I have never doubted that my father loved me, but I was never able to chat easily to him; years after the war, Aretus said something about feeling the same way, and he is a far less taciturn man than I. Perhaps it was just that we were more like our mother, who was silent and resigned, and our younger brothers were garrulous and friendly like our father. Nevertheless, that night, I think my father knew that I wanted to talk to him, and cut short a dice-party at someone else's tent.
"'M worried about Antilochus," I said, taking off my greaves. There had been some minor action later that day, which the Spartans had mostly run off and cleared out; it seemed as though the skirmish had been more on principle, to remind us all that we were still at war, than for any other reason. I hadn't been involved, but it had served to reawaken my fears about the Ethiopians.
"How come?"
I hemmed and hawed for a while, telling my father things he already knew: that Antilochus was young, that he was impulsive, thatI was afraid he would do something stupid, that I felt responsible for him.
"Thrasymedes," my father said gently, "you're losing perspective. We're talking about someone who ran away from home when he was fourteen so he could join us here." This was true.
"Yes," I said, "but you know, he's real young, and he doesn't have the experience the others and I have, I mean he's had a few men under his command but not all the time like we do, and—" I was running on at the mouth. I lacked only the hand-wringing to put on a bad performance, and also to make my father give some serious thought to my health.
"You really don't trust Antilochus not to do anything stupid in the field, do you?"
"Oh, I trust him. It's the Ethiopians I don't trust." As though I could stick a huge sign on my brother's back, threatening dire consequences if he were to be killed, or somehow stop the melee in case things got too rough.
"You're not supposed to trust them," my father said gently. "They are our enemies' allies. But you can trust your brother, and you can trust the gods."
Cold comfort, when my brother was notorious for doing rash things, and when even the gods could not remain impartial—or so it seemed.
"I want to," I said. "I want to, Dad. You can't know how much."
I would have liked to tell Achilles to take care of Antilochus, for I could not (nor could I hope that my brother would listen to me), but it was completely untenable. And so I took my father's advice, and trusted the gods; I hung my spoils in the temple of Thymbraean Apollo, which was neutral ground, although the Archer and I had never gotten on. My sudden piety was the talk of the camp; I overheard Odysseus telling someone, "Oh, have Thrass purify you about the other guy you killed when you were drunk; he's a good holy man." He was being sarcastic, of course, but that he would remark on it at all meant that it was getting out.
That night, and for many nights following, I prayed before bed; I swapped one of the rank-and-file a new tunic in exchange for some incense, which he might have stolen from Calchas (judging by the unusual amount of grumbling we all heard from the soothsayer). I pretended to myself that the reason the act of burning it brought me no comfort was because it had been stolen.
There are times when the gods do not hear your prayers, and although I knew this, I could not bring myself to accept it. My desperation spiraled like a vine up the side of a house: I prayed for the Ethiopians not to come. I prayed for them to get sick and die before they could fight, or for Memnon to be detained until we'd cleaned up Troy good, for somebody else to mop them up before Antilochus took the field. In my panic, I prayed that my brother would take sick or be wounded—oh, not enough that his life would be in danger, but just enough to keep him off the field.
I prayed like a woman newly widowed, who cannot yet accept the fact of death.
As a young boy, I used to do something that brought me comfort: count the number of my steps to a certain place, shut my eyes, and pretend that the thing in my heart would not come to be. Because then, I was convinced, I would get it.
I had, of late, reverted to this habit, as though a child's game would make the gods do what I was convinced all my prayers and entreaties would not. It was just sunup—we had gone the night without an attack. I don't know why I was surprised by this: they no longer had the numbers, nor could they afford to risk it. They were weakening.
I walked across the long line of tents; it must have still been early, because only the sentries were awake. I remember that the sun was up and struck everything, even the trampled, well-packed ground where we'd all been stomping about for the past nine years, into gold. Only half-aware of my surroundings, I began to count to myself. One. Two. Three. Four.
Past the Argive tents. Diomedes' tent-flaps were still shut. He wasn't up yet. Of course, maybe he hadn't come in that morning; there might have been recon work to do last night, and he always pulled a certain amount of that. Sixty-four. Sixty-five. Sixy-six. Sixty-seven.
Coming up on Ithacan tents, then. I knew some of the Ithacan archers; their tents were all shut up, too. There was a single sentry, looking very tired; he was clearly afraid to fall asleep. Nobody I recognized. Maybe Odysseus was back, and we wouldn't hear of it until there was a council. One hundred sixty-six. One hundred sixty-seven. One hundred sixty-eight. One hundred sixty-nine.
By the time I reached the end of the line, I had taken seven hundred and ninety-five steps. I was in front of the Myrmidon tents, and I could hear the clang and clash of swords—somebody was up early and practicing. Vigorously, at that.
I shut my eyes and thought, My brother will not live. As though this childish game would ensure his safety. The old ritual brought me no comfort.
"Hey, Thrass, we're not going to hurt you. You don't have to look so scared."
I must have looked even more horrified when my eyes flew open, because Antilochus and Achilles both laughed. My brother, in fact, laughed so hard that he didn't look out for a small stone securely embedded in the ground near his feet, tripped on it, and was sent sprawling—which made him laugh all the harder, and Achilles snickered again.
"This is the finest Pylos has to offer!" I said, indicating my brother with a sweeping gesture.
Still grinning, Achilles raised an eyebrow. "How proud your father must be."
"He considers Antilochus one of our better spearmen," I said. My brother was still laughing, as though this pratfall was the funniest thing that had ever happened to him.
"The Trojans must run like frightened deer."
"No," Antilochus said, finally picking himself up, "I do silly things, and then while they're gawking, my brothers and my father finish 'em off." He brushed off his chiton.
"I didn't mean to interrupt anything," I said. "I'll go now, if you want."
"Stay and break bread with us," Achilles said, at exactly the same time as my brother said, "I just wanted Achilles to show me a few things. We weren't doing anything important." All the same, I got the impression, from the vaguely sulky tone of his voice, that Antilochus wanted me to remove myself; he was always jealous of his friends.
I wanted to stay. I wanted to watch the two of them circle each other, drawn swords in hands, wanted to watch them both at work: in the field, you don't really have a chance to appreciate it, because you're too busy watching your own back (and your opponent's technique). I wanted to see my brother happy and laughing.
"Good of you to offer," I said, "but I'd best get back to our part of the camp. Aretus came back from a raid." (This was true.) "You know Dad's going to want someone to help catalogue the spoils." (This was not necessarily true, in that it did not have to be me.)
They made the appropriate too-bad-you're-not-staying noises and waved me out. As I turned to go, some daimon put it in my head to say, "Oh, Antilochus? Try and make it back before noon, if you would. I heard we're breaking the drought this afternoon." This was also not necessarily true, but it was based in fact; everybody had seen Trojan heralds escorted to and from our camp, and everybody knew that there had been noises about single combat.
Antilochus crowed like a little boy. "That's the best news I've heard all day! Thanks, Thrass. I'll be there."
When I could no longer see him, I heard him say, "I don't have much time, then."
Achilles' voice said, "You want to do just a few more?"
"Sure, let's see if I can get this down. One more time before I go, then!"
The afternoon was so choreographed that it might as well have been painted on a sign and hung outside the Scaean Gates and in front of our camp: "Single combat, skirmish to follow. All combatants to retreat at nightfall."
The particularly uninspired single combat that afternoon involved some minor Argive and one of Priam's sons. (The witticisms about Priam still having living sons flew fast and furious.) I could almost hear them chanting, "Parry, parry, thrust, thrust" in the monotone of everybody's swordsmanship teacher—that was how dull the combat was. Needless to say, it decided nothing, but it did get the young and callow of both sides all whipped up and thirsty for blood.
The skirmish was equally uninspired; I gave a decent account of myself, killing three of my men. I managed to strip one of them, and got the greaves and breastplate off the other before a Trojan twice my size came bounding over to defend the body. Needless to say, I did not get to strip the third. All the same, there had been enough witnesses that anything I said about him would go undisputed, although I have often suspected that I was well-liked simply because my brother and father were. I was well aware that the other sons of Nestor were thought of as dull dogs.
I ask you, though: how could I measure up to Antilochus? How could anybody?
Watching his spear-work, I ached with pride and fear: one moment, I wanted to say, That's my brother! to anyone who would listen, and the next, I wanted to rush to him and whisk him away, as though I were a god who could protect him. It was in those last days that I came to understand why men covet things that belong only to the gods.
Father Zeus, Zeus the Thunderer, Zeus Soter the Preserver, I prayed, promise me. I did not say what I wanted him to promise me—perhaps it was too terrible to contemplate, or perhaps I myself did not know.
Echephron said later that I had raised my palms to the sky right there on the battlefield, and that only Teucer's quick thinking and lightning reflexes had saved me from an untimely death at the hands of a Trojan twice my size.