This is the 3rd instalment of my latest Novella. I’ve spent the last three days editing this story, going through it line by line, and I feel satisfied with it. This won’t be coming out in book form for a while, but it will definitely be coming out. I want to release it as a “collection” of all four volumes when it’s ready. I’m calling it THE TROJAN CYCLE when it’s printed. And here’s the best part. There’s a printer right around the corner from here. It’s walking distance.
I’ve been talking to the man and he gave me a price for printing up 100 copies. The original idea had been that I’d print these books up and mail them out to my paying subscribers…but that don’t look like it’s gonna happen, folks.
No one wanted to help pay for the costs at $30 for the year. Now, I’ve dropped the price to $5 for the year, (forever) and still no takers. So I’ll put up the money myself. He (the printer) said he can do it for $8.50 per book, in paperback. I’ve put those numbers through Chat and asked what the going price for a book of 150 pages is, and it said $22-23 range. So I’m going to sell mine for $19.95. The first book will be THE BRIDGES OF ROME. It will have the title TRILOGY across the cover, be one colour—hopefully it won’t leave streaks—and with Gold lettering (which costs extra, so I might just go with white instead, to save on the cost.)
It will be ready, and printed, within two weeks of giving him the flash drive. I just have to do a final edit of it. It can’t be this weekend because we’re having a major blow-out bar-be-que and expecting a shitload of friends. So next week.
Oh yes, I’ll be numbering each book and signing them. So it’s sure to be a “collector’s” item for those who want to buy one. And then next year, VOLUME II, the year after VOLUME III, and after that, THE TROJAN CYCLE. By that time, I’ll probably be looking into doing a KICKSTARTER. Each one of those colours will be the colour of the covers…so Plum, Green, Black and the RED.
If you want to pre-order a copy of TRILOGY I: THE BRIDGES OF ROME, then DM me, I’ll put you on the list with a number, and send me a post card with your address, and I’ll mail it out to you. If I get enough pre-sales, I might print more copies, but only the first 100 will be signed and numbered.
And there you have, that’s my offer.
And no my story…
STAVE III
I let Cassie lead me to the water’s edge where I could watch the slaves pulling the ship into the berth. With the sail furled and the beat of the drum slowing in pace, a deckhand tossed a thin rope out to the pier, both fore and aft, where two slaves caught them. There were slaves hurrying along the dock who soon began pulling as well. Two sizeable hooped lines fell from the ship’s deck, into the water. I leaned over to look, and watched as a hundred slaves lifted the lines and began pulling the vessel into the berth.
But I wasn’t looking at the ship, I was looking among the soldiers of the stiil, all of them standing at attention, looking for my brother Eurymachus. The Guards were all tall men, with thick arms and stout legs, tanned a nut brown by the sun, and their faces hidden behind the helmets they wore. They were the Korath Leon—the Lion Guard—the King’s personal Guards, and said to be elite. That was the moment I noticed there was a woman standing amongst them.
She was hidden within the stiil, behind the men and their great size. They moved aside as Cassie and I approached. She was a small woman—a tiny slip of a girl one could say. I had no idea who she was, just that she looked important. I stared at her like I was a star-struck child lost in the wonder of her. Cassie looked down at me and laughed.
“Well, Annie, it looks like you have a new admirer,” she said, and I could feel myself blushing.
“And who’s this?” she asked, bending down to look at me. She brushed the long hair out of my face and smiled at me before straightening up and looking at Cassie again. Helenus stepped in beside me and smiled.
“Come to greet the conquering hero, have you?” he laughed.
“As a wife, it’s my duty to greet my husband.”
“With a full stiil of the Korath Leon?” Helenus pointed at the Guards and that’s when I saw my eldest brother standing amongst them.
He winked at me.
I hadn’t seen him in a fortnight. Not since he’d come to pay ama his honour token—the fellaseem—a coin of issue he gave as payment to her for allowing him to serve the King. It was something he did out of respect for her as Tareena Karethi, which meant Lady Princess. He served as Serik in the Korath Leon—a Swordsman—and was said to be a man to be reckoned with. As one of the many nominal Princes of Troy—of whom I was once one of them—my brother, of late, had been styled as Prince of Arisbe, which came with a stipend as well as a title our father had bestowed upon him. It promised my brother the throne as King of Arisbe when our mother’s father died.
“I thought it was your duty to give my brother sons?” Helenus laughed, and I turned again to look at Cassie.
“That’s not exactly nice, Hel,” she said.
“Oh? Was I supposed to be nice?”
“It’s hardly the example to be giving young Ant, here,” she said.
“Ant?” the girl asked, looking down at me again. I could feel my face turning red being singled out by her, and found myself studying the ground at my feet.
“Antiphonus,” Cassie said, and I looked up at her.
“One of daddy’s endless bastards,” Helenus remarked.
“He’s not a bastard,” Cassie corrected him. “And don’t you dare call him that.”
“Well, he’s not one of Mommy’s brood either, is he? He’s a kid from one of daddy’s camp followers. A concubine, I’d imagine. Some young girl groomed at an early age to know what she has to do to please a man. Some foreign princess who fancies herself a queen, maybe?”
It was the way he said daddy that made me look at my brother again. I knew there was something there I didn’t understand—like what a concubine was—and as much as I wanted to, I knew better than to ask. I could see my brother’s jaw tensing and I knew from experience his anger was about to brew over. Cassie saw things differently.
“He’s our brother,” was all she said, and then turned to look at the woman again. “I’m sorry Annie, I shouldn’t have to apologize for him, but I know he won’t,” she said. “Still, it must be hard coming into the palace and having to take over a household you’ve only just married into,” she said. “And then your husband gets sent away a month later. But you’re lucky you married Hector, and not one of my other brothers,” she added, looking at Helenus again.
“I’m lucky to have married anyone under the circumstances,” she smiled.
“It’s not as bad as all that,” Helenus said with a laugh.
“Do you have to?” Cassie said, turning to look at him again.
“Do I have to what?”
“Do you not know what happened to her family?” she said, and I wondered what she meant. I looked at Helenus, thinking he might say something, but he dropped his head in shame, and then looked up at the sky where a flock of birds were on the wing in the distance. The idea that he could see anything in the way they were flying seemed ridiculous, and then I saw the way he looked at his sister, and it made me wonder.
Hector’s ship—Minerva’s Quest—loomed large where it sat in its berth.
“Well, now that Hector’s back, maybe we can get back to the chore of making babies,” the woman Annie laughed, and Cassie smiled.
“My mother told me I should try to enjoy it for a while before I actually have children,” Cassie said.
“Like your mother and father?” Andromache said with another laugh.
“I don’t think anyone enjoys making babies more than Daddy does,” Cassie laughed, and then looked down at me. “It’s just the following through part he isn’t very good at, right Ant?”
I could feel myself blushing again, embarrassed that she’d call attention to me in front of the other woman. I tried to speak, but stammered, and they both laughed. I never understood them then, and I don’t understand them now. Women, I mean. Why were they laughing at my embarrassment? Cassie got down on one knee and looked at me.
“It’s all right, you don’t have to say anything. I already know what you’re thinking before you even think it. You’re thinking: With that many children running about, how’s he supposed to keep count of who’s who? Isn’t it enough that I know you?” she asked. “And now Andromache knows you. And look, just like that Antiphonus, you’ve made two new friends today. What more could you want?”
I smiled and nodded, looking down at my bare feet. The dust on the road had coated them a dull red, and I knew I was going to be in trouble once mother saw that I was walking about unshod yet again. She’d tell me that we weren’t poverty stricken—nehi`we alltadere nę Taros, she’d say in her Arisbean language—“We have the protection of the King.”
“This will be a day you’ll never forget,” Cassie said to me, and I looked up at her, wondering if it was something she saw in me, or in my future.
As it turned out, it was my future.
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