IDOMENEUS Better to not die at all. Is there no plan to save ourselves?

ALASTOR

(Teucer’s commander)

The ships are burned. The food is running out, but we will all be dead of thirst before we starve. Disease claims more every hour.

MENESTHIUS

My Myrmidons want to break out—fight our way through the Trojan lines and make for the south—to Mount Ida and the heavy forests there.

NESTOR

(nodding)

Your Myrmidons are not the only ones thinking about breaking out and escaping, brave Menesthius. But your Myrmidons cannot do it alone. None of our tribes or groups can. The Trojan lines stretch back for miles and their allies’ lines go deeper. They expect us to try to break out. They’re probably wondering why we haven’t tried it before this. You know the iron laws of combat with sword, shield, and spear, Menesthius—all Myrmidons and Achaeans know it—for every man who falls in shield-to-shield combat, a hundred are slaughtered while fleeing. We have no working chariots left—Hector’s chiefs have hundreds. They’ll run us down and slaughter us like sheep before we cross the dried bed of the River Scamander.

DRESEUS So we stay? And die here today or tomorrow on the beach next to the charred timbers of our great black ships?

ANTILOCHUS

(Nestor’s other son)

No. Surrender is out of the question for any man here with balls, and defense of this position will be untenable in a few hours—it may be untenable during the next attack—but I say we all try to break out at the same time. We have thirty thousand fighting men left—more than twenty thousand well enough to fight and run. Four out of five of us may fall, verily—be slaughtered like sheep before we reach the concealing forests of Mount Ida—but at those odds, four or five thousand of us will survive. Half that number may even survive the searches of the forest for us which the Trojans and their allies will carry out, like royalty pursuing a stag, and half that remaining number may find their way off this goddamned continent and cross the wine-dark seas to home. Those odds are good enough for me.

THRASYMEDES And for me.

TEUCER

Any odds are better than the certainty of our bones bleaching on this fucking goddamned motherfucking shit-eating piss-drinking beach.

NESTOR Was that a vote for breaking out, son of Telemon?

TEUCER You’re fucking goddamned right it was, Lord Nestor.

NESTOR Noble Epeus, you’ve had no voice in this council yet. What do you think?

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!