Uttering a hideous, inhuman shriek, the snake took the blow. Before Silvius or Elissa could do anything more, the remnant of Python had slithered away.

When they ran after him, they could not see any sign of him. Elissa collapsed, panting, Silvius next to her.

‘Is Python dead?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so! I was meant to shoot him, Silvius! It was meant to be me! Dolphinlight, dolphin and light.’

‘And one will die … Tisamenos!’ Silvius picked up the broken parts of the Arrow. He did not look at Elissa.

Tisamenos had collapsed. They went to him. He was limp. Elissa felt a sob of grief gathering in her stomach.

‘He’s just unconscious!’ said Silvius.

‘No,’ answered Elissa, starkly. ‘He’s dead.’

Thirty-Eight

Out of the Spiral

‘Look, there’s light up there.’ Silvius saw pale beams coming through a fissure. There must be a tunnel they could go through. Elissa was bloodied and dirtied and shaking. They took Tisamenos by the arms and legs, and half-carried, half-dragged him. The pool of light grew, and in a short while they saw a wide opening above them, at the end of a short incline. They scrambled up the stone ramp, struggling with Tisamenos. Silvius stumbled, sending rocks clattering down into the meteorite pit.

‘Keep going … Almost there …’ Elissa called.

Panting, they came out into daylight, and placed Tisamenos on the ground. He was heavy, like stone.

Silvius sank his head onto Tisamenos’s chest. It was lifeless. His body was cold, his eyes shut.

Orestes’s voice came from afar, and then he was groaning and wailing, pushing them aside. He threw himself onto his son’s body and wept, his whole frame heaving with sobs. ‘My son … my son …’

Silvius wept too, kneeling in the dirt around the boy’s corpse.

He prayed and prayed, to Apollo, to Hermes, feeling that he had done wrong, that he had failed.

The sun’s beams began to lighten the gloom, and the devastation of the army was revealed. Silvius, hardly knowing what he was doing, wandered through the battlefield. All around were corpses, many Achaeans; and many men, women and children too. The power of Python had left his army, and a huge group of confused Italians was clustered together, ragged and hungry, with no memory of what they had seen or what they had done. Among them were mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, and those that remained found and clung to each other in the light.

Later, the sky was bright and clear. An ox was roasting for the soldiers, whilst the others were clearing up the battlefield, placing the bodies of the slain ready for the funeral pyres, picking up the weapons that they could salvage. Callias’s long red hair was a bright gleam among the grime and greyness, covering his lifeless face. A comb was still attached to his hair.