The Songs of the Kings by Barry Unsworth

enhanced by shin guards of polished bronze. Conscious of the eyes upon him, he took out an ivory and papyrus fan from a tuck at his waist, flicked it open and began to fan himself, very slowly.
    â€œThere’s a man there with faulty hearing,” Ajax shouted. His huge face had flushed to a shade of dark crimson.
    Achilles continued with his fanning. “Better deaf than daft.”
    The wind at Aulis, continuing so long, had sensitized men’s hearing in some ways, as if it was necessary, to avoid going crazy, to distinguish sounds not caused by it, or even to invent such sounds, there were those who swore afterwards that they had heard Ajax’s teeth grinding in the massive jaws. But his mind worked slowly, even when not clouded by rage, and Croton took the opportunity to intervene.
    â€œThe justice of Zeus—” he began loudly, but Agamemnon silenced him with a slight movement of the arm.
    â€œCalchas will give us the meaning.”
    â€œMy lord, fountain of benefits, I will do my poor best.” The meaning was obvious of course—suspiciously so to Calchas’s mind: the hare was Troy, by its death and devouring victory was established in advance for the Greek alliance. Not only was the cause approved and the favor of Zeus confirmed, but the total destruction of the enemy was guaranteed. However, no diviner worth his salt would blurt out the obvious, there had always to be the ceremony of interrogation, the spending of words.
    â€œHow often did the birds wheel in the sky?” he asked Leucides. “Once only or more than once?”
    â€œOnce only.”
    â€œDid they cry out?”
    â€œNo, they were silent.”
    â€œThe eagles came in the days just after the full moon, when the face of the moon was crumbling. At the hour you saw the hare the moon would still be clearly visible in the sky?”
    â€œYes, the moon was still to be seen.”
    â€œThe eagles, in their flight, did they cross the face of the moon?”
    For the first time Leucides hesitated, but not, it seemed to Calchas, in the way of one striving to remember. “No,” he said, “no, they flew lower.”
    â€œDid they fall on the hare with folded wings or wings extended?”
    Leucides was hesitating again, but it was a question destined never to be answered. The man whose excitable face Calchas had noticed earlier now broke into stumbling speech:
    â€œThe hare was fat with young, the eagles swooped on her and ripped her open, the young ones came spilling out, they were fully formed . . .”
    The voice seemed not his own, it was thick, with a strange bubbling in it, as if struggling up from somewhere lower in the body. Calchas felt fear at the voice, at the staring face, at the convulsive movements at the throat.
    â€œAnd then?”
    â€œMother and young were torn to pieces and devoured.”
    The silence inside the tent was so loud now that it smothered the crying of the wind. Yet they heard the sound of the man’s swallowing, the click of his tongue in the dry mouth. His eyes had opened wide as if he could still see the ravenous descent, the ripped flesh, the gorging. Calchas felt the clutch of fear grow tighter. The man was possessed, a god was speaking through him, pronouncing the one and only truth to be found in this whole account, though it did not belong to that dawn at Mycenae, it was happening now, here in the tent, he knew it from the stillness of the man’s companions as they stood there, stillness of shock, knew it even as he saw Phylakos, readier than the others, raise his chin as at a call to battle, and heard him say, “Yes, this killing of the young was also in the report they gave me, the hare was pregnant, the eagles ate the mother and the young.”
    But it came too late and the knowledge of this was on the face of Phylakos as he spoke. The hush was broken now. As if a quilt had been lifted they heard again the clamor of the wind in the world