Heir of Troy: The Third Son

The sails appeared on the southern horizon at dawn.

Hector saw them from the northern wall, where he had been standing since the last watch change. His eyes were gritty from too few hours of sleep, but the shapes on the water were unmistakable — broad-beamed, deep-drafted, the Lycian and Carian merchantmen he had learned to read during three years of coordinating with Sarpedon’s navy.

Twelve Lycian. Eight Carian. Riding low in the water. Full holds.

He sent a runner to the harbour and went down to meet them.

Arsini was already at the docks when he arrived. She had two tablets under her arm and a third in her hand. Sarpedon’s fast courier had arrived yesterday with the manifest — she had spent the night preparing berth assignments and allocation schedules.

"Twelve Lycian, eight Carian," she said without looking up. "Six hundred measures of barley, two hundred of wheat, plus oil and linen for Antiphus."

"Fighters?"

"Two hundred and twelve volunteers. Not just farmers. Real fighters."

The first gangplank hit the stone pier. Glaukos, Sarpedon’s military second, stepped off. Compact, hardened, a man who moved like a coiled spring. Behind him came the Carian representative — a woman named Thero, carrying a spear as naturally as Hector carried his sword. Her arms were scarred from wrist to elbow.

"Glaukos of Lycia," the man said, clasping Hector’s forearm. "Sarpedon sends what he can. He says if Troy falls, Lycia falls next. This isn’t generosity. It’s arithmetic."

Hector turned to the Carian. She looked at the walls with the professional assessment of someone who had attacked cities before and was now on the other side of one.

"Thero of Caria. My king sends two hundred fighters and eight ships. He also says your walls are impressive, but they won’t save you. Only what’s behind them will."

Hector almost smiled. "Adrastos hasn’t changed."

"He’s still the most patient man in the Aegean." Thero looked past him to the walls. "Where do you need us?"

"The Lycians to the harbour defence ships. They know the water. The Carians —"

"Carians hold the gaps," Thero finished. "We’re good at holding gaps."

While the cargo was unloaded — every sack counted twice by Maea’s settlement workers to prevent theft — Hector left the logistics to Arsini and walked to the training compound. He needed to see what Miros was building.

Paris was on the eastern wall when Hector passed below it. He had his bow in his hand, a quiver at his hip. He looked down at the harbour, at the ships coming in, and something crossed his face that Hector could not quite read from this distance.

Paris called down: "Lycian grain. I can smell it from here."

"Then come down and help carry it."

"I’m on watch. Antenor’s orders."

Hector kept walking. Paris had found his place. The bow had given him that.

The training ground was loud with the crack of wood on wood.

Miros stood at the edge of the compound, his useless right arm bound to his chest, his left hand resting on his sword hilt. In the centre of the dirt, two young men were sparring. Seventeen years old, built like border stones — solid, rough-edged, shaped by wind and hard living rather than palace training.

Twins. Sons of Miros’s sister from the western perimeter. They had arrived three days ago, and they fought like border wolves.

Dexion used a spear. He was precise, methodical, his weight always perfectly balanced. He held his weapon with the grip of someone taught by a man who considered wasted motion a moral failing. Every thrust was measured. Every step was deliberate.

Echion wielded a heavy single-bladed axe with terrifying speed. He fought with a reckless aggression that would get him killed in a formal formation but was devastating in a brawl. He was fast where Dexion was careful, loud where Dexion was silent.

They complemented each other. They always had. That was what twins did on a border — they divided the world between them and covered each other’s gaps.

"Stop," Miros barked.

The twins froze instantly. Border discipline. When Miros spoke, you stopped. Not because he was your uncle, but because on the western perimeter, the man who didn’t stop when told to stop was the man who died.

Dexion held his thrust position. Miros stepped forward, tapping Dexion’s lead foot with his own.

"Your weight is too far forward. On flat ground, falling into your enemy is an advantage. On a wall, you have two feet of space and a man with a shield on your left. You fall, you break his formation, and the Greeks pour through the gap you opened."

"My father taught me to close the distance," Dexion said. Not arguing. Stating.

"Your father taught you to fight raiders in the open. I’m teaching you to fight on a wall. Reach comes from the shoulder, not the hips." Miros took the spear with his left hand, demonstrated a short, sharp thrust. The point stopped exactly where a man’s throat would be if he were coming over a parapet. "Again."

Dexion adjusted. The next thrust was shorter, tighter. He stayed upright.

"Better. Fifty times. Then switch to defensive positions."

Echion stepped forward. "What about me."

Miros looked at the axe. Heavy, chipped, the handle wrapped in leather that was dark with age and someone else’s sweat.

"Where did you get that."

"My father’s. He took it from a Thracian raider who tried to cross the wall when I was nine."

"It is too heavy for wall fighting."

"It has killed eleven men."

"Eleven men on flat ground. On a wall, the first time you swing that thing, you hit the man beside you. Or the swing carries you forward and you go over the edge."

Echion looked at the axe. He had carried it since he was twelve. It was as much a part of him as his right hand.

"I will not give it up."

"I’m not asking you to." Miros pointed to the narrow passage between the training compound’s wall and the supply shed. Four feet wide, designed for moving equipment, not for fighting. "That is your corridor. When they break through the wall, that is what you will be fighting in. There, your axe is the right weapon. Your job is to hold that space while the men behind you reform. You do not advance. You do not retreat. You hold."

"For how long."

"Until someone tells you to stop. Or until you are dead."

Echion hefted the axe. He walked into the corridor and stood there, his shoulders almost touching both walls. He looked at home in the tight space. The border had taught him that fighting was not about range. It was about not moving.

Deia was sitting on the low wall at the edge of the compound.

She had been there since the twins began their drill, her tablet on her lap, her stylus moving in the quick, dense notation she had developed over two years of recording training sessions. She did not speak. She did not need to. Her presence was its own kind of instruction — the reminder that what was being taught was also being preserved.

She watched Dexion adjust his weight. She noted the angle of his shoulder. She recorded the correction: Reach from shoulder, not hips. Wall combat, Section 3.

She watched Echion stand in the corridor with his axe and wrote: Corridor fighting. Heavy weapon. Weight advantage in enclosed space. Hold, do not advance.

Then she wrote something that was not a record but a question.

Border fighters learn terrain. Wall fighters learn formation. What happens when you need both?

She looked up. Miros was watching Dexion run the thrust drill again — the fiftieth repetition, the shoulder now finding the angle without thought. He nodded once. The correction had taken.

Deia held up her tablet. "A question."

Miros glanced at it. Read it. He was quiet for a moment.

"That is the right question," he said. "The answer is what I have been building for two years. The floating role. When you learn to read the whole formation instead of your section, you can fight on a wall the way you fight on a border — reading the terrain, but the terrain is the formation itself."

He looked at the twins. "Neither of you is ready for that yet. Learn the wall first. Learn why the formation matters. Then I will teach you how to break it open and put it back together."

Dexion lowered his spear. "Who taught you the floating role?"

Miros was quiet for a moment. "I built it. Over two years. With help from the man who designed the harbour defence and the training system. He is not here now. When he returns, he may have things to teach you that I cannot."

He did not say Lysander’s name. He did not need to. The twins had heard the stories on the western perimeter — the third prince who fell and woke up different. But stories were stories. What mattered was the work in front of them.

"Again," Miros said. "Both of you. Defensive positions. The wall is not a field. Learn the difference."

Hector found Arsini in the supply office as the sun dipped below the horizon.

The harbour was quiet now. The grain was stored, the fighters billeted. Arsini handed him the final tally. The numbers were precise, organized by category, cross-referenced with the manifests that Sarpedon’s courier had delivered the day before.

"Two hundred and twelve fighters. Twelve women from Caria, all combat veterans. The linen is already with Antiphus. The bronze spearheads are with Daidalos for sharpening."

"And the military supplies?"

"Forty spearheads. Sixty shield bosses. Twelve replacement oars." Arsini paused, looking down at a smaller tablet. "There is one more thing."

"Tell me."

"When the Carian ships were docking, Helen was in the harbour office with me. She was helping tally the oil jars. But she asked a question that struck me as odd."

"What question?"

"She asked how many of the incoming ships were warships, and how many were supply vessels. Specifically the ratio."

Hector frowned slightly. "She is learning the supply system. It’s natural to be curious about the fleet composition."

"Perhaps. But we don’t count warships in the supply manifests. The cargo tallies don’t distinguish. She was asking for information that isn’t part of her inventory work."

Hector looked at Arsini. She was not accusing. She was recording. The difference mattered.

"She is Paris’s wife," Hector said slowly. "She worries about the military threat. It makes sense she would want to know what kind of protection the supply ships had."

"It probably does," Arsini agreed. She set the tablet aside. "I just thought you should know."

Hector nodded. He took the final tally and walked out into the evening air.

The city was settling. The smell of roasting grain drifted from the lower town — a smell that had been fainter a week ago. The Lycian ships had bought them time. Not much, but enough to breathe.

He passed the eastern wall. Paris was still up there, his bow across his back, watching the sea. He raised a hand as Hector passed. Hector raised his own.

Two brothers on opposite sides of the city, doing different jobs, preparing for the same war.

He looked toward the eastern wing of the palace, where Priam lay dying. Somewhere beneath those stones, Lysander was walking through a dark that had not seen light in a thousand years.

Hector didn’t know about the tunnels. He only knew his brother was gone. He gripped the tally tablet tighter and walked toward the northern wall.

The Greeks were coming. But tonight, Troy had eaten well.