And then, Odysseus was forced to throw up the bow in defense as a man, armed with a cudgel, swung at him. The strength of the blow sent the weapon spinning from his grasp: he stepped in before the princeling could strike again, ramming his head into his enemy’s face, smashing his nose to pulp. He stumbled away, cursing in pain. But not for long. Odysseus grabbed his head and twisted savagely, snapping the bones.
Leaving the corpse twitching on the floor, he grasped one of the ancient, double bladed axes and plunged into the fray, striking men—and those women who had sided with them—down, the righteousness of his vengeance surging through him. The shrilling shrieks of the serving girls—his serving girls—now mingled with the guttural male sounds of battle. The Ithacan men took their cue from him and spared no-one.
A princeling tried to fight with a spear taken from one of the Ithacan men, but Odysseus clove him in two, the old blades shearing him from shoulder to hip. The ripe stench of shit and bile was almost overwhelming as the lad’s innards fell from his body, coiled, rancid and bloody.
There was no guilt in Odysseus, no remorse, no fear—nothing save the exultation of the kill. He didn’t care that most of these men were unarmed and drunk, scarcely able to defend themselves. The violence sustained him, the blood an elixir that urged him to greater prowess, the begging of the vanquished more seductive than the songs of the tortured women on the rocks he’d dubbed Sirens.
His arms—his entire body—drenched in gore was not touched by weariness. His men—his Ithacans—fought like gods, as though his strength had become theirs. In those moments whilst the battle raged, these men were not farmers or swineherds, carpenters or tanners—they were the warriors they had once been, Ares’s fire filling their bellies and hardening their hearts.
Roaring in triumph, Odysseus grasped Melantho by the hair and forced her to her knees. She screamed and pleaded but he brought the bronze blade down hard on her thin neck, hacking through her, her head coming away in his hands. Traitorous bitch. Such was her end.
Odysseus tossed the severed head away. It rolled across the blood-soaked stones to lay still amidst the detritus of battle. It was as if this last action drew an end to it. He saw Eumaeus slitting a princeling’s throat from behind, the lad on his knees. He fell forward—a prince slain by a pig farmer. Foreign prince. Ithacan pig farmer.
Bodies littered the floor—all the suitors slain but there were Ithacan dead too. “They had a great ending, my king!” Eumaeus’s voice rang out. “One last battle!” And those that survived cheered and hailed him.
Odysseus tried to let the axe fall from his hand, but there was so much gore caked to it that it had stuck fast. He worked his fingers and thumbs till eventually it dropped to the stones with a clash, leaving twines of tacky vileness hanging from him in its wake.
His men—his men—who recently had the aspect of the Ares now looked like a vision from Tartarus. They, like he, were caked in blood. The roaring, glorious cacophony that had driven them in the storm of bronze and iron had now become the keening, desperate cries of the limbless and dying. The stench of shit, bile and that unique copper odor of blood permeated the great hall and in that moment, Odysseus wondered if the place would ever be made free of it.
The men looked around in shock as their exultation wore off, weapons clattering away, some going to their mates, others still putting those that could not be saved out of their misery. Farmers—they knew when a beast was dying and the kindest thing to do was end it.
Because men were beasts—Odysseus had always known it and it was the same after every battle. The guilt that a survivor felt even though his cause had been just. The feeling that so many had died yet he had lived. And the truth that the guilt—like the pain of an old wound or the agony suffered by a woman in childbirth would soon be forgotten and the desire to do it again would prevail.
“Pyres,” he rasped, conjuring visions of the countless pyres for the dead that burned on the shores of Troy. “Pyres for the dead.”
He couldn’t bring himself to look at the women he’d killed in the grip of Ares’s madness. They had deserved it—they had betrayed him and no king could tolerate such disloyalty. But now that the frenzy had departed, he wished he’d stayed his hand and had them executed humanely. As it was, he knew that every man would say that they were caught up on the tumult of war, blameless victims of a desperate fight.
It couldn’t have been avoided they would say. Because everyone knew that in battle, innocents and innocence itself always died first. And because the men knew that they—as well as their king—had been culpable in the slaughter of the women.
Odysseus glanced at the empty dais, whispering a prayer of thanks to Athena that Penelope had not had to witness more of the slaughter. Women would never understand that a man’s honor had to be defended. That a man—a king more so—must prove his strength and his valor. That he must revenge himself on those that slighted him: that there had to be a reckoning.
But women also never understood that it was only they that could keep a man sane after such deeds committed. That coming home to them made it all seem distant and that—for a time—hearth and home, wife and child were the only things that mattered in the world. Good things.
Until Ares called once again. Like he always did. Like he always would.
Odysseus sighed. He would wash the detritus of battle from his body and go to her. Face her as he had faced her suitors. Tell her his tale—most of it at least—and hope that he had been right and that she loved him still.
His eyes were drawn to the corpse of Amphinomus and a part of him wondered if the smitten boy would have made her happy. But—by the gods—it was not to be. Poor Amphinomus was dead. Odysseus was alive.
It was time to put the warrior to sleep and bring back that young man who had charmed and delighted Penelope so long ago. The man that ploughed the fields and made his people strong. The man who had held her in his arms and told her that—above all things—it was she he loved most of all. That thought of returning to her was the only thing that had given him the strength to survive those long years.
He could not tell her the whole truth. She would not want to know it. So he’d spin and weave words like she had spun and woven her tapestries until he had lied enough so that they were both comfortable with it and she would prefer to believe the legend. He’d convince her in the end.
Because, after all, he thought to himself with a sad smile, they didn’t call him “wily Odysseus” for nothing.
Epilogue
Vicky Alvear Shecter
THE HOMECOMING
* * *
PENELOPE
Moonlight from the small opening in the ceiling drenched the room in silver as Penelope rose naked from her marriage bed. She placed a hand on the twisted, gnarled trunk of the ancient olive tree that grounded both the room and her marriage. How was it, she wondered, that the tree still lived?