Page 21 of Odette's Vow

“Why?”

Odysseus hesitated. “She is more than just a prize of war,” he explained, his voice heavy with the weight of uncertainty. “She is a symbol of power and prestige. That is why they both believe she belongs to them.”

I looked beyond, to the girl who was standing beside the throne with her wrists tied. Agamemnon’s current prize, no doubt. Her skin sported angry welts that stood out in stark relief against the pallor of her flesh, itself an unsightly sickly colour. Deep bruises marred the delicate curve of her jawline, her hair hung limp and lifeless around her shoulders, and dark circles ringed her eyes.Thatwas what becoming Agamemnon’s ‘prize’ did to you.

“No,” I said, quietly.

“No?” Odysseus whispered back, and I thought I caught a slight bemusement in his tone.

“No, you do not need to choose another.”

I could see all too well the human cost of war and the consequences of male ambition and pride. Though I might now be a mere slave to the Greeks, I understood the fragile balance of power that governed their world.

Τ?ιλορ?α and Shamera had been right – it was up to me to decide how I played the hand I had been dealt. Not the men nor the whims of the Fates that had brought me to this point. Dying would not absolve me of this helpless feeling. The vow I had made was nothing more than a bargain designed by my mind to keep me tethered to this world. The petulant demands of my behaviour had not changed my circumstance, nor would my longing for death. None of it made any difference.

Alcander and Lykas were not coming back.

I was not joining them.

Odette, the woman who had always tried to do right, was gone.

And now I stood in her place.

8

Odette

When I had first arrived, it felt as if every camp had been all but deserted when the men went off to fight, each one willing to earn his glory. That’s what all men fought for: honour and glory. The Greeks weren’t so different to the Trojan men after all. They just didn’t know it.

But now, four months later, more and more men lingered around camp, claiming illness. Each day, it seemed their numbers grew, abandoning their swords and choosing to remain behind. Not that I nor any of the other women knew what these supposed ailments were. We were not allowed to work in the medical tent, for we could not hope to understand the medicine of men, or so we were told. No matter that we’d made tinctures like the medics every day when we had been home with our families.

It was common now to hear the usual morning grumbles and murmurs persist like a dull ache while I went about my business, collecting water and food for the day, doing the washing, each step purposeful but heavy, made heavier by the knowledge of the endless days that stretched before us.

But on this particular day as I passed by the watering tents, I caught a snippet of bitter conversation, the voice familiar but one I could not place.

“Nine years wasted!” he exclaimed. “And for what? Nothing but bloodshed and suffering!”

I scoffed under my breath. The ones who stayed behind always complained the loudest. But I held my tongue and kept moving.

When the men returned from fighting on the plains, weary and worn, covered in blood and sand and dirt, their faces etched with exhaustion and longing for respite, the camp seemed poised on the edge of unrest. The usual routine of washing and gathering around the fires was disrupted by murmurs of discontent that simmered just beneath the surface.

A fire could feed no more than a hundred men at a time before we needed replenishments, and there were tens of thousands of them. At least a thousand in each army. Fires littered stretches of sand all the way up the beach. Each camp, for each king and his men, had gathered its own sort of mini community. Unless one of the other kings or generals was visiting, we tended to see the same faces day in and day out.

By nightfall, the whispers of the discontented had turned the camp alive with the sounds of anger and unrest. The fires seemed to burn higher and brighter, the embers spitting into the air, as men shuffled about in the sand and began to fight one another. King Agamemnon eventually dispatched his men to stop the dissent, to carry away those fighting; but those men were just followed with more cries of outrage.

It was more and more common nowadays that certain women did not turn up at the fires, and we learnt in the following days to look for bruises on their arms, necks, and chins in the mornings. The men did not think the women needed aid, so we would save some goat’s milk and honey, hide it, and use itas a balm. Or steal some of the herbs meant for the medical tent. More often than not, those women had been initially presented to that pig of a king, Agamemnon, and he’d later discarded them to his other soldiers.

So the king’s soldiers were no better.

The rest of us were left to gather around the fires of our camps lit along the beach. Water was boiling to cook whatever we had harvested that day, game cooked in a broth and then carved for everyone to come and help themselves. Men first, always.

I had just poured some more water in the broth that had begun to reduce down into a stickier sauce when I felt a large, calloused hand between my shoulder blades. Looking up, I saw Odysseus, his weathered features illuminated by the flickering flames. Despite the chaos that surrounded us, there was a warmth in his gaze that softened the harsh lines of his face.

“There you are.”

I smiled at him before busying myself gathering him a plate, filling it with the foods I knew he liked best. “Thank you,” he said when I handed it to him.

“So polite, Odysseus,” one of the nearby generals I didn’t know said before chuckling. “You would think your beautiful wife, Penelope, didn’t prepare meals for you in all the time you’ve been married.”

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