The Firebrand (75 page)

“Oh, I can understand why you feel this way,” Kassandra said, “but this is not even your war. I wish you would all leave before this day’s fight.”

Penthesilea looked her straight in the face. “Have you had an omen, Bright Eyes?”

“Not really,” Kassandra said, then realized she should have said yes; maybe the Amazon would have believed her. She flung her arms around Penthesilea and began to cry.

“I wish you wouldn’t” was all she could say. She clung to the older woman, weeping, and Penthesilea scowled.

“Come, now, where’s the warrior I myself trained?” she asked. “You are behaving like a weak house-bred woman! There—that’s right—dry those bright eyes, my love, and let me go.”

Reluctantly, Kassandra wrenched herself free, trying to stifle her sobs. “But Akhilles is invulnerable; they say a God protects him and no man can kill him.”

“Well, Paris boasted that no man could beat him at archery,” Penthesilea said with a droll smile. “Perhaps that only means it is reserved for a woman to kill him. And if I am not ordained to do it, perhaps another of my women may do so to avenge me. Darling, no mortal man is invulnerable; and if any God protects such a monster, then such a God should be ashamed. We have given too much power to Akhilles; he is a man like any other.”

Nevertheless, he did kill Hector,
Kassandra thought, but there was nothing to say, for Penthesilea was right. They walked together, surrounded by the other Amazons, to where the horses and chariots were forming up for the attack.

Penthesilea put her arm around Kassandra’s waist.

“Why, child, you are still shaking!”

“I can’t help being afraid for you,” Kassandra said in a muffled voice.

Penthesilea frowned at her; then her voice altered to tenderness. “This can be no part of a warrior’s life, Bright Eyes. I don’t want anyone to see you weeping like this. Come, darling, let me go.”

I can’t bear to see her go! She will never return. . . .
But Kassandra reluctantly unwound her arms from her kinswoman’s waist. Penthesilea kissed her and said, “Kassandra, whatever may happen, know that to me you have been more than a daughter, and dearer than any of my lovers. You have been my friend.”

Kassandra stood aside, watching through a blur of tears as her aunt swung up into her saddle. The Amazons closed ranks about her, talking in low tones of battle strategies; then the gate swung open and they rode out.

Kassandra knew she should go to her mother in the palace, or to the Temple to oversee the serpents—all was in confusion there now that the death of the Great Snake was known; but instead, she went up onto the wall to watch as Penthesilea and her group rode forth against the Akhaians. Half a dozen of the Trojan chariots rode out first, directly engaging the massed forces with spears and swords. Then like thunder the charge of the Amazon horses raced down on Akhilles and his men.

They came together with a shock of spears clearly heard by the women on the wall. When the dust subsided, two of the Amazons were lying on the ground, their horses fallen. One scrambled to her feet and cut her assailant down with her spear; the other lay motionless, her horse struggling and rolling away, trying to rise. An Akhaian soldier saw its struggles and quickly cut its throat, then knelt over the fallen woman to wrench off her fine armor. Kassandra saw that Penthesilea had survived the first charge; her horse had taken a spear wound, but was still on its feet.

The Amazon Queen swung her mount and charged right through a cluster of Akhilles’ soldiers, knocking them aside, killing more than one with her spear-thrusts. Kassandra saw the very moment when Akhilles became aware of her: when she cut down a man who must have been one of his own personal bodyguards. She saw the leap he made, facing the Amazon as if inviting her to get down and fight him face to face.

Penthesilea dismounted to face him head-on, sword to sword. She was actually taller than he was, and had a longer reach with the sword. They clashed together, with a flurry of sword-strokes too swift to follow. Akhilles reeled and for a moment went down on his knees. He made some signal, so that his men rushed in and immediately engaged all the other warrior women. Then, swiftly as a striking snake, he was up, his sword moving almost too quickly to be seen. Penthesilea retreated a few steps until she stood against her horse’s flank. Then his relentless sword pressed her until she went down. Kassandra heard the breath sob out of her as Akhilles fell to the Amazon’s side. What was the madman doing? He tore at her clothes in a frenzy, leaned forward and, as they watched in horror, violently raped the corpse.

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.”

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 had 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.