The Firebrand

CHAPTER 12

The truce rather to Kassandra's surprise, was not broken by the Akhaians. None of them competed in Hector's funeral games - except for an anonymous Myrmidon who entered the wrestling, threw four successive opponents (ending by pinning down Deiphobos), pocketed the golden cup given as a prize, and vanished without revealing his name. Gossip in the city later credited him with being one of the Immortals in disguise, but he wasn't. Paris said he had seen him in the ranks and he was just a common soldier. Trojans and Akhaians both stood watching the various events and applauding the winners in a fine sportsmanlike way.

Penthesilea insisted on competing for the prize in archery, which caused some trouble when she won handily against all comers, including Paris, who had obviously marked out that prize for himself. He protested, but no one upheld his objection; since Paris had been heard often to say that no man alive could best him at archery, several of Priam's younger sons (who were not at all sorry to see their brother beaten for once) insisted he had no right to complain at being beaten by a woman.

On the third morning Kassandra woke early, hearing with relief the sounds of many birds singing loudly in the gardens of the Sunlord's house; at least there would be no substantial earthquake this day.

She went early to the rooms in the palace—Penthesilea had moved from her quarters in the Sunlord's house—and helped arm the Amazon in her armor of hardened leather with metal plates.

"All of us will be fighting, and this day we - we Amazons, that is - will throw all our forces against Akhilles," she said. "We have fought for many years. One warrior, be he never so fierce, cannot lay us all low."

"I wish you would set yourselves to attack someone less formidable," Kassandra said, troubled, "There are enemies enough; such as Menelaus and Idomeneos need killing too. Why not go against Agamemnon? Why must you challenge the pride of the Akhaians?"

"Because, if Agamemnon or Menelaus is killed, Akhilles is still there to inspire them, but when Akhilles is dead, the whole crew of them will be like a hive when the queen is gone," Penthesilea said. "The Myrmidons at least will be completely demoralized; remember when Akhilles was still sulking, they hardly fought at all, and they certainly did not fight like the well-disciplined army they are now."

"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 tears. "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 round 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 on 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 fallen 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 animal and charged right through a cluster of Akhilles's 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 bodyguard. She saw the leap he made, facing the Amazon as if inviting her to get down and fight him face to face.

Penthesilea straightened her body 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 backward 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. But 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 bad my bow! Akhilles had finished and was fighting off the four Amazons who had come to attack him. He cut 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 out-numbered 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, an entire 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. She did not believe for a single moment that he had been overcome by lust; it was a cold-blooded act of contempt.

It would have been fitting 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 no longer qualified as an honorable opponent in battle, she realized; he was like a mad dog.

But the Gods stand by and will do nothing. If Akhilles were a mad dog, 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 was 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 Sunlord to accept her, she knew clearly why she had come to the Sunlord'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 Sunlord'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 Sunlord's own. She strung it with a plain arrow—she might need 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; 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-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 chariots 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 general!

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 walls to see what Akhilles's 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 the wound; but after a time she saw him reach down and claw at his foot, signalling 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 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 lower at the wall 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 everyone was crowding to the wall, pushing and shoving to find out what had happened.

"One of the Akhaian leaders is dead," someone told her. "It might 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 they repeated the story, said no more than, "Well, it's about time."