The Songs of the Kings

The Heavy Burden of Command

1.

'What went wrong?' Odysseus took care to keep his tone casual. The last thing he wanted to do was antagonize the man before him, who might then decide to change sides. Unlikely, he was too deeply implicated. But Phylakos was corrupt, and so more easily offended in his dignity than an honest person. 'I mean to say, it was a simple enough matter, wasn't it? All you had to do was coach the men in the story so they didn't contradict each other.'

He had thought at one point that Calchas would take it into his head to interrogate the three separately, in which case discrepancies would certainly have been revealed. But he had seen almost at once that there was nothing to worry about. Behind his professional ma

Phylakos stared unwaveringly before him, habit of an old soldier who felt himself under reprimand. He had been summoned to Odysseus' tent early for this private talk. Chasimenos, who had also been party to the story, was due later. 'We couldn't have known he would come out with that,' he said. His voice was scraped, painful sounding, as if always proceeding from a parched throat.

'But you must have known he was a hysteric. Those with him must have known.'

'Hysteric?'

Odysseus sighed. 'They must have known he had a screw loose. You only have to look at his face.'

'They said he screamed in his sleep sometimes, and sometimes laughed for no reason, but they were used to him. They thought nothing of it and neither did I. All the fool had to do was keep his trap shut.'

'Well, he didn't.' Odysseus paused for a moment or two, then said in a tone of wonder rather than of reproach, 'And you backed him up.'

There was no reply to this and Odysseus expected none. It had been a bad mistake, but he knew that Phylakos had not been able to help himself, it had been in the nature of a reflex action. The back-up, the closing of ranks, the solidarity to the group, this was the conditioning of military life. It counted for morality with many, even in support of a lie. Only very rare beings were free of such limiting factors, such blindness to their own interest: clear-sighted men, who saw things steadily and saw them whole. Men like himself. 'Well,' he said, 'it's too late to do anything about it now. I trust this blabbermouth will be rendered harmless, made incapable of further damage, what's the word I'm looking for?' He liked this fishing for words, casting, seeing the float bob, pulling up a plump one. But Phylakos, still staring doggedly before him, was not the right sort for it. This time he was obliged to answer his own question. 'Neutralized,' he said.

'Snuffed out, you mean? Already taken care of. That's one motherfucker won't talk out of turn again, I can promise you that.'

'Your patriotism will be remembered and rewarded,' Odysseus said. 'Liberally rewarded. You know, when we get across the water.'

In the reflective silence that followed these words, one of his Ithacan guards came in to a

'What went wrong?' Chasimenos said to Phylakos as soon as he was inside the tent. He took less care than Odysseus had taken to keep his tone free of a

But Phylakos was not prepared, in a military camp, to take rebukes from a civilian, however high-ranking. 'It wasn't me telling the story,' he said, in a voice like the dragging of gravel. 'It wasn't my story at all, it was yours. You schooled them in it, you should have seen the bastard was off his chump.'

Good heavens, do you think I have time for character analysis? Have you any idea of the administrative difficulties involved in organizing a meeting like that, making sure that the chiefs are notified well in advance, so no one is drunk or out hunting or pillaging some local farm or busy raping someone? No good sending out memoranda, none of them can read.' This clodhopper, he thought, all he can do is swing a sword. 'And you backed him up,' he said. You supported that nonsense about the eagles eating the young of the hare. It's the official version now.'

'No good crying over spilt milk,' Odysseus said. 'The harm is done now, recriminations won't help.' How ridiculous, he thought, these two standing glaring at each other, the soldier and the civil servant, each feeling they belonged to a superior race, when in reality they were as alike as two peas, both hirelings. Phylakos had physical courage but he would sign up with anyone he thought likely to win; he took orders and hoped for promotion if he did well. Chasimenos was devoted to the King's interest, as he saw it, but he was a natural subordinate, dreaming of a Greater Mycenae across the water, where his services would be rewarded and his power and influence increased. One in steady employment, one up for grabs, that was really the only difference. 'We must look forward, not back,' he said. 'The past has less substance than a shadow, it can hardly be said to exist at all. Besides, it isn't such a disaster. The omen has become more ambiguous than we intended, that's all. Phylakos, can I ask you to do me a service?'

Phylakos raised his chin and squared his shoulders. 'Yours to command.'

'Either go yourself, or send one of your people, find Croton the priest, and bring him here to my tent as soon as possible.'

'I will go myself.' With this, he raised his hand in salute and strode out, without a glance at Chasimenos, who said, as soon as the soldier was out of the tent, 'That man is an oaf, he has no ma

'Well,' Odysseus said, 'you are two very different kinds of person, after all. But we'll have to forget our differences and forge ahead, if we want what is best for Agamemnon and the Greek cause.'

'That is true.'

'Before Croton comes, there are one or two things I thought we could talk over. As you and I both know, the expeditionary force is far from united at present. Less than half of the people here are from regions anywhere close to Agamemnon's power base in the Argolis. My own Ithacans are a case in point. Of course, I'm bound by oath to the Mycenaean cause, through thick and thin, but the same can't be said for everybody. There are plenty here who think only of their own interest. The alliance was always shaky and it's getting shakier day by day. People are homesick – home being the place where there is no wind, no sense of being under sentence of doom. Before very long, if we don't find a way of holding things together, the army will start melting away. I've seen it happen before. Desertion is contagious. It starts here and there, in ones and twos, then before you know where you are it has developed into a mass movement. By then it's too late to do anything about it, much too late.'

Chasimenos nodded, lips compressed. He had a habit, when pondering deeply, of switching his eyes from one side to the other, as if following the flight of some small, erratic insect, and this lent a look of slight alarm to his narrow face. 'What we need', he said, 'is some way of guaranteeing the end of the wind, some promise of an end to it that they will believe in.'