Agamemnon originally didn't think much of Night...but that was understandable.
After all, other heroes had come with full households, bringing large numbers of soldiers, entire families throwing themselves into the campaign together, brothers and fathers and sons fighting side by side.
Like the cousin relationship between Achilles and Great Ajax in the alliance, or Ajax and Teucer as brothers.
But who could have imagined that the Moon god's status would suddenly pop up, and that this man could even ride a sacred deer that only Artemis could ride, which showed how much the other party was valued by the goddess?
After being squeezed of so many soldiers and so much wealth, Agamemnon naturally would have loved to throw Night straight onto the front lines and get him killed there.
Watching an enemy profit was more painful than losing money himself.
He could not stand this blatant freeloading.
So Agamemnon tried to use his authority as supreme commander of the alliance to force Night toward the front.
It would be best if this guy were to die there in battle.
That way he would not have to offend the moon goddess, and an enraged Artemis might even join the Greek side and turn on Troy.
That would have been absolutely wonderful.
But what remained of his strategic mind beyond the influence of his desires was quickly shut down by a single sentence from Night.
"I am only a musician and have no real combat ability.
I can use music to ease the suffering of the soldiers and kindle the courage in their hearts. That is why I came.
Though I lack the great power of the heroes here, I can still help Greece in my own way."
Night said he hoped no one would think less of him for his weakness.
The assembled heroes immediately rushed to say, "Of course not, absolutely not!"
Most of them were quietly delighted by his choice, even as they could not quite hide their disbelief at his ability to say these things with a straight face.
You call someone who nearly killed Diomedes weak?
You call yourself a musician?
But shortly after, when Night produced his lyre and played a short piece right there at the banquet,
Every hero in the room broke into applause and simply bowed down in admiration.
Music at this level—he really was a musician after all.
As for his refusal to compete for power and position, the heroes expressed their approval and support without hesitation.
Absolutely right.
Sending a musician onto the battlefield was no different from murder.
Such a cruel and wicked idea was something they, as heroes, could never allow.
And great king of Mycenae, as the leader of all the heroes gathered here, surely you would not force Artemis's own chosen, a noble wandering poet, onto the battlefield.
Under pressure from multiple directions, Agamemnon in the end had no choice but to abandon the idea of forcibly assigning Night a combat role.
In the end, Night was temporarily given a logistical position and left to move freely.
Agamemnon's private resentment was deep.
He had once been king of kings, and a single decree from him meant no one could resist, whether proud Athens or Sparta, whether a kingdom with the demigod Achilles or one with a mind as sharp as Odysseus's.
Everyone obeyed and followed him to war.
But the string of setbacks at Troy, the heroes' own competing interests, and the incident where Achilles nearly put a sword through him had made Agamemnon's authority crumble significantly in the eyes of the heroes and kings gathered here.
In the old days, what he said went.
Now he could not even fuck a woman without so many complications, and even assigning one person a position met with resistance.
How infuriating.
That was the sum of what happened at the banquet.
Though it was worth noting, aside from Achilles, one other person had not attended.
Or rather, that person had not been welcoming of Night's arrival.
After Night left, an old man walked into Agamemnon's tent without announcement, and not a single person moved to stop him.
When he stepped inside and took in the scene, broken plates scattered across the floor, food and wine mixed with blood, women with their lower halves exposed and battered, one of them looked up at the old man and pleaded, "Please help me... Lord Nestor."
The old man, addressed as Nestor, frowned and paid the woman no mind, looking at the devastation around him as though it were no more remarkable than weeds by the roadside.
His eyes moved to the head seat, where Agamemnon sat slumped against his throne, covered in blood, idly turning his sword in his hands.
"Agamemnon. You cannot keep going like this. Listen to me. Go and make peace with Achilles.
With Achilles, we can turn this around at any time. The Amazon queen Troy brought in means nothing before a true demigod.
All of this because of one woman.
You have let things come this far."
Nestor. King of Pylos.
A hero of great experience and even greater reputation.
Even at his advanced age, somewhere around a hundred and ten years old, he stood as a figure of extraordinary longevity among Greek heroes whose average lifespan barely reached forty.
But this old man had still brought both his sons into the alliance, and he continued to offer counsel to younger warriors.
It was worth noting he was from the previous golden age of heroes, a contemporary of Heracles himself.
His father and brothers had all been killed by Heracles.
He was the only survivor.
But Nestor was also a member of the heroic team that boarded the Argo in search of the Golden Fleece and also participated in the hunting operation against the Calydonian boar.
He was a hero with little fame but a very strong foundation.
Nestor had been working hard lately to bring Agamemnon and Achilles back to terms, exactly as he had done in the original myths.
But clearly both Achilles and Agamemnon were still blinded by desire and resentment.
At one point, this stalemate even drove Nestor to briefly consider drawing his blade and simply killing Briseis to eliminate the source of conflict between them from the root, but Agamemnon kept her well guarded, and Nestor had never found the opportunity.
Now a man suddenly appeared claiming to be descended from a fellow Argo crew member.
Although Nestor had no memory of anyone named Kratos, because of Telephus's endorsement, he had not questioned his existence.
Still, it was precisely because of the Telephus connection that his attitude toward Night was unfriendly.
The reason for the unfriendliness had already been mentioned.
His family had been killed by Heracles. Warmth was simply not going to happen.
Agamemnon, for his part, ignored the old man entirely, doing as he pleased without even glancing up.
Nestor's reputation was too great for Agamemnon to do anything about it despite finding him endlessly irritating.
The old man kept pushing him to reconcile with Achilles, and Agamemnon could not shut him up.
Even the guards at the door didn't dare to block someone of his seniority.
If nothing could be done about him, treating him as invisible would have to do.
Nestor showed no anger at being ignored.
His brow only furrowed deeper.
.
.
.
And on the other side of the camp,
Night had no idea that the greatest obstacle to his goals had already revealed itself.
For Night, who intended to draw Achilles and others away from the alliance, this hundred and ten-year-old elder, steady and clearheaded, who had been working all along to unite the various heroes of the Greek army, was working toward the exact opposite of everything he was trying to accomplish.
This made their conflict inherently irreconcilable.
And Night's current public alignment with a descendant of Heracles made him a natural source of hostility for Nestor, confirming that this elder was not someone who could be won over.
Meanwhile, Night had just returned to the quarters Agamemnon prepared for him, and an old man was already there waiting.
.
.
.
(End of the Chapter)