The Firebrand

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  She heard a step behind her and turned; at first she hardly recognized Oenone. The slender young girl had become a tall and heavy woman, deep-breasted, her dark curls coiled low on her neck. Only the deep-set eyes were the same; but even so, Kassandra hesitated when she spoke the name.

  “Oenone? I hardly recognized you.”

  “No,” Oenone said, “none of us are as young and pretty as we once were. It’s the princess, is it not—Kassandra?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I suppose I have changed too.”

  “You have,” Oenone said, “though you are still beautiful, Princess.”

  Kassandra smiled faintly. She said, “How is my brother’s son? I hear he has been ill.”

  “Oh, nothing serious—just one of those little disorders that come to children in the summer. He will be recovered in a day or two. But how may I serve you, Lady?”

  “It is not for me,” Kassandra said, “but my brother Paris. He lies dying of an arrow-wound, and you have such skill in healing—will you come?”

  Oenone raised her eyebrows. At last she said, “Lady Kassandra, your brother died, for me, on the day when I left the palace and he spoke not one word to acknowledge his son. All these years, for me, he has been dead. I have no wish now to bring him back to life.”

  Kassandra knew in her heart that she should have anticipated this answer; that she had had no right to come here and ask anything of Oenone. She bowed her head and rose.

  “I can understand your bitterness,” she said. “And yet—he is certainly dying; can your anger be still so great? In the face of death?”

  “Death? Do you not think it was like death for me, to be sent forth without a word, as if I were a penny harlot in the streets of Troy? And all those years not a word to his son? No, Kassandra, you ask if my anger is so great? You have not begun to know anything about my anger, and I do not think you want to know. Go back to your palace, and mourn your brother as I have mourned him all these years.” Her voice softened. “My anger is not toward you, Lady; you were always kind to me, and so was your mother.”

  “If you will not come for Paris’ sake, or for mine,” Kassandra pleaded, “will you not come for my mother’s sake? She has lost so many of her sons . . .” Her voice broke and she bit her lip hard, not wishing to weep before Oenone.

  “If it would make any difference . . .” Oenone began. “But now, with the city about to fall into the hands of an angry God—ah, it surprises you that I know that? I am a priestess too, Lady. Now, go home and care for your child—send her to safety if you can; it will not be long now. I bear no ill will even toward the Spartan Queen, but I can do nothing for Paris. When he deserted me, he outraged Father Scamander—who is one with Poseidon.”

  It had never occurred to Kassandra before that the River God, Scamander, should be an aspect of Poseidon Earth Shaker. But Paris had forsaken the River God’s priestess for the daughter of Zeus Thunderer—and he had presumed to judge in a controversy between the Immortals, abandoning his own country’s Gods to serve the Akhaian Aphrodite.

  “I bear no guilt for his death,” Oenone continued; “his fate is on him as are yours and mine on ourselves. May your Gods guard you, Lady Kassandra.” She raised her hand in a gesture of blessing, and Kassandra found herself walking away down the hill, feeling like a peasant woman dismissed from the royal presence.

  Downhill, her return took less time, and when she returned to the palace, she heard the sound of wailing. Paris was dead. Well, she had expected it. Despite her encouraging words to Helen, she had been sure that with such a wound he could not long survive.

  Moving to the balcony to look out over the plain where the Akhaian armies were building, she could now see the rough outline of what the scaffolding surrounded. It rose, huge, clumsy, unmistakable: the great wooden form of a horse.

  So this is their altar, she thought: the very form of Poseidon Earth Shaker Himself. Do they think this horse will kick down the walls of Troy, or that it will summon the God to do so for them? How childish.

  Then, without knowing why, she was seized with a sharp fit of shivering, so that she had to wrap her cloak around her in spite of the brightness of the sun. The figure of the horse—or of the God—struck her through with terror, although she was not sure why.

  14

  EVEN BEFORE the funeral rites were held for Paris, Deiphobos went to Priam and demanded command of the Trojan armies; when Priam protested, he said, “What choice have you, Sire? Is there anyone else in Troy, save perhaps Aeneas? And he does not belong to the royal house of Troy, and is not Trojan born.”

  Priam only stared, embarrassed, at the ground.

  “Perhaps you would like to give the armies to your daughter Kassandra, who was once an Amazon?” Deiphobos asked, sneering.

  Hecuba spoke up clearly and almost loudly, for the first time since Hector’s death.

  “My daughter Kassandra would command the armies of Troy no worse than you,” she said. “You were a cruel and greedy child, and you are a proud and greedy man. My lord and King, Priam, I beg you to find some other to command the forces of Troy, or it will be the worse for all of us.”

  But they all knew there was no other. None of Priam’s other surviving sons was old enough, or experienced enough, to lead the armies. When Deiphobos was called out before the troops and Priam formally handed over the command to him Deiphobos said, “I will take this command only if I am given Paris’ widow, Helen, as my wife.”

  “You are mad,” Priam said. “Helen is by right Queen of Sparta, not a prize to be handed from man to man like a concubine.”

  “Is she not?” asked Deiphobos. “Have you not had enough of the trouble a woman can make when she is left to choose with which man she will share her bed? Helen will marry me and be cheerful enough about it, won’t you, Lady? Or would you rather go back to Menelaus? I could arrange that if you prefer it.”

  Kassandra saw Helen shudder; but she only said to Priam in a low voice, “I will marry Deiphobos if you wish me to, Sire.”

  Priam looked embarrassed. He said, “If there were any other way, I would not ask this of you, Daughter.”

  She threw herself into the old man’s arms and embraced him. “It is enough that this is what you wish for me, Father,” she said.

  He held her gently, and there were tears in his eyes. He said, “You have become one of us, child. There is no more to say.”

  “Well, if that is settled,” Deiphobos said loudly, “set forth the marriage feast.”

  Hecuba protested. “Is this any time for feasting, with Paris lying dead and not yet laid to rest?”

  “There may be no time for feasting hereafter,” Deiphobos insisted. “Should I alone of all Priam’s sons go to my wedding unfeasted and unhonored?”

  “There is little enough to honor here,” said Priam, under his breath; only Hecuba and a few of the women heard him. Nevertheless, he called the servants and ordered that the stores of wine be brought out and a kid be killed and roasted, and such foods as could be quickly prepared be set forth.

  Kassandra went with the palace women, including Deiphobos’ mother, to choose any fruits ready for harvest and set them out on platters. She agreed with Hecuba that this was no time for feasting, but if this wedding had to be, it should be made to look like a matter of choice rather than coercion. If Helen could put a good face on it, who was she to complain?

  But for all the food and the hastily summoned minstrels, the wedding was joyless enough. The knowledge that Paris lay dead above cast gloom over the palace. Long before the bride and groom were put to bed together, Kassandra excused herself and withdrew. Looking down at the lights, she thought that perhaps the common folk of Troy, enjoying the gifts of food and wine sent down to them from Priam’s palace, actually believed that this was a genuine festival. If they criticized Helen, it was only for her willingness to be given again in marriage when her husband had yet to be buried. Well, she thought, let them enjoy themselves. There may not be much more for them to enjoy
.

  And indeed, the funeral rites for Paris were held on the morrow—veiled Helen grave and pale, and nine-year-old Nikos standing small and serious at her side. He had insisted on cutting his hair for mourning. “I know he was not my father,” he said, “but he was the only father I have ever known, and he was kind to me.” His attempt not to cry tore at Kassandra’s heart.

  Once the ceremonies were completed, Deiphobos, with a look of relief, said briskly, “Now that’s done, we’ll go down and deal with that horse as Paris did. Start with a barrel of good hot tar or some pine-pitch and a few fire-arrows. We’ll make short work of it. What do you think of that, my wife?”

  Helen’s voice was barely audible: “You must do as seems best to you, my husband.”

  She looked submissive and quiet, like any of the Trojan soldiers’ wives, with little trace of the Goddess-given beauty they all had come to take for granted. The words were submissive too, the very ones she might have spoken to Paris; but it occurred to Kassandra that with this obedience she was mocking him. Deiphobos did not seem to think so; he looked at her with satisfaction and pleasure: now he had what he had always envied, Paris’ wife and Paris’ command. Well, if this marriage had brought happiness to at least one person, then it was not all bad.

  This had not been demanded of Andromache; she had been allowed a decent time to mourn Hector. Why could Helen not have been allowed that same privilege?

  Yet Helen had acted to show all women that they could do as she did; they should be grateful to her and admire her.

  Deiphobos was gathering his charioteers, briefly discussing strategy with them. Kassandra watched Helen say farewell and bid him take care in battle, exactly as she had done with Paris.

  Was it that Helen was so accustomed to catering to a man’s will that it made no difference to her who the man was? Or was she only so stricken dumb with grief that nothing mattered anymore? If I had loved as she loved Paris, and he was taken from me—look at Andromache! I love Aeneas well; but when he is gone from me, I remain myself. If he were to die, rather than leaving me to return to Creusa’s side, I would mourn his death beyond measure; but it would not destroy me as Hector’s death destroyed Andromache. Was Andromache mourning Hector, then, or only the loss of her place as Hector’s wife?

  The charioteers rushed forward, making a charge through the workers who were pulling down the scaffolding around the monstrous wooden horse; they scattered and ran, about a dozen of them falling under the wheels of the chariots. There was a queer bitter smell in the air which Kassandra could not identify, and as the charioteers came close to the Horse, their flights of fire-arrows went toward it, but they did not ignite.

  Agamemnon’s soldiers attacked from the shadow of the scaffolding. The Trojans in their chariots fought strongly, but they were driven back to the walls. As the gates were opened for them to retreat inside Troy, there was a battle to prevent Agamemnon’s men and what looked like a host of Akhilles’ now-leaderless Myrmidons from crowding in and flooding the streets. A few forced their way in, but they were cut down in the narrow streets, and Deiphobos’ men got the gates shut.

  “It looks as though we will have a siege again,” Deiphobos declared. “At all costs now we must keep them out of the city, which means these gates must not be opened. The one thing that monstrosity out there does is keep us from a good view of what’s happening in their camp and field. We can’t even burn it; they’ve soaked it with something so it won’t burn, maybe a mix of vinegar and alum. Burning the scaffolding before may have been a mistake; it warned them that that was the first thing we’d try to do.”

  “If it is intended to be our God Poseidon,” Hecuba said, “would it not be a sacrilegious act to burn it?”

  “I think I’d burn it first and make my peace with the Earth Shaker afterward,” Deiphobos said; “but it won’t burn now.”

  “But we can burn it eventually?” asked Priam.

  “Well, Sire, I’m certainly going to try my best,” Deiphobos answered. “We can try shooting arrows covered with pitch and hope enough of the stuff will stick. I keep wondering if they’ve put this thing up here to give us something to think about so that we’ll not notice what else they might be doing, like trying to tunnel under our walls from the landward side, or climb to the Maiden Temple and attack from up there.”

  “Do you think they could do that?” Hecuba asked fearfully.

  “I’m sure they’ll try, Lady. It’s up to us to keep ahead of whatever tricks that Master of Sneaks, Odysseus, might be thinking up while we’ve got our eyes and our minds on that wretched thing out there.” He looked at the Horse with loathing and shook his fist at it.

  The image of the wooden Horse wandered that night through Kassandra’s dreams. In one nightmare it came alive, rearing like a stallion and pawing at the ground; then it kicked out, and the stroke of its mighty hoof battered down the main gate of Troy, while from the Horse an army poured, raging and pillaging in the streets. Its head rose black and dragonlike above the flames that consumed the city. When she woke, so intensely real had the dream seemed that Kassandra went out in her night-shift to the balcony where she looked down over the plain below and saw the Horse solid and wooden and lifeless as ever in the pallid moonlight. It was not even nearly so large as it had seemed in her dream. It’s just a thing of wood and tar, she thought, harmless as that statue by the Scamander. A few pale torches burned before it—homage to Poseidon? She recalled the vision in which she had seen Apollo and Poseidon battling hand to hand for the city, and went inside to the shrine to kneel and pray.

  “My lord Apollo,” she implored, “can You not save Your people? If You cannot, why are You called a God? And if You can and will not, what kind of God are You?”

  And then, terrified at the form of the prayer, she fled the shrine. She was suddenly aware that she had asked the last question anyone ever asked of a God, and the one that would never be answered. For a moment she was afraid she had committed blasphemy; then she thought, If He is not a God, or if He is not good, then what is there to blaspheme? He is said to love Truth; and if He does not, then all of what I have been taught is false.

  But if He is not a God, what was it I saw battling for the city? What was it that overshadowed Khryse, or Helen?

  If the Immortals are worse than the worst of men, small and petty and cruel, then whatever They are, They are not for mankind to venerate. She felt bereft; so much of her life had been spent in the intense passion for the Sun Lord. I am no better than Helen, but I chose to love a God Who is no better than the worst of men.

  She went back to the walls and stood there, numb with horror, as the sun rose for the last time over the doomed city.

  15

  BEFORE HER lay the plain of Troy in the early sunlight. Within the city no one was stirring; outside, a few torches guttered weakly against the sunrise.

  The silence was absolute. Even the distant line of the sea beyond the Akhaian earthworks lay dead calm and molten as if the very tide itself had ceased to pull upon the land. The reddish overcast of the sky was like faraway flames swallowing the last dim flicker of the setting moon. It was again as in her dream: the wooden Horse before the walls seemed to rear upward, pawing with monstrous hooves at the city.

  She screamed, hearing her own voice die unheard in her throat, and then screamed again, pressing against the silence until at last, she could hear her voice as if it were tearing her throat open: “Oh, beware! The God is angry and will strike the city!”

  It was as if behind the dead silence she could hear great roiling waves of sound as if Apollo and Poseidon, in their struggle for the city, had broken the deadlock and Poseidon had thrown the Sun Lord down.

  Her screams had not been unheard; already women were flocking out of the buildings in all stages of undress.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  Kassandra was dimly aware of what they were saying.

  It is Kassandra, Priam’s daughter. Don’t listen to her: she is mad.<
br />
  No, heed what she says. She is a prophetess; she sees . . .

  “What is it, Kassandra?” asked Phyllida calmly, speaking to her soothingly. “Can you not tell us quietly what it is that you have seen?”

  She was still screaming out words. She tried to listen to herself—for she was as confused as her hearers, and it seemed as if her head had been cloven with an ax—and she thought, If I were listening, I would believe I was mad too. Yet in spite of the confusion, one part of her mind was clear, with the icy clarity of despair, and she struggled to bring that part into focus and to ignore the part that was a chaos of panic and terror.

  She heard herself crying out, “The God is angry! Apollo cannot conquer the Earth Shaker; the city walls will be destroyed! Our own God will do what the Akhaians could not do in all these years! We are lost, we are destroyed! Hear and flee!”

  But of what use was a warning? It was upon her that no one would escape, that she could see only death and disaster. . . . She became aware that she was fighting Phyllida’s restraining hands and her friend was saying gently to one of the other priestesses, “Give me your sash to tie her, lest she do herself some hurt. Look, her face is bleeding where she has scratched herself.” She passed the cloth carefully around Kassandra’s hands.

  Kassandra said desperately, “You need not tie me; I will not hurt anyone.”

  “But I fear you will harm yourself, my dear,” Phyllida said. “Go, Lykoura, bring me wine mixed with syrup of poppy seeds; it will calm her.”

  “No,” Khryse said, striding toward them. He roughly shoved Phyllida away and pulled the sash from Kassandra’s hands. “She needs no drug; no soothing draft can calm her now. She has had a vision. What is it, Kassandra?” He laid his hands on her brow and said in a strong, stern voice, looking compellingly into her eyes, “Say what the God has given you to say; I pledge by Apollo, none will lay hands on you while I live.”