Hades Daughter (7 page)

“And what if I offered you that thousand years?”

Now the look on his face made her laugh, and she relented. “Not the old Troy, Brutus, for this world is diseased and could no longer support the power and glory of”—
you
—“such a magnificent and glorious city. No, I shall send you to a new land, a strong land, a bright land. Build me a new Troy, Brutus, and I can give you
everything
you could possibly want.”

Her tone, her wandering hand, the tip of her tongue between her teeth, left Brutus in no doubt whatsoever that the “everything” included Artemis.

“Troia Nova,” he said. “And you.” All his life he’d felt that there was
something
towards which he should be moving, something which awaited him. His father had smiled at him, the companions of his childhood had jeered. Others had been indifferent. No one had believed him save these men who currently slept at his back.

Now…he swallowed, almost overcome both by the presence of the goddess and by what she offered him.

Artemis watched his reaction, and knew the thoughts that jumbled through his mind. She turned her hand so that its back was against his skin, and she let it drift lower, down to his belly where she could feel his muscles quivering in excitement.

“Where?” he said, his voice almost breathless now in his excitement. “Where is this strong and bright land?”

“You will reach it in time, Brutus. First, however, you must sail south for two days to a city called Mesopotama.”

“My long and dangerous travail.”

“Aye.” Her hand was moving more deliberately now, and she could feel how much her touch excited him; their eventual matching would be all she had hoped for. “Mesopotama is ruled by a king called Pandrasus. There is a great test for you in this city of Mesopotama, one you will pass
only
if you have the strength and ability to rebuild Troy.”
And win me.
“When—if—you have won through, and have set your fleet to sea once more, sail a further day’s journey south, and you will find an island. Seek me out there, and I will show you the path to your Troia Nova.” She pressed her hand deeply into his flesh, then withdrew it and stood away from him. She smiled, holding his eyes, then stepped forward and brushed past him.

He turned as if to follow, but she held out her hand, halting him. “Do as I say, Brutus,” she said, and then, suddenly, Artemis was gone, as if she had never been.

In a land far distant, so distant it was almost incomprehensible to either Trojan or Llangarlian, a naked youth of particularly dark beauty sat in a barren, dry plain in the valley of an alpine landscape. Above him reared snow- and ice-capped mountains, about him whistled frigid winds, but none of this did he notice.

He sat cradled within the dark heart of the unicursal labyrinth that he had scrawled in the dry earth with a knife. The knife lay on the soil before his crossed legs, its blade pointed outwards towards the entrance of—
the escape from
—the labyrinth, its curious twisted-horn haft pointing towards the youth.

Asterion sat, his black eyes riveted on the knife, drawing strength from its curious dark power, thinking on what he had just learned: one of Ariadne’s daughter-heirs had made her initial move in the resurrection of the Game.

And here he sat, “trapped” in this calamitously weak body.

He smiled, as cold and malicious as the landscape about him. Asterion had known exactly what Herron was doing when she interfered in his rebirth, forcing him into this body and this distant land. He had expected it, had known that either Ariadne or one of her daughter-heirs would try to negate his power, so they could restart the Game. Having anticipated the betrayal, Asterion could very well have stopped it, and escaped Herron’s darkcraft.

But that was the very last thing Asterion wanted to do. Above all else he wanted Herron and whoever followed her to believe he was incapacitated, that he was trapped and impotent.

Asterion’s smile grew colder, his eyes darker. Weak his body might be, but his power was stronger than ever.

He reached out a hand, and touched the knife gently, loving it. This knife was very precious to him, for it was
of
him. In his first rebirth after Ariadne had enacted her Catastrophe, ruining the Game in the Aegean world, Asterion had journeyed back to the devastated island of Crete. There he searched out the remains of his former body—the body that Theseus had murdered with Ariadne’s aid—and cut from its skull the two great curved horns. These Asterion had then worked, with the skills both of power and of craftsmanship, into the twisted-horn handle that now adorned the blade of the knife.

In the months and years ahead this knife was going to be his friend and his ally, his voice, and the weapon that he would use against Herron’s daughter-heir Genvissa and this man she had picked as her partner in the Game.

Weak? No, Asterion was stronger than ever.

His smile died, and his eyes glittered.

Brutus stood for a very long time watching the moonlight play out over the crescent of sleepers and the waters wash in gently, gently, gently to the sand.

Troy. He was to rebuild Troy.

He could feel the excitement deep in his belly, as powerful an urge as the sexual longing Artemis had roused in him, and he lifted his arms and placed his hands on each of the golden bands that encircled his biceps.

Troy. Home regained.

It was ninety-eight years since Troy had fallen to trickery and betrayal; ninety-eight years since the Trojans who survived that betrayal had first wandered homeless about the lands of the Mediterranean. Ninety-eight years during which thousands had died, more thousands had been enslaved, and others, like himself and his comrades, had journeyed purposeless,
fighting as mercenaries when asked, sometimes fighting when not asked for the sheer relief of it, sometimes settling for a season or two to aid some tiny community sow and harvest crops, always constantly searching.

Now, the searching might not be completely done with, but the waiting was over. Brutus was to regain his heritage: Troy.

He took a deep breath, tipped back his head, and opened his arms to the moonlight in silent exultation.

The next moment he was crouching in the sand, eyes moving warily about the beach, as a shout of sheer terror swept over the sleepers.

Men rolled out of their blankets, hands grabbing at weapons, and Brutus, vulnerable in his nakedness, ran to where his sword lay.

But by the time he had reached his tangled blanket, both he and the other men were relaxing. The shout had come from one of the sleeping men.

A dream, no doubt.

There were a few murmured words and a snort of laughter, then men lay back down to their sleep once more, but Brutus could see which sleeper it was who had shouted in dream terror, and his shoulders were again tense.

Membricus, tutor, friend, one-time lover and, Brutus knew only too well, a powerful seer.

“Membricus,” Brutus said, kneeling where his friend sat wide-eyed, “what have you seen?”

Membricus, a lean, older man with wide, thick lips, even but yellowing teeth, and a shock of grey curls twisting around the sides of his balding pate, turned to look at Brutus. His grey eyes, normally cool and distant, now had retreated to the colour and warmth of ice.

“The Game has begun,” he said, low and hoarse.

“The Game is dead,” Brutus said, perhaps too sharply. “It died with Ariadne’s betrayal.”

Membricus shook his head, then looked at where his hands clutched into his blanket. Brutus could see that their fingers trembled. “The Game has only been waiting. Now it has woken.”

“It was a dream, Membricus. A dream.”

Membricus raised his eyes to Brutus and they were once again clear and part of this world. “The Game is stirring,” he said, then he sighed, turned away from Brutus, and rolled himself back into his bedding.

The Game is stirring? Brutus slowly stood, staring at Membricus’ form.

Power,
the goddess had offered him. His heritage.

Again Brutus’ hands strayed to the golden bands about his biceps. “Of course,” he whispered, and shuddered at the thought of the degree of power that would be his if the Game was indeed stirring.

A thousand years, she had teased him.

And perhaps that was no tease at all.

Brutus did not sleep the rest of the night. Instead, he paced up and down the beach, staring out to sea, watching the light catch on the crescents of the breaking waves, waiting impatiently for the dawn and the start he could make towards his heritage.

I
n the morning, when the men rose and were set to break their fast, Brutus called them to stand before him and announced that they were to sail two days south to a city called Mesopotama.

“And from where has this idea sprung, Brutus?” asked Membricus, laying down the bowl of maza one of the other men had handed him. The older man looked tired and drawn, as if the fear of his dream still lingered within him.

“Last night, as we slept, the goddess Artemis came to me,” Brutus said, addressing the crowd of warriors rather than answering Membricus solely. “She announced to me that it was time for me to resume my great-grandfather’s inheritance.” He drew in a deep breath, his face joyous. “We are to rebuild Troy in a land untouched by troubles! Troia Nova! A city, not of ill luck and trickery, but of strength and nobleness, blessing and peace.”

Instantly, men shouted questions at Brutus, but he held up his hands and hushed them back to silence. He still had not dressed, and, standing naked under the morning sun, the golden bands gleaming against his deeply tanned skin, his wild black hair flowing about his shoulders, Brutus looked like a god himself.

“For years you have followed me, giving me your loyalty and your swords,” he continued. “I could have
asked for no better. And neither could the gods! We are to be blessed again, my friends. Handed back the favour of the gods!”

One of the warriors stepped forth. He was of an age with Membricus, but tightly muscled and barrel-chested and completely bald above his hook-nosed face.

He strode up to Brutus, leaned close, and touched his mouth to the band that encircled Brutus’ right biceps. “I am always proud to serve you, Brutus. But today my joy transcends my pride. Troy. Oh gods! That we shall rebuild Troy!”

His voice trembled, but he controlled himself. He was one of Brutus’ most respected officers, and had travelled widely before joining Brutus’ band some eight years previously.

Brutus smiled, and laid his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Hicetaon? I can see by your eyes that there is something more you want to tell me.”

“I know of this Mesopotama,” Hicetaon said.

“It is ruled by a man called Pandrasus,” Brutus said. “This the goddess told me.”

“Oh, aye,” Hicetaon said. “And did she say more?”

“That it contains a test I must endure before we travel further.”

“Ah.” Hicetaon nodded. “I think I may know to what she refers. My mother came from Mesopotama. She and her mother escaped when she was but a babe in arms—”

“Escaped?” Brutus said, and his hand tightened on Hicetaon’s shoulder.

“Escaped. If the goddess has commanded you to rebuild Troy, then I wonder not that she directed you to Mesopotama, Brutus. When Troy fell, the cursed Pyrrhus, son of the even more accursed Achilles, herded several thousand Trojan men and women and children into deep-bellied merchant ships and brought them to
this city of Mesopotama, where he sold them for good coin as slaves to the Dorians who live there. The Dorians kept—and still keep, for all I know—the Trojans in vile confinement within the city walls, and made them to haul timber and stir pots and wipe the shit from the arses of their Dorian masters. This must be your test—to free the Trojans held in captivity, and to lead them to Troia Nova.”

A murmuring rose from among the ranks of the Trojan warriors. The fate of all Trojans since the fall of Troy had been poor, but this slavery…this was obscene!

“This king, Pandrasus,” Brutus said, “tell me of him.”

Hicetaon shrugged. “If he is like the king of my mother’s time, and the ones before that, then he will be cruel and arrogant, and think of his Trojan slaves as little more than despicable beasts, fit only to be worked to death and then discarded.
I
say that if the goddess has directed you south to Mesopotama, then I am glad, for I have a great longing to free my mother’s people.”

“
Our
people,” Brutus said softly. “Trojans all.”

“And when we have freed our fellow Trojans,” Membricus asked, startling Brutus a little, for he had forgotten Membricus sitting so silent to one side, “where then do we sail?”

“Artemis will show me once we have taken our people from Mesopotama, and sailed one day south to an island where she has promised to meet me.”

Later, when the men were breaking camp and wading out to their low-slung warships, Membricus pulled Brutus to one side.

“My beloved companion,” he said, murmuring so that no one else would hear them, “I feel a great wariness in my gut.”

Membricus moved very close to Brutus, so close their shoulders touched, and Membricus shivered.
“Artemis?” he said. “How can this be so? None of the priests or seers have felt, let alone spoken to, any of the gods in at least three generations. But lo! Suddenly Artemis appears strong and powerful and full of promises of future glory and Troy reborn. Have you no wit, Brutus? No caution?”

Brutus’ face went dangerously expressionless. “Jealous, Membricus? Jealous that she should approach me rather than you?” He grabbed Membricus’ hand and held it hard against one of his golden bands. “
I
wear these, my old foolish friend. Not you.”

“But—”

Brutus sighed, relenting. The fact that he and Membricus had once been lovers constantly disturbed their current relationship, and Membricus, as Brutus’ adviser, was right to question. His hand softened on Membricus’, patted it, then allowed it to drop.