Page 1 of Odette's Vow

1

Odette

The first murdered body I saw was my son’s. The second was my husband’s.

We had known they were coming, of course – the Greeks. Seven years ago, they had landed on Trojan shores, their approach signalled by rumours seeping through the citadel walls and whispers carried across the ocean. One of their kings, Agamemnon (a strange name), had done what no man before his people had. He’d united the fractured Greek kingdoms for one cause: her.

Well, that’s what they said. But we all knew the truth. The Greeks wanted access to our trade route with the other countries. Helen was just a convenient excuse to go to war.

I had seen her only once. Helen of Sparta. I could see why they coveted her. Hair when lit by the sunset shone like woven gold. A rare sight, in these parts. Yes, I could see why the men fought over her like she was a bone.

Worse, too, she had been kind when she’d visited my village. Shy, but kind. Asking gentle questions of the other women in that higher-pitched, accented voice of hers. Taking flower offerings from the children. Smiling demurely at the men. A people’s princess.

Now, they whispered she was Helen of Troy. That one of our princes, Paris, had saved her from a fate no woman would wish for. Yes, poor Helen. A queen, then a treasured prize behind Troy’s walls. Poor Helen, married to a rich king and in love with a richer prince. Poor Helen, safe behind those citadel walls while our men were slaughtered.

Those were my thoughts as I’d watched my husband Alcander die before dawn. When the soldiers arrived, they had barged through our door and dragged him away before I could reach for him. Another soldier came for me, hauling me into the chaos outside.

When I emerged, the wheat fields were on fire, but my eyes found Alcander, pinned to the ground by a different soldier again, this one a boar of a man, driving his spear into my husband. It seemed to pin his body to the ground as easily as my knife had speared boiled potatoes the night before. Alcander’s face had been smashed into the dirt and rocks, and blood pooled around his head, dirtying that mop of light brown hair. Still, my loving husband had turned his face to me, his eyes bleak – as if the blade had bled all colour from them – pleading with me torun.

But, there was nowhere to go. Our lands were on the outskirts of the citadel, a small modest wheat farm my husband’s family had run for generations. Acres of golden fields stretched out around us, the ones not on fire now browned and muddied by the Greeks who had cut through them on their way to finally raid us. The only place for me to run was towards the citadel’s walls, usually an entire day’s walk.

Instead, I’d watched the boar of a man pin my husband to the ground like a fish. Even his Greek armour did not hide the barrel of his huge torso, and he wore no helmet, so I could see his dark hair and beard. Matching dark cold eyes stared down atmy husband, bulging arms holding the spear as Alcander’s body convulsed and writhed on the ground with its dying breaths.

I may have cried out, tried to reach for him; I do not know. I do not remember everything that happened in those moments. I remember strange things instead. When my husband’s blood seeped into the ground outside our family home, I had thought of the gods and our sacrifices to them. The demands they made of us. The blood offerings over doorways to ward off evil spirits. I remember being on my knees as my eyes went to the heavens.

My offerings had gone unnoticed. I had lost everything. The gods wanted this war regardless, just like the men.

“You owe me a debt that cannot be repaid.”

It was a calm statement, said in a moment of utter surrender to facts I could not change, and something in it stilled the air. The winds died, the screams stopped. It was as if Gaia herself cocked her head and watched me. One mother to another.

I watched back.

Perhaps mercifully, my boy was already dead when the soldiers arrived. None of the men or boys of the village had survived; only we remained – the herd of women on our knees in the courtyard, rounded up like cattle. Together we’d watched as the soldiers looted our homes, taking anything of value to them and placing it in a pile beside us. War prizes and property. Some of the women cried, others begged the soldiers to let them go, that they wouldn’t say a word to anyone. They had not been told what to expect from the coming war.

I had.

I remember glancing at the body of my dear Alcander lying a few feet away. He had warned me as best he could. He had been a good man, in his own way. Yet, there would be no funeral pyre for him, no coins laid on his eyes for the ferryman’s crossing of Styx to the Underworld. These brutes would not do our men thatcourtesy. Nor our children. Their souls would remain to travel these plains for the rest of their existence.

So, when the flames went up in our homes and the wailing women’s cries with them, mine had not joined in. Instead I had watched the boar soldier, the one responsible for the death of my husband and by proxy, my son. He stood there, arms folded as he watched the flames with us.

Some of his brothers in arms laughed. He did not. He just stood and watched, vigilant in his task. Then his eyes turned to me. He didn’t smile, didn’t leer. He and I both knew there was nothing more he could take from me. Not even with what we both knew would come next. These brutes could not take my agency if I had already resigned myself to the fact. Which left my pride, and that had died last night when I put the hemlock to my son’s lips. To spare him from this.

I hoped the soldier saw the promise in my eyes even as I swore an oath to the gods under my breath.

“If I am never to return here, may he never return to his home, either.”

We walkedin silence along the road that would lead to the beaches. Most of the women were barefoot, having been dragged from their homes before dawn broke along the horizon. The soldiers had not allowed them to retrieve their shoes, and those women struggled as the sharp rocks dug into their heels. But, they didn’t complain out loud. I only saw them wince, and the soldiers must have seen it, too.

The crying finally stopped when the women tasted ash in the air. The fires continued to burn at our backs, and once the Greeks were satisfied nothing would remain, we had beenordered up. The one I watched, the boar, had said something in Greek that most of the women didn’t understand. I pretended not to, either. In our small village, Thracian or Lydian were more common tongues. The soldiers gestured and prodded enough that it was obvious they expected us to walk.

“Let’s go,” he’d said.

His voice was surprisingly melodic. I’d expected something gruff, something that matched his facial features, but from his tone and pacing, even in a different tongue, it was clear he’d been trained in the art of speech. This wasn’t just one of the soldiers, then. This was a general. That made me hate him even more.

The smell of fire stayed with us for a long time.

I took small satisfaction in the soldiers’ frustration with our slow pace. Every now and then, one would shove us forward, but since the entire group moved sluggishly, they had no choice but to let us continue at our own speed.

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