The Firebrand (46 page)

“Every animal has a proper mating season,” she said. “We tried to remind them of that, but they would not hear. So we told them that we would consider it if they would let us go; and they said we should cook them a meal, because men in cities had women to cook for them, look after their needs. They even forced some of the women who were already pregnant to bed with them!

“So we cooked them a meal; and you can imagine what kind of meal it was.” She grinned fiercely. “But some women wished to spare the fathers of their children—Earth Mother alone knows where they got such ideas. And so some of them had been warned, and when they were all spewing and purging, we made ready to ride; but a few of them forced us to fight. Well, we could not kill them all; and so we lost many of our number: the traitorous ones stayed and did not return to us.”

“They stayed with the men who—who had done this to you?”

“Aye; they said they were weary of fighting and herding,” Penthesilea said scornfully. “They will bed with men in return for their bread—no better than harlots in your cities. It is a perversion of those Akhaians; they say, even, that our Earth Mother is no more than the wife of the Thunder Lord Zeus. . . .”

“Blasphemy!” Kassandra agreed. “This was not Cheiron’s tribe?”

“No; them we can trust; they cling, like us, to the old ways,” Penthesilea said. “But when this year Elaria led the women to the men’s village, we made them swear an oath even they dared not break, and we made them leave with us all the weaned children. We hide here in caves because with our strong young women away, we have no warriors to guard our herds. . . .”

Kassandra found nothing to say. It was the end of a way of life which had lasted thousands of years on these plains; but what could they do? She said, “Has there been much of a drought? Cheiron told me that food is harder to find.”

“That too; and some tribes have been greedy to own too many horses, and grazed more than the plains could feed, so they would have them to sell in return for cloth and metal pots and I know not what—and so it is that those of us who treat the earth well are dying. Earth Mother has not stretched out Her hand to punish them. I know not . . . perhaps there are no Gods who care anymore what men do. . . .” Her face looked strained and old.

“I do not understand,” Adrea said. “Why does it trouble you so, that some of your women have chosen to live as all women now live within the cities? You women could live well, with husbands to care for you and look after your horses; and you could keep your sons as well as your daughters, and you need not spend all your time fighting to defend yourselves. Many, many women live so and find nothing wrong with it; are you saying they are all wrong? Why do you want to live separately from men? Are you not women like any others?”

Penthesilea sighed, but instead of the instant scornful comment Kassandra had expected, she thought for a moment; Kassandra had the feeling that she really wanted this elderly city woman who so strongly disapproved of her to understand.

At last she said, “It has been our custom that we live among our own kind and are free. I do not like to live inside walls; and why should we women spin and weave and cook? Do not men wear clothes, that they should not make their own? And surely men eat; why should women cook all food that is eaten? The men in their own villages cook well enough when there are no women at hand to cook for them. So why should women live as slaves to men?”

“It does not seem slavery to me,” the woman protested, “only fair exchange; do you say men are enslaved to women when they herd the horses and goats, then?”

Penthesilea said passionately, “But the women do these things as if it were an exchange for sharing their beds and bearing their children. Like the harlots in your cities who sell themselves. Cannot you see the difference? Why should women have to live with men when they can care for their own herds and feed themselves from their own gardens, and live free?”

“But if a woman wishes for children, she needs a man. Even you, Queen Penthesilea . . .”

Penthesilea said, “May I ask without giving offense, ladies: why is it that you have not married?”

Kara spoke first, saying, “I would gladly have married; but I pledged I would remain with Queen Hecuba while she wished for my company. I have not missed marriage; her children were born into my lap, and I have shared in their upbringing. And like Lady Kassandra, I have met no man I loved enough to separate me from my beloved Lady.”

“I honor you for that,” Penthesilea said. “And you, Adrea?”

“Alas, I was neither beautiful nor rich; so no man ever offered for me,” the old woman said. “And now that time is past. So I serve my Queen and her daughters, even to following Lady Kassandra into this Goddess-forgotten wilderness filled with Kentaurs and other such wild folk. . . .”

“So there are other reasons than simple wickedness why a woman might choose not to marry,” Penthesilea said. “If it is well for you not to marry out of loyalty to your Queen, why should Kassandra not remain loyal to her God?”

“It is not that she does not marry,” said Adrea; “it is that she does not
wish
to marry. How can one sympathize with a woman like that?”

This was too much for Kassandra; she exploded with words she had been repressing for days. “I have not asked for your sympathy, any more than for your company; I did not invite you to join me, and you are welcome to return to Troy, where you will be surrounded by proper women, and I shall travel to Colchis with my kinswomen and their escort,” she said hotly. “I have no need of your protection.”

“Well, really,” said Adrea huffily. “I have known you since you were a baby, my lady, and what I say is no more than your own mother would say, and all spoken for your own good—”

Penthesilea said peacefully, “I beg you not to quarrel; you have a long road before you. Kassandra, my dear child, even if I were free to travel with you myself to Colchis, I could not keep you safe on your road. I pray that Priam’s name and Apollo’s peace will do so. Perhaps it is this war; perhaps it is the spread of the Akhaian ways now that the Minoan world has fallen. You have not even told me why you are traveling to Colchis; is it simply that the Lady is your old friend, or has Priam decided to send even so far afield for allies?”

She told Penthesilea about the earthquake and the defection of the Temple serpents, and the Amazon blanched at the omen.

“Still I will trust the Sun Lord,” Kassandra said. “I have none other in whom to trust; and if I can come safely to Colchis with no other safeguard than His blessing, I shall take that as a sign of His continued goodwill.”

“May He bless you, then, and guide you,” said Penthesilea, “and may Serpent Mother Herself await you and give you blessing in Colchis—and everywhere else, my dear.”

Soon after this they went to rest; but Kassandra lay long awake.

When she slept, her dreams were restless; she was seeking something—a lost weapon, a bow perhaps—but whenever she thought she had found it, it was not the one she wanted, but was broken, or had a broken string, or something of that sort.

What was it that the Gods were saying to her? She was a priestess; she had been taught that all dreams were messages from the Gods, if she could only find the meaning. That she could not interpret this dream meant only that she was, as she had long suspected, unfit to receive the Sun Lord’s favor, that He had withdrawn from her. Try as she might, she could gain from it only a faint ill omen that whatever she sought on this quest, she would not find it.

In the morning, Penthesilea bestowed gifts on her and her women—new saddles, and a warm robe of horsehide.

“You will need it, believe me, in crossing the great plain,” she said. “The winters have been more severe latterly, and there still may be snow.”

As she embraced her in farewell, Kassandra felt like crying.

“When shall we meet again, Kinswoman?”

“When the Gods will it. If it should ever be the will of Earth Mother that I end my days in a city, I will come and end them in Troy; that I vow to you, my child. I do not think your mother would fail to welcome the last of her sisters, nor would Priam turn me from his door. Perhaps I should come with my warriors and seek to drive forth some of those Akhaians.”

“When that day comes, I will fight at your side,” promised Kassandra; but Penthesilea only embraced her with great tenderness and said, “That is not your fate in this life, my love; make no pledges you cannot keep,” and rode away from them without looking back.

THE WINTER indeed lingered long on the great plain, and within four days after they had spent the night with Penthesilea and the remnant of her Amazons, the sky darkened, and snow began to fall so heavily that Kassandra wondered how her attendants could follow the narrow and ill-marked trail at all. All that day it snowed, and all the next, and although they continued to travel, they encountered almost no sign of human life. Once, far away through the snow, they saw a watching Kentaur outlined against the horizon; but when they would have signaled to him, he wheeled his horse and galloped away.

Kassandra was not surprised; from what Penthesilea had said, she knew that the inhabitants of the great plain, never particularly willing to trust outsiders, were even less inclined to do so now. It was fortunate that she had no need to trade with them for food or any other commodities. Day after day they plodded across the plain, their animals’ hooves cutting through the soggy mud where there had been frozen grass, the snow never thick enough to be a danger and the dull rains never enough to thaw more than a few inches of the frozen ground. The great steppes were empty and barren; they found little enough food to supplement their dreary travel rations, and Kassandra grew weary of riding over the empty lands, crawling under an endless sky which seemed as gray and hostile as the faces of her companions.

Day followed sullen day while the moon thinned and faded and then swelled again; how long could this winter endure? Then, soon after a vagrant sight of a full moon through ragged clouds, she woke to hear rushing winds and a heavy, thick dripping rain which seemed to be carrying away the very land itself.

The new morning brought a countryside transformed, with little rivers flowing everywhere over the surface of the ground, shining in a new strong sun, and grass springing up everywhere under warm, soft winds. It soon grew so warm that Kassandra folded away her horsehide tunic and rode in her soft cloth chemise.

On one of these spring days they came to a village. It was no more than a cluster of round stone huts on the plain; but surrounding it were fields of greening winter grain uncovered from the fast-vanishing snow. Kassandra remembered the blighted village of her journey with the Amazons years before, with so many of its children deformed. But if this was the same village, it must somehow have survived the blight, for such children as she saw looked strong and healthy. Later, though, she saw some of the older girls and boys who had only two fingers on a hand. Before this they had seen no human dwelling for eight or ten days, and when the headwoman of the village came out to meet them, she seemed glad to see them as well.

“The winter has lain long on the land,” she said, “and we have seen no humans all this winter but a little band of Kentaurs, so weakened with starvation that they made no attempts on our women, but only begged us for food of any sort.”

“That seems sad,” Kassandra said, but the headwoman wrinkled her face in disdain.

“You are a priestess; it is your work to have compassion even for such as they, I suppose. But they have terrorized us too often for me to have any feeling save satisfaction when I see them brought so low. With luck they will all starve, and then we need never fear them again. Have you metals or weapons for trade? No one passes through here for trade these days; such metals as they have are all bound for the war in Troy, and we can get none.”

“I am sorry; I have no weapons but my own,” said Kassandra. “But we will buy some of your pots if you still make them.”

The pots were brought out, and lengthily examined; dark fell while Kassandra’s party was still looking them over, and the headwoman invited them to dine at her table and continue the trading in the morning. She placed one of the stone huts at their disposal, and bade them to dinner in the central hut. The food was meager indeed—meat that seemed to be some kind of ground squirrel, boiled in a stew with bitter acorns and tasteless white roots; but at least it was freshly cooked. Kassandra, recalling the blight, was somewhat reluctant to eat here at all, but told herself not to trouble about it—
for though I am still, I suppose, of childbearing age, I am not wed, nor likely to be. And in any case, while these ladies sleep one at either side of my bed, I am scarcely likely to get myself with child.

If this village had not somehow recovered from the blight,
she thought,
it would have vanished when every soul in it died.

A FEW DAYS later they sighted the iron gates of Colchis, as high and as impressive as ever, and Kassandra attired herself not in her leather riding clothes and chemise, but in her finest Trojan robes, dyed in brilliant colors, and had one of her waiting-women dress her hair in the elaborate plaited headdress she wore in the Sun Lord’s Temple. At least Queen Imandra would greet her as a princess of Troy, not as a wandering supplicant.

They were welcomed at the city’s iron gates as envoys from Troy and bidden to lodge at the palace. Kassandra, saying she must first pay her respects at the Sun Lord’s Temple, went to His large shrine at the city’s very center, and sacrificed a pair of doves to Apollo of the Long Bow. After that, she was taken to the palace and conducted to a luxurious guest suite, where bath-women and dressing-maids were put at her disposal. During the long process of bathing—or rather, of being bathed—she reflected that during the long journey she had all but forgotten the taste of luxury. She enjoyed the steaming water, the fragrant oils, the gentle massaging of her flesh with brushes and the soft hands of the women. Then they dressed her in fine guest-garments and conducted her into the presence-chamber of Queen Imandra.