The yells of the wounded awoke the others but the second and the third volleys of arrows were already rending the night and sowing the ground with the dead and wounded. Their cries spread panic and confusion, but the attackers were all under cover and well positioned to take aim. They were helped by a little moonlight that drifted through the clouds. The arrows raining down in every direction, even from above, disoriented the Ambron, who could not understand how to locate their aggressors. The survivors soon took to their heels, running headlong towards the valley and seeking shelter in the forest, but the Achaeans relentlessly pursued them all through the night.

At the first glimmer of dawn, the Achaeans gathered the bodies of their comrades and gave them burial. Diomedes buried Telephus, the Hittite slave, who had once been the commander of a chariot squadron in the plains of Asia; he had found death in a remote place, far from the homeland to which he had so longed to return.

The Chnansat off at a distance on a big boulder, chewing on a blade of grass and watching the sky as it filled with light. When the men had finished burying the dead, the Chnanapproached the grave where Telephus had been buried. He picked up a fistful of dirt and let it run through his fingers. ‘You stubborn Hittite,’ he said. ‘Was this any place to die? You had to leave me, just now when I was beginning to have a little hope. .’

He picked a deep blue mountain flower and laid it on the mound, then reached under his tunic and drew out a bronze clasp with coral and amber beads, and buried it next to him. ‘It’s all I can leave for you; you know how much I need these things. . Sleep, now, Telepinu; sleep, commander. The air is good here, the sun, and the wind; it’s a better place than many others, in the end. I must continue on my road until I find the sea again, and a ship. It was destiny; a mountaineer and a sailor could never stay friends. If I ever reach you where you are now, I’ll be soaking wet and stinking of algae, I can feel it. . stinking of rotten fish and salt water. .’

Myrsilus gave the signal; it was time to go. The Chnanturned back one last time. ‘You never asked me my name,’ he said. ‘If we should meet up again one day in the dark world, you wouldn’t even know what to call me. . there will be lots of Chnansdown there, I guess. . Anyway, friend, my name is Malech. . Malech. Remember that.’

They resumed their journey, walking at mid-slope on the mountain crest, directed south. One of the women said: ‘It takes thirty days to cover this road; it crosses the Blue Mountain range and leads to the land of the Mountains of Fire.’

‘What does that mean?’ one of the men asked Myrsilus, who was marching alongside her and listening attentively.

‘I’ve heard,’ said the woman, ‘that there are rivers of fire that pour out of those mountains and devour everything below. Storms of flames are hurled towards the sky, and the sea boils all around like a cauldron bubbling on the fire. Sometimes the earth trembles from its deepest depths and splits open, loosing pestiferous fumes that make the birds fall dead out of the sky.’

Myrsilus caught up with the king, who was marching at the head of his people in silence.

‘ Wanax,’ he said. ‘There’s a woman walking at the middle of the column who’s talking about the land of the Mountains of Fire that is found at the end of this trail. At thirty days’ march from here. I think she is speaking of the land of the Cyclops! I have heard it described by men who sailed very far from our land. No one has ever dared approach it; from the sea at night, you can see the Cyclops’ blazing eyes, flaming, you can hear their wild cries. They devour those who the waves cast up on their deserted beaches. I know that you do not fear them, you fear neither gods nor men, nor monsters of the earth or sea, and you know that I am ready to follow you anywhere, even to the Mountains of Fire, even to the land of the Cyclops, but listen to me, I beg of you. I think that the time has come for us to stop, as soon as we find a place where we can live. We have women, and we’ll take others. We can build a city, with walls, we can establish alliances with nearby peoples. We lost more comrades in taking that pass, brave men, skilled with spear and sword. How many more will we lose if we continue on this way? You have your bride. . stop, and generate a child so that this land can nourish him and accept him as its own. . or we will stay foreigners. .’

The king did not turn and continued on his way.

They marched along the crest of the mountains all day, until dusk, leaving behind their lost companions, leaving behind Telephus, the slave who died as a warrior, as the commander he had always been.

The king advanced with his head low, the first of the entire column, and for the first time he looked small to his men against the immensity of the mountains and the sky. He looked lost, in that labyrinthine, wooded land where every valley might conceal new threats. As far as the eye could see, there were no places that could sustain a city, no fields where crops could be grown, no plains that led to the sea, to a port from which ships could depart, making contact with other peoples, striking up trade. All they saw, few and far between, were villages of huts inhabited by shepherds who withdrew fearfully into the forests upon their approach.

Some of the men began to envy those companions who had remained in Argos. Perhaps nothing had happened to them; they had certainly rejoined their families and were sitting at table now with their wives and children, eating fragrant bread and drinking strong red wine. And when they awoke in the morning their eyes beheld the walls and the towers of Argos, of all cities the most beautiful and gracious.

It even seemed to them that their king had been abandoned by the gods. Where was Athena, who was wont to appear to him in human form, or so they said, and speak with him? Where was the goddess who had been at his side in his war-car on the plains of Ilium, guiding his horses like a charioteer?

The king advanced alone, head low, as if he had lost his way, as if he no longer had a goal. Some said that perhaps by walking among the severed heads, he had unknowingly surrendered his inner strength, his indomitable courage.

They camped in a little valley, wedged between the forests, near a clear-watered lake. There was an island in the middle of the lake, connected to the shore by a thin, partially submerged isthmus. The island was bare, save for a single, gigantic tree. Diomedes reached the shore of the lake and sat on a stone; he seemed to be contemplating the huge tree that extended its boughs to cover the island.

The bride from the Mountains of Ice joined him. She had a name now, Ros, and she had learned the language of the Achaeans.

She stepped up lightly behind him. He heard her but did not turn. He said: ‘I stole you away from your husband because I thought I could found a kingdom in this land for myself and my comrades. I thought I could build a city and make it invincible. I thought, when I saw you, that only you could erase from my mind and my flesh the memory of the wife who betrayed me, Aigialeia. . But now my strength is abandoning me, the road has become endless. I abducted you from your promised husband. . for nothing.’

‘Nemro,’ she said. ‘I saw him but once, and I held his hand only at the moment when I was to become his bride. I cried when you killed him, but perhaps. . perhaps I would have cried over you if he had killed you. I cried for his youth cut short before its time, for the day that darkens before it reaches noon. I could do nothing anything else; a woman cannot choose to whom she will bind her life. But you are my destiny now, you sleep beside me every night.’