As a little boy, burning to see the spectacle, I had begged my father to hitch up the oxen. He had laughed and refused, yet here I was, a man of forty years, husband of ten wives and owner of fifty concubines, still hankering to see the Skaian Gate shut.

Across the top of the gate a corbelled arch connected the walls on either side of it, thus permitting the pathway which ran along the top to be continuous right around the perimeter of the city. The Skaian Square inside the gate lay in permanent shadow from those fantastic, God-built ramparts; they towered thirty cubits above me, smooth and sleek, sheeny in the sun when it bathed them.

I nodded to my driver to move on, but before he could shake the reins I changed my mind, stopped him. A party of men had come through the gate into the square. Greeks. That was manifest in their garb and manner. They wore leather kilts or tight-fitting, knee-length leather breeches; some were bare from the waist up, and others sported tooled leather blouses open to display their chests. The clothes were ornate, decked in gold designs or sporting tassels or rolls of dyed leather; their waists were clipped in narrow by wide belts of gold and lapis-studded bronze; polished crystal beads depended from the lobes of their ears; each throat was girdled with a great gem-encrusted collar; and their very long hair flowed loose in careful curls.

Greeks were taller and fairer than Trojans, but these Greeks were taller, fairer and more deadly looking than any men I had ever seen. Only the richness of their clothes and arms said they were not common marauders, for they carried javelins and longswords.

At their head strode a man who was surely unique, a giant who towered over the other members of the group. He must have stood six cubits high, and had shoulders like dark mountains. Pitch-black and trimmed into a spade, a beard coated his massively jutting lower jaw, and his black hair, though cut short, was wild and unruly above a brow which overhung his orbits like an awning. His only clothing was a huge lion pelt flung over his left shoulder and under his right arm, the head a hood on his back with frightful jaws open on mighty fangs.

He turned and caught me staring. Overwhelmed, I found and looked into his wide still eyes – eyes which had seen everything, endured everything, experienced every degradation the Gods could mete out to a man. Eyes which blazed with intelligence. I felt myself mentally backed up against the house behind me, my spirit a naked scrawn, my mind his for the taking.

But I marshalled my sinking courage and drew myself upright proudly; mine was a great title, mine a gold-embossed chariot, mine a pair of white horses finer than any he had ever seen. Mine, this mightiest city in the world.

He moved through the racket and bustle of the marketplace as if it did not exist, came straight up to me with two of his companions close behind, then put out a hand the size of a ham to stroke the black muzzles of my white horses gently.

‘You are from the palace, perhaps of the King’s house?’ he asked in a very deep voice, though it lacked imperiousness.

‘I am Podarkes called Priam, son and Heir of Laomedon, King of Troy,’ I answered.

‘I am Herakles,’ he said.

I stared at him with mouth agape. Herakles! Herakles was in Troy! I licked my lips. ‘Lord, you honour us. Will you consent to being a guest in my father’s house?’

His smile was surprisingly sweet. ‘I thank you, Prince Priam. Does your invitation include all my men? They are of noble Greek houses, they will not shame your court or me.’

‘Of course, Lord Herakles.’

He nodded to the two men behind him, a signal that they should step out of his shadow. ‘May I present my friends? This is Theseus, High King of Attika, and this is Telamon son of Aiakos, King of Salamis.’

I swallowed. All the world knew of Herakles and Theseus; the bards sang their deeds incessantly. Aiakos, father of the stripling Telamon, had rebuilt our western wall. How many other famous names were there in that little band of Greeks?

Such was the power in that single word Herakles that even my miserly father was moved to put himself out, give the famous Greek a royal welcome. So that afternoon a feast was laid out in the Great Hall, with unlimited food and wine off gold plate, and harpers, dancers and tumblers to provide entertainment. If I had been awed, so too was my father; every Greek in the party of Herakles was a king in his own right. Why, therefore, I wondered, were they content to follow a man who laid no claim to any throne? Who had mucked out stables? Who had been gnawed, bitten and chewed by every kind of creature from gnat to lion?

I sat at the high table with Herakles on my left and the lad Telamon on my right; my father sat between Herakles and Theseus. Though the imminence of Hesione’s sacrificial death overshadowed our hospitality, it was so well concealed that I told myself our Greek guests had noticed nothing. Talk flowed smoothly, for they were cultivated men, properly educated in everything from mental arithmetic to the words of the poets they, like us, committed to memory. Only what kind of man was a Greek underneath that?

There was little contact between the nations of Greece and the nations of Asia Minor, which included Troy. Nor, as a rule, did we of Asia Minor care for Greeks. They were notoriously devious people famed for their insatiable curiosity, so much we knew; but these men must have been outstanding even among their own Greek kind, for the Greeks chose their Kings for reasons other than blood.

My father in particular did not care for Greeks. Of late years he had formulated treaties with the various kingdoms of Asia Minor giving them most of the trade between the Euxine and the Aegaean Seas, which meant that he had severely restricted the number of Greek trading vessels allowed to pass through the Hellespont. Not Mysia and Lydia, not Dardania and Karia, not Lykia and Kilikia wanted to share trade with the Greeks, for the simplest of reasons: somehow the Greeks always outwitted them, emerged with better bargains. And my father did his part by keeping Greek merchants out of the black waters of the Euxine. All the emeralds, sapphires, rubies, gold and silver from Kolchis and Skythia travelled to the nations of Asia Minor; the few Greek traders my father licensed had to concentrate their efforts upon fetching tin and copper from Skythia.

Herakles and company, however, were far too well bred to discuss incendiary topics like trade embargoes. They confined their conversation to admiring remarks about our high-walled city, the size of the Citadel and the beauty of our women – though this last they could gauge only from the female slaves who walked among the tables ladling stews, doling out bread and meats, pouring wine.

From women the talk veered naturally to horses; I waited for Herakles to broach the matter, for I had seen those shrewd black eyes appreciating the quality of my white horses.

‘The horses which drew your son’s chariot today were truly magnificent, sire,’ said Herakles at last. ‘Not even Thessalia can boast such stock. Do you ever offer them for sale?’

My father’s face took on its avaricious look. ‘Yes, they are lovely, and I do sell them – but I fear you would find the price prohibitive. I ask and get a thousand gold talents for a good mare.’

Herakles shrugged his mighty shoulders, face rueful. ‘I could perhaps afford the price, sire, but there are more important things I have to buy. What you ask is a king’s ransom.’

He did not mention the horses again.

As the evening drew on and the light began to fail my father started to sag, remembering that on the morrow his daughter would be led to her death. Herakles put his hand on my father’s arm.