The Road to Ithaca - another exclusive preview

Hello all! Here’s another exclusive preview of The Road to Ithaca: an Odyssey. This directly follows part 1 (which can be found here: https://www.lachlanbondauthor.com/blog/exclusive-preview-of-the-road-to-ithaca ). This story is very dear to my heart, and I’ve been having so much fun writing it. I’m around 26k words into this one, and am aiming for an even 40k to round out this novella. A shorter story, but one that I hope you’ll enjoy when it’s finally ready. Read on, and I hope you like it!

The Road to Ithaca: an Odyssey

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In my life there have been three major blunders. Three tremendous mistakes that would go on to bring such irrevocable chaos into my life that they can not be thought of as anything but life-changing errors. Three miscalculations, three misuses of my vast cunning.

Our story begins with the first.

I do not take responsibility for the wrongdoings of the Gods, and their sins are rarely tallied. I do, however, acknowledge the small role I played in the genesis of the Trojan War. Peleus and Thetis were fated to be married, and thus are beyond my control. Eris would always have thrown that golden apple into the crowd, declaring that whichever goddess was deemed fairest would be it’s recipient. Zeus would always have chosen Paris of Troy to play the adjudicator, though why the king of the Gods would choose a wayward prince to judge the beauty of the immortals, I could not tell you. Paris would always have picked Aphrodite, and she would always have offered him the hand of the most beautiful woman in the world as his prize, she would always have offered him Helen.

Paris would always have run away with Helen. It was fated. This is beyond my sphere of influence, I cannot be held accountable for the actions of Zeus the Thunderer.

I can, admittedly, be held accountable for the pact.

Tyndareus, King of Sparta, had a problem. His daughter was the most beautiful girl in the known world. So beautiful was this girl that suitors lined his halls, waiting for the king to name the man to which his daughter would be wed.

This alone is not a problem. Name some rich prince or noble king, claim a rather opulent bride-price, ship your daughter to Gods-know-where on the other side of the world, problem solved. The issue, however, arose from the sheer desperation of those poor bastards lining Tyndareus’ halls (myself not included, of course). 

If he chooses one man, the rest riot. And believe me when I say a riot involving kings can quickly become a war of continental scale.

So I, rather cunningly, offer him a solution. If he makes each suitor swear an oath to protect the marriage of his daughter, no matter who the husband may be, then none can say he was not fairly considered, and no man would take revenge for fear of retribution from the other kings. 

This, at the time, seemed like an excellent solution, and I was rewarded for my cunning with my future wife, Penelope, but that’s beside the point. 

The point is, Tyndareus took my advice. The suitors made their oath, and a suitor was chosen.

I do not know what possessed  king Tyndareus to choose Menelaus, then prince of Mycenae, to be his son-in-law and successor. Perhaps he hoped to garner favour from the house of Atreus,  perhaps he simply longed for an expensive bride-price.

Either way, Menelaus of Mycenae was chosen, and walked away with a new title; Menelaus of Sparta.

This wife, as I’m sure you’ve put together, was Helen of Sparta, the most beautiful woman in the world. 

When she was spirited away to Troy, it was the oath I’d invented that drew all the kings of Greece into that bloody conflict. It was my schemes that doomed the Achians to a decade of war, doomed thousands of sons to grow up without their fathers, mine own included. Helen would always have been given to Paris by Aphrodite, this is true. But if it had not been for my oath it would have been Sparta against the entire might of Troy, a war Menelaus could never have hoped to win alone. 

Perhaps he would have stayed home, sulking in Sparta. Perhaps he would have gone alone, waging war against Paris and spilling his blood in the river Scamander. Perhaps he would have rallied his brother, Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, and they would have died at Troy together. 

But in either case the kings of Greece would stay in their homes, and I would have watched my son learn to walk, held him as he babbled his first words, watched the girls chasing after him as he grew into a man. I wouldn’t have missed his life.

So that was the first of my blunders.

Everything unfurled after that. The golden apple, the deliberation of Paris, the kidnapping of Helen. Menelaus, enraged, called all the suitors who had sworn my oath to uphold their vows. A single feud between Menelaus and Paris, Prince of Troy, dragged every king in the civilised world into a brutal siege on a far-away shore, and they all answered.

Every single one. 

Except me.

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News of the abduction spread like a virus across the countryside, and the rumours soon reached the humble shores of my island kingdom, Ithaca. As soon as I heard she had been taken I knew what would inevitably come next, the call to arms. The fulfilment of Tyndareus’ oath.

I began to scheme, to weave a lie that might cover my would-be-allies’ eyes, just as my dearest Penelope weaves her shrouds upon her mighty loom. I concocted the idea that the kings would not take me for their army if I had lost my sanity, if my mind had fled and left me a hollow shell. 

Who would want Odysseus, after all, without his wits?

Sure enough the ships came soon after. Looking out at the distant horizon I saw the white canvas sails of Euboea begin to speckle my sea. 

So, I thought, Menelaus has sent Palamedes.  

My beautiful scheme unfolded as such; I would rave and mumble, act drunken and slobbering when I had drunk no wine, and I would pull my plow with both an ox and a donkey, their opposing strides driving the plow in sporadic lines that would ruin my crops. I planned to leave the holes empty, but my Penelope, conniving as ever,  suggested I sow salt into the earth behind me. It would surely render my field unusable for at least the season, but this was a small price to pay for my family.

Palamedes was welcomed by my wife, who told him of my raving madness, told him I couldn’t possibly sail away to Troy in my current state. 

I think he very nearly believed her.

I can’t be sure whether he knew I was lying, or whether he simply didn’t care for the life of my son. He plucked my boy, Telemachus, from his mother’s breast, wailing, and placed him in the path of my plow.

I heard Penelope scream, heard the servants rush to save their young master, but they could never have reached him before I did.

I could have kept driving, crushed my boy and maintained my deception. But any father will tell you, that’s no real choice. 

I swerved my plow, plucking Telemachus from the dirt, cradling his tiny form in my arms. 

It was over, I was discovered. I could not refuse to go now, or the kings of Greece would sail to my shores, burn my home, and destroy my family for disobeying the oath, the very same oath that I myself had designed.

To tell it true I can’t rightly remember what Telemachus had looked like on that day. A pink, bawling baby, but no concrete details. What colour had his eyes been? What did his hair smell like as I cradled him? These details are lost to me now, I suppose I was too preoccupied to take note. 

But the face of Palamedes. The smug, arrogant grin, those beady, daring eyes. That I remember, even now. He thought he’d bested me, thought he’d outwitted the great Odysseus. What a fool. 

It would not be for some time, but I would take my revenge upon Palamedes for taking me from my home. I shall tell that story when we come to it. 

For now, I was leaving Ithaca.

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That’s it for this preview, folks! Who knows, maybe there’ll be more of this novella to see on the blog, or you might just have to read the finished product to see where our story leads. But for now, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed, and remember to subscribe below for more short stories, exclusive previews, writing tutorials, and updates.

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