Mood Riders (35 page)

“The Earth Shaker!”

“The sea god is angry!”

“Poseidon attacks us now?”

They were in Cassandra’s chamber when they heard a terrible, heartbreaking wail. All four of them ran out into the passageway to find that the dreadful sounds came from Helen’s bedchamber. Helen clutched her head and screamed repeatedly in an agony of despair. Two nurses covered in dust kneeled before her, and laid out on the floor were the bodies of the two little sons that Helen had borne to Paris. They had been sleeping with their nurses in the children’s quarters.

“Ah no,” Cassandra cried.

“The walls fell down . . . the walls fell down on top of them!” the nurses cried. “We could not get in to them fast enough! It’s not our fault! It’s not!”

Suddenly Cassandra backed away, pale and trembling, clapping her hands to her ears.

“What is it?” Myrina caught her arm.

“The horse . . . the horse that gallops around and around the walls,” she muttered, shaking from head to toe. “Can’t you hear it? It kicks down the walls of Troy!” Suddenly blood streamed from her nose and down her gown.

“Get her out of here! Get her out!” Helen began screaming and pointing at Cassandra. “She brings disaster wherever she goes. She’s a witch! I swear it! She is to blame for this. Get her out!”

Myrina grabbed Cassandra and she and Tomi pulled her away, down the passageway to her room. They made her lie down and Chryseis washed her face.

The bleeding stopped almost at once and Cassandra quickly became calm again. Suddenly she was getting up and seemed quite in control, her voice deep and strong. “This is the moment,” she told Myrina as she struggled to her feet. “You must wait no longer, you must go.”

Myrina hesitated for a moment, but Chryseis agreed. “This is your moment,” she said.

Tomi frowned in uncertainty, but Cassandra took Myrina by the hand and led them all onto her balcony, which overlooked the south of the city. “Can you see it?” She pointed. “Look down there! Can you see it? By the fig tree.”

They stared down to where she seemed to be pointing, but all they could see was a group of guards standing on top of the tower looking down at the wall. They seemed to be pointing and shouting, quite agitated about something.

“What is it?” Myrina asked.

“The wall is cracked from top to bottom,” Cassandra told her. “Just a little rain and a little sun and it will fall apart and crumble like a castle made of sand when they return.”

Myrina and Tomi looked at each other, puzzled. “When they return?”

Then Cassandra pointed out to sea, and as they turned to look they saw at once that it was dotted with Achaean ships sailing fast away from the Trojan shore, leaving behind them few tents and no cooking fires.

“What are they doing?” Tomi asked.

“Do they leave for the Bitter Months?” Myrina wondered.

“Perhaps they think themselves safer out at sea than on the shaking land,” said Tomi.

Myrina turned back to the cracked wall. It was hard to think; everything seemed to be happening at once. She could see no crack, but the guards down there were certainly disturbed and looking at something and Myrina knew better than to disregard Cassandra’s warnings. It would be hard to leave her friend, but perhaps the moment had indeed come.

She turned to her and gripped her shoulders. “Come with us—please come with us!”

Cassandra simply shook her head.

“We are like the rats that sailors say will always leave a sinking ship.” Myrina couldn’t stop tears from rolling down her cheeks.

But now Cassandra took hold of her, smiling. “How right you are! How right you are, my lovely Snake Lady. But why do rats leave a sinking ship? Because then they will not be dragged down; they will swim and have a chance to survive! Get your women and your horses and go—I shall order the guards to let them out under your direction.”

“The princess speaks truth.” Chryseis was convinced. “Now is the moment. Priam has too many other things to worry about.”

“Yes!” Myrina assented and Tomi nodded.

“Will you travel to Iphigenia’s place of safety?” Chryseis asked.

“Yes; will you come?”

Chryseis shook her head. “No, but if you are willing, Theano and I will ride out with you, but then we will head for the safety of Thrace.”

“Of course,” Myrina agreed.

“But . . . please tell Iphigenia about my little Chryse. I plan to make us a home on Sminthe Island with my father as soon as I can, and Iphigenia will always be welcome to join us there—please tell her that! There will be a home for her on Sminthe once the Achaeans have left our ruined land.”

“I will tell her,” Myrina promised. Then she hurried away, shouting for Coronilla. “Go at once to gather the other Moon Riders and then to the stables! Prepare the horses!”

“Is this it?” Coronilla was wildly excited. They had longed for this moment and she was eager to put their plans into action.

Tomi, Myrina, and Cassandra set off at once down the passageway, toward the southern entrance to the palace. They passed Helen’s room again. The door stood wide open and Myrina could not help but pause for a moment in her stride, for the sight there shocked her deeply. The nurses and waiting women were carefully washing the two poor dead children, laying out fresh garments to dress them in, but Helen sat in front of her mirror, smoothing rose oil into her cheeks. The scent of the precious oil filled the whole room and drifted out into the passage.

The Queen of Sparta picked up a pot of rouge and a small brush and began carefully to paint her lips. She stopped for a moment and turned, aware of Myrina standing white-faced in her doorway. All trace of tears had gone and already the skillful work that she had done made her face look radiant.

“There is nothing left here for me now,” she said calmly. “Menelaus always liked this shade of rouge and he loved the scent of roses on my skin.”

Myrina just stared at her. “We are all rats,” she murmured.

Helen shook her head vaguely and smiled. She looked serene and beautiful, despite her silver graying hair—more beautiful at that moment, thought Myrina, than at any time before. There was certainly strong metal hidden beneath all that softness and charm; Helen would survive. Myrina shook her head, remembering that she must hurry. She turned and ran after Cassandra and Tomi.

There was wailing as they ran through the streets, and dust and disorder everywhere. In the slaves’ sleeping quarters, part of the roof of the shed where the children slept had come down. Myrina marched up to the gate and Cassandra drew herself up very tall and imperiously told the guards that all the women were to be put under her command to clear up the stones and bricks that had fallen in the night.

They obeyed her willingly enough.

Myrina made the agreed sign to Akasya, flicking out her fingers from a closed fist; it meant “freedom.” The sign spread like fire from woman to woman and from hand to hand, but never a word was spoken. The guards untied the ropes and the women marched out in an orderly way. Some had small babies strapped to their chests; others had the more difficult role of leading toddlers, but each child was quiet and obedient, glad to get away from the walls that had threatened to crush them in the night.

Akasya whispered low that two children had died like Helen’s little ones and their mothers were refusing to leave. Myrina stooped to enter the low building that was now half filled with rubble. The mothers sat together, each with her own dead child in her arms. There was no keening from them, just a terrible, staring silence, as they rocked gently back and forth as though soothing their children to sleep. Myrina made the “freedom” sign to them, but both shook their heads. Myrina nodded.

“We cannot make them come,” she said to Cassandra. “We all have our own choices to make.”

“I will take them as my waiting women,” Cassandra told her. “Two I can try to save; all of them I cannot.”

Myrina turned to her with the terrible realization that the time had come to say good-bye. Who could tell whether they would ever meet again? She could not make a display of this moment for fear that the guards would become suspicious. This leave-taking was more painful than she had ever imagined it could be. “I pray to Maa that you will save yourself,” she whispered.

But Cassandra for once was fearless. “I will save myself,” she insisted. “Helen has her means and I have mine. Look in your mirror, Snake Lady, and you shall see!”

“I will,” Myrina told her.

“I go to the upper gate now,” Cassandra told her coolly. “I’ll make sure that it is open. Then, whatever happens, do not stop or turn back, just ride, ride, ride! Snake Lady . . . I will always think of you!”

A
S
C
ASSANDRA HAD
promised, the upper gates were open, with only a small number of guards, who were distracted enough with all the difficulties that the earth tremor had brought. The slave women mounted the horses as they had planned, two to each mare. Each Moon Rider took a woman who had never ridden and many of those also had a child perched in front. Akasya and the other women who had recently had lessons from Myrina took a mare for themselves. Chryseis and Theano joined them, little Chryse strapped snugly to his mother’s back. The two priestesses gave the large party of riders even more of an air of authority. They ambled quietly through the upper streets with Myrina at their head. Tomi brought up the rear.

Cassandra issued more orders to the guards as the horses began to pass steadily out through the hidden gateway. All seemed well, but as more and more rode through, the guards became suspicious.

“What is this? Why so many?”

“But the princess has ordered it!”

“Never mind the princess—what of her father? We have never let so many out before!”

“Why are these children going? These babies never go outside!”

“You will do as you are told!” Cassandra ordered. “Do you wish the wrath of Trojan Apollo on your head? Has not the Earth Shaker shown enough anger to this city in the night?”

The captain of the guard would have no more. “Stop them!” he bellowed.

But by then every last woman was out and Tomi, bringing up the rear, wheeled his horse about. “Ride!” he bellowed, taking his bow from his shoulder. “Ride!”

All the riders heard his cry—even Myrina on Isatis at the front. Instinctively she urged her mare onward, but at the same time her heart sank to her boots.

“Ride!” Tomi cried, as he notched an arrow to his bow, and sent it flying toward the angry guards, who knew at once that they had been tricked.

Tomi’s arrows flew fast and furious and he shot down each guard that came at him, trying to follow the women. It was a short but bitter battle and at the end of it every one of the small group of men lay dead, but so did Tomi.

Myrina and the women galloped on and vanished over the hilltop.

Cassandra stood by the gates, her hands trembling, but then she made herself walk quietly out to where Tomi lay, his horse still snuffling at his bloodstained cheek. “Ya, ya yush!” she whispered, tears flooding down her cheeks.

Moon Silver reared his head. “Ya, ya yush!” Cassandra repeated.

The silver stallion turned obediently and headed up the hillside, following in Myrina’s wake.

Cassandra sat beside Tomi for a while, but then she got up and carefully pulled his body back inside the hidden gate. She closed the great wooden doors, knuckled the tears from her eyes and calmly called for a servant to see the bodies taken away. “A band of Achaean warriors have captured our slaves,” she announced.

“All of them, Princess?”

Cassandra looked at him sternly; her blue and green eyes did not waver.

“Yes, Princess.” The man said no more; there was far too much else to concern both lords and servants in Troy than this.

“Take the Mazagardi warrior to my chamber,” she ordered. “I myself will lay him out and prepare him for the pyre. He was a very brave man.”

“Yes, Princess.” He did her bidding at once.

As Myrina breasted the hilltop, an astonishing sight lay before her. There, crossing their pathway, was a great gang of Achaeans, led by Odysseus. They moved steadily toward the downward path leading to the plain below. They dragged and pushed a heavy wooden battle engine with a great pointed head, the whole thing on wheels. Ropes were fastened to it on all sides and those at the front hauled away, while others pushed from the back. Myrina thought at once of Cassandra’s words: “A horse that moves toward the walls.”