The Arrow of Apollo by Philip Womack

Author:Philip Womack [Womack, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783528691
Publisher: Unbound
Published: 2020-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Four

The Trial of Tisamenos

MYKENAI, ACHAEA: KINGHOUSE OF THE LION

A tall, thin man, his lips bloodied, was speaking to Tisamenos. His voice was guttural, and Tisamenos could hardly understand his words. They were in a vast, dark room, and the man was pointing at something the boy knew was bloody and fetid, though it was just out of his sight.

He turned to look, but there was nothing. A groan called his attention back, and in the thin man’s place stood another, broader in his chest and body, though his face was unmistakeably of the same family type; the same long nose, the same slightly pointed cast to the chin.

The ghosts of his ancestors filed before his dreaming mind, imploring, cajoling. They would never rest.

‘The House Accursed … we are all bound to it … you cannot escape the curse … Each one of us …’

They were twined into the bones of the kinghouse, as much a part of it as the Fury that paced and snarled in the cellars.

Tisamenos’s head was ringing with their cries, and he dragged himself up and out of sleep, feeling that their stone-cold fingers were snatching at him, that they might try to trap him with them for eternity.

His lips were parched. He was still in the same cell, lying on the same bit of earth. He was still waiting to be tried for a crime he did not commit.

He sat bolt upright. His body ached. A rough wooden beaker of water and some venison in a bowl sat within reach, and he took great pleasure in the liquid on his lips and the gamey meat filling his empty belly, tearing at it with his teeth and barely chewing.

Would the Swallows think him soft now if they saw him, trembling with hunger, cold and alone, lying in a dark, dank cell? Would they come and save him? He didn’t think so. Perhaps this was what they had wanted all along. Without him, Orestes was weaker, his only other son a babe.

How stupid he had been to trust them!

The trial would be tomorrow. For plotting the death of the king, there was only one penalty.

Death.

His own father would have to sentence him to death. Maybe that was the only possible outcome for a member of the House of Atreos.

Maybe that was where everything had been tending towards, over all these centuries. The bloodied knife, making its way home.

So many had been killed before him by their own kin. He would be killed too, and Penthilos would take his place. Penthilos would end the cycle. There was nobody else.

Tisamenos placed his hands on the stone slabs of the walls. The kinghouse would help him. It had to.

His mind became still, a brief space in which he imagined the outline of his cell. Then an overwhelming clanging filled his skull.

The kinghouse was in uproar. He could not focus.

He tried again, but the clamour was too much, like a thousand smiths banging their hammers on vast anvils. It was too much.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.