The Greeks had claimed the bay.
‘It begins,’ murmured Odysseus.
Danae squinted through watery eyes as Agamemnon raised his sword above his head, then brought it slashing through the air. A heartbeat later the salpinges were blown once more, their sound echoed by other horns within the marching regiments.
Full-throated cries tore through the air, as the first rows of soldiers picked up the pace and surged towards the topless towers of Troy. In different circumstances it would be foolhardy to attack such a well-defended city, but even a fortress such as Troy had never before been tested against an army of this magnitude.
Danae’s pulse quickened as Odysseus urged his steed out in front of his men, raising his sword.
‘Forward!’ he cried, then led the charge.
There was no time to look back for Atalanta as Danae and Hylas were forced to ride after the Ithacan king.
The waters of the River Scamander churned beneath makeshift bridges fashioned from planks laid by the first soldiers to cross the plain. Danae pulled up her mare on the near bank as the fighters streamed past her, as though she were nothing but a rock in a current of molten bronze. This was where she and Hylas must wait. She gazed around frantically, then spotted Atalanta’s silver breastplate on the far side of the river. Her ears thrummed with the war cries of thousands of men as her world narrowed to one woman.
Atalanta did not look back.
Danae clenched her jaw so hard she almost bit through her lip, then again tilted her face to the sky.
‘Come on,’ she breathed.
Beside her, Hylas held his horse still. He looked every inch the soldier, with his blade sheathed at his side, his breastplate gleaming under his navy cloak, his chestnut curls whipping his face.
‘You should be out there, not waiting with me,’ she called against the clamour of the men.
Hylas looked at her as though she were the only person on the battlefield. ‘You should not have to wait alone.’
As the last of the Greek soldiers crossed the Scamander, movement aboard the ships drew Danae’s gaze back to the bay.
It looked as though each trireme was raising an additional mast, with weighted wooden contraptions at their bases and bulbous cups at their tips. Soldiers scurried about the decks, straining with ropes and levers.
‘What are those?’
Hylas smiled. ‘Daedalus’ invention.’
‘What do they do?’
‘You’ll see.’
Danae watched, coughing as the wind-blown smoke from the burning Trojan ships raked her throat. The levers of Daedalus’ contraptions were released to catapult clods of fire, metal and rock into the air, smashing into Troy’s yellow stone walls. Brick and dust exploded on impact in a gritty burst. Some of the ammunition made it over the walls and the burning buildings within sent plumes of black smoke into the clouds above. A cheer rang out from the Greek army as they continued to surge towards the city.
After the initial volley, the walls were revealed to be scarred from the attack, but the triremes’ weapons hadn’t yet broken through.
‘Damn,’ Hylas cursed.
Danae’s neck began to ache as her eyes darted from land to sea to sky in a wary cycle.
As the ship’s vast catapults were reloaded, beneath her grip, the trident sang. She’d spent the last precious hour before dawn draining what little vegetation and sea-life she could find near the camp to imbue the weapon with life-threads. It had been intuitive, much easier than gifting the stick an ichor back on Delos. The gold had absorbed her proffered threads like a sponge. What’s more, they felt amplified inside the trident, as though the gods-forged metal was some kind of echo chamber for their power.
Once more the catapults were unleashed, and once more the high walls of Troy remained impenetrable.
‘I could blast through those walls.’
‘No.’ Hylas brought his horse between hers and the river. ‘If the Olympians saw you, they would surely not risk fallinginto our trap. They might destroy the entire Greek army from the sky like they did at Delphi.’
Danae’s chest tightened at the memory of the burning city. All those people murdered because of her. She clenched her jaw once more and set her sights on Troy and the masses of Greek soldiers now approaching the walls. It was impossible from this distance to tell where Atalanta and Telamon were, or to distinguish the squadrons of Children of Prometheus fighters from the rest of the Greek army.
The sky darkened, a fleet of arrows hissing from longbows behind the Trojan defences. There were cries from below as the Greeks hurried to raise their shields.
