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Back The Arrow of Apollo
Chapters (52)
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. About the Author
  4. Dedication
  5. By the Same Author
  6. Author’s Note
  7. Map
  8. Domus Libris
  9. House of the Wolf
  10. The House of the Wolf
  11. One
  12. Two
  13. Three
  14. Four
  15. Five
  16. Six
  17. Seven
  18. Eight
  19. Nine
  20. Ten
  21. Eleven
  22. Twelve
  23. Thirteen
  24. Fourteen
  25. Fifteen
  26. Sixteen
  27. Seventeen
  28. Eighteen
  29. Nineteen
  30. Twenty
  31. Twenty-One
  32. Twenty-Two
  33. Twenty-Three
  34. Twenty-Four
  35. Twenty-Five
  36. Twenty-Six
  37. Twenty-Seven
  38. Twenty-Eight
  39. Twenty-Nine
  40. Thirty
  41. Thirty-One
  42. Thirty-Two
  43. Thirty-Three
  44. Thirty-Four
  45. Thirty-Five
  46. Thirty-Six
  47. Thirty-Seven
  48. Thirty-Eight
  49. Timeline of the Trojan Cycle
  50. Further Reading
  51. Acknowledgements
  52. Supporters

Hermes smiled.

He went to Tisamenos’s body, and laid a hand on it.

There was a moment of stillness, and the rays of the sun seemed to play on the corpse. Even a god’s touch could not bring back someone from the dead, thought Silvius.

Then the impossible happened.

At first, Silvius wasn’t sure if he had seen correctly, thinking that his tears might have blurred his vision. But the others around him were looking puzzled too. And then he saw it again. It was true. Tisamenos had blinked. And now he coughed, and stretched, and sat bolt upright. He felt his head, his body, his fingers. He turned to Elissa, and a smile spread over his face. Orestes let out a gasp of astonishment and fell to his knees.

‘His soul was flitting, lost in the Underworld,’ said Hermes. ‘His body is not entirely flesh, so he could be called back. The love for him here from Elissa, the despair that Silvius showed – these things helped to bring him back.’

‘There’s something odd about my body,’ said Tisamenos. His voice was rasping. He kept prodding himself all over. The sheen on his skin was different, too, duller.

‘A miracle!’ Orestes sobbed. ‘Hermes, I thank you … My son, my son …’

Elissa threw her arms around Tisamenos, and kissed him, and Orestes held him. They both pulled apart from him, looking at him strangely. ‘I don’t … I don’t understand …’ There was a note of confusion in Orestes’s voice. He kept touching his son, then pulling away. ‘What … what has happened?’

‘Orestes – the Corinthian general wants you. Trouble with some of the men.’

Sighing, Orestes traced his finger down Tisamenos’s cheek, then went off to do his duty.

Silvius, waiting by the side, stood quietly until Elissa had finished whispering to Tisamenos. She released him, brushing a tear away from her eye.

‘Tisamenos,’ he said, coming forwards shyly. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

‘And you,’ he answered. ‘And you.’ Something in his voice, something like an echo, made Silvius wonder.

‘But what … what’s happened to you?’

Tisamenos looked down, and his expression did not change. He rapped his knuckles on his head. ‘I am stone,’ he said. I am made of stone.’

Later, Silvius watched from the side as Tisamenos and Elissa held each other by the campfire, as the men feasted on roasted oxen and drank from bowls of dark wine. Silvius had had his fill of meat, but was eating his third apple.