The Firebrand

CHAPTER 13

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 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 the other, faster than they could be replaced, the Akhaians finally gave up the attempt and withdrew the builders.

Kassandra had not watched Akhilles's funeral pyre, nor the battle of the archers, though the women in the Sunlord'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 she believed that the death of the serpent was an omen, not only of the death of Akhilles which it 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.

"What are the Akhaians doing now?" she 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."

Poseidon would indeed be a friend to those Akhaians, if they should persuade him to break our walls. And their soothsayers know it, if they have persuaded the attackers to invoke the Earthshaker.

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 he 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 in 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 and choose my time better 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 should refuse to acknowledge his first-born."

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 frown behind Helen's eyes and decided not to pursue this further.

"This is not what I came to say. Have they more horses in the Akhaian camp than are needed to draw Agamemnon's chariots 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's arm. 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 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 drew 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 negligently, "and the Akhaians can no more get at them than if they were in the stables of Pharoah 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 Pnam 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 whatever she said would only harden Paris's decision to ignore her advice. She could hardly set guard on the horses herself, but she did speak to the priests in the Sunlord's house, and they agreed to set a watch themselves upon the royal stables. Late that night the alarm was sounded from the walls, and Paris's 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 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 had 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 ransom 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 Earthshaker."

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 Earthshaker with your stinginess; but I swore to sacrifice those horses to him. Do you really think he will favour 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 would not be pleased, though, 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 ago.

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's 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 good will too; and we will be getting a dozen more for Odysseus's 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 axe, and after he blessed the weapon a strong young priest took the axe and completed the sacrifice, chanting invocations to the Earthshaker.

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 Sunlord, she implored, cannot you 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 like the distant surf in her ears.

Even I cannot contend with what the Thunderer has decreed, child. What is to come must come.

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 - to break the people who sacrificed to him, while Apollo Sunlord stood helplessly aside as the Earthshaker 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 were 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 one another. 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 are building an altar to Poseidon."

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 chariots 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 down 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 the Trojan chariots in hot pursuit, cutting them down as fast as they could. When they were in full retreat and looked like running 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, they heard the cries of Agamemnon uselessly trying to rally his men, and they rode back inside the walls before Agamemnon could assemble the Akhaians 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.

Paris shrugged; the movement made him flinch again.

"An arrow wound. It didn't touch a bone," he said.

"Kassandra," Helen said, "come and look at this; what do you think?"

Kassandra came and folded back the sleeve of Paris's tunic. It was a flesh wound, a small depression just above the elbow. Purple and puffy, like pouting lips, it had already closed, and from it a drop or two of blood oozed.

"It is not, I think, too serious," she said, "but it should be washed in wine and bathed with very hot water and herbs; if a puncture wound closes too quickly, it can be serious. At all costs it must be kept open and made to bleed freely to cleanse it."

"She is right," said Khryse, bringing a flask of wine which he began to pour over the wound; but Paris grabbed the flask.

"A waste of good wine," he said, and poured it into his mouth instead, making a wry face. "Ugh, not even fit for that. Might be good to wash my feet with."

Khryse shrugged. "There is better wine for the drinking, in the Sunlord's house, Prince Paris; this is a poor vintage kept for cleansing wounds. Come and have some of the better vintage while we tend you."

"Better yet, come to our rooms in the palace and let me tend you," Helen said. "You have had enough fighting for one day -and there is nobody left to fight."

"No," Paris said, walking to the wall, "I hear Agamemnon; he's got some of those archers of his to attack again; let's go down and drive them off. Already they say I spend too much time in your boudoir being cosseted, my Helen; I am weary of a coward's reputation. Here, tie this up with your scarf and let me go." He pulled his armor together over the bound wound, and was off down the stairs. They heard him shouting to his men.

"Oh, why did he have to have a damned attack of heroism right now?" Helen said, smiling angrily. "And if it was really an altar to Poseidon, do you think the God will be angry because he burned it down?"

"I don't see what else he could have done, whether the God is angry or not," Kassandra said. "Perhaps the Earthshaker will remember all those nice fat horses that we gave him courtesy of Odysseus a couple of days ago."

"I pray it does not hamper his riding and shooting," Helen said. "When he comes back - if he survives this charge—I will take him off to be tended by the best of the healers."

"I will go and send our best healer-priests to the palace for him, Lady Helen," Khryse said, and went off up the hill. Kassandra watched the charge; Paris fought like a madman, as if the War God's self inhabited him, and she lost count of how many of the Akhaian soldiers he cut down and left bleeding on the ground.

"I have never seen him fight like this before," Helen said.

Pray you never do again, was Kassandra's reaction.

"Maybe the wound is as slight as he says; he seems not to be favouring the arm at all."

"He rides like Hector himself," said Priam, watching him from the wall. "We have all been unjust to the boy, thinking him less heroic than his brother."

Helen shut her eyes as a sword came down toward Paris; he parried the blow at the very moment when it seemed it must strike his head from his shoulders. It was the last blow; a moment later Agamemnon's men broke and ran, running as if they did not mean to stop until they reached their ships. Paris yelled as if he were going to chase them into the water, but before long he called off his men.

"If there is a bullock, have it killed for the men's dinner," he said to Hecuba, as he came up the stairs to the waiting women. "I have never seen such fighting."

"Praise to Aphrodite that you are safe still!" Helen hurried to embrace him.

"Yes, she is still watching over us; she did not bring us here to Troy only to abandon us now." Paris looked down at the ashes of the structure the Akhaians had been trying to build.

"If this is dedicated to any God, I pray he will forgive me.

Now, if you will find that healer, my Helen, I will be glad of his good offices; my arm aches." He leaned on her as they went down into the palace and Kassandra looked after them with dread.

"You had better go," said Khryse. "You are as good a healer as any in the Sunlord's house." She had not heard Khryse come back.

Kassandra was not sure of that, but did not know how to say so. "You saw the wound closer than I; you know how bad it is," he added. "I do not like such wounds even when they look harmless." She hurried off to Paris's and Helen's chambers, only to be told that her services were not required.

That night was quiet, but in the morning, the scaffolding had been raised again and the Akhaians were hammering and sawing away again as if they had never been interrupted.

"Well, we'll make short work of that, as we did yesterday," said Deiphobos, who had come out this morning with Priam, the old man leaning heavily on his son's shoulder. "Where's Aphrodite's gift to womankind this morning? Still hiding behind Helen's frilled skirts?"

"Be quiet," Priam said sharply. "He had a wound yesterday; perhaps it is worse or he has taken cold in it." He summoned one of the younger messengers and said, "Go to Prince Paris if you please, and ask why he is not here with his army."

"A wound," said Deiphobos scornfully, "I saw that wound; a cat-scratch or more likely, a love-bite."

The boy hurried away and came back looking pale. He bowed to Priam and said, "My lord, the Lady Helen asks that the priestess Kassandra will come and look at her brother's wound; it is beyond her power to cure."

"My father," Deiphobos said, "have I your leave to take out the chariots and drive off these ants as Paris did yesterday?"

"Go," Priam said, "but when Paris is healed you will give over command to him again; nothing that is his will ever belong to you."

"We'll see," said Deiphobos, saluted Priam and went.

Kassandra went down into the palace, through the halls which seemed, this morning, dank and cold and still, with wisps of sea-fog hanging in the halls themselves. In the rooms allotted to Paris and Helen, Paris, half-clad and very pale, was lying on a pallet, muttering. Helen, at his side, trying to bathe the wound with steaming water scented with herbs, sprang up and came to Kassandra.

"Aphrodite be praised that you have come; perhaps he will listen to you when he will not to me," she said. Kassandra came and drew back the veil with which the wound had been covered. The whole upper arm was grossly swollen, the puncture still obstinately closed and weeping clear fluid; the arm looked purplish, with red streaks fanning down toward the wrist.

Kassandra drew breath; she had never seen an arrow wound quite like this. She said, "Have the priests of Apollo seen this?"

"They were here twice in the night; they told me to bathe it with hot water, and said it should probably be burned with a hot iron, but I had not the heart to make him suffer that, when they could not promise that it would cure him," Helen said. "But just in the last hour he seems worse, and he does not know me now; until a few minutes ago he was yelling to the servants to bring his armor, and threatening them with a beating if they would not help him get up and put it on."

"That is not good," Kassandra said. "I have seen worse wounds heal, but—"

"Should I have let them burn him?"

"No; if I had been there I would have said, dress it with wine and sweet oil; and sometimes I have known a poultice of mouldy bread, or of cobwebs, to cleanse a puncture wound," she said. "The healers are too quick with their hot irons; I might have cut it last night to make it bleed more freely, but nothing more. Now it is too late. The infection has taken hold, and either he will live or he will die. But don't despair," she added quickly. "He is young and strong, and as I told you, I have seen worse wounds heal."

Is there nothing that can be done?" Helen asked wildly. "Your magic—"

"Alas, I have no healing magic," Kassandra said. "But I will pray; I can do no more." She hesitated and said, "The river priestess Oenone, she was skilled in healing magic."

Helen sprang up in excitement.

"Can you not send for her?" she implored. "Beg her to come and heal my lord! Whatever she asks, it shall be hers; I promise it."

But the only thing she wishes for, you have already taken from her, Kassandra thought. She said, "I will send a message to her; but I cannot promise that she will come."

"But if she loved him once, could she be cruel enough to refuse him her help, if it meant his death?"

"I don't know, Helen; she was very bitter against him when she left the palace," Kassandra said.

"If I must, I - Queen of Sparta - will kneel before her with ashes in my hair," Helen said. "Should I go to Oenone, then?"

"No; I know her, I will go," Kassandra said. "You pray and sacrifice to Aphrodite, who favours you." Helen embraced her, and clung to her.

"Kassandra, surely you do not wish me evil? So many of these women of Troy hate me - I can see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices—" Helen's voice sounded almost like a pleading child's, and Kassandra touched her cheek gently.

"I wish you nothing but good, Helen; that I swear to you," she said.

"But when first I came to Troy you cursed me—"

"No," Kassandra said. "I foretold truly that you would bring sorrow on us. Because I saw the evil, it does not mean that I caused it. It was the doing of the Immortals, and no more of your doing than mine. No one can escape the working of fate. Now I will go to the headwaters of the Scamander and find Oenone, and implore her to come and heal Paris," Kassandra said.

Khryse greeted her as she left the palace. She looked at him in surprise; this morning she had forgotten, and simply taken his presence for granted.

"I thought by now you would be on a ship bound for Crete or Egypt," she said. "Why have you not gone?"

"There may still be something I can do for the city which has sheltered me, or for Priam who has been my King," Khryse said, "or, who knows, even for you."

"You should not stay for me," she said. "I would be glad to know you are safe from what will come."

"I want nothing," he said in a queerly sober tone, "except that you should know at last, before the end comes for us all, that my love for you is true and unselfish, desiring nothing except your good."

Why, that's true, she thought, and said gently, "I believe you, my friend, and I beg you to go to safety as soon as you can. Someone must remember and tell the truth about Troy for those who come after; it troubles me that in legends, our children's children should come to think of Akhilles as a great hero or a good man."

"It is not likely to do us any harm, or Akhilles any good either, whatever they may say or sing of us in times to come," Khryse said. "Yet if I survive I swear I will tell the truth to anyone who will listen."

Kassandra climbed quickly to the Sunlord's house and took off her formal robe; she put on an old dark tunic, in which she could come and go unheeded, solid leather sandals, and a heavy cloak which would keep off wind or rain. Then she went quietly out of the small abandoned side gate and took the road up toward Mount Ida, along the drying stream of the Scamander. The track was beaten now into a road; many horses and men had come this way and the water which had once run strong and clean was muddied and fouled. When last she had taken this path - how many years ago now?—the water had been clear, the path almost untrodden.

Even now, had her errand been less urgent and desperate, she would have enjoyed the journey; the sun was hidden by clouds, the tops of the tree-clad hills lost themselves in thick rolls of mist and the light winds promised rain and probably thunder. She went up quickly; but although she was a strong woman, the gradient was so steep that she was soon out of breath and had to stop and rest. As she climbed, what had been a river ran clearer here, and no man nor horse had polluted the pathway or the water. She knelt and drank, for in spite of the clouds and wind, it was hot.

At last she reached the place where the water sprang forth from the rock guarded by a carved image of Father Scamander. She struck the bell which summoned the river priestesses, and when a young girl appeared, asked if she might speak with Oenone.

"I think she is here," the girl said. "Her son was ill with a summer fever; she did not go down to the sheep-shearing festival with the others."

Kassandra had forgotten that it was so near to shearing-time.

The child went away, and Kassandra sat down on a bench near the spring and enjoyed the silence; perhaps when Honey was older she might come here to serve among the priestesses of the River God. A pleasant place for a young girl to grow up -not perhaps as pleasant as riding with the Amazons, but that was no longer possible. She began to understand that she had hardly begun yet to feel her grief for Penthesilea. She had been so busy with vengeance and then with other deaths that her grief had had to stand aside for more leisure to mourn.

It will be a long time before I can mourn for my brother, she thought, and wondered what she had meant by it.

She heard a step behind her and turned; at first she hardly recognized Oenone. The slender young girl had become a tall and heavy woman, deep-breasted, her dark curls coiled low on her neck. Only the deep-set eyes were the same, but even so Kassandra hesitated when she spoke the name.

"Oenone? I hardly recognized you—"

"No," Oenone said. "None of us are as young and pretty as we once were. It's the princess, is it not - Kassandra?"

"Yes," she said. "I suppose I have changed too."

"You have," Oenone said,"though you are still beautiful, Princess."

Kassandra smiled faintly. She said, "How is my brother's son? They told me he has been ill—"

"Oh, nothing serious, just one of those little disorders that come to children in the summer. He will be recovered in a day or two. But how may I serve you, Lady?"

"It is not for me," Kassandra said, "but my brother Paris. He lies dying of an arrow-wound and you have such skill in healing - will you come?"

Oenone raised her eyebrows. At last she said, "Lady Kassandra, your brother died, for me, on the day when I left the palace and he spoke not one word to acknowledge his son. All these years, for me, he has been dead. I have no wish now to bring him back to life."

Kassandra knew in her heart that she should have anticipated this answer; that she had had no right to come here and ask anything of Oenone. She bowed her head and rose.

"I can understand your bitterness," she said, "and yet - he is certainly dying - can your anger be still so great? In the face of death?"

"Death? Do you not think it was like death for me, to be sent forth without a word, as if I were a penny harlot in the streets of Troy? And all those years not a word to his son—no, Kassandra, you ask if my anger is so great? You have not begun to know anything about my anger, and I do not think you want to know. Go back to your palace, and mourn your brother as I mourned him all these years." Her voice softened. "My anger is not for you, Lady, you were always kind to me and so was your mother."

"If you will not come for Paris's sake, or for mine," Kassandra pleaded, "will you not come for my mother's sake? She has lost so many of her sons—" her voice broke and she bit her tongue hard, not wishing to weep before Oenone.

"If it would make any difference," Oenone began, "but now, with the city about to fall into the hands of an angry God - ah, it surprises you that I know that? I am a priestess too, Lady. No, go home and care for your child—send her to safety if you can -it will not be long now. I bear no ill will even to the Spartan Queen, but I can do nothing for Paris. When he deserted me, he outraged Father Scamander - who is one with Poseidon."

It had never occurred to Kassandra before that the River God, Scamander, should be an aspect of Poseidon Earthshaker. But Paris had forsaken the River God's daughter for the daughter of Zeus Thunderer—and he had presumed to judge in a controversy' between the Immortals, abandoning his own country's Gods to serve the Akhaian Aphrodite.

"I bear no guilt for his death," Oenone continued. "His fate is on him as yours and mine are. May your Gods guard you, Lady Kassandra." She raised her hand in a gesture of blessing, and Kassandra found herself walking away down the hill, feeling like a peasant woman dismissed from the royal presence.

Downhill, her return took less time, and when she returned to the palace, she heard the sound of wailing. Paris was dead. Well, she had expected it. Despite her encouraging words to Helen, she had been sure that with such a wound he could not survive long. Moving to the balcony to look out over the plain where the Akhaian armies were building, she could now see the rough outline of what the scaffolding surrounded. It rose, huge, clumsy, unmistakable; the great wooden form of a horse.

So this is their altar, she thought; the very form of Poseidon Earthshaker himself. Do they think this horse will kick down the walls of Troy, or that it will summon the God to do so for them? How childish.

Then, without knowing why, she was seized with a sharp fit of shivering, so that she had to wrap her cloak round her in spite of the brightness of the sun. The figure of the horse - or of the God - struck her through with terror, although she was not sure why.