The Firebrand

CHAPTER 3

The rebuilding began almost at once in the Sunlord's house. So many buildings had been destroyed, and some on such a scale that, Kassandra thought, it would demand the fabulous reputed strength of the Titans to set the walls up again. Some of the great stones could not be restored with the labour currently at their disposal; too many of the able-bodied men in the city were out there fighting Akhaians under Hector's command.

Thanks to Kassandra's timely warning, no lives had been lost in Apollo's Temple. A few of the priests had been injured -broken legs, twisted shoulders, a shattered ankle - by falling over stones which were no longer where they were supposed to be, and there were a good many burns incurred while extinguishing fires. One or two of the serpents had escaped in the confusion, or taken refuge under fallen stones, and had not yet been found. One of the oldest priestesses had gone mad with fright and had not spoken a rational word since; they treated her with herbal potions and played soothing music, but the most experienced healers felt it unlikely that she would ever fully recover her wits.

Still, comparatively, Apollo's household had escaped lightly. In the Temple of the Maiden, it was said, many priestesses died when the roof of their dormitory fell in. No one knew how many had been killed and Kassandra was frantic about her sister Polyxena, but had no leisure to seek news of her. She comforted herself thinking if Polyxena were dead they would send her word.

As always the poorest quarter, with their flimsy wooden houses and inadequately guarded open fires, had suffered most. If the quake had come a few hours earlier it would have been worse, but since the hour was late, fires lighted for cooking the evening meal had mostly been extinguished.

Still, a dreadful number of dead lay in the streets, except where the burning houses had given them funeral pyres. Some corpses still lay under fallen buildings which would have to be torn down to recover them, as the ghosts of the unburied dead all too frequently sent pestilence in revenge. The priests of Apollo worked night and day, but it would take time, and everyone feared the vengeance of so many unburied corpses.

Nor had Priam's palace escaped unscathed. The buildings were of Titan stone that had resisted even the strength of Poseidon's fury, but one room had collapsed - the room where the three sons of Paris and Helen were sleeping. Most of Priam's family, including Paris himself and Helen were uninjured.

Helen's son by Menelaus, young Nikos, had been hiding with his playmate, Astyanax, from their nurses. The two children had been sleeping in a courtyard out of doors (which they had actually been forbidden to do) and both boys had escaped unhurt - and unpunished. Still, the palace was plunged into grief for Paris's sons, and the truce had been briefly extended because of the rites and burial of the children.

Kassandra went down to the women's quarters of the palace—since none of the boys had been as old as seven, the warriors would take no official notice of their deaths, little children still being under the women's care. Paris was there, attempting to comfort Helen. She looked pale and weary, and Nikos, who had been officially committed to his step-father's care only a few days before, was there too, as if to remind his mother that she still had a son.

Helen came at once to Kassandra and embraced her.

"You tried to warn me, sister, and I am grateful to you."

"I am so sorry," Kassandra said. "I only wish—"

"I know," Helen said. "This is not a new grief to me. My second daughter died; she was a year younger than Hermione, and two years older than Nikos. She never breathed, and when Nikos was born strong and healthy, so that I had both a Queen for Sparta, and a son for Menelaus to bring up as a warrior, I swore I would bear no more children; but nothing went as I had decided."

"It seldom does, in this world of mortals," Kassandra said. Paris approached them in time to hear this and said with an angry glare at Kassandra, "So have you come to gloat at us?"

"No," she said wearily, "only to tell you how very sorry I am."

"We need not your sympathy, you crow of ill omen!" Paris said wrathfully. "Your very presence brings us more evil fortune!"

"Be quiet, Paris! For shame!" Helen said. "Have you forgotten that she came to try and warn us of Poseidon's wrath? Or what welcome she had for her pains?"

Paris only scowled; but Kassandra thought he did look somewhat ashamed. Well, she could live without his good opinion; she would rather have Helen's.

The children were duly cremated and their ashes properly entombed; the truce lasted two more days and then was broken by a Trojan captain (he, like the Akhaian who undid the truce before, said that one of the Gods had prompted him, though he refused to say which one) who let off an arrow and wounded Menelaus, painfully, but, (unfortunately, Priam said) not fatally. If Menelaus had been killed, the King said, the Akhaians would have had a good excuse to call it all off and go home. Kassandra was not so sure; perhaps the Gods were, really eager to destroy the city as she had seen in her - had it been only a dream?

Only the women were troubled by the end of the truce. Hector, Kassandra thought, was glad to get back to the fighting. In his chariot he led forth the Trojan armies the next day, riding up and down the long line of foot soldiers, encouraging them while the Akhaians were gathering for battle. The women, as usual, watched from the wall.

"Hector is certainly the finest charioteer," said Andromache, and Creusa laughed.

"You mean he has the finest charioteer," she said, "and I think Aeneas comes at least close to that. Who is Hector's charioteer? He drives like the wind - or a fiend."

"Troilus, Priam's youngest son," Andromache said. "He wanted to take part in the fighting, but Hector wanted the boy under his own eyes. He's worried because he is no more than twelve—and still unseasoned in battle."

"Does Hector really think Troilus will be safer in his chariot? It seems to me that is where the fighting will be thickest, and certainly Hector will have no leisure to protect him," Kassandra said, but Andromache only shrugged.

"Don't ask me what Hector thinks," she said.

Of course, Kassandra thought, Troilus was nothing to her, only her husband's youngest brother. Andromache would mourn his death, but only in the same way that she grieved for Helen's children; from family duty, no more.

Helen still looked wasted and worn with sorrow, her eyes red and burning, and her hair lustreless; she had hardly troubled to pull it back out of her eyes; much less to scent it and brush it with oil. She wore an old bedraggled gown, it was all but impossible to recall the incredible glowing beauty which had inhabited her as the Goddess of Love. Yet Kassandra remembered, with the tenderness she always felt for her sister-in-law. Is this a sign of Paris's neglect? Was it that he cared so little for his children? She could guess Helen was grateful that her Nikos had not been lost in the earthquake, yet she sensed that Paris's sons were dearer to Helen than the son she had borne Menelaus.

She turned her eyes down to the battlefield, where Aeneas, in his splendid chariot, was riding up and down the line, calling out what she imagined was a challenge. Battle among opposing armies, she had seen, usually took the form of a series of duels between champions. It was not at all like the pitched battles she had fought when she rode with the Amazons, where the battle was a muddle of fighting where you killed as many as you could, any way you could.

"There," said Creusa, "he has found someone to take his challenge. Who is that?"

"Diomedes," said Helen.

"The one who exchanged armor—?"

"The same, yes," Andromache said, "but I think Aeneas is a stronger fighter, certainly with that chariot and those horses—"

"His mother was a priestess of Aphrodite - some say Aphrodite's self," Creusa said, "and she gifted him with these horses when he came to Troy - look, what's going on?"

Below them, Diomedes had ridden like a madman at Aeneas, and managed with his spear to overturn the chariot, tumbling Aeneas out on the ground. Creusa screamed, but her husband sprang to his feet, evidently unharmed, his sword out and ready. But Diomedes had cut the harness of the horses and seized their reins; it was obvious from his gestures that he claimed horses and chariot as his prize. Aeneas shouted in protest and rage, so loudly that the women could clearly hear his voice but not the words; he turned on Diomedes, and as they watched, he seemed before their eyes to grow taller, and his head to glow with a shining aura. It flashed through Kassandra's mind, Why, I did not know his hair is the same colour as Helen's! Then she knew that she saw before her the beautiful Goddess herself, turning on Diomedes in the fury of an Immortal. Diomedes visibly flinched; he had not been prepared for this, but his courage did not fail; he dashed at the towering form of Aphrodite and thrust with his sword, wounding the form of the Goddess in the hand.

Abruptly it was Aeneas who stood on the field, screaming like a woman, and shaking his hand from which blood was pouring.

Diomedes did not lose the advantage, but put up shield and sword in defense. Aeneas, however, attacked wildly, and after a moment Diomedes went down full length on the ground; a few seconds later, Agamemnon and four of his men were backing up Diomedes, driving Aeneas off in a fury of blows. Hector's chariot dashed by, and Hector jumped to the ground, briefly engaged Agamemnon in a wild exchange of swordplay, and lifted Aeneas into his chariot. They dashed back toward the gates of Troy, while a handful of Hector's soldiers drove off Agamemnon and his men from Aeneas's chariot and managed to recapture the horses.

"He's hurt," Creusa cried, and ran down the stairs, the other women following in haste, just in time to greet Hector's chariot. Hector swung down and motioned them away.

"Get back so we can get these gates closed, unless you want Agamemnon and half the Akhaian army in here," he said. The women surged back, and the men joined hands pushing the gates closed, cutting down one luckless Akhaian soldier who was trapped inside.

"Throw him over the wall to his friends," Hector said. "They want him, and we don't."

Creusa was holding Aeneas tight, summoning healers to bandage up his hand. He seemed dazed; but when Kassandra came and took over the bandaging, he smiled up at her and asked, "What happened?"

"If you don't know," said Hector, "how are we to tell? You were fighting Diomedes and suddenly you stopped…'

"It was not you but Aphrodite," Helen said. "She fought through you—"

Aeneas chuckled. "Well, I don't remember anything except being in a rage at Diomedes for trying to claim my chariot and horses; the next thing I remember, my hand was bleeding and I heard someone scream—"

"That was you," Hector said, "or the Goddess—"

Aeneas laughed. "The Beautiful One," he said,"screaming all the way back to Olympos, I dare say, to sit in Zeus Thunderer's lap and tell him all about the nasty men fighting. I hope the Thunderer commands her, in no uncertain terms, to stay off the battlefield from now on; it's no place for ladies - not even when they're Goddesses," he added.

Kassandra finished tying up his hand.

His eyes smiled at her. To her he still bore the glamour of the Goddess, and her heart beat faster. If he sought her again she knew she would never be able to resist him. Is this the revenge of the Goddess because I would not serve her? Has Aphrodite conquered me when Apollo could not?

She had finished the bandaging; it was with reluctance that she let go of his hand. There was a little stall nearby where the soldiers bought bread and wine at mid-day; Hector went to it and brought back two goblets of wine and gave one to Aeneas, who shrugged it away. Creusa said, "Drink it, you have lost blood," and he shook his head.

"I've cut myself worse and lost more blood shaving," he said, but he sipped at the wine and laughed.

"I wonder if they will tell the same mad tales as they did when the Goddess appeared when Paris fought Menelaus?"

"No doubt," Kassandra said. He was looking straight at her.

"The Akhaians seem to like that kind of story."

"Well, the Gods will do as they will, and not as we ask them to," Aeneas said. "Yet by my divine ancestress, I wish they would go away and let us get on with the war. It's not their business, it's ours."

"I think perhaps it is their business more than ours," Helen said, "and we have very little to say about it."

"But why? Why should the Gods care who wins a mortals' war?" Andromache asked.

Hector shrugged. "Why not?"

And to that not even Kassandra ventured an answer.

"There was a time when I believed that we were altogether at the mercy of the Akhaian troops," Hector said. "But now that Akhilles has abandoned them—"

"That can hardly go on for long," Helen said. "I cannot imagine the great Akhilles remaining for long sulking in his tent like a little boy…'

"But that is exactly what Akhilles is like," Aeneas said. "A cruel, arrogant schoolboy."

Hector said, without changing expression, "We must not question the decrees of the Gods."

Aeneas replied, "If the Gods make decisions which would be set aside as the decisions of the mad, perhaps they are not to be obeyed blindly. Perhaps—" But he lowered his voice and looked round fearfully as he spoke, "perhaps they are testing us to see if we have the wit to stand against them."

"Maybe they are headstrong like Akhilles," Helen said, "and if they cannot have their own way in a game they will smash all the playthings."

"I think it is like that," Hector said, "and we are the playthings."