Feeling the overwhelming pressure exuded by Night, Agamemnon's expression grew very ugly.
That beautiful face, which had caught his eye moments ago, was no longer appealing in the slightest.
In the end Night walked away from Agamemnon with a substantial amount of gold and soldiers.
On the surface, Agamemnon framed it as a king's grant to a hero who had traveled from far away to offer his support.
That barely held together the last shred of his dignity.
Agamemnon had boiled over and nearly reached for violence several times during the exchange, but the goddess behind Night stopped him from acting on any of it.
In Greece, if you wanted to operate, you needed backing.
Without it, Agamemnon could show you what it meant when a dead man had more to say than a living one and yet could never open his mouth again.
Afterward Agamemnon held a grand banquet, which had originally been intended only for Night, but now that things were settled, it became an occasion to introduce him to the other heroes.
At the banquet, Night encountered a series of notable figures one after another.
Among the famous were Great Ajax and Little Ajax, Diomedes, Odysseus, and the aggrieved Spartan king Menelaus.
There were also many heroes less widely known, such as Idomeneus, king of Crete; Thoas, king of Aetolia; Thessalus, king of Ormenion; and Teucer, the first to bear the name of Troy's founding line.
Heroes in title, kings in practice, with quite a few present who amounted to little more than filling out the headcount.
Achilles didn't come.
Apparently he was still somewhere between the Cold War and complete withdrawal.
Night's attention right now was mostly on the heroes with real power, like Diomedes, with whom he had just had a very intense and memorable exchange.
What could be said but that he truly deserved to be the hero who eventually wounded gods in the age of the divine?
His physical endurance was extraordinary.
Diomedes's earlier injuries had already recovered enough for him to attend the banquet normally.
Throughout the entire banquet, however, Diomedes said almost nothing to Night.
The other kings were quite curious about Night.
Thoas, king of Aetolia, showed such enthusiasm toward him that it bordered on ignoring Agamemnon's displeased expression entirely.
That had something to do with his faith, of course.
In the myths, Thoas was someone who had taken his devotion to the moon goddess to a nearly obsessive extreme.
He had once nearly sacrificed his own two sons to the goddess and was only stopped by Iphigenia.
It was worth noting that this same Iphigenia was the daughter who Agamemnon himself had almost sacrificed to the moon goddess under pressure, a princess of the Mycenaean kingdom.
Unlike Agamemnon, who had acted under force, Thoas was a different breed entirely, someone who had voluntarily attempted to offer his own sons.
When Thoas expressed his regret at having been unable to properly sacrifice his two precious sons to the great Artemis,
Night could no longer hold it back. "The pure moon goddess has never required human beings to be offered as living sacrifices.
Though Goddess Artemis has the aspect of the goddess of the hunt, what she loves is never the taking of life itself but the freedom of the hunt and all that it encompasses.
Even Iphigenia was spared by the merciful goddess.
Please do not do things that cause the goddess distress, Thoas."
Hearing his words,
Thoas froze entirely.
No human sacrifice needed?
But the tradition of his people had always been to offer human lives to the moon goddess.
Even he, as king, had believed it completely and been devoted to it so fervently that he had nearly killed his own two sons for it.
And now he was being told the goddess did not want it?
He was furious. He could not believe it. He wanted to argue back.
Others had said similar things before, and he had disbelieved them entirely, even had them cut down.
But the one saying it now was the hero Griffith.
The man had arrived on the divine deer, something that could not be faked.
As Artemis's devotee and representative, there was no possibility he was deceiving him.
So he had actually been wrong all along?
Thoas's expression went distant and dazed.
He sank into himself and went quiet, then slunk off to a corner of the room to drink alone without another word.
Night filed him away in his mind for potential future use.
His character was not particularly admirable.
But that zealous faith in the moon goddess could be leveraged.
Even if nothing else came of it, making him disillusioned and spiritless was still something.
At the very least, the soldiers he had brought from Aetolia were respectable fighters on the battlefield.
This counted as a small blow to the Greek alliance's morale.
What Night had not anticipated was the moment he finished speaking to Thoas; a gentle breeze drifted through, and he suddenly felt refreshed and clearheaded.
The moon goddess's blessing inside him became flooded with warmth.
Night had just arrived and darkness was falling, with the moon now appearing.
Already recovering rapidly under the moon blessing, he was hit by this sudden surge of power, and his injuries healed completely in an instant.
This was clearly Artemis's doing.
Night: Well. It seems the goddess is still keeping a close eye on things here.
She was satisfied with what I just did?
And at this moment Artemis didn't appear.
She was probably watching Night's negotiation with Agamemnon the whole time and then grudgingly accepted that it was enough to settle things.
This was actually a little disappointing.
He had been planning to squeeze Agamemnon a bit further and then go running to Artemis to report it, letting her give this guy a thorough and proper lesson.
With how much Zeus doted on this youngest daughter, if Artemis wanted to make Agamemnon suffer, the King of Gods would probably not only stand aside but personally drag Agamemnon over for her to torment.
Whenever Artemis felt her anger had been satisfied, the Greek alliance could go back to receiving her support.
That was no obstacle at all.
After all, when the king of gods decided who would win, that side eventually won.
The kings of men were nothing more than his playthings.
Why would he concern himself with their feelings?
Did gods ever concern themselves with what humans felt?
(About as much as humans concerned themselves with ants.)
With one word from Thetis, the sea nymph and Achilles's mother, Zeus allowed Troy to win one round before helping Greece win the war in the end.
And how many Greek soldiers died in between, how many heroes fell, the god-king did not care at all.
But even without Artemis descending to intervene,
Once Night left, Agamemnon's temper erupted anyway, and the women around him bore the brunt of it.
That night, women's screams continued to be heard in Agamemnon's camp tent, but no one dared to stand up and stop his interest.
It was clear enough that at the banquet earlier, Agamemnon had been holding it together, but the fact that Night had gotten so much out of him had left him in a thoroughly foul mood.
After all, most of the compensation Night extracted had come directly from Agamemnon's own pocket.
There was no world where he could smile about that.
And so,
At that unusual banquet, aside from Agamemnon swallowing his rage and the king of Aetolia sinking into a self-doubting spiral, most of the other heroes had no strong feelings toward Night in either direction.
Not warm, not hostile, just neutral.
With the one exception of Odysseus, who was visibly dying of envy over Night's status as a moon goddess devotee.
Still, he did leave quite a deep impression on the assembled heroes.
When Agamemnon raised the question of what position Night would be assigned to, given that he had come as reinforcement,
Many of the heroes immediately frowned.
After all, none of them wanted another person competing for military achievements.
Especially those who were comfortable with their current standing were unwilling to see Night's arrival disrupting the stable distribution of glory they had settled into.
What no one expected was that this white-haired man made no attempt to claim any of the frontline positions where military achievements could be earned.
This caught both the heroes and Agamemnon completely off guard.
Offered authority and he still didn't want it?
.
.
.
(End of the Chapter)
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