Heir of Troy: The Third Son

Chapter 100: Demons on the Horizon

The twelfth fishing boat was late.

Lysander had been counting since dawn—a habit he’d built over two years of watching the harbor from the tower. Eleven boats had returned with the morning tide, their holds full, their crews loud and ordinary. The twelfth should have been among them. It wasn’t.

He stood at the parapet, the sea wind tugging at his cloak, and scanned the water. Nothing. Just the empty Aegean, grey-blue under the morning sun, stretching north until it vanished into haze.

It’s a fishing boat, he told himself. Fishing boats are late sometimes. Nets get tangled. Rudders break. There’s no reason to assume the worst.

He had been standing here long enough to know that the worst didn’t need a reason. It simply arrived, usually on a morning that had seemed ordinary until the moment it wasn’t.

The harbor bell rang. Not the measured signal for a trader or a fishing vessel. Something faster, more urgent.

He turned and looked down at the harbor mouth.

The ship coming through the barrier pilings was a coastal transport, the kind that ran supplies between the northern islands and the Anatolian mainland. But this one wasn’t carrying supplies. Its deck was crowded with people. Families. Children. Old men clutching bundles. They stood in the kind of silence that comes after screaming has stopped.

Its sail was torn. Its hull rode low—too low, the weight of too many bodies pressing it toward the waterline.

Lysander was already moving toward the stairs.

By the time he reached the dock, the refugees were disembarking. They staggered onto the stone pier like people who had been through something they didn’t yet have words for. A woman clutched a child who wasn’t crying. An old man sat down on the dock and stared at nothing. A young fisherman, both hands wrapped in bloody cloth, stood apart from the others and looked north.

Lysander found the captain near the gangplank. Middle-aged, face weathered by decades of salt and wind, drinking water from a clay cup. His hands were steady. His eyes weren’t.

"I’m Lysander. Supply overseer. Tell me what happened."

The captain looked at him. "You’re the one they talk about. The prince who asks questions."

"Yes. What happened."

"We picked them up two days ago. Off the coast, north of the headland. They were in fishing boats. Dozens of them. Fleeing."

"Fleeing what."

"Black ships. I didn’t see them myself. Every person on this deck saw them. Seven ships, maybe more. They came out of the morning fog. No sails—oars. Moving faster than any trading vessel I’ve ever seen." He paused. "They hit a fishing village north of here. Burned everything. The boats, the nets, the houses. The people who got out did so because they were already on the water when the ships arrived."

"How many survivors from the village."

"A few. Most of the people we picked up were from settlements further north. They’d been warned. Someone ahead of them saw the ships and sent word down the coast. They left before the ships reached them."

"How many settlements."

"Three. Maybe four. The ones we spoke to said the black ships were moving south. Methodically. They weren’t raiding—they were clearing. Burning every village, every boat, every net."

Lysander looked at the people on the dock. The woman with the silent child. The old man staring at nothing. The fisherman looking north. "Did anyone fight back."

"The village tried. The fishermen took their boats out to meet them." The captain’s voice was flat. "None of them came back."

Hector was at the northern gate, reviewing patrol assignments with Miros. The midday sun was high, the shadows short, the wall throwing its bulk against the sky. He turned as Lysander approached and read his face in the space of a heartbeat.

"How bad," he said.

Lysander told him what the captain had said. Black ships. Seven or more. Villages burned. Survivors fleeing in fishing boats. The fishermen who fought and didn’t return. He told it plainly, without softening, because Hector didn’t need softening.

Hector absorbed it without blinking. Then he turned to Miros. "Scout ship. Fastest we have. North within the hour. I want to know how many, how fast, and where they are now."

Miros nodded. "And if they find them."

"Observe and return. No engagement. We need information, not heroics."

Miros left at a run.

Hector looked at the settlement below the gate—the northern section, closest to the sea, where the newest arrivals lived. Families who had already fled one disaster and were now in the path of another. "How many people in the northern section."

"Approximately eight hundred."

"How long to move them."

"With warning—a day. Without warning—" Lysander stopped. "Without warning, they’re directly in the path."

"Then we give them warning." Hector’s voice was flat. "The northern section begins a quiet evacuation at dawn. Not a panic—a relocation. Move them to the outer ring, closer to the walls. And pull back the fishing fleet. No boats north of the headland until we know what we’re facing."

He turned and walked toward the palace. Lysander followed.

They went to the war room. Hector stood before the map on the wall—the coastline north of Troy, every village marked, every watch station, every landing point. He studied it without speaking.

"The scout ship should reach the village by dawn," he said finally. "We’ll know more then."

"And if the black ships are still there."

"Then we fight." Hector turned from the map. "The watch stations double their shifts. Every station reports at dawn and dusk, regardless of sightings. I want riders ready to move at a moment’s notice. And the settlement—tell Maea to begin the relocation quietly. We don’t need eight hundred people panicking." freёwebnovel.com

"I’ll tell her."

Hector nodded. He looked at the map again, his jaw tight. "Fishermen. They took fishing boats out against warships."

"Yes."

"Brave men."

"Yes."

Hector said nothing more. He didn’t need to.

Lysander walked back through the palace. The corridors were quiet in the way that meant news was spreading faster than official announcements. Servants glanced at him. Guards straightened slightly. Everyone knew something had arrived. No one knew what it meant.

He passed the garden.

She was sitting under the old fig tree. A piece of embroidery rested in her lap, but her hands weren’t moving. She was looking toward the harbor, where the damaged ship was being unloaded.

He had seen her before. In corridors. At formal occasions. At the edges of rooms where Hector was present. Dark hair, simply dressed, with a stillness that wasn’t the stillness of calm but of someone who had learned to wait.

She turned as he approached. Grey-green eyes, direct and unafraid.

"You were with Hector," she said. "At the gate."

"Yes."

"There’s news."

"Yes."

"Bad."

"Yes."

She nodded once. She didn’t ask what the news was.

"I’m Andromache," she said.

"I know. I’m Lysander."

"I know who you are." She studied him. "Hector speaks of you. Not often. He doesn’t speak often about anyone. But when he does, there’s something in his voice I don’t hear at other times."

"I wouldn’t know what that is."

"Neither do I. That’s why I’m telling you." She paused. "Will this change things?"

"Probably. I don’t know how much yet."

She looked toward the harbor again. "He’ll do what needs to be done. He always does. That’s not what concerns me."

"What concerns you."

"Whether what needs to be done will ever stop needing to be done."

She stood, gathering her embroidery. She was tall, nearly his height, and she held herself with the straightness of someone who had learned composure early and never set it down. At the garden’s edge, she paused.

"Whatever it is—he won’t ask for help. He never does. You should give it anyway."

She went inside.

He was crossing the main courtyard when the cart came through the gate.

A plain cart. Two guards, a driver, a serving woman walking alongside. It stopped in the center of the courtyard, and the serving woman helped someone down from the back.

An old woman. White hair, bound simply. A bronze brooch at her shoulder in the shape of a lion. She moved slowly—her joints were stiff, he could see it in the careful way she placed her feet—but without hesitation.

The guards straightened. A servant near the main door turned and went quickly inside.

Hecuba. His mother.

She had been gone for months—at the healing springs, he’d been told, though no one had given him details. She had left before the fall, before everything changed. The Lysander who had existed before was her son. The Lysander who stood in this courtyard now had never met her.

She crossed the courtyard slowly, looking at everything. The stonework. The guards. The faces of the servants who stopped to bow. Taking inventory of a city she’d left behind.

Her eyes found him.

She stopped. For a long moment she simply looked at him, her face unreadable. Then she walked toward him, and despite the stiffness in her joints, her pace quickened.

"Lysander." She said his name like a question and a statement both.

"Mother." He bowed his head. "Welcome home."

She reached up and took his face in both her hands. Her palms were dry and cool, the skin loose over bone, but her grip was firm. She turned his head slightly, studying him the way she’d studied the stonework and the guards—measuring what had changed.

"You look different," she said.

"I’ve been told."

"Who told you."

"Everyone."

That almost produced a smile. Almost. "They said you’d changed. The stories reached me even at the springs. A prince who negotiates treaties. A prince who built a settlement outside the walls. I didn’t believe half of it."

"I’m still the same person."

"No. You’re not." She released his face but didn’t step back. "The boy I left was quiet. He stayed in corners. He never looked anyone in the eye. The man standing in front of me now looks like he’s been carrying the weight of this city on his shoulders and hasn’t slept properly in weeks."

"That’s probably accurate."

"Hmm." She studied him a moment longer. "I don’t know what happened while I was gone. I don’t know what changed you. But I know my son when I see him. And you are my son."

It was not a question. It was a statement of fact, delivered with the certainty of a woman who had been making such judgments for decades and had rarely been wrong.

"Thank you," he said.

"Don’t thank me. Tell me what’s happening. I saw the ship in the harbor. I saw the refugees."

"Black ships. North of the headland. They’ve been burning villages."

"How many."

"Seven or more. Moving south."

"How long."

"Three days. Maybe four."

She absorbed this without blinking. Then she nodded once. "Take me to Priam."

"He’s in the war room with Hector."

"Then take me there."

She began walking toward the palace, and despite her stiff joints, he had to quicken his pace to keep up.

The war room was lit by a single lamp when they entered. Hector stood at the map, his back to the door. He turned at the sound of footsteps, and when he saw who had entered, something shifted in his face—not surprise, exactly, but the quiet relief of a man who had been carrying a burden alone and had just been reminded that he didn’t have to.

"Mother," he said.

"Hector." She crossed the room and embraced him briefly—a soldier’s embrace, firm and quick. Then she stepped back and looked at the map. "Tell me everything."

They told her. The damaged ship. The refugees. The black ships moving south. The scout ship dispatched north. The evacuation beginning at dawn.

Hecuba listened without interrupting. When they finished, she was quiet for a moment.

"You’ve done well," she said. It was not praise. It was assessment, delivered with the same flat certainty as everything else she said. "Both of you. The preparations, the evacuation, the scouts—all correct."

"We don’t know if it will be enough," Hector said.

"No one ever does. You prepare for what you can see and you trust that your preparation will hold against what you can’t." She looked at the map. "Your father built these walls. Your brothers have strengthened them. Now you’ll defend them. That’s how it works."

She turned to Lysander. "You’ve been standing on towers counting ships."

"Among other things."

"Good. Keep counting. Keep preparing. And when the black ships come, you’ll fight. That’s all any of us can do."

She walked to the door, then paused. "I’ll be with your father. He’ll want to know everything. After that, I’ll be in the temple. The gods should be reminded that we’re still here."

She left.

Hector looked at Lysander. "She’s been back for an hour and she’s already given orders to both of us."

"She’s efficient."

"She’s terrifying." But he said it with something that was almost warmth. "She’s been terrifying since I was old enough to hold a sword. I’ve missed it."

Lysander went back to the tower at dusk.

The scout ship had been gone for hours. Somewhere to the north, it was moving through the darkness toward an answer. Tomorrow it would return. Tomorrow they would know how many ships, how fast, how close.

Below, Troy was settling into its evening rhythms. The harbor fires were being lit. The watch was changing at the gates. In the settlement, the refugees from the transport were being fed, registered, given somewhere to sleep. Maea would have it organized by midnight. She always did.

Footsteps on the stone behind him.

Hector came to stand beside him at the parapet. He didn’t speak for a long moment. He looked at the darkening sea, his hands resting on the stone.

"The scout ship should reach the village by dawn," he said.

"If the captain’s account was accurate."

"It was. I’ve known him twenty years. He doesn’t exaggerate."

They stood in silence. The last light was fading from the sky.

"You spoke with Andromache," Hector said. "In the garden."

"Yes. Briefly."

"She mentioned it. She said you listened." freewebnovel.cσ๓

"That’s all I did."

"That’s more than most people do." Hector was quiet for a moment. "She was twelve when her city fell. She watched it burn from a ship, the same way those refugees watched their villages burn. She’s never forgotten what that felt like. She carries it with her, the way some people carry old injuries that ache when the weather changes."

Lysander thought about the stillness he’d seen in her. The straight spine. The composure. It wasn’t calm. It was the discipline of someone who had learned to function in the presence of fear.

"She told me you wouldn’t ask for help," he said. "She said I should give it anyway."

Hector didn’t respond immediately. Then: "She knows me well."

"Yes."

"The scout ship will be back tomorrow. Whatever it finds, we’ll deal with it then." He turned from the parapet. "Get some rest."

He went down the tower stairs.

Lysander stayed at the parapet. The sea was black now, the horizon invisible. Somewhere beyond it, black ships were moving through the darkness, burning villages, and coming closer with every hour.

He thought about Hecuba’s hands on his face. I know my son when I see him. And you are my son.

He thought about Andromache in the garden, her grey-green eyes. Whether what needs to be done will ever stop needing to be done.

He thought about the fishermen who had taken their boats out to fight and never came back.

Tomorrow the scout ship would return. Tomorrow they would know.

He went down to the supply office and began to work. There were numbers to review, preparations to make, contingencies to plan. The future was coming, faster than he’d expected, in a form he hadn’t anticipated.

But that was the nature of the future. It never arrived the way you thought it would.

He worked until the lamp burned low, then refilled it and worked some more.