A to Z: Ever-Enduring Eurysakes

    So, Eurysakes is both complicated and pretty simple.

    His character is the simple part;  he speaks slowly like his father did, he's big and tough and dependable like his father was, and he's vulnerable because when he was still a tiny child, his father died in a manner that ruined his formerly perfect reputation.  Where he becomes complicated is the fact that he's an actual character from Greek myth who I have gotten totally wrong. 😰

    You see, Eurysakes is the son of Aias of Salamis (better known by his Roman name, Ajax, which I hate because it sounds like a cleaning product) and his concubine Tekmessa.  Eurysakes is mentioned briefly in the excellent Sophocles tragedy Aias, as Aias leaves his shield with his tiny son (about three or four years old) before his death.  (The name Eurysakes, in fact, means "broad shield."  Because Aias was also known by the epithet "of the towering shield" as his enormous shield was one of his distinguishing features in battle, and helped him earn one of his other epithets, "the bulwark of the Achaians.")  That play is one of the only surviving works that even mentions Eurysakes.  The only other mention of him I'm aware of off-hand is in Plutarch, which I'll get to below.  (Oh, and a passing mention in Pausanias.)

    Now, most of the Greek myths are done by the time the Trojan War ends, but there are still a few stories that take place after the war, and even some after the Odyssey.  These mostly have to do with the fallout from the war in one way or another--the Orestes cycle, for example--though there's also the Heraclidae, the myth of invading Dorians that the Greeks used to explain why the society of the Heroic Age was so different from their own.  One of the tales of the fallout of the war is that of the return of the Salaminian contingent and the reaction of King Telamon to the news that his near-perfect son Aias is dead, and to the ignominious manner of his death.

    (Trigger warning:  to continue discussing this, I have to talk about how Aias died in the myths.  Therefore, I need to put a "read more" tag here for self-harm.)

    Okay, so what happened to Aias was that following the death of Achilles, there was a big contest among the kings and princes as to who would get the amazing armor that Hephaistos had made for Achilles during the Iliad.  The contest quickly came down to just Aias and Odysseus.  Aias was the one obviously more worthy of the armor, having been the second-best warrior in their army after Achilles (well, okay, sometimes people said Diomedes was the second-best, but...) and in most versions also being Achilles' first cousin.  (Except in the Iliad (and possibly the Odyssey), Telamon and Peleus, Achilles' father, are said to be brothers.  In the Iliad this is clearly not the case, as Aias is never referred to as Aiakides (son of Aiakos) but Achilles is.)  However, Odysseus being Odysseus, he found a way to convince the other kings to award the armor to him.  (There are multiple different traditions regarding how he did this.)  Aias was so outraged by the decision that he decided he would kill Odysseus and the kings who had made that decision, take the armor, and sail home.  To protect her favorite, Athene drew a veil of madness over Aias (to use the metaphor preferred by the ancient authors) and caused Aias to spend the night slaughtering the camp's livestock rather than the men he had planned to massacre.  When he wakes in the morning and sees what he's done, he says goodbye to his loved ones, goes to the beach and kills himself.  Then half the Sophocles play is actually about his half-brother Teukros (son of Telamon by his Trojan concubine Hesione, sister of King Priam) trying to convince Agamemnon to allow Aias to have a proper burial and not leave his body out to rot, something that is only achieved because Odysseus himself joins the argument on Teukros' side.

    When Telamon found out that Aias had gone mad and slain himself, he was irate with Teukros for allowing it to happen (or for failing to avenge him, despite that avenging him would have required him to kill Odysseus and possibly Agamemnon and the other kings), and banished him from Salamis.  In his exile, Teukros found himself in Cypros, got in good with the king there, and ended up marrying the king's daughter and founding his own city/kingdom, also called Salamis.  (This was a real place, btw, and the Salamis in Cyprus really was founded in the Late Bronze Age.)  Okay, so far so good, right?  This stuff is very basic, and I got it right.

    Now as to Eurysakes...among the lost plays of Sophocles, there were plays called "Eurysakes" and "Teukros."  In reading about the lost works by the tragic playwrights (I think in the Loeb Library book of Sophocles Fragments, but it's been so long that I'm no longer sure) I misunderstood what it meant in the teeny-tiny summary of one of those lost plays.  Basically, what it said was along the lines of "Upon the death of Telamon, Teukros wants to attend his father's funeral in Salamis, but Eurysakes stops him."  Obviously, what that meant was that Telamon had kept Eurysakes and Tekmessa in Salamis, and Eurysakes had inherited upon his grandfather's death, but had been poisoned by his grandfather against his uncle, and thus refused to lift the banishment on him, even for the brief window of the funeral games.

    That...uh...is not how I interpreted it at that time.

    I took it to mean that Teukros had raised Eurysakes, and when Telamon died Eurysakes convinced his uncle that he shouldn't try to go home for the funeral games because Telamon wasn't worth the honor.

    That is totally not what the actual story was and not entirely acceptable for the culture in which the story is set.

    Unfortunately, by the time I realized my mistake, I was far enough along in writing about my heroic trio of Atalanta, Ariadne and Eurysakes that I didn't want to go back and either invent a new character to take Eurysakes' place or to rip him out and replace him with a version of Eurysakes that fit the myth.  So my version is in that respect totally inaccurate, because my Eurysakes was raised by his uncle (having been rejected because his mother was the former princess of a small kingdom allied to the Trojans) in Cypros, with a mindset much like Teukros' own, with a love of Aias that borders on worship at times, and a longing for the forbidden island of Salamis, but also a strength of character and love of righteousness (of what was considered righteous in their culture, anyway).

    As to how I could possibly explain Telamon sending away his innocent little grandson as well as his adult son, well, Plutarch came through for me on that one!  Because that mention of Eurysakes is in...hmm...the life of Solon, maybe?  One of the Athenians, anyway.  It mentions that the island of Salamis was given to Athens by "Eurysakes and Philaios, the sons of Aias."  (I'm not quoting as such, obviously, since I don't even recall which biography it was in, but there's not a lot of ways to say that in English, so it's almost a quote.)  Now, from doing a little digging in what little I can find online, I'm pretty sure that Philaios was, originally, the son of Eurysakes (thus the mention of them being the "sons" of Aias was much like the Iliad poet giving Achilles the patronymic Aiakides, which is actually his father's patronymic) but Plutarch seemed a little muddy on that.  Additionally, one of the Athenian demes claimed descent from Philaios, so there was actually a version at some point (around the Persian Wars, if I had to guess) claiming that Philaios was Aias' son by a Greek wife, rather than the son of Eurysakes, and thus the grandson of an Anatolian woman.  (Something similar happened in Epirus, where the families who claimed descent from Neoptolemos invented an otherwise unknown Greek wife for him so they wouldn't be claiming descent from his Trojan concubine.)  Given all that, I figured "good enough" and decided that in my version, Aias had already married and fathered a son before he sailed off to Troy, and thus Telamon didn't need four-or-five-year-old Eurysakes because he already had ten-year-old Philaios.  Thus in my version Philaios is ruling in Salamis at the time of the novels.  Wrong, but hopefully not so wrong as to be truly egregious.  (The mention in Pausanias was in a description of the Athenian Acropolis, as there was a shrine to Eurysakes there (presumably built in the wake of the second Persian War and the importance of Salamis to the Greek victory) as the one who had gifted the island of Salamis to Athens.  Which honestly is absurd, because Athens was utterly insignificant in the Late Bronze Age, but... 🤷🏻‍♀️  Who am I to judge what the ancient Greeks claimed to believe?)

    Okay.  So now that the mythological component is out of the way, I can talk about my version of Eurysakes to my heart's content.  😁  In the original drafts, he was a bit too perfect (aside from his slow speech, which I tried to make evident in written form by giving him short, simple sentences), so in the new drafts I've tried to adjust by giving him character flaws that won't detract from the characteristics that I wanted to define him.

    As I said above, he's very much like his father:  he's a powerful warrior, and very honorable by his society's rules.  He's also very dedicated to his father's memory, and to his family in general, meaning that as soon as he learns that Atalanta is the daughter of Achilles--and thus his cousin--he becomes dedicated to her as well.  So where I've tried to give him some character flaws to make him more interesting is that I've given him the social biases that you would expect him to have, as a man raised as a prince in the Late Bronze Age.  They don't always show through, but the position of privilege he was raised in--in terms of wealth, status and gender, plus the ethnic arrogance of his society--do periodically show up, marking out his vast difference from the two girls, who were raised as slaves in the position of a hated ethnic minority.  (Okay, it might not be ethnic?  If any research has been done into if there were ethnic as well as cultural differences between the Mycenaean Greeks and the Hittites, I'm unaware of them, because why would I even look for something like that?  They were certainly in a cultural minority, as Lesbos was part of the Hittite empire at that time.)  Also, he has a tendency to try to talk for the girls (despite the slow, awkwardness of his speech), especially in the first book.  Oh, and he's actually a bit promiscuous, but sometimes has trouble dealing with women who aren't sleeping-around candidates.

    Anyway, as there's a lot of text about Eurysakes to sort through (though I think I'll just stick to the first three books, since they're the ones that have been rewritten, lol), I'm just going to put up some snippets in order.  Starting with the way the girls meet him, at the massive grave mound that covers the golden amphora containing the bones of Achilles and Patroclos.  (At this point, the girls are sixteen, and he's more like twenty.)

         As she came to the end of the burnt-out remains of the camp, Atalanta spotted the large mound of earth that was her father’s tomb. It was surrounded by smaller mounds, but as the old man had said, it dwarfed them all. Atalanta had heard the stories, of course, that her father had insisted that his bones be buried in the same vessel that contained the bones of his best friend, Patroclos. But looking at the size of the mound, she was a little surprised that it wasn’t being used for a lot more than just two bodies! It was big enough to contain funerary urns for at least four or five dozen!
         More surprising than the size of the grave, however, was the fact that there was already someone standing at it. He was an enormous man, at least a head and a half taller than she was. Nearly all Atalanta could see of him was the enormous rectangular shield that he wore on his back, which looked to have been very well crafted, and also showed the scars of many years of continual use. The top of his helmet was only barely visible above the top of his shield—mostly just its elaborate plumed crest, in fact—and it seemed to have been even more elaborately made than his shield. He was simply standing there, staring at the mound. However, as Atalanta—and Ariadne catching up behind her—approached, the man turned to look at them curiously, revealing that he wasn’t simply taller than Atalanta, but also much wider, nearly twice as wide as she was. Like Atalanta, he wore a heavy bronze cuirass, but unlike hers, his was quite elaborate; not only was the bronze highly polished, but it had been decorated here and there with designs of stars applied in silver to the bronze. He smiled at them warmly, and somehow just looking at him convinced Atalanta that was probably a very nice man. He had dark eyes, and a very friendly smile, and looked like he was probably only a few years older than they were.
         “You must be the ones I’m waiting for,” he said. His voice was slow and methodical, but genial.
         “We didn’t come here to meet anyone,” Ariadne answered warily.
         The man laughed. “No, of course not. But I did.”
          “Huh?” Atalanta had meant to say something else—maybe ask if he had come on that ship on the beach—but that had been the only thing she could produce.
         “I dreamed of my father’s shade,” the man said, still speaking slowly. His words gave Atalanta a lumping feeling in the pit of her stomach. No! This man couldn’t be the son of Achilles! He didn’t look anything like her! If he was a son of Achilles…then how could she be his daughter? “He said he couldn’t rest. Because he was…” The man frowned, and scratched his head under his helmet. “Uneasy?” he suggested, though Atalanta wasn’t sure who he was asking.
          “And your father is buried here?” Ariadne asked. Atalanta thought she sounded just a little too eager to hear him say ‘yes.’
          But thankfully the man shook his head. “Over there. On the beach,” he said, pointing to a spot to the south, between the ship and where they stood. “I kept dreaming it. Over and over again. My father wants revenge.”
         “Revenge?” Atalanta repeated. “On…Achilles?” Did that mean this man was a Trojan, despite his Achaian armor?
          He laughed, and shook his head. “No. Mostly on Odysseus.” Ariadne twitched slightly, but said nothing. “Because my father was never…he never…” The man sighed sadly, and shook his head. “I went to an oracle. She told me to come here. She said to make an offering to Achilles and Patroclos and Antilochos. Then they would come.”
          “They?” Atalanta asked breathlessly. Would the oracle confirm what she had always known to be true, what Ariadne had been denying?
         “The ones who would help me avenge my father,” the man said. “That must be you.” He smiled at them warmly.
         “Um…” Atalanta looked to Ariadne helplessly. What were they supposed to do about this?
          “Just what kind of revenge do you want?” Ariadne asked. “I wouldn’t necessarily be averse to helping you avenge your father’s honor against the memory of a dead man, but Odysseus was still alive the last I heard of him, and he’s a king, on top of everything else. I’m not joining a total stranger on a suicide mission, no matter how honorable his reasons may be.”
         He smiled, shaking his head again. “It’s not like that,” he assured her.
         “Then what is it like?” Ariadne prompted.
          “I don’t know. But my father was a good man. He would not want me to hurt his friend,” he said, still speaking slowly, and nodding his head as he spoke. Atalanta found his answer confusing, though. Why would one of Odysseus’ friends want vengeance on him? And…
         “What does any of that have to do with my—with Achilles?” she asked, unable to hold the question back.
          The man hesitated, his brow furrowing. “It was…” He stopped speaking almost immediately, and let out a deep sigh. “Their rivalry was never settled. My father is still seen as second best. That, too, is why he cannot rest. He wants people to know he was just as good as Achilles.”
         “No one was as good as Achilles!” Atalanta exclaimed.
          “I think you just proved his father’s shade’s point,” Ariadne chuckled. “But what, exactly, are you expecting us to do for you?” she asked.
         “The oracle did not say,” the man admitted. “Except that we would travel together.”

    Here's a short bit that I thought was a good depiction of how Eurysakes can be dismissive of people he looks down on.  The context is that in arriving at the palace at Troy, Atalanta and Ariadne are claiming to be boys from the far north (for reasons), and kept having to make excuses about why they couldn't do various things like normal people.  Following one of those...

         “Have you any such…complications?” Zelotes went on, looking at Eurysakes.
         Eurysakes laughed. “No. I am no different from any other man. Except larger,” he added, with a smirk. Zelotes was, after all, nearly as short as Ariadne. And he did not seem the least bit amused to have that pointed out, given the way he suddenly started walking much faster, and didn’t say another word until they reached their destination.

    Ah!  That quote reminds me that I was going to use this post to talk about guest-friendship!  Okay, so guest-friendship, xenia, was an enormous deal in the ancient Mediterranean world.  Among the Greeks, it was considered a holy duty to Zeus, but the other cultures in the region had their own equivalents to it, so far as we can tell.  And that was because they pretty much had to.  One of the first things that people noticed once they could read Linear B and see what had been written down by the Mycenaean Greeks (mostly just clerical stuff to keep their kingdoms running) was that there was never any mention of money.  Likewise, no coinage had ever been found at the sites.  This is because money hadn't been invented yet; in fact, if you look, you'll notice no mention of monetary value in the Iliad (because coins wouldn't be invented for another 100-150 years after its composition!) and items of worth are described as being worth however many oxen.  (Later Greek writers weren't really able to wrap their heads around the fact that their ancestors didn't use money, though, and so you get tales of Odysseus framing Palamedes by planting bags of Trojan coins under his bed.)

    Anyway, without money you couldn't really have things like, say, inns.  Meaning that if a person wanted to travel, they either needed to sleep in the wilderness or they had to find someone willing to put them up for the night.  Most people prefer not to sleep on the ground where animals might start chewing on them in the night (and keep in mind that the European lion had not yet been hunted to extinction at this point!) so finding a host was preferable.  But how could you know if you could trust him, and how would he know if he could trust you?  Well, guest-friendship required that a host and a guest not betray each other.  (This is one of the key arguments levied against Alexander/Paris at the start of the Trojan War:  he not only stole another man's wife, but violated guest-friendship in doing so, as he had been Menelaos' guest at the time he ran off with Helen (and a lot of gold and treasure, too, in most versions), which made his behavior indefensible even if Helen actually preferred him to Menelaos.)  Guest-friendship on the kings and princes level also played a bit of the role of international trade, as far as we can tell, as a royal visit would involve the exchange of whole shiploads worth of "presents" which of course had to be reciprocated in kind, thus if one kingdom has a whole lot of mineral wealth and is low on food, a kingdom with a lot of food but not so much in the way of metal can send its heir visit that first kingdom with lots of surplus grain, which the heir gives to his host, and then the host can give him metals as return gifts.  As far as I know that's more or less academic conjecture based on the textual evidence (much of which is by implication within literature like the Greek myths) and what little archaeological evidence there is, but...whether or not it's actually how people in the Late Bronze Age handled guest-friendship, it's how my research indicated guest-friendship worked, and thus it's how it works in my novels, because in a fictional world the author has to know what the rules are! 🤣  And, let's face it, no matter how well someone in the modern world researches an ancient period, they're still not going to be able to accurately recreate what life in that time period was actually like anyway.

    So, long story short, because Eurysakes is a prince, he expects the rules to be properly followed.  He expects them to have hosts--though they are often at pains to present proper gifts to their hosts in the later books--and he expects those hosts to treat them with the respect the children of three of the greatest Achaian heroes deserve.  That of course means that--unlike what you might expect in your typical fantasy novel--when they arrive in a kingdom, normally the first thing they're going to do is present themselves to the king and be taken in as his guests.  Even in going to Troy itself!  (Admittedly, Eurysakes is at the moment his uncle's heir, and his uncle is closely related by blood to Troy's royal family, so it's not quite as bizarre as it sounds at first blush, but...it's still pretty weird.)  This wasn't the case in the first draft of the novel, where they only got the king's attention after defeating some bandits that had been plaguing the kingdom, so it was one of the improvements I made in the rewrite.  Given that some of the political wrangling in Troy itself is pretty important to the plot, that was a major improvement, one that would not have happened without Eurysakes and his position of social privilege.

    Speaking of his new character flaws (not that I've been speaking of that for a while now), here's a very late bit from Scions of Troy in which he attempts to mansplain something.  🤣  The situation is that they've found a wine-mixing vessel (a krater) that contains water and long bones...

         At first, it looked like four bones, but as Eurysakes reached into the water and removed one, it became obvious that it was two bones which had each been broken roughly in half.
         “Legs,” Eurysakes said. “The thigh,” he added, pointing to the ball at the top. “This goes into the hip—”
         “We get it, Eurysakes!” Atalanta shouted.

    I don't know why, but it just strikes me as especially hilarious that he's mansplaining bones.  (Maybe I'm just easily amused by my own jokes?)

    Anyway, moving on to The Golden God of Aiolia, another of my own jokes that I enjoy too much...but which does at least show how well Eurysakes handles himself in social situations.

            “Greetings, Eumelos, King of Pherai,” Eurysakes said.  “I am Eurysakes, son of Aias Telamoniades.”
             “You really are, aren’t you?” the king replied, looking into his face fondly.  “You look so much like your father!  Ah, but I haven’t seen you since you were such a small child!  How fares your mother?”
            “She is still lonely without my father,” Eurysakes replied. “But she is otherwise well.”
            “And your grandfather?”
            “It is far from Cypros to Salamis.  I have heard little news.  But he is probably still dead.”
            King Eumelos laughed.  “So he would be!” he exclaimed.
            “He claims to recognize him, but still tests him?” Ariadne growled quietly.  “I don’t like this guy one bit.”

    In a radically different moment, I want to share part of the first scene in Eurysakes' point of view.  It starts out as a memory of a quiet moment in his father's hut when he was still a tiny child, and that's the part I want to share:

            Mama was resting.  The hut was quiet.  The men outside were very loud.  Even though they should have been in the fields.  Why were they loud?  Why weren’t they fighting?
            The noise outside came inside.  Papa had come in!  Papa was back!  He was back early!
            “Papa!”
            Mama woke.  “Aias?”  She stood up.  “Why are you home so early?  What about the battle?”
            “The field was too soft.  The chariots sank into the mud.  And the horses would have broken their legs.”
            Mama hugged Papa.  And Papa held Mama.  “Papa!”  When was it his turn for a hug?  “Papa!”
            “I’m so glad,” Mama said.  She pressed her face against Papa’s armor.  “I always worry so when you go off to battle, Aias…”
            “Don’t worry about me, Tekmessa,” Papa said.  “I won’t die easily.”
            “Papa!  Papa!”
            “Eurysakes, please, be quiet!” Mama exclaimed, frowning at him.  “Your father and I are talking!”
            “It’s all right.”  Papa finally picked him up.  So high up!  Eurysakes put his arms around Papa’s neck.  Papa’s hands were warm.  His arms were warm.  It was so nice being held by Papa.
            But then Papa put him back on the floor again.  That was sad.
            Mama helped Papa take his armor off.  Eurysakes tried to play at wearing the armor.  It was too big.  But the leg piece was too small for Eurysakes’ chest.  Papa laughed.  He put his helmet on Eurysakes’ head.  It was so big and heavy!  Eurysakes fell down under it.  But it was still warm from Papa’s head.  He couldn’t see anything.  But it smelled like Papa.  He laughed inside the big helmet.  His laugh echoed back at him.
            Mama sighed.  She took the helmet away again.  Papa picked Eurysakes back up.  Papa sat down.  Eurysakes was sitting on Papa’s lap!  He liked that!  It was just like being in Papa’s arms.  Papa was smiling at him.

    I wanted the moment with the helmet to be sort of the reverse mirror to the moment in the Iliad when little Astyanax is terrified by the sight of Hector in his helmet, because he's been sheltered enough in the palace that he's never seen his father dressed up for war.  This is backwards of that because having been born in the war camp, Eurysakes has been surrounded by arms, armor and death his entire short life at this point.

    There are a lot of good character moments for him, but the more I look for them, the more I realize that they're hard to separate out from the plot. 😰  But I do want to post one teaser from The Martial Maenads, a scene focused mostly on Eurysakes, but in the POV of a new character called Ampelios who...you really don't need to know much about him to understand this scene, really.  The only thing about the plot that matters here is the subject of the false god Bromalios.  (As the text of this novel hasn't quite been finalized yet, there may be some small tweaks made to the text before its release...)

            By the time that Eurysakes stepped onto the carefully shorn lawn in front of the palace of Ares, there were three large figures awaiting them, even the smallest of them larger than Eurysakes was.  Two were male figures dressed in torn and burnt robes the color of dried blood:  Phobos and Deimos, the gods of fear and panic.  The third was a female figure in an equally torn robe, pale and covered with stains of every vile hue:  Eris, the embodiment of strife itself.  All three of them were armed with spears.  As he followed Eurysakes onto the grass, Ampelios noticed that the horses, which wore fancy gold armor, were no longer hitched to the golden chariot, and seemed as impatient for battle as the personifications around them.
            “I seek audience with Ares,” Eurysakes informed the three immortals standing before him.  It was not how Ampelios would have recommended that he begin the interaction to follow, but he knew better, at this point, than to try to offer his wisdom.
            “Arrogant mortal!” a furied voice shouted from within the palace.  It was soon followed by the speaker, the mighty Ares himself, wearing armor even more impressive and golden than the divinely crafted armor of Achilles.  “You dare to approach a god while armed for war?!”
            “It would be more foolish not to,” Eurysakes answered, with a wry smile that Ampelios thought was a very bad idea indeed.  “Would the god of war lend support to a man who is not a warrior?”
            “You dare to presume you could gain my aid?!” Ares, bane of mortal men, bellowed furiously, aiming his golden spear at Eurysakes.  “You, who waste all of your potential for my service?!”
            “Waste…my potential…?” Eurysakes repeated, sounding utterly flabbergasted.  It was a sound that Ampelios relished.
            “You could be a great warlord, but you’d rather go on missions of trade and diplomacy, or go traipsing about with pretty girls,” Eris chortled.  “Instead of going and seizing your birthright by force, you wouldn’t take it even when it was offered to you!”
            Eurysakes shook his head, then looked over at Eris.  “Perhaps that seems a waste to the gods.  I do not know the plans of immortals.  But to me it has always seemed wisest.”  He looked back at Ares.  “You must know of the false god.  The one who usurps your role in Thrace.”
            “Of course I know!” the god snarled back at him.
            “I seek a sign from you.  To show his followers that he is false,” Eurysakes explained.  Ampelios had to repress a sigh.  Did he really think that Ares didn’t know that?  This was a test, and Eurysakes was failing badly.  He wasn’t supposed to tell the gods things they already knew!  He was supposed to show them what was in his heart, and prove he was worthy of them!
            “You want a sign from me?  Then come and prize it from my hands in battle!” Ares bellowed, leaping onto one of his horses.  That…had not been what Ampelios was expecting to hear.  Even from the god of war.  Did he have no respect for the way that mortal/immortal interactions were supposed to go?  There were procedures to be followed in these dealings, after all!
            Eurysakes nodded, seeming to have expected this, and took his massive shield off his back.
            To Ampelios’ shock, all three of the other immortals also mounted their horses and prepared their spears for combat.  “Four immortals against one mortal man?” Ampelios exclaimed.  “That’s absurd!  Just one of you is more than a match for him!  For all of you to team up thus is simple cruelty!”
            “If four against one is so unfair, then you could join the fight and even up the odds a little, pretty boy!” Eris cackled at him.
            “N-no, I’d rather not…” Ampelios admitted sheepishly.  He wasn’t a warrior, and saw no shame in that fact.
            “Then stay out of the way,” Phobos hissed at him, the sound of his voice chilling Ampelios to his bones, “unless you want to be trampled.”

    And that's probably all too much of me just sort of pouring out all sorts of random drivel about my very inaccurate version of this mythological character.  So I guess that makes it link time. 😅

    Book One, Scions of Troy, is available in interactive form on itch.io, and in text-only form on AO3.  (Technically, the text-only form is also on itch.io...though the AO3 text is technically slightly more up-to-date because in finding quotes for an earlier post I noticed a missing quotation mark and added it there but didn't bother adding it anywhere else.  But it's a single quotation mark, so that's not much of anything.)  I recommend the interactive form, because you can also lead the three youths to horrible deaths.  Uh, I mean, because it's interactive.  Also because the picture of Aias' gravestone didn't load properly onto AO3 and I haven't had time to fix it yet. 😰

    Book Two, The Golden God of Aiolia, is also available in interactive form on itch.io, and in text-only form on AO3.  And again, I recommend the interactive form.  Which is in a different engine than book one's interactive form, so it's easier to go back if you want to see what happens if you pick a different answer.  (Both novels are entirely free on both itch.io and AO3, and the interactive form can be read in the browser for both novels, though the browser version of The Golden God of Aiolia takes a while to load.)

    Book Three, The Martial Maenads, is very near to release; whether it's released this month or next month will probably depend on just how long it takes me to work on all these blog posts. 😅  Anyway, it'll be going on both itch.io and AO3 as well once it's ready.