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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

Kinghouse of the Lion

ORESTES King of Mykenai, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.
HERMIONE first wife of Orestes, now deceased.
ERIGONE second wife of Orestes. Daughter of Aegisthos.
TISAMENOS son of Orestes, by Hermione.
PENTHILOS son of Orestes, by Erigone.
HERO half-sister of Orestes. Daughter of the Trojan prophetess Cassandra and Orestes’s father Agamemnon.
ELECTRA sister of Orestes.
AGATHA nurse to Penthilos.

The House of the Wolf

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Kinghouse of the Lion

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One

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The Starlight Visitor

LAVINIUM, ITALIA: HOUSE OF THE WOLF

An eagle cast its shadow over Silvius’s eyes as he gazed at the sun sinking behind the hills. The raptor hung, poised, on a thermal, before swooping down onto its prey, out of sight.

Silvius turned his attention back to the dusty, stony road spooling out eastwards in front of him, past the marshes and into the wooded grey-green hills. He adjusted the leather straps of his helmet, which was beginning to weigh down on his black curls, and paced the length of his wall patrol once more. High wooden palisades, taller than he was, rose on either side of a narrow path.

He’d been on duty since the early afternoon, whilst the citizens of Lavinium went about their business below him, safe within the wooden city walls, bartering, selling, sharing jokes, starting fights, solving them. The sound of saws cutting through wood was constant, of timber being hauled and stone being hammered. The smell of sawdust carried to him on the breeze.

There had only been a few traders, trickling in from the other small settlements scattered near Lavinium, bringing deer skins, bear pelts, wines, olive oils, clay jars and bronze weapons. Silvius’s older brother Iulus had arrived with a party of riders from his nearby colony of Alba Longa, strutting in on a fine dark stallion. Silvius had watched him, unnoticed, from above.

Silvius longed for something more. Maybe a raiding party, bronze spears glittering like stars. Or better still, if he could see one of the creatures that his father Aeneas talked about with wonder. After a boar hunt earlier that year, Aeneas said that he’d seen, disappearing into the woods, shy, awkward and beautiful, a human head and torso shading into the shaggy legs of a goat, one of the last fauns.

But Silvius hadn’t yet been allowed to fight, even in a skirmish, though it was his thirteenth birthday soon, and he was going to be given his first sword.

It wasn’t fair. Iulus had been leading the army by the time he was fourteen, when the Trojans had first come to Italian soil, fifteen years ago now, after their long journey over the seas when their city had been burnt to the ground by the Achaeans.

Silvius lifted his spear, sighting along its length as if about to hurl it at an imaginary opponent; he shouted, ‘Yah!’ and then let it drop to his side.