Chapter Text
TELEMACHUS
The weather at Delphi was kind.
The waning days of the winter months brought life and light to everything around. The air was cool enough to wake the senses yet softened by the promise of spring. Sunlight slanted over the sacred slopes, spilling in golden rivulets across the marble terraces and glinting upon the bronze tripods that lined the path.
From the corner of his eye, Telemachus caught sight of rabbits darting between tufts of new grass, their small bodies quicksilver with youth, and behind them their young, clumsy-footed. A gentle breeze stirred the laurel leaves, carrying with it the faint sweet fragrance that seemed to belong to Delphi alone.
Further down the slope, patches of colour had begun to punctuate the winter’s green and brown – crocuses perhaps, or irises, though Telemachus could not say for certain. He wished he could go near to them and see them, for he had not his mother’s propensity for flowers to recognise them from a distance. He had never learned the names of flowers the way his mother had, able to tell them apart by the curl of a petal or the hue of a leaf. Still, he could appreciate the way their colours spilled across the hillside, as though some unseen hand had scattered a painter’s pigments there.
He breathed in deeply, the crisp winter air filling his lungs, and let it out slowly, feeling the tightness in his shoulders ease.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Exhale.
It was almost enough to forget where he was, almost enough to imagine himself home again in Ithaca’s gardens, the murmur of bees overhead, the seas a blue curve on the horizon–
“The indignity!”
The words burst like a stone through still water, shattering the quiet in an instant.
God-like Neoptolemus’ voice carried the hot edge of outrage, and the man stepped forward with a disdain that seemed to ripple from every line of his frame. “To think of it, that I should trade words with men such as you, base as the dust beneath my feet!”
“And what meaning lies in those words of yours?!” Orestes shot back without pause. His hands tightened into fists, his breath coming fast. “No – speak it not! I have no need of an exchange of words from a thief of brides. You are as foul as that Phrygian Paris, curse of his own people!”
The words were flung like spears, not thought through even for a mere moment. It was simply two men reacting before reason could catch them, the way a startled ox rears before recognising friend from foe.
The echo of their voices rolled through, stark and utterly graceless against the mountain’s serene hush.
Telemachus sighed.
Neoptolemus’ eyes flashed, his lips curling in disdain. “The audacity you speak with, Atreides– it leaves me astounded! Hermione is my wedded wife! Your own grandsire, Tyndareus himself placed her hand in mine, lest you forget, and before him your Uncle, Fair-Haired Menelaus who ruled Golden Sparta, he swore her hand to mine when we went to war for your Aunt Helen. And you dare compare me to Paris? To the man who slew my sire beneath Troy’s high walls? Your lack of piety speaks louder than your words.”
He paused, running a hand through the gentle red curls that caught the sun like copper. They were looser than Telemachus’ own black hair, though Telemachus’ curls fell longer on his back.
Neoptolemus’ gaze sharpened, his voice dripping scorn. “Though that should not be surprising, considering the lack of respect you hold for your own parents. Mother–”
Orestes sprang to his feet before the words could even be fully said, his face burning as if a torch had been set to his veins. He roared and his hands reached out to Achillides’ throat. Of course he did. What was Neoptolemus even thinking bringing up Aunt Clytemnestra to her son who killed her.
Telemachus closed his eyes briefly, rubbing at his forehead the way his beloved mother had done when, in his boyhood he had pressed her patience to its edge. Never had he understood her more. The heat of their quarrel swelled, and he felt the thin thread of his own composure begin to fray.
Athena, give me strength, he prayed to his patron as he stood up, rising to his full height. Stepping forward, he set himself between the two, the shadows of the Apollo Py’thius’ temple stretching long behind him. He felt grateful for the measure of his stature – taller than Atreides and of measure with Achillides, though Neo was much broader – so that his presence stood like a wall of between them, preventing both the royal fools from killing each other.
His hands pressed against their chests, holding them apart as he had once done with Argos and Pylos. Of all the hounds they had bred for the hunt, it had always been those two who could not abide each other, snarling at the mere sight of the other’s flank.
And now, it seemed, men of royal houses and divine lineages were no better.
Hermione was still seated, right beside where he had been before he rose – her posture languid, one arm braced upon her knee as she watched the quarrel unfold. She rolled her bright blue eyes, the faintest curl of her lip betraying what she thought of both men’s bluster. Telemachus did not meet her gaze, though he could feel it upon him – shamelessly staring at his thighs. He chose to ignore it, for there were greater fires to quench than Hermione’s thirst for him, and he could not – he would not – allow for three men to be fighting over her.
“Good men,” Telemachus said, keeping his voice loud enough to cut through their shouting, but not too loud lest they draw him into their argument. “Let us not resort to such quarrels. Our fathers were friends and comrades, bound in arms when they worked together to bring down Priam’s sacred citadel. And wherever they dwell now in the realm of Polydégmon, I am certain they would weep to hear that their sons wage strife over a woman – even if that woman be Golden Hermione herself.”
“Odysseus is not dead,” Neoptolemus snapped, quick as the bite of a hound. “Our fathers true – but he is not. I know it.”
Telemachus turned to him, speaking with the calmness of one soothing a restless colt. “Peace, Achillides. I, of all people, am most well aware of the continued mystery of my father’s existence.”
Neoptolemus’ gaze flared, but he did not speak again. Telemachus knew well that his bond with Odysseus was a thing tangled beyond easy understanding – complicated, perhaps, even more than Telemachus’ own relationship with his sire.
Fascinating, and in some ways deeply unsettling.
Neoptolemus was never consistent in that manner either – for as long as he had known the older man, Neoptolemus had been entirely too obsessed with his sire. He’d either go on ranting about how Odysseus dragged him to war and forced him to fight, or how Odysseus was the closest thing he had to a father and how he is most certainly alive and thus Telemachus should not doubt him.
It was terribly frustrating – trying to seduce a man who was so entirely obsessed with his father.
Though Telemachus was ever glad that Lord Eros had not guided his heart to Orestes instead, who was infinitely worse – obsessed with Telemachus’ mother as he was, though Telemachus did his best not to dwell on that. Orestes’ ever obvious attraction to his mother was a point of great frustration, one that had given cause to Telemachus to feel pleased when he had heard the man had chosen to wed. At least this way he would not come to Ithaca only to stare and sigh at his mother, evidently lusting over her and using the excuse of reintroducing Cousin Iphigenia to someone familiar.
Regardless, beneath all of it lay the same root: the absence of the man who had sired him. If only his father had returned from the war at its end, there would be no crowds of ravenous men feasting in his halls, no suitors pressing their claims on his mother within his own halls. Mother too would not be so consumed in grief, nor worn thin with fear.
It was this that stung most.
Telemachus had grown to despise Odysseus for it – the father he had never known, the man who had abandoned him to this burdensome existence, no doubt having found another woman perhaps or having sired another son somewhere else. Mother always protested, her glowing eyes misty, shining with wounded disbelief, when he dared to speak such words, swearing that his father would never forsake them, that he loved them beyond measure. But what would he know of the man? He had no memory to cling to, no visage but what others had painted in his hearing.
He had only ever had one constant in his life – his mother. And even she was half-lost to him, her heart forever turned towards the seas, her thoughts trapped in the ebb and flow of longing for a man who might never return, who might have just abandoned her.
His mother was too good for this world, and there in lie the crux of the problem.
Perhaps he would have a different opinion on the matter had he been recipient of the good fortune of knowing his father.
But that was not so.
And so here he was.
His thoughts – bitter, spiralling, heavy as stones – were broken at last by Fair Hermione. She leaned her cheek against her palm, her light hair falling forward, her eyes half-lidded with weariness.
“Are you done?” she asked flatly, her voice more tired than sharp. “Or do you both intend to continue bellowing like oxen until dawn? For unlike you, I am in my older years, and I would like nothing more than to rest.”
A silence followed, awkward and brief.
Orestes muttered under his breath, almost childlike, “I forget sometimes how much older she is…”
“Older?!” Neoptolemus snapped, turning on him with frustration this time around. “She is barely five years older than you, Atreides!”
Telemachus rolled his eyes heavenward, beseeching the gods above with the expression alone. He shoved both men apart with renewed force – pushing Neoptolemus harder than he needed, and most certainly not noticing the solid muscle beneath the fair-haired prince’s tunic. Gods above, the man was built like a temple column. Telemachus swallowed hard and cursed himself silently.
“Enough,” he said aloud, his voice taking on the weight of command. “You must stop. Both of you. What madness is this? You are men of noble breeding, sons of houses that should command respect. Shall you lower yourselves to this quarrel, clawing like dogs over scraps and shaming your fathers?”
His gaze flicked briefly toward Orestes, for he could not help the thought that the House of Tantalus had little nobility left to boast of – cursed and blood-soaked as it was.
Forget murder, Telemachus could not even fathom the thought of raising a hand to his Noble Mother. Still, aloud he gave them both their dignity.
He turned to Neoptolemus, his words measured and firm. “And you, Achillides – you are the sole grandson of Divine Thetis herself, she who is honoured among all Nereids. You have won many victories, and your name carries weight enough that any man would gladly bind his house to yours in marriage. You have no need to cling to Hermione as if she were the only jewel in the world.”
Neoptolemus folded his arms across his broad chest. The muscles flexed as he did so, and it took every shred of Telemachus’ will not to let his gaze linger. By Pallas Athena, the man was insufferable – insufferably handsome besides.
Telemachus drew in a breath and forced the words out, though he liked it not and wished not to say it. “If ever I should have a daughter one day, or if a younger sister of mine should yet be born – I would give her hand to either of you. Gladly, if it would make whichever one release Hermione now.”
For a heartbeat, there was silence.
Then Orestes’ eyes lit up, sparkling in utmost pleasure.
He is thrilled to join himself to anyone of my mother’s blood that’s what this is.
“How generous,” he said, his voice thick with pleasure. “But tell me, son of Odysseus – what of your mother herself?”
The words struck like a spear to Telemachus’ gut.
Orestes’ smile curved slow, deliberate.
That vile lecherous bastard.
“If Odysseus does not return, and you are king upon Ithaca’s throne… will you give her hand to me?”
His lips parted, breath sharp in his throat, but before he could so much as fashion a reply – before he could hurl back fury, or shame, or the clenched fist that burned to strike Atreides for daring to speak thus of his mother – the world itself moved against them.
The winds rose, sudden and wild, tearing through the precinct with a force that made even the sacred laurels shudder. The air howled as though the mountain itself had loosed a cry.
It startled all four of them, their quarrel silenced at once. Orestes’ hand fell from his weapon, his eyes wide and uncertain; Neoptolemus’ mouth tightened, his bravado faltering into something perilously close to fear. Even Hermione’s languid disdain dissolved, her posture stiffening as she clutched at her shawl.
“Come closer, both of you,” Telemachus commanded, forcing his voice to be like bronze in the storm. He thrust out his hand to Hermione, who at once placed her smaller fingers in his, seeking shelter at his side. “Stay by me,” he told them, his height and calm presence drawing them in, binding them together against what none of them could name.
He had no need to call upon his patron to know that this wind was divine. This was no chance squall upon Parnassus, winds of this ferocity – it was the wrath of some god displeased. He raised his voice, loud enough to be carried by the storm’s breath:
“O great one, who it is we unbeknownst to ourselves have offended, forgive us! If it is Phoebus Apollo, let not our discord profane your holy ground. If it is some other among the deathless ones, hear us, and take pity! Spare us your anger – we are but mortals, foolish in our strife!”
But still the winds grew stronger. The bronze tripods clattered upon the flagstones, their chains rattling like a chorus of ghostly voices. Orestes fell to his knees, murmuring fragments of hymns to Lord Apollo, his lips trembling as he prayed to the bright archer who loved him.
Neoptolemus, more stubborn, more desperate, flung a powerful arm around Telemachus’ neck, pulling him close as though to anchor himself. His voice broke with urgency as he cried out to the sea: “Grandmother Thetis, hear me! You who rose for my father at his need, rise now for me! Save me, Goddess, from whatever storm this is!”
Hermione pressed herself against Telemachus’ side, her face buried in his arm, the proud disdain all gone now, replaced only with mortal fear. Her fingers clutched tight at his cloak, and he could feel her trembling.
The storm raged on. The flowers Telemachus had admired only moments ago were torn from their stalks, ripped into a thousand petals that swirled in the air like dying sparks. Even the rabbits he had watched – quicksilver with the cheer of spring – were caught up, their small bodies whirling helplessly in the gale. It was a strange, cruel sight, one that made his stomach twist.
The winds shrieked louder, louder, until it seemed the whole of Delphi might be torn from the mountain and hurled into the sea. Telemachus braced himself, the muscles in his jaw and shoulders set tight against the onslaught, his arm pulling Hermione against him, his other handheld firm at Orestes’ back to keep him from falling. Neoptolemus’ grip upon him was iron.
At last, with all the strength in his lungs, he threw back his head and shouted into the storm, his cry raw, unguarded, desperate:
“ATHENA!”
His voice cracked against the winds, and the name of the goddess who had favoured him since boyhood – grey-eyed Pallas, ever true, ever guiding – rang out like a final plea, hurled into the howling mouth of the divine tempest.
ODYSSEUS
The morning light over the Achaean camp was bright, sharp as a blade’s edge, and the son of Laertes felt it bite at his eyes as though Phoebus Apollo himself anticipated blood. Heat lay coiled beneath the day, as though waiting only for a spark.
And then the spark came.
In truth Odysseus had been anticipating this. How could he not? He had known, from the very moment the priest had approached with the wreaths of the god – the distant deadly Archer – wound upon his golden staff, that misfortune would cling to the host like smoke. Agamemnon should have known it too – of all men living, he should have known better than to provoke the blood of Koiogeneia. Had he already forgotten the bitter price he had once paid for kindling a feud with Agroterê Artemis, Lord Apollo’s own sister, sprung from their shared womb? A daughter lost, a household shaken, the weight of a god’s displeasure settling upon him like bronze.
But memory had never been Agamemnon’s strong suit – not the kind that taught wisdom, at least.
Not only had Agamemnon refused the old man’s ransom, but he had stung him with words that even now Odysseus could recall with a twist of upset: “Never again, old man… The girl – I won’t give up the girl… long before that, old age will overtake her in my house, in Mycenae… forced to share my bed…”
Cruel words.
Needless.
The kind that invited ruin.
And ruin had come, swift and sure. The gods were generous to those who honoured them. Odysseus himself had grown beneath the shadow of grey-eyed Pallas, and he knew the truth of it deeper than bone. When a god is insulted, the world bends to the shape of their wrath.
Lord Apollo had been no exception.
When the first man began to cough blood, Diomedes had known at once. His keen golden eyes narrowing, his jaw set in a line akin to carved marble. Odysseus had met his gaze then, a silent agreement passing between them like a gust of cold air. Too many men would be lost too quickly if this should continue on. A plague could cut them down faster than any Trojan spear.
He had gone to Agamemnon that same day – spoken to him not as a subordinate, nor even as an equal, but as one friend entreating another beloved. But the son of Atreus had listened with a deaf man’s arrogance, his heart too clouded by the warmth of the girl in his bed. He had chosen desire over reason, stubbornness over survival.
In the end it had been the son of Peleus – fiery, deadly Achilles – who demanded the assembly. Odysseus did not doubt the truth of it. Pallas had stood by him that morning with a weight he felt between his shoulder blades, urging him to readiness claiming it had been Hera Alexandros’ wish. Something would break today.
Something must.
And now here they all were.
Wide-ruling Agamemnon stood in the centre of the assembly, erratic as a bull brought to madness by a lash, his breath coming hard and uneven, shoulders heaving with the brute force of rising fury. When he wheeled upon Calchas, the poor seer shrank as though the sun itself had turned to scorch his face.
Odysseus… would not put that past Agamemnon.
Agamemnon’s rage against Calchas had been burning since the death of Iphigenia some eight nine years ago. It would only end with Calchas’ death, he was certain of it.
Odysseus watched with a sinking weight in his chest, grim inevitability.
This is the shape of pride. This is the spark I felt waiting beneath the morning’s heat.
“Seer of misery!” Agamemnon spat, the words flung like burning oil. “Never a word that works to my advantage! Always misery warms your heart!”
Odysseus’ jaw tightened. His hand drifted to the hilt of his sword. If Agamemnon’s fire met Achilles’ fury, the whole camp might burn before noon. He could feel Athena at his back, cool as a shadowed spring, steadying him for whatever storm must now be weathered between these men.
The High King raged on, his voice cracking the morning stillness. “You divine the god’s will! Bruit it about as fact – because I refused the glittering price for Chryseis! Because I prefer her: her beauty, her grace, above even Clytemnestra, my wedded wife!”
Murmurs rippled through the ranks like a sudden wind skimming the surface of the sea. Shivers passing from man to man, each soldier stiffening as though the High King’s words were a lash across their own backs. Odysseus felt that tension like a living thing, crawling beneath the skin of every warrior present, poised to bolt, to break, to burst.
He nearly groaned aloud.
What possessed the man to say such things before the whole host?
This was no small slip of the tongue, no careless jest over wine. This was a king, before the assembled might of Achaea, declaring that he prized a captive girl above the wife who had borne him children, above the highborn queen who was mistress to his hearth. The King of Kings confessing he preferred the warmth of a Phrygian slave’s bed to the woman of his own house, Clytemnestra of Golden Lacedaemon, blood of Mycenaean Perseus himself.
Odysseus would sooner slit his own throat than even think such a thought of his bride, who shared such a lineage.
Penelope.
His heart clenched.
His mind was dragged homeward, across leagues of the wine-dark sea, toward the young bride he had left behind.
Nine years he had been gone from her, alone, beneath Ilios’ shadow. Penelope, his clever, laughing girl with her golden curls tumbling like sunlight down her waist, with her smile that softened into warmth and sharpened into mischief all at once. Her white arms would loop around his neck as though she meant to pull him wholly into her, body and soul. He could almost feel the soft arousing brush of her thick breasts against his chest, the sweet heat of her thighs opening for him, the way her voice would shake and tremble as she moaned his name – my lord, my Odysseus – to draw him deeper, to keep him there, forever inside her, as though only then she felt whole.
Gods, how he missed her.
And Telemachus.
A breath caught in his throat, raw as a fresh wound.
When he had sailed from Ithaca, his son’s eyes had not yet settled on a colour. A sweet babe who had just learned to laugh, no heavier than the helm he wore atop his head when he rode into battle, blinking at the new world with all the confusion of a soul freshly arrived among mortals.
What colour were those eyes now?
Had he impossibly inherited Odysseus’ own mismatched gaze? Or the bright blue of his mother? Perchance Father’s deep earth-brown? Or perhaps Penelope’s own father’s olive green. Or Precious Penelope’s eyes themselves, that shifting green blue like shallow seas stirred by morning light?
His boy would be upon his eighth year now.
Did he cling to Penelope’s skirts? Did he laugh loudly or softly? Was he shy, or bold, or something in between? Had someone, her father or his, or some overeager tutor, already put a spear in the boy’s small hands?
He hoped not.
That was his right. His joy. His duty.
He wanted to teach his boy how to plant his feet, how to notch an arrow, how to judge the wind and let loose true. To show him how to think, how to wait, how to seize the moment when men least expect it. His Telemachus would surpass him – of that Odysseus was certain. Bone-deep, sure as the tides.
A son should always outshine his father.
His most of all would.
“But I will give her back!” Agamemnon thundered then, tearing Odysseus from his thoughts, though he had been hearing what else had been going on all the same. The High King lifted his hand high, as though granting a gift of mercy and not what was demanded by the gods above. “Still, I must not go without another prize. My honour must not be the only honour stripped from me!”
Odysseus drew in a long breath between his teeth.
There it is.
He felt Athena’s hands upon his shoulders, burning with the unmistakable edge of warning.
And, as he had known it would, God-like Achilles’ voice cut through the air, bright and sharp as a spear’s point:
“Agamemnon, great field marshal, most grasping man alive – how can the Argives give you prizes now? All we won has been divided. Do you bid us claw it back from the hands of those who bled for it?”
The murmurs rose again, sharper now, every man caught. Odysseus’ stomach knotted. The boy – no, not a boy, not anymore – Lion hearted Achilles was fire incarnate when he had set his mind to a matter, and to provoke him was to stand in a dry forest with a torch.
Odysseus stilled, breath slow, muscles tight beneath Athena’s unseen grip.
He continued, the force of him like a storm wind, “So return the girl to her father. We will repay you three, four times over when the God-King grants us Troy’s fall.”
It was a reasonable offer. Wise even, more reasoned than Odysseus would ever have expected from Peleus’ son in his fury. For a moment, he allowed himself the hope that Agamemnon would relent.
But his beloved friend only stiffened, pride bristling along his spine.
“Not so quickly, God-like Achilles,” he growled. “You would cheat me – leave me empty-handed while you cling to your own prize. If the Argives will not give me one, I shall take one myself: yours, Ajax’s, or Odysseus’! I will commandeer her myself and let that man I go to visit choke with rage!”
Beside these words, Agamemnon’s gesture was casual. A hand flicked, a dismissive sweep, as if the threat were no more than a change of wind. But Odysseus felt every eye swing toward him, felt the weight of the insult settle across his shoulders like a yoke. His prize – torn away publicly? For the sake of a quarrel born of wounded pride? That stemmed from his enraging of a deathless one above? It was a humiliation not yet done but promised.
Certain.
His eyes narrowed, as fury burned through him, though he said not a word.
Not yet.
He cared not for bedding prizes as some of the other men did. No other woman would or could bring him the sweet intoxicating pleasure of his wife’s form – moaning and gasping underneath him as he took, took and took, her glowing eyes teary with his onslaught, her golden hair spread out on the bed he had built for them with his own two hands, her skin bruised from his teeth, voice hoarse from how much he had made her scream. There was no joy to be found like the one in willing Penelope’s form, riding him as he looked over papyrus, golden curls stuck to her fair face as she bit her plump lips to silence herself so as to not disturb her lord.
But, his war prizes were his. A mark of his victories.
He would sooner draw blood then allow himself to be insulted in such a manner.
Though, well versed with Agamemnon as he was, he knew the man’s fondness for him would not allow such a grave insult towards him to be.
Agamemnon barked on, “We will send the girl back! Haul a black ship to the seas, gather a decent number of oarsmen along her locks and put aboard a sacrifice, and… and Chryseis herself, in all her beauty… we embark her too. Choose a captain: Ajax, Idomeneus, Odysseus, or you, Achilles! You – the most violent man alive – so you can perform the rites for us and calm the Archer’s wrath!”
The king’s voice rolled like thunder breaking over the plains.
Odysseus did not have to turn to look at Pelides to know his rage would be rising up to match their High King’s.
Just as Achilles’ breath gathered, his fury coiling to strike, the winds rose.
It was neither a breeze nor a playful salt-kissed gust from the nearby sea.
A force.
Air slammed together in the heart of the assembly with a crack like a god snapping a bowstring. Dust sprang up in choking clouds. Chlamys and hair whipped about like startled birds, and the men cried out, stumbling as the earth seemed to shiver beneath their feet.
The wind converged – there, at Agamemnon’s very side.
Menelaus seized his brother’s arm at once, hauling him back with a strength born of fear. The Laconian King’s face had gone pale as bone, and Odysseus could read his thought even from where he stood:
Not again. Not another god’s wrath. Not my brother.
Telamonian Ajax and Patroclus were equally swift with Achilles, their hands clamping onto his arms before he could so much as step toward the storm. Even Swift-footed Achilles, who would charge at a deathless one if given half a chance, blinked against the gale and stayed his advance, teeth bared, bright hair lashing wildly.
Odysseus did not flinch.
Athena’s unseen hand pressed against his cheek – hot, fierce, a shield – and he felt debris strike her protection rather than his skin. Her fingers slid briefly across his brow, as though commanding him to look, to bear witness, but not yet to act.
Around him, the army trembled.
This was no plain wind.
Phoebus again? Odysseus wondered. Or some greater, stranger power still?
The wind shrieked, then ceased.
Cut off.
As though a door between worlds had slammed shut.
And in the thick silence that followed… there came a sound. A dull, chaotic thudding – bodies hitting the earth.
Murmurs rippled instantly through the host. In the name of the gods who reside upon Mytikas, the army was worse than women.
The Goddess let him go at last, withdrawing her protection like a warm mantle slipping from his shoulders. His sharp eyes swept the clearing. Four figures lay scattered in the dust at the storm’s heart.
Three men. One woman.
All evidently dazed, groaning softly as they struggled to rise.
His fingers curled once more around the hilt of his blade as he stepped forward, every sense sharpened to a lethal point. The men gave way, as they were wont to do to someone who stood far above them.
Achaeans – at least, they wore the guise of Achaeans. The cloth was correct, the styles familiar. Yet why ever would the gods – for this was plainly their work – send four strange Achaeans to the shores of Troy?
The woman rose first, white-armed, modest, veiled as a married woman ought be. Her hair, visible at the edges of her veil, glowed a soft fair red – rare among the Achaeans. The shade tugged at some memory. He had only known one other to have hair in that colour. Menelaus’ daughter. Hermione. She would be in her seventeenth year by now, a maiden grown nearly to womanhood.
Odysseus’ heartbeat tripped.
But no – what madness was this? Why should she be here, in Ilios’ killing fields? And why ever would she be married without her father there to give her to another? Old Tyndareus would not do such a thing to the man who fought for his daughter on the bloody fields of Troy.
His gaze slid to the young men. One red-haired, but not the fiery red of Menelaus’ mane. Gentler. Akin to gold almost. Fair hair similar to Pelides, not Atreides.
Another dark-haired one, skin dark as his own. The third dark-haired too, but duskier in complexion, something foreign threading his blood despite his clearly Achaean garb – deep red chiton, embroidered in a pattern Odysseus had not seen on any Argive noble.
Who were they?
The last of the men shook out his curls, a leaf caught in them fluttering free, likely from the winds that had brought them here. He turned, unaware of the army surrounding him, unseeing of Agamemnon and Achilles and all of the princes and kings of Achaea who now frozen in utter shock – but to his own companions.
Foolish boy.
Too foolish by far, to ignore an entire host bristling with spears.
“I do not know what those winds were,” he said, brushing dust from his crimson chiton, “but my demand stays as it is. I want your mother’s hand in marriage.”
Silence.
The silence of jaws unhinging in pure disbelief.
Achilles’ mouth fell open. Patroclus’ eyes went wide as a startled doe’s. Telamonian Ajax simply stared, big enough to blot out the sun but speechless for once in his life. Menelaus’ gaze shot sharply toward the long-haired man in the blue chiton. His face drained of blood, as though he had seen a shade standing there and not a mortal man.
Odysseus swore inwardly and shifted, trying to catch a clear glimpse of the strangers’ faces, but damn the fates, damn the angle, damn the crowd, he could not.
Athena hummed low and warning behind his ribs, a vibration felt rather than heard.
Menelaus stared at the blue-clad youth as though he knew him. As though he recognized him.
Odysseus’ annoyance flared hot.
If only he could see their faces.
Because whatever storm had delivered these four into the heart of their assembly had not come by chance.
Odysseus drew a slow breath, steadying the prickle at the back of his neck. The blue-clad youth still had not spoken a word – only knelt there, swaying faintly, as he held onto the earth. Dazed, then. Struck senseless by whatever tempest had hurled them into the midst of the Achaean host. And yet even in that fog, the man’s stance told a tale: he had fallen shielding the others. The red-haired youth, the dusk-skinned one, the veiled woman – he had taken the brunt of the wind’s wrath for them all.
A protector, then.
And better at it, Odysseus grudgingly allowed, than he himself might have been in such chaos.
Still, suspicion whispered through him like an undercurrent in the wine-dark sea. A man who could fall from the sky and land ready to fight was rarely a simple one.
The red-chiton wearing fool, however, was simple enough.
“I care deeply for the bride I was given,” that one proclaimed, still brushing dust from his clothes as though an army were not staring at him like gods witnessing the birth of madness. “She is my own blood – how could I not? But if I cannot have Golden Hermione, who shines like Laughter-Loving Aphrodite, then I will gladly take Blameless Penelope, whose virtue is reno–”
What?
By all the gods – his Penelope? He knew not of any noble woman who wore his beloved wife’s name. His heart surged hot, a tide rising to drown thought. Had a man spoken so before him, he would have run him through before he reached the second sound of her name.
But he never reached the second sound.
Even as Odysseus’ own hand closed around the hilt of his blade, ready to spill this insolent wretch’s guts upon the sand, the blue-clad youth – silent till now, dazed and reeling from the storm – moved with a swiftness that belonged to warriors born, not boys. In a blink he lunged, seized the red-chiton wearing fool by the himation, and drove his fist straight into the man’s jaw.
No daze now. No disorientation. He moved with the fury of a storm breaking loose from its chains. One heartbeat he stood blinking, barely conscious; the next he was the God-King’s thunderbolt given flesh.
His fist crashed squarely against the jaw of the red-chiton suitor once more, the sound sharp as a shield struck in battle. The fool staggered – had no time even to gasp before a third blow drove into his cheek, a fourth into his ribs. The blue-clad man roared: an animal sound, raw and furious, born from a place so deep Odysseus felt it in the marrow of his own bones.
The assembly recoiled.
Gasps tore through the army. Men flinched. Patroclus crossed his arms. Ajax took half a step forward, uncertain whether to intervene. Menelaus stared in shock. Even Achilles muttered, half-amused, half-impressed:
“By all the gods… which great man sired this boy?”
Odysseus did not share the amusement. Rage burned through him like molten bronze.
Hermione… Penelope…
Better this man strike the fool than himself, yes. But still: no man, no boy, no stranger had the right to mete justice for an insult against Penelope. That right was his alone. She was his.
He shoved past a ring of men; they parted at once, recognizing the look in his eyes. Agamemnon barked something – an order, perhaps – but his voice was lost beneath the roaring in Odysseus’ ears.
The boy’s assault only grew more vicious. His curls whipped about his face; his teeth were bared in a snarl; he moved as though it was not him defending his own honour, but like one protecting a rare treasure, that a hero so preciously gains from foreign lands, sacred to the gods.
Hermione… Penelope…
That means…
“I want your mother’s hand in marriage.”
Odysseus froze.
“Telemachus!” The other companions of the storm-tossed group cried out.
The name cleaved through him.
Everything stopped: his breath, his stride, the beat of his heart.
Telemachus.
Telemachus.
His Telemachus was a boy – eight summers old, his arms no doubt still soft with childhood, his laughter most certainly ringing through the halls his father had built, like a little bronze bell. Odysseus was sure he could scarcely lift a proper spear, let alone throw punches like a trained warrior.
Yet that is the name they screamed as they clung to the youth’s arms, pulling him back.
Telemachus.
Telemachus.
The man– no, the boy, snarled and twisted, still trying to reach the red-clad man, but his companions dragged him back with frantic shouts. In their panic, they left his face unshielded.
And Odysseus saw him.
Clear as a statue, carved by the blessed hands of the muses themselves, as Golden Aphrodite showered it in the gifts of beauty, and Apollo Amyklaios in youthful strength that boys are blessed with.
Storm-tossed, bruised-knuckled, breath heaving.
Beautiful.
O gods above – beautiful in a manner so precious that struck deep and unguarded in Odysseus’ chest. A face shaped like his own but softened with Penelope’s gentleness. Lips hers. Curls hers. And the eyes–
The eyes stole the strength from his legs.
Mismatched.
A marvel of the gods.
One blue as the skies atop the great cliffs of Ithaca. One green as the seas that the ships sailed on at dawn.
Impossible.
Impossible.
And yet–
Fair-Haired Menelaus seized the youth’s arm then, Gentle Patroclus the other, each expecting a wild animal’s thrash – but the boy granted them their expectations, fighting against the restraining hands of all four. He was dimly aware – through the swimming disbelief and the burning in his eyes – that the man in the red-chiton was still coughing from the blows, propped up by Powerful Agamemnon himself.
Their voices were distant. Muffled by the pounding of Odysseus’ own heart. Confusion roared in his skull like Ilios’ gates slamming shut. The face was his. His own face, mirrored back at him across over twenty years, beardless as the day he himself had first taken up a spear.
Odysseus’ feet moved before he consciously commanded them to. He pushed through the few warriors ahead of him, who parted instinctively around him.
The boy no longer fought. He stood still, chest heaving, curls tangled from the tempest, dust streaking the bow-shaped line of his cheek. The boy swallowed, throat bobbing. His mismatched eyes shimmered – by the gods, they shimmered just as Penelope’s did when she was enraged yet tried to conceal the length of her fury from those around her.
It seemed that it was only then, that this precious child realised those crowded around him. His righteous rage giving away to shock and confusion as he felt the hands on his person, exceeding the number of companions he had. His stunned gaze swept over the assembly, past Agamemnon, past Menelaus, past the kings and captains still recovering from the storm-blast that had flung these four into their midst.
And then those eyes – Oh gods above, those eyes – found Odysseus.
Odysseus’ breath hitched like a ship striking a rock in the seas, destined to alter its path forevermore.
“I have found you.”