Of Waves and War

23: but your mind is crippled

Eulises

The wine flows freely here, and they are more than content with my tale. I drink and eat nothing, casually switching out my glasses for their empty ones. I don't trust the food and no matter how drunk they become I fail to relax. Dozens of faces before me with names I cannot bring myself to commit to memory. I live with the names too many dead to learn new ones. They are content enough with my tale and laugh in parts where they should not which only soothes me in that the words I speak are not true. I use true names which is a mistake. And I put Circe in it because she is there, along with the dead, though I regret that for then they speak of her and mispronounce her name, even if the she of my tale is not the she that held me for a year.

The people are seemingly friendly. With loose smiles, loose laughter, looser purses, and considerable jewelry loose on their wrists and fingers. All of which gets looser the drunker they get. The girl comes and tries to speak to me. I smile at her for she is small and not the worst thing that has touched me.

The evening grows late and I make remarks about leaving. Of course, I am pretending I've drunk as well even though my mouth is dry from speaking and drinking nothing.

"If you're a soldier, come fence with us," one of the drunk, I'm quite sure, boys says.

"I've been adrift at sea and marooned before that, I'm not of fighting shape," I say, idly, looking around at them in the candle light, "And I am a soldier, the best of the Acheneans." If only by default for few others live.

"Then you're not afraid surely?"

And without my mind's actual consent, my mouth speaks the words, "No man calls me a coward. I'll best two of you at once, come who thinks himself the quickest?"

That sounds like a stupid thing to say, maybe. But my last combat experience is was sparring with the Myodians on the shores. I'd rally my men, who in retrospect didn't benefit from it as I did, find the son of Peleus with whatever lover he'd crawled off with. Gods above that boy. I couldn't stay cross with his idiot smiling face either as he complained and rubbed his eyes like a rotten child, simpering and smiling at me pathetically.

Anyway, I'd rouse my men and his, and early in the mornings make them spar on the shore. Of course, none could take the son of Peleus. The great Achilles, swift footed, lion hearted. It irked me the speed with which he could disarm me, tripping around me in the soft sand, a grin on his face, showing this was all sport and easy as dancing to him.

"You're fast Ithaca," he laugh, twisting and stretching in the early sun, "But nobody is fast as I."

"It's true," his man, Patroclus, lounging in the soft sand to watch us. He'd already bested two of my men who I could see waiting to complain to me about it. All the others had long since ended their games. Only the son of Peleus and I continued, determined to best the other.

"Do you ever get tired?" I asked, standing, he'd again forced me to the ground.

"Not really," he shrugged, innocently, "Come again. With no tricks."

"I can best you without tricks," I said.

"That's false," Patroclus, his mouthful, he was eating by then.

"Did you contract him to contradict me?" I asked, annoyed.

"In a manner. I and Briseis have a wager as to how many lies you tell a day, and what number they come to and we're having him count," Achilles laughed, spinning his sword in his hand.

"I don't need tricks to best you," I said. I knew then I did.

"To be clear, kicking sand in his face is a trick."