'The King has heard enough of this raving,' Chasimenos said.

'No, let him speak.' Agamemnon fixed on the diviner a look of sombre and deliberate patience. 'Tell us the reason.'

'They could not deny it without discrediting their own story too. There was no hare, this was an invention of some here who wanted to raise the army's morale by promising a glorious end to the war.'

He paused again and after a moment bowed low to Agamemnon, a deep reverence from the waist, knees flexed and head lowered, following – deliberately now – the practice of the Hittites. He said, 'Lord King, I am still your diviner. You have shown me your love, do not take it from me now. The wind is sent by the goddess, she who planted the words of warning in the man's mouth, the Mistress, however we call her, the Protectress of the Innocent. It is sent to give us pause, to tell us that for the slaughter of the unoffending she will exact a price.'

He raised his head, struggled to control his breathing. He was about to do the bravest thing he had ever done in all his fearful life. 'She will exact a price,' he said again. 'Not now, not in the present, not by requiring the blood of an innocent. How can she be propitiated by the shedding of blood now, when she is warning us against it in the future? The gods are not like us, they cannot contradict themselves.'

His breathing had grown calmer as he spoke. He had reached the moment of the gift, the moment that would redeem him, restore him to trust. For the first time he met the King's eyes. 'No crimes are yet committed,' he said. 'The goddess gives us time to reconsider. And this is the message brought to the King by his diviner, which I said once before and was not heard. But now I see further. If the King will accept the goddess as sender, he will be free from necessity. The justice of Zeus and the compassion of Artemis will make a single path for him if he can find it. Since there is no offence, there can be no punishment. With the fear of punishment lifted, there can be no constraint. This is the gift of the goddess to Agamemnon, through the words of his diviner. She offers him the greatest gift that mortals know, the power of choice.'

He fell silent and bowed his head and waited. Then Chasimenos spoke and there was a note of genuine incredulity in his voice. 'A seer from Asia, who denies that Artemis is bound in obedience to Zeus, who believes the snake and the eagle to be equal in power, this upstart tells the King to reconsider.'

Agamemnon said nothing for some moments, his head lowered on his chest. Then he looked up and Calchas felt his heart contract at the hatred on the King's face and knew in that moment that he had been led again into error, that in offering freedom he had snatched away the comfort of necessity from the King's heart.

Chasimenos said, 'We have it on good authority that it was this man who encouraged Iphigeneia to put Artemis above Zeus. Now he is seeking to undermine the King's authority and his dedication to the heavy burden of command. Further proof, if any were needed, that he is a Trojan spy. Let me call the guard and have him shackled.'

'No.' Agamemnon's mouth seemed to smile a little. 'No, I have other plans for Calchas the diviner. Not one hair of his head must be harmed. Do you hear me, Chasimenos? I make you responsible for his safety.'

'I will obey you in this, as in–'

While he was still speaking a guard entered hastily and sank to his knees before Agamemnon. 'Lord King,' he said, 'the word has come, the ship has been sighted.'

In the moments following upon this announcement, all those in the tent felt a strange deafness descend on them, like the humming aftermath of some crash or collision. This they thought at first was due to the momentous nature of the news; but then, in a collective moment of realization, the true reason came: the wind had ceased. The guard remained kneeling; no one moved or spoke; the first sounds that came creeping back were still, at first, like symptoms of deafness.

Afterwards, everyone in the camp asked himself the same question: where was I, what was I doing, when the wind ceased? People stopped in their tracks and stood stock-still, listening to the silence. Those sleeping woke abruptly, with a sense of insecurity and alarm. After the first deafness there was the illusion that one could hear the very slightest of sounds, sounds never heard before. Those on the hillside thought they could hear the straightening of grasses or the clicking sounds made by the movements of insects' antennae; others swore that they could hear the breathing of the horses, even though they were far away on the other side of the shore; others claimed that they could hear the winking and bubbling as the suds of the last waves burst and webbed the pebbles.

Odysseus, as a person of authority and unrelated by family to either of the Ajaxes, was trying to arbitrate in the dispute between them, which had grown more embittered with time. All three were sitting in the shelter of some dunes, well away from the camp, so as to avoid any spreading of the quarrel among the rank and file.

'Do you not think,' Odysseus said to Ajax the Larger, who had just threatened once again to leave the expedition and return home, 'that it will be very bad for your image if, having introduced these Games as a means of peaceful and healthy competition, in order to avoid quarrelling and disunity, having had yourself widely publicized through the Singer as Ajax the Unifier, the man who held the allies together, you now abandon those same allies because of a dispute with your closest friend? See what I mean? Does it not seem contradictory to you?'

Ajax the Larger's huge face bore no detectable expression. His greenish eyes under their sun-bleached brows looked more than usually blank. 'Share and share alike,' he said. 'Through thick and thin. That's what friends are for.'

'Thick and thin my arse,' Ajax the Lesser said. 'How come I always get the thin end? I wasn't even there when you threw that fucking javelin, why the fuck should I pay anything?'

Odysseus sighed and cast round in his mind for further arguments. Both men were stingy and obstinate, but the basic trouble was that Big Ajax was not intelligent enough to keep incongruous elements present together in his mind. Far from thinking his attitudes contradictory, he appeared to believe that quarrelling with his friend over the blood price was quite consistent with his role as peacemaker. Arbitrating between them was a thankless task; however, some further effort would have to be made. 'Look at it this way,' he was beginning, when suddenly the wind ceased, leaving all three of them staring at the sea as if in expectation of a storm.

Odysseus was the first to gather his wits. This calm came to him as a serious threat. 'I must get back,' he said, and he got to his feet and moved away, leaving the other two sitting there. When he reached the first lines he learned that Iphigeneia's ship had been sighted and would soon be entering the strait. Heralds were already crying through the camp, summoning the chiefs to an immediate assembly.