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

But now she wore a filmy linen blouse under the jacket that while it revealed the bounce and shape of her breasts, hid their more intimate features. It was a wife’s dress, and those that passed her in the corridor assumed Cornelia had accepted her place by Brutus’ side.

The two warriors stationed outside Pandrasus’ door nodded her through, used to Cornelia’s visits.

She ignored them, brushing past without a glance.

Pandrasus sat on a stool by the solitary small, narrow window. It was open, revealing the bustle of the city below.

He was staring out, his face expressionless, his eyes blank.

She found him thus on every morning that she came to visit.

In the past few months Pandrasus seemed to have shrunk. He was clothed in a simple waistband and short linen waistcloth, his belly folding over the waistband in flabby folds where once it had rounded firm and proud. His arms and legs had thinned as if, having no longer the duties of kingship to support, their muscles had lost their strength and dwindled into uselessness.

His hands, dangling between his legs, quavered with slight tremor.

‘Father?” Cornelia said, drawing up a stool to sit next to him.

He turned his head listlessly. “Daughter.”

‘Ships have arrived,” she said. “Two nights since. Eight of them.”

Pandrasus grimaced, the only sign that he’d heard.

‘Your fellow kings betray you,” she said.

‘They have been paid well with Dorian jewels,” Pandrasus said. “Riches buy any loyalty.”

‘Then use those riches to purchase your own loyalty,” Cornelia said, keeping her voice low lest the guards at the door heard her.

Pandrasus shrugged, turning his eyes to gaze blankly out the window once more.

‘You do not have to lie each night under the weight of his body!” Cornelia whispered harshly. ” You do not have Trojan sweat ground into your pores! How can you just sit there and shrug when it is ,’ who must endure him?”

Pandrasus turned his face back to her, his eyes a little less dull than they had been. For the first time he noticed the filmy linen she wore under her jacket, and he frowned.

His daughter was proud of her breasts, and enjoyed displaying them.

Lifting one trembly hand he tugged at the linen where it was tucked into her girdle, finally managing to free it so he could pull the material toward her neck.

The material caught on one of Cornelia’s breasts, and she flinched.

Pandrasus saw her movement, paused, then raised the material more carefully.

His face, if possible, became even more expressionless than previously.

Cornelia might be his only heir, his only legitimate child, but Pandrasus had impregnated so many of his concubines that he was well used to the early changes pregnancy wrought in a woman’s body.

He lifted a finger to one of her breasts, and traced the engorged blue veins as they marred her ivory flesh.

‘You are breeding to him,” he said, now cupping her breast in his hand, as if to gauge its weight and value.

‘You think to blame me?” she said. “You think this my fault?” She brushed his hand away and jerked the material back over her breasts. “Save me , Father, if not yourself.”

‘How? How?” Pandrasus was finally roused. “Here I sit day and night cosseted about with Trojan spears! How am I to save you? Would you like me to beat that child from your belly? Throw you from this window to a final release? Is that what you want?”

Cornelia drew back from her father, her expression hard. “I need a father. I need a man who can protect me.” She tossed her head. “That is not what sits before me now.”

Color mottled Pandrasus’ cheeks, and his mouth clamped into a thin line.

She held his stare, where once she would have looked away. “Nichoria,” she said. “If you ask Podarces of Nichoria then he will help. Remind him of the debt he owes you.”

Pandrasus looked at Cornelia carefully, both surprised and a little disconcerted at her knowledge.

“The’debt’?” he said.

‘You knew Podarces well when you were young together. You found him one day, burying his youthful manhood between his mother’s legs even as he tightened his hands about her throat. You kept your silence, even though matricide—and maternal rape—is a most unnatural offense. Podarces owes you his throne. Call in the debt.”

‘How do you know this ?”

‘A woman came to me,” Cornelia said, her very calmness unnerving. “She said she was a goddess, and showed me the manner of Podarces’ mother’s death. She said you knew, and it was a knowledge that you should now use to throw off this Trojan insult to your kingdom and your daughter.”

Pandrasus stared, then relaxed, nodding a little. “The gods came to you, and have shown you—and thus me—the means to our freedom.” He smiled, proud of his daughter, and patted her cheek. “I will need you to send him a message, demanding his aid. Can you do that?”

‘Yes!” Cornelia leaned forward, taking her father’s hands and, not even flinching at the discomfort, pressing them to her breasts in the traditional Dorian woman’s gesture of gratitude. “Yes, I can arrange that!”

CbAPGGR FOUREMBRICUS? ASSARACUS? HOW STAND OUR preparations?”

Brutus and his two companions stood on the beach of the bay just west of Mesopotama. It had been three months since the first ships had arrived. Now almost one hundred black-hulled ships bobbed at anchor in the waters before them, crowded so closely together there was scarcely an arm’s breath between their sides. Brutus called the flotilla his “kingdom,” for a man could step onto one of the outside ships and jump easily from ship to ship, traversing a territory of undulating wooden decks and platforms.

‘The last of the ships arrived last night,” Membricus said.

‘Pandrasus said he could get no more,” Assaracus put in.

‘Hmmm,” Brutus said, not unduly upset. In the past six months Pandrasus had purchased, leased, begged, stolen, and commandeered virtually all the ships along the west coast of Greece, and some from even farther afield. Brutus could see, even from this distance, the distinctive lines of several Egyptian merchant vessels. “What ratio war vessels to merchant?”

‘Seventeen war vessels,” Assaracus said. “The rest are merchantcraft. We shall be at risk from pirates, if we sail very far south.”

His last sentence was both statement and question. Brutus had, as yet, confided none of his plans to any of his lieutenants. Seven thousand Trojans were about to sail into the unknown, and to an as yet unknown destination, and Brutus wanted them to do so without question.

‘The gods shall watch over us,” Brutus said, then turned so he could look at Assaracus. “Remember

what happened to Pandrasus and his army.”

Assaracus grunted. What had happened to Pandrasus was a fading memory, both for the Trojans and the Dorians. Brutus had established his authority quickly and cruelly within days of taking Mesopotama, and for months the ISO Dorians had been so cowed, and so shocked, by the turn of events that there had been no resistance or questioning of anything Brutus ordered.

But now there was a growing undertow of resentment and loathing within the Dorian community.

Brutus’ preparations for the outfitting of his fleet had stripped the city and its surrounding farming land of all its wealth, both of food and of gold. Everything Mesopotama had was being poured, both literally and metaphorically, into Brutus’ fleet. Pandrasus himself had overcome the sloth and depression that had at first gripped him and was growing more confident, more ready to express openly his contempt of Brutus and the Trojans where before he had taken the effort to veil it.

And more Dorians were following his example. Assaracus had no doubt that sooner or later their resentment would explode into violence, and an attempt to wrest back from the Trojans everything they had won.

Their departure could not be too soon for him.

‘The oar crews are training well,” Membricus said.

‘Good,” Brutus said, and both the men with him could hear the relief in his voice. All the ships would require oar crews to augment their sails, some forty to sixty men per ship, and much of the past months had been spent training sufficient crews from among the Trojans.

It had been difficult. Oar crews took years to train well, and generally only voyaging experience hardened them into mature crews, but the Mesopotamian Trojans had little practice at sea. Instead, the men and youths pressed into service generally spent hours per day on practice platforms that had been built along the shoreline. Experienced orderers, the men who beat the time for the oars, shouted and cursed in their efforts to get the trainees to stroke together, or to learn to back water, or to dip and hold, all maneuvers oar crews needed to learn in order to control a ship. Sails were all very well, but too often the waters of the Mediterranean lay becalmed… and Brutus did not have enough provisions to feed the entire fleet while they drifted about aimlessly.