EPEUS (Shuffling his feet and looking down in embarrassment. Epeus is the best boxer of all the Achaeans, and his face and shaved head show his years at the sport—cauliflower ears, a flattened nose, permanant scar tissue on his cheeks and brow ridges, countless scars even on his scalp. I cannot fail to see the irony in Epeus’ position in this council and my own effect on his life and fate. Never famed for his battle prowess, Epeus would have won the boxing matches in Patroclus’ funeral games—held by Achilles—and been the master builder of the Odysseus-conceived wooden horse if I had not begun screwing up the Homeric version of this story almost a year ago. As it stands now, Epeus is in the council of chieftains only because all his commanding officers—up to Menelaus—have been killed.)
Lord Nestor, when one’s opponent is most confident, when he crosses the fighting space toward you with certainty in his heart that you are down for the count, unable to rise, that is the best time to strike him hard. In this case, strike him hard, stun him, knock him back on his heels, and run for our lives. I was at the Games once when a boxer did just that.
(Laughter all around at this.)
EPEUS But it will have to be at night.
NESTOR I agree. The Trojans see too far and ride their chariots too quickly for us to have a fighting chance in the daylight.
MERIONES (Son of Molus, close comrade of Idomeneus, second in command of the Cretans.)
We won’t have a much better chance in the moonlight. The moon is three-quarters full.
LAERCES
(A Myrmidon, son of Haeman)
But the winter sun sets earlier and the moon rises later this week. We will have almost three hours from the beginning of real darkness—the kind of darkness where you need a torch to find your way—and the rising of the moon.
NESTOR
The question is, can we hold through the hours of daylight today and will our men have enough energy left in them to fight—we’ll have to concentrate our attack and hit hard to forge a hole in the Trojan lines—and enough energy left then to run the twenty miles and more to the forests of Mount Ida?
IDOMENEUS
They’ll have the energy to fight today if they know they might have a chance to live tonight. I say we hit the Trojans right in the center of their lines—right where Hector leads—since he’s concentrated his strength on both flanks for today’s fighting. I say we break out tonight.
NESTOR The rest of you? I need to hear from everyone here. It’s truly all or nothing, everyone or no one in this attempt.
PODALIRIUS
We’ll have to leave our sick and wounded behind, and there will be thousands more of these by nightfall. The Trojans will slaughter them. Perhaps do worse than mere slaughter in their frustration if any of us gets away.
NESTOR Yes. But such are the vagaries of war and fate. I need to hear your votes, Noble Chiefs of the Achaeans.
THRASYMEDES Aye. We go for it all tonight. And may the gods watch over those left behind and those captured later.
TEUCER
Fuck the gods up the ass. I say yes, if our fate is to die here on this stinking beach, I say we defy the Fates. Go tonight at fall of true dark.
POLYXINUS Yes.
ALAST OR Yes. Tonight.
LITTLE AJAX Aye.
EUMELUS Yes. All or nothing.
MENESTHIUS If my lord Achilles were here, he’d go for Hector’s throat. Maybe we can get lucky and kill the son of a bitch on our way out.
NESTOR Another vote for breaking out. Echepolus?
ECHEPOLUS
I think we’ll all die if we stay and fight another day. I think we’ll all die if we try to escape. I for one choose to stay with the wounded and offer my surrender to Hector, trusting in the hope that some shards of his former honor and sense of mercy have survived. But I will tell my men that they can make up their own minds.
NESTOR
No, Echepolus. Most of the men will follow their commander’s lead. You can stay behind and surrender, but I’m relieving you of your command and appointing Amphion in your place. You can go straight from this meeting to the tent where the wounded wait, but speak to no one. Your brigade is small enough and it is on Amphion’s left on the line… the two can merge with no confusion or need to reposition troops. That is, I am promoting Amphion if Amphion votes to fight our way out tonight.
AMPHION I so vote.
DRESEUS I vote for my Epeans—we fight and die tonight, or fight and escape. I for one want to see my home and family again.
EUMELUS
Agamemnon’s men told us, and the moravec things confirmed it, that our cities and homes were empty, our kingdoms now unpopulated—our people stolen away by Zeus.
DRESEUS
To which I say fuck Agamemnon, fuck the moravec toys, and fuck Zeus. I plan to go home to see if my family is waiting. I believe they are.
POLYPOETES
(Another son of Agasthenes, co-commander of the Lapiths from Argissa)
My men will hold the line today and lead the fight out tonight. I swear this by all the gods.
TEUCER Couldn’t you swear by something a little more constant? Like your bowels?
(Laughter around the circle)
NESTOR It’s agreed, then, and I concur. We’ll do everything in our power to hold back the Trojan onslaught today. To that end, Podalirius, oversee the serving out of all rations this morning except for what a man can carry in his tunic tonight. And double the morning’s water rations. Go through Agamemnon’s and dead Menelaus’ private stores, pull out anything edible. Commanders, tell your men before this morning’s battle that all they have to do today is hold—hold for their lives, die only for their comrades’ lives—and we will attack tonight at true dark. Some of us will reach the forest and—Fates willing—our homes and families again. Or, failing that, our names will be written in gold words of glory that will last forever. Our children’s grandchildren’s grandchildren will visit our burial mounds here in this accursed land and say—“Aye, they were men in those days.” So tell your sergeants and their men to breakfast well this morning, for most of us will eat dinner in the Halls of the Dead. So tonight, when it’s true dark and before the moon arises, I will authorize our favorite pugilist—Epeus—to ride up and down our lines, shouting Ápete—just as they do to start the chariot races and footraces at the Games. And then we’ll be off to our freedom!
(And that should have been the end of the meeting—and a rousing end it was, for Nestor is a born leader and knows how to wrap up a meeting with action items and energy, something my department chair at Indiana University never understood—but, as always, someone breaks the perfect rhythm of the perfect script. In this case, that someone is Teucer.)
TEUCER
Epeus, noble boxer, you never told us the end of your story. Whatever happened to that Olympics boxer who stunned his opponent and then ran out of the arena?
EPEUS
(Who as everyone knows is more honest than wise)
Oh, him. The Olympics priests hunted him down in the woods and killed him like a dog.
The Achaean chieftains have dispersed, gone back to their lines and their men. Nestor has left with his sons. The healer Podalirius has put together a detail of men to sack Agamemnon’s tent in a search for food and wine. I’m left alone here on the beach—or at least as alone as one can be when pressed cheek to jowl with thirty thousand other unwashed men all reeking of sweat and fear.
I touch the QT medallion under my tunic. Nestor did not ask for my vote. None of the Achaean heroes so much as looked at me during that entire debate. They know I don’t fight and they seem to like me no less for it—it’s the way these ancient Greeks treat men who like to dress up in women’s clothing and paint their faces white. There is no dishonor there in most of these men’s eyes, only dismissal. I’m a freak to them, an outsider, something less than a man.
I know I’m not going to stay until the bitter end. I doubt if I’ll stay during today’s battle since the air here will grow dark with volleys of arrows in the next half hour. I don’t have the morphing gear and impact armor that I had as a scholic—I haven’t even donned the metal or leather armor that’s so available from Achaean corpses all around me. If I stay, I doubt I’d last the day—the last two days have been a series of craven hours and timid cowering for me here, near the back of the line, near the tent where the wounded are dying. If I were to survive the day, my chances of surviving the attack on the Trojans after dark would be near zero.