They filed in almost at once, four men, unarmed, accompanied by Chasimenos, still in his tunic of a palace official. They made their reverences, crouching with heads lowered and hands on knees. Then they straightened and stood together, side by side before the King. One of them Calchas recognized, a man named Phylakos, a captain in Agamemnon's guard. He was naked to the waist, dressed only in cotton kilt and leather wristbands and sandals, a powerful, deep-chested man, nearly bald, with pale scars on his body and a papyrus flower tattooed on his right thigh.

In the pause before the King spoke again all heard, twining through the voices of the wind but distinct from them, the flailing of the bull-roarers down near the shore, like the sound of many wings beating together. Every day the shamans of the Pelasgians, a people with their own gods and their own language, fronted the sea and whirled their long ropes, with flat pieces of wood attached, in great circles overhead, striving to outdo the wind with the whirling they made and so drive it back to its caves in the north. Perhaps stirred in his twilight by this mighty wingbeat, old Nestor began some querulous complaint, hushed immediately by his two sons, who were in constant attendance upon him, one on either side. In the years of trying to quieten their father, their voices had become identical, like the cooing of doves. Calchas felt again that shudder of warning within him. These things too were exact, unrepeatable, as was the way they had chosen to stand together, even though it might seem as random as the stones in a stream bed.

Agamemnon began to speak. His voice was slow, like the voice of one who relates a dream immediately on waking and strives to remember the order of things as they happened. He spoke about the omen of the eagles, the two male eagles, one black as night, one with a blaze of silver, seen about the palace of Mycenae in the time before the expedition set out, seen several days in succession, haunting the walls, always on the right hand, the spear side, auguring good fortune. Two full-grown male eagles in company together, a thing never seen before. 'Those of Mycenae will remember this omen and the interpretation made at the time by our diviner Calchas?'

Nobody spoke but Menelaus nodded and after him several others, as if they had needed the example. None of the four who had been brought in made any sign. Agamemnon turned his head slightly towards the diviner. 'Calchas will remind us of his words at that time.'

Thus prompted, the priest began to speak in his careful, slightly hesitant Greek, moving his body slowly and rhythmically forward and back in the way the priests of Caria did when uttering prophesies – it was in Caria, as a youth, that he had been admitted to the cult of the god whom he must always now remember to call Apollo. A coldness gathered in his breast as he spoke, because his words at Mycenae had been uttered to please Agamemnon and establish his own position, he had not been properly mindful of the nature of his god, who was male and female in equal parts and so gave divided counsels, which then had to be reconciled. There was no choice now but to repeat the simple message.

'As the eagle is the king of birds, so Agamemnon and Menelaus are kings of men, the eagle brothers, sons of Atreus. The eagle is the bird of Zeus, and this has been so from the beginning of his rule, even before his rule was established. It was an eagle that flew towards him on the eve of his great battle with the Titans for supremacy in heaven, thus ensuring his victory. The eagles that came to haunt the battlements of Mycenae and whose presence was remarked by many, were sent by Zeus in token that the quarrel with Troy is a just one.'

He stopped here, the coldness still gathered round his heart. Croton was already raising his staff. He had known that the priest would intervene, would want, as he had wanted from the beginning, to make the augury his own, establish himself as sole interpreter of the god's will. But he had expected more ceremony. Now Croton broke into speech, scarcely waiting for the King's nod – mark of the power he had gained in these few days.

'The justice of Zeus demands that the outrage to hospitality committed by Paris in his abduction of Helen while a guest in the house of her husband Menelaus should be avenged. The justice of Zeus–'

He was interrupted by Menelaus, who said loudly, 'Absolutely right, you've hit the nail on the head, Croton. A piece of shit like that, a beastly Asian who started life as a ragged-arsed goatherd, how could my Helen, who was always repelled by anything coarse, have allowed herself to be forcibly abducted like that, if he had not used the wiles of the bitch goddess Hecate and all the demons of his filthy country against her?' He was fair-skinned and inclined to freckles and his nose had peeled, making it look strangely paler than the rest of his face, which had flushed with the force of his feelings. 'Asians stink,' he said, more mildly. 'Their houses are like pigsties.'

Croton's staff was still raised. He seemed not to have registered the interruption. 'The justice of Zeus gives redress to the wronged, the justice of Zeus is vested in the eagle brothers Agamemnon and Menelaus.'

His eyes were alight and his voice vibrated with passion. This was the new thing, this cry of justice, Calchas thought. It simply didn't make sense. Thoroughly unreasonable. It derived from the same error, that of regarding a god as a father. Naturally, the children will want a father to be just, especially since they can't achieve justice themselves. Zeus was cloud-gatherer, rain-giver, thunderer. Where did the justice come in? He glanced across at Menelaus' patchy face. That reference to the uncleanness and evil habits of Asians, had it been a dig at him? On the whole, he thought not. The representative Asian was still Paris, who had seduced Menelaus' wife while he was away at a funeral and then run off to Troy with her. All the same, these outbursts were getting more frequent all the time and more wide-ranging. Calchas thought of the houses of Tarsus, with their scrubbed steps and entrance-ways, the smell of wet dust in the courtyards of Hattusas when they scattered water to clean the paving stones. In Kadesh they employed street-sweepers, a thing unheard of in the Greek lands. Menelaus had seen nothing of Asia, of course – except perhaps the slave markets of Miletus...

Croton seemed about to continue, but Agamemnon raised a hand to stay him. No one had yet mentioned the wind and it seemed unlikely to Calchas that anyone would, not here, not unbidden. It was too dangerous a subject. But the question must be there in all minds, as it was in his: if Zeus had sent the eagles as a blessing on the expedition, why was the army being held here in Aulis, why were they being prevented from sailing?

Agamemnon looked round at the faces as if he might see treason on the wing among them. 'It was to Mycenae that the eagles were sent, not elsewhere,' he said. They were sent to me. By consent of my brother first, and then by consent of you all, the conduct of the war is given to me.'

No one had questioned this, at least not otherwise than in private with those he could trust, or in the reflections of his solitude. For Agamemnon to assert it publicly now was a mistake, a sign of weakness. Calchas sensed the knowledge of this twisting through the minds of all those in the tent. He saw Odysseus glance aside, but could not tell where his eyes were directed. Chasimenos, standing beside him, appeared lost in thoughts of his own. Achilles was turning his perfect profile upwards, towards the roof of the tent, with his usual air of bored indifference. No particular expression showed on any face; but Calchas could sense the twisting course of the knowledge of weakness as it went from mind to mind, a serpent of thought, moving like the snakes of light that coiled and loosened on the walls of the tent as the wind ruffled the flaps of canvas at the entrance. The snake, sign of the Mother...