‘I am Aineas, and unarmed!’ he called.

‘Too bad, Dardanian! I am Achilles, and armed!’

Unimpressed, he raised his brows. ‘There are definitely times in the life of a careful man when discretion is the better part of valour! I’ll meet you in Lyrnessos!’

Knowing myself swifter of foot than others, I started after him at an easy pace, intending to wear him down. But he was very speedy, and he knew the lie of the land; I did not. So he led me into thorny thickets and left me floundering, over ground riddled with craters from foxes and rabbits, and finally to a wide river ford, where he streaked across on the hidden stones with light familiarity while I had to stop on each rock and look for the next. So I lost him, and stood cursing my own stupidity. Lyrnessos had a day’s warning of our impending attack.

As soon as dawn came I marched, my mood sour. Thirty thousand men poured into the Vale of Lyrnessos, lapping about the city walls like syrup. A shower of darts and spears met them, but the men took the missiles on their shields as they had been taught, and sustained no casualties. It struck me that there was not much force behind the barrage, and I wondered if the Dardanians were a race of weaklings. Yet Aineas hadn’t looked like the leader of a degenerate people.

The ladders went up. Leading the Myrmidons, I attained the little pathway atop the walls without having encountered one stone or pitcher of boiling oil. When a small band of defenders appeared I hacked them down with my axe, not needing to call for reinforcements. All along the line we were winning with truly ridiculous ease, and soon found out why. Our opponents were old men and little boys.

Aineas, I discovered, had returned to the city on the previous day and immediately called his soldiers to arms. But not with the intention of fighting me. He decamped to Troy with his army.

‘It seems the Dardanians have an Odysseus in their midst,’ I said to Patrokles and Ajax. ‘What a fox! Priam will have an extra twenty thousand men led by an Odysseus. Let us hope the old man’s prejudices blind him to what Aineas is.’

19

NARRATED BY

Brise

Lyrnessos died, folding up its wings and spreading its plumage across the desolation with a shriek that was all the cries of the women put into one mouth. We had given Aineas into the care of his immortal mother, Aphrodite, glad he had been granted the opportunity to save our army. All the citizens had agreed it was the only thing to do, so that at least some part of Dardania would live on to strike a blow at the Greeks.

Ancient suits of armour had been lifted from chests by gnarled hands which shook with the effort; boys donned their toy suits with white faces, toy suits never designed to take the bite of bronze blades. Of course they died. Venerable beards soaked up Dardanian blood, the war cries of small soldiers turned into the terrified sobbing of little boys. My father had even taken my dagger from me, tears in his eyes as he explained that he couldn’t leave me with the means to escape drudgery; it was needed, along with every other woman’s dagger.

I stood at my window watching impotently as Lyrnessos died, praying to Artemis the merciful daughter of Leto that she would send one of her darts winging quickly to my heart, still its clamour before some Greek took me and sent me to the slave markets of Hattusas or Nineveh. Our pitiful defence was bludgeoned into the ground until only the citadel walls separated me from a seething mass of warriors all in bronze, taller and fairer than Dardanians; from that moment I envisioned the Daughters of Kore as tall and fair. The only consolation I had was that Aineas and the army were safe. So too was our dear old King, Anchises, who had been so beautiful as a young man that the Goddess Aphrodite had loved him enough to bear him Aineas. Who, good son that he is, refused to leave his father behind. Nor did he abandon Kreusa, his wife, and their little son, Askanios.

Though I couldn’t tear myself away from the window, I could hear the sounds of preparation for battle in the rooms behind me – old feet pattering, reedy voices whispering urgently. My father was among them. Only the priests remained to pray at the altars, and even among them my uncle Chryses, the high priest of Apollo, elected to cast aside his holy mantle and don armour. He would fight, he said, to protect Asian Apollo, who was not the same God as Greek Apollo.

They brought the rams to bear on the citadel gate. The palace shuddered deep in its bowels, and through the din beating on my ears I thought I heard the Earth Shaker bellow, a sound of mourning. For his heart was with them, not with us, Poseidon. We were to be offered up as victims for Troy’s pride and defiance. He could do no more than send us his sympathy, while he lent his strength to the Greek rams. The wood crumpled to splinters, the hinges sagged and the door gave way with a roar. Spears and swords at the ready, the Greeks poured into the courtyard, no pity in them for our pathetic opposition, only anger that Aineas had outwitted them.

The man at their head was a giant in bronze armour trimmed with gold. Wielding a massive axe, he brushed the old men aside as if they were gnats, cleaving their flesh contemptuously. Then he plunged into the Great Hall, his men after him; I closed my eyes on the rest of the slaughter outside, praying now to chaste Artemis to put the idea into their heads to kill me. Far better death than rape and enslavement. Red mists swam before my lids, the light of day forced itself relentlessly in, my ears would not be deaf to choked cries and babbling pleas for mercy. Life is precious to the old. They understand how hard won it is. But I did not hear the voice of my father, and felt that he would have died as proudly as he had lived.

When came the clank of heavy, deliberate feet I opened my eyes and swung round to face the doorway at the other end of the narrow room. A man loomed there, dwarfing the aperture, his axe hanging by his side, his face under the gold-plumed bronze helm stained with grime. His mouth was so cruel that the Gods who made him had neglected to give him lips; I understood that a lipless man would not feel pity or kindness. For a moment he stared at me as if I had issued out of the earth, then he stepped into the room with his head tilted like a pricking dog’s. Drawing myself up, I resolved that he would hear no cry or whine from me, no matter what he did to me. He would not conclude from me that Dardanians lacked courage.

The length of the room disappeared in what I fancied was one stride; he grabbed one of my wrists, then the other, and lifted me by my arms until I dangled with my toes just clear of the floor.

‘Butcher! Butcher of old men and little boys! Animal!’ I panted, kicking out at him.

My wrists were suddenly crushed together so hard that the bones crunched. I longed to scream in agony, but I would not – I would not! His yellow eyes like a lion’s showed his rage; I had wounded him where his self-esteem was still sensitive. He didn’t like being called a butcher of old men and little boys.

‘Curb your tongue, girl! In the slave markets they flog defiance out of you with a barbed lash.’

‘Disfigurement would be a gift!’

‘But in your case, a pity,’ he said, putting me down and releasing my wrists. He transferred his grip to my hair and dragged me by it towards the door while I kicked and struck at his metal form until my feet and fists felt broken.

‘Let me walk!’ I cried. ‘Allow me the dignity of walking! I will not go to rape and slavery cringing and snivelling like a servant woman!’

He stopped quite still, turned to stare down into my face with confusion on his own. ‘You have her courage,’ he said slowly. ‘You’re not like her, yet you have a look of her… Is that what you deem your fate, rape and slavery?’