Excerpt from A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She was glad of it when she found herself at what she thought was another dead end. About to give in to despair, she stared into the smoke and thought she might see a smaller path to the left, running between two houses. She was trying to remember whose homes they were, and work out where she might be, when a gang of soldiers erupted from the one furthest away. Creusa shrank back against the front wall of the building opposite the men, but they did not see her. They laughed as they ran down the alleyway which Creusa planned to use. She did not need to hear their words to know that the men had killed whoever they had found inside. Creusa waited for the men to disappear before she dared follow. Having tried so hard to remember whose house she was passing, she was grateful that she had failed. She did not want to know whose throat the men had just slit.

She dragged her fingers along the wall beside her, making her way more slowly now, to be sure that the men would not see her behind them. When the passageway finally opened out into the street again, she saw that she had done it. She had found her way to the city walls.

* * *

'Take the horse,' Sinon said. 'In so doing, you will take its power from them. They built it here and dedicated it to Athene, protector of the Greeks. They believed it to be so large that you Trojans would have no chance of dragging it away into your city. They saw the distance across the plains, the height of your acropolis, and they laughed at the notion that you could take it for yourselves.'

'How do you know?' asked Hecabe. Her Greek was rudimentary, but clear.

'Forgive me, queen, I do not understand,' replied the prisoner.

'How do you know what they thought about the horse?' she repeated. 'If you were hiding in the reeds, fearing for your life. You say they built the horse after you had run away. So how do you know what was said?'

Creusa thought she saw a flicker of annoyance cross the man's face. But when he spoke again, his voice was still quavering with sorrow.

'It had been their original plan, my lady. Before Calchas and Odysseus cooked up their plot against me. The Greeks wanted to build a giant horse and invest it with all the sacred power they could. Then they wanted to leave it outside your city to taunt you: a sign of the goddess guiding them home safely. It is the kind of arrogant gesture that Agamemnon cannot resist.' Hecabe frowned but said no more.

'So please, king,' he added. 'Rob them of their safe voyage home. Take their horse to your citadel before nightfall. It could be dragged by your men. I will set my own shoulder to the ropes if you will only permit me. Anything to punish those impious Greeks who would have taken my life without hesitation. If you let me help you drag the horse into your city and up to its highest point, I will fall on the sword of any of your men the moment the task is completed. I swear it.'

'No.' Laocoon the priest could keep himself in check no longer. 'I beg you, king. The horse is cursed and so shall we be, if we allow it in our city. The man speaks with a false tongue. Either he deceives or he is deceived. But the horse must not come inside our city walls. Let us burn it, as I proposed.' He lifted his meaty arm and flung the spear he held into the horse's flank. It vibrated for a moment, humming in the shocked silence which followed his words.

Creusa could not be sure what happened next. She didn't see the snakes for herself, though many others claimed to have done so. She wasn't looking at the reeds. She was looking at the man, Sinon, and his filthy, unreadable face. The only sign that he could understand Laocoon's words was the shiver of his biceps against the ropes which still held him. She thought Laocoon's children had simply run out into the water. Why wouldn't they? They had long since tired of hearing the men argue and – like all the other children of Troy – they had never been down to the shore before, never played in the sand. So of course they had wandered off, following the river a little way until they reached the waves on the beach. The two of them had waded out into the shallows before anyone noticed they were gone.

Excerpted from A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. Copyright © 2021 by Natalie Haynes. Excerpted by permission of Harper. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.