Free Warriors in Bronze by George Shipway

eyed my handling of the reins. I wore a Companion's mail of the time - the convention of sparing Companions in battle was rapidly wearing thin - a metal skull­cap, bronze-studded leather corselet and a short stabbing sword. The company numbered a bare four hundred: thirty-odd Heroes in chariots, each with his personal spearmen, and a handful of Cretan bowmen. Scouts on shaggy-coated ponies trotted in the van. We took neither baggage carts, pack mules nor donkeys; a minimum of slaves to wait upon the nobles shambled at the tail. This was a quick in-and-out expedition, Atreus declared; and for the journey to the Isthmus we would find supplies in Tiryns.
    I still remember the thrill of my first approach to war: the column swathed in dust, a smell of thyme and horses' sweat, the sun-shot glint of spears, gleaming brazen armour, helmet plumes like rippling flames, the crunch of wheels on the ill- paved road King Sthenelus had fashioned over fifty years before. ('Time we re-laid these roads,' the Marshal remarked as the chariot lurched on the flags, 'and you could have avoided that hole with a scrap more care!') He smilingly regarded my unconcealed enthusiasm and damped my aggressive hopes. 'No greaves for you today, my lad - we're simply rounding up a mob of scoundrelly bandits!'
    We reached Argos before noon. King Adrastus greeted Atreus at the gates; a warband half our strength mustered in the citadel's streets to avoid attracting attention. The king, a wizened man whose jutting beaky nose curved to a chin like a warship's ram, had passed beyond the age of leading whirlwind raids. He presented his Leader of the Host, Tydeus, a black- bearded black-browed warrior very short in stature and nearly broad as he was long. An immigrant from Calydon, he had won Adrastus' favour and married his daughter.
    Tydeus presented a fourteen-year-old stripling clad in Com­panion's armour. 'My son Diomedes,' he said. 'He keeps pester­ing for adventure, and I judged this little foray a gentle intro­duction for a youngster green in war.'
    I liked Diomedes on sight. Short, square and stocky, with the promise of strength and agility in wide-framed shoulders and supple hips. Corn-coloured hair, a snub-nosed, square-jawed face and honest brown eyes. An engaging directness in speech and manner concealed, as I learned in after years, a mind as keen as a newly honed blade. He walked to my chariot, grasped the rail and examined the restless horses.
    'As lovely a pair as ever I've seen.' His voice was husky, the tones abruptly changing, obviously recently broken: a contrast to the resonant bellow which later made his war-cry famous. 'Venetic blood - they must be a handful to drive! You are ..
    'Agamemnon son of ... Atreus.'
    'Ah, yes.' For a moment Diomedes' eyes held mine; the glance warned me he knew all about my parentage. Which was hardly surprising: family trees and lineage are among the subjects most discussed by men of noble blood. 'We heard rumours of your trouble with the Goatmen. You —'
    His father and Atreus ended a low-voiced colloquy. 'Dio­medes, you ride with the Marshal's Companion Phylacus. Get mounted!'
    'Oh, dear.' Diomedes sighed heavily. 'The old boy coddles me like a new-born lamb. Atreus' reserve chariot, I suppose? Nurse- maided in the second rank, as I expected. Well, maybe one day ...' Smilingly ,he climbed to the empty place beside Phy­lacus and engaged that dour character in sprightly conversa­tion. Atreus mounted, lifted his spear. Scouts trotted ahead; the column clattered and crunched the stony road to Tiryns.
    Flat and open countryside extended on either hand until, some hundred bowshots short of the point where the citadel's ramparts climb into view, scrub-stippled hills closed in on the road to make a narrow, twisting path just wide enough for four men marching abreast. I handled the horses gingerly: drainage ditches bordered the track and stunted olive and tamarisk bushes leaned from the banks and brushed our