Mood Riders

by Theresa Tomlinson

  As Myrina stood there watching, Achilles removed his helmet then bent over Penthesilea, gently removing the spear. His very gentleness made Myrina more furious than ever; what was the point of gentleness now?

  He went down on one knee and carefully removed the Moon Rider’s polished horsehide helmet, revealing Penthesilea’s young face and beautiful panther-patterned cheeks. Her long brown hair fell all about her head, gleaming as though with life and health.

  From many of the Achaean warriors there came astonished gasps and murmurs:

  “Look at her!”

  “She’s so young!”

  “Beautiful!”

  “To fight so fiercely and look like that!”

  Battle-hardened warriors stood still, heads bowed. Just for a moment shame was there on their faces. Myrina trembled with sorrow and hatred, her hands making tight fists, tears rolling down her cheeks. Suddenly, a sneering Achaean foot soldier approached them, leering at the fallen warrior priestess. He bent over Penthesilea. “Give us a kiss before y’ go, darling.”

  “Do not you dare to touch her—I’ll have your guts on a plate,” Myrina hissed, whipping her knife out from her belt.

  Achilles took a step back and swore. He brought his armored forearm swiftly down on the man’s head. “She had more courage in her little finger than you have in all your evil frame,” he growled.

  But there was no reply. The man had dropped at once and lay there as still as Penthesilea.

  Myrina moved slowly forward and kneeled to cradle Penthesilea’s head in her arms, heedless of the blood that flooded over her already stained smock. She sat there gently rocking back and forth, ignoring the huge bulk of Achilles, who towered above her so that she could see the sweat that ran down his face, and smell the animal warmth of his body.

  Again there was a moment of silence; then Achilles looked over to where Aeneas stood, his cheeks lined and gray. “My Lord Aeneas, let us have a three-day truce to see our dead honored. Though there will be no honor for this fellow.” He turned once more and kicked the body of the fallen Achaean. The man would not be getting up to return to his tent.

  Aeneas bowed courteously and then all the warriors, Trojans and Achaeans alike, bowed again to one another and turned, wandering wearily back to their own tents and lodgings.

  “What is this?” Myrina muttered through gritted teeth. “What deadly polite, jolly sport?” She hated them even more for their courtesy.

  She stayed there for a long while, nursing Penthesilea in her arms, until at last she looked up and saw that Akasya stood at Penthesilea’s feet, with Cassandra beside her. They had brought a litter draped with clean silk and bearers to carry it.

  “Let us take her now,” Cassandra said.

  Carefully they lifted Penthesilea’s muscular body between them and carried her back to the citadel.

  More sorrow waited there in the city walls. Myrina found that Alcibie and Polymusa were laid out beside Bremusa; Coronilla was wounded, the only survivor from Myrina’s gang. Many of the Moon Riders who had followed Penthesilea lay beside them. The losses among the Trojan allies had been great, though many Achaeans had been killed, too.

  Again the Trojan royal family tried to offer elaborate funeral rites, but Myrina shook her head. “We Moon Riders return our dead to the earth simply. I wish another pyre to be built beside the Mound of Dancing Myrina, and then we few who are left may dance alone to honor our dead.”

  The courteous Aeneas once again made all arrangements for them, and while the Achaeans held their funeral rites in the distance, the Moon Riders and Cassandra danced quietly to a slow beating drum. The Trojans built another funeral pyre above the stinking ash pit, while their king wept pitifully. Queen Hecuba smiled and nodded her head to everyone, saying that she must not stay long for she was preparing rooms for Hector.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Honor and Dignity

  IN THE DAYS that followed Myrina spent all her time nursing Coronilla, who, to her great relief, recovered slowly. She used all her knowledge of herbs and healing and was constantly helped by the faithful Akasya. Slowly as they worked together, while Coronilla slept soundly under the healing influence of Atisha’s herb lore, they got to know each other better. Akasya had been captured as a child after a Hittite raid on her homeland. The Hittites were in dispute with the Egyptian pharaoh over the land where she had once lived. Prince Paris had ridden in the service of the great Hittite king and led the raiding party. He’d been awarded both goods and slaves in return for his services.

  “Terrible.” Myrina shook her head. “To be dragged away from your home and family.”

  “My parents and sisters were killed,” Akasya told her. “I was the lucky one.”

  Myrina nodded, her head full of images of burning Mazagardi huts and her own parents lying together in the dust. “I know how that feels,” she told Akasya. “But at least I was not captured and forced to live as a slave. Do you hate Prince Paris?”

  “There could be worse for us than this,” Akasya replied.

  Although Myrina thought that she knew the answer, she asked, “What could be worse?”

  Akasya took a deep breath. “If Troy should fall, as I swear it must, it is to those men who camp outside these walls that we shall be given. Their anger grows with each month and year they are forced to stay away from their homes. They live a barren fighting life here in the marshes; they will treat us like animals when Troy falls. The Trojan women will be dragged away as slaves and concubines to the Achaean lords—but what of us, who are slaves already? They’ll let the battle-hardened lowest ranks loose on us. Those who’ve been deprived of all decency and lived like beasts out there for nine long years.”

  Myrina nodded in silence. So the slave women understood well enough what their fate would be.

  Akasya’s face was grim with fear. “I’d rather die,” she whispered. “We slaves know well that we might rush the guards at the upper gate. But what then? Where could we go? The hills are full of prowling raiding bands. Even if we managed to get away, we’d fall into the hands of those we dread most.”

  Myrina nodded. “Would you join us as a Moon Rider?” she asked.

  For a moment there was disbelief on Akasya’s face, then suddenly joy. “Yes,” she whispered. “I would give anything to join the honored priestesses.”

  “And are there others who would come?”

  Akasya laughed. “Which of us would not? But . . . I thought that such a thing was impossible. Don’t you have to train from childhood and ride like a centaur? Most of us slaves have never sat astride a horse.”

  “Desperate times mean changes.” Myrina was thinking fast. “Atisha, our Old Woman, made me swear not to fight. She knew Penthesilea like a mother, and I think she guessed what might happen. I must now take the lead and somehow find a way for the Moon Riders to survive. Our numbers are small—so many are dead—we need brave women to swell our ranks, and in those sleeping sheds I see what I need.”

  Akasya was suddenly trembling, her eyes filled with tears.

  “What is it?” Myrina demanded.

  “To be a Moon Rider . . . it would give us more than freedom; it would give us back our dignity.”

  “Some of you may die in the struggle,” Myrina warned.

  “We will die anyway, whatever comes.”

  Myrina was convinced that she must find a way to free them. “Speak to the other women, but do not let a word of this be heard by the Trojans. King Priam would not allow it; only the Princess Cassandra can be trusted.”

  Akasya nodded, but her face was full of hope. “The princess has always been our friend,” she agreed.

  So, as the hottest days of the Month of Burning Heat wore on, Myrina’s mind was busy with plans. Another one that occupied her thoughts much was Chryseis. Whenever there was time she would visit the priestess, but there was little response from her. Myrina would sit beside her bed and stroke her hand, murmuring soft words, so that the troubled woman sometimes drifted off to slee
p. Cassandra insisted she could see that Chryseis benefited from this concern. At least the priestess’s skin was looking a little better and she allowed herself to be fed.

  Myrina asked Cassandra whether it might be possible to take the priestess away with them, if they could only find a way of getting the slave women out of Troy.

  Cassandra looked thoughtful and sighed, shaking her head. “I cannot get her even to leave her bed,” she said. “At night I have her little son brought to my chamber so that at least he may know something like a mother’s love.”

  “Does he thrive?”

  “Few babes thrive these days in Troy, but at least he does survive.”

  The sadness of it all touched Myrina and she thought often of the joy she’d left behind her on the Isle of Marble. She wished that she could somehow find a way to help Chryseis.

  Between her plans and the work that must be done to keep the Trojans fed and their spirits up she found a few moments to seek out her mirror-visions.

  One evening, when the sun was setting, she retired to her chamber and took out her looking glass. First she looked for Tomi, and was reassured to see that he was alive and well but struggling through a mountainous region, surrounded by strong-looking fighting men whose skins gleamed black as ebony.

  Then she looked for her grandmother and her young niece Phoebe. The little girl looked strong and happy as Grandmother Hati led her along on the back of a fine, dappled mare. The glimpses that she got of Atisha troubled her, for the Old Woman looked ill, but she was being nursed devotedly by Iphigenia. It was while she gazed on this gentle image that an idea came to her. She let the vision fade at once and put her precious mirror away carefully; then she got up and went to Cassandra’s chamber.

  “Where is Chryseis’ baby?” she demanded.

  Cassandra looked surprised. “Why? The wet nurse should be bringing him here at any moment.”

  Myrina sat down to wait, but was very impatient.

  “What is it that you want with the child?” her friend asked.

  “A thought has come to me; it is just a different way of looking at things. It may not work, but it is worth trying. May I take the child to Chryseis and speak to her?”

  Cassandra sighed. “Of course you may. Try anything that you can, but I doubt . . .”

  The nurse arrived and Myrina could see at once that the child was fretful and thin. She took the little struggling bundle into her arms and went at once into Chryseis’s chamber.

  Chryseis looked puzzled for a moment to see her there with a child in her arms, but then she clearly understood that this was her child and turned her head at once to the wall. Cassandra followed Myrina quietly into the room, looking a little concerned as Myrina approached with the baby to sit unbidden on the bed.

  The little boy fretted and weak cries filled the room, but Myrina ignored the small sounds and began to talk.

  “I was looking in my mirror today,” she said, “and I saw in my vision the Princess Iphigenia. I saw that she is on the banks of the River Thermodon and is taking good care of the Moon Riders’ Old Woman, who is sick. Do you remember the Princess Iphigenia?”

  Chryseis made no reply, but a small movement of her head told them that she was listening. Myrina looked up at Cassandra, who nodded her encouragement.

  “Do you remember the young princess who came to Troy with her mother? The little girl who delighted in the beautiful gowns that were brought for her, and who followed you and Cassandra about like a faithful, loving shadow?”

  Still no word passed the priestess’s lips, but they both saw that a tear trickled slowly down her cheek. She did remember the little girl, that was certain, and the sadness that went with that memory told them that she remembered the terrible plight that Iphigenia had found herself in when her father had agreed to sacrifice his daughter.

  “You must remember how we rode down through Thrace,” Myrina went on insistently, as though she were telling a story. “We were led by our dear Penthesilea and we saved the princess. We snatched her away from Chalcis’s knife.”

  There was silence for a moment and then once again the baby mewed his tiny cry. “Well.” Myrina took a deep breath and plunged in again. “Have you ever thought, Priestess, that this little one you bore is Iphigenia’s brother? Never mind who his father is, we care naught for that man, but his sister matters very much to us!”

  The silence that followed was very tense. Both Myrina and Cassandra held their breaths and once again the child whimpered pitifully, breaking into the quiet with his pathetic sounds.

  As he cried on, Chryseis at last turned slowly around and looked at her child. She looked at him properly as he struggled in Myrina’s arms, and at last she spoke. “But . . . he’s so thin!”

  “He needs his mother.” Myrina tried to make the words sound free of any judgment.

  “Then give him to me!” Chryseis held out her arms.

  Myrina passed him over at once and she and Cassandra, with tears in their eyes, watched the priestess awkwardly cradling her child, concern showing in her face at last. “Iphigenia’s little brother,” she murmured.

  Cassandra put her hands on Myrina’s shoulders. “You are a very clever Snake,” she whispered in her ear.

  Chryseis looked up at them. “What is his name?” she asked.

  Cassandra shook her head. “It is his mother’s right to name him.”

  “Well, then . . . I shall call him Chryse, after my father, priest of Sminthean Apollo,” she told them.

  “A good name,” Myrina agreed.

  Chryseis swung her feet around and got up from the bed. She stood there, wobbly-legged, and Myrina reached out to steady her. “I must find food for him,” the priestess told them with motherly concern.

  Cassandra opened her mouth to say that she would have some sent up to the room, but then, as she saw Chryseis’s shaky but determined progress toward the door, she held the words back.

  Chryseis turned back to Myrina. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I shall try to be a good mother to him. You have made me see how I may regain my honor.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Snake Venom

  IT WAS NOT long before Chryseis was to be seen striding about Troy as she used to, giving help and encouragement to all who needed it. She met with concern and kindness in return and was touched to find that the people still referred to her respectfully as Priestess. She was never without the now thriving baby strapped to her back.

  Myrina confided her plans for the slave women to Chryseis and begged her to join them. She was quite surprised when the priestess shook her head. “My father has taken refuge on the isle of Sminthe,” she said. “Whatever happens to Troy, I shall do my best to return to him and take his grandson home to the sanctuary there.”

  Questions and plans whirled through Myrina’s head and she could get little sleep. One moment she was miserable and hopeless, the next full of wild excitement and a belief that she could succeed.

  One night she woke from a troubled dream. She had seen herself nursing Penthesilea in her arms once again, while Achilles stood above them, huge and terrible, and a small brown viper coiled itself unnoticed around his ankle. She got up too disturbed to sleep, leaving the chamber that she shared with Coronilla and went out of the slumbering palace. The quiet streets of the citadel were bathed in moonlight.

  A few guards stepped out to challenge her, but when they saw that it was the Snake Lady, they bowed and let her pass. She made her way to the Southern Tower and crept up the stairway to the lookout point. She stood there for a while, looking down across the quiet plain. All along the distant seaboard torches burned where the tents and huts of the Achaeans lay. It was hard to believe in the silver moonlight that so much terror and destruction could be wrought here, in this beautiful landscape.

  There was a sigh and a scuffling sound behind her and a voice that she knew: “I see the Snake Lady cannot sleep either!”

  She turned sharply and saw a silhouette of broad shoulders a
nd a glint of golden silver hair above. She recognized the shape and voice of Paris. Though he was not her favorite person, he seemed very subdued and unthreatening here in the dark. “You are right, I could not sleep,” she agreed.

  “Such a beautiful site for so much pain and misery,” he said, and his words so closely echoed Myrina’s own thoughts that she was startled and couldn’t think how to reply. “And so much of it must be borne here, on these shoulders,” he went on.

  Myrina still could not think what to say. She had never imagined that he cared or was bothered by the responsibility that he should indeed feel.

  Paris sighed. “Do you know what the worst thing is? If I could go back in time and change it all, I know that I would still do the same. I would do anything to be with Helen, however high the cost.”

  Myrina was touched by his honest words. This was not the boastful favorite prince whom she remembered from long ago. This was a man worn by harsh experience, who had grown to know himself and face his faults, however bad they were.

  “Helen wins everyone’s heart,” she told him gently. “Somehow she makes you love her even if you do not want to.”

  “Even the fierce Moon Riders?” Paris teased.

  “Even them,” Myrina agreed.

  Then Paris’s voice became serious again. “I am so sorry for the loss of your brave Penthesilea.”

  Myrina nodded. “You should not think yourself responsible for that. Penthesilea always did exactly what she wanted. Nothing could have stopped her riding out that day.”

  Paris moved to stand beside her, and they both stared out toward the farthest end of the shore, where Achilles’ tents and huts were sited.

  “How can we defeat him?” Paris murmured. “A man like a bear, who leads his poisoned ants so that they swarm around us in every direction. It seems that no one can defeat him, not Penthesilea, not even my brave brother Hector.”

  “Of course they can’t; the man is protected like a tortoise,” Myrina agreed. “That gleaming armor covers him from head to toe.”