Achilles took a couple of staggering steps backward, his eyes wide with disbelief. Diomedes' sword was still buried in his belly. The stands, which moments before had roared with shouts and wagers, fell into a sepulchral silence.
No one breathed.
Patroclus watched from his place, pale, unable to look away. Horror tightened his face.
"Achilles!" Thetis shouted.
The voice of the hero's mother broke in the air. Her eyes filled with tears that began to slide uncontrollably down her cheeks.
Achilles lowered his gaze toward the sword embedded in his own body. For a moment he seemed not to understand what he was seeing. Then he raised a trembling hand and grasped the hilt.
A deep growl escaped his throat as he began to pull the blade out. The growl slowly turned into a groan… and the groan into a savage cry of pain and barely contained fury, a roar that echoed throughout the entire stadium.
Thetis could not bear it. She squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears with both hands, unable to watch or hear the torment of her son.
Finally, with one last pull, Achilles tore the sword from his belly. The hero tossed the weapon into the sand without even looking at it. Achilles immediately pressed one hand over the open wound, applying force, trying to contain what threatened to escape from within him.
Even so, he remained standing.
High in the divine stands, a voice broke the silence.
"Well…" murmured Hephaestus, leaning slightly forward with evident surprise. "Your protégé is… interesting."
Athena smiled, satisfied, without taking her eyes off the battlefield.
"Of course he is" she replied with pride. "After all, I trained him."
"It's the same…"
The deep voice that interrupted them made both gods turn their heads.
Ares had approached without them noticing.
The god of war watched the scene with an expression difficult to decipher, his eyes fixed on Achilles. Hephaestus and Athena waited in silence.
Then Ares spoke again, in a low, almost thoughtful tone.
"It's exactly the same… as that time."
The mind of the god of war returned in that instant. To the moment when a mortal had wounded him.
________________________________________
In the Iliad, the poet Homer recounts the combat between the god and the warrior. But that poem was composed in the Archaic age, while the Trojan War had occurred centuries earlier, in the Mycenaean world. Between those two times stretched the Dark Age: three hundred years in which writing was lost and memories became legend.
Men forget. The gods do not.
During the war, the gods had been forbidden to intervene directly in the fighting. But a prohibition would never stop the god of war if there was blood to be spilled.
Ares descended onto the battlefield and carved his way through the Achaean warriors to the right and left. His spear pierced cuirasses, his sword split shields, and each blow left another body upon the earth. The battlefield soon became a river of blood, viscera, and corpses.
Soon the Achaeans began to retreat. One by one they fled, all except one.
Ares recognized him immediately.
He was the same mortal who had wounded Aphrodite while she tried to rescue her son Aeneas from the battlefield. Athena's protégé.
The goddess had ordered him not to fight him. To wait while she went to warn her father, Zeus, that Ares had broken the prohibition. Like a spoiled girl running to accuse her brother.
Ares spat a low laugh.
Before him, Diomedes held his spear. The god watched him carefully: he saw the cold sweat sliding down his brow; he saw the tension in his muscles; he saw the fear… and also the determination in his eyes.
Diomedes hurled his spear. The projectile cut through the air with violence… and crashed against the god's enormous bronze shield with a metallic thunder. The spear bounced off without even scratching him.
Ares smiled.
"Is that all?"
With a swift movement, he took his own spear and threw it. The force of the cast was such that the air burst with a dry roar, like a compressed thunderclap. Diomedes barely managed to move aside.
The warrior did not hesitate. Instead of retreating, he ran toward the god, his sword descending in a brutal strike, but the blade struck Ares' shield and bounced off without causing harm.
The god answered in that same instant, turning the shield and ramming it forward with monstrous force. The impact lifted Diomedes from the ground.
The warrior was hurled several meters through the air before crashing against a huge rock. The blow tore the breath from him and blood burst from his mouth as he fell.
For a few seconds, the world spun. But even so… he forced himself to rise.
Ares extended a hand; in the distance, the spear embedded in the earth vibrated… and shot toward him, crossing the battlefield until it fell once more into his hand.
The god began to walk toward the warrior, without haste. With the calm of a hunter who already has his prey cornered.
Diomedes fled; that proved disappointing for Ares. However, before he could react, a spear cut through the air with a violent whistle. Ares raised his shield with the natural ease of one who had stopped thousands of such weapons, certain the blow would simply bounce off… but it did not happen.
The tip of the spear sank straight into the metal, piercing it with a dry crack.
A look of genuine surprise crossed the god's immortal eyes. He immediately recognized the power that imbued that spear. Then he understood.
The unmistakable stench of his sister's power permeated the weapon.
"Athena…" he muttered with displeasure.
And it was not the only one. Diomedes began to gather the weapons scattered across the ground: spears, swords, axes, all torn from the corpses of Achaeans and Trojans alike. Each projectile embedded itself in Ares' shield with a dull thud, and each carried the same divine stench: the unmistakable scent of Athena's power.
The shield, now bristling with shafts like a bronze porcupine, became an unbearable burden. Ares, with a roar of frustration, tore it from his arm and hurled it to the ground.
Diomedes already gripped another spear, ready to throw it, but Ares gave him no time. The god charged like an enraged bull, thrusting with his own spear in a brutal strike. The blow was devastating: Diomedes' shield shattered into pieces in an explosion of fragments, leaving the hero exposed and staggering. He stepped back a couple of paces, struggling to regain his balance.
Ares, without pause, prepared another mortal thrust, ready to split the insolent mortal in two. But at that critical instant, Diomedes spat a jet of blood directly into the god's face. Ares blinked, blinded for a second.
It was enough. The divine spear only grazed the hero's side, tearing away a strip of flesh, but Diomedes did not hesitate. With a fierce turn, he drove his own spear into Ares' belly, just where the cuirass was thinnest.
The god let out a deep growl. He felt the bronze tear through his immortal flesh. He staggered back, contemplating the golden ichor that flowed from the wound like liquid gold. He looked at the mortal with absolute disbelief.
With a gesture of rage and pain, Ares grasped the shaft and tore it from his own body. The movement wrenched a cry from him that grew into a deafening roar, so powerful that it shook the entire field. For a moment, Achaeans and Trojans alike halted their blows, paralyzed by terror.
When he finally freed the spear, Ares fixed his eyes on Diomedes one last time. A crooked smile, a mixture of admiration and fury, crossed his bloodied face.
"Well done, mortal"
Then, wrapped in a black cloud of darkness and acrid smoke, Ares vanished from the battlefield.