Chapter Text
The morning mist over the Ionian Sea did not roll into the bay of Ithaca; it clung to the sheer limestone cliffs like a shroud, damp and smelling faintly of brine, crushed wild thyme, and the cold, unyielding iron of the deep water.
In the high orchard terrace of the palace of Laertes, the old king himself was already awake. A man who had seen the shores of Colchis from the deck of the Argo did not sleep late, even when the joints in his knees grumbled at the dampness of the early northern wind. With an iron-tipped pruning hook in his calloused hand, Laertes was methodically clearing the deadwood from a row of young pear trees—trees he had planted with his own fingers when his son was still small enough to stumble over the roots.
The silence of the dawn was broken not by the cry of a sea eagle or the routine changing of the watch at the lower gates, but by a sound that was entirely out of place for the dignity of a royal estate: a long, rhythmic, low-pitched groan that sounded less like a human voice and more like a sacrificial bull being dragged toward an altar against its will.
Laertes paused, his hook suspended above a tangled branch. He turned his head toward the steep, winding path that led up from the harbor, a faint, weathered crease appearing around his eyes.
"Again," the old king muttered to himself, the corner of his mouth twitching upward beneath his gray beard. "The Samian vintage has claimed its tribute."
From the interior of the megaron, the heavy oak doors creaked open, and Anticleia stepped out onto the terrace. She wore a simple robe of deep indigo wool, her silver-streaked hair bound tightly in a linen band. She did not look toward the harbor; instead, she looked toward the stone benches near the kitchen hearth where the daily bread was already being prepared.
"They are early," she said, her voice carrying the dry, practical resonance of a mother who had managed the domestic sanity of Ithaca for three decades. "I expected Eurylochus to wait until the noon sun had at least given them time to regret their existence."
"Eurylochus has an estate to run, wife," Laertes observed, leaning his weight against the trunk of the pear tree. "He is not a man to waste a good morning breeze just because our son believes his liver is as strong as his wit."
A sudden, sharp yell echoed from the path below—clearly the voice of Polites, though it lacked its usual melodic brightness. It was followed by the unmistakable, gravelly rumble of Odysseus attempting to swear an oath to Lord Poseidon, only for the sentence to dissolve into a violent fit of coughing.
***
By the time the trio reached the outer courtyard, half the household staff had conveniently found reasons to be near the stables or the grain stores. The guards at the gate stood at rigid attention, their bronze spears held perfectly vertical, though their eyes flicked sideways with the desperate, strained discipline of men trying not to laugh in front of their sovereigns.
It was, by all accounts, a tactical disaster for the future leadership of Ithaca.
Eurylochus marched in the center, looking as solid and immovable as the foundational stones of the palace itself. He had not changed his traveling cloak, which was dusted with the salt-spray of the channel crossing, and his face bore the grim, professional expression of a commander clearing debris after a siege.
Under his right arm, he carried Polites. The fleet-footed scout, usually the most graceful man on the three islands, was slung over Eurylochus’s broad shoulder like a sack of unwashed barley. Polites’s long legs dangled uselessly down Eurylochus’s back, his sandals dragging through the dirt with every step. His face was buried in the wool of Eurylochus's mantle, his fingers clutching at the fabric as if the movement of the earth itself was highly suspect.
With his left hand, Eurylochus maintained an iron grip on the collar of Odysseus’s leather tunic. The prince of Ithaca was not being carried, but he was barely walking; his feet moved in a series of loose, uncoordinated lunges, his head lolling back against his shoulders as he stared up at the morning sky with a look of profound, philosophical betrayal.
"A curse upon the house of Same," Odysseus mumbled, his tongue clearly twice its natural size. "A curse upon the trees that grew the grapes. A curse upon the ancestors who dug the cellars."
"Quiet, Prince," Eurylochus said, his voice level and entirely unaffected by the extra two hundred and fifty pounds of Ithacan royalty he was shifting across the stones. "You are on your own soil now. Die with some dignity."
"He has no dignity left," Polites groaned from somewhere near Eurylochus’s shoulder blades. "He told your uncle he could out-drink a centaur. He signed our death warrants with his own mouth."
From the shade of the portico, a small, distinct sound cut through the complaints. It was a sharp, musical burst of laughter—clear and utterly delighted.
Ctimene stood leaned against one of the carved cypress pillars, her hands pressed against her mouth in a futile attempt to maintain the solemnity expected of a princess. She had risen early, her hair falling in soft, loose waves over a kirtle of saffron-dyed linen. Her eyes, bright and dancing with mirth, were fixed entirely on the absurd spectacle before her.
For Ctimene, this was the finest theater the world could provide. To see her brother—the man who spent every hour of the day calculating three steps ahead of everyone else, the man who treated every domestic conversation like a chess match—reduced to a dragging, muttering heap by a single night on Same was a rare gift. And to see Polites, who usually spent his days leaping over fences and laughing at the slow pace of the world, hanging like a dead sheep from Eurylochus’s shoulder, was almost too much joy to bear.
Eurylochus stopped dead in the middle of the courtyard. The moment Ctimene’s laughter reached his ears, the rigid, efficient posture of the Samian commander vanished. His left foot caught slightly on a loose pebble; his grip on Odysseus’s collar loosened just enough for the prince to slide six inches closer to the ground, and a sudden, dark flush of red climbed rapidly from the neck of his tunic straight to the tips of his ears.
"My lady," Eurylochus stammered, his voice dropping an octave as his eyes darted toward the stone floor, completely avoiding the pillar where she stood. "I... we have arrived."
Odysseus, even in his state of near-total physical collapse, did not miss the shift. He let out a low, liquid chuckle that turned into a groan, his bloodshot eyes rolling toward Eurylochus’s face. "Look at him," Odysseus whispered hoarsely to the sky. "A mountain of a man... brought down by a bird's song."
"Silence," Eurylochus growled, his knuckles white as he hoisted Polites higher onto his shoulder, his entire frame tense with a sudden, agonizing self-consciousness.
***
Anticleia walked down the stone steps with the measured, slow pace of a queen approaching a foreign embassy. She stood before Eurylochus, ignoring her son entirely, and placed a cool hand on the Samian lord’s forearm.
"You have had a long night, Eurylochus," she said softly, her eyes sweeping over his tired face with genuine affection. "Let the servants take these two. They belong in the dark, with nothing but goat's milk and their own thoughts."
At a nod from Laertes, four elderly, stout house-slaves stepped forward. It took three of them to unhook Polites from Eurylochus’s shoulder and steady Odysseus’s swaying frame. The two young men allowed themselves to be led away toward the cooler chambers at the back of the house, their complaints growing fainter as they passed through the heavy shadows of the inner doors.
Eurylochus finally let his arms drop to his sides, though his posture remained stiff, his shoulders squared as if he were still on trial before the high council.
"They brought it upon themselves, Queen Anticleia," Eurylochus explained, his voice returning to its normal, steady cadence, though his eyes remained resolutely fixed on a point exactly three inches to the left of Laertes’s head. "We had barely finished the evening sacrifice when your son decided to inspect my father's private stores. He claimed the wine of Ithaca was older and therefore more robust. My uncle Pterelaus took it as a challenge."
Laertes let out a loud, bark-like laugh, leaning on his pruning hook. "Pterelaus? The one who wrestled the bull at the games of Elis thirty years ago?"
"The same, King Laertes," Eurylochus said, the corner of his mouth tightening in a dry smile. "He is twice their age and nearly twice their weight. He has spent forty years drinking the unwatered resin-wine of the high Samian hills. Odysseus insisted they drink from the great silver skyphos without a single drop of spring water to cool it. Polites tried to match him cup for cup out of solidarity."
"And you?" Anticleia asked, her eyes twinkling.
"I drank two cups of well-watered vintage, checked the moorings on the ships, and went to sleep," Eurylochus said simply. "I woke at dawn to find them both sleeping in the straw with the tracking hounds. The hounds looked miserable."
Ctimene stepped forward from the pillar, her footsteps light against the stone. "And you carried them all the way from the harbor? Without a cart?"
The question was simple, but the effect on Eurylochus was immediate. He shifted his weight from one large foot to the other, his hand rising instinctively to scratch the back of his neck where the hair was cropped close.
"The... the path is steep, Princess," he said, his speech slowing down as if he had to choose each syllable from a difficult text. "A cart would have jolted their heads too much. They would have vomited in the olive groves. It was... cleaner this way."
"You are too good to them, Eurylochus," Ctimene said, her voice dropping into a tone that was soft, rhythmic, and entirely different from the sharp laughter she had used moments before.
Anticleia watched the exchange without moving a muscle. Her eyes flicked from the slight tilt of her daughter’s head to the rigid, desperate propriety of Eurylochus’s shoulders. A long, silent look passed between the Queen and her husband—a look developed over decades of ruling an island together, where every gesture had a double meaning.