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Another man appeared, another soldier in armor with a sword. Lia threw herself behind the marble column next to her and clung to it for life. She crouched, column in front of her, trying to hide, to will herself invisible.
Wide-eyed, panting and panicking, she glanced around, searching her surroundings for a better hiding place.
She heard footsteps, the flat of sandals ringing against the marble steps. Men approached.
She counted five Greek hoplites, two carrying torches, the other three carrying their swords. They stood at the top of the steps, at the entrance to the temple, speaking in low tones. She tried to creep around the column but either her white gown was too bright in the moonlight or they heard her breathing...but one of the soldiers sprang forward and captured her, quick as a hare. She struggled in his grasp, but there was no use. She went limp to avoid getting run through with his blade.
“What’s that?” one of the other soldiers called to the one who held her.
“Pretty girl,” the soldier said, laughing.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” said a man with a booming voice.
She was dragged by the hoplite to the men holding the torches. Their faces were grotesque to her. Under other circumstances they might have been handsome, or at least not repellent. But even the oldest man, old enough to be her father, stared at her with a rapacious hateful gaze. She’d seen that same look in her husband’s eyes right before he put a spear through a stag’s heart or a crueler spear in whatever poor slave girl he ordered to his chambers every night.
“Who wants to be first?” asked the soldier who held her with arms pinned behind her back—so that if she were to try to run, he’d wrench her arms out of her shoulders. “I went first last time.”
The oldest soldier, who wore a gray beard and was heaviest around the chest, stared at her face in the torchlight.
“I know that face,” he said. “Gods...it’s the little queen. Aren’t you?”
The soldier who held her kneed her lightly in the back.
“The general asked you a question, wench. Answer him.”
Lia swallowed. “Briseis,” she whispered.
The old general boomed a laugh like thunder.
“Briseis...” he hissed like a snake. “Caught us a queen.”
“Can I keep her?” the soldier holding her asked.
“What would a shit like you do with a queen?” the general demanded. “Even a slave, she still outranks you.”
That got the other three soldiers to laughing.
“What we going to do with her, then?” another soldier asked.
The general seemed to puzzle that over, eyes narrowed, fingers stroking his ratty gray beard.
“I know,” he said at last. He turned and stood at the edge of the temple stairs. He put two fingers into his mouth and blew a piercing whistle, loud as the cry of a hunting horn.
Lia went still as a statue in the grip of her captor. But though her body was frozen with terror, her mind ran wild. She was no fool. She knew her fate had been decided. As queen, she could be valuable. If her soldiers had taken any high-ranking Athenian or Ithacan prisoners, she might be ransomed for them. She might be given to Agamemnon, their king. She might be executed, publicly, in front of the remaining citizens in order to quell any rebellion.
Hera, Lia prayed.I, too, am the wife of an unfaithful husband. Protect your child. Deliver me from harm. Whomever takes me into captivity, let him be better than this disgusting rabble. And let him be a better man than my dead husband. You know I am asking for little in that.
The general had called someone up to the temple, and he now approached. She sensed the change in the soldiers surrounding her. Their backs straightened. Their chins rose. Their faces hardened to stone. They weren’t standing at attention out of respect.
They were afraid.
A man stepped into the temple.
The general walked to his side. The man was tall, taller than any of the other soldiers, including the general. Broader in the chest, too, with powerful arms and a king’s bearing. He wore magnificent armor—a bronze breastplate with an owl engraved on the gleaming metal and a bronze helmet with violet plumes.
As they approached, Lia composed herself. She sensed that this man, far more than the general, held her fate in his hands.
“Here she is,” the general said as they came to her.
