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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

Sulking slightly, he barred the door and piled up everything he could in front of it.

‘I don’t like this,’ he said. Ruffler curled himself up at the end of the pallet. It smelt as if something might have died in it not long ago. ‘You sleep. I’ll keep watch.’

‘I’ll go first.’

Silvius nodded, reluctantly, and lay down on the bed. Within seconds, he was asleep.

Elissa took up her station at the door, alert to every movement. In the morning, they would begin their search for the rest of the Arrow. And what power the two parts would have when they came together, she shuddered to think.

Twenty-Four

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The Trial of Tisamenos

MYKENAI, ACHAEA: KINGHOUSE OF THE LION

A tall, thin man, his lips bloodied, was speaking to Tisamenos. His voice was guttural, and Tisamenos could hardly understand his words. They were in a vast, dark room, and the man was pointing at something the boy knew was bloody and fetid, though it was just out of his sight.

He turned to look, but there was nothing. A groan called his attention back, and in the thin man’s place stood another, broader in his chest and body, though his face was unmistakeably of the same family type; the same long nose, the same slightly pointed cast to the chin.

The ghosts of his ancestors filed before his dreaming mind, imploring, cajoling. They would never rest.

‘The House Accursed … we are all bound to it … you cannot escape the curse … Each one of us …’

They were twined into the bones of the kinghouse, as much a part of it as the Fury that paced and snarled in the cellars.

Tisamenos’s head was ringing with their cries, and he dragged himself up and out of sleep, feeling that their stone-cold fingers were snatching at him, that they might try to trap him with them for eternity.

His lips were parched. He was still in the same cell, lying on the same bit of earth. He was still waiting to be tried for a crime he did not commit.

He sat bolt upright. His body ached. A rough wooden beaker of water and some venison in a bowl sat within reach, and he took great pleasure in the liquid on his lips and the gamey meat filling his empty belly, tearing at it with his teeth and barely chewing.

Would the Swallows think him soft now if they saw him, trembling with hunger, cold and alone, lying in a dark, dank cell? Would they come and save him? He didn’t think so. Perhaps this was what they had wanted all along. Without him, Orestes was weaker, his only other son a babe.

How stupid he had been to trust them!

The trial would be tomorrow. For plotting the death of the king, there was only one penalty.

Death.