The air in the Achaean camp was thick and still, as if the Styx River itself had overflowed its banks and was frozen between the tents. It clung tightly to his throat, carrying an unbearable mixture of smells: the stench of unwashed bodies, the sweet smell of rotting wounded flesh, smoke from stunted bonfires on which there was nothing to cook. Ten years. They had been standing here for ten years, against these damned, indestructible walls, and it seemed the same amount of time had passed since they had last eaten their fill.

The sand at the water's edge, once pure and golden, was now a dull, gray swamp, trampled by thousands of feet, pitted by wagon wheels and strewn with debris. The fishing nets that had once brought salvation now lay abandoned and empty, their knots huddled in the sun like the skeletons of monstrous spiders. Even the sea, their eternal ally and breadwinner, seemed to have turned away from them: the waves were stingy and cold, and the waters were unnaturally deserted, as if Poseidon had indeed cast his displeasure on them, withdrawing all living creatures into its depths.

And above this realm of decay and despair hung a single sound-a furious, animal roar that came from the most luxurious tent in the camp. Achilles. Not a hero, but a wounded beast that had broken loose. Like an echo, he was echoed by the moans coming from inside – the moans of Patroclus, who was dying without medication, from infection in a wound that had nothing and no one to treat. And that sound was scarier than any battle cry, because it meant the end: the end of hope, the end of strength, the end of the very reason many of them were still fighting here.

Apart from this chaos, Odysseus stood in his usual place on the cliff. He was looking at the sea, but he didn't see it. His gaze was turned inward, to where the images of distant Ithaca stood before him: the slopes overgrown with olive trees, the laughter of his little son, Telemachus, and ... you. Your face, your eyes, your calm presence, which was more support for him than all the walls. He squeezed his temples with his fingers, trying to drown out the hungry pain in his stomach and the sharp, cutting longing in his heart. He, the Cunning One, has exhausted all his cunning. He, the King, could not feed his people. He, the Husband, could not hug his spouse. At that moment, he was just a man who had reached the very edge.

It was then, at the most desperate moment, that his gaze, clouded by pain and hunger, caught on a point on the horizon. At first he didn't believe it, thinking it was a mirage created by an exhausted mind. But no. It was a ship. Small, light, but walking with incredible, almost insane confidence straight to their shore, to the very heart of the blockade.

Odysseus slowly straightened up. His heart, which had not shown signs of life a minute ago, began to pound with such force that it became difficult to breathe. He peered at it, squinting against the salt spray and the tears that welled up. The sails... the sails were neither Achaean nor Trojan. They were made of fabric that he would have recognized from a thousand. The cloth that was woven in his own palace. The fabric he asked for for your new peplos the last summer before he left.

The blood drained from his face, and then rushed back. He did not realize how his feet carried him down to the shore, through a crowd of stunned, alarmed warriors. He ran, stumbling over empty boilers and people sleeping on the move, not taking his eyes off the ship, which was already throwing its anchor on the sand.

And when you came down the gangplank, standing on the trampled, hopeless sand, like hope incarnate from the very light, time stopped. He froze a few steps away, his chest heaving. There was no cunning or calculation in his tired, piercing eyes, but a mute, bottomless shock mixed with such relief that his powerful shoulders trembled.

«...Is this a dream?" a hoarse, broken whisper escaped him, which was heard only by the two of you and the sea, which finally brought him not grief, but salvation.