When the Trojan army swept in like a tide and launched a full assault on the Greek alliance,
By the time the Greek side fully responded, the two sides fought through the entire day, then both pulled back and settled into a fresh standoff.
With Diomedes, a top-tier warrior, gone from the front, the Greek army, which was already stretched thin without Achilles and now facing the Amazon queen on top of everything, took a serious beating.
In this round of fighting, several kings were wounded, and Thoas, who had been talking with Night just the night before, was critically injured, barely escaping a trip to meet the moon goddess in a dream.
Menelaus, the suffering king of Sparta, nearly got shot dead by the Trojan sharpshooter Pandarus.
If Athena hadn't quietly intervened and put her protection on him, letting the arrow pierce skin but not reach bone or flesh, that long-suffering man would have checked out of this war permanently.
At the critical moment, Great Ajax stepped up and held off Hector, buying the Greeks some time.
The legendary scene of Hector's divine spear at full power still failing to break through Ajax's shield played out on the battlefield once more.
When the fighting ended and the Trojan forces were finally pushed back,
Agamemnon immediately called a war council.
All heroes were required to attend, including Odysseus and Night, who were technically in logistics roles, and both came to the tent.
The moment Night stepped inside, he found Agamemnon in full fury.
The man raged about the treachery of the Trojans and the incompetence of the assembled heroes.
"All the heroes of Greece under one banner, and not one of you could stand against Hector.
You are a disgrace to your own names as heroes. Useless. Every last one of you is useless!"
Agamemnon's voice came out cold and cutting, and he threw a goblet to the floor. Red wine spread across the carpet like blood.
That sight made the faces of the heroes underneath him go very dark.
Although many heroes, led by Odysseus and the others, said nothing out loud, the irritation inside them was burning.
If you, Agamemnon, are so exceptional that you can scold our incompetence, why didn't you go duel Hector yourself?
You can't beat the man either.
The elder Nestor spoke up with calm and composure. "Agamemnon. This is not the moment for anger.
If you can bring Achilles back, Hector is not a problem."
The moment the old man said it, the furious Agamemnon went completely silent.
He stayed quiet for a moment, then sat back down in his chair with an expression like someone had forced something foul into his mouth.
There he sat, saying nothing.
Bring Achilles back.
That was the same as asking him, the king of kings, to bow his head to someone beneath him.
Impossible. Absolutely not.
A prince of some minor kingdom thought he could compete with him over a woman.
The arrogant and conceited King of Mycenae would never allow himself to bow down to his rival.
He also noticed that many of the heroes around the room were showing signs of restlessness, clearly hoping for the return of the invincible Achilles.
And the more obvious that became, the more Agamemnon detested Achilles.
Achilles was a vassal who defied his king.
And these vassals of his weren't thinking about how Achilles should apologize.
They were expecting him, the king, to go and beg someone to come back?
Great Ajax, unable to hold himself back, put in a word for his cousin Achilles.
After that, several other heroes who were on good terms with Achilles also spoke up, all urging Agamemnon to bring him back.
By the end, nearly every hero in the room had said something in Achilles's favor.
Even those who weren't close to him had seen what he was capable of on the battlefield.
They agreed his fighting strength was indispensable to whatever came next.
And through all of it, Night stood right where he was and did nothing.
As someone who had only just arrived, he was practically invisible.
No one looked at him if he said nothing, and at the same time, as a newcomer, he had no established reason to be close to any of these so-called heroes on the Greek side.
He said nothing, and nobody thought it was strange.
He used the time to quietly observe the relationships between the different heroes.
Then the elder Nestor, the one person who hadn't shown up at the welcoming banquet the night before, suddenly spoke up and aimed it directly at Night.
....
"Lord Griffith, do you have any thoughts on this?
Everyone here hopes Achilles will return. You are the only one who has not spoken.
I imagine you have a better solution to the current difficulty in mind."
...
With one sentence, Nestor pulled every gaze in the room straight to Night.
Everyone was curious about this newly arrived hero's actual ability.
They had heard he defeated Diomedes, but the fight apparently left him in a rough state too, and many of them hadn't watched the full thing, so most held no strong opinion on his strength.
Even so, they were genuinely curious what he thought.
Night glanced at Nestor.
The old man's face showed nothing, but Night's sharp perception caught a well-hidden current of hostility underneath.
Thinking about it, he frowned faintly.
When did he end up on this old man's bad side?
Nestor's one sentence yanked Night out of his invisible corner and put him directly in the light of everyone's scrutiny.
If he couldn't say something worth hearing, he would almost certainly earn the resentment of the faction backing Achilles.
All because he didn't speak up for Achilles?
No. It probably went deeper than that.
Thinking about Nestor's background and history, he suddenly understood.
This elder who dedicated himself to bringing Achilles back to the Greek army showed dissatisfaction at seeing Night stay silent and not speak up for Achilles, which might have been one part of it.
But there was likely also a personal reason behind the hostility.
Night was introduced by Telephus, a descendant of Heracles.
And the young Heracles had killed Nestor's entire family.
Was he catching stray hostility just from the connection to Telephus?
He even suspected that when the Greek alliance attacked Telephus's kingdom, this old man, if he hadn't actively pushed for it, had certainly been happy to watch it happen.
Maybe others didn't know, but as a survivor whose family was killed by Heracles, didn't this old man know which land the descendants of his enemy ruled over?
However, he said nothing, not until Telephus was pushed all the way back to his own capital and nearly finished off.
If not for Achilles and Telephus recognizing each other and sorting out the misunderstanding,
Telephus might have genuinely lost his kingdom and life entirely.
Could a man like Nestor really not have known whose son Telephus was?
He probably spent no small amount of effort at the time letting things play out so they would conveniently eliminate a descendant of Heracles for him.
Another scheming old fox.
Troy's offensive was very fierce, and in terms of top-tier fighters, they were far ahead of the Greek side.
Without Achilles there was basically no other option.
If Night said nothing useful, it wouldn't just embarrass him; this way, he could also put pressure on Agamemnon to tell the other party the necessity of Achilles and force Agamemnon to invite Achilles back in advance.
Two birds with one stone. Clever.
But Night obviously couldn't let the old man's plan succeed.
Achilles was his intended future ally for Troy.
He wasn't going to watch everyone drag him back here.
Because of the Briseis situation, what was originally a decade-long grinding war skipped straight to the stage of Achilles and Agamemnon falling out.
Without Achilles, the Greek side went from a siege to suddenly getting pushed back toward their own doorstep.
And now, with Diomedes heavily injured, Troy seized the opening and drove them further into a corner ahead of schedule.
If Night remembered correctly, it was exactly when the Greeks got pushed this hard that Athena stepped in and granted Diomedes her blessing.
That was when Diomedes's legendary rampage began.
If Achilles also came back early on top of that....
.
.
.
(End of the Chapter)