Troy: A Brand of Fire

by Ben Blake

  Chapter Ten

  Words of an Owl

  Troy raised duties on all Argive goods on its roads, eleven days after Odysseus signed a trade agreement in Egypt.

  The higher transit tax came into effect immediately. Ship captains sailing into the Bay of Troy found themselves faced with a price they hadn’t expected, or planned for. Turning around wasn’t an option; they had bought their goods with Troy in mind, and would make less money elsewhere. Besides, they would only be wasting time. Those who could pay, did so. Others were forced to hand over a tenth of their cargoes in lieu of payment.

  Wagon masters reaching Troy had even less choice. Confronted with extortionate fees at the toll posts, it was inevitable that some of the traders would turn violent. They were Argives, after all. Priam had expected that though, and placed soldiers there to enforce the law; Scamandrians in lacquered red and black, Palladians in cuirasses of bright yellow. The trouble didn’t last long. A few people were bound and carried away, a few more had an arm or hand broken by the haft of a spear to encourage civility. One brawl left three men dead, and buried in small cairns beside the Road.

  Crescas heard the news in his warehouse and shared a tight smile with Eteon. They’d managed to secure a meeting with Ucalegon in the Pergamos, and been assured that the new duties did not apply to an Argive who had left his home for Troy. Not one who had married a Trojan woman, and especially not one who was supplying iron to the city’s new Hittite smith. Crescas was well aware of the anger the fees would cause, and knew it might lead to more than a handful of deaths on the Trojan Road. But it didn’t affect him. Not yet at least, and that was enough for the moment.

  Mursili heard it too, though his command of Luwian was still poor enough that he wasn’t sure at first what he was being told. Something about prices, he knew that, and people being attacked on the road east of the city. It wasn’t until the afternoon that he could put everything together well enough to understand what had happened. Even then he didn’t see what reason there was for the king to do this. In Hattusa tax hikes on a single group were a weapon of punishment. When he talked with his new friend Phereclus, in a tavern later that evening, he realised that was exactly the point.

  Phereclus himself had heard the news down at the Bay, where he was supervising the construction of seven new ships. Troy had never had a navy of its own; had never needed one, in truth, with Argives and others sailing the Greensea for them. But Priam thought it was time for that to change. If Troy had her own ships she could keep prices down, and perhaps in time also train archers and spearmen to fight from the decks, the way the Argives did. Phereclus had been brought all the way from Colchis to make that possible.

  He heard about the taxes and frowned, pushing a hand through hair the wind had already strewn around his head. One problem with ships was that they did go missing between ports, even when the weather was mild. Pirates, mistakes, even plain bad luck could see a ship holed, and unable to reach land in time. Rivals could sink a lone vessel in the knowledge that they couldn’t be blamed for it, not with certainty… and the Argives had a lot of ships. A lot. If they were angry enough, this new little fleet of Phereclus’ might see the bottom of the sea rather sooner than he would like.

  News reached the stables down by the Scaean Gate, at the southern end of the city.

  “Will the Argives attack us?” Tanith asked.

  Troilus was rubbing down a newly-tamed mare. She was still skittish around new people, and would snort and stamp if any hand but Troilus’ touched her. “How would I know?”

  “They would break their spears on our walls and sail home weeping,” Tanith said, with more confidence than she felt. The Argives frightened her. Every time word came of another raid on some far-off coast, carried out by the terrifying Myrmidons and their dread captain perhaps, she trembled inside. But Troy was too strong, its walls too high, surely. Surely.

  “I expect so,” Troilus said.

  “You really haven’t heard anything?”

  “I spend more time in these stables than I do in the Pergamos,” he said. “Taxes and politics have never interested me.”

  “What does interest you?”

  She struck a pose as she spoke, knowing he’d see her from the side of his eye. When she worked she wore a short, simple dress, tight-fitting at the bodice and cut lower that Trojan dresses usually were. It was rather like an Argive chiton, in fact. It showed off her figure well. Troilus turned his head slightly and grinned, but he didn’t stop rubbing down the mare.

  “Horses,” he said.

  Horses interested Tanith too. She’d grown up around them back in Phrygia, and taken the chance to come to Troy because the best animals in the world were here. Everyone knew it. She’d uprooted her life to work with these horses, but still, she wasn’t as passionate as Troilus was.

  Not about horses, anyway. About him… but that was not a thought she ought to be having. He was a prince, she an outland stable girl. She’d take what he gave her, and try to be happy with it.

  “Say that again,” she said, striving for a light tone, “and I’ll upend this bucket of manure on your head, I swear I will.”

  He finished with the mare and left the stall, taking care to bolt the door behind him before he turned to Tanith. When he did he crossed the distance to her in a stride. He picked her up – she was small, had never really gained weight – and kissed her soundly. There was hay in his hair.

  “I locked the door,” she said breathlessly, when their lips parted.

  “Wouldn’t matter if you hadn’t,” he said. He carried her into an empty stall and knelt on the floor, so she could lie back onto a pile of straw. She was already pulling at his shirt. He rucked her dress up around her hips and she grabbed his head so she could kiss him, and shortly afterwards forgot all about the Argives, and taxes, and everything but her prince.