The Curse of Blood | An Ancient Legends Prequel

Aktika, Greece

1650 BC

The sun, Haweios, drifted low in the western sky over the soft waves of the sea. Her shimmering rays sprouted from her round yellow face. In the evening’s royal haze, Inachus stared at the solar goddess until his eyelids shut out her bright glory and his ears closed to the battle training behind him.

His legs swung over the cliff from his hilltop palace in the city of Aktika, and the salty wisp of a sea breeze filled his nostrils and swept the black curls from his forehead. The salt’s crisp sting assaulted the cut on his cheek and lip. He rubbed his bruised shoulder and returned to cradle a hurt hand by his belly, hopeful the boys in training would not see him—the loser of the last spar—coddling his wounded limb.

The powerful rush of a sea wave crashing against the rocky shore in the distance drew his attention from his aches. His focus on the horizon amplified the waves as they raged in his ears and drowned out the clashing and clanking behind him. The soft lull of the ebb and flow of the water entranced him again. The sea called to him. It was his peace—the one gift the gods had given him in his miserable ten-year life.

But even the sea had its one dark stain: His father, the first King of his newly formed empire in the land of Attica, had sailed off on those waves five years ago to unite more land and people to fight in the war against the northern peoples—the mountain tribes and the Thracians—who threatened his lands.

“King Oceanus,” he whispered his father’s name, and a half grimace came over his lips.

The image of his father’s penetrating eyes—black like Inachus’—and the line-drawn bull tattoo dancing on his hulking bicep were all Inachus could summon from his last recollection of what his father looked like. Though his father’s face blurred, his father’s daunting height and bulk reigned supreme over all the men, even Glaukos.

Glaukos—he thought about the brute shouting orders behind him—the menace of a war-hardened man left to instruct him and the boys of Aktika and the surrounding cities in battle and cut down any threat to his father’s kingdom.

Inachus rubbed his injured hand, taking away his focus on the sea. The boys’ grunts and yells emerged as they fought each other in the palace’s large courtyard-turned-training yard. Ignore them, he told himself, but a boy’s screech pierced his mind’s peaceful escape.