Page 10 of Odette's Vow

She frowned, not fully understanding what was being said between the words.

I got up and collected the bowl of sand usually reserved for bathing scrub. I sprinkled some on my empty plate and sketched out clumsy pictures with my thick fingers. First, a prophet, using the symbol of Urania – the muse of astronomy, known for her fortune-telling – to show Odette that we’d had a seer guide us with Urania’s good graces.

I looked at Odette, who nodded that she understood, and continued.

I then drew the symbol for Hydra, a water snake, and nine wide vee’s above it – bird wings. I travelled my finger along the snake and up into the air, my finger ‘eating’ the nine birds one by one, before travelling back into the snake’s belly each time with a smudge of my finger.

“Do you see?” I asked her. “Nine years will pass before we will finally take Troy. There are two more years to go.”

“The war will be long,” she said.

“The warhasbeen long,” Diomedes interjected.

Odette’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. It will be over soon, though?”

Diomedes and I shared a look.

“Two years on the battlefield feels like twenty. We have already lived a lifetime here,” I said quietly.

“Why not just leave if you are all so unhappy?”

“Because of yourupstartof a prince, Paris. He broke the blood oath. We cannot break from this war until he pays for it,” I said.

To my surprise, Odette shook her head. “He is not my prince.”

Diomedes laughed boisterously, but I waited, watched, to hear what she had to say next. She was trying to get us on side for something, of that I was certain, and my friend was falling for it.

“She’s already one of us! Well done, Odysseus. You definitely chose well. And her Greek is really rather marvellous, isn’t it?Is that what you two have been doing all this time in the tent together, hmm?” Diomedes wiggled a sly look between us and smirked at the crude joke.

Odette’s shoulders hunched towards her ears, but then I watched her take a controlled breath and actively work to lower them. “You misunderstand, my Lord,” she eventually replied. "Paris is not my prince. I am not one of the citadel members. I am just,wasjust, a farmer’s wife. Kings, princes, oaths and wars … these are not my business.”

Odette threw me an inscrutable look, which irked me even more. Was she laying blame at my feet for dragging her into this? War would have come regardless. If anyone, Odette should lay the blame with Paris. And she should be grateful she ended up with me and not one of the more animalistic men.

“Quite right. You are much better suited here where you can help,” Diomedes quipped between bites.

“Perhaps that is enough talk of the war,” I suggested, not in the mood to tolerate more accusations and inscrutable looks. Reaching out, I ripped some bread and dipped it in oil before plunging my knife and cutting away a section of lamb.

Diomedes chuckled. “How can one forget the war, when you gut that lamb like you gut a man on the battlefield?” He turned to Odette once more. “I know you don’t belong on the battlefield my dear, but you should see how this one fights! He crouches down behind his shield, then once they throw their spear helungesforward and spits them like a pig.” He mimicked the actions with his own knife.

Odette slowly finished chewing her mouthful, before she dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her thumb. I fixated on the action, waiting for whatever words would come next. For her to reveal her hand. When it came, I realised just how dangerous a creature she was.

“I thought it looked more like gutting a fish, myself. But yes, I would say that is exactly how he killed my husband.”

4

Odette

Athrum of expectation hummed through my bones at the declaration. A beat of silence so long it engulfed everything that followed. I wasn’t sure what I expected, exactly, but it wasn’t what happened. Was I waiting for Odysseus to deny it, so I had just cause to claw out his eyeballs with my fingernails? For the two oafs charading as civilised men to condescendingly explain the art of war to me, as if I did not know?

No, it was worse than that.

They simply looked at one another and kept on eating. The roaring silence in my head turned into a buzzing. Eventually I could see their mouths moving again, but I could not hear the words.Would nothear them. I had just admitted that my life had been ruined over the man who now claimed me as his property and they had …ignoredit. I grimaced as the smacks of saliva and chewing beside me broke through the hum in my head.

Alcander had been right – they were savages.

Diomedes, of course, was exactly that. Alcander had told me of the famous heroes known for their legendary prowess and bravery, but I saw none of this in Diomedes. Here in the tent his words, even in another language, felt delivered by a dullhammer. Subtlety was not this Greek hero’s strong suit, further emphasised by the sheer size of him. He could likely snap me in half like a twig and my organs would just bleed out onto the ground.

For some reason, the thought didn’t arouse anything but mild curiosity in me now.

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