For ten years the city of Troy had stood defiant, its high walls scarred but unbroken. On the evening that would be remembered long after the dust of history settled, a strange stillness clung to the air, heavy, expectant, like a breath held too long. The sun slid behind the plains where the Greek encampments once sprawled, but no campfires flickered now. No war cries rolled across the fields. Only the sound of the sea remained, whispering its quiet warning on the shore.
Laodamas, a young sentry on the western wall, leaned forward against the parapet and squinted into the dusk. “It feels wrong,” he muttered. “Like the world is waiting for something.”
Beside him, older and more battle-weary, Phylo shook his head. “It’s peace, boy. You’ve forgotten its sound.”
But Laodamas could not shake the unease spreading across his skin. Below, by the Scaean Gate, torches bobbed around the hulking wooden shape the Greeks had left behind, a towering horse, wheels half-buried in the earth, carved muscles outlined by wavering firelight. The soldiers joked as they guided work crews toward it, eager to drag their trophy into the city.
A gift, they said. A symbol of Greek defeat. A tribute to Athena, whom the Greeks had offended. And yet…
Hours earlier, when shepherds had brought news that the Greek ships were gone, joy had erupted through Troy. But it was a nervous joy, the relief of a man who has outrun a wolf but wonders whether the beast has given up or merely circled ahead. Even King Priam’s wise old eyes had narrowed as he gazed upon the abandoned horse, though he hid his doubts with practiced calm.
“Strange that they left so quickly,” Priam had murmured then, almost to himself. “Strange they would leave this as well.”
Laodamas had heard that whisper. He had also watched Cassandra, wild-haired, frantic Cassandra, rush into the courtyard, screaming her prophecy.
“Burn it!” she cried. “Burn the horse before nightfall! If you bring it into the city, you bring doom!”
No one listened. No one ever listened.
Now night crept fully across the city. The horse towered over the courtyard like a dark god as dozens of men rolled it through the gate. Its wooden belly strained against the stone arch as if resisting entry.
Laodamas watched it vanish from sight with a chill crawling down his spine.
The celebration that followed was loud enough to shake dust from the rafters. The Trojans drank deep from victory’s cup, wine spilled as freely as laughter. Bards sang of returning sons and rebuilt lives. The long war, they proclaimed, was finally over.
Yet each time the wind shifted, Laodamas heard something else underneath the revelry, soft thuds, faint metallic echoes. Almost like… breathing? No, shifting. Adjusting.
Coming from the direction of the temple district where the horse had been installed as an offering.
He told himself it was the sway of torchlight playing tricks. He told himself he was exhausted from ten years of fear.
But when the moon reached its peak, silvering the rooftops, he saw movement on the horizon.
Barely a ripple at first. Then sails… dark sails, rising from the edge of the sea like ghosts summoned from the deep.
His heart froze.
The Greeks. Returning.
The ships glided silently toward the shore, oars muffled, torches extinguished. Hundreds of them, an entire fleet reborn from the darkness.
Laodamas sprinted down the wall steps, shouting for the guard captain. His warnings were brushed aside, swallowed by drunken celebration. Even Phylo waved him off.
“Boy, calm yourself, your nerves are jumping at shadows.”
But Laodamas grabbed his arm. “The Greeks are coming back! I saw their ships!”
Phylo’s expression faltered. “That… can’t be.”
Even as he spoke, a cry erupted from the lower quarter, shrill, terrified. A woman’s voice. It was followed by another. And another.
Then the sound Laodamas had dreaded most: metal on metal, clear and vicious.
Greek steel.
Trojan defenders surged to their feet, stumbling for weapons. But already fire licked at rooftops. Already the shouts of intruders echoed through the streets.
Laodamas and Phylo raced toward the temple district. Smoke coiled upward from its entrance, and a stream of soldiers, Greek soldiers, poured into the streets like insects erupting from a split carcass. Their bronze gleamed red in the flames.
“Impossible…” Phylo whispered. “How did they get inside the city?”
Laodamas stared at the temple steps, where the severed ropes of the great horse’s belly dangled in the wind.
The enemy had been inside all along.
But even that revelation did not prepare him for the true surprise.
As the horse burned, its wooden frame collapsing, Laodamas caught sight of movement among the shadowed colonnade behind it, more figures, stepping out into the firelight.
Trojan figures.
Men he recognized.
Men who’d been thought dead for years.
It struck him like a hammer: spies. Trojan collaborators. They had guided the hidden Greeks, unlocked the gates, slit the throats of guards from within. The betrayal ran deeper than any prophecy.
Suddenly, the collapse of Troy was not just a Greek victory, it was a Trojan failure.
Their downfall had been carved not only in wood, but in their own trust.
And as the city burned, Laodamas realized the truth Cassandra had never spoken:
The Greeks alone had not doomed Troy.
Troy had doomed itself.