Agamemnon set his travel bags down in the hallway. It had been an unreasonably long voyage back from Troy. A storm had scattered the Greek fleet, and thanks to the 10 years lying on dry sand and baking in the sun, many of the ships had proven unable to handle the strain of tempestuous waters. It seemed as if Poseidon had had the last laugh.
Poseidon is dead. That was still a difficult thought for Agamemnon to wrap his head around. That Zeus and Hera were gone was even harder to believe, even with the haze of smoke and fire replacing the storm clouds that had ones covered the summit of Mt. Olympus. He’d seen Ares fall in battle, personally, and had attended Athena's funeral. According to Odysseus’s nonhuman partner, Aphrodite, Artemis, and Apollo were also gone. Hephaestus, she'd said, would likely retire from the world. It would have shaken the Greek world to its core if they hadn’t done a bit of damage control before they left.
Nothing could prevent the rank and file from telling their families what happened, but old, battle weary soldiers told many stories that people dismissed as delusion or exaggeration. The leaders of the Grecian League had made a pact, though, to cover up the deaths they could, to tell their people that the gods were still watching over them from the heavens. Greece would have to get used to a more abstract understanding of their pantheon, but maybe that was the nature of the world; the old gods and heroes became memories, memories became history, and history became mythology.
It had been a tense negotiation, given the fall out of the war, but in the end no one wanted to take the war back to Greece with them. The Achaean kings and princes had shaken hands and parted as allies. The Grecian League had survived, and violence between the Greek states would be averted for the foreseeable future.
Of course, that wasn’t the only lie they agreed to tell. Agamemnon had been furious that Odysseus and the others had let the remaining Trojan royals go. Scamandrius was a threat so long as he lived, and Andromache and Kassandra would have been fantastic status symbols to drag home. But then, Odysseus had pointed out that Scamandrius was only Scamandrius, so long as people agreed that he was. Anyone of appropriate age could come along and rally the surviving Trojans, claiming to be Hector’s son. The infant himself was inconsequential in the long run, so Odysseus had simply thrown a sack of potatoes from the walls of Troy, and everyone had declared the most beloved child of Troy dead. Likewise, Nestor had added Andromache and Kassandra’s names to the lists of slaves taken back to Greece. Few Grecians had met the women face to face, and a king’s harem was kept silent and private – few people would know that Hector’s wife and sister weren’t among Agamemnon’s concubines.
There had been no fanfare to celebrate Agamemnon’s return. The wives and children of the Mycenaean men who’d followed him to war ten years ago had swamped the docks, but as many joyous reunions as there were, there were many more tears. He’d tried at first to send letters home apprising his people of their casualties, but then Aphrodite had twisted his mind around and he’d fallen into Dionysus’s nihilistic version of hedonism. He’d stopped sending the letters, because sending them had made him unhappy, and so what was the point? That bill was paid today, in the tears of all the women who had expected to see their husbands step off of the Mycenaean ships, but were instead offered their service pensions.
And of course, Agamemnon’s family had not met him at the docks. Clytemnestra was probably deep into a bottle of some sort right now, and the last he’d seen of Iphigeneia – the only person in the world he’d ever truly loved – she had been supplicating herself before Artemis, preparing to have her life ended so that Agamemnon’s fleet could set sail for their ten years of hell. If only he’d never listened to Athena. If only he’d gone to Troy with one ship, he and Menelaus, the two of them, they might have come to some sort of peaceful solution. Found some other way to break Aphrodite’s hold on Helen.
Agamemnon took his sword off and hung it on the wall. The rest of his weapons had gathered dust and tarnished, because, why should Clytemnestra bother the servants with a minor detail like maintaining their king’s armory? He sighed as he unbuckled his armor, hung it on a stand, and put his leather bracers on a shelf next to the cuirass and tassets.
Athena, Artemis, and Aphrodite. And Helen and Adresteia as well, apparently. Goddesses had an amazing talent for ruining men’s lives. The only gods men should worship should be men, Agamemnon thought. He swung open the door to his bed chambers and found himself face-to-face with Clytemnestra. She was perched at the end of the bed, naked, her breasts dangling over the end of the footboard
Behind her was Dionysus, his pale lean body hammering hers from behind as he drank from Agamemnon’s favorite goblet.
“What… what?” Agamemnon blinked in disbelief.
Clytemnestra just panted as Dionysus sustained his vigorous pelvic assault.
“Your wife has been helping me with some experiments,” Dionysus said casually as he continued thrusting, “We’ve made great breakthroughs, haven’t we Clytemnestra?”
Dionysus grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back. Her lips spread into a wide smile – with two perfect, glistening fangs.
“Welcome home, husband,” Clytemnestra moaned, “I’m so glad you make it in time for dinner.”
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