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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

She was close to Tisamenos now. Her chest was heaving. He ignored her offer of help, and stood up by himself.

‘I – I wanted to help you.’

‘I don’t need a child’s help.’ She spat. Tisamenos found it shocking. ‘Especially a soft, useless one like you.’ He was more insulted by her calling him a child. She was hardly older than him, he guessed, though her eyes had the hard wisdom of the streets in them.

‘I … I’m not a …’

She turned to leave, and her tunic rode down her neck. Tisamenos saw, tattooed there, the tiny outline of a swallow.

‘Wait!’ he called.

She ignored him, and he rushed after her, grabbing her wrist. Irritably, she shook him off.

‘Hero. Where is she?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

She ran away to the edge of the agora, where a street led between some low houses. She looked over her shoulder at him, and the look was unmistakeable. It said: follow, if you dare.

Then she was off, darting away like a butterfly.

That was enough for Tisamenos.

He dashed after her.

Five

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A Breach of the Walls

LAVINIUM, ITALIA: HOUSE OF THE WOLF

The whip lashed down onto Silvius’s upper back for the eleventh time. The pain was becoming almost unbearable, burning fiercely. It wasn’t close, he reminded himself, to what the casket had felt like. Somehow that helped him.

Yet beads of perspiration were running down his forehead and hitting the ground beneath him. They made dark patterns in the dust.

He heard the noise of the soldier pacing backwards, and steeled himself for the twelfth, and final, stroke.

It was the pauses that were the worst. At least if the strokes were regular, then he could anticipate the next. But his punisher was biding his time.

He watched the shadow of the man on the ground. He relaxed, and then the whip snapped with greater force than any of the previous strokes. Silvius was determined not to show any sign of pain.

But it was hard, and his mind filled with a hot brightness that threatened to spill out into a cry.

In the end, he couldn’t keep it in, his voice echoing around the courtyard.

‘Finished,’ said the soldier, and gave him a hand to pull him up. Silvius wobbled up from his knees, and let out a prayer of thanks to the household gods. He wiped away a tear with a knuckle. The soldier shoved his helmet back onto his cropped head, and sauntered out without another word.

Afterwards Silvius let his mother bathe his wounds in his small room, whilst his little brother Brutus fidgeted about on his bed.

‘Why were you whipped?’ asked Brutus, twisting his fingers in the thick blanket. Brutus’s hair was curly and brown, and he looked much more like Lavinia than Silvius did. He stuck his thumb in his mouth, and gazed directly at Silvius.