Текст книги "Heroes"

Автор книги: Valerio Massimo Manfredi

Соавторы: Valerio Massimo Manfredi
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

6

Myrsilus thought that his last day had come when he saw armed Trojans in such a far-off land. But the Chnanhad no fear and he approached the new arrivals, mingling among them, watching and listening to try to understand why they were there.

It was evident that the village chieftain and the man who seemed to be the chief of the Trojans did not understand each other, but that they had become accustomed to communicating using gestures, and even the Chnancould understand these gestures well.

‘I think,’ he told Myrsilus later, ‘that the foreigners want to remain here. They are prepared to exchange bronze for wheat, milk and meat for the winter, and seeds for the spring. They want to settle down in this land.’

‘When Diomedes finds out he will march here with his men and wipe them all out! I am certain he wants no Trojans in the land in which he will found his new kingdom.’

‘Then don’t tell him,’ answered the Chnan. ‘We cannot wage war in these swamps, in this bitter cold, and those wretches mean no harm. They’re just trying to survive the winter. When the seasons change they will sow wheat and, if they manage to harvest it, a new people will be born, in a new land, under a new sky. Let the seeds take root, warrior. This land is big enough to nourish many peoples.’

‘Perhaps you are right, Chnan. There’s only one thing I do not understand; why it is deserted. If we were in the land of the Achaeans, there would be at least six or seven villages in the land that stretches from here to the sea. Here we’ve found nothing but these four huts in an entire day’s journey. And no more, as far as the eye can see.’

‘You’re right. Perhaps the land is inhospitable, perhaps it is infested with wild beasts. Perhaps the people who lived here were driven away by famine or killed off by a plague. Man persists in living everywhere, even if the earth doesn’t want him. Do you know that there are men who inhabit the great sands, where not a blade of grass grows? And men that live in lands covered with ice? But the earth, sooner or later, frees itself of men like a dog scratches off fleas. Perhaps it is best that we rest now. Tomorrow morning we will have to start off for the ships before dawn, or your king will set off looking for us and get all of us into a fine mess.’

‘What about our comrades out there on the plain? They have no shelter; they’ll die of cold when the frost sets in.’

‘I’ll go tell them to come here with us. There’s plenty of room.’

‘No,’ said Myrsilus. ‘Someone must remain outside the village in case something happens.’

‘I understand,’ said the Chnan. ‘I’ll go. .’ He took a pile of pelts from one of the corners and stole away, disappearing into the darkness. He returned not long after. The Trojan camp was lit up by a few scattered fires. The village was just barely illuminated by the ash-covered embers that still burned in the centre of the main clearing.

As he groped around for the entrance to the hut, he felt a heavy hand fall on his shoulder. He spun around and saw that it was one of the women who had looked with longing at the goods he had set out. No one had offered to exchange pelts or food for an amber-beaded clasp for her. But she knew she had something even more precious that perhaps the foreign merchant would appreciate: herself. Tall and buxom, her blonde hair fell loose on her shoulders and a leather cord decorated with bits of bone adorned her white neck.

She smiled at him and the Chnansmiled back. Small and dark he was, and with his short, curly hair he seemed like little more than a boy next to her. She slipped a hand under his tunic to feel for a trinket that she liked, taking his right hand at the same time and placing it on her breast. The Chnanwas flooded by a heat he had not felt since he had left his land; he felt like a boy reaching out to gather ripe clusters of grapes from the vine. He put his other hand under her gown and he realized she wore nothing underneath; it was like caressing the soft down of a newborn lamb. He kissed her avidly, and it felt like sucking a honeycomb at high noon in the fragrant mountains of Lebanon.

She left him leaning against the wall of the hut, exhausted, walking away with the supple, solemn roll of a mare and the Chnanrealized that he had made the best deal of his entire life. Even if she had carried away all the wealth he had laced under his tunic, what he had had in exchange was worth as much as a herd of horses, as a load of cedar wood, as a caravan of mules laden with all the copper in Sinai.

He entered the hut and by the dim light of a wick stuck in tallow took stock of what was left to him. Oh virtuous woman! The girl had taken nothing but a clasp with three beads of coloured glass, one yellow, one red and one white, streaked blue. In the dark her fingers had recognized what her eyes had desired by the light of sunset.

‘Did you see them?’ asked Myrsilus’s voice in the dark.

‘I did not see much but I felt the earth shake. .’ answered the Chnanas if talking in his sleep.

Two hard, woody hands threw him against the wall. ‘I asked you if you’d seen our comrades,’ repeated Myrsilus, and his voice was a low growl.

The Chnanregained his wits: ‘I did see them and they were dying of cold. Now they’re fine. Better than before, without a doubt. Calm down, warrior, let us get some sleep as well.’

Myrsilus was placated and lay down once again on his mat, pulling up a cover made of sheepskins sewn together. The warmth was soothing, and sleep descended rapidly on his eyelids, but he was soon saddened by anguished dreams. He realized that he had left his homeland for a cold, muddy place where the sky and the ground were always sodden, as if it had just rained or were about to rain. Even his king was changing; he was shedding his splendour with each passing day. The days of Ilium were distant, as if centuries had passed since they had left the shores of the Hellespont.

It was the Chnanwho woke him, shortly before dawn. They took their things and left without making a sound. At their backs, a pale sun illuminated a group of hills that rose from the plains like islands in the sea. Myrsilus had not noticed them before, and he had the sensation that they had emerged overnight. And perhaps that is what happened.

They reached their comrades outside the village and they took the road of return towards the sea.

‘The Trojans are not alone,’ said the Chnanabruptly. ‘There are others with them, who followed them across the sea.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Myrsilus.

‘I had awoken before you. I wanted to say farewell to a girl; I owed her a gift. She’s the one who told me.’

‘Who are these people?’

‘ Enet, I think. They’re called Enet.’

Myrsilus continued on his way for a while without speaking, as if he were trying to recall something.

‘Enetians,’ he said.

‘What?’ asked the Chnan.

‘Perhaps they are Enetians. A nation allied with the Trojans. Fine combatants, both with spears and with bows. They were almost always drawn up on the left wing; they faced the Cretans of King Idomeneus and Ulysses’s Cephallenians. I never met them myself. I wonder what they’re doing here. And I also wonder why they’re with the Trojans. The gods are truly persecuting us; they have cursed us.’

‘Don’t you know how many peoples have abandoned their settlements in these past years? Didn’t you ever notice those strange lights in the sky when we were out to sea? No man alive has ever heard of or seen such a thing, I’m certain of it. And I’m sure that all this means something, although I don’t know what.’

‘If only the seer Calchas were with us!’ said Myrsilus. ‘He would know how to interpret these signs, and he would know what they meant.’

They journeyed that whole day without seeing a soul, and towards evening came within sight of their camp. Myrsilus reported to the king, telling him everything they had seen without making mention of the Trojans. He did not want to march back inland and start up a war again that he hoped finished for ever. He could not know that it was only a sign, and that a man can not escape the destiny that the gods have placed on his scale.

His comrades offered the food given to them by the villagers and someone lit a fire for their evening meal. There were fish from the sea as well, and partridges and teals that some of the men had downed with their bows.

The sun was setting over the plain and a mist was rising from the ground, looking something like a cloud, a milky foam crossed by whitish streaks. It veiled the sun, and everything that was near the ground was swallowed up within it. The men looked around in dismay. Not even the king, Diomedes the hero, knew what to do or what to tell them.

After a while, only the tips of the tallest poplars emerged from that shapeless expanse that fluttered like a veil. Sounds were muffled and even the birds called to each other with weak laments. A heron, passing over their heads in slow, solemn flight, vanished all at once into the void.

‘What is this?’ the king asked the Chnan. ‘You who have seen so many lands, can you tell me what this is?’

‘I’ve never seen anything like this, wanax,’ said the Chnan, ‘but I think it may be a cloud. I have met men who come from the land of the Urartuwhere the mountains pierce the clouds, and they have told me that it is like this inside a cloud. But I cannot explain why the clouds weigh on the ground in this land instead of sailing in the sky. It is a strange land indeed.’

When darkness fell nothing could be seen at all, and the men stayed very close together for fear of losing their bearings, and kept the fire burning that whole night. Diomedes thought that that land must be similar to Hades, and perhaps he believed that he had truly reached the limits of the other world, but he neither trembled nor sought to flee. He knew that only heroes and Zeus’s favoured sons can face that which is impossible for all others.

He lay down on his bearskin and covered himself with a fleece. Myrsilus slept nearby.

At dawn the next day, Diomedes gave orders to set sail and the fleet began to navigate slowly through the mist that steamed on the surface of the water, amidst the cane thickets on the shore and the little woody islands that cropped up on the sea.

They advanced in this way for most of the day, when suddenly, they all thought they had heard calls of some sort.

‘What was that?’ asked the men at the oars.

‘I don’t know, but it’s best to stop,’ replied Myrsilus.

The king agreed and went to the bow to scan the foggy expanse in front of them. The other ships stopped as well and the splashing of the oars ceased. In that complete silence, the calls sounded more clearly and then long rostrated ships emerged from the mist slowly, like ghosts. A standard with the head of a lion stood tall at one of the bows, and a red cloth hung loose on the mast.

Telephus, the Hittite slave, approached the king. ‘ Pelesetpirates,’ he said. ‘They must have got lost in this accursed cloud. Let’s hope they don’t attack us.’

‘Why?’ said the king. ‘I do not fear them.’

‘It’s best to avoid clashing with them,’ said Myrsilus, who had handed the helm over to one of the men. ‘We have nothing to gain, and much to lose. Since they’ve seen us, we must speak with them. The Chnansurely knows their language. Have him come.’

The king nodded and the Chnansucceeded in arranging an encounter. The Pelesetflagship and Diomedes’s ship both left their formations and met half-way. They manoeuvred slowly with oars and helm until they were nearly touching, side to side. The Pelesetchief and King Diomedes, both armed and carrying a spear in their right hands, faced one another.

‘Tell him to let us pass,’ said Diomedes, ‘and we will do them no harm.’

‘The heavens have sent you, powerful lord,’ said the Chnaninstead, ‘to free me from indescribable suffering.’

‘I am glad you speak my language,’ said the Peleset. ‘We’ll have no difficulty understanding one another. Tell him to turn over everything he has and we will spare your lives.’

‘The chief pays you his respects,’ translated the Chnan, turning to Diomedes, ‘and he asks if you have wheat or barley to sell him. They are short on food.’ Then, without waiting for an answer, he turned again to the Pelesetchief: ‘If you want my personal advice, you’d best attack these people immediately, because the rest of the fleet will be here at any moment; thirty battle ships loaded with warriors are close behind us. This is just the advance guard. In exchange for this information, I beg of you, take me as your slave! These people are savage and cruel. They have sown death and destruction wherever they have passed, burning down villages and setting whole cities aflame! They subject me to the worst of torments for the mere pleasure of ill-treating a poor wretch. With my own eyes I have seen my master, this man here, at my side,’ he continued, indicating Diomedes, ‘rip the beating heart out of his enemy’s chest and devour it avidly. Free me, I beseech you, and you will not regret it.’

The Pelesetchief was dumbfounded, and in Diomedes’s stern gaze he thought he saw all of the terrible things that the slave had warned him of. ‘You can die for all I care,’ he said to the Chnan. ‘We’re going our own way.’

‘We have no food to sell him,’ said Diomedes.

‘Of course, wanax, I took the liberty of giving him this answer, already knowing what you would say. They’ll be off on their own way now.’

The Pelesetships paraded past them, one after another, about twenty in all. They turned to the right, heading south. The fog was thickening again and the damp chilled them all to the bone. The last Pelesetvessel passed at just a short distance from them, but before it was swallowed up into the mist they heard someone shout from the deck: ‘Achaeans! I am Lamus, son of Onchestus, Spartan. I was made a slave in Egypt! Remember me!’ His words were followed by the sound of blows, moaning and then silence.

Diomedes started: ‘Gods!’ he said, ‘an Achaean like us in such a distant land. . and Peleset. .’

‘And Trojans, and Enetians. .’ said Myrsilus.

Diomedes spun around to face him: ‘What did you say?’

‘There were Trojans and Enetians in the village we visited last night.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me? I could make you pay dearly for lying to me.’

‘Not a lie, wanax, silence. I waited until now to tell you. If I had told you then you would have launched an attack.’

‘Certainly. They are our enemies.’

‘Not any more, wanax. The war is over.’

‘Only when I say so. Did you recognize anyone? Aeneas? Had he been there, would you have recognized him?’

‘Of course, wanax.. But he was not among them. Their chief was an older man with grey hair, but his beard was still dark and his black eyebrows thick. Tall, with slightly bent shoulders. .’

‘Antenor,’ murmured Diomedes. ‘Perhaps you saw Antenor. It was Ulysses who asked Agamemnon to spare him the night of the fall of Troy because Antenor had treated him with respect and had given him hospitality when he had gone that first time to ask Priam to give Helen back. But why here? What does he seek in this land?’

The Chnandrew closer: ‘Something terrible must have happened. Perhaps a war greater than the one you fought, perhaps a gigantic battle, or some cataclysm. The Pelesetwould never have ventured so far! Those Trojans must have known, and have chosen to seek out a place far away from everything, a tranquil and solitary place.’

‘Do you have orders to give me, wanax?’ asked Myrsilus.

‘We’ll go forward, but stop as soon as you find a suitable place. If we can, we’ll try to free that wretch. Those ships can’t be too far.’

They proceeded until darkness fell, without ever sighting the Pelesetfleet. They moored their ships on the beach of a sandy island, low on the surface of the sea, and lit a fire. The coast of the continent was very close. The king called Myrsilus: ‘They must be anchored somewhere near here, on the mainland. Go aground with a group of selected men and see if you can liberate that Spartan. Take the Chnanwith you; he understands their language and he’ll be useful to you. I don’t want you to suffer any losses; if the endeavour proves too difficult, turn back.’

As the others went ashore on the island, Myrsilus and the men he had chosen walked to the mainland; since the water was so shallow at that point, they were no more than knee-deep. A breath of wind was picking up from the sea, dispelling the fog and letting a little moonlight through. Myrsilus had never seen such a land in all his days; the coast was a vast expanse of fine white sand that sparkled in the pale glow of the moon. The waves swept across the wide beach and then withdrew with a gurgling sound. Here and there were gigantic trunks, abandoned on the waterline, stretching their enormous skeletal arms towards the sky.

‘There must be a great river near here,’ said the Chnan.

‘Why?’ asked Myrsilus.

‘Those trunks. Only a great river can uproot such colossal trees and drag them to the sea, where the waves wash them back to the shore.’

Myrsilus was once again astonished at the wisdom of this foreigner that they had rescued from the sea; all he knew must come from having journeyed so far and having met diverse peoples with different languages. They walked and walked, so far that the moon had risen by nearly a cubit at the horizon; finally, at the end of a small bay, they saw the Pelesetfleet at anchor. The place was completely deserted and there were only a couple of sentinels standing guard near a small campfire. Every so often one of them would break some dry branches from a trunk lying on the sand to add to the fire. Myrsilus and the Chnancrept close, so close that they could hear the crackling of the fire and the voices of the two sentinels.

‘How can we find the man we’re looking for?’ asked the Chnan. ‘We can’t search the ships one by one.’

‘You’re right,’ said Myrsilus. ‘The only way is to make ourselves heard.’

‘But then they’ll all be upon us!’

‘No, not if something is keeping them busy.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like their fleet catching fire.’ The Chnanwidened his eyes and shook his head incredulously. Myrsilus turned to his comrades: ‘You go that way, to the edge of the forest, and lure the sentinels away from the fire, then kill them. We’ll take firebrands in the meantime and go set fire to the ships. When the confusion is at its peak, I’ll call him out and we’ll all meet up at the big dry trunk. If you are careful and do as I say, none of us will die, and we will have liberated a long-suffering comrade.’

A small group of men went off towards the woods; soon after there was a sound of branches being broken, followed by the close beating of wings and a loud rustling.

The sentinels turned and stopped talking, straining to hear. More noise, and the two Peleseteach took a brand and headed to where the sounds were coming from; presumably a wild animal was roaming about their camp, since the place seemed completely deserted and uninhabited.

As soon as they had left the halo of light of the fire, Myrsilus and his comrades seized blazing firebrands and rushed off towards the ships. They ran barefooted on the sand like shadows, without making any noise at all. Each chose his ship and set fire to it. The pitch and caulking pressed into the seams of the planks ignited immediately. Flames licked at the hulls and dense spirals of smoke curled upward. The two sentinels turned back to raise the alarm but they were stricken down at once by the men hiding in the wood.

In just a few moments, four of the ships were completely enveloped by the blaze. The men sleeping on board flung themselves out through a barrier of flames, yelling for help. Their comrades rushed from the other ships, carrying jugs and buckets of water to douse the flames.

In that confusion of blood-red light and crazed shadows, Myrsilus raised a cry in the language of the Achaeans, knowing that only one man aboard would be able to understand him. He shouted: ‘Spartan! Join us at the dry tree trunk at the seashore!’ In that chaos of cries and laments, Myrsilus’s words floated like the peak of a mountain above the clouds of a storm and Lamus, son of Onchestus, heard them.

He jumped ship and began to run towards the burning vessels where, amidst all the uproar, he slipped away from the area illuminated by the raging fire and took shelter in the darkness, by the great dry trunk. He looked around, seeking the voice that had called him; he saw no one and feared he had imagined the whole thing. As he was about to return to his destiny, a voice rang out behind him: ‘We are Argives and we heard your voice. We have come to free you.’

Lamus embraced them one by one, sobbing like a baby. He could not believe that he had escaped the grievous destiny already marked out for him. Myrsilus urged them all to leave that place at once and to rejoin their comrades, but before they started their march, he was seized by doubt. He felt he had to make the freed Spartan understand that the fate awaiting him might be worse than any he had faced up until then.

‘Before you join us, consider what you are doing; you are still in time, surely no one will have noticed your escape. You must understand,’ said he, ‘that we shall never again return to Argos and the land of the Achaeans. We fled our homeland where betrayal awaited us, and here we seek a new land where we can settle and found a new kingdom for our king, Diomedes, son of Tydeus, victor of Thebes of the Seven Gates and of Troy.’

‘Diomedes?’ said the Spartan and his voice trembled. ‘Oh gods. . oh gods of the heavens! I fought with you in the fields of Ilium. I was with Menelaus.’

‘Then think about it, I tell you. If you remain with those pirates perhaps you will return home some day, perhaps someone will pay your ransom. It was a storm that drove them here; they have not come of their own free will. We instead have come here to stay. Forever.’

The man was struck by those words. He turned towards the Pelesetships and his face lit up with their scarlet glow. Then he turned towards Myrsilus and his face was sundered by the darkness, as were his thoughts.

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘For you, I am a man, a comrade. Anything is possible for a free man. I thank you for having faced all this danger for me.’

They set off in haste and did not notice that behind them a wounded man was dragging himself through the sand; it was one of the two sentinels whom the men had attacked after luring him away from the campfire. He was bloodied, but alive, and he had seen everything.

Myrsilus and his comrades began to sprint along the beach, and when they were out of danger, past the little promontory that closed off the bay, they looked back. The burning ships were destroyed; all that was left of them were their fiery masts which sank sizzling into the dark water. Around them, many tiny black shapes scurried in every direction, like ants whose nest has been devastated by the farmer’s hoe.

The king awaited them, standing vigil at the fire, alone. All of the other comrades, done in by their hard labour at the oars, had succumbed to sleep in the ships, or stretched out on the sandy beach. When he heard the men splashing through the shallow water that separated the beach from the island, he went out to meet them.

‘We’ve brought back a Spartan,’ said Myrsilus. ‘The one who made his voice heard in the midst of the fog. We told him that perhaps he would be better off staying with the Peleset,but he decided to join us nonetheless.’

The man advanced towards the fire, then threw himself at Diomedes’s feet and kissed his hand: ‘I thank you, wanax, for having liberated me,’ he said. ‘I fought at Ilium as you did, and I never would have thought I would see other Achaeans in this desolate place, in this land at the ends of the earth.’

They remained near the fire at length, and Lamus told of how he had ended up in Egypt. During a great battle, he had fallen into the sea grasping on to a piece of flotsam. He was fished up by the Peleset, who intended to sell him in the first city they landed at. But the wind had pushed them north for days and days until they had ended up in that sad, dreary place.

‘What do the Pelesetplan to do?’ asked Diomedes.

‘They want to return to their home territory, but they fear facing the winter sea. Perhaps they will seek a place where they can pull their ships aground, where they can find food and water to drink until the season changes.’

‘Your king. .’ Diomedes asked again, ‘King Menelaus. . did he survive?’

‘He was alive when I last saw him, but I have heard nothing more since then. Oh wanax, the gods blew us out to the sea, and our small vessels were tossed to and fro, on to the shores. . the gods toy with our lives like a boy playing in a pond who pushes his boat back out whenever the waves bring it close to shore. .’

‘The shore. .’ said Myrsilus. ‘Perhaps there are no longer shores where we can land. In this place the water, the earth and the sky are all mixed together. We are returning to Chaos.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Diomedes. ‘Are you afraid, helmsman?’

‘No,’ replied Myrsilus. ‘I feel no fear. Grief, sorrow. . melancholy, perhaps. Not fear. It’s as if we were fleeing from life, descending into Hades before our time and without a reason.’

The king turned again towards the Spartan: ‘What do you know of this land?’ he asked. ‘And of its inhabitants, if there are any?’

‘Very little, wanax. In the many days we’ve navigated here we’ve never seen another human being. Those who were sent inland reported that there is, first, a thick, nearly impenetrable forest of pine and oak to cross, populated by boars and huge wild bulls, but then an open plain as vast as the sea beyond. I know no more than this.’

The Chnanapproached their Spartan guest and asked: ‘Did you see the strange signs in the sky as well? What did the Pelesethave to say about them?’ A shiver of fear was visible in the man’s eyes. ‘Did you see them?’ insisted the Chnan.

‘We saw them. The Pelesettell a story that they learned from an old man who lives in a hut in the forest.’

Silence fell, and they could hear the heavy breathing of the men sleeping inside the ships and the light murmur of the tide lapping at the sand.

‘What story?’ asked the king.

‘The old man stayed with them nearly three months, but I do not know how well he managed to learn their language. He too had seen the strange lights in the sky, and he spoke of a terrible thing that wiped out the inhabitants who lived on the plain, one village after another. He claimed that the chariot of the Sun had fallen to earth not far from here, near the great river.’

‘The chariot of the Sun? What kind of a story is that?’ protested the Chnan. ‘The chariot of the Sun is still in its place and every day crosses the vault of the sky from east to west.’

‘Maybe they saw something similar to the sun falling on to the earth. The old man spoke of a specific place, not far from the mouth of the great river, but no one has dared to go near there. The waters of the swamp boil up, incomprehensible sounds are heard. Laments, like the weeping of women, fill the night. .’

Another long silence followed, broken by the solitary screech of a scops owl in the distance. The Chnanstarted: ‘Someone may have mistaken the cry of a night animal for the shrieking of mysterious creatures. This land breeds ghosts.’

‘We will soon learn what land we’ve reached,’ said the king sharply, ‘and we’ll know whether the chariot of the Sun has truly fallen into these swamps.’ He raised his eyes to the ship which transported his weapons and his horses. ‘I can harness the divine horses to that chariot, the only ones who could draw it. .’ There was blind, stubborn conviction in his voice. ‘But we must sleep now,’ he added. ‘The nights are long, but the dawn is no longer far off.’

They lay down near the fire, leaving a sentinel to stand guard, but the king was pensive. The cry of the owl seemed even sadder now, in that immense silent night, and reminded him of when as a boy that screeching would keep him alert in the palace of Tiryns as he stared out open-eyed into the endless darkness. That boy believed that there were creatures whose eyes were made to see in the gloom, creatures with eyes of darkness who saw the other half of the world, the half that the sun never visited. But those were times in which he thought he saw centaurs descend from the mountains in the golden twilight, and chimeras flying among the rocky gorges with shrill screams. Now he felt those empty eyes staring at his men and at his ships from the wooded shore on the mainland, and he was afraid, as he had been then, long ago.

The next day they resumed their journey. Myrsilus made a wide turn towards the open sea to avoid engaging the remaining ships of the Pelesetfleet in battle. Towards midday, they met with a rather strong eastern wind and so he hoisted sail and hauled back towards land. The sky was covered with clouds and the air was biting cold but the sea was calm and made for clear sailing. All at once the look-out at the prow shouted that he could see something which looked like the mouth of a river. Myrsilus had a jug dipped into the water; when it was full, he hoisted it aboard and tasted the water with his finger: ‘It’s fresh water, wanax,’ he said, handing the jug to Diomedes. ‘We’ve reached the mouth of the Eridanus!’

‘I told you that I would bring you to a new land,’ said the king. ‘It is here that we shall stop and build a new city.’ He asked the helmsman if the wind was strong enough to allow the ship to sail upstream.

‘Yes, wanax,’ replied Myrsilus. ‘I think so.’

‘Then let us go,’ said the king.

He took a cup and filled it with strong red wine, the same that he would drink before battle in the fields of Ilium. He poured it into the river current, saying: ‘I offer you this libation, oh god of the waters of Eridanus. We have fled our homeland, after suffering all that men can suffer in a long war. We seek a new land and a new era and a new life. Show us your favour, I beseech you.’ He threw the precious silver cup into the water as well; Anassilaus had melted it and engraved it with supreme art one day long ago at Lemnos, never imagining how far away it would end up.