Below us, at the bottom of a shrub-covered slope, a circular stand of cypress trees have been planted, their trunks towering high. Among them, gathered in front of a stone altar, stand roughly forty women, clad in white; most of them holding young babies. I can see individual faces, and easily pick out the queen – she’s in the middle, garlanded with winter roses and wearing a gold circlet and neck chain.
Clytemnestra is not the unearthly beauty that her half-sister Helen is. She’s older, dark-haired like her father Tyndareus, with no divine theioi blood. During my years in Lacedaemon, I knew her as a quiet, stubborn girl, lacking Helen’s dazzling charm. She has a fleshy face and a stocky body which is still carrying the weight of her recent pregnancy. If she was just a villager, no one would notice her. But her face is radiant as she looks down at the babe in her arms. Whatever she feels about the man who abducted and raped her, she loves the child, and that endears her to me, even as I ready an arrow and prepare for chaos.
Ceraus and Pseras remain on guard, while Bria, Diomedes, Laas and I advance down the slope, weaving through the shrubs. Diomedes and Bria take the front; I follow, my bow string drawn, sweeping the bow around, seeking a target, with Laas covering my back.
It takes a few breaths before anyone notices us, and when they do, there’s a moment when Bria’s presence and my bow makes them think we’re part of the security. The women hush and murmur, there’s alarm at the presence of men but not outright fear.
Then Laas slams a fist into the face of an archer woman who comes to meet us with a puzzled look on her face. Bria hammers a priestess in the belly and she folds to the ground, and the remaining women emit frightened gasps.
Diomedes thrusts his way through the women, right up to Queen Clytemnestra who’s standing in front of the altar, open mouthed and wide-eyed, clutching her baby. ‘Who…? What…?’ she stammers, eyes widening further.
Diomedes has been indoctrinated to think exactly like a hero of legend, so he drops to one knee before her, arms outstretched. ‘Princess Clytemnestra!’ he announces. Clearly he’s decided that her marriage to Tantalus doesn’t count. ‘Odysseus of Ithaca has led us here to rescue you!’
The women gasp then fall silent, staring intently as Bria and I arrive behind him. Babies wail, and from the woods around us I hear a horn blare in alarm.
Clytemnestra gapes at the kneeling Argive, then opens her mouth and screams her lungs out.
Oh fuck, I think. Maybe she doesn’t want to be rescued at all…
I’m shocked, but Diomedes is utterly stunned. Noble soul that he is, he has no idea what’s really happening, and lets the ashen-faced queen back away. There’s a shout from the rise above us – Ceraus, his voice urgent. ‘They’re coming!’ he yells.
Bria reacts. ‘Move, you kopros-headed oaf!’ she shouts at the kneeling Diomedes, steps forward and snatches the baby from the queen’s arms. As Clytemnestra recoils in horror, Bria lands a roundhouse punch on her jaw with her left fist, and she goes down like a sack of beets. Laas shoulder-charges a woman who tries to aid the queen, then hammers her head with his sword hilt when she doesn’t heed him.
My brain catches up. ‘Grab Nestra!’ I roar at Diomedes, who’s still gaping. ‘Now!’
I step forward, spinning and aiming my arrow at face after face, as the women back off, white-faced and horrified. Laas roars abuse, spraying spittle as he waves his sword in their faces.
Horns blare again, closer now, and on the opposite rim of the dell a huntress appears, drawing her bow. I curse and shoot at her legs rather than her body – out of some manly spirit of chivalry, I suppose. Before she can loose, my arrow slams into her left thigh and she folds, her arrow spilling.
‘Diomedes, come on!’ I shout at him.
Finally, the Argive prince regains control. He scoops up Nestra, who is limp as a corpse. I ready another arrow as Bria tucks the baby under her left arm and whips out her sword.
‘Go!’ she shrieks. ‘Go!’
Diomedes, his face twisted with emotion, hefts the unconscious Clytemnestra over his shoulder and we run up the slope, where Pseras and Ceraus are exchanging arrows with a trio of huntresses, darting in and out of cover to shoot. One of the women sees me, but I scythe her down with an arrow in the side before she can shoot. Laas slashes another shaft from the air, snapping it in half with a miraculous sweep of his blade, and we crash into the trees, legs pounding. I let the others go ahead, spinning as I nock another shaft, catch a blur of movement and drop. An arrow slams into a tree trunk beside me, I shoot back and my shaft slams into the chest of the archer, instincts overriding my desire not to kill. I mutter a prayer, spin and run on.
From somewhere far off to my right, a lioness roars.
‘Run!’ Bria hollers, the baby in her arms now screeching its head off. ‘Head for the horses! Move your arses!’
The two Mycenaean brothers fall back to run with me, panting hard as they ready more arrows, while Diomedes lumbers along under the weight of the queen, gasping for breath despite his prodigious strength. We’re heading into the sun, the sky ahead blood red as though angered at this desecration – or it’s going to rain, if omens aren’t your thing. The lioness roars again, already closer.
Pseras shouts, ‘Watch your—’
Then his back arches and he goes down, an arrow jutting from his right eye.
Ceraus screams, and stops running, firing his arrow and slamming a shaft into the chest of the huntress who shot his brother. She staggers backwards against the trunk of a pine, but the Mycenaean doesn’t stop there. He feathers her again, putting a second shaft through her groin and then a third through her left breast.
‘Ceraus, run!’ I shout, but he’s past hearing, his face torn, bereft. I’ve seen it on battlefields, when loss overrides all care for self, and when I look back, there are at least a dozen women sprinting after us. ‘Ceraus, come on!’ I shout, firing to slow them.
But he’s too far gone. He puts another arrow in that same woman’s gut, even though she’s already dead. He doesn’t care, reaching for another arrow and finding his quiver’s empty. That breaks something in him. He staggers over to his brother’s body and drops to his knees.
I leave him; he’ll be dead any moment now, and if I stay, I will be too.
As I catch up to Diomedes and Bria, I sense movement to my right and dart behind a tree as a shaft whistles by, turn and shoot back – wide, this time. Behind us, Ceraus’s battle roar is cut off mid-cry.
Two down.
Three more arrows hurtle past me. Laas, Bria and Diomedes are well ahead now, somewhere in the trees. I send another shot round the trunk, shooting blind to slow my pursuers. I’m almost out of arrows now, so I focus on escape, racing down into a shallow gully, weaving about to avoid any shots and catching up to Bria and Diomedes as they climb out of it via a narrow cutting that gives us a little cover. I spin, sweep my second last arrow up and nock it, as the first of the huntresses tops the rise on the other side of the gully sixty yards behind – but they’re wary, after the trail of dead and wounded I’ve left behind us. One steps from cover and I put my arrow in her right thigh, and her sisters jerk back into shelter.
I turn and sprint after Bria and Dio, dodging as the hiss of arrows pursues me. Ahead of us, I hear the horses whinny and my heart leaps.
‘We’re over here!’ Bria shouts, and we hear Agrius shout back, some wordless response. We’re close to the edge of the grove now, and the ground is flatter, but the undergrowth is thicker and more tangled. The huntresses’ arrows falter – they must be scared of hitting the queen, now that they can no longer see us clearly.
We break from the trees, and there’s Agrius and Philapor, already mounted, each leading a string of three more horses by their severed chariot reins. Nearby, several bodies lie prone beside the discarded chariots. The Mycenaeans have done well. I run past Diomedes, leap onto my somewhat unwilling mount and beckon to him. ‘Here!’ I shout. ‘Give Nestra to me!’
Diomedes, his face distraught, heaves the still unconscious Clytemnestra off his back and across my horse’s withers. Bria has the baby, purple-faced and squalling, in the crook of her left arm, her features contorted with worry as she grasps the reins of Philapor’s second horse in her right hand. Diomedes hurries over to give her a leg up before swinging himself onto his own mount, sending the beast skittering sideways and almost losing his seat.
‘Where’s Pseras and Ceraus?’ Agrius yells.
‘Fucked,’ Laas shouts back, his arms nearly jerked from their sockets as he struggles to control his horse.
Philapor releases the last pair of horses, those intended for the two brothers, his face ablaze with anger. ‘Filthy pornes, bloody shit-eating whores! Hera, curse the lot of them!’ he screams, oblivious in his rage to the fact that we attacked them, and we’ve paid the consequences.
Archers emerge from the trees as we all wheel, dig in our heels and send our steeds careering eastwards, toward the mountains, with arrows arcing into the sky behind us. But we’re moving fast now, and it takes a hell of a shot or outright luck to score a hit. A few come close, but a fraught few minutes later we’re belting along a wide track through scattered fields and clumps of forest, the odd early-rising shepherd or farmer staring at us gap-mouthed as we thunder past.
I draw alongside Bria. ‘What in Erebus just happened?’ I shout. ‘Why did Nestra scream?’
‘She didn’t understand,’ Bria calls back. ‘She thought we meant to hurt her child.’
‘That’s not how I saw it!’ I reply. ‘She didn’t want to come!’
‘Bullshit,’ Bria snaps. ‘And anyway, it’s irrelevant. She’s ours now, and soon she’ll be back with her family.’
I throw a look over my shoulder at Diomedes, who’s looking miserable and confused, and Laas who is simply looking grim, as he battles to control his horse. Obviously the beast, raised as a chariot horse, isn’t happy about being ridden. The two Mycenaeans are openly weeping over the loss of their two comrades, men they knew far better than I did. ‘We’ve got a hard ride ahead,’ I call back to Diomedes. ‘We’ve got to get to the ambush spot before we’re caught.’
He nods mutely, staring at Clytemnestra, who’s being jolted up and down on my thighs. At the very least she’s going to be a mess of bruises, by the time we’re safe. But she still hasn’t stirred and I’m worried Bria’s done her some permanent harm. I can’t spare her too much attention however – we’re riding hard, and from behind us, the sounds of brazen horns are echoing across the plain behind us.
Along with the roar of a lioness, too damn close for comfort. The hunt is well and truly up, and we’re the quarry.
Agamemnon, you’d better bloody be there…
I glance behind me to see a blur of gold streaking towards us. The lioness – Atalanta – has outrun the pursuit with ease. At any moment she will be on us.