‘No. I shall ride upon the back of a dolphin.’

I never saw her again. At dawn Aresune came with two slaves and got me to my feet, put me into my bed. For one full circle of Phoibos’s endless journey around our world I slept without remembering one single dream, then woke remembering that I had a son. Up the stairs to the nursery, Hermes’s winged sandals on my feet, to find Aresune taking him from his wet nurse – a healthy young woman who had lost her own babe, the old woman chattered. Her name was Leukippe: the white mare.

My turn. I took him into my arms and found him a heavy weight. Not surprising in one who looked as if he was made from gold. Curling golden hair, golden skin, golden brows and lashes. The eyes which surveyed me levelly and without wandering were dark, but I fancied that when they acquired vision they would be some shade of gold.

‘What will you call him, sire?’ Aresune asked.

And that I didn’t know. He must have his own name, not someone else’s. But which name? I gazed at nose, cheeks, chin, forehead, eyes, and found them delicately formed, more in the mould of Thetis than me. His lips were his own, for he had none; a straight slit in his lower face, fiercely determined yet achingly sad, served him for a mouth.

‘Achilles,’ I said.

She nodded, approving. ‘Lipless. A good name for him, dearest lord.’ Then she sighed. ‘His mother prophesied. Will you send to Delphi?’

I shook my head. ‘No. My wife is mad, I take no credence in her predictions. But the Pythoness speaks true. I do not want to know what lies in wait for my son.’

3

NARRATED BY

Chiron

I had a favourite seat outside my cave, carved out of the rock by the Gods aeons before men came to Mount Pelion. It was on the very edge of the cliff, and many were the moments I spent sitting on it, a bear skin spread to shield my old bones from the hard caress of its stone, looking out over the land and sea like the king I never was.

I was too old. Never more so than in the autumn, when I felt the aches begin, harbingers of winter. No one remembered how old I actually was, least of all myself; there comes a time when the reality of age is frozen, when all years and all seasons are but one long day’s wait for death.

The dawn promised a day of beauty and peace, so before the sun rose I performed my scant domestic duties, then went outside into the cold grey air. My cave was high on Pelion, almost at the summit on its southern side, and it hung over the edge of a vast precipice. I sank into my bear skin to watch for the sun. The aspect before me never wearied me; for countless years I had gazed out from the top of Pelion over the world below me, the coast of Thessalia and the Aegaean Sea. And while I watched the sun rise I fished a piece of dripping honey-in-the-comb from my alabaster box of comfits and sank my toothless gums into it, sucking hungrily. It tasted of wild blossoms and zephyr breezes and the tang of pine woods.

My people, the Kentaurs, had dwelled upon Pelion for more time than men could record, serving the Kings of Greece as tutors for their sons, for we were unrivalled teachers. I say ‘were’ because I am the last Kentaur; after me my race will be no more. In the interests of our work most of us had chosen celibacy, nor would we mate with women other than our own; so when the Kentaur women grew tired of their unimportant existence, they packed their possessions and departed. Fewer and fewer of us were born, for most of the Kentaur men could not be bothered making the journey to Thrake, where our women went to join the Maenads and worship Dionysos. And gradually a legend came into being: that Kentaurs were invisible because they were afraid to show men their persons, half man and half horse. An interesting creature if it had existed, but it did not. Kentaurs were simply men.

Throughout Greece my name was known; I am Chiron, and I have taught most of the lads who grew up to be famous Heroes: Peleus and Telamon, Tydeus, Herakles, Atreus and Thyestes, to mention but a few. However, that had all been long ago, and I had no thought of Herakles or his breed as I witnessed the sunrise.

Pelion abounds in forests of ash, taller and straighter than other ash, a shimmering sea of bright yellow at this time of the year because every bright and dying leaf shivered and shuddered in the slightest wind. Below me was the sheer drop of rock, five hundred cubits of it bare of even the smallest touch of green or yellow, and below that again the ash forest growing up to the sky, and many birds calling. I never heard the sounds of men, for no other mortal stood between me and the pinnacles of Olympos. Spread far beneath me and reduced to the size of an ant kingdom was Iolkos – not a farfetched description. They called the people of Iolkos the Myrmidons, the ants.

Alone among all the cities of the world (save for those in Crete and Thera before Poseidon levelled them), Iolkos had no walls. Who would dare invade the home of the Myrmidons, warriors without peer? I loved Iolkos the more for that. Walls horrified me. In the old days when I travelled I could never bear to be shut inside Mykenai or Tiryns for more than a day or two. Walls were structures built by Death from stones quarried in Tartaros.

I flung the honeycomb away and reached for my wineskin, dazzled by the sun crimsoning the great reaches of the Bay of Pagasai, glancing off the gilded figures on the palace roof, brightening the colours of the pillars and walls of temples, palace, public buildings.

A road wound up from the city into the fastness of my retreat, but it was never used. That morning was different, however; I heard a vehicle approaching. Anger dispelled contemplation and I rose to my feet, hobbled to confront the presumptious interloper and send him packing. He was a nobleman driving a fast hunting car with two matched Thessalian bays harnessed to it, and he wore the insignia of the royal household on his blouse. Eyes clear, bright, smiling, he jumped down with a grace only youth could own and walked towards me. I backed away; the smell of a man was disgusting to me these days.

‘The King sends greetings, my lord,’ the young man said.

‘What is it, what is it?’ I demanded, discovering without any pleasure that my voice cracked and rasped.

‘The King has commanded me to bring a message to you, Lord Chiron. Tomorrow he and his royal brother will come to give their sons into your keeping until they are young men. You are to teach them all that they ought to know.’

I stood rigid. King Peleus knew better! Too old to be bothered with rowdy boys, I no longer taught, not even the scions of a House as illustrious as Aiakos. ‘Tell the King that I am displeased! I do not wish to instruct his son or the son of his royal brother Telamon. Tell him that if he climbs the mountain tomorrow he will be wasting his time. Chiron is retired.’

Face a study in dismay, the young man looked at me. ‘Lord Chiron, I dare not give him that message. I was commanded to tell you that he is coming, and I have done so. I was not charged to bring an answer.’

When the hunting car had disappeared I went back to my chair to find that the view had gone behind a veil of scarlet. My rage. How dared the King presume that I would teach his offspring – or Telamon’s, for that matter? Years before, it had been Peleus himself who sent heralds throughout the kingdoms of Greece announcing that Chiron the Kentaur was retired. Now he broke his own ordinance.

Telamon, Telamon… He had many children, but two favoured ones only. The elder by two years was a bastard by the Trojan princess Hesione, Teukros by name. The other was his legitimate heir, Ajax by name. On the other hand, Peleus had but one child, a son by Thetis his queen miraculously born alive after six had died at birth. Achilles. How old would Ajax and Achilles be? Little boys, certainly. Smelly, snotty, scarcely human. Ugh.