They made Odysseus a hero. Of course they did. The Achaeans loved their tales of heroes. Slaying beasts. Bedding nymphs. Staples of the western canon. On the big screen, now, not sung around the fire. Guns and cars rather than spears and ships. But the same basic idea.

Odysseus wasn’t a hero. He was a thug. He and his fellow Achaeans sacked my home over a petty king’s pretty wife. They killed my father and my husband and my brother, and hundreds of other noble, decent men. They drove the rest of us into the wilderness. When they were done, most of them went home to their families. But Odysseus liked the sacking and killing too much to follow their example. So he gathered up the dregs of the remaining soldiers and spent the next twenty years pillaging coastal villages and peaceful islands from one end of the Mediterranean to the other.

I’ve told his story before, the way it happened, over hearths and campfires across the Greek-speaking world. People ate it up. I’m a good storyteller. But the men who retold it over the following centuries didn’t care for it as it was. By the time someone wrote their retellings down, the thug had become wise Odysseus, great-hearted Odysseus, Odysseus the kingly man.

Crap.

Let me set the story straight.

I was pregnant when I fled the ruins of Wilusa. Troy, to whoever reads this, probably. If I decide to share it. That traitorous bastard Ishtanu helped deliver my son in a nearby wood. I should’ve cut his Hatti throat afterward. No commoner should see a Wilusan princess so intimately. He had to, of course, to help. But still. And if I’d killed him then Tror would be alive, instead of dead by Ishtanu’s hand. As Ishtanu has now publicly admitted in his self-serving memoir. Read it yourself and see.

We were taken to sanctuary by one of my father’s Thracian allies. Ishtanu included. Tror grew to manhood there. Once he was self-sufficient, I faked my own death and set out to avenge my people. I didn’t tell anyone. Not even Tror. He would have insisted on coming. It was something I had to do on my own. I assumed he’d still be there when I came back. I was wrong.

I took enough gold with me to buy passage on trading ships. I doubt the Thracians noticed. They didn’t keep track of the plunder from their raids. Sometimes the traders tried to get me to pay my passage in other ways. They came away with modest wounds and modified attitudes. One tried more forcefully. He drifted away behind us in the night in a slick of his own throat-blood.

The first place I landed on the Greek peninsula was called Meliboea.

I disguised myself as a man—I was taller than most women of the time, and I’m more broad-shouldered even now—and bought a few rounds in a wharf-side tavern. Wine loosens men’s tongues. Free wine loosens them more. Once I had a half dozen carters and labourers at my table I started teasing out what I could about the sack of  my city.

“Our king was there, you know. Philoctetes.”

“Rotten bastard.”

“Watch yourself. Fine man, he was.”

“Was.”

A sip and a nod. “Fair enough.”

“Not now?” I asked.

They went silent. I signalled for more wine. One of the men looked around cautiously and lowered his voice. “Getting old. Stays shut in his palace. Neglects his duties. Letting the whole kingdom go, really.” They all stared sadly into their cups. Then one straightened up and smiled. “None to beat him in his prime, though. Him with that bow of his.” The rest muttered in agreement.

“Good archer?”

The man nudged his neighbour and chuckled. “Just ask that Trojan prince, eh?”

I stiffened. “Trojan prince?”

“Him who kidnapped Menelaus’ wife. Started the whole mess.”

“Gorgeous, that Helen.”

“Saw her then, did you?”

“Well, no. But she had to be, didn’t she? You don’t send a thousand ships after a donkey-face.” They all laughed at their friend’s wit.

I didn’t. I’d had a sister-in-law named Helen. One of my older brothers brought her back from a trading mission years before. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Pet names. Private jokes. It had made me gag. My brother Paris. Prince of Wilusa. Troy.

Not that I ever bought the Achaean excuse that they had come for my sister-in-law. She was pretty enough, sure. And I don’t doubt Menelaus’ pride was hurt when she left him. But you don’t mobilize a war fleet because a fellow king gets cuckolded. You get him drunk and let him wail. Take him to a brothel. Mock him at your feasts. You mobilize a war fleet because you want land, or trade, or plunder. Wilusa had commanded the only shipping route from the Aegean to the Black Sea. Not everyone was happy about that.

I set my goblet on the table to steady my hand. “Took down a prince, did he, your king?”

“Put an arrow through his neck at a hundred paces.”

“Two hundred, I heard.” Soon they were shouting over one another to see who could come up with the goriest retelling of my brother’s death. That made me want to gag too. But I didn’t. I focused on the immediate reality behind their stories.

My brother’s assassin was within walking distance.