Chapter 14: My Odyssey

HERMES HAD SEEN ME transform myself into Odysseus. He went straight to tell Poseidon. Somehow, Odysseus had already offended the sea god, and Poseidon was still upset with me for damaging his sea monster and rescuing Aphrodite from his grasp. Two reasons for the ancient god to dislike me.

We would leave Troy with the five hundred ships of Greece still floating. Odysseus and his men had been gone ten years, most of which was spent sitting around waiting. Homer only described the last year of the campaign. If he’d have described the whole thing, anyone reading it would have died of boredom. But in ten years, we’d basically built a good-sized city on the shores, not just an army camp. We’d landed with 100,000 warriors, give or take a few thousand. But as any military person will tell you, you need a nearly one-to-one ratio of logistics personnel to soldiers in order to feed and supply and fuck the army. Don’t think these hearty warriors were doing without for ten years.

Like Odysseus, some of these men had wives and family at home. The majority, however, had been teenagers when they left Ithaca and all they knew of women was from the camp followers. Of course, Homer cleaned up that part of things. He was as sexually repressed as a Puritan, and made sure there was no hint of sex in his story.

Except when talking about the rape of the Trojan women or in his allusions to various warrior bonds that developed, like between Achilles and Patroclus. I forget if it was Agamemnon or his brother Menelaus who insulted Achilles, but the great hero had spent most of the war sitting in his tent, making out with Patroclus. Odysseus was the one who convinced Patroclus to join the battle. That started an exchange of deaths. Hector killed Patroclus in battle. Achilles was so upset by the death of his lover that he went out and not only killed Hector, but humiliated the Trojans by dragging the body behind his chariot around the city walls. Paris took revenge for his brother and got a lucky shot off that hit Achilles with one of Apollo’s poison arrows. Paris was killed by ... I don’t remember who. You lose track after a while.

Oh. My point was that there were women in the camp village from all over Greece and the Aegean islands, and over the course of ten years, more came with reinforcements for the lost forces. During the course of the ten years, there was a battle about once every week or two. A lot of people would die and then there would be a week of truce as people—non-warriors—went out and picked up the bodies and weapons, providing a funeral pyre for the fallen. Then the warriors would decide a day to go back and fight again. Both the Trojans and the Greeks received reinforcements on a regular basis. A few—or a lot—of men got weary of the war and decided to take their ships and leave. Agamemnon decided to burn their ships so they couldn’t leave. So, there were only half as many ships now as had come over and they were filled to overflowing.

Some men took the option of trying to start a new life right there in Troy where there were a lot of widows who’d been captured, but not all would fit on the ships and not all men wanted to take a new woman home with them. It was a real mess and I sat to have a little talk with my men.

“I hold one crime above all others as deserving of instant death,” I said. “That crime is rape. Now, I’m not going to work my way through all of you because until this moment you didn’t know it was a crime. Let me tell you this: Any woman you bring on board had better have agreed to become your wife or be happy to live the life of a prostitute. If she isn’t that willing, leave her behind.”

“Are you kidding, Dys? Fuck you! Any spoils of war are ours to do what we want with,” one of the men said. “I’ll fuck this little hole anytime I want.”

It was one of those moments I couldn’t let pass. I drew my sword and swiftly removed his head from his shoulders.

“Does anyone want to leave this ship instead of living by my rules? That’s a better choice than challenging me.”

A few of the men jumped overboard, leaving whatever treasure or women they had behind and wading back to shore. I saw a couple getting aboard Ajax’s ship. Good luck with that. He pulled down Athene’s statue and raped a little girl who had sanctuary there. That was not a goddess I would want to be on the bad side of.

I turned to the women who were on board and changed my speech, so they would be able to hear and understand me and the Greeks wouldn’t.

“You women don’t have many choices. If you think your chances are better over there with the other Greeks, you can leave. If you plan to stay on the ship, you should choose a man and make him happy. But don’t put on airs and say you’re too good for this one or that one. There are no princesses here any longer. There are no women with rich fathers. Your fathers and brothers are dead and your wealth is gone. I’m sorry to say, it’s your lot in life,” I said. The women talked together for some time. Men had a single choice. Go or stay. The women had to discuss the positives and negatives. Some suggested it would be better to kill us and steal the ship. They were laughed down and another woman pointed over to where the men had stripped the body of their one-time comrade and threw it into the sea. I think the reality of their situation, even with what they had seen over the past several years, had just hit home. They gradually got up and approached the men who seemed to have some minimal amount of negotiation and accepted their new mates.

The woman who had been in the process of being mauled by the sailor I dispatched came to me and bowed her head before me.

“You have won me as the spoils of battle, Captain. I will be your woman,” she said. I put a hand on her bare shoulder. Most of the women were only partially dressed if at all. I’d have to get Nimia to provide me with some clothes for them. While my hand caressed her soft skin, I read her thoughts. I can’t imagine anyone having pure thoughts in that kind of situation. She wished we would all just die. But she considered me to be noble and the best choice among the men and would give me her loyalty. I agreed to take her.

When the tide started out, our ship moved with it. With us, most of the fleet of Greeks moved as well. We clustered near each other, mostly because they’d all grown used to being near each other over the years. Occasionally, song would break out on one of the ships and would be answered by another. There wasn’t enough wine to get everyone drunk, so most of the activities remained good natured.

FOR THREE days we sailed out into the Aegean with ships turning farther north or south to return to various ports of origin. And then Poseidon’s vengeance struck. I didn’t think he had anything against most of the Greeks. He’d been their ally. And this storm did not wreck our ship. I think Poseidon had already discovered I didn’t drown easily. But when the storm broke and the skies began to clear, there was not another Greek ship anywhere on the horizon. We entered the deadliest calm I had ever seen on the sea. Not a breath of wind filled our sails. The men lay about the deck under the burning sun and often under their women who took seriously the task of keeping the men as beneficent toward them as possible.

I couldn’t just fill the sails with wind on an otherwise clear and still day. I was walking near the edge of what was believable. And I wasn’t yet sure how Athene would react to the knowledge that I was occupying the likeness of her hero. She’d been so devoted to Odysseus it was legendary and he had been such a coward in battle. Odysseus would have done better, perhaps if he had taken refuge in Athene’s temple rather than Aphrodite’s. No, all we could do was wait for the wind.

I WAS supposed to be Odysseus. If it weren’t for all the men and women on the ship—which caused it to nearly wallow from the overload—I would have risked Poseidon and blown my ship to land. I secluded myself in my cabin with a psychic barrier on the door, and took the woman who had asked to be under my care, Doria, to the infinity room. There, she joined the harem without hesitance and was amazed at the paradise that awaited her.

“Why do you not bring all of your men and women here?” she asked in wonder.

“That’s not such a bad idea,” Nimia said. She’d taken immediate charge of Doria when I brought her through. We were eating at a table spread with fine food, the likes of which had not been seen around Troy in many years.

“My heart says to be generous and kind to them,” I said. “But I fear for what they might do in upsetting the natural order of things. I believe they are still only one step away from rape, even though the women have submitted to them. That barbaric mind might be more than our fragile society in the infinity room can withstand. I don’t want our people turned into barbarians.”

“Here’s an idea,” Josie said. “We have a nice lake and the beginnings of a saltwater sea. Enlarge the sea and place a replica of your ship on it. Move the men and women to it and they would not know where they are.”

“Can you cast an illusion over the men?” Doria asked. “Give them a kind of waking dream in which they sail your private sea for as long as you sail the real world. Then when you reach this Ithaca of Odysseus’s you can transfer them out of the inner sea and back onto your boat, but you won’t need to deal with them while you pilot your craft.”

“Doria, you are a brilliant young woman,” I said. “Let us work together to refine the plan.”

It did not take too long to enlarge the sea and put a replica of our ship on it. It was, of course, almost time enough for the men to mutiny against their missing captain and the women were fearful-looking when I emerged from the cabin. I acted as if nothing untoward were happening. I noticed, however, that even though we had no wind, the ship was slowly moving on some hidden current. I took frequent sightings on the stars at night and could see our southwestward drift. I felt we were likely being dragged to some doom Poseidon was cleverly preparing for us.

The next night, I set about the long task of moving the crew from the ship to the infinity room.

I went from man to man and woman to woman to read their memories and decide what kind of person I would be bringing into the infinity room. A few were just too disgusting to tolerate—both men and women. Most were fine and had begun to develop a mutual respect with each other, male and female. In these, I implanted a memory of sailing away from Troy together and induced forgetfulness of those I refused to bring into the infinity room.

Doria led a small team of women, including some of the goddess’s priestesses, onto the ship to carry the sleeping forms into the room and onto the replica ship there. A few of the women so despaired of life with these men that we took them to our village that was rapidly turning into a city. And a few of the priestesses—used to a steady diet of frequent sex—were pining for male company and quickly took the places of the unhappy women with the men on the ship.