Just as Griffith symbolized a griffin and the courage it represented,
Ajax too was named for the eagle and everything it stood for.
It was the blessing of the great hero Heracles for the son of his good friend, a wish that this child would grow to be as brave and strong as an eagle.
The two names were remarkably similar in what they represented.
When Ajax understood the meaning behind the name Griffith, a faint sense of kinship stirred in him.
And then Night brought up Telephus, which led naturally into talk of their fathers and the time their fathers had fought side by side alongside Heracles.
This caught Ajax's full attention.
His name had been given by Heracles.
That was a matter of great honor.
Though his mother Hesione had been taken by force when Heracles sacked Troy, meaning that despite carrying half Trojan royal blood in his veins, Ajax still stood among the main forces attacking Troy.
How much of that was truly his own choice from the heart was another question entirely.
.
.
.
Meanwhile, in the course of casual conversation, the story of Kratos gradually worked its way out to Ajax, drawing his deep interest.
With multiple threads pulling him in, the growing sense of kinship in Ajax was evident, and by the time they reached Agamemnon's tent, he was no longer watching Night with wariness.
He even offered a quiet piece of advice.
Though Agamemnon feared the power of Artemis, he was not an easy man to deal with.
Ajax suggested Night know when to stop pressing.
Even with Artemis's backing, he could not simply walk through the Greek alliance doing whatever he pleased.
After all, who among them did not have some god's support behind them?
Just look at Diomedes, who Night had just thoroughly beaten.
But strangely enough,
The goddess had only asked him to protect Diomedes.
She didn't show much inclination to punish Night at all.
Perhaps she had something else in mind and simply had not told him.
"We are here. Griffith, from this point you go in alone." After speaking with the guards, Ajax turned back to Night.
Night did not mind.
He had already gotten the location of Ajax's tent from him during the walk over.
There would be plenty of opportunity to build on that connection later.
For now, it was time to see what the man who called himself king of kings among the Greek heroes, that greedy and powerful tyrant, was actually like in person.
The moment he stepped through the door, he walked into a scene of indulgence.
Cups filled with wine, fruit, and tender meat, all laid out lavishly even in the middle of wartime, as though comfort were never to be compromised.
Some of the food had even been placed on the skin of the girls nearby.
Countless beautiful women were pressed close around the man seated at the head of the table, a powerfully built and handsome grown man.
Agamemnon.
Looked better than he expected.
Not in the same league, of course, but he was still hero-descended royalty with real power behind him, so a certain standard came with the territory.
Strength did not guarantee good looks, but the overflowing life force and powerful build of heroes generally kept them from being anything close to ugly.
Agamemnon looked up at Night's arrival and immediately brightened, visibly struck by his appearance, the kind of beauty that suddenly made the women in his arms seem far less appealing.
Greece's kings were, more often than not, bisexual with no particular preference.
What a shame Briseis was not his yet.
Otherwise he would not need to make do with these common beauties.
Thinking of the goddess-like girl he had his eye on, Agamemnon's mood soured.
Though Achilles ultimately failed to take Briseis back, he never stopped watching and would not allow Agamemnon to touch her.
The moment Agamemnon showed any sign of wanting to take her by force, Achilles would reach for his weapon.
As reckless as Agamemnon was, he was not brainless.
He was not going to cause a scene serious enough to need Athena's rescue again.
Some things were simply going too far, and he knew it.
For all the prestige of being called king of kings, compared to the gods above, the title meant nothing.
The gods could replace him whenever they pleased.
Unless absolutely forced,
Agamemnon had no desire to make an enemy of another divine-backed individual.
And so Agamemnon gestured for Night to sit and laid on a show of warm hospitality.
Without waiting for Night to speak, he took the initiative to explain that he had been buried in urgent matters and failed to notice the arrival in time.
That was his failing.
But the herald had been unclear in his report, failed to grasp the importance of the situation, and sat on news this critical without bringing it forward. Agamemnon announced he had already had the herald's head taken off and had the head presented to Night as a gesture of accountability.
Though it was entirely the herald being made a scapegoat, Agamemnon's skin was thick enough to present it as a simple fact while putting on a show of someone thoroughly overworked and burdened.
Night: "..."
If you at least sent the women away, the exhausted act would be slightly more convincing.
Such an obvious lie, and he could not even be bothered to sell it better.
A poor herald, killed for nothing.
Though it was not only the scapegoating that made Agamemnon have him killed.
He had also noticed something was off about the herald.
The man had never mentioned that Night arrived on the divine deer.
A herald in that position could not have missed the significance of that and yet still said nothing.
Ruling out suicidal insanity, and with nothing suspicious about his background to suggest he was a Trojan spy,
That left very few other possibilities.
The kind Agamemnon did not even want to think about.
Things like the hand of a god.
Someone, no, some god, deliberately clouding human minds, orchestrating this entire confrontation from behind the scenes.
Whether out of fear of Artemis or a genuine desire to smooth over this unusual conflict, Agamemnon truly did want to put Night at ease.
And yet,
You can never wake someone who is pretending to sleep.
Night had no interest whatsoever in getting along with him.
At the most fundamental level there was an irreconcilable conflict between them.
He was even feeling a flicker of temptation right now, wondering whether he could simply cut Agamemnon down on the spot.
But the odds of success were too low.
He set that appealing thought aside for now.
Then Night went on the offensive, demanding Agamemnon provide an explanation or even compensation.
"This is not for my sake. It is to appease the anger of the great goddess Artemis.
My dear king, you surely do not wish to go through another ordeal of being targeted by the moon goddess, do you"
...
The words hit Agamemnon like a mouthful of something foul.
His expression curdled and his smile vanished.
This little brat actually dared to use the goddess as leverage against him?
You insufferable little pest!
He had already said it was a misunderstanding, and still there was no letting it go.
Night, for his part, did not see a misunderstanding at all.
To be honest, as king of Mycenae, even Agamemnon's father, the hero Atreus had gotten the throne through a fight with his own brother.
Entangled in royal succession struggles from childhood, Agamemnon had grown up cycling through every tragedy imaginable: fathers sacrificing daughters, wives killing husbands, and sons killing mothers.
These experiences had forged his formidable heroic strength, but perhaps too much suffering had driven him to seek pleasure at every turn, and in the end he had become a brutal tyrant defined by greed and excess.
None of which changed the fact that Night only wanted to make things worse for him.
If Agamemnon could not produce genuine sincerity, Night had no objection to giving him a life even more miserable than in the original story.
Not for any grand reason.
Simply because he had the moon goddess covering for him.
That was the privilege of a moon goddess believer.
This kind of confidence was exactly what the role called for.
Sorry, having a god on your side really does let you do whatever you want.
At least at this particular moment, Agamemnon, who had already offended the sea goddess Thetis, had absolutely no interest in testing whether his head was hard enough to take on another divine enemy.
Having calculated this exactly,
Night felt completely at ease pressing as hard as he liked.
.
.
.
(End of the Chapter)