Blood of Wolves Read online

  A note from the publisher

  Dear Reader,

  At Pantera Press we’re passionate about what we call good books doing good things™.

  A big part is our joy in discovering and nurturing talented home-grown writers such as S.D. Gentill.

  We are also focused on promoting literacy, quality writing, the joys of reading and fostering debate.

  CAN YOU READ THIS?

  Sure you can, but 60% in our community can’t. Shocking, isn’t it? That’s why Pantera Press is helping to close the literacy gap, by nurturing the next generation of readers as well as our writers. We’re thrilled to support Let’s Read. A wonderful program already helping over 100,000 pre-schoolers across Australia to develop the building blocks for literacy and learning, as well as a love for books.

  We’re excited that Let’s Read operates right across Australia, in metropolitan, regional and also remote communities, including Indigenous communities in Far North Queensland, Cape York, and Torres Strait. Let’s Read was developed by the Centre for Community Child Health and is being implemented in partnership with The Smith Family.

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  Please enjoy The Blood of Wolves.

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  Happy reading,

  Alison Green

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Book I

  Book II

  Book III

  Book IV

  Book V

  Book VI

  Book VII

  Book VIII

  Book IX

  Book X

  Book XI

  Book XII

  Book XIII

  Book XIV

  Book XV

  Book XVI

  Book XVII

  Book XVIII

  Book XIX

  Book XX

  Book XXI

  Book XXII

  Book XXIII

  Book XXIV

  Book XXV

  Book XXVI

  Book XXVII

  Book XXVIII

  Book XXIX

  Book XXX

  Book XXXI

  Book XXXII

  Book XXXIII

  Book XXXIV

  Book XXXV

  Book XXXVI

  Book XXXVII

  Epilogue

  Bookclub

  Acknowledgments

  About S.D. Gentill

  For the Greens

  . . . the family, not the political party

  gratias vobis ago

  . . . because

  Quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur

  . . . and

  Revera linguam latinam vix cognovi

  PROLOGUE

  THE FABRIC WAS AS SOFT as the breath of a babe. Yet it rearranged the stars with its weft. Eos, the sunrise, reached over the horizon to touch the weave—the crimson of first light like blood on the fingers of dawn.

  The immortal sisters wore sable robes, three lithe shadows in the break of day. They danced before a loom strung with the thread of life, and they wove.

  Their faces were round, beguiling; their eyes distant as they gazed upon eternity. But these same eyes had once wept blood, unable to behold anything but the wrong that had been done. Deadly vipers had framed the now soft cheeks and fanged jaws had hung slackly open as they whispered doom into the ears of men. Daughters of night, they were monstrous-born, conceived in violence, birthed in betrayal. But grey-eyed Athene, beloved daughter of the king of gods, had placated their fury, and stayed their bloodlust. She had made them as they were now, well minded and serene. Men called them merciful, but still, they were not always so.

  Their fingers moved lightly, weaving as they talked in the way that sisters do. And they remembered the men who had escaped them when they were the most feared of avenging spirits.

  Tisiphone selected the thread. She sighed, her nimble fingers holding the skein to the light. “Before the goddess of wisdom changed us so, I tormented the man whose fate I now weave. I scourged his back with my whip and tried to wrest his sanity from him.” She smiled with the memory, for it pleased her still.

  Megaera laughed. “I remember. We hunted him until his mind was near broken and his spirit all but spent.”

  Alecto, once called unceasing, stood to study the effect of their work. “The sons of Agelaus escaped us and yet, my sisters, here we sit weaving the fabric of their fate. Already the cloth we have created for them is threaded with sorrow and trial. How now shall we weave the patterns of their destiny?”

  Tisiphone ran her hand over the tapestry of lives. As she did so, she recounted the tale of the sons of Agelaus and their sister, all borne by Amazons and raised by a gentle herder outside the walls of Troy. In thread dyed with blood and ash was woven the Greek invasion that brought down the great walls and left the Herdsmen of Ida accused. Then desperation was spun with courage as the children of Agelaus chased Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, across the known world to cleanse the name of their people.

  Alecto’s eyes were bright as she identified the pattern which entwined the fate of the war-like Amazons with that of the Herdsmen through the flawed girl, Hero, and then the dark strands knotted by Medea, the Witch of Kolchis. She traced the translucent threads which wrought the bewitching of Machaon, and hid the Herdsman from their eyes: the spell of Medea which had joined his spirit with that of the wolf and placed into his heart the savagery of a beast.

  And now they wove the final fate of the Herders of Ida.

  “What say you, my sisters?” crooned Megaera as she swayed in the gentle wind.

  “Twist!” cried Tisiphone. “Twist the threads of fate!”

  Alecto’s face softened and her voice grew quiet. “These are Herdsmen, defenders, preservers of life. Long did they keep the secrets of the tunnels that ran under the walls. Long did they sustain the city through siege. Never have they sought glory and faithfully did they serve. Shall we not show mercy, sisters? Wise Athene gave us mercy.”

  “To use should we choose it,” Megaera replied. “The Fates decide where the blood of wolves shall flow.”

  “Twist!” cried Tisiphone twirling with the words. “Twist, twist, twist . . .”

  Now I shall heed, O gods of my fathers. Wherever you lead there shall I be.

  Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 2

  BOOK I

  THE IMMORTALS WERE SILENT. THE shapes would not hold, shifting and slipping in and out of form, inconstant and elusive like the gods for whose word she waited. In the billowing smoke, Hero sought a prophecy, some sign of their fate. Her eyes watered and burned and yet she had seen nothing but fleeting imaginings. Her ears strained for the voice of far-shooting Apollo, but there was only the crackle and hiss of the offering pyre.

  And then, as the fumes curled anew, Hero found a shape, an insubstantial, tentative shadow of a thing that almost was. She blinked, trying hard to focus eyes that had always been weak. Her head was light and the world seemed to swirl like the smoke. Hero raised her face and her hands to the sky. The ground rocked like the sea and she could feel the spray of waves on her cheeks as she sank into oblivion.

  Dark-winged Morpheus embraced the pious daughter of Agelaus the Herdsman as she slipped into the quiet realm of unknowing sleep. Hero did not hear the shouts of those who came to her aid nor see the extinguishing of her sacrificial fire.

  She awoke in the strong arms of Machao
n as he carried her from the flames. He lay her down beneath the spreading branches of an elm, gazing anxiously at her limp form.

  “We must go,” she said, stricken by her own words. She did not want to go . . . they had only just come home, and though Troy was now a ruin, the mountain which loomed over the remains of the citadel still belonged to the Herdsmen of Ida. But the land she loved now caught her heart with dread and foreboding.

  “Cad—bring some water,” Machaon called over his shoulder as she coughed.

  Cadmus came with Lycon beside him, and Hero was surrounded by her brothers. Machaon pressed a skin of water to her lips and they watched intently whilst she spluttered with the first sip.

  “Stop talking and breathe,” Machaon said as she tried again to tell him that they must leave.

  This was not the first time they had rescued Hero from her own devotions. Their sister’s fires notoriously escaped her control. Perhaps it was because her sight was poor or her piety excessive. Regardless, they had come to accept that they would, from time to time, be required to douse the expression of her faith. Still, she had never before breathed the smoke so long.

  “The Pantheon has given me a sign,” Hero gasped.

  “A what?”

  “A sign! They have spoken to me.”

  Lycon snorted. “I’d keep that to yourself.”

  “Talking to gods is a dangerous habit, Hero.” Cadmus looked down at her sternly. “They are unreliable at best.”

  On this point, Hero’s brothers were in agreement—even Machaon nodded. With the fall of Troy, they had been freed, though the freedom had been bitter, and dearly bought. The sons of Agelaus were not inclined to care about the Pantheon’s signs.

  “Our time in Ida is over,” Hero said urgently. “Troy is gone and the gods will not suffer us to stay!”

  Machaon glanced down the slope. He could just make out the rubble that marked the site of the legendary citadel. In two years the seasons had not managed to wash and bleach the blackened remains of the Greek inferno. In two years the images of carnage and horror had not faded in his mind.

  For generations the Herdsmen of Ida had sustained the city in times of siege, bringing food to its population through the hidden passages which ran beneath its great walls. Machaon and his brothers had, like all the men of Ida, taken supplies of grain and cheese and meat deep into the subterranean tunnels that emerged within the fortified stronghold. The protective circle around Troy had not been merely stone.

  “And where does the Pantheon wish us to go?” Machaon asked wearily.

  “Nemesis screams for justice. She demands we find Scamandrios.”

  A knowing glance passed between the young Herdsmen.

  When the Greeks had breached the walls and razed the holy city, the survivors had turned against those who had been their allies. They had flogged Machaon on the command of Scamandrios, the only surviving prince of Troy, and executed gentle Agelaus. The Herdsmen were condemned, and their elders slaughtered. All this to appease the wrath and anguish of Troy.

  And yet it was Scamandrios himself who had given the Greeks the secrets they needed to destroy his father’s stronghold. The discovery of his treachery burned bitterly in the hearts of the sons of Agelaus. In their sister, the fury was an inferno to rival that which had laid waste to Troy.

  “We have only just returned,” Machaon said. “Would you have us leave Ida so soon?”

  They had chased Odysseus across the sea to restore the name of the Herdsmen and then sailed to the edge of the world to retrieve Hero from the Amazons. For only a single cycle of the moon had the children of Agelaus rejoined their people and truly been herders again, working to rebuild their herds on the slopes of the mountain. It had not been an easy task, for there was very little left. Their once abundant bulls had been sacrificed by the Greeks; their horses taken as spoils of war. Marauders and pirates descended upon them to sift through the ruins in search of forgotten plunder, destroying their fledgling herds anew. Wrestling over the conquered kingdom of Priam had begun and the world did not care that Ida had always belonged to the Herdsmen.

  “Of course I do not wish to leave,” Hero snapped. “But we dare not disobey. We cannot remain in defiance.”

  “What exactly did the gods say this time?” Lycon asked. Hero had been talking to the gods a lot of late.

  “I felt the spray of the sea on my face, the rock of the boat. It can only mean they want us to sail again.”

  “We splashed you as we put out the fire, Hero, and you were rocking a fair bit yourself by then.” Lycon shook his head in exasperation. Hero was mad enough without thinking she was a seer.

  Hero rubbed the stain of smoke from her eyes and glared at the three of them. They stood strong and tall about her, as similar as brothers of blood, which they were not. Only Machaon had been the natural child of the man they called father. And yet, Agelaus had passed to each of his sons a gentle strength that marked their features as strongly as any common ancestry. The sons of Agelaus were alike, and as united in their indifference to the gods as they were in all things. Indeed, Hero did not know why she still hoped that they would see the folly of their heresy.

  “No. It is a sign. We have to go . . . all of us.”

  Machaon offered her his hand. “Can you walk?” he asked.

  Hero let him pull her to her feet.

  He put his arm around her shoulders. “There will be a time to deal with Scamandrios,” he said gently. “We are Herdsmen, Hero, vengeance is not our first thought.”

  “But we do get ’round to it in time,” Cadmus added, folding his arms.

  Lycon nodded, his dark eyes glittering angrily with the memory of the day that Scamandrios had condemned them. He and Agelaus had watched, helpless, as Scamandrios put Machaon under whip. Lycon had seen the anguish in his father’s eyes as he watched the torture of his eldest son. It had been the last thing Agelaus had beheld on earth and he had gone to Hades in agony and desperate grief.

  Hero’s eyes welled. “You don’t understand! It was a sign.”

  “How do you know the gods wish us to leave?” Cadmus challenged. “They might simply want the Herdsmen to take up fishing.”

  Hero stamped her foot, aware he was mocking her, and he made it worse by laughing. All semblance of piety now forgotten, she shouted at him, calling all manner of insult to her aid.

  Machaon raised his hand for silence. “Can you hear that?”

  Cadmus groaned. “The gods are speaking to you now?”

  Machaon shook his head. They all heard the second howl. It came from the beach at the base of the mountain. To all but Herdsmen it would appear to be the cry of a wolf.

  “That’s Kelios,” Lycon murmured. “He calls us to the beach.” Kelios, the steady son of Brontor, now led what was left of their people.

  Machaon nodded. The wild language of the Herdsmen of Ida was as clear to them as the words of other men.

  “Come, we’ll ride,” Cadmus said, turning towards the pastures where their steeds grazed with sleek cattle.

  Kelios would not have summoned them without reason and though there was no note of danger in the howl, neither was it a casual greeting. The Herders were as cautious now as they had been during the war, aware that they were no longer many and, though the riches of Troy had long been sacked, there were those who still coveted dominion of Ida.

  The horses came on first command, giant beasts with proud intelligent heads. Cadmus pulled Hero onto his own horse. She could ride as well as any of them but as the light failed so would her sight. The steeds knew the mountain trails, picking a path through the trees with barely a sound.

  The western horizon burned gold as it welcomed the chariot of Helios home and it was in the warmth of this aged light that they reached the beach of the Trojan harbour. Many Herdsmen had heard and answered Kelios’ call and most were gathered around a boat which had been pulled onto the sand. The craft was simple and battered, its mast broken and its sail in shreds.

  “Mac!
” Kelios beckoned above the heads of his brethren from the side of the vessel. The Herders parted to make room. Though Kelios now led their people, the deeds of the children of Agelaus had not been forgotten.

  A man sat on the beach in the shadow of the grounded ship. He was caked in salt and battered by the winds and sea. His lips, barely visible amidst a long, matted beard, were cracked and blistered and his eyes swollen almost shut. He had been given food and wine, of which he partook painfully but enthusiastically.

  “Who is he?” Machaon enquired quietly of Kelios.

  Kelios shrugged. “He’s said nothing . . . but the ship . . .”

  Machaon turned and looked closely at the small craft. He saw now the carved inscription in the bronze prow. The vessel was Trojan and yet the Greeks had burned the entire Trojan fleet in their destruction of the stronghold.

  The sea-weary man reached out to clasp Machaon’s knees.

  “By Zeus the Thunderer, I beseech you as a supplicant. Though this land was once mine, I am a stranger here now. I beg your protection and your aid in the name of the king of gods, protector of travellers and father of us all.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am twice a refugee who now seeks help more than harbour.”

  Machaon sighed. He had little patience for riddles.

  “Come,” said Kelios. “We will give you shelter, and the comfort of clean robes, and then you will tell us your tale.”

  They waited for the man to croak hoarse gratitude and finally to release Machaon’s knees. The castaway was taken slowly back up the mountain to the cave of Agelaus in which his children still lived. The cavern was hidden beneath the fall of a mountain stream and so the man was able to wash the grime of hardship from his thin body before huddling by the cave’s central fire. Once again he was plied with wine and meat, for he seemed cruelly wasted.

  The cave was crowded now with Herdsmen. Barely one hundred of their people had survived the two years since Troy had fallen, and the large cavern could hold them all. The Herders were both curious and wary. This man seemed harmless enough, but they had been betrayed before.

  Washed, the man’s features became distinct. He was fair, his eyes blue and his bones fine. There was a vague softness to the lines of his face that spoke of youth not too far passed. When he had eaten again, Kelios spoke.