The details – of the perfumed Trojan prince that had snatched her, of the war being planned – would not change that. But what more, really, was needed? He had sworn, and he was bound. Come to our aid or be disgraced.”Ĭlipped and angry, just this side of insult. She is stolen and the house of Atreus invokes your oath. The man recited into the air, like a priest speaking for a god: “You once strove to win Helen of Sparta’s hand, and swore to defend her marriage. “Are you Philoctetes, companion of Heracles?” He came from Agamemnon, king of great Mycenae, and his tunic was stamped with the lion seal. The messenger had found him at his father’s house. “I don’t want it,” he had answered, and pushed the wood back into his friend’s hands. Heracles had put a giant hand on his shoulder and shook him, as he did when he was pleased. I swear you handle that thing better than me. Heracles used to watch him, arms crossed, leaning against a scabby trunk. When he drew his bow, he was twenty still, and steady as the earth. Every day now they took longer to loosen. His old shoulder wound would ache, and his bowman’s fingers would be stiff and twisted as roots. He knew that when he opened his eyes and sat up, he would find his mouth uncomfortably dry, and his bladder overfull. If he tries it, pash him in the face, that will fix him.

Like over-oiled armour that will slip from you in battle. He could not say why, exactly, other than that he smiled too easily. Yet, in this small island of time before he rose, he could admit: he did not like the man. It is an honour for me to keep watch for a companion of Heracles.” As though he was being granted an indulgence. Odysseus had smiled at him, the first night, as he stood to go with his bedroll. He had been yoked with far worse in his day. He would make a good comrade in the field: keep his head in the mêlée, and not forget to dig the latrines after. Odysseus was young, but he seemed competent, always among the men, handing out words like sweets, breaking up quarrels. They had been paired together for the crossing to Troy, modest fleet with modest fleet. Odysseus, prince of rocky Ithaca, was with them. Never trust an army alone.īut of course the men were not alone. These days it seemed that a worm in the earth could wake him. He had always been a light sleeper and now, older, he was lighter still. He had made his bed apart, as was his custom, so that he would not be troubled by their snoring nightmares. There was, as yet, no rattle and bang of the army breakfast, no streams of morning piss. There were no sounds but the distant waves it was too early for birds. He kept his eyes closed poised just beneath the surface of the day. Heracles was always laughing too hard to answer. “Really?” he would say, in those early days. His friend said this to tease him, for he had been born a shepherd, and was slow to leave his peasant fairytales. The strings, he said, were whiskers plucked from the Nemean Lion as he roared. Was it true a god had given it to him? Whenever he had asked his old friend about it, Heracles would make up some outlandish tale that its wood was cut from a golden tree at the end of the world, that it was the horn of the goat that nursed his father Zeus. Did you learn nothing from the Hydra? You must kill your enemies at the root, or they will come back.Īny other weapon would have been ruined by such hard use, but this was the great bow of Heracles. And, of course, he would not use the poisoned arrowheads when he did it. He was not a cruel man, and would shoot them only in the leg or the shoulder, somewhere that meant they would live to speak of it. Many had tried to take it from him over the years. My men are sleeping on the beach.Įyes still closed, he reached for his bow – though ‘reached’ was the wrong word, for he slept with his arm threaded between curve and string. Was he ten once more, and on a hunting trip with his father? He lay, eyes closed, and smelt the damp earth and blooming lindens, scent so thick he felt it on his tongue.

The feeling was so startlingly familiar that he forgot himself. Their ebbing had always left him like this, peaceful and smoothed as the beach after the tide. As a child he had suffered from headaches that turned his stomach and blinded him with pain. When he woke, his head felt strangely clear, swept clean.

The little book of hercules pdf