They go out into the place where the demigod Aeneas had led the Greek slaughter, more than a year ago. Red flowers grow now where their comrades fell. All else is quiet.
Ophellios releases the string of his bow and a bird falls from the sky. It was only a small thing, but the arrow pierced neatly its heart; there will be enough meat for feasting later.
There is hunger in the camp.
He turns, looking to his lone companion. “How many have you caught, Lord Aetos?”
He slits open its belly.
The fragrant entrails that slither out of the wound are just a meaningless mass of flesh and blood.
He weeps.
The Mycenaean and Pylian camps are not close. His appetite bears on him almost like Tartarus when at last he returns to his hut.
It hasn't been long enough for real starvation to set in.
The young man slumped over not far Ophellios's hut is almost certainly not going to die of hunger today. He's just hungry enough that he can't move very much or think very much, only look up and scramble pitifully to his knees as the king approaches and try to shuffle away.
…
“Wait.”
The king unslings his bag again and retrieves another catch. He tosses it to the boy.
“Take this and feast. Gods go with you.”
He stands uncomfortably as he is thanked, and at last he enters his house.
Diameda looks up at him, hollow-eyed. The other maids in his clay court look even weaker.
Ophellios sighs.
He cannot bring himself to care about the insult. The scent of roasting birds turns his stomach, and for a second he worries about being sick all over the Cretan’s sandals.
“Yes,” he responds palely, taking a seat in that fur-lined chair. “He told me of an omen I must follow.”
Ophellios manages a laugh. “No. No, that is not it. Only… I would be cured with a little food. I will sleep tonight and hunt again tomorrow, and I will be fine.”
He shakes his head, which rests rather heavily on his right hand. The signet ring his father gave him glints in the flames.
“No.”
"What happened, by the gods? Were you robbed? Or - Ophellios, tell me you fed yourself first. "
Ophellios doesn’t answer, only glances at him with a sheepish expression.
It reminds Aetos of a prince he met seven years ago.
"Boy. You are the King. If you have any love for the Pylians, you will make yourself strong enough to protect them. What use are you to them like this?"
He rolls his head towards Aetos, now a tired look on his face. “My servants hungered. I can go another week.”
"You hunger too, you fool! Now you would go running after Calchas and seeking to turn aside the will of Achilles, and still starve yourself? Has Apollo stricken you too with disease, a disease of the mind?"
He is in fact going to make Ophellios eat.
“It is none of your concern–”
There is a plate of roasted meat in front of him now.
“You treat me like a child…”
…
“Thank you.”
He will eat.
"I will cease to treat you like a child when you cease to act like one, Pylian King. Stop talking and eat it all."
He sighs. “I am eating. I am eating. Thank you.”
Aetos watched as the godling attempts to sate his gnawing hunger in as dignified a fashion as possible.
The food is disappearing at an alarming rate.
At last some light returns to his eyes. “Had you been a better shot, there would be more meat on this thing’s bones.”
"Had you been a wiser king, you would not have needed it." He cracks a smile.
"Now. Now that you are capable once more of reason - for no man can think well with his stomach empty - what did old Calchas tell you?"
He frowns at Aetos’ own plate. “Have you enough? You had caught only four when we were summoned.”
"I am more used to hunger than you will ever be, young king, unless the gods wax wrathful indeed against you. Speak."
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