Although the outer walls of the hall were solid stone, I could somehow still see through them to the countryside beyond where a majestic silver river wound its way through gentle verdant hills and fertile pastures. It was an ancient and deeply mysterious land, such as I had never seen nor even imagined.
Oddly, it felt like my homeland, and yet this was nothing like the hills surrounding Mesopotama.
I looked back to the hall. There was a sound of laughter, and from the very corner of my eye I saw the figure of a small girl dashing between the stone arches. It was my future daughter, I knew this, and my joy deepened, for this must be Melanthus’ child, too. I was sure of it.
Then a great joy swept over me. There was a man here, a man I loved beyond any other, and he me.
Melanthus! I turned full circle, but I could not see him. Melanthus?
I frowned, and looked more carefully, and saw instead two women standing at some distance from me. One was… one was Hera, while the other was a much smaller and darker woman, mysterious like the land I had glimpsed beyond the arches.
Hera put her hand on this dark woman’s shoulder and bent to her, and spoke in her ear.
Although I could not hear, and certainly not comprehend, I had a sense of a great many words being spoken and, also, most remarkably, a sense of a vast amount of time passing.
And then, just as I walked closer, and opened my mouth to speak to Hera, the smaller dark woman took a step toward me, then another, and then she was rushing at me as if she were not a woman but a pinprick of brilliant light. I tired to take a step backward, to evade this light, but there was nowhere to go, and suddenly the light was upon me—it was so hot!—and then it was gone. Vanished as if it had never been, although there was a horrible burning sensation in my lower belly.
‘Hera!” I whispered, thinking to ask her of Melanthus, but I was alone. The hall was empty save for
me, and suddenly it seemed a very forsaken place indeed.
THE DREAM WAS SO NASTY I WOKE WITH A START. I LAY a hand on my belly, feeling a warm heaviness in its lower extremity. For a moment, still befuddled by sleep, I wondered if my monthly courses were about to flow, then realized it could not be as they’d only completed themselves a mere week previous.
I frowned, and thought to rise and pour myself some wine so that I might put the dream from my mind, but just then the door opened and a shape approached my bed. I thought it must be Tavia, and I was glad, for I had need of her comfort. I opened my mouth to apologize to her for my earlier spitefulness, then closed it with a snap.
This wasn’t Tavia.
It wasn’t even the strange dark woman of my dream.
Nor even Hera.
Instead, it was horror most foul come to snatch me.
‘GET UP!” THE SHAPE SAID, AND I REALIZED—TO MYTO tal stupefaction—that it was a man. In the instant between when he spoke and when he strode to my bed and grabbed me by my hair I wondered consecutively whether this was somehow, wonderfully, Melanthus come to me, or my father returned to explain it was all a bad dream, or perhaps a god come to take me as his own.
But then the man, this intruder , grabbed the hair at the crown of my head and dragged me naked and crying from the bed, “I said to get up, girl!” and I knew then that this was neither Melanthus, nor my father, nor even a god.
He dragged me several paces away before I managed to regain either my feet or my voice. “Let me go! How dare you touch me!”
And I kicked at him with a foot.
He evaded me easily, and in the next moment delivered a stinging blow to my breasts.
I gasped in twin shock and pain, and he gave my hair a vicious twist for added measure. “I have no time for kicking, squealing girls,” he said, his voice harsh. “Now keep quiet and do as I say!”
Now terror had overwhelmed my shock, and I tried—difficult with someone’s hand twisted tight into the hair of one’s head—to nod. He seemed to understand my efforts, for he gave a curt jerk of his own head.
‘Good. I have not come to rape you, but to take you to the megaron. If you remain quiet, and amenable, you will come to no harm.”
I managed an almost nod again, and he grunted and, hand still in my hair so that I had to walk with my head cruelly twisted, pulled me out the door and down the palace corridors toward the megaron.
I could not see his face, but somehow I had no doubt this man was a Trojan.
And not one of the tame slaves I had known all my life.
CbAPGGR ‘V ‘ J*INGLY, OR INTHEIR TWOS AND THREES, BRUTUS’
men dragged variously shocked and compliant, still sleepy and murmuring, or angry and struggling people into the megaron.
Every single one of them, as soon as they entered the megaron, fell still and silent as they saw Pandrasus’ burly figure kneeling, head bowed in his utter humiliation, several paces before the dais on which stood the throne. He was completely naked save for minor gold jewelry at his wrist and neck and ears. Then, as if they’d been instructed, every one of them in turn shifted their eyes from Pandrasus to the warrior slouched in the throne. He was of some thirty years, wore nothing but his boots, a golden and scarlet waistcloth, and six magnificent golden bands about his limbs. His long black curly hair was left unbound to course down his back and about his blunt-faced and dark-eyed visage. A sword rested across his knees, and Pandrasus’ gold and ruby bracelet lay on the floor between his feet.
Brutus, staring unblinking at Pandrasus.
Finally, as a guard signaled that all the palace Dorians had been brought to this chamber, Membricus walked across the megaron, paused momentarily to stare at Pandrasus, then moved to Brutus’ side to murmur something in his ear. Brutus nodded, gave Membricus a brief smile, then stood.
Membricus stepped back to stand just to the left of the throne.
Brutus walked very slowly to the edge of the dais where he stopped, his sword swinging idly in his hand, staring about the assembled peoples.
With only the exception of Pandrasus, who kept his eyes on the floor, they were all staring at him.
‘My name is Brutus,” he said slowly, but very clearly, his eyes moving with deliberate precision from person to person within the megaron, “born of Sil vius, born of Ascanius, born of Aeneas, hero of Troy and son of Aphrodite herself. I am of the blood of gods and princes, and I am heir to Troy, and to all that Troy claims. This man”—he lifted his sword and pointed it at Pandra-sus—”has denied the rights of freedom of body and dignity to my people, whom he keeps as slaves. I have come to rectify this matter.”
Brutus stepped off the dais, his booted footsteps ringing about the mega-ron.
‘I offered to Pandrasus the means to free his people without harm to him or his, but he refused.”
Brutus was now circling the megaron, staring at each of the Dorians in turn, as if assessing their worth.
“He thought to deny my people their freedom, and the gods, in their anger, have humiliated him.”
Brutus paused before a girl of some fourteen or fifteen years. She had a round, somewhat plump face—typical of so many girls her age—above a body that was also still caught in a remnant of its childish plumpness. While her features were unremarkable, the long shining brown hair that tangled over her shoulders and her startlingly deep blue eyes showed that she would one day grow to an attractive woman.
She was naked, although apparently unconcerned about the matter, and Brutus was surprised by the shudder of need that ran through him as he studied her flesh. She did not have a particularly seductive body—Brutus would certainly not have looked twice under normal circumstances—but there was something about her… something compelling…
Brutus looked back to her eyes, trying to see past the anger within them, trying to see what it was about her… then she moved her arm slightly, and a gleam caught Brutus’ eye, and he saw the gold and ruby bracelet that encircled her right wrist.
Apart from its size and weight, it was a mirror image of the one that Pandrasus had worn.
Brutus smiled, certain now of what it was that must have made him study her so closely. She would prove as useful as Melanthus.