The steward withdrew; I came around to stand near Polyphemus. “Why so?”
“Foremost, my behavior the other night. It was appalling. Bad enough that I shunned your company in favor of that trollop’s, but to also make you accomplice to my lies? Then, I understand you have been ill. I did not know it was customary for friends to check in upon one another. Good King Aeolus tutored me in such manners as are practiced by your people. I have no excuse, son of Lykaon. I hope you can forgive me. Will you sit?” He motioned to a small stool.
“I will,” was all I could manage. I sat, still wary. If he knew I had witnessed his crime, would he still be so eager to remain on friendly footing? Or would he arrange an accident to befall me on my way home? Enlist a certain knife-wielding trollop to do the deed? You see my dilemma, eh, child? Oh, he sounded sincere, but was he? Well, you’re more trusting than I was at your age.
At any rate, he asked after my health, and I told him I was no longer in any danger of slipping across the benighted Styx; like my father, he blamed my fever on being too young for all that wine and revelry. Though I knew the truth of it, I did not disagree.
“I was younger than you when my tribe came north from Aethiopia,” he said, after a moment’s pause. “We were herdsmen, but our cattle had died the year before of a bloody flux. So my father led us north to find more. We found a different sort of cattle. Human cattle. The lord of Syene, who had rounded up every malcontent and malingerer in his territory, offered us meat and milk if we would use our spears to herd this rabble north to Thebes, to face Pharaoh’s judgment. We thought him mad, or an idiot; but we were not so aloof that we would refuse meat and milk for merely doing what we have done for generations. That’s how we became Medjay; of course, by their reckoning any Aethiop with a spear was Medjay.
“It was some ten years after, while serving the governor of Thonis, that I first saw the sea.” Polyphemus’s voice dropped to an awed whisper. “Such power! Such majesty! Neither the sun, Amun, who rules as a tyrant over the deserts of Aethiopia, nor the moon, Khonsu, who brought succor, could match the all-encompassing breadth of Naunet, the sea. Here was a goddess I could serve.” I leaned forward, listening in rapt silence. “And so, I left the land behind and became a soldier upon the waves. You know as well as I, son of Lykaon, how fickle a mistress this goddess can be. The sea gives sustenance, she gives shelter, she gives riches beyond measure…but she also brings grief; her storms can waste a countryside like an invading army, and though the song of her heart brings peace, there is only death upon her breast—for no man can long survive her watery embrace.”
I found myself nodding along with him. My own father had said much the same, in the past. As had every fisherman and sailor who ever poured a libation into the green waves with the hope of placating the gods of the deep.
Polyphemus shifted with a grimace; his hip pained him still. “The wrath of my goddess put me upon this island, the sole survivor from a crew of forty souls. We were bound for Gebal on the coast of Canaan with a hold full of papyrus when a storm snatched us up. For ten days it blew, and on the eleventh day our waterlogged hull struck an outcropping of rock and split open like a rotten egg. The goddess, perhaps sated on the blood of my companions, cast me upon the beach. And here I’ve stayed—never far from the sea. Even still, I love her. Though she hurled me upon this wretched shore, I love her. I sacrifice to her with the dawn, and pour libations to her at the gloaming. But never again have I dared tempt her wrath. She put me here for a reason.”
“What is the reason?”
Polyphemus gave a wistful smile. “If we knew in detail all the inner workings of divine logic, son of Lykaon, where would the spice of life come from?”
I tell you this tale, child, so you might see some measure of the conflict that roiled in my own breast. On one hand, Polyphemus had proven he was a man willing to lie, to kill, if it meant taking his vengeance. On the other, I could not help but like him. I felt in him a kindred soul; I understood why he did the things he did. In another life, who’s to say I would not walk the same path, spilling blood if it meant my enemy might feel the wrath of Nemesis?
I knew I must broach the subject with him; I dredged up my last reserves of courage and was on the verge of opening my mouth to speak when something happened that dwarfed my childish anxieties.
From the heights above us—from the watch-tower overlooking the sea—came the clash and clangor of a great bronze-headed drum, calling the city to arms.
Polyphemus came to his feet with a start. “What is it?”
“The king’s men have spotted something,” I replied. I hurried to the edge of the terrace upon which the garden sat and peered over the low rock wall. I craned my head this way and that, scanning the expanse of blue sea for some sign of what caused the alarm. On the third look, I saw it. “Ships,” I said, making a quick tally. “Twelve of them.”
Blind Polyphemus’s breath caught in his throat. “Are they black-hulled?”
I looked closer. “I think so. With red sails.”
“Odysseus,” I heard him mutter. “Beware, son of Lykaon. The king of Ithaca returns to claim by the spear what he could not by flattery…”
You’ve never seen this city gird itself for war, child. No, I expect not even your mother, who is famous for her flagrant disregard of convention (through no fault of mine, I’ll have you know; I blame her mother), would not countenance her daughter running amok in times of strife. Though ask her how she spent the night of the Great Arming, when an alliance between the Sikelians and the Elymians threatened our borders. Aye, that should put a bit of color in her cheeks, provided she doesn’t banish you to your room—and me to mine, for that matter.
Polyphemus bid me take him to the king, which put me in the thick of things. Not a place any boy should be, mind you, much less a boy leading a blind man about. No longer was I a touchstone of good luck. I’d become a nuisance underfoot. The king’s sons snarled and snapped, cursing my lineage in the same breath as they bellowed for their servants to fetch their panoplies.