My master is pretty grumpy sometimes, especially in the morning, but he's a good man, well actually he's not much more than a boy, and I should know, I have served him all his life. The truth is, at his age, he shouldn't really be here. But his father was a great hero in this war, and he is expected to be the same. In fact, there was a prophecy about him. Helenus, a seer, told them that the only way that this war would be won, would finally end, is if he joined it. And so he is here, and so am I. For the first time, Neoptolemus, or Neo as he is known, is away from all he knows, taken from the Island of Scyros, from the care of his grandfather Lycomedes, brought here by Odysseus.

Everything left behind. Except for me. I am all he has to remind him of home.

'Doran,' I hear him shout again, and hurry into the tent he sleeps in. 'I'm thirsty. Bring me wine.'

He's laid there, on his pallet, a tangle of sheets around him, his eyes bleary and reddened. He's frightened and so he drinks too much wine. And to cope with the morning after headache, he drinks yet more wine.

I've tried watering it down, but he knows when I do.

'Is it morning?' he asks, as I pour wine into his cup and give it to him.

'Nearly Neo,' I tell him.

'Will I have to go out again and stand at the front so they can see me?' he asks, his voice quivering, and his hand shaking and sloshing the wine on his thigh. 'Oh Doran, I don't want to. I don't like it here. I just want to go home and read the myths and play my lyre.'

But he doesn't have a choice about being here, or about being made to stand at the front of the army.

And he knows it.

'The war will be over soon,' I try to placate him, offering him a platter of grapes that one of the other slaves has brought in for him. 'And then you'll be able to go home and pick up your life where you left it.'

'I hope so,' he responds, picking at the grapes and not eating any. 'I really hope so.'

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Neo's armour is far too large for a boy that hasn't even seen his fourteenth year yet, but he has to wear it anyway, so I help him put it on.

I watch as he tries to walk in it, and keeps nearly falling over.

Like a little boy playing dress up in his father's armour.

Except his father is dead, and he never really knew him.

'What's with keeping us waiting?' I hear someone shout outside the tent, and then a large man comes bustling in, his long white hair flying around his face. 'Neoptolemus, what is keeping you?' he says, waving his arms around. 'You should have been at the battle front by now, frightening our enemies.'

'Agamemnon,' Neo sighs. 'Do I have to…'

'Yes you do,' he shouts, moving so quickly that he's got my master in a head lock before I realise what he's going to do. 'You will do as you are told little boy,' he screams. 'I am in charge here, and I am not going to let a snot nosed boy try to wield his way out of doing what needs to be done. I've never been one for allowing that, never have been, and never will be.' With each word, he uses his hands to shove Neo in the chest.

'He's ready now,' I say. 'He's ready to go out now, aren't you Neo, um, Neoptolemus?'

Neo nods his head.

But Agamemnon just glares at me. 'Did I say you could speak slave,' he scowls and spits at my feet. 'Do you know what I do with my own slaves that dare to speak to me when I don't tell them to? Do you?'

'No sir.'

'Well I'll tell you, I slit their throats, and I'll tell you something else and I tell you this to scare you so you aren't so familiar to me again. I've done things that you wouldn't believe, I done things to others that have become my enemies. Some of them have been great men, some of them have been my family. Do you know, I had my daughter killed? Iphigenia. And do you know why? Because I wanted to. I told the men that Artemis was stopping the wind, so that we could not travel here. That she demanded a sacrifice. And that sacrifice was my daughter. But it wasn't true. I just didn't like the way she had turned out, just like her mother, a self-righteous uptight witch. She refused to respect me, so I decided to end her life. Everyone knows this of course. Not at first maybe, but they worked it out over the years, and realised that it wasn't a good idea to cross me.' He smirks. 'So maybe you shouldn't. Because next time, I will kill you.'

I don't say anything. What can I say? I just look at the floor, and hope that he goes away soon.

'You can't talk to him like that,' Neo says. 'I won't allow you.'

'You, little boy, will shut up,' he responds, and starts to head for the flap of the tent. 'I want you outside in one minute,' he says. 'Or I'll be back in, and I might not be so nice to your slave next time.'

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I follow Neo out of the tent and then watch as they lead him to the very front of the men, where he stands, probably trembling, while Agamemnon marching up and down the line, shouting, waving his arms around, his cloak whipping around him, and the little of his white hair that is visible until his helmet floating around his back.

'We have already won,' he shouts. 'You know it, and we know it, so why don't you just come out and…'

'Why don't you come in?' someone shouts from the war, though I can only just make out his words.

'Well open your gates and I will.'

'If you've already won, why do you need us to open them? Truth is, you've not won, so why don't you and your army go back where you came from, and wallow there.'

I hear laughter from the walls of Troy.

'You see this man,' Agamemnon shouts, standing in front of Neo.

'I only see a boy,' the voice shouts again.

Agamemnon purses his lips and pulls something from underneath the next of his armour, he holds it close in his hand so I only see a thin flash of silver from the chain. He closes his eyes for a moment. Then grimaces, and looks up at the wall. 'This man is the son of Achilles, Greece's mightiest warrior.'

'Who we killed,' the voice says.

More laughter follows.

'Your own seer has prophesied that if we want to win, then Achilles' son must join the fight. Well here he is.'

'And you believed him?'

'He's a seer.'

'That's priceless, you believed a seer who's a Trojan. You know he probably told you to bring the boy so everyone would think you an idiot don't you?'

'Shut up.'

'Ha ha ha, the truth hurts does it?'

'Just shut up.'

'Make me.'

'Agamemnon steps toward Troy's wall, and for a moment, I think he's about to run to it, on his own and try to knock it down with his bare hands.

'Oh I will, I promise. When we enter your city, I'll find you and make you shut up.'

'Oh yeah, what are you going to do? Put a rag in my mouth?'

'I will open up your mouth, pull your tongue out of your mouth and then feed it to you.'

'Oooh,' the voice says. 'I am so afraid. I guess it's lucky you don't know my name is Prince Astyanax, son of Hector then isn't it? Oops. Oh dear, now I've told you my name. I am so afraid. I think I'm going to wet myself.'

More laughter.

'You will pay for your laughter, and so will your men, I promise.'

'Yeah, yeah.'

All this time, Neo has been stood still, staring ahead at the walls of Troy.

I wish I could go to him, pull him away, take him back to his home, but I am only a slave.

Instead, he has to stand there, the sun bouncing of his helmet, heating up within his armour like a pot over a fire.

And all that time, Agamemnon continues to walk up and down, shouting to the Trojans.

By the time night has started to fall, he has been out here for a long time, so as he is allowed by Agamemnon to go back to his tent, I help him there.

Help him climb out of his armour.

Wince at the welts and rubbings on his skin.

Put a salve on them.

While realising that tomorrow, he will have even more.

'Doran,' he says, after he's eaten, and I've got him to climb onto his platform and into his bed. 'Tell me a story.'

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He stares at me with luminous eyes, a tear sparkling in the corner of one. Underneath the sunburn, his skin is too pale, and he's biting his bottom lip. His limbs are shaking under the sheet.

This boy needs hope I realise.

He needs to know that things can turn out right, even in the direst of situations.

He needs a story that he can relate to. Something that will let him see that even when things are tough, when life is too much to take, when it seems that it has fallen down around you, and there is no escape that there is hope.

I quickly consider the stories I have told him before. Tales of Perseus, or Theseus. Stories of young maidens, or mystical creatures, but none of them seem right.

None of them will comfort him. Will let him see that even in his situation that there is, if he looks, a spark of hope at the end of the long tunnel.

No, none of the tales, the traditional tales are right for that, but what is?

And then I remember a tale that my father told me when I was far younger than Neo. A story that his father had told him, and his father before.

A tale that I had almost known. That I'd just had to be reminded off.

I smile at Neo. 'Yes,' I say, walking toward him, and sitting on the edge of his bed. 'I will tell you a story. A story that happened a long time ago, in a place far to the North of here.'

He nods, and puts his thumb in his mouth.

But I do not say anything, though his grandfather has beaten him in the past for sucking it. And I have been told to stop him. But it's comfort to him, and I won't deny him that.

'Have you ever noticed the white at the top of mountains far away?' I ask.

'It's called snow,' he mumbles, his thumb still in his mouth.

'Yes snow, and ice,' I smile. 'Well imagine that snow and ice if it were to come down the mountains and lay on the ground at your feet. But deep so it comes up half up your legs, and covers the ground and everything else for as far as you can see. Well that is what this place was like. It was harsh. It was cold. And the people who lived in it had to struggle to survive each day. And then it got colder.'

'Sounds horrible.'

'Yes, it does,' I let him think about the scene I had just set for a few moments, and then start to tell my story. There was once a group of people who lived on the land in that cold place, possibly in tents not too dissimilar to this one, my story is about one of these groups, but more than that, it is really about a young man, probably about your age who was named Darac. These people were used to the cold, how could they not be, and so was Darac, but one morning when he got up and went outside the tent to empty his bladder, he was met by a fierce and very cold wind that howled like a wolf. The snow swirled around him, rising up into his face so he could barely see where he was going. But when he came to a more sheltered place nearby, protected as it was from the wind, he was finally not blinded by the snow. So he looks over the land and that is when he saw the ice that walks over the land…'

'Ice walking?'

I nod my head. 'It's called a glacier. The snow and rain freezes on it, so that it keeps covering the land, almost as if it is walking over it.'

'All right.'

'So the ice that walks over the land, he could see was closer to where they lived than he could ever remember it being. And with it, it brought the cold. The people shivered, trying to keep warm by huddling outside near the fires. But as they did, the snow fell on them.'

'Why didn't they just go in the tents?'

'Yes, that would have been a good idea, except it was cold in the tents because they couldn't have their fires in them. So it was either they stayed out of the snow and froze, or tried to keep warm near the fires, but got snowed on. It was an impossible situation.'

Neo sighs. 'I know how that feels.'

'Yes,' I say, reaching out and squeezing his hand. 'I know you do.'

'So what happened?'

'To the people? Well, they thought that the spirits were angry at them, and that is why the ice was creeping toward them. So their holy man, a priest of kinds, went off on his own to beseech the spirits to show him what they should do. But he was gone a long time, and after many days, with the ice edging even nearer, some of the younger people started to get restless. Including Darac. He was impatient, and didn't want to wait any longer for the holy man to come back, so he started to say that he had probably died, and that the spirits that had protected the people had probably left them because of the cold and they should leave and find somewhere else to live. Somewhere warmer where the spirits would come back to them. But the older people, the leader and others, refused to leave their homes that their people had lived in for a very long time. They said that they had to be patient, that the protective spirits had not left, but were just unhappy. And would be even more unhappy with no place to call home if they were all to leave. But Darac and the other young men and women would not be convinced. They thought they would die if they remained. And though those older begged them to at least wait until the holy man returned, they left.'

'What happened to them? To them and to the older group?'

'Ah, well, the older group, they waited for the holy man to return, and eventually he did. He returned wearing the fur of a bear, a bear that lived in caves. He said that the spirits had been joined by another spirits, that of the cave bear, who had taught him all they needed to survive the cold winters. That no matter how much it got colder, or how much snow fell, they would survive as they would have the furs of animals to keep them warm, and would live in caves, where they would be able to have their fires, and keep away from the snow.'

'But what about Darac?'

'Yes, Darac, and I said that this story was about him didn't I? Darac and the others headed south, following the birds that flee from the cold in autumn, and then turned east to…'

'Where we live?'

'Yes, maybe. I do not know exactly where they ended up, but I do know of their journey.'

'Tell me.'

I smile. 'The people were in an impossible situation, but whereas the older ones amongst them decided to endure it, and wait for the spirits, Darac and the other younger ones took their fate in their own hands. But the spirits were not good to them, and the cold followed them for much of their journey. They travelled from the North for many years, walking for long periods of time, and then stopping and themselves staying in caves. But it wasn't easy. The cold would often take one of them in the night, freezing the body to death, or as they were walking over the snow, a person would fall down a crevasse and be lost, or would slip and hurt themselves badly. Sometimes they encountered animals, fierce beasts that ripped their still living flesh off their bodies. But no matter what happened, they still kept on walking. They would not give up. Along the way, they would see how the animals lived in the cold lands, and they would copy them, soon they too were living in caves during the coldest part of winter, and were not just hunting animals for their meat but for their coats too. And as they walked, they adapted. And they learnt. They learnt how to survive. They learnt that they did not have to be controlled by nature, but could instead have charge over it. They learnt to survive. As they walked, they grew stronger, and they got better at hunting. These young men and women were quite young when they left their people, but over time, they started to pair off, and when the time came for the first baby to be born, they stopped, and spent the rest of the winter in a cave, and then another winter too, and another as more babies were born. For years, they stayed put, staying warm in the coldest part of winter in their caves, and hunting during the warmer parts and in the short time when the weather turned warmer and the snow started to melt. And still they learnt. And when those children were mostly old enough to walk, then they started heading south again, carrying their young who were too small on their backs. This was their life. And their young, they grew up only knowing the walking. And the living in caves. They didn't know the cold winters. They didn't know of bodies being frozen to death in the night. And with time, and walking, these young ones grew up, and were stronger than their parents. And more knowledgeable. Cleverer. Wiser. Many years passed as they slowly walked south, until a time came when Darac was middle age and decided that the time had come to head east. It was warmer where they were now. The summer was longer, and the winter shorter, and as they headed east, it got warmer.'

'Did Darac get to the new lands?'

I nod my head. 'Yes, he did. He was an old man by then, and a great tribe followed his lead. He had dared to take his own fate into his hands, he had suffered, he had learned, and eventually when he was an old man, he was rewarded when they found the land that they settled in. A land that was warm, that only knew snow as something on the top of mountains. But that wasn't the end of their journey.'

'It wasn't? They kept walking?'

'No, they didn't keep walking. They settled in that land, but you see a journey can be more that leaving one area and going to another, it can be something in the mind, a decision, a way of being. They say that life is a journey. I guess it is. You are born, you live and then you die. But it is what comes between being born and dying that is important. And Darac knew that, as the people they'd left behind never did. Darac and the others learnt to change, to adapt, but those that stayed, though for a time they did learn, they only did it in a limited way, they started to use furs to keep themselves warm, and lived in caves. But Darac, he took the situation he was in, and hoped for a better future.'

Neo sighs. 'I wish I had a better future,' he says. 'But with Agamemnon…' he sits up and grins inanely at me. 'But I can have a better future can't I? I can be like Darac. He left for a better life, I can too. I could leave, go back to my grandfather and…'

I do not say anything.

'Oh but he would be ashamed of me. If I left, it would be like I was a deserter.' He looks up at me, tears falling over his cheeks. 'I can't be like Darac can I? He left, but I can't. He was able to find a better future, but I'm stuck here doing what that horrible man says. Oh, I will never be like Darac.'

'You are more like him than you know,' I say, wiping his cheeks with a cloth. 'Darac was in an impossible situation and he left. But it isn't the leaving that is the important part of the story, it is the adapting, the learning. That is what is the essence of the story, and of Darac. He learned, he adapted and by doing these things, he changed, not just himself, but those around him. Agamemnon wants you out at the front of the men each day, and for now you have to go, but it won't last forever. Soon this war will be over, and gods willing, we will win. And then you will go back to Greece a hero. And have a great future. But in the meantime, watch and learn all that goes on around you. And then you will be like Darac.'

He hugs me then. 'Oh, I will,' he says, grinning as he pulls away. 'I will learn, I will adapt. I will be like Darac. I will hold my own destiny in my own hand.'

I pat him on the back. 'Good,' I say. 'Now, you should get some sleep. You'll have another long day tomorrow.'

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As soon as Neo is asleep, I leave the tent and go to a place that I like to go to when I want to be alone, or when I have thinking to do.

But tonight, I do not want to do either, instead I want to try what the holy man of the people did. I want to try to converse with the spirits, want to try to get them to help us. Because I know that it wasn't the holy man going to talk to them, and learning from them, which was to blame for the people staying the same. That was because they didn't want to risk change, they didn't want to learn, to adapt. But Neo isn't like that. He can adapt and will learn, given the chance, but I want to just make sure that he gets the best chance he can.

So I go to the place I like to go to. It's a short distance from the camp, but as it is the other side of the latrines, nobody bothers to go there, except me, and I know that just as though the wind is blowing toward the latrines and from it, that it will just smell of grass and flowers and the damp earth.

And that's how it smells tonight.

I sit under a tree, stare at my hands in the moonlight and then shut my eyes, and try to empty my mind of all but the desire to reach out to the spirits.

And strangely, it comes naturally. I feel uplifted straight away, and feel something there, something right there with me, something good and kind, something that cares, for me, for Neo, for the whole world. I can feel it, and it can feel me.

I can feel it in my heartbeat, in the rise and fall of my chest, in the blood pumping around my body. And I can sense it in the air, in the flowers, the grass, in the worms in the rich earth.

I can sense it all around me.

'Help him,' I say.

I feel arms enveloping me, cradling me, and they lull me to sleep.

And I dream of a woman with golden hair streaked with grey telling her son to flee because he is in danger.

Although, it's almost like she's talking to me.

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I wake to sunlight dappling through leaves onto my face. Sitting up, I groan as my back spasms from sleeping leant up against the trunk of a tree. But I do not have time to feel sorry for myself, for at that moment, I hear a commotion coming from the camp.

Jumping to my feet, I start to run, hoping that the Trojans haven't attacked in the night and my master has been murdered.

But as I come closer, I see a crowd gathered in the centre of the camp, where Agamemnon holds his meetings.

And he's holding a meeting this morning. Sort of.

While I have been asleep, some of the men were busy, Agamemnon included. But they weren't busy discussing tactics, or trying to gain entry into Troy, no they were busy going on a raid. They've been taking people hostage. And not well off people. Not princes or kings. No, simple people. Farmers, and their families.

And now Agamemnon is holding his meeting, and selling off those captured to the highest bidder.

He's selling men and women, old people, and children. Babies.

And I know that he doesn't care who buys them, and how they are treated afterwards. All he cares about is making a profit, and annoying the Trojans in Troy.

And this will annoy them, I am sure.

'Here's a fine boy,' Agamemnon says pushing a curly haired boy forward. 'He looks like he could do a good days work. So who wants to barter?'

On and on it goes. People sold like cattle. Prospective buyers look in their mouths, feel their muscles, feels the firmness of breasts. Every indignity is heaped on them, by the people I serve.

But it doesn't take long for them to be sold.

Well, all except one.

A girl.

A pretty girl probably only a few years older than Neo.

She's got long, honey coloured hair that twirls around her shoulders, and a face that could rival the beauty of Helen. And her eyes stare out at us, big, and sad, and extremely scared. I think they are green.

'Saving the best for last,' someone shouts out. 'How much do you want for her?'

Agamemnon grins. 'This one is not for sale. This one will keep my bed warm for me.'

'Not fair,' another voice shouts. 'My bed needs warming too.'

'Then I suggest you go and find your own woman,' Agamemnon says. 'This one is mine. At least until I grow tired of her.'

Crude shouts and raucous laughter comes from the crowd.

I turn my back on it, and go to see to Neo.