‘I doubt, sire,’ said the son of Peleus levelly, ‘that if the Trojans don’t venture outside to fight, we can take Troy. My long sight is better than most men’s, and I’ve been studying those walls you seem to think overrated. I can’t agree. I feel we underrate them. The only way we can crush Troy is to lure the Trojans out onto the plain and defeat them in open battle. And that’s not easy. We’d have to outflank them as well, prevent their retiring back inside the city to fight another day. Don’t you think it’s wise to talk bearing that in mind? Can’t we devise some sort of trick to lure the Trojans out?’
I laughed. ‘Achilles, if you sat within walls as thick and high as Troy’s, would you march outside to do battle? Their best chance was the beach of Sigios while we were landing. They couldn’t defeat us even then. If I were Priam, I’d keep the army on top of the walls and let it thumb its noses at us.’
He was not at all dashed. ‘It was no more than a faint hope, Odysseus. But I can’t see how we can storm those walls or batter down those gates. Can you?’
I pulled a face. ‘Oh, I’m silent! I’ve already spoken on the subject. When there are ears prepared to listen, I’ll do so again. Not before.’
‘My ears are prepared to listen,’ he said quickly.
‘Your ears aren’t prominent enough, Achilles.’
Not even this little joke pleased Agamemnon’s ears. He leaned forward. ‘Troy cannot withstand us!’ he cried.
‘Then, sire,’ Achilles persisted, ‘if there’s no sign of a Trojan army on the plain tomorrow, may we drive to the foot of the walls to inspect them at close quarters?’
‘Of course,’ said the High King stiffly.
When the meeting ended without resolving to do anything more significant than drive out to see the walls, I jerked my head at Diomedes. Shortly afterwards he joined me in my tent. After the wine was poured and the servants dismissed he allowed his curiosity to show; Diomedes was learning not to burn.
‘What is it?’ he asked eagerly.
‘Does it have to be anything? I enjoy your company.’
‘I’m not questioning our friendship. I’m questioning the look on your face when you signalled me. What’s afoot, Odysseus?’
‘Ah! You’re growing too accustomed to my little habits.’
‘My thinking apparatus may be war-battered, but it can still tell the difference between the smell of a jonquil and a corpse.’
‘Call this a private council, then, Diomedes. Of all of us you know war best. Of all of us you should know best how to take a fortress city. You conquered Thebes and built a shrine out of the skulls of your enemies – by all the Gods, what passion it must have taken to do that!’
‘Troy isn’t Thebes,’ he answered soberly. ‘Thebes is Greek, a part of our united nations. Here is war with Asia Minor. Why won’t Agamemnon see that? There are only two powers of any consequence on the Aegaean – Greece and the Asia Minor federation, which includes Troy. Babylon and Nineveh aren’t greatly worried by what happens around the Aegaean, and Egypt is so far away that Rameses cares not at all.’ He stopped, looked embarrassed. ‘But who am I to lecture you?’
‘Don’t hold yourself too light. It was an admirable summation. I wish a few more at today’s council were half as logical.’
He drank deeply to wash the flush of pleasure away. ‘I took Thebes, yes, but only after a pitched battle outside its walls. I entered Thebes over the bodies of its men. Achilles was very likely thinking of that when he spoke of luring the Trojans outside first. But Troy? A handful of women and children can keep us baying at the gates for ever.’
‘Starve them out,’ I said.
That made him laugh. ‘Odysseus, you’re incurable! You know full well that the laws of Hospitable Zeus forbid that. Could you honestly face the Furies if you starved a city into submission?’
‘The Daughters of Kore hold no fears for me. I looked them in the eye years ago.’
Was this further evidence of my impiety? he was clearly asking himself. But he did not ask me. Instead, he asked, ‘Then tell me what conclusion you’ve reached?’
‘One, thus far. That this campaign will be very long – a matter of years. I’ll therefore make my arrangements with that fact in mind. My house oracle said I’d be away for twenty years.’
‘How can you believe so implicitly in a humble house oracle when you can advocate starvation?’
‘The house oracle,’ I said patiently, ‘belongs to the Mother. To Earth. She’s very close to us in all things. She thrusts us into this world and calls us back to her breast when our course is run. Yet war lies in the province of men. It ought to be a man’s own decision as to how to pursue war. Every wretched law governing it seems to me to protect the other side. One day a man is going to want to win a war so badly that he’ll break those laws, and after him everything will be different. Starve one city into submission and you start a landslide of hunger. I want to be the first such man! No, Diomedes, I am not impious! Just impatient of restrictions. Doubtless the world will sing of Achilles until Kronos remarries the Mother and the day of men comes to an end. But is it hubris in me to want the world to sing of Odysseus? I don’t have the advantages Achilles has – I’m not physically huge or the son of a High King – all I have to work with is what I am – clever, cunning, subtle. Not bad instruments.’
Diomedes stretched. ‘No, indeed. How will you plan for this long campaign?’
‘I’ll commence tomorrow after we return from our inspection of Troy’s walls. I intend to select my own little army from out the ranks of this too large one.’
‘Your own army?’
‘Yes, my very own. Not the usual kind of army, nor the usual kind of troops. I’m going to recruit the worst of our daredevils, trouble makers and malcontents.’
He gaped, thunderstruck. ‘Surely you’re joking! Trouble makers? Malcontents? Daredevils? What kind of troops are those?’
‘Diomedes, let’s put aside for the moment the question of whether my house oracle is right in saying twenty years, or Kalchas is right in saying ten. Whichever is a long time.’ I put my wine cup down and sat up straight. ‘In a short campaign a good officer can keep his trouble makers busy, his daredevils so closely watched that they can’t harm the rest of his men, and his malcontents separated from those they might influence. But on a long campaign there’s bound to be strife. We won’t be fighting battles every day – or even every moon – throughout the course of ten or twenty years. There’ll be moons on end of idleness, particularly during winter. And during these lulls tongues will work such mischief that the mutters of discontent will reach the proportions of a howl.’
Diomedes looked amused. ‘What about the cowards?’
‘Oh, I have to leave the officers sufficient unsatisfactory men to dig the cesspits!’
That provoked a laugh. ‘All right, then, you have acquired your own little army. What will you do with it?’
‘Keep it very busy all the time. Give its members something to work on that their dubious talents will relish. The kind of men I mean aren’t craven. They’re cantankerous. Trouble makers live to stir up trouble. Daredevils aren’t happy unless they’re endangering other lives as well as their own. And malcontents would complain to Zeus about the quality of the nectar and ambrosia in Olympos. Tomorrow I’ll go to every commanding officer and ask for his three worst men, excluding cowards. Naturally he’ll be delighted to be rid of them. When I’ve finished recruiting them, I’ll put them to work.’
Though he knew I was deliberately teasing him, Diomedes could not resist rising to the bait. ‘What work?’ he demanded.
I continued to tease him. ‘On the fringes of the beach not far from where my ships are drawn up there is a natural hollow. It’s out of sight of everyone, yet close enough to the camp to be put on this side of the wall Agamemnon is going to have to erect to shield our ships and men from Trojan raids. It’s quite a deep hollow, big enough to contain enough houses to board three hundred men in extreme comfort. My army will live in that hollow. There in complete isolation I’ll train them for their work. Once they’re recruited, they’ll have no contact whatsoever with their old units or the main army.’
