The Firebrand

CHAPTER 14

Even before Paris was laid on his pyre, Deiphobos went to Priam and demanded command of the Trojan armies; when Priam protested, he said, "What choice have you, sir? Is there anyone else in Troy, save perhaps Aeneas? And he does not belong to the royal house of Troy, and is not Trojan born."

Priam only stared, embarrassed, at the ground.

"Perhaps you would like to give the armies to your daughter Kassandra, who was once an Amazon?" Deiphobos asked, sneering.

Hecuba spoke up clear and almost loud, for the first time since Hector's death.

"My daughter Kassandra would command the armies of Troy no worse than you," she said. "You were a cruel and greedy child, and you are a proud and greedy man. My Lord and King, Priam, I beg you to find some other to command the forces of Troy, or it will be the worse for all of us."

But they all knew there was no other. None of Priam's other surviving sons was old enough, or experienced enough, to lead the armies. When Deiphobos was called out before the troops and Priam formally handed over the command to him, Deiphobos said, "I will take this command only if I am given Paris's widow Helen for my wife."

"You are mad," Priam said. "Helen is by right Queen of Sparta, not a prize to be handed from man to man like a concubine."

"Is she not?" asked Deiphobos. "Have you not had enough of the trouble a woman can make when she is left to choose with which man she will share her bed? Helen will marry me and be cheerful enough about it, won't you, Lady? Or would you rather go back to Menelaus? I could arrange that if you prefer it."

Kassandra saw Helen shudder; but she only said to Priam in a low voice, "I will marry Deiphobos if you wish me to, sire."

Priam looked embarrassed. He said, "If there were any other way I would not ask this of you, daughter."

She threw herself into the old man's arms and embraced him. "It is enough that this is what you wish for me, Father," she said.

He held her gently, and there were tears in his eyes. He said, "You have become one of us, child. There is no more to say."

"Well, if that is settled," Deiphobos said loudly,"set forth the marriage feast."

Hecuba protested. "Is this any time for feasting, with Paris lying dead and not yet laid to rest?"

"There may be no time for feasting hereafter," Deiphobos insisted. "Should I alone of all Priam's sons go to my wedding unfeasted and unhonored?"

"There is little enough to honor here," said Priam, under his breath; only Hecuba and a few of the women heard him. Nevertheless he called the servants and ordered the stores of wine to be brought out and a kid killed and roasted, and such foods as could be prepared quickly be set forth.

Kassandra went with the palace women, including Deiphobos's mother, to choose any fruits ready for harvest and set them out on platters. She agreed with Helen and Hecuba that this was no time for feasting, but if this wedding had to be, it should be made to look like a matter of choice rather than coercion. If Helen could put a good face on it, who was she to complain.

But for all the food and the hastily summoned minstrels, the wedding was joyless enough. The knowledge that Paris lay dead above cast gloom over the palace. Long before the bride and groom were put to bed together, Kassandra excused herself and withdrew. Looking down at the lights, she thought that perhaps the common folk of Troy, enjoying the gifts of food and wine sent down to them from Priam's palace, actually believed that this was a genuine festival. If they criticized Helen it was only for her willingness to be given again in marriage before her husband was properly given his funeral rites. Well, she thought, let them enjoy themselves. There may not be much more for them to enjoy.

Just before dawn the funeral pyre for Paris in the back court of the palace was set alight; Kassandra went down with the priests of the Sunlord and watched as veiled Helen, grave and pale, set the torch to the pyre then stood with the nine-year-old Nikos small and serious at her side.

He had insisted on cutting his hair for mourning. "I know he was not my father," he said, "but he was the only father I have ever known and he was kind to me." His attempt not to cry tore at Kassandra's heart.

Once the pyre blazed up, Deiphobos, standing at Helen's side, said with a look of relief, "Now that's done we'll go down and deal with that horse as Paris did. Start with a barrel of good hot tar or some pine-pitch and a few fire-arrows. We'll make short work of it. What do you think of that, my wife?"

Helen's voice was barely audible, "You must do as seems best to you, my husband."

She looked submissive and quiet, like any of the Trojan soldiers' wives, with little trace of the Goddess-given beauty they all had come to take for granted. The words were submissive too, the very ones she might have spoken to Paris, but it occurred to Kassandra that she was mocking him with this obedience. Deiphobos did not seem to think so; he looked at her with satisfaction and pleasure - now he had what he had always envied, Paris's wife and Paris's command. Well, if this marriage had brought happiness to at least one person, then it was not all bad.

They had not demanded this of Andromache, but were willing to allow her a decent time to mourn Hector. Why could Helen not be allowed that same privilege?

Yet Helen had acted to show all women that they can do as she did; they should be grateful to her and admire her.

Deiphobos was gathering his charioteers, briefly discussing strategy with them. Kassandra watched Helen say farewell and bid him take care in battle, exactly as she had done with Paris.

Was it that she was so accustomed to catering to a man's will that it made no difference to her who the man was. Or was she only so stricken dumb with grief that nothing mattered any more? I love Aeneas well; but when he is gone from me, I remain myself. If he were to die, rather than leaving me to return to Creusa's side, I would mourn his death beyond measure; but it would not destroy me as Hector's death destroyed Andromache. Was Andromache mourning Hector then, or only the loss of her place as Hector's wife?

The charioteers rushed forward, making a charge through the workers who were pulling down the scaffolding around the monstrous wooden horse; they scattered and ran, falling under the wheels of the chariots. There was a queer bitter smell in the air which Kassandra could not identify, and as the charioteers came close to the horse, their flights of fire-arrows went toward it, but they did not ignite.

Agamemnon's soldiers attacked from the shadow of the scaffolding. The charioteers fought strongly, but were driven back to the walls. As the gates were opened for them to retreat to within Troy, there was a battle at the gates to prevent Agamemnon's men and what looked like a host of Akhilles's now-leaderless Myrmidons from crowding in and flooding the streets. A few came in but they were cut down in the narrow streets behind the gate, and Deiphobos's men got the gates shut.

"It looks as though we will have a siege again," Deiphobos declared. "At all costs now we must keep them out of the city, which means these gates must not be opened. The one thing that monstrosity out there does is keep us from a good view of what's happening in their camp and field. We can't even burn it; they've soaked it in something so it won't burn; maybe a mix of vinegar and alum. Burning the scaffolding before may have been a mistake; it warned them what was the first thing we'd try and do."

"If it is intended to be our God Poseidon," Hecuba said, "would it not be a sacrilegious act to burn it?"

"I think I'd burn it first and make my peace with the Earth-shaker afterward," Deiphobos said, "but it won't burn now."

"But we can burn it eventually?" asked Priam.

"Well, sire, I'm certainly going to try my best," Deiphobos answered. "We can try shooting arrows covered with pitch and hope enough of the stuff will stick. I keep wondering if they've put this thing up here to give us something to think about so that we'll not notice what else they might be doing, like trying to tunnel under our walls from the landward side, or climb to the Maiden's Temple and attack from up there."

"Do you think they could do that?" Hecuba asked fearfully.

"I'm sure they'll try, Lady. It's up to us to keep ahead of whatever tricks that Master of Sneaks, Odysseus, might be thinking up while we've got our eyes and our minds on that wretched thing out there." He looked at the horse with loathing and shook his fist at it.

The image of the wooden horse wandered that night through Kassandra's dreams. In one nightmare it came alive, rearing like a stallion and pawing at the ground; then it kicked out, and the stroke of its mighty hoof battered down the main gate of Troy, while from the horse an army poured, raging and pillaging in the streets. Its head rose black and dragonlike above the flames that consumed the city. When she woke, so intensely real had the dream seemed that she went out in her night-shift to the balcony where she looked down over the plain below, and saw

° the horse solid and wooden and lifeless as ever in the pallid moonlight. It was not even nearly so large as it had seemed in her dream. It's just a thing of wood and tar, she thought, harmless as that statue by the Scamander. A few pale torches burned before it - homage to Poseidon? She recalled the vision in which she had seen Apollo and Poseidon battling hand to hand for the city, and went inside to the shrine to kneel and pray.

"My Lord Apollo," she implored, "can you not save your people? If you cannot, why are you called a God? And if you can and will not, what kind of God are you?"

And then, terrified at the form of the prayer, she fled the shrine. She was suddenly aware that she had asked the last question anyone ever asked of a God, and the one which would never be answered. For a moment she was afraid she had committed blasphemy; then she thought, If he is not a God, or if he is not good, then what is there to blaspheme? He is said to love truth; and if he does not, then all of what I have been taught is false.

But if he is not a God, what was it I saw battling for the city? What is it that overshadowed Helen, or Khryse?

If Immortals are worse than the worst of men, small and petty, and cruel, then whatever they are, they are not for mankind to venerate. She felt bereft; so much of her life had been spent in the intense passion for the Sunlord. I am no better than Helen, but I chose to love a God who is no better than the worst of men.

She went back to the walls and stood there, numb with horror, as the sun rose for the last time over the doomed city.