[SPOILER: The strait is rigged. On one side a six-headed monster on a cliff who will pluck six men off the deck. On the other side a whirlpool that will eat the ship whole. Circe was clear: hug Scylla. Take the loss. Don’t try to fight her — armor will only make it worse. Odysseus does it. He doesn’t tell the crew. He tells himself it’s mercy — better to row hard than to know which seat is the dead seat. Six men go up screaming his name, hands grasping at benches, oars, each other. He stands at the prow with two useless spears, watching. He calls it later a cold sacrifice. Not the price of battle — every man at Troy chose his line — but a price he picked from a menu and made other men pay without telling them. It is the moment cunning is no longer enough and the captain has to be something worse than cunning.]
The Cold Sacrifice
Sail close enough to Scylla to lose six men, or close enough to Charybdis to lose all of them. He chooses six. He doesn't tell them.