Heroes (formerly Talisman of Troy) by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

Author:Valerio Massimo Manfredi [Manfredi, Valerio Massimo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers UK
Published: 2010-10-01T06:00:00+00:00

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Diomedes resumed the march towards the Blue Mountains with a heavy heart. Victory had given him no joy, and the land they were passing offered no place suitable for founding a city. They saw more square villages surrounded by moats and cultivated fields, but they were naught but islands in a sea of wild nature that had taken possession of all the territory. Many of the villages appeared to be deserted, as if the inhabitants had left, taking their things with them.

Boundless cane groves marked the slow snaking of the water over the earth. It seemed that a number of frightful floods had devastated the work of men, and that immense, prolonged fatigue had finally crushed the will of the village communities to withstand the constant onslaught of the elements. Everywhere they found signs of work begun and abandoned half-way: embankments, dams, canals . . .

The weather had begun to change and the high sun warmed the air and the earth. At first this brought welcome relief, but then the heat became intolerable because the water that flowed on the ground mixed with the air and produced a sense of suffocation and oppression. Only towards evening was there any respite. The land seemed to change; the sun setting behind the Blue Mountains enflamed the clouds in the sky and set alight the marshy expanses at their feet. The water glittered between the canes like molten gold and the wind rose to bend the grass on the plains and rustle the green foliage of the oak and ash trees. The poplars shivered silver at every breath of the wind and the new leaves of the beeches shone like polished copper. At the edges of the forests grazed great horned deer and does with their newly born young. Packs of boars snuffled under aged oaks, and the sows called to their striped-back little ones with soft, continuous grunts. Sometimes, in the thick of the wood, they would glimpse the shiny pelt of a huge bear.

When darkness fell, an incessant choir of frogs would rise from the waters, joined by the chirping of crickets in the meadows and the solitary warbling of the nightingale in the forest. At that hour, the king would go down towards a nearby river or stream to bathe; he would throw his chlamys over his shoulders and remain in silence to contemplate the evening. Memories would overwhelm him then, of the furious battles fought under the walls of the city of Priam. His companions: Achilles, Sthenelus, Ulysses, Ajax . . . all dead . . . or lost. How he would have liked to sit with them and speak of the toils of the day, drinking wine and eating roasted meat . . .

For many years he had desired to return to the peace of his home and the love of his bride and now, incredibly, he regretted that the war had ever finished. Not the blind clashes he’d had in this land, but the loyal combat of the past, where two phalanxes would draw up in broad daylight on the open field, front to front.

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