The Firebrand (76 page)

“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.”

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 take 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.

As the halfway mark was reached and the sixth horse fell to the ground, there was a small sound like a very distant thunderclap, and the ground beneath them rolled slightly. An omen? she wondered. Or was Poseidon simply acknowledging His sacrifice?

Apollo Sun Lord,
she implored,
can You not save this city which has been Yours for so long, even if You first took it from Serpent Mother?

The glare of the sun was bright in her eyes, and the well-known voice seemed to crash in her ears like the distant surf.

The sacrifice went on, but she was no longer watching. What was the use of sacrificing to Poseidon if He was bound by the Thunderer—
who is no God of mine, and no God of Troy’s
—to destroy the people who sacrificed to Him, while Apollo Sun Lord stood helplessly aside as the Earth Shaker ravaged the city—
His own city?

If this was all ordained anyhow, why sacrifice and petition the Immortals? Defiance struggled in her, never again to be wholly silent, the old cry still unanswered:
What good are these Gods?

It seemed now that high above the city, as she had seen once in her vision, two mighty figures, fashioned of cloud and storm, stood toe to toe like wrestlers, struggling and casting blows of lightning and thunder at each other. The sound seemed to slam through her consciousness. She swayed, her eyes fixed on the battling Immortals.

Then she stumbled and fell, but lost consciousness before she touched the ground.

When she woke, she was lying with her head in her mother’s lap.

“You should have stayed out of the midday sun,” Hecuba reproved gently. “It was not right to make a disturbance at the sacrifices.”

“Oh, I don’t think the Gods cared that much,” said Kassandra, pulling herself upright through the stabbing pain behind her eyes. “Do you?” But seeing the faintly bewildered look on her mother’s face, she was sure the Queen did not understand what she was talking about; she was not sure herself. “I am sorry; I meant no disrespect to the Gods, of course. We are all here to do Them honor; do you think They will feel in honor bound to return the courtesy?” But all she saw in Hecuba’s eyes was the old look—the look that said
I don’t understand you.

“What in the name of all the Gods are they doing out there?” Helen asked.

“Polyxena heard that they’re building an altar to Poseidon,” Kassandra replied.

Down below, on the open space which had been so long a battlefield, what looked like the whole Akhaian army was lugging lumber, and under the protection of a veritable wall of lashed-together leather shields, hammering and sawing frantically.

“Their priests drew up the plans,” said Khryse, strolling up to join the women.

Paris came toward them and bent down to kiss his mother’s hand.

“It looks unlike any altar I have ever seen,” he said; “more like some form of siege machine. Look, if they build it this high they could shoot down over the walls, or even climb over into the city, like boarders on a ship.”

Hecuba seemed troubled by the tone of his voice. She demanded, “Have you spoken to Hector about this?”

Paris bent his head and turned away, but not before Kassandra could see that his eyes were filled with tears. “How can you bear it when she talks like that?” he murmured.

“The question is not how we can bear it, but that she must,” Kassandra said sharply. “You at least can go out and try to avenge the ills that have broken our mother’s mind and are breaking down our father’s. Tell me, can they really build that thing high enough to climb into the city?”

“Probably; but they shall not while I live,” said Paris. “I must send to rally all the remaining charioteers and archers.” He kissed Helen, and went down the stairs. Soon after, they heard the battle cry as Paris and the remaining chariots dashed breakneck at the structure, shooting flights of arrows that all but darkened the sky. The wild charge actually knocked off one corner of the structure, sending it down with a crash, and half a dozen men fell screaming to the ground.

The Akhaian soldiers broke and began to run, with Trojans in hot pursuit in their chariots, cutting them down as fast as they could. When they were in full retreat and appeared to be trying to run as far as the ships, Paris called off the chase and rode back to the unprotected structure. Finding a barrel of tar on the site and sloshing it liberally about, he set the whole construction alight. As it burned, the Trojans heard the cries of Agamemnon uselessly trying to rally his men, and they rode back inside the walls before Agamemnon could assemble the Akhaians together for a renewed attack.

The Trojans on the walls were cheering wildly. It was the only battle they had clearly won since the burning of the Akhaian ships. Paris came up and knelt before Priam.

“If they want to build an altar to Poseidon, they will not build it on Trojan ground, sir.”

“Well done,” said Priam, embracing him heartily, and Helen came to help him out of his armor.

“You’re wounded,” she said, seeing him flinch as she removed the vambrace from his upper arm.