The Firebrand

CHAPTER 7

The Akhaians made no effort to break the truce during the seven days of funeral games for Patroklos, nor during the next three days which were devoted to a feast at which the prizes were-distributed. Kassandra attended neither the Games nor the feast, but heard about them from Aeneas. He won the javelin-casting, and gained a gold cup. Hector was disgruntled because he had entered the wrestling, and had been beaten by the Akhaian captain called Big Ajax, but was a little comforted by the fact that his son Astyanax won the boys' foot-race, though he was smaller than any other boy in the contest. "What did he win?" Kassandra asked.

"A silken tunic from Egypt, dyed crimson; it's too big for him, and too fine to be cut up for a child but he can wear it when he is grown," Aeneas said. "And at the end of the feast, they thanked us for our company at the games and said they'd meet us on the battlefield in the morning. So let us sleep, love, for they will blow the horn to rouse us an hour before daylight."

He stretched out and drew her into his arms, and she put her arms around him joyfully. But after a moment she asked, "Was Akhilles there?"

"Aye; Patroklos being killed has made him even more angry than any insult from Agamemnon," Aeneas said. "You should have seen him look at Hector; it was as if he were the Gorgon and could turn your brother to stone. You know I'm no coward, but it's just as well it's not my fate to go up against Akhilles."

"He's a madman," Kassandra said with a shudder, then stopped further talk by pulling Aeneas's head down to her own and kiss-mg him. They fell asleep in one another's arms, but after a time it seemed to Kassandra that she woke and rose - no, for, looking back, she could see herself still in the bed, still lying entwined in Aeneas's arms.

Light as a ghost, she drifted through the temple, hovering where the Amazons still sat wakeful in their rooms, sharpening their weapons; drifted down toward the palace; in the rooms where Paris and Helen lived, Paris sleeping heavily, Helen with tear-stained cheeks wandering through the room where her children had been killed. She still has Paris; but is this enough? If we are defeated, what will become of her? Will Menelaus drag her back to Sparta, only to kill her? For a moment it seemed to her that she saw the Akhaian captains casting lots for the conquered women, dragging them on board the black ships which filled the harbor so full of filth and dread…

No; that was no more than a dream; it might never happen after all. The death of Patroklos and the return of Akhilles had changed some tide in the currents of what might befall, she knew that; now even the Gods must make new plans. The night appeared to sparkle with glimmers of moonlight, and it seemed, as she drifted ghostlike down toward the Akhaian camp, that great forms drifted through the dark. No mortal thing, she knew, could see her in this form, but the Gods might catch sight of her as she spied in this world of ghosts…

She had no idea where she was going, but for some unknown reason a firm sense of purpose drove her on. She lingered a moment in Agamemnon's tent; he lay sleeping—he was not really larger than life-size, only a narrowly built, mean-looking man with a troubled look on his face. This man was married to Helen's sister, and had offered his own daughter as sacrifice for a fair wind… did the Gods of the Akhaians truly demand such hideous things or did they have priests who said so to suit their own corrupt purposes? She supposed that an evil man was evil everywhere, and among the Akhaians it must be easier. As she lingered, he rolled over on his back and opened his eyes; it seemed to Kassandra that he could see her, and perhaps if he was dreaming he could.

He said in a whisper - though she did not think he actually spoke - 'Have you been sent to tempt me, maiden?"

She replied, "You are only dreaming I am here. I am the spirit of the daughter whom you sent to death, and may the Gods send you evil dreams." She drifted through the wall of the tent, but behind her she heard him wail in sudden terrified waking. She would not wish to be he this night.

She moved on and found herself in the tent of Akhilles. The Akhaian prince was awake, stretched on his back, his eyes wide open; and lying on a stretcher at the other side of the tent lay the body of Patroklos. Kassandra did not understand; he should surely have been burned, or buried or even exposed to the great scavenger birds, as some of the tribes of the great steppes did. Yet the body had been embalmed; and Akhilles kept vigil beside it. His strange pale eyes were swollen as if he had been weeping for a long time; and he was crying inaudibly.

"Oh, Mother!" he cried out through his sobs, and Kassandra had no idea whether he was invoking his earthly mother or calling upon a Goddess. "Oh, Mother, you told me that Zeus Thunderer had promised me honor and glory, and look what has happened to me; taunted by Agamemnon and now my only friend is gone from me!"

She thought, You should have been the kind of person who-could have more than one friend in a lifetime. She heard him moan wordlessly again and then cry out to Patroklos:

"How could you leave me? And what shall I say to your father? He told you to stay at home and mind the affairs of your own kingdom; but I pledged to him that no harm should come to you, and that I would bring you home covered with honor and glory! Aye, I will bring you home - but there is no honor or glory for you now." His sobbing became uncontrollable.

For a moment Kassandra almost pitied the Akhaian prince's grief, but she had heard too much of his mad battle-lust. He killed without mercy, inflicting as much suffering as he could; but when it came his turn to suffer he had little bravery. And if he had come out and fought for himself this would never have happened; Patroklos had been killed for being where Akhilles should have been. Suddenly she knew what she had come to do.

"Akhilles," she called softly, imitating the accent she had heard in the Akhaian camp.

He sat up, staring around him, his eyes rolling with terror.

"Who calls me?"

"Ghosts have no names," she said, deepening her voice. "I am numbered among the dead."

"Is it you, Patroklos? Why have you come to haunt me, my friend? Why do you stay here rather than passing to your rest?"

"While I remain unburied I cannot rest; my spirit remains to haunt those who compassed my death."

"Then go and haunt the Trojan Hector," Akhilles cried in terror, his eyes almost starting from his head. "It was his spear cast out your life, not mine!"

"Alas," Kassandra wailed, "I remain here for I was killed in your armor, and in that place which should have been yours in battle—" and then, with sudden inspiration, "Do you love me no more because I have passed the doors of death?"

Akhilles wailed, "The dead have no more place among the living; reproach me not, or I shall die of grief—"

"I do not reproach you," Kassandra moaned in the sepulchral voice. "I leave that to your own conscience; you know I died the death that should have been yours—"

"No!" Akhilles cried out. "No! I will not hear this! Help! Guards!"

What the devil! she thought. Does be truly believe that his guards can cast out a ghost? Four armed men rushed into his tent.

"You called us, my prince?" asked the first of them, avoiding looking at the body of Patroklos where it lay.

"Search the tent and the camp," Akhilles commanded. "Some intruder has entered unseen and spoke dreadful things to me in the voice of Patroklos. Find him and drag him here - and I will have his eyeballs on sticks to roast! I will tear out his gizzard and fry it before his eyes! I will - but find him for me first!" He shook his fist and the men rushed out.

Her mission finished, Kassandra drifted after them, and heard one of them say, "I knew it. He's been mad since he shut himself up in his tent and it's driven him further out of his senses, it has."

"Do you think there's a spy?"

"I wouldn't wear meself out looking, lad," said the first speaker cynically. "Inside his poor sick brain, that's where ye'll find your ghost."

Kassandra would have laughed if she had been capable of it. Like a wraith of fog she moved up the long hill to the windswept heights of Troy, and silently slipped downward and merged with her body, still wrapped in Aeneas's arms.

She slept without dreams.

Now that she had a man among the warriors, she told herself she understood the impulse which sent the women down to the wall to watch the fighting. She left Phyllida to care for the serpents, and the other priestesses to the task of healing the wounded. This morning the line of chariots seemed more brilliantly painted and polished, weapons shining with a more terrible menace that ever before. Hector was leading, flanked by Aeneas and Paris, armored and imposing as if they were the

Gods of war in person. Behind the line of chariots came long lines of foot-soldiers in their polished leather armor with their javelins and spears. She thought, if she were among the Akhaians and saw this formidable host approaching, she might well run away.

The Argive troops, already lined up along the earthworks they had built between the plain and the shoreline where their ships were beached, did not flinch even when Hector gave the command to charge, and the Trojan war cry rang out. The chariots thundered forward, toward the unbreaking Argive line. The Akhaians loosed a flight of arrows and, as if in one concerted movement, the Trojan shields went up; most of the arrows fell harmlessly on the roof thus formed by the shields of the Trojans. A second flight of arrows quickly followed the first; one or two soldiers in the ranks fell, or stumbled out of line back toward the walls; but this did not interrupt the charge of the chariots.

A great cry went up from both ranks; at the top of the earthworks stood a great bronze chariot ablaze with golden wings and a rayed sun, and in it a glittering figure; Akhilles had joined the battle, dominating the line of Akhaians as a rooster dominates a henyard; everyone on either side of the battle seemed smaller and drabber by contrast.

Shouting, he raised his mighty shield, and charged down the earthworks at Hector like a fury. Jumping out of the chariot he cried his challenge. Hector was ready to oblige him. He cast his javelin which rebounded from Akhilles's shield, then, sword in one hand and shield in the other, swiftly engaged Akhilles in combat. Even where she stood Kassandra could feel the shock of that first blow, from which they both reeled back, staggering, several feet.

She knew that Andromache was beside her, clutching at her arm so strongly that her nails dug into Kassandra's skin. This battle had been inevitable from the moment Patroklos was killed.

Kassandra shrieked with excitement. Behind the foot soldiers, who swept along to catch the Akhaian soldiers between the chariots, came the horses of the Amazons. Their arrows and swords dispatched many of the foot soldiers. Hector, engaged with Akhilles, now seemed taller and more formidable; Kassandra felt it was not her brother, but the shining War-God himself. Hector wounded Akhilles and the Akhaian went down; a cheer from the Trojan ranks seemed to revitalize him, and he was up again, beating Hector back toward his chariot. The Trojan prince jumped up and was fighting Akhilles from the step of the chariot, then pivoted the wheels and knocked Akhilles down as he rode almost over him. Akhilles recovered and flung his javelin. It rebounded from Hector's armor, but he followed it up with a mighty sword-slash that struck Hector in the neck.

Hector slumped in the chariot. Troilus grabbed the reins, and, knocking Akhilles down again, made a dash for the walls. Then the Amazons with their spears swept toward Akhilles but he was surrounded by at least two dozen of his own Myrmidons, who made a solid wall of shields around him. The Amazons were forced to retreat, for although they cut down ten or twelve of Akhilles's men there were always more.

The Myrmidons reached Hector's chariot when it was already under the walls of Troy, then storming after them came Akhilles in his own chariot, with only one horse - he had cut the other loose. He crashed his chariot deliberately into Hector's, spilling young Troilus out on to the ground. The boy landed on his feet and went down beneath the swarming Myrmidons. Andromache was screaming; Kassandra turned to quiet her, and when she looked back again, Akhilles had the reins of Hector's chariot and was racing back toward the Akhaian lines with Hector—or his body—still inside.

Troilus was fighting for his life. One of the Amazons swept up to him, killed three of Akhilles's men and snatched Troilus into her saddle. Paris and Aeneas were in hot pursuit of Akhilles but the men atop the earthworks repelled them with what seemed a wall of javelins on which their horses were impaled. The Amazon charge cut down the javelin wall, and rescued Paris and Aeneas, but their overturned chariots were in Akhaian hands. Akhilles with Hector and his chariot, had vanished from sight.

It took a hard-fought hour for the Trojans to make their way back to the gate, even covered by arrow-fire from the walls; and Andromache met them.

"You couldn't even recover his body?" she shrieked. "You left it in their hands?"

"We did our best," said Paris; he had lost most of his armor, and was leaning on his charioteer, bleeding from a great sword-cut across the thigh. "But with Akhilles leading his men—"

"Akhilles! Curse him forever! May his bones rot unburied on the shores of the Styx!" Andromache broke into a high wild scream of lamentation.

"Hector is dead! Now let Troy perish indeed!"

Hecuba joined in the keening, "He is dead! Our greatest of heroes is dead! Dead or in Akhaian hands—!"

"Oh, he's dead all right," Aeneas said grimly.

"Galls me to admit it, but without the Amazon charge we would all have been dead," said Deiphobos, who had lifted down Troilus from the Amazon saddle and was half carrying him, examining his wounds. Hecuba hurried to him and took him in her arms, beckoning for a healer-priest.

"Ah, my sons! My Hector, my first-born and my last-born in a single hour! Ah, most fateful of all battles! It has begun," Hecuba wailed, and crumpled senseless. Kassandra ran to kneel by her, suddenly terrified that the shock had killed her mother too.

"No, Troilus is alive," said Aeneas, lifting the old woman gently. "You must be strong, Mother, he will need your good care if you are not to lose him too." He turned Troilus over to the healer-priest, who restored him to consciousness with a sip of wine, then examined his wounds. Women were handing round wine; Aeneas took one of the cups and gulped.

"I think tomorrow I will take careful aim at Akhilles from the walls and try to get him off the field before we even venture out."

"He can't be killed that way," Deiphobos said. "That armor of his is God-forged; arrows bounce off it like twigs!"

"Not God-forged," said Penthesilea, "forged of solid iron. Have you any idea what it must weigh? Even my women's metal-tipped Skythian arrows cannot penetrate it."

Paris said in disgust, "There's an old tale that Akhilles is protected by spells so that no wound inflicted by a mortal can bring him down."

"Let me but get a weapon into his flesh," said Aeneas. "I'll guarantee to kill him. But we must go up and break the news to Priam; the worst news of all this year."

Kassandra said between her teeth, "We should have expected this. Hector killed Patroklos; Akhilles was ready for him the minute he put a foot outside the wall. This was not war but murder." And silently she wondered if there was that much difference.

"We must go to Akhilles at once," Aeneas said, "perhaps even before we tell our father; and ask a truce to bury and mourn our brother."

"Do you really think they will give it?" asked Paris sarcastically. "You think too well of them."

"They must grant it," said Aeneas. "We gave a truce for Pat-roklos's funeral games."

"If it comes to that," said Andromache, "I will go myself and kneel to Akhilles and beg back the body of my husband."

"They will return it," said Aeneas. "Akhilles is always talking of honor."

"Only his own, I notice," Kassandra said.

"Well then, his own honor will prompt him to do the honorable thing," Aeneas said. "They know me; let me go then with a delegation of Hector's own guard to bring home his body."

"We must tell Father first," said Troilus, rising from the healer's ministrations, very pale, his head wrapped in bandages. "If you wish it, I will tell him; I am to blame; I let him fall into Akhilles's hands—"

Hecuba embraced him fiercely. "No blame to you, my love. I rejoice that you did not follow him into death." She added, "But yes, go to Priam; nothing could comfort him for the loss of our first-born but the knowledge of the son we still have to bless us—"

"I will go and tell him," Paris said. "But first gather all my brothers; all of us who live still shall stand before him and be ready to comfort him."

"And I," said Kassandra, "I will go to the Maiden's Temple, and tell Polyxena; she and Hector were close in age and they loved each other well."

They had begun to set off on their various errands when Andromache went to the wall and let out a high wild shriek.

"Ah, the fiend, the monster! What is he doing now?"

"Who?" Kassandra asked, but she already knew; fiend, monster could be only one person. She rushed to the wall.

The sun was high; it was not yet noon. It had only seemed that they had watched the great battle for half of a day. There was a great cloud of dust on the plain before Troy; it cleared a little and she could see the chariot of Akhilles, with Akhilles himself standing upright, driving his matched horses. And in the dust at the tail of the chariot, a figure whose armor revealed clearly its identity.

"Hector! But what is he doing?" she demanded.

It was all too clear what he was doing; he was dragging

Hector's corpse in the dust behind his chariot, as he raced fiercely in circles around the plain. The Trojans watched, frozen in horror.

"Why," said Kassandra, "he is mad, then. I thought—" she had thought they called him mad rhetorically; but surely a man who could thus abuse the fallen corpse of an enemy - even an enemy who had slain his dearest friend - must be mad in truth. Why, he is not fit to be let out without a keeper, she thought with a shudder.

Aeneas said, "Why, this goes beyond even revenge; the man is inhuman."

"Demented with grief, perhaps," said Kassandra. "He loved Patroklos beyond reason - and when his friend died he lost the last of all ties to sanity—"

"Still, this must be stopped," Aeneas said. "We must send to the Greeks - Odysseus at least is a reasonable man - and get back Hector's body before this comes to his father's ears—"

"So," said Andromache, with clenched fists, "I am to stand here and watch this and not go mad myself with grief, but Priam, a man and a king, must be shielded from the very word, let alone the sight—" She flung back her head and began to scream; "I will go down myself, if I must, and I will persuade that man, with a horsewhip, that he cannot do this thing before all of Hector's kin—"

"No," Paris said, embracing her gently. "No, Andromache, he would not listen to you. I tell you, he is mad—"

"Is he? Or is he feigning madness so that we will offer him a greater ransom for Hector's body?" Andromache asked. Kassandra had not thought of that.

At last Troilus, taking with him two or three of Priam's other sons, went up to tell the King that Hector was dead; while Paris and Aeneas armed themselves and drove forth in a chariot with Priam's favourite herald. They tried in vain to make Akhilles hear them, but he simply went on whipping up his horses into a frenzy and refused to listen to a word the herald said.

After a time they stopped and conferred and went on to the main Akhaian camp to speak with Agamemnon and the other captains. Eventually they returned to Troy looking discouraged; Andromache rushed at them.

"What did they say?" she demanded, though it was obvious they had had no success; down on the plain, Akhilles's chariot was still dragging the body around in circles. It seemed he meant to go on at least till sunset, perhaps longer.

Aeneas said, "They will do nothing to stop Akhilles; they said that he is their leader, and he must do as he will with his own captives and prisoners. He killed Hector and the body is his, to ransom or not as he chooses."

"But that's monstrous," Andromache said. "You hesitated not a minute to grant a truce for burying and mourning Patroklos! How can they do this?"

"They didn't want to," said Paris. "Agamemnon could not look me in the eye. He knows they are violating all the rules of warfare - rules they themselves made and we agreed to honor. But they know they have no chance of triumphing without Akhilles; they angered him once, and they will not risk making him angry again."

The sun had slanted down considerably and the plain of Troy was now partly in the long shadow of the walls. Paris said, "There is nothing for it but this, then. We must go out and fight for his body." He called his arms-bearer and started putting on his armor.

"Summon the Amazons; their charge and their arrows can cover us. They are fierce fighters, fiercer than any man," Aeneas said. "I will vow my best horse to the War-God if he grants us to win Hector's body."

"I'll vow more than that if he grants me Akhilles," said Paris. "Hector and I were not always close; but he was my elder brother, and I loved him; and even if I had not, kinship's dues would forbid me to stand by and see his corpse dishonored. Even Akhilles can have no quarrel with the dead."

Kassandra said, "I remember how Hector said he and Patroklos would have much to talk about in the afterworld."

"Aye," said Aeneas sombrely. "If Akhilles paused to think, he would know that Hector and his friend would feast side by side as comrades in the halls of the afterlife."

"I trust it is no God's will I meet Akhilles as a comrade on the other side of death," said Paris grimly. "Or, I swear, unless I learn something there that I have not been given to know in this life, I shall disrupt the peace of that world itself when I meet Akhilles there."

"Oh, hush," said Aeneas, "none of us know what we shall think or do past that gate; but in this world, we all have been properly taught that enmity ends at death, and what Akhilles now does is an outrage and an atrocity—as well as being plain bad manners. He should show respect for a fallen foe; you know that, I know it, the other Akhaians know it. And I give you my word, if Akhilles does not know it, I shall be happy to give him a lesson, here and now. Are the soldiers armed and ready?"

"Yes," called Paris, "open the gates."

Priam came slowly through the ranks and went to the wall where the women stood. He himself was as white as death, Kassandra thought, and he had been weeping.

"If you rescue the body of my son for honorable burial," he said, as Aeneas passed him on his way down to the gate, "it needs no saying that you may ask whatever reward you will."

Aeneas knelt for a moment before him and kissed the old man's hand.

"Father, Hector was my brother-in-law and my brother in arms; I want no reward to do for him what I know well he would be the first to do for me."

"Then the blessings of every God I know how to call be upon you," said Priam, and as Aeneas rose, embraced him quickly and kissed his cheek. Then he let him go and the men went down to the gate.

As Troilus would have joined them, Hecuba cried out, "No! Not you too!" and caught at his tunic; but Troilus pulled away, and Priam gestured to the Queen to let him go. Hecuba collapsed weeping.

"Cruel old man! Unnatural father! We have lost one son today; will you lose another?"

"He is no child," Priam said. "He wishes to go; I will not forbid him. I would not make him go if he wished any excuse to stay; but you should be proud of him."

"Proud!" she raged, looking down on the chariots as they raced out through the gates. "There is more than one madman here!"