Troy: A Brand of Fire

by Ben Blake

  *

  The night after landing, the Trojan wagons had reached Therapne, a village five miles south of Sparta.

  There they met other warriors, men who had slipped ashore in twos and threes over the previous week and made their way inland. Most of them were men from the Simois valley, or the northern slopes of Ida, well used to ghosting silently through countryside and living off the land. There had been one unfortunate incident which required the deaths of a young swain and his lover, who had chosen to hold their midnight tryst right on the track five Trojans were following in the starlight. Other than that nobody had been seen.

  There were now sixty Trojan soldiers in a field outside Therapne, beside the river Evrotas. As the moon rose one of them climbed up on a wagon bed and made a speech.

  He wasn’t actually a warrior at all. Not someone you would expect to be leading such a daring raid as this, deep into Argive territory. This was a task that called for a Hector, an Aeneas, or at least the captain of one of the divisions, the Apollonians or Scamandrians. The speaker was none of those things. That was why the Greeks in Troy would never think to wonder where he was.

  We have spoken our prayers, Paris began, and offered our sacrifices before we set out. The gods are with us or they are not. All we can do is trust in them, and go forward with honour.

  There was a joy in him, actually, something wild and fierce that he’d never felt before. A little like the thrill of the first time with a new woman, but more intense even than that. His heart was beating hard and strong. He felt strong, as though every god in the east was watching him, and smiling. Tarhun of Storms was with him, Ipirru of horses, and Pallas Athena the Lady of Battle had her hand upon his shoulder. His voice swelled as he spoke.

  They all knew why they were there, he reminded them. The Argives were never going to return Hesione, the aunt he had never seen. They could not be persuaded, and would not be driven to it by taxes or encroaching poverty. Their pride was more important to them than any other consideration. Either Hesione was abandoned, or the Argives were forced to hand her back.

  Hesione would not be abandoned.

  But he believed she would be handed back, if in exchange the Trojans could return an Argive woman they had taken in their turn. A younger woman than Hesione, more highly prized, of higher rank. A queen then, and young, and beautiful. And last summer Antenor had seen a woman he called the loveliest he had ever set eyes upon: Helen, the queen of Sparta, and sister by marriage to Agamemnon the High King in Mycenae.

  This was Antenor’s plan, then, fermented in his mind since that day in Laconia last year. The warriors gathered here would slip into Sparta while its king was away, lured to Troy with the offer of discussions. The best Laconian soldiers would have gone with him, while the other captains would be out patrolling the borders, making sure nobody tried to take advantage of the monarch’s absence. That was what Argives did, it was how they thought. Nobody would be looking for a small party of men already inside the borders, all the way to Sparta itself.

  They would slip inside, find Helen and seize her, and be gone down the road to Therapne and then Gythium, and their ship. Helen would not be touched, not harmed in any but the most minor way. They would take her home to Troy and then ransom her back for one price, and one only: the return of Hesione. No sane man could refuse that bargain.

  After, the extra taxes on Argive goods could be removed. Perhaps games could be held on the Plain of Troy, thrown in honour of the Greek gods atop Mount Olympus. They would soothe raw wounds. Good wine would wash away sour moods. Troy and Mycenae would be friends again.

  When he jumped down captains issued rapid orders. Six men broke away to take positions south of the ford, in case luck or planning failed and Laconians tried to hold it against the returning raiders. Six was not many, but enough to discomfit a holding force with arrows from behind. The rest of the men set out northwards, trotting along the deserted road as the moon slowly rose. They had all spoken their prayers beforehand, as Paris said, but that didn’t stop them speaking more as they ran, to whichever deity they thought best.

  Nothing could go wrong, as long as the gods were with them.