So, this one is both similar to yesterday's and also different. Bromalios, like Atalanta and Ariadne, is from my series of roughly Young Adult-level novels, The God Killers, taking place about a generation after the Trojan War. Unlike the two of them, however, he's not directly named after a pre-existing mythological figure.
He's also the villain of book three, The Martial Maenads, which is not quite released yet. (Hopefully I'll get it out this month...) Because of that, I don't want to say too much about him, yet I also want to make a decent post of this, so let's see what I can accomplish on that score.
It takes awhile for the heroic trio--Atalanta, Ariadne and Eurysakes--to learn about Bromalios' existence. They have to go to Aiaia to get Kirke's aid in breaking a curse for reasons that take several chapters to explain in the book. (Kirke is better known by the alternate transliteration of her name, Circe, but given all the baggage that spelling has (including a Wonder Woman villain) I opted to transliterate the kappas as the letter K rather than the letter C.) This is the first thing that's said about Bromalios after they've reached Kirke:
“There is a man among the Bistones in Thrace who is preventing the proper worship of both Ares and Dionysos all throughout the region,” Kirke informed them. Beside Ariadne, Atalanta shuddered at the mention of Thrace, and Ariadne couldn’t blame her. “You three will go and put a stop to him in whatever manner is required. When my father [Helios] reports that this is done, then I will break the curse.”
“Why do you care about how they are worshipped?” Eurysakes asked, his eyes narrowing. “And only in Thrace?”
Kirke laughed. “Maybe I don’t care. Maybe it just seems like a suitably annoying challenge for you. Or maybe I wouldn’t mind having two handsome gods owe me a favor.”
Personally, Ariadne could have gone her whole life quite happily without ever having been told that Ares was handsome. Some things she just didn’t need or want to know.
Of course, the mention of the Bistones in Thrace triggers a lot of different thoughts in our leads! In addition to the fact that they've recently heard a dramatic recounting (part) of the tale of Heracles going to Thrace to recover the man-eating mares of Diomedes, King of the Bistones, there was also this incident before the girls ran away from Methymna on Lesbos:
The early part of the feast was calming enough. The bard was singing of the twelve tasks of Heracles, and after some rather tasteless and bawdy discussion of Heracles’ equally prodigious labors with the ladies, the mood suddenly turned more serious. “Speaking of the Bistones, though,” the Aiolian guest said, “have you heard the most recent rumors out of Thrace, sire?”
“Thrace?” The master frowned, and caressed his beard with his fingers. “I have not heard anything of any note.” He looked around at the other men of the court, but they all echoed his sentiments. “What are these rumors?”
“They say that there is a cult among the Bistones that worships some vicious barbarian god,” the Aiolian replied. “A god so cruel that it demands human sacrifice, which the Bistones show no hesitation in performing with great frequency.”
And also this one:
At the conclusion of the feast, it was Ariadne who asked the eunuch bard for one more private meeting in the gardens, but this time she had no interest in learning new songs. “Tell me more about these rumors your master mentioned,” she said as soon as they were alone. “The ones out of Thrace.”
“I haven’t heard much more than what he said at the feast,” he said, shaking his head. “But we heard them from some people who fled Thrace in fear of the Bistones and their new king. I believe their fear. Even if the tales of human sacrifice aren’t true, there is some terror in the land of the Bistones again, with no Heracles present to purge it.”
And this one:
“You really need to stop panicking,” Ariadne said, sitting down on her bunk. “If you keep burbling nonsense like that in front of other people, they’ll think you’re a coward.”
“I’m not panicking,” Atalanta insisted. “It’s just—even Kawiya told me I needed to get used to being parted from you! But I won’t! I can’t! I—I—what would I do without you?!”
Ariadne let out a miserable sigh. “If the master’s guest has his way, probably get sacrificed by a Thracian cult.”
Atalanta’s lower lip started to tremble. She had been expecting—hoping—Ariadne would deny that part…
While I'm pretty sure even in the original draft I had always had a threat of human sacrifice in Thrace as part of why they ran away, when I did the rewrite I was able to lay out early hints that more closely fit the actual reality they would meet in book three.
Their arrival in Thrace is indirect, landing on the island of Thasos, just off the coast of Thrace itself. The island is a Phoenician territory at the time, giving the girls a bit of a language barrier, since they don't speak Phoenician, and even the well-traveled Eurysakes only knows some Phoenician. (Thasos is a real place, naturally, and everything I read about it said that it was the site of a Phoenician colony and gold mine in the Late Bronze Age.)
None of the men on the docks looked at all surprised to see an Achaian ship arriving, but they were greatly surprised when the first ones to disembark from the ship were two horses! In fact, they seemed quite panicked by the horses until Atalanta hurried to take charge of them. “What are they so afraid of?” Atalanta asked, as her cousins joined her. “You’d think they’d never seen a horse before!” The Phoenicians were no longer panicking, but they were still jabbering away and staring at the horses in abject fear.
Eurysakes frowned. “It sounds like…” He stopped again without finishing his thought.
“Like what?” Ariadne prompted.
“They think the horses will eat them,” he said.
“What? But…” Atalanta shook her head. “I mean, that made sense in Athens, after [spoiler deleted], but here? I don’t get it!”
“Given that those events happened just on the other side of a thin strait from here, their fear makes a little more sense,” Ariadne said, “but only a little, considering it must have been about a hundred years ago.”
“More like fifty years ago,” a voice suddenly said from behind Atalanta’s elbow. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Ampelios had followed them off the boat. “Heracles came here to deal with the man-eating mares of Diomedes about fifty years ago.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “Or maybe it was more like sixty? Well, much less than a hundred, anyway.”
“Still, none of these men were alive at the time,” Ariadne pointed out, waving a hand in the direction of the terrified Phoenician sailors. Most of them didn’t look like they could be out of their third decade.[snip]Ampelios returned to them, looking worried. “They said that the Bistones are being more aggressive now than they were even in the time of Diomedes, more than doubling their land just in the last two years or so. And…well, they don’t have any proof that anything unnatural is going on, but the Bistones have changed their emblem to one of a horse’s head with red teeth, so everyone here is afraid that they are once again raising man-eating mares, and that they’ll conquer Thasos next, seeking to gain control of the island’s gold mines.”
After that, they journey onwards into Thrace, and eventually come across a temple...
They soon came across what had plainly begun as a temple to Ares. It was not particularly large or ornate, but it had two nearly identical statues in front, which had originally been statues of Ares, both depicting him raising his spear above his head—one in the left hand and the other in the right—as if to urge his troops on into battle. The statues had been altered, however: the armor had been repainted to look as if it was a leopard’s skin, ivy had been twined around the spears, snakeskins had been added to the base of the helmet, and a strange symbol was now painted on the shields.
“Apart from the painting on the shields, I’d say they were trying to turn the statues into maenads,” Atalanta commented. “Is that symbol one of those letter things?” she asked.
“No, it’s not a letter. It might be a pictogram, but if it is, it’s not one I’m familiar with,” Ariadne said, peering at it. “It’s probably the crest we were told about: a horse’s head with red teeth.” Though if so, it was very crudely drawn…
...and inside they meet a priest who asks them if they've come to join in the worship of "the most holy and powerful Bromalios." In the discussion that follows, the Trojan War is mentioned, as is the time that Diomedes of Argos (not to be confused with Diomedes of the Bistones) wounded Ares as that god was fighting on the side of the Trojans. (This incident was in the section of the Iliad often known as the Deeds of Diomedes.) To the girls' surprise, the priest replies that his god Bromalios couldn't exist if that had not happened:
“It is quite simple, my child. You see, the god Ares could not survive his wound, so grievous it was,” the priest explained, “and his brother god Dionysos was equally wounded in saving him. They fled here to the land of the Bistones, and sought a cure from Queen Herais, who was Ares’ own granddaughter, and had learned many healing elixirs in her time serving as a maenad of Dionysos. But even she could not save them, and their essences entered into her womb, and combined there to form our most holy god Bromalios.”
“That doesn’t make much sense,” Ariadne said, frowning. The very notion made her want to retch for about fifteen different reasons. “I’ve never heard any rumors of the gods being killed, especially not by mortals! And wouldn’t that make your god only about seventeen or eighteen years old?”
“No, this was in the early years of the war,” the priest assured her, “so he was born of that mortal woman some twenty-six years ago.”
“That can’t be right!” Atalanta exclaimed. “Eurysakes said that happened in the ninth year of the war!”
“As a priest of Bromalios, I know his age to a moment,” the priest said, glaring at Atalanta with narrowed eyes.
(Needless to say, the priest's version of events is incorrect, and Atalanta was right about when Diomedes injured Ares. Also, Ares did not need rescuing, and especially not by Dionysos (who was mentioned in the Iliad, but never actually appeared), so that part of his tale is also a fabrication by the cult of Bromalios.)
I don't want to use any more quoted passages from my not-yet-released book, but obviously they do in fact go on to meet Bromalios and the reader learns a great deal about him. He's unlike the earlier two villains in a very basic respect that I actually can't even share because it would be a total spoiler. 😰 I mean, I don't know if anyone reading this is going to want to read the book, but if they do then if I said any of that, it would spoil this one, and kinda spoil the previous books as well. I suppose one difference I can admit to that isn't a spoiler is that I feel like his motivations and thought processes feel a little more "real" than those of the previous two villains.
Oh, another thing I can spoil is that unlike the previous villains, he's actually hoping to score with Atalanta; well, he wants to make her his bride, so there's a certain political cache as the primary goal, but the desire is absolutely there. That's actually very unusual for this series: usually the villains just want to off the heroes and be done with it straight away. There is another villain who wants to see Atalanta give birth to a child, but he doesn't want to be the father (or even if he did in the original draft, he won't by the time I'm done rewriting that book) and it's entirely about her bloodline not about her, if that makes any sense. It's kind of funny, actually, because most of the people who want to try forcing Atalanta to get married are technically good guys: there's actually a line early in book three about how Atalanta feels she can't return to Aiolia ever again because of the four thrones and three political marriages people have been trying to foist on her as the daughter of Achilles.
I feel like I haven't actually been able to say much about him because it's all spoilers. 😭 Which is a pity, because I feel like Bromalios is actually one of the best villains I've written. He's not a villain with a sympathetic side, but he does have his own code of ethics which he adheres to, and his goals are, as I said above, very realistic.
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