For the Winner Read online

  About the Book

  Some three thousand years ago, in a time before history, the warriors of Greece journeyed to the ends of the earth in the greatest expedition the world had ever seen.

  One woman fought alongside them.

  Abandoned at birth on the slopes of Mount Pelion, Atalanta is determined to prove her worth to the father who cast her aside. Having taught herself to hunt and fight, and disguised as a man, she wins a place on the greatest voyage of that heroic age: with Jason and his band of Argonauts in search of the legendary Golden Fleece.

  And it is here, in the company of men who will go down in history as heroes, that Atalanta must battle against the odds – and the will of the gods – to take control of her destiny and change her life for ever.

  With her unrivalled knowledge and captivating storytelling, classicist and historical novelist Emily Hauser brings alive an ancient world where the gods can transform a mortal’s life on a whim, where warriors carve out names that will echo down the ages … and where one woman fights to prove herself equal to the bravest of men.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Map

  Prologue

  PART I: GREECE

  The Hunt

  To the City

  Loved by the Gods

  The Heir Returns

  The Killing of the Boar

  The Quest Begins

  PART II: OCEAN

  On the Argo

  All at Sea

  Winds of Change

  Hera’s Revenge

  Betrayal

  In Exile

  Poseidon Awakes

  PART III: ANATOLIA

  Defeat

  The Return

  Golden Apple

  Before Greece

  PART IV: GREECE

  Farewells and Greetings

  Iris’s Last Message

  Return to the Palace

  The Race

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Suggestions for Further Reading

  Bronze Age Calendar

  Glossary of Characters

  Glossary of Places

  About the Author

  Also by Emily Hauser

  Copyright

  For the Winner

  Emily Hauser

  For my parents and for Oliver, always

  Acknowledgements

  There are so many wonderful people who go into the making of a book, and it is one of the real joys of writing to be able to work with and benefit from them all. First and foremost, of course, I am so grateful to my publishers, Transworld: I couldn’t imagine a better home for my books, and I benefit every day from the team’s endless enthusiasm and expertise. Among many, I would like to thank my fabulous editor Simon Taylor, whose shared passion for the ancient world makes working together a true pleasure, as well as Tash Barsby, whose fantastic assistance made everything run more smoothly; many thanks also to Hannah Bright and Patsy Irwin, Viv Thompson, Becky Glibbery, Phil Lord and Candy Ikwuwunna. Beyond Transworld, my sincere thanks go to my agent Roger Field for his advice on everything from books to boar-hunting, and my copy-editor Hazel Orme. I’m so grateful for all you do to help in making these ancient myths a reality.

  I am also greatly indebted to many scholars and resources in my research for this book. My thanks go in particular to Professor Vakhtang Licheli at the Tbilisi State University, Georgia, for his assistance in explaining the Bronze Age history of Colchis and its relations with the Greeks, and to Professor Richard Hunter, who first introduced me to Apollonius’ Argonautica at Cambridge. Otar Lordkipanidse’s important Archäologie in Georgien: Von der Altsteinzeit zum Mittelalter (1991) was an invaluable resource on the archaeology of ancient Colchis, and Georgij A. Klimov’s Etymological Dictionary of the Kartvelian Languages (1998) was particularly helpful in elucidating the Kartvelian/Zan language. The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia (2009) was a useful resource for understanding the geography and ethnicities of ancient Anatolia, and Hara Georgiou’s ‘Bronze Age Ships and Rigging’ (1991) was extremely helpful in reimagining the ancient Argo – as, of course, was our visit to the reconstructed Argo at Volos. In this regard I would also like to thank our wonderful host Nasia Chatson for her hospitality during our visit to Mount Pelion, when I was lucky enough to explore the ancient Bronze Age sites of Iolcos, Pagasae, and the slopes of the mountain on which Atalanta grew up. My thanks also go to the Harvard Archery club, especially Natalie Chew, for bearing with me as I got to grips with a bow and learned how to (almost) hit a target like Atalanta.

  A writer is only as good as the colleagues, friends and family who support her and make the process of writing not only possible but enjoyable. My colleagues, friends and mentors at Yale and at Harvard – Emily Greenwood, Irene Peirano-Garrison, Diana Kleiner, Linda Dickey-Saucier, and all my colleagues at Phelps; Greg Nagy, Ivy Livingston, Teresa Wu, Alyson Lynch, my Boylston friends and my Latin 1 students – have supported me in my creative endeavours far beyond the call of duty. I am so grateful to all the wonderful people at The Biscuit in Somerville – Hannah, Ryan, Bryan, Ilona, Emmy, Emily, Greta and all the others – whose smiles, conversation and encouragement (as well as their almond chais) powered the writing of this book. My friends – too many to mention them all – in the US, the UK and Austria, have been a constant source of support and inspiration: I am so grateful to Farzana, Athina, Natalia, Bells, Alice and all the others who are always cheering me on from the sidelines.

  This book is dedicated to my parents, Andrew and Jenny, whose love and support have managed to reach across the Atlantic and five time zones over the past six years. I am so grateful to you for the important lessons you taught me in life and the encouragement you give me, now that my ship has sailed from the harbour. And I also dedicate it to my wonderful husband, Oliver, whose love and unfailing support along the journey makes living every day and writing every line a joy.

  Prologue

  The king’s adviser trudges up the side of the mountain. Snow whirls around him, blistering his skin with cold. He clutches the precious bundle he is carrying closer to his chest, as if he could protect it from what is to come. Wind lashes the pine trees, bending them like blades of grass, and the snow swirls across his vision through the darkness, the cold biting at his fingertips through his boar-hide gloves. This is no night to be out on the slopes of Mount Pelion, alone, exposed to the fury of the storms of Zeus, with flakes of snow frosting your eyes and bitter ice crystals forming upon your beard. This is no night to be doing such a deed.

  But the king has been firm, and he can only obey. He is a mere adviser, after all, and newly raised to the position. If he denies the king’s orders, what will become of his family? He has his wife to think of, his children, his own little daughter.

  He shudders.

  Yet he wishes he did not have to do what he must tonight.

  The trees are clearing now. He will soon reach the mountain peak where the bare rock reaches up into the sky. A flash of lightning illuminates the path, a steep curving trail up sheer rocks, the only handholds the roots of young trees, the stone slippery with new-fallen snow. It is as if the swirling squalls of wind are pressing him on, on, like the hand of a divine being at his back. The rumble of thunder seems to shake his very bones and sets him mumbling prayers for deliverance as he climbs the treacherous rocks, the bundle clasped to his chest in the howling wind, prayers to gods in which he can hardly believe any more – for what gods could look on and allow King Iasus to order such a thing? What gods could allow him, the powers forgive him, to do what he is doing now?

  And then he thinks:
it is not himself he should be praying for.

  The top of the mountain is bare, whipped clear by winds that blow hard across the sea from Troy to the east, and shaped into jagged peaks of stone, like waves upon the ocean. He searches for shelter, somewhere that the pounding of the wind and the sweeping snow will not reach, then curses himself for a fool. As if it will make any difference.

  But he finds a small cleft within the rocks, and tries to sweep a few dead leaves into a pile to create some warmth. He bends down and places his burden carefully upon the bed of leaves. It is no larger than his two palms placed together, a little bundle of fine-spun cloth and wool. The baby stirs in her sleep, clenching and unclenching her tiny fists.

  He stands up. His fingers are trembling as he turns back towards the path, back into the dark, cold night.

  ‘Farewell, daughter of Iasus,’ he says.

  Back on Olympus, the home of the gods where eternal beings live in endless time, a goddess is hurrying through the empty halls of Hera’s palace. The only light comes from beneath the door of the chamber at the far end of the hall: Hera’s bedroom, her refuge when she is plotting against Zeus or too furious to sleep beside him. Iris knows that Hera, queen of the gods, will be awake at this midnight hour, pacing up and down the cool marble floors, awaiting her return.

  The messenger goddess pushes the door open softly.

  Hera is standing at the centre of the chamber, as Iris had known she would be, back turned, curling dark hair knotted beneath a golden wreath of oak leaves, determined to the last, it seems, not to show how much she wants to hear this news. Hera turns slowly.

  ‘Well?’ she asks.

  Iris bows her head. ‘It is done.’ Her face is blank, expressionless, except for a tiny crease in the centre of her forehead where her brows are drawn together. As she tilts her head up to look at Hera her tunic ripples slightly, iridescent in the lamplight.

  Hera lets out a breath. ‘It is done, then,’ she repeats, in a whisper. She moves to her bed and sits upon it, gazing at her hands, thinking. Then she looks up. ‘And no one saw you go? Hermes?’

  ‘Welcoming Dionysus and the maenads to his palace as I left.’

  Hera nods. ‘Good. And Zeus?’

  ‘Watching the Battle of Qadesh.’

  Hera laughs, and the sound echoes off the marble walls. ‘You have done well, Iris – very well. Not even Hermes could have done such a good job.’

  ‘I’m sure he couldn’t,’ Iris says. She glances at the ceiling, which opens to the night sky and shows a velvet-black darkness dotted with a veil of stars.

  Hera blows out one of the guttering oil-lamps, and the silvery stars become a little brighter. ‘Indeed,’ she says. ‘So the girl will die.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Iris. ‘She will.’

  There is a pause, and it is as if, for a moment, Iris and Hera can see the three Fates seated together in the gaping chasms of darkest Hades, slowly unwinding the golden thread of Atalanta’s life from their spinning wheel and slicing it through with their teeth, until only an inch of thread remains; as if they see one take it between her ancient, time-weathered fingers and flick it over the cavern’s edge, floating down to the infinite depths of the Underworld, to be piled with all the other remnants of mortal lives that were never lived. The two goddesses move softly around the room, extinguishing the remaining oil-lamps hanging on their bronze stands and sending wafts of smoke drifting through the darkness.

  ‘Did you require anything else?’ Iris asks, as the last of the lamps goes out and the goddesses are left shining in the moonlight, slim and pale as two columns of Parian marble.

  ‘No,’ Hera says. ‘It is done. I can sleep in peace at last. I have won.’

  ‘Then I will leave you.’

  But as Iris closes the door behind her and makes her way through the silent sleep-filled palaces of Olympus, she cannot help but wonder whether the Fates, and the snip of their teeth against the thread of mortal life, are always where the story ends.

  Whether it might be possible to defeat destiny itself.

  PART I

  Eighteen years later

  GREECE

  1260 BC

  There grows corn without measure, and grapes for the wine: rain-showers are there always and sweet dew; it is a land good for pasturing goats and oxen, and upon it grow trees of every kind, and pools that never dry.

  Homer

  The Hunt

  Mount Pelion

  The Hour of Offerings

  The Fourth Day of the Month of Sailing

  I was running, beating away thorny brambles and ferns, trampling the shoots of saplings. Thighs tensed, breath coming hard, soles of my feet arched, arms pumping by my sides. The path was barely there, a hunter’s trail criss-crossed with overgrown wild grasses and tree heather, but I knew my way through the mountain forest as well as any seasoned huntsman. My eyes were stinging with sweat, a few strands of chestnut hair stuck to my forehead, but still I ran, determined not to stop until I had put as much distance between myself and Kaladrosos as I could. I skirted a low-hanging branch and jumped a fallen tree trunk, moss-covered and damp, landing sure-footed.

  ‘Aura – faster!’

  Aura, my father’s hunting dog, increased her pace to match mine, panting, her ears flat against her head as she ran. The oaks were packed close here, twisting grey-green trunks ploughing into the earth on every side, roots snarling across the path. The afternoon sun was a faint disc above, flashing through the canopy. I ran faster, heart pounding, my aching thighs shining with sweat, my leather quiver – one half lidded for my arrows, the other open for my bow – bouncing on my back. A waterfall flew by, tumbling over rocks into a green-blue pool, and then I was leaping through the stream of the Kissos, Aura splashing through the shallows, and up, up through the oak forests to the spreading beeches that climbed the flanks of the mountain towards the peak.

  The light was filtering through the dense branches more insistently now, brighter, pooling over the leaves in puddles of gold. A clearing was opening between the trees, and I paused, hands resting on my thighs, breathing hard. Aura stopped too, flanks heaving, as I looked around me. Bare outcrops of rock alternated with low buckthorn shrubs and yellow-flowering broom, surrounded by a circle of pale-trunked trees, and there was the scent of fresh growth and the iron tang of water from the Kissos nearby. I took a deep breath. My anger was beginning to ebb, rinsed out of my body by the blood pumping through my veins, though I could still feel the frustration smouldering in the pit of my belly. She does not understand, a voice in my head said. She thinks her life in Kaladrosos is all there is, spinning wool to thread, weaving it to cloth all year long, seeing the same people, staying always within the village.

  I snorted and flicked my dagger out of my belt.

  And then I stopped.

  There was a rustling in a thicket of wiry hawthorn on the other side of the clearing. I turned, listening. Aura started to growl, her hackles raised.

  ‘Quiet, Aura,’ I whispered, putting my finger to my lips, and she stopped immediately with a whimper. I laid my hand on the scruff of her neck and held her, tightening my hold on the dagger in my other hand. She was straining to move forwards, her black nose sniffing at the trees. The undergrowth rustled again, louder this time. A twig snapped as it was crushed under a heavy weight, the sharp crack echoing around the forest glade.

  My hand tensed on Aura’s neck.

  Without a sound, I sheathed my blade, reached back to the quiver behind me and slid out my bow with practised ease, looped the bowstring over the peg and pulled it taut. Kneeling behind a broom shrub, I took an arrow, nocked it and stretched its feathered fletching back to my ear, feeling the familiar bite of the string against my fingers. My blood was pounding in my ears, the mixed thrill and terror of imminent danger pulsing in my veins as I peered through the branches, trying to get a glimpse of the animal.

  I aimed the tip of the arrow towards the lowest of the boughs in the thicket opposite, a little above the g
round. I could sense where the creature’s movement was coming from. I felt its heavy body prowling across the forest floor; I could almost hear paws padding over the moss and the guttural throb of a growl. I drew the arrow back to its fullest extent, the edge of its flint head biting into my thumb, and aimed. Remember, Atalanta, I thought. You do not miss.

  You never miss.

  But before I could let the arrow fly, there was the sound of cracking branches from my left. I swivelled around. Another beast was charging towards me from the other side of the clearing a hundred paces distant, roaring, teeth bared, its paws thudding against the earth. My heart leapt to my throat as I turned back towards the thicket where I had heard the first beast, and saw another wall of muscle tearing through the undergrowth the same distance away. Aura was barking again, and the two beasts flashed gold, their jaws full of white teeth, claws ripping at the ground.

  Lions.

  With a roar that seemed to shake the trees to their roots, one leapt forwards, charging towards me faster than the torrent of a river pouring over rocks, huge muscles heaving, a bronze blur against yellow flowers and dark leaves. My fingers shook on the bowstring, the twisted ox-gut cutting into my skin, but I was ready. I narrowed my eyes until only the very tip of the arrow existed in my vision and, beyond it, the target of moving muscle. I held my arm steady as the curve of the bow moved to follow the lion’s progress. As if time had slowed to an infinite progression of moments I saw the tightening of the beast’s haunches as it prepared to spring over a fallen tree, heard the crunch of the dried leaves beneath its paws as it leapt, and in that instant I let the arrow fly. It whistled through the clearing, spinning unwavering around its point. I did not stop to hear the bellow of pain from the animal as the arrow met its mark, tearing through the thick muscles of the chest to the unprotected heart, but pulled the dagger from my belt once more and flung it after the arrow to lodge deep in the animal’s chest. It gave a terrifying roar of pain, the life force wrested from it in that final blow.