The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus) (23 page)

Diomedes lifted the cloak away with the point of his blade. The material crumbled with the movement, revealing the grey skeleton beneath.

‘The shoulder bone’s the same colour as the rest. This isn’t Pelops.’

‘It’s the body of a grave robber,’ Odysseus said.

Eurybates picked up the sword. ‘These black stains are blood. But if the weapon was dropped on top of the man’s cloak
after
he was decapitated, then who killed him?’

‘One of his companions?’ Eperitus suggested. ‘They found something of value and argued over it. Typical of their kind. The victor then left the tomb with his treasure and closed the entrance behind him. Perhaps that’s all this curse is: human greed in the face of untold wealth.’

‘I pray to the gods you’re right,’ Odysseus said, though his instincts told him otherwise. ‘Now, let’s find the sarcophagus and hope these men didn’t have a taste for ivory.’

A little beyond the remains of the robber, the tunnel turned right. With Odysseus leading again, they advanced into the blackness for a few paces until another passage opened on their left, noticeable only by a deeper darkness and the faint, cold movement of air on their cheeks. The king ignored it and, with his fingers still tracing the right-hand wall, plunged on into the depths of the maze. Almost immediately the wall bent right and then another right, leading the huddled group of warriors shortly afterwards to a dead end. Without taking his hand from the wall, Odysseus followed it left and left again, back the way they had come until it turned right twice to lead them once more to the opening they had passed only a few moments earlier. He did not hesitate, but pressed on with his torch held before him in his free hand. The wall led him left to another choice of ways – an opening that went straight on or a passage that headed right. Knowing he must stick to the plan he had worked out the evening before, Odysseus turned right and traced the wall in a zigzag pattern until it bent sharply back to the right again. He turned the corner and stopped so suddenly that Eperitus and Diomedes almost walked into him.

‘Another body,’ he announced.

He raised his torch upwards so that it shed a pool of orange light over the curled up form of a second skeleton. This one wore no cloak and the remains of its short tunic were nothing more than a few lengths of rag clinging to the ribcage and the angular protuberances of the pelvic bone. Its head remained attached to the spinal column, but the handle of a knife stuck out from its back.

‘If these men died because of an argument,’ Diomedes began, ‘why were they both killed from behind? The first could have been fleeing, and I didn’t see that he was armed; but this one’s holding a dagger – look.’ He pointed to a dull blade lying beneath the rib cage, the bony fingers of the dead man still bent around its handle. ‘Why didn’t he turn and defend himself?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Odysseus responded. ‘Something tells me this man died long before the other – see how the clothes are more decayed – but if they weren’t killed by their fellow-robbers, then I don’t know how they died. I’ll say this much, though: they were thieves, lightly armed and with no training in how to fight.
We
are warriors, veterans of a long and bloody war. Whoever, or whatever, stalked these men through the black confusion of these tunnels won’t find it so easy against sixteen of us!’

He stepped over the body and forged on into the darkness. The others followed, many of them drawing their swords and throwing uncertain glances over their shoulders. The tunnel twisted again and again, leading them deeper into the maze as the cold blackness numbed their senses and left them feeling ever more disorientated. Time was drawn out so that moments that would have passed briefly in the daylight were stretched by confusion and growing fear into long periods that offered no hope of ending. They stumbled into each other constantly as they bunched ever closer, afraid of becoming separated in the dark. Despite the light of their brands they soon felt themselves entirely reliant upon Odysseus’s hand as it trailed along the stone walls to his right. Even Eperitus’s senses, Odysseus guessed, must have lost their edge, deprived of the sounds and smells of the outside world and confused by the deceptive shadows cast by the clustered flames of their torches. He realised that, but for his plan to follow the right-hand wall of the maze, they would be completely lost in a place without features and seemingly without end. He only hoped he had been correct in his deduction.

After a long time, twisting and turning and meeting at least two dead ends, he stopped and raised a cautioning hand. There, ahead of them in the shadows, was another body. Like the others, it lay front-down on the flagstones, nothing more than a skeleton beneath the rags of its former clothing. Then he saw the handle of a long knife protruding from its back.

‘It’s the same body we passed before,’ Eperitus said behind him.

‘It can’t be!’ Diomedes declared, pushing past him and staring down at the crumpled form. He kicked at the collection of bones and sent them rattling across the floor. ‘Damn it, Odysseus, your ridiculous scheme has been leading us in circles!’

His voice rose above the oppressive air that had previously dampened every sound they had made and rang out through the tunnels, echoing back on itself so that even Diomedes forgot his anger and glanced about in concern.

‘This sort of thing is to be expected,’ Odysseus replied firmly. ‘If you’d looked before kicking it to pieces, you’d have noticed we’ve approached it from the opposite direction. It’s the nature of a maze to lead back on itself in places and, if anything, coming here again shows my deductions were correct.’

He moved on before Diomedes could challenge him, knowing that if he was to concede his own doubts they might refuse to follow him altogether. Diomedes might even insist that they split up – something which Odysseus now felt certain would be disastrous for all of them. As it was, they followed him without question. Ever since Diomedes’s outburst, they had felt an increase in the malevolent atmosphere of the maze, as if the evil that had been slumbering there was now awake and conscious of their presence. They shrank against each other as they passed openings to other passages, or baulked as their heightened hearing detected the sounds of rodents or bats ahead of or behind them. Polites, whose great bulk brought up the rear of the file, was constantly glancing back over his shoulder and even Odysseus felt compelled to draw his sword and hold it loosely in his right hand as he traced the wall with the tip of his forefinger. Then, after many turns that had them feeling as if he had descended far beyond any hope of finding a way out again, they came upon the remains of another man. The skeleton had been dismembered and its bones spread across the tunnel, and for an awful moment Odysseus thought they had returned to the body Diomedes had kicked apart in his anger. Then he realised this was a third victim of whatever had killed the other two robbers, and that its arms and legs had been torn off by force while still alive and left littered around the torso. No-one spoke as they stepped over the bones, but Odysseus knew every man was thinking the same as himself.
What terrible creature possessed the strength to tear a man limb from limb
?

More than ever he wanted the nightmare journey to end, but the maze did not oblige his desperate desire to be free of its dark, confining walls. They wandered on interminably, past more openings and into more dead ends, not knowing whether the junctions they encountered were old or new. More than once Diomedes had to order his men to silence, and when the first torch spluttered and died out the sense of desperation among the warriors of Argos and Ithaca became palpable.

‘Keep your spare torch for the return journey,’ Odysseus said, as the man slid the dowel from his belt.

Eventually, just as he was wishing they would find another body to break up the monotony of the maze, he detected a change in the air. He did not need Eperitus’s supernatural senses to tell him they were nearing a larger space, and soon the whole party were lifting their heads and looking about as if their eyes could see what their deeper instincts had revealed to them. Then they found it. They followed the wall round to the right, then left again to face a large black void, much wider than any opening they had yet encountered. As they paused, the sounds of their feet in the dust and the knocking of their armour were no longer smothered by the close air but echoed back from the open space before them.

Odysseus let his fingers drop from the wall and, gripping his torch, forced himself forward through the opening. Eperitus followed. There was a short passage, like an antechamber, then the ceiling opened up above their heads and they found themselves in a wide, natural cavern, bigger than the great hall in the palace at Ithaca. The torches flared up to meet the richer air, and were soon joined by the flames of the others, who had forgotten the weariness of their long, subterranean journey in their eagerness to enter the heart of the maze.

T
HE
G
UARDIAN OF THE
T
OMB

T
he darkness was thrown back and the vastness of the chamber was revealed to them. Thick stone columns soared up into the shadows above their heads, and by the monochromatic light of their torches the warriors saw all the gathered wealth of a legendary king lying between them. To the left were two chariots: one magnificent in beaten gold that gleamed alluringly in the torchlight; the other a shattered wreck, its screen flattened, its yoke snapped and its broken wheels laid flat beside it. In an instant, Eperitus knew this was the chariot in which Oenomaus had pursued Pelops and Hippodameia, and beneath which he had been dragged to his death. His eyes moved on from this grim reminder of Pelops’s victory over his father-in-law to the heaped spoils of his victories over the other cities of the Peloponnese. Spears and swords lay in piles, while beside them were stacks of shields of the same, outdated design as the one Eperitus had inherited from his grandfather. Sets of body armour sat between them, like half-formed warriors rising up from the cavern floor. They were made of layered bands of bronze that gave the wearer full protection from his chin down to his groin, but due to their weight their like had not been seen on battlefields for many decades. Resting on top of them were helmets of bronze or leather, several of which were circled with layers of boars’ tusks.

More substantial wealth in the form of tripods, cauldrons, gold and copper ingots, silver goblets and other valuables lay scattered over the flagstones in no particular order. Whether they had been left like that by Pelops’s fearful but unloving subjects, or had been misplaced by the greedy hands of successive grave robbers, Eperitus was unable to tell, but they were a clear measure of how rich and important Pelops must have been in his lifetime. Some of the Argives were drawn irresistibly towards these precious items – forgetful of the dead men they had seen in the tunnels – but an order from Diomedes brought them back.

‘Touch nothing,’ he warned them. ‘We’ve come for one thing and one thing only!’

Odysseus hardly seemed to notice the piled treasures about him. He remained standing a few paces in from the entrance, his gaze fixed on the wooden figure of a horse at the far end of the chamber. It stood on top of an immense stone sarcophagus, which itself was set on a dais reached by three broad steps. Lying spread-eagled across the steps was another skeleton, this one on its back and staring blankly up at the high ceiling. Of all the rest of the party, only Eperitus, Diomedes and Omeros had noticed the tomb and the grim reminder of the curse that still haunted it. Odysseus turned and indicated for the others to put their torches in the empty iron brackets that were affixed to the columns. Then, with his own held high above his head, he approached the sarcophagus.

If the curse was to strike, Eperitus thought, now was the time. Diomedes snapped angrily at the others, who were still beguiled by the treasures around them, and ordered them to place their torches in the remaining brackets and ready their swords. Eperitus hung his own torch on one of the columns, snatched up a dusty shield and joined Odysseus at the foot of the dais. As the other Ithacans and the Argives formed a defensive semicircle around the sarcophagus, he stared down at the skeletal remains before him. Whether the other robbers had reached as far as Pelops’s burial chamber, Eperitus did not know, but this man had made it through the maze only to die at the steps of the sarcophagus. The manner of his death was not clear, though Eperitus noticed there was an unnatural angle to his neck.

‘This is it, then,’ Odysseus said, staring up at the carved horse with its bowed head and rigid, wooden mane. ‘Inside that sarcophagus is a riddle that will give us the key to the gates of Troy. We just have to work it out.’

‘Why a horse?’ Eperitus asked.

‘The Pisans are great horse breeders. They love their animals and revere them like gods, honouring them in their art, their rituals, even their funeral rites.’

‘Just like the Trojans.’

Odysseus did not answer, but narrowed his eyes thoughtfully as he stared at the effigy of the horse standing atop the tomb.

Diomedes joined them. ‘Let’s not delay any longer. This place is making my men nervous. And me too, if you want the truth.’

They took the few steps to the dais, careful not to tread on the skeleton of the grave robber, and looked down at the stone sarcophagus. It was twice the length of a normal man and twice the width, and was capped by a heavy granite lid that formed the base for the wooden horse. The horse stared down at them in disdainful silence as they laid their hands upon the rough stone and began to push. Their arm and leg muscles strained with the effort, the veins bulging as their grunts filled the chamber, but the lid would not move.

‘We need something to prise it off with,’ Eperitus said.

He returned to the piles of weapons stacked amid the columns and picked up a sword. But as he was about to return to the dais, his eyes fell on a spear leaning against the wall by the shattered chariot of Oenomaus. It had a long, black shaft of some unknown wood and was tipped by a broad head. Though it must have lain there for as long as all the other weapons, the bronze had not been dulled or tarnished by the years. Instead, it shone out fiercely in the torchlight, beckoning to him irresistibly. He picked it up, surprised at how light it felt in his hand despite its monstrous size. It was then he noticed the shaft had been intricately carved and inlaid with faint traces of gold and silver, only catching the torchlight as he moved it in his hands – the work of a great craftsman. The carvings began at the head of the shaft, beneath the socketed point, and seemed to depict a race between pairs of chariots. Only when Eperitus’s eyes reached the base did he realise it was the same pair of chariots, repeated at intervals, and that it was not a race but a pursuit, with the last scene showing the occupant of the second chariot impaling the first from behind with his spear.