The Boy Who Cried Horse (4 page)
“You promised me a pig’s head if I let you in,” the guard said.
“I’m off to get it now. The Greeks left lots of food behind.”
The guard nodded. He pushed at a stone and part of the wall slid open. Sinon patted his arm and walked out onto the moon-silver plain.
I ran to the gate.
“Acheron the singer!” the guard cried.
“Shush, Cottus!” I hissed. “Let me out. I’m following that man.”
“Don’t you go pinching any pigs’ heads those Greeks left behind. The first one is mine.”
“You already have a pig’s head on your shoulders,” I muttered and pushed through the gap in the wall.
Sinon was plodding over the plain. The Greek tents were gone, but ashes from dead fires and broken swords of dead men showed where they had been. I kept to the path around the edge of the plain and ran in the shadows of boulders.
We were close to the shore now and the moon was blocked by a huge shape. The shape of a wooden horse, almost as tall as the walls of Troy.
Sinon waved to the horse as he walked past it. At the water’s edge, there was a wooden pier that the Greeks had built.
A single ship stood waiting and Sinon walked towards it. The east wind carried the voices to me:
“Is it done, Sinon?”
“It is done. They take the horse in tomorrow morning.”
“That’s when we will return.”
A rope was untied and the ship was rowed out into the wind-chopped sea.
It was a mystery. Sinon had said they were gone for good, so why were they talking of returning?
I wandered back over the plain towards Troy and looked up at the horse. On the moonlit side, I saw something I hadn’t seen on my way out to the shore.
A rope ladder hung down the side. I heard voices of men and they seemed to be coming from within. I heard the rattle of their armour and swords as they moved around.
Then I understood. And I knew what I had to do.
I sped over the silver-sanded plain and back to the walls of Troy. I called for Cottus to open the gate. “Did you see that old feller with my pig’s head?” he asked as the stone swung open. “I want it on a plate.”
“It’ll be
your
head on a plate tomorrow if you don’t let me through. Quickly! I have to warn Prince Paris!”
I ran over the cobbles till my bare feet were stinging, and up the hill till my lungs were burning. I burst into the feast and cried, “Beware of the wooden horse!”
“A singerly songerly!” Paris cried when he saw me. The wine jars were all empty now and the royal faces were as red as a Trojan sunrise … the last sunrise Troy would ever see. Even the guards were drunk.
“The Greeks are planning a trick!”
“Singerly songerly!” Paris roared and banged the table with his knife handle.
“He wants you to give us one of your poems, Acheron,” Helen cried. “Do it!”
“But…”
“Do it or we will be eating
you
in a pie at the next feast,” she snarled.
I’d lost my lyre. I had no song. I had to make it up as I went along. I began:
“
The Greeks they left a gift, a wooden horse;
It isn’t all it seems, you know … of course!
The horse is stuffed with soldiers, fully armed.
Once they’re inside our walls,
they’ll do us harm.
Just leave the horse out there upon the plain;
Or Troy will die and never rise again!
”
