Cursing, Eperitus left him and ran on down the street, his heart beating fast with the fear that his father would escape. He had waited too long to face him and despite his earlier doubt he was now filled with an urgent need to confront Apheidas. He reached a turn in the street and saw a small market square ahead of him. The tail of the enemy rearguard was marching across it, heading towards the gate in the northern wall of the city. An archer recognized his old-fashioned but unmistakeably Greek shield and called to his comrades, who loosed a dozen hasty arrows towards him. They were hopelessly out of range, though, and the nearest bounced harmlessly off the wall beside his head.
Unfazed, Eperitus scanned the retreating army for sight of his father, but knew in his heart that he was not among them. Seeing a narrow side road, he dashed down it as more arrows sailed down to stick into the earth around his running feet.
Soon he was losing himself among the dark, deserted alleyways of Lyrnessus, hoping beyond hope that he would stumble across Apheidas among the shadows. But every door was closed and the windows he passed revealed only empty rooms, devoid of all removable possessions. The city’s population had abandoned their homes in a hurry, fearful of the slaughter, rape and enslavement that a triumphant Greek army would bring. Even the dogs had gone, leaving the streets and marketplaces temporarily bereft of the signs of civilized life.
But the void they had left was already being filled. Here and there Eperitus saw the stooping, misshapen figures of wounded men, fleeing the destruction at the gates and on the battlements and desperately seeking a place to hide from the wrath of the victors. Eperitus ignored them, knowing they would be too confused or frightened to be of any use in his hunt for his father. His sharp senses picked up the harsh shouts of warriors drawing in on every side, closely followed by the crackle of flames and the smell of burning. He emerged on to another broad avenue – which he guessed must run from the southern gate – and saw a dozen black-clad men to his right.
‘There’s one,’ a voice shouted.
A spear flew fast and accurate towards Eperitus’s head. He leaned to his left and flung up his shield, knocking the missile aside with the flat of the layered oxhide.
‘Hold, damn you,’ he shouted, as the battle-crazed Myrmidons readied their weapons to attack. ‘I’m Eperitus, captain of the Ithacan royal guard.’
‘Impossible! Achilles was first in the city, and we were right beside him as the gates fell. The Ithacans are still trying to take the walls.’
Eperitus gave a derisive laugh. ‘Odysseus and I were inside the city while you were still knocking on the doors. And if you still doubt who I am, then I know two of you at least are from Peisandros’s command. What Trojan would know that? Now get about your business and leave me to mine.’
He ran on, leaving the confused Myrmidons staring after him. He passed more groups of Achilles’s men and several bodies as he went. As the sky began to fill with dark palls of smoke he heard the heavy clash of weapons ringing in the distance. The fight with the enemy’s rearguard had begun, but whether Odysseus and Diomedes were leading the attack, or whether Achilles had caught up with them first, Eperitus could not guess. Then, as he reached an open space before a squat temple of yellow stone, a man stepped out from a doorway and lunged at him with a sword. Eperitus turned aside at the last moment, just as the blade passed beneath his arm and scraped against his cuirass. The sharpened upper edge slid along the soft skin beneath his bicep, burning like hot iron as it opened his flesh. Wincing with pain, he stepped away and threw his shield across his body as his assailant drew his arm back for a second thrust. The point jabbed at the oxhide, but was too weak to penetrate. Eperitus responded with a foot to the man’s groin, doubling him over. Before he could bring his sword down into the man’s skull, a second appeared from the same doorway and took the blow on the boss of his oval shield. A third man followed and suddenly Eperitus found himself facing three fully armed Lycians, with no inclination to retreat until they had taken their revenge on at least one Greek.
‘Out of my way,’ he warned them. ‘I’ve no quarrel with you.’
‘But we have with you, you Greek scum,’ the third man answered.
They fanned out around him. Eperitus saw the man to his right crouch, ready to spring, and immediately lashed out with his sword. The man lifted his shield, but too late to prevent the point of the blade slicing across his eyeballs and the bridge of his nose. He screamed in agony and fell to his knees, clutching at his face. An instant later his comrades attacked, screaming defiance as their swords beat down simultaneously against Eperitus’s raised shield. Using his great strength to throw both men back, he brought his sword around in a low sweep at the legs of the nearest. His opponent saw the attack too late and could only watch in horror as the blade hacked into his left leg below the knee. He collapsed on to his shield, thrashing about with pain and spraying blood across the dry earth of the street.
The remaining Lycian looked at his two colleagues, the first now unconscious and the second oblivious to everything but the pain of his wound, and decided he had seen enough. Throwing down his weapons, he turned and fled. Without hesitation, Eperitus placed his foot on the chest of his second victim.
‘Have you seen Apheidas?’
The man gave a great sob of pain and tried to twist free, but Eperitus leaned his weight upon him and slapped the flat of his sword against his cheek.
‘I said, have you seen Apheidas!’
The man reached out a shaky hand towards Eperitus, begging for mercy. Eperitus placed the point of his sword against the man’s throat and drove it through into the earth beneath. The Lycian’s lifeless head lolled to one side and he was silent.
‘I’m here, Son.’
Eperitus whirled round to see a figure standing in the shadowed portico of the temple. The dull gleam of a drawn blade shone at his side.
‘You fought well,’ he said. ‘If your grandfather was alive he’d have been mighty proud of such a display.’
‘Not as proud as he’d have been to see me run you through, traitor.’
Apheidas chuckled. ‘Still so angry, Eperitus? Come now, such excessive rage goes against nature and the will of the gods. You must leave it behind.’
Laying his blade casually over his shoulder, he turned and disappeared between the tall wooden doors of the temple. Eperitus felt a bead of sweat trickle down across his cheek. Swatting it away, he gripped his sword so tightly that his knuckles turned white, then he walked up to the pillared threshold. The familiar temple smell of perfumed incense and woodsmoke drifted out from the darkened doorway. In the blackness beyond he could see an avenue of painted wooden columns, fading to grey as the shadows swallowed them, and a floor flagged with stone slabs, worn to a black-edged smoothness by generations of worshippers. He stepped inside and instantly felt the warmth of the sun sucked from his flesh by the chill, stagnant atmosphere of the temple.
He paused and scanned the heavy shadows, waiting patiently for his eyes to adjust, relying instead on the acuteness of his hearing and the supernatural ability of his skin to sense the slightest movement in the air. It reminded him of the ruined temple at Messene, where he and Odysseus had once fought an ancient serpent placed there by Hera. As he recalled the terrifying battle with the giant snake he noticed two points of light at the far end of the temple. They gleamed like eyes in the darkness, and indeed that was what they were – not living eyes, but the glass eyes of an idol. Half his own size, the painted wooden effigy stood in an alcove behind the white-washed stone altar. It had been carved with an ankle-length chiton, large breasts and a golden bow in its left hand. Eperitus shuddered: he was in the temple of Artemis.