The Firebrand

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Monstrous, she thought. If only I had my bow! Akhilles had finished and was fighting off the four Amazons who had come to attack him. He struck down two of them at once, then took down another with a spear, wounding her so that, reeling away, she was cut down by one of his soldiers. The remaining women made a desperate rush to recover Penthesilea’s body; but they were hopelessly outnumbered, and within a few more minutes not a single Amazon warrior remained alive. The soldiers rounded up and led away their surviving horses. In a single hour of battle, the last of a tribe with all their culture and their memories had been wiped out, and that fiend Akhilles had carried out the final insult to a warrior who dared challenge him. Kassandra did not believe for a single moment that he had been overcome by lust; it had been a cold-blooded act of contempt.

  It would have been fitting, she thought, if Apollo had let fly His arrow at that moment to take him in the very act of overweening pride. The God who loathed excess in revenge or even in war would have been the perfect avenger. Akhilles, Kassandra realized, no longer qualified as an honorable opponent in battle; he was like a mad dog.

  But the Gods stand by and will do nothing. If Akhilles were indeed a mad dog, she reflected, someone would come and kill him, not to avenge the dead but to protect the living, and to put the poor maddened beast out of its misery.

  And if Apollo will not act, it is not for nothing that I am sworn to serve Him—if only by doing what a more innocent priest would expect the God to do. For the first time since she had knelt and prayed as a young girl to the Sun Lord to accept her, she knew clearly why she had come to the Sun Lord’s house. She looked one last time at the body of Penthesilea lying shamefully stripped and bared on the field, then turned away; she had done all her weeping that morning when she begged Penthesilea not to go, and had no more tears.

  She went up into the Sun Lord’s house and to her room; from the chest there she took her bow, a gift from Penthesilea, elaborately gilded and inlaid with ivory like the Sun Lord’s own. She strung it with a plain arrow—she might need it to get the range—and into her quiver she put the last of the envenomed arrows which the old Kentaur Cheiron had made.

  Kassandra realized she was shaking from head to foot. She went down into the kitchens and found herself some stale bread and a little honey, forcing herself to eat. The women were gathered there baking fresh bread for the funeral feast of the Great Snake, and besought Kassandra to wait for the fresh baking, but she refused everything except a mug of watered wine. They were all astonished at seeing their priestess armed, but they forbore to ask her questions; in her status as an elder priestess her doings were assumed to have a good purpose, no matter how mysterious or obscure, and could not under any circumstances be challenged.

  Then, deliberately, she went down into the most secret room of the Temple, and from a chest to which only a few of the high priests and priestesses had the keys, she took a certain robe adorned with gold, and the golden Sun Lord’s mask. With hands schooled to steadiness, she put them on and tied the strings.

  She was not entirely sure whether what she did was the highest of sacrileges—she thought of Khryse putting on these things in an attempt to cajole an inexperienced girl into serving a lust he could not satisfy any other way—or whether she was serving the honor of Apollo by doing what the God ought to be doing and would not.

  Sandals were a part of the costume; gilded sandals with small golden wings attached to the heels. She laced them on, wishing they were really winged so that she could fly down over the Akhaian camp. Silently she climbed to the balcony which overlooked the battlefield, remembering how Khryse had stood here in the aspect of Apollo to shoot down the arrows of plague into the Akhaian camp. He had cried out, too, in Apollo’s voice.

  The bodies of the Amazons lay at the center of clustering clouds of flies. The horses were gone; the Trojan chariot riders and foot soldiers who had marched out this morning had retreated within the walls of Troy. Akhilles strutted in the midst of his own guards, apparently waiting for someone to come and challenge him to a fight. Couldn’t his own soldiers see that the man had gone outside every limit of sanity and decency? Yet they still respected him as their leader!

  She did not cry out as Khryse had done; Apollo had given her nothing to say, even though He was the God of song. Perhaps someone else would make a song about this, but it would not be with her words. She simply strung the bow, took careful aim at Akhilles and let fly. The arrow fell a little short; but now she had the range. The Akhaian hero had not seen the arrow and continued his strutting between the chariots. Now where to shoot when the iron armor covered so much of his body? She looked up and down to see that though the helmet covered face and hair, on his feet he wore sandals which were no more than a couple of narrow strips of leather. So be it, then; she let fly at his feet.

  The arrow struck his bare heel. He evidently thought it no more than an insect bite, for she saw him bend to brush it away; then he drew out the shaft and looked about to see where it had come from. One by one the Trojan soldiers looked up at the Temple to see what Akhilles’ Myrmidons were staring and pointing at. Kassandra stood motionless; she was probably out of ordinary bowshot when it had to be directed straight upward, even if anyone had the courage to shoot an arrow at what could have been the God. She felt completely invulnerable, and even if an arrow had come out of the blinding noon, she had accomplished what she set out to do.

  Akhilles was still standing, gazing upward at the source of the arrow, apparently unaware of the nature of his wound; but after a time she saw him reach down and claw at his foot, signaling one of his men to bind it up. Well, let them try; she knew that even if they should now cut his foot off—and that had been tried for small localized wounds such as this—the poison had entered his blood, and Akhilles was already a dead man.

  For a few more minutes he strode arrogantly about the field; then he stumbled and fell. He was on the ground now in convulsions. There was confusion in the Akhaian camp—and then a great cry of rage and despair went up, not unlike the death-cry raised over Patroklos. Down on the city walls where the other women were watching there were cries of jubilation, and at last a great shout of thanksgiving to Apollo. But by this time Kassandra had slipped down from the wall and was in the secret room returning the mask and robe to their locked chest. When she came out again, the people of Troy were crowding to the wall, pushing and shoving to find out what had happened.

  “One of the Akhaian leaders is dead,” someone told her. “It may even be Akhilles. Apollo Himself appeared, they say, high on the walls above Troy, and shot him down with His arrows of fire.”

  “Oh, did he?” she replied, sounding skeptical, and when the story was repeated, said no more than “Well, it’s about time.”

  13

  NOW THAT AKHILLES was gone, a mood of confidence swept through Troy; everyone was looking forward to a swift end to the war. There was no formal period of mourning, and no funeral games; Kassandra suspected that among the Akhaians there was little genuine mourning, though some ritualized wailing arose around the funeral pyre. She remembered Briseis, who had gone to Akhilles of her free will, and wondered if the girl mourned the lover she had idealized. She almost hoped so. Even for Akhilles, it was not just that there should be no one to mourn.

  Yet Agamemnon, who had assumed command of all the Akhaian troops, and even commanded the Myrmidons to go on fighting, seemed to have no doubt of the final outcome of this war. The Akhaians began building an enormous earth-rampart to the south, from which they might assault the wall partially tumbled in the last earthquake. It was a few hours before the Trojans noticed what they were doing, and when they did, Paris ordered all available archers to the highest wall to shoot the soldiers down. The Akhaians worked for a considerable time under cover of extra-large shields held over their heads, but as the shield-bearers were shot down one after another, faster than they could be replaced, the Akhaians finally gave up the attempt and withdrew the builders.

  Kassandra h
ad not watched Akhilles’ funeral pyre, nor the battle of the archers, though the women in the Sun Lord’s house reported every move to her. The Temple was in mourning for the Great Serpent, and would continue to be so for a considerable time. Serpents of this variety were not found on the plains of Troy, and they must send forth to the mainland or to Colchis or even to Crete for another one. Privately, Kassandra believed that the death of the serpent was an omen not only of the death of Akhilles, which it had so briefly preceded, but of the fall of Troy, which could not now be long delayed.

  She spoke of this one night in the palace when she had gone down to see her mother.

  Hecuba had never really recovered from the death of Hector. She was appallingly frail and thin now, her hands like a bundle of sticks; she would not eat, saying always, “Save my portion for the little children; old people do not get as hungry as they do”—which in fact sounded sensible enough, but there were times when Kassandra thought her mother’s mind had gone. She spoke often of Hector, but seemed not to realize that he was dead; she talked as if he were out somewhere about the city, overseeing the armies.

  “What are the Akhaians doing now?” Kassandra asked Polyxena.

  “They have felled a good many trees along the shoreline, and are hacking them into lumber; I spoke with the woman who sells honey cakes to the Akhaian soldiers, and she said they spoke of a plan to build a great altar to Poseidon and sacrifice many horses to Him.”

  Poseidon would indeed be a friend to those Akhaians, if they should persuade Him to break our walls; and their soothsayers know it, if they have persuaded the attackers to invoke the Earth Shaker.

  She rose from Polyxena’s side and went to speak with Helen. She had learned long ago that Paris would not listen to her but could sometimes be approached through his wife. Helen greeted her with her usual affectionate embrace.

  “Rejoice with me, Sister; the Goddess has heard my grief and will send us another child for the ones I lost to Poseidon’s blow.” When Kassandra did not smile, she begged, “Oh, be glad for me!”

  “It is not that I am not glad for you,” Kassandra said slowly, “but at this particular time—is it wise?”

  Helen’s pretty smile was full of dimples. “The Goddess sends us children not as we will but as She wills,” she reminded Kassandra; “but you are not a mother, so perhaps you do not yet understand that.”

  “Mother or not, I think I would try to choose a better time than the end of a siege,” Kassandra said, “even if it meant sending my husband to sleep among the soldiers when the moon was full or the wind blowing from the south.”

  Helen blushed and said, “Paris must have a son; I cannot ask him to take Nikos as his heir and set the son of Menelaus upon the throne of Troy.”

  “I had forgotten that particular foible,” Kassandra said, “but I had believed that Andromache’s son was to rule after Hector. Has Paris, then, resolved to usurp that place?”

  “Astyanax cannot rule Troy at eight years old,” Helen said. “It goes ill with any land where the King is a child; Paris would have to rule for him for many years at least.”

  “Then perhaps it would be better for Paris to have no son,” Kassandra said, “so that he would not be tempted to overthrow the rightful heir.” Helen looked indignant, so Kassandra added, “In any case, Paris already has a son by the river priestess Oenone, who dwelt with him here as his wife till you came from Sparta. It is not right that Paris refuse to acknowledge his firstborn.”

  Helen frowned and said, “Paris has spoken of her; he says there is no way to be certain that he fathered Oenone’s child.”

  Kassandra saw the look in Helen’s eyes and decided not to pursue this further.

  “That is not what I came to say. Have they more horses in the Akhaian camp than are needed to draw Agamemnon’s chariot and the chariots of the other Kings?”

  “Why, I’ve no idea; I know nothing of things like that,” Helen said, and leaned across the table to touch Paris’ hand. She repeated the question to him, and Paris stared.

  “Why, no; I don’t think so,” he said. “They’ve been trying to capture the horses from our chariots, even at the cost of leaving gold or leaving the chariots themselves.”

  Kassandra said urgently, “If they are building an altar to Poseidon, you don’t suppose the Kings are going to sacrifice the horses that draw their own chariots, do you? I beg you to set a double watch on all the horses of Troy, wherever they are stabled.”

  “Our horses are all well within our walls,” Paris said unconcernedly, “and the Akhaians can no more get at them than if they were in the stables of Pharaoh of Egypt.”

  “Are you certain? Odysseus, for instance, is crafty; he might by some ruse inveigle his way inside the walls, and get the horses out,” she said, but Paris only laughed.

  “I don’t think he could get inside our gates even if he could manage to disguise himself as Zeus Thunderer,” Paris said. “Those gates will not open to man or Immortal; even for King Priam or myself it would be difficult to persuade anyone to open them after dark. And if he did get in somehow, how do you think he would get out again? If Agamemnon wants horse sacrifices, he will have to sacrifice his own, for he’ll get no Trojan ones.”

  Kassandra thought he was dismissing the possibility a little too lightly, but there was no way to continue; Paris would not admit the fallibility of his defenses, certainly not to his sister. If he would be the only one to suffer from this casual attitude, she would have said no more, but if he was wrong all Troy would pay; so she urged, “I beg you, set extra guards around your horses for a while at least,” and repeated what Polyxena had told her.

  “Sister,” Paris said, not altogether unkindly, “surely there is enough women’s work for you to do that you need not concern yourself with the conduct of the war.”

  Kassandra pressed her lips together, knowing that Paris was certain to ignore whatever she might say.

  Kassandra could hardly stand guard on the horses herself; but she spoke to the priests in the Sun Lord’s house, and they agreed to set a watch upon the royal stables.

  Late that night the alarm was sounded from the walls, and Paris’ soldiers, roused, caught half a dozen men, led by Odysseus himself, leaving the royal stables. The guards, who had not recognized the Argive general, said that he had come into the stable with a royal signet and an order to take half a dozen horses to the palace. They had believed him a messenger from Priam himself, and had given up the horses without protest. Only when they had gone did one of the priests of Apollo notice the Akhaian sandals that they were wearing, suspect a trick and sound the alarm.

  Paris ordered the deceived guard hanged, and when Odysseus was brought before him, said to him: “Is there any reason I should not hang you from the topmost wall of Troy for the horse-thief you are?”

  Odysseus said, “In my country, we hang woman-stealers, Trojan. If you had not shown us all how fast you could run, you would now be nothing but bare bones hanging outside the great walls of Sparta, and none of us would have had to leave our homes and come and fight here for all these years.”

  Priam had been hastily roused from sleep; he looked unhappily at his old friend and said, “Well, Odysseus, you’re still a pirate, I see. But I see no reason to hang you. We’ve always been willing to accept ransom for captives.”

  “What ransom do you want?” Odysseus asked, looking only at Priam and ignoring Paris.

  “A dozen horses,” Paris said.

  Odysseus waved a hand. “There they are,” he replied, and Paris scowled at his effrontery.

  “Those are our horses already. We will have a dozen of yours.”

  Odysseus said, “Have you no piety, friend? Those horses have already been dedicated to Poseidon.They are not mine to give back; they belong already to the Earth Shaker.”

  Paris sprang up, ready to aim a blow at him; Odysseus deflected it easily.

  “Priam, your son is lacking in the manners of diplomacy; I would rather deal with you. You can ta
ke those horses back if you are willing to risk angering Poseidon Earth Shaker with your stinginess; but I swore to sacrifice those horses to Him. Do you really think He will favor Troy if you rob Him of His sacrifice?”

  Priam said, “If you have vowed those horses to Poseidon, they are His. I will not be more stingy than you with a God. These horses are for Poseidon, then, and a dozen more from your people to ransom you.”

  “So be it,” Odysseus agreed, and Priam called for his herald to send the message to the Akhaian army. Agamemnon, however, would not be pleased, Kassandra thought. She wished Odysseus no harm; in spite of his place with the enemy host, she could not help thinking of the old pirate as a friend—as he had been in her childhood. She still had, in one of her boxes, the beautiful string of blue beads he had given her years before.

  As Odysseus took his departure to arrange for the actual exchange and delivery of the ransom, Paris said to his father, “You fool! Are you really going to give those horses for sacrifice? What are Odysseus’ promises to you? You don’t believe he was going to sacrifice them, do you?”

  “It may well be,” Priam said; “and what have we to lose? We need Poseidon’s goodwill too; and we will be getting a dozen more for Odysseus’ ransom, so we have lost nothing.”

  “I don’t think they will do the God half as much good as they would do our armies,” Paris still grumbled; but when Priam made up his mind there was nothing to be done.

  The next morning, before the walls of Troy, the horses were sacrificed to Poseidon. Kassandra watched the slaughter, troubled; Priam hardly seemed strong enough. She remembered such sacrifices in her childhood, when Priam had been strong and vigorous enough to strike off the head of a bull with a single blow. Now his shaking hands could scarcely close on the ax, and after he blessed the weapon, a strong young priest took the ax and completed the sacrifice, chanting invocations to the Earth Shaker.