The first thing he had to do was release his grip. Bending slightly, with his right hand he scrabbled around for a rock. The snakes’ hissing increased in volume, but the Last Gorgon seemed to be toying with him, slithering back and forth across the same cold patch of rock.

He found a flint, and holding it tightly, he smashed it repeatedly onto his new stone knuckle. Panting with exertion, with a final loud grunt he shattered the joint, and the stone finger fell to the cave floor, releasing his hand. He dropped the shield, and it clattered hollowly.

Where his finger had been was now a hard stump. He felt it gingerly. Necessity compelled him.

He had to go on.

The first torch was guttering right next to him. He tore it from the cleft. With his back still to the Last Gorgon, he listened hard for her movements. Her snakes were hissing nearby, but she seemed to have come to a standstill.

He spun round on his heels with his eyes clamped shut, and flung the torch at where he thought the Last Gorgon was.

It clattered to the cave floor, and the Last Gorgon laughed again, her light human voice shading into the unsettling hiss of the snakes.

He’d missed, and now there was only his sword and the second torch, further into the cave, nearer the Last Gorgon. He scrabbled for his sword, and at the same time, his skin prickled again with something like fire, and he felt something sticky when he put his hand to it, before quickly bringing it away.

Venom. The snakes were spitting venom at him.

Wildly grasping, he recognised the shape of the sword hilt and lifted it, at the same time finding the shield and settling it onto his arm with difficulty, covering his head.

Tisamenos had never fought anyone before, not properly. The sword had never been used. He thought of the Swallows, all those hardened, weathered, cold-eyed people. He thought of his bed, so soft and huge, and the downy pillows, and the golden goblets in his rooms. He thought of his father, drunk, on his crumbling stone throne, a dancing girl sitting on one knee, a cupbearer on the other. His stepmother, Erigone, watching everything, and the new life she’d brought into the world.

The echoes in the cave intensified, pounding round his skull. A rustle made him jump sideways, and a huge slug of venom stung his unprotected hand. This time it burned his skin, leaving a large welt.

The other torch. If only he could get to the other torch.

But how? He remembered the touch of his mother. My little lion cub. He needed that fierceness now he was more than a cub. What she’d said to him had worked in the Swallows’ meeting place. He remembered it now. Know things, and know the names of them, and you will have them in your power.