The Whirlwind
Title: The Whirlwind
Fandom: Troy
Pairing: Odysseus/Agamemnon
Rating: R (discussion of violence and sex)
Disclaimer: Not mine. This takes place in a shadow amalgam of "Troy" and the Iliad, in which Sean Bean and Brian Cox are, respectively, Odysseus and Agamemnon, but Homer has not spun from his single or collective grave into orbit. The only respect in which I have chosen the Troyverse over the Homerverse is in the timeline of the Achaean invasion, because ten years of siege is a dramatic bitch.
Feedback: Here or at my journal, please.
Summary: It is the business of war.




"Instead, the whirlwinds got him, and no glory." (the Odyssey, trans. Fitzgerald)

i. Past Tense

Later he would weep for how short it seemed, but on the journey to Troy the sea was endless. Vast and blue and without bound; hungry at the edges of his sleep and haunting in his dreams when he lay down in the creaking, salt-heavy hold. All his life he had lived by the sea in rocky Ithaka, and never had he rid himself of the sense that it would consume him.

During the day the sails billowed and he stood on deck, watching the waves. Mariner, they called him, and king; man beloved of Athena, and wise in the ways of war. Agamemnon had said he was made for this war, as fighting men believe that each war is the one for which they have been born to glory. Perhaps he was made for this war. All that he believed, in truth, was that he was made for the islands: for the high land of Ithaka, for the gray rocks and green crags where lonely sheep and their shepherds roamed the thin grasses. For the harbors where fishermen came sun-tanned and shouting from the sea; for the clay huts where farmers raised crops and children against the steady wear of age and eternity.

Here the halting roll and glide of the sea was bearing him to some hot eastern shore where death would come for his men in droves and flies would coat their bodies under the merciless skies. There was nothing to be done. It was the business of war.


ii. Present Tense.

That first night on the beaches of Ilium, Agamemnon calls Odysseus to his tent after the counsel of war has concluded. The Mycenean pours a cup of wine with one heavy, ringed hand, and pushes it across the table ungracefully, his face misshapen with shadows in the firelight.

Odysseus already knows what it is the king will say. All his life men and women have desired him, not for any felicity of face, but for something else altogether--- for some subtlety, for some humor, for some eccentricity of soul. They clamor at the gates, and he will not let them in.

Agamemnon possesses none of this subtlety. "Come to my bed," he says.

Odysseus drinks the wine. It is good wine, full and well-honeyed. Outside the tent the air is filled with the noise of war and the sea.

"Will you make no response?"

"You are a king," Odysseus answers. "What response can I give? Answer poorly, and you may revenge yourself upon my land. Answer wisely, and I fear the truth may pay the forfeit."

His face darkens. "Your word games are unwelcome here, Ithaka."

"Ah. Then perhaps I, too, should be unwelcome."

Agamemnon reaches out and lays one hand upon his comrade's wrist, trapping it to the table. "I desire you."

"And what a king desires, he will have." Odysseus watches the wine in his cup. Dark, and so like blood. This is a business of war.

"You are not given to another. To no man?" There is an angry question in his eyes, and Odysseus knows without asking that he is thinking of Achilles, imagining the two of them entwined, hard and weathered bodies locked in a treasonous embrace.

"No. Not to any man. Only to my wife, and to my land."

Agamemnon releases him and makes a dismissive motion. "Feh. We all have such ties. It is the way of things."

Odysseus does not answer, for his mind is filled suddenly with the rushing sound of the sea across the shore of Ithaka, and the high calls of seabirds, and the wind. There is a place, a place high up in the cliffs, where a man can be alone under the gray sky, and where he has gone many times to sit in silence with his thoughts or walk with the spirit of gray-eyed Athena by his side. How far it is from this tent, this shore: across an ocean, across more. He does not know now if to ever return to that mountain will be his fate, or if he will die (as he fears) wretched with defeat upon the cruel white sands of Troy. The Gods know, but are silent on this: his simplest prayer.

"It is the way of things," he murmurs in assent.

"Then we agree." Agamemnon's look is gleeful and greedy, the look of a covetous man who has gotten what he desires.

Odysseus raises his hands in a gesture that is half humor and half hopelessness. "What can I do? We are kings."

And Agamemnon takes those fine-boned fingers in a grip like steel and pulls his general to his feet. "I knew you would see sense," he breathes. "Ithaka. Odysseus. Clever Odysseus." His breath smells of wine and his hands are not gentle as he wrenches the straps of his shieldmate's armor loose, but this is not an affair of the bedroom: it is a business of war.


iii. Future Tense.

In the morning Odysseus will wake cold with the sea air and burrow into the bed for warmth, closing his gray eyes and dreaming of war. Soon he will get up from these blankets of fur and go to his sword and shield and fasten them on, and fight. Battle: a language he has learned to speak with skill and style; death: an art he has perfected upon the bodies of thousands of men. And if he lives beyond this day--- if he lives beyond this week, this month, this year--- there will be again the vast exhaustion of the sea. The empty ache of the horizon and the clean loneliness of his bed. He'll no more face the love and fear of armies, or wake consumed by the desire of other men.

He longs for silence, for solace, for Ithaka. But one way or another, there will be a boatman, and he will rest on some far-away shore: until then he will endure what bears endurance. It is not the best of lives; it is not the hopeful sea which beats at his heart. But there is nothing to be done. It is the business of war.