3.

Calchas remained where he was while the army began to disperse, while the corpse of Opilmenos was carried away. Poimenos, who missed no change in his master's face, saw now that it was ashen below the caking of chalk. Without knowing the cause, he made to draw nearer, but Calchas waved him away and sat motionless, head declined, staring down at the ground before him. How could he have been so deceived? He was the more shaken as this had been – or seemed – a private message, not a matter for public pronouncement but an assurance that he was still held worthy of trust, still had the favour of Pollein.

The moving body, the moving flames, the Singer at the edge of the firelight – perhaps that sightless one had seen more than he? Fire and dance, the briefest of things and the most lovely. But not the same... Was that where he had gone wrong? He pondered it, eyes still fixed on the ground. The flame has no past and no future, it belongs only to now, it is born and leaps and dies, no other flame will exactly resemble it, though the number should be countless. Also the dance dies and cannot be reborn and no other dance will exactly resemble it, even though the dancer be the same. He had thought this consuming joy of life meant the death of the dancer along with the dance but Stimon the Locrian had killed while dancing and lived to dance again. Perhaps the god had wanted him to understand that the more intense the life the greater the power of death, and therein lay the divine contradiction. Or perhaps it had not been Pollein who had led him there, perhaps some other god altogether had directed his steps, visited him with that shaft of conviction, luminous and deceiving. Fear came with this thought, fear his familiar, the companion of his days, the nightmare fear of not knowing the sender, not knowing whom to placate. It was like the wind... he seemed to remember now that there had been laughter from somewhere in the crowd, or perhaps somewhere beyond. Laughter of men or gods? Had he simply been tricked, toyed with, or had his mistake somehow been necessary? And if so, necessary to whom and for what purpose? How could it be known? At least he had made no public forecast, he had merely hinted at knowledge, always a safe thing to do.

He was seeking to derive what comfort he could from this when he saw Ajax the Larger bearing down on them with his rolling gait, head and shoulders above everybody else, flanked by the usual group of sycophantic companions from Salamis, who were making a way through the crowd for him, jostling anyone who didn't move quickly enough. Calchas got to his feet as they approached and Poimenos followed suit.

'I wanted to have a word or two before we go in.' Ajax made a motion of his huge head in the direction of Agamemnon's tent.

'Of course.'

'I was against this fight from the start. These people will tell you. Speak up, was I or was I not against it from the start?'

'Yes, Ajax, you were, you were, right from the very start.'

'I said as much, I told Agamemnon how I felt. Did I or did I not? Speak up.'

'You did, Ajax, you did.'

'Well, events have borne me out.'

Calchas experienced the usual mixture of feelings Ajax of Salamis inspired in him, awe at his enormous strength and stupidity, fear of his erratic temper, a nervous, half-humorous sense of his dangerous absurdity. 'How do you mean?' he asked.

'Well, it has ended in a death, hasn't it? I said that would happen.'

'But it was a duel to the death, wasn't it? It was only to be expected that one of them...' He stopped short, becoming aware that the eyes of Ajax and those of the whole entourage were intently upon him. 'Well, of course,' he added quickly, 'it is undeniable that the Boeotian is dead.'

Ajax continued to look down at him in silence for some moments. He had unusually wide-open eyes, very short-lashed, light greenish-blue in colour, eyes that looked somehow stunned, as if at some point in the past, perhaps long ago, they had registered a shock of surprise so enormous that it had never been possible to absorb it. He seemed put out now and Calchas wondered whether he had been backing Opilmenos to win. Like all exceedingly simple souls and some souls not so simple, Ajax easily set down his disappointments to something that needed mending in the general state of things. More than once he had been heard to say that the smell of shit that lay over the camp was due to faults in the positioning of the army.

'The waste of a life,' he said now. 'This Opilmenos was a good soldier. Even the other chap, the Locrian, has a wound that will take time to put right. In his sword arm too. As a military man, I can't see any sense in it. It is not quarrelling and threatening and blood-letting that we need. I've said it before and I'll say it again, what we need–'

'He has said it before and he'll–'

'Who is that fool interrupting me? I'll have your guts for garters if it happens again. What we need is something that will bring us together, something that will make us if not exactly friends...'

'Allies,' a rash voice offered – despite the fear Ajax inspired, there was always someone among his followers who tried to curry favour by getting in early with the right word.

'Blockhead, we are allies already. Good grief, I am surrounded by cretins. We need something to take the men's minds off this wind and as a military man I know what it is.'

'He knows what it is.'

Ajax raised a hand, extending a forefinger that looked to Calchas the size and shape of the sausages they made in Pergamum from goat guts and corn. 'Games,' he said. 'I intend to organize a Day of Games. Something never heard of before. It came to me in the form of a dream, which is why I have come to you with it, you being the chap best qualified in the dream department.'

'Well, I am at your service,' Calchas said.

But some shyness seemed to descend on Ajax now and he did not immediately relate his dream. 'There's bound to be winners and losers – that's life,' he said. 'But we will come out of it, you know, not friends exactly...'

'Closer,' Calchas said. 'With mutual respect.'

'That's it exactly, that's just the phrase I was looking for. Great gods, what it is to have a head on your shoulders.' Ajax's eyes were as dazed-looking as ever but a glow had come over his face. 'Mutual respect,' he said, drawing out the syllables. 'I like that, as a military man I like it a lot.'

'We could have races,' one of the followers said.

Ajax turned on him and half raised a fist that was roughly the size of Poimenos' head. 'Numskull, there are races already. Everyone knows what a race is. I am talking about something completely new.' He lowered his hand, it seemed reluctantly, and turned back to Calchas, shaking his head. 'Thick as two planks,' he said.

'What was your dream?'

'I was throwing a javelin across the sea. The sea was dead calm, not like this one, there wasn't a ripple on it. I stood on the shore and I hurled the javelin with all my strength. I was waiting, you know, to see the splash, so I could judge the distance. I mean, I knew it was a mighty throw, but I expected to see a splash sooner or later. But there was no splash, the javelin flew up into the sun and disappeared. There wasn't a mark on the sea at all. Then there was a great crowd all round me and everyone was shouting, "Ajax! Ajax! Ajax has won the most points!" The shouts were still in my ears as I woke and it came to me that this was a message, that some god was telling me to organize a Games Day with different events, not just running – I'm too heavy for running – javelin throwing, for example, and give points to the winner and the one coming second and so on.'

'This is a most important dream,' Calchas said. 'We have to attend on Agamemnon shortly, but when I have had time for reflection I'd like to talk to you about it. I see nothing offensive to the gods in the idea. And they are clearly favourable to a javelin-throwing competition as one of the events.'