Hades’ Daughter. Book One of the Troy Game by Sara Douglass

THERE WAS A SUDDEN THUNDER OF HOOVES, THEN A roar of voices, and Assaracus jerked his head back to where the Dorian army now rode and ran unheedingly into the gorge. They splashed through the shallows of the Acheron, some tripping over in their haste, their comrades behind them treading in their backs in their haste to propel themselves forward.

The chariots came first, leading the charge, then hardly a breath behind them came the infantry, swords and lances raised to shoulder height, faces screwed up in battle lust.

” Pandrasus! Pandrasus!” they screamed.

‘Brutus,” Assaracus whispered, overcome.

‘Wait,” Brutus said, and beside him the strange goddess tightened her hold on his shoulder.

ANTIGONUS FOUND HIMSELF SCREAMING WITH THE men, screaming in bloodlust and triumph. He pounded the back of his charioteer, urging him forward, forward, forward, while to his right Pandrasus did likewise.

None of the men saw anything save what the Darkwitch put before their eyes.

‘WAIT,” BRUTUS WHISPERED AGAIN.

Assaracus could not tear his eyes away from the Dorians. They were well into the gorge now, charging as if they had no care in the world, as if all that lay before them was a family of mice who had given themselves to the slaughter.

As the road narrowed deeper into the gorge, most of the men and chariots had been forced into the shallow river where, given the firm surface of the river bottom, they still managed good headway.

But headway toward what? Assaracus wondered.

Then he gasped, horrified even though what was happening would win them an almost bloodless victory.

SUDDENLY ANTIGONUS SCREAMED. THERE WAS NO stubbled field! No Trojan army sitting heedless and drunk about campfires!

There was only the steep and densely wooded gorge walls rising to either side of him, and a river underfoot…

… a river underfoot that had abruptly risen to thigh height… no! Waist height!

Or was it that the river bottom had given way to the treacherous quicksand of the marshes?

Were the men, the chariots, sinking into the very heart of Hades’realm itself?

‘Brother!” he screamed to Pandrasus who was riding in one of the few chariots still on the solid banks of the river. “Save yourself! Get yourself and as many as you can back to Mesopotama!”

‘WE MOVE,” BRUTUS SAID, AND STOOD, WAVING HIS left hand in signal.

Assaracus glanced at him. The goddess was gone now, and Brutus was grinning at him with a strange light in his eyes. “Will you join the killing, comrade?”

IT WAS A SLAUGHTER. ANTIGONUS’ ARCHERS MANAGED to get off some arrows but they were soon overwhelmed by the Trojans—who, graced by the gods—walked across the river as if its waters were solid rock! What men of his that had not succumbed completely to the ensorcelled riverbed were all but trapped to their hips, unable to do more than parry a few blows with their swords, or jab uselessly with their lances.

‘Father!” came the desperate cry, and Antigonus turned in horror.

There, only a few paces away, were his three sons. One, his eldest, had gained purchase on a sinking chariot, and had dragged the two younger boys to a momentary safety. All were covered in the slime of the river, their weapons gone, their faces crumpled in horror, their eyes shining at their father in a frightful hope that somehow he would save them.

IGG Antigonus gave a wordless cry and stretched out a useless hand even as his own chariot lurched, its horses shrieking, and began to sink.

THE TROJANS, AUGMENTED BY ASSARACUS’ MEN, surged into and among the trapped Dorian army.

It was as if they were once again in their youth and on the practice field, sticking their swords into straw dummies. Some of the Dorians screamed, some pleaded, some swung weapons uselessly.

All died.

Assaracus fought—if fighting it could be called, slaughtered, more like—at Brutus’ side, when he suddenly realized that Pandrasus, together with perhaps five or six chariots and a hundred men, were escaping out of the gorge.

‘Brutus!” he cried, grabbing at Brutus’ left arm to gain his attention.

Brutus stilled instantly, his sword almost fully through the neck of a Dorian charioteer. “What is it?” he asked, his voice still strangely calm.

The stricken charioteer grabbed uselessly at the blade in his neck, his mouth open, gurgling as blood bubbled forth.

‘Pandrasus escapes,” Assaracus said, staring in horror at the charioteer. “He—”

Brutus leaned back, pulling his sword free, and the charioteer collapsed, his hands still trying to plug the gaping wounds in his neck.

The man’s head rocked, and Assaracus realized, sickenly, that the charioteer’s hands were the only thing holding his head on.

Then the hands collapsed nerveless, and the head dropped, splashing into the river. For an instant the

body still stood up to its waist in water, and then, gently, almost apologetically, it too sank beneath the waters of the Acheron.

‘It is of no matter,” Brutus said, and it took Assaracus a moment to realize he talked of Pandrasus, not of the dead charioteer.

‘We must send men after him! If he manages to lock himself into the city he can hold out for a year, maybe more! The city is well stocked for a siege, and we hardly manned to conduct one! Brutus, you said we need Pandrasus to supply us with ships, and provisions, and…”

Assaracus slid to a halt, wondering why he was giving this speech when Brutus was grinning at him as if Pandrasus’ escape was of no consequence.

‘I do not think we shall have much trouble gaining an entry to the city ourselves,” Brutus said, then extended his sword to a group of sinking chariots some ten paces away. “Look.”

ANTIGONUS CALLED OUT TO HIS SONS, TEARS IN HIS eyes as he considered their bravery.

IG ‘Peleus! Andronus! Melanthus! Oh, gods, I am cursed to have led you to such an inglorious death!

Peleus, hold Melanthus’ chin higher, for the gods’ sake! I cannot lose him! Oh, I cannot!”

‘And there is no need for you to do so,” said a voice behind Antigonus, and he whipped about.

A man stood in the river, as if on solid ground, his sword sheathed, holding out his hand for Antigonus to grasp. He was tall, and solidly built, and beneath his boar’s tusk helmet his eyes burned black and fierce amid features clearly Trojan.

‘There is no need for either you or your sons to die,” the man said, and waggled his hand a little in his impatience.

‘Brutus,” Antigonus said, his voice flat. “Are you to walk through life as god-favored as your ancestor Aeneas?”

And then, as he heard the sound of sucking mud behind him, and Melan thus called out in horror, Antigonus dropped his sword into the river am grasped Brutus’ hand.

CbAPGGR GUD6CV LLANGARLIAIRED FROM HER EFFORTS ON BRUTUS’

BEHALF,

Genvissa strode through the meadowland that led from the northern bank of the Llan to the Llandin, the most sacred of Llangarlia’s Veiled Hills.

She was pale-faced with fury.

Not at Brutus, nor at anything that had happened during the battle—all had gone well, and Brutus had acted with as much decisiveness as she had expected—but at what she had felt from here during that battle.

Mag, trying her pathetic best to wriggle away.

That had shocked Genvissa. She didn’t think Mag had that much spirit (let alone energy) left. Indeed, Genvissa thought she’d cowed the ancient mother goddess completely.

‘Well,” Genvissa muttered, “perhaps it’s time I made sure of it now.” She didn’t need Mag anymore.

The power she commanded from her darkcraft and as Mistress of the Labyrinth would be enough for what she needed.

Genvissa slowed her pace as she neared the base of the Llandin, coming to a final halt by a pretty spring that gurgled out of a nest of stones shaped like a woman’s vulva. Above it, shading the waters from the hot sun and the cold starlight, spread a massive oak tree, almost as old as the hill itself.

Genvissa stared at the waters as they emptied into a small rock pool before finally spilling over and running down in a small rivulet to join with the Magyl River. This was Mag’s home, her blessed waters.

She would be inside, somewhere, cowering, terrified, knowing Genvissa stood outside.

Genvissa felt a small twinge of sympathy (it was, after all, Mag who had welcomed Ariadne into the land, and given her succor) but she suppressed it quickly. “I’m sorry, Mag,” she murmured, “but it is truly more than time you joined your lover Og in perpetual obscurity.”

IG Her eyes still on the pool, Genvissa slipped out of her robe. Naked, she stepped to the edge of the pool and stared intently into its shallow depths. Many Llangarlian women came here when they wanted to conceive and wished to ask Mag’s blessing for a healthy child and an easy childbed… but today conception and the pangs of labor were the very last things on Genvissa’s mind.