Heir of Troy: The Third Son

The serving woman ran.

She had been in the temple when the priest gathered his followers—had hidden behind the curtain of the inner sanctuary, her hand pressed over her mouth, listening to the words that no one should ever hear. The goddess demands blood. The impure must be cleansed. Start with the children. The children are the root. Cut out the root.

She ran through the dark streets of the lower town, her sandals slapping on the stones, her breath tearing in her throat. The temple was behind her. The palace was ahead. She had to reach Fylon. She had to warn him. The priest was coming. The priest was coming for the children.

She reached the palace gate and collapsed against the guard. "Fylon," she gasped. "Get Fylon. The priest. The settlement. The children. They’re going to kill the children."

Fylon was in the small room above the wine shop when the guard found him. He listened for ten words, then he was running.

He found Lysander in the war room and Hector in the barracks. He told them in fragments—the priest, the armed men, the settlement, the school. The children. Neither of them asked questions. They ran.

Miros was already at the northern gate when they arrived, his left hand gripping his sword, his right arm bound useless against his chest. He had heard the commotion. He had seen the torches moving toward the settlement. He had already assembled every guard within reach—twelve men, not enough, never enough.

"Go," Hector said. "Now."

They ran.

The screams reached them before they reached the school.

Lysander heard them as he rounded the corner of the settlement’s main path—high, shrill, the sound of children screaming in terror. The torches were ahead, clustered around the small building where Arsini had opened the first refugee school two years ago. The building where Deia had taught multiplication to children who had never held a stylus. The building where the youngest refugees learned their letters while their parents worked the fishing boats.

The door was broken. The windows were shattered. The screams were coming from inside.

Hector was the first through the door. Lysander was behind him. Miros and the guards were right behind.

What they found would never leave them.

The priest was not there. He had sent his followers to do the killing while he waited at the temple, praying for their success. But his followers had done what he asked.

Five children were dead. Their bodies lay in the aisles between the tables where they had been learning to write their names. The oldest was perhaps nine years old. The youngest was barely four. They had been cut down with swords and spears, the wounds brutal and final.

Three more children were wounded. One of them—a girl named Eleni, who had arrived with the last wave of refugees, who had been so frightened of the sea that she cried every night for a week—was bleeding from a gash across her chest. Her eyes were open. Her breath was shallow.

Deia was there. She was standing in front of the remaining children, her arms spread wide, her face white with terror. She had no weapon. She had no training. She was thirteen years old, and she had put herself between the attackers and the children she taught. There was a cut on her arm where a blade had glanced off the table she had dragged in front of her. But she was still standing.

The attackers—six of them, armed with swords and clubs—were still in the room. They turned when the soldiers burst through the door. For one frozen moment, they stared at the armed men who had come to stop them. Then they raised their weapons.

Hector killed the first one before he could move. His sword took the man in the throat, and he went down without a sound. Miros killed the second with his left hand, his blade finding the gap between the man’s ribs. The guards swarmed the rest. It was over in moments.

But not fast enough. Never fast enough.

Lysander knelt beside the girl with the chest wound. Her name was Eleni. She had arrived with the last wave of refugees, had been so frightened of the sea that she cried every night for a week. She had stopped crying, eventually. She had started school. She had learned to write her name.

"Antiphus is coming," he said. His voice was steady, but his hands were not. "Hold on. He’s coming."

The girl looked at him. Her eyes were dark, unfocused. "It hurts."

"I know. I know it hurts. Antiphus is coming. He’ll make it stop."

She closed her eyes. Her breath rattled in her chest. Lysander pressed his hand against the wound, trying to stop the blood, but there was too much of it. It spilled over his fingers, hot and dark.

"I wrote my name today," she whispered. "All by myself. Deia helped me. She said I did good."

"You did. You did very good."

"Will you tell my mother I wrote my name."

"I’ll tell her. I promise."

The girl’s breath stopped. Lysander knelt there, his hand still pressed against the wound, the blood pooling on the floor beneath him. He had built walls. He had built ships. He had built a net across the strait and a fleet of fire ships and a network of spies that stretched across the Aegean. He had not been able to save a four-year-old girl who wanted her mother to know she had written her name.

Deia was still standing in front of the children. Her arm was bleeding. Her face was white. But she had not moved.

"They came through the door," she said. Her voice was flat, empty. "We were practicing letters. Eleni had just written her name for the first time. She was so proud. She wanted to show her mother." She looked at the bodies on the floor. "I told them to hide under the tables. I told them to be quiet. But Eleni was too slow. She was always too slow. She—"

"Deia." Miros was beside her. His left hand, still bloody from the man he had killed, rested on her shoulder. "You saved the others. The children behind you. They’re alive because of you."

"I should have saved all of them."

"You’re thirteen years old. You had no weapon. You faced armed men with nothing but a table and your own courage. You saved the children behind you. That’s more than anyone had a right to expect. That’s more than anyone else could have done."

She looked at him, and her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t speak. She just stood there, trembling, while Miros’s hand rested on her shoulder.

Hector stood in the centre of the room, surrounded by the bodies of the dead. Five children. Six attackers. The priest’s followers had been killed or captured. The priest himself was still in his temple, waiting for news that would never come.

"Fylon," Hector said. His voice was not loud, but something in it made every man in the room turn. "Take men. Go to the temple. Arrest the priest."

"He’s protected by sanctuary."

"The sanctuary protects the faithful. It does not protect men who murder children." Hector’s hand closed around the hilt of his sword. "Take him. If anyone in the temple tries to stop you—any priest, any acolyte, any servant—arrest them too. All of them. I want the temple emptied and the priest in chains before dawn."

"And if they resist."

Hector looked at him. The expression on his face was one Fylon had never seen before. "Then kill them. Be quick about it. Because if I reach that temple before you’re finished, I will not leave anyone alive to arrest. And if anyone asks why—if the council asks, if the people ask, if the gods themselves ask—I will tell them the goddess demanded blood. And she got it."

The room was silent. Fylon left without another word. Hector stood in the centre of the ruined school, surrounded by the bodies of dead children, and waited for dawn.

The temple was dark when Fylon’s men surrounded it. Twenty guards, armed and silent, moving into position around the entrances. The acolytes who slept in the outer chambers were woken by torchlight and rough hands. They were dragged into the courtyard, confused and terrified, their protests silenced by the sight of drawn swords.

The priest was in the inner sanctuary, kneeling before the altar. He did not rise when Fylon entered. He did not turn around.

"They failed," the priest said. His voice was calm, almost serene. "The children are still alive."

"Five children are dead. Three more are wounded. Your men did what you sent them to do before we stopped them." Fylon’s voice was cold. "You’re under arrest. By order of Prince Hector. The council will try you for treason and murder."

The priest rose slowly, his joints stiff from hours of kneeling. He turned to face Fylon, and his pale eyes were untroubled. "The goddess will protect me. She has always protected her faithful."

"The goddess didn’t protect the children you murdered. She won’t protect you either." Fylon gestured to the guards. "Take him."

The guards seized the priest. He did not resist. He walked with them into the darkness, his white robes trailing on the stones. Behind him, the temple was empty. The flame on the altar still burned, but no one was left to tend it.

The Council Chamber – The Next Morning

The councillors were already assembled when Hector entered, still wearing the blood-stained armour from the night before. He had not slept. He had not changed. He walked to the centre of the chamber and stood before them, and the expression on his face made several of the older councillors shrink back in their seats.

"Last night, the High Priest of Athena sent armed men into the settlement to murder children." His voice was flat, hard, the voice of a man who had passed beyond fury into something colder. "They broke into a school. They killed five children. The youngest was four years old. Her name was Eleni. She had written her name for the first time that day."

He paused. The room was absolutely silent.

"The priest’s followers are dead or in custody. The priest himself is in chains. We found letters in his sanctuary—correspondence with Mycenaean agents, evidence that he has been feeding information to Agamemnon’s network for months. The same network that knew about our patrol schedules. The same network that knew about our fire ships. The same network that knew about the sulfur from Tarsus. The leak has been found. The conspiracy is broken."

Phaedrus rose slowly. His face was grey. "The priest will stand trial."

"Yes. He will stand trial. The evidence will be presented. The council will render judgment." Hector looked at the councillors, one by one. "But he will never preach in this city again. He will never send another assassin into the palace. He will never threaten the people we have sworn to protect. The goddess he claimed to serve does not demand the blood of children. She never did. He used her name to justify murder. And he will answer for it."

Hecuba, seated beside Priam’s empty chair, spoke for the first time. Her voice was low, but it cut through the silence. "The children who died last night were refugees. They came to this city with nothing, and we gave them shelter. They were learning to write their names. They were learning to be Trojans. The priest killed them because he feared them. Because he feared what they represented. He was wrong. And he will answer for what he did."

Phaedrus inclined his head. "The council will support whatever judgment the royal house deems appropriate."

"The judgment will be the council’s," Hector said. "We are not tyrants. The priest will face a fair trial. But the evidence is clear. The verdict will be the same regardless."

The councillors nodded. The tension that had been coiled in the room for weeks was finally beginning to ease. The priest was gone. The conspiracy was broken. The children were mourned, but the city was still standing.

Lysander stood near the window, as he always did. He had not spoken during the council meeting. He had not needed to. His hands were still stained with the blood of a four-year-old girl, and he had nothing to say to the men who had spent weeks arguing about procedure while the priest plotted murder in his temple.

Hector finished the meeting and walked to his brother. "It’s done."

"For now."

"For now." Hector looked at the broken sword on the table, the one Achilles had sent with his envoy. "The war is still coming. The fleet is still gathering. But today, the city is united. Today, the traitors have been rooted out. Today, the children have been avenged."

Lysander nodded. He looked at the sword, the blood on his hands, the grey winter light filtering through the window. "And tomorrow."

"Tomorrow, we keep building."

Lysander walked out of the council chamber, into the cold morning air. The city was stirring. The harbour was busy. The settlement was quiet, the families of the dead children sitting shiva in their shelters, mourning their lost little ones. But the priest was in chains. His followers were dead. The conspiracy was broken.

The war was still coming.