Free The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason Page B

chief of the Myrmidons was built like a mountain but fleet as the wind. Women found him comely but he reserved all his affections for two young men, Patroclus and Antilochus. In combat he was the most cold-blooded and terrifying man I have ever seen. I took to following in his wake on the field—I earned the first notches in my shield by finishing off the Trojans he wounded. Here, I thought, was a man who was in his way as different from the common run as me.
    I made him my study. He was devoted to a sea goddess, Thetis, in front of whose portable shrine he sat for hours each day in silent prayer. I watched him train with Patroclus and the Myrmidons. He came to practice early and for every javelin his men threw, even the champions,he threw three. He was, in his way, as relentless as death. Cultivating him was easy, as the other chiefs found him stand-offish and abstemious and he had few friends. It was easy to draw him out—I got the sense that he liked to talk about himself but rarely got the chance. He told me he had been blessed by Thetis at birth and made immortal, immune to every weapon. But for all that, his immunity was limited—the day of his death was already fixed by Fate and not even the gods could change it. He therefore intended to win what glory he could in his set span of days. I questioned the value of an immortality that lasted exactly until one died but his fatalism was impregnable and he laughed at me and called me a sophist.
    The war dragged on for years. Only our numbers kept us from being routed. We lost five men for each one of theirs, which was, alarmingly to my mind at least, considered an acceptable rate of attrition, as we outnumbered them ten to one. I did not wish to number myself among the sacrifices and therefore became a skilled tactician, anticipating the places where the Trojans would attack and being elsewhere. From time to time I would guess where the Trojans would be weak and ambush them, just to avoid getting a reputation as a man who avoided trouble. Over the years lines of tribal authority weakened and men with knowing eyes and similar dispositions gravitated to my troop.
    I was with Achilles when his fate found him. Hector,the mainstay of the Trojan army, had appeared in the thick of battle and scattered the Greeks. Achilles went straight to meet him but his bodyguards were shot down and he found himself more or less alone—I, as always, was hanging back, waiting to see what developed. Egged on by Hector, the Trojan rank and file hurled themselves at Achilles, who disappeared in the mass of them. I was going to cry out that they should come and fight me instead—I had a clear path back to the encampment—but their ranks shattered as Achilles burst out of them, spear whirling, his harsh metallic war-cry ringing, and for a moment I thought that this could not be a man, that this could only be the god of war. He slew many, sent the rest flying, and, best and last, drove his spear through great Hector’s jaw.
    I expected him to pursue the survivors but he just stood there, leaning on his spear. I found him grey-faced and trembling, his left foot soaked in gore—he had finally been wounded and it was a bad one, the tendon in his left ankle slashed through. I put his arm over my shoulder and helped him hobble back to camp. The physicians dressed the wound but it got infected and when I went to visit him I could smell the gangrene. I pled with him to have the leg off as the physicians said he must, or perish, but he refused, saying death was better than life as a cripple, and so he remained intact, and on the third day he died.
    This was five years into the war. Any sane man wouldhave called it a loss, or perhaps found some way to construe it as a victory, and gone home, but Agamemnon was immovable. I was not the only one who tried to talk him into decamping but we might as well have debated with a stone.
    I decided to end the war on my own. Knowing we would never take the city, I