There's no point saying things you don't believe yourself.
Night put on an expression of sincere concern, the face of someone who had made you a real friend and was genuinely worried about you.
You're trying to fool me with these high-sounding words?
Ajax opened his mouth, started to put something together, then stopped.
No matter how many arguments he came up with, somewhere under it all, he already knew every single one would ring hollow.
He wasn't the kind of person who liked lying to himself.
He wanted to say Agamemnon wasn't that brutal and wouldn't do something like that.
But in reality, how could these heroes not know what kind of person Agamemnon was?
He was brutal. Indulgent. Self-centered and domineering.
For the sake of a woman, he was even willing to turn against his strongest general.
Asking someone like that to give up what he took as spoils of war,
Ajax would have to offer something even more tempting to Agamemnon.
And did he have that?
For a moment, something he had never allowed himself to think about before, or had chosen not to, was now sitting right in front of him because Night named it out loud.
This caused Ajax the Great to struggle internally, and at the same time, he felt guilty towards Night.
After all, the other party was genuinely looking out for him, and here he was still reaching for comfortable fictions.
That wasn't good enough.
His friend deserved honesty in return.
Since ancient times, loyalty and family had always pulled in opposite directions.
As a hero and king on the Greek side, he was bound by his oath to fight under the command of the dominant power. But the people he was fighting against were his mother's blood.
If it were just the destruction of Troy, that would be one thing, but if Agamemnon really wanted to wipe them out completely —!
Ajax took a slow, deep breath.
Then he said with sudden certainty: "Then I would raise my weapon and my shield and protect my family.
I would ask the king for mercy.
To at least spare their lives.
If the king refused, then I would use my shield to get them out of there."
What he said out loud was already something close to treason inside a Greek camp.
He was treating Night as a real confidant without hesitation.
Night quietly marveled in his heart.
Wasn't Ajax worried he would turn around and report him?
That kind of conviction without concealment was foolish in a practical sense, but genuinely admirable for what it was.
"From the moment you said that, your fate is more or less set, Great Ajax.
I feel like I can see the distant future.
I have a story I want to tell you. Would you like to hear it?"
Without waiting for Ajax to respond, Night began to speak on his own.
He took out the lyre and started to play, deliberately keeping the sound contained within the room so it wouldn't carry outside.
Then, a hero's epic called Great Ajax began to unfold from his lips.
A hero who lived by the courage of an eagle and the holy shield Aegis, son of Telamon and Erispphe, cousin of the great hero Achilles, and one of the fiercest commanders on the Greek battlefield.
He and his brother Teucer once held the line together against Hector's assault.
His shield could not be pierced even by Hector's divine spear, and combined with Teucer's archery, the two of them almost defeated Hector, the greatest warrior of Troy and Achilles's most formidable rival.
At the funeral games held in honor of Patroclus,
He competed with Odysseus and Diomedes in wrestling and combat and matched both of them evenly.
This showed everyone that he was not merely a defender. He was a truly powerful warrior in every sense.
When Night sang to this point,
Ajax was already deeply shaken and unsettled.
He could tell Griffith was singing his own story, but so many of the events described had not yet happened, and yet in the music they took on form and image, as though unfolding as a vivid vision.
It felt too real. Like something that was about to happen.
The future?
What a terrifying thought.
Then he heard it.
When he heard about himself and Teucer holding off Hector together, one with a shield and one with a bow, he didn't think too much of it.
But when he heard about the funeral games after Patroclus died, where he competed alongside Odysseus and Diomedes,
It was a Greek custom to hold athletic competitions at a hero's tomb as a final send-off.
And the name Patroclus gave Ajax a faint sense of recognition.
Not an especially famous warrior, but someone who was extremely close to Achilles, which was why the name lodged in his memory at all.
That man and Achilles went back to childhood.
They trained together under the centaur Chiron.
In some mythological accounts their bond was described as close enough that some claimed they were lovers. Two men, childhood companions.
Patroclus... died?!
Knowing how close Achilles was to this friend, a friend who was many times closer than his so-called cousin, what if he really died in the future?
Ajax could already imagine what Achilles's state of mind would be if that really happened.
The loss of Briseis couldn't compare to years of friendship. If Patroclus actually died, Achilles would throw himself into revenge with everything he had.
And Night's song wasn't finished.
Gradually, in the music, Achilles died too, and that was something Ajax couldn't accept.
A man with an invincible and undying body, how could he possibly die on a battlefield?!
In the story, he went and recovered Achilles's body, but when it came to competing with Odysseus for Achilles's belongings, for the armor and equipment, most of the other heroes sided with Odysseus, who was clever and socially gifted.
They overlooked Ajax's more substantial contribution.
Achilles's legacy went to Odysseus, a complete outsider with no real connection to Achilles.
Feeling humiliated and filled with grief, Ajax the Great wanted to challenge Odysseus to a duel and prove his worth in combat, but a goddess interfered and clouded his mind until he mistook a flock of sheep for his enemies and slaughtered them.
When he came back to himself, the proud hero could not endure the humiliation of being made a fool.
Feeling he had lost face in front of other heroes and had no right to face others, he chose to end his life by slitting his own throat.
The song ended there.
Because Night didn't want a certain goddess to pay special attention to this moment, he left out her name in the part where she deceived Ajax.
Even though that goddess had already started watching him because of a battle a few days before.
When the piece finished,
Silence. A dead, heavy silence.
A terrible atmosphere.
Ajax seemed still completely inside the story, lost in the world the music wove around him, a world so real it felt like stepping into another place entirely.
Setting aside the logical gaps, like how someone as powerful as Achilles could possibly die in battle,
If everything in that world were true, if that were him, faced with each of those situations, what would he do?
Ajax checked instinctively against his own nature.
And instantly realized, breaking out in a cold sweat.
Because every single piece was exactly right.
.
.
.
(End of the Chapter)