Troy: A Brand of Fire

by Ben Blake

  *

  The Argive kings were barely out of the room before Priam swung towards Antenor, fury distorting his words. “Where is he?”

  “The message didn’t say,” Antenor answered. “At a guess, I’d say perhaps Egypt or Cyprus, somewhere far away from Greece. Unless Paris decided it was safer to come back to Anatolia before Argive ships begin searching, in which case he might be in Halicarnassus, possibly Miletos.”

  “So you don’t know,” Priam snapped. “What use is an advisor who has no useful advice?”

  Hector spoke from across the dais. “That isn’t fair, Father. Paris has changed the plan Antenor made, but that’s my brother’s fault. Rage at him when he does come home. Don’t abuse Antenor for it.”

  Priam glared at him, and then shook his head. “You’re right, of course. I’m sorry, Antenor. The lad has betrayed you as much as me. What can have possessed him to do this made thing?”

  “Aphrodite, perhaps,” the advisor said, straight-faced.

  “Paris has always been a fool for women,” Hector said. “And they for him, just as much. The sight of a pretty girl turns Paris’ head and makes him forget all sense. It might have been better to send Troilus on this mission, or Lycaon. Pandarus, even. But it’s too late now.”

  Hector had never had any time for Paris. Until now Priam had dismissed that as the natural behaviour of an eldest son towards the youngest: the duty-bound heir’s envy of the sibling free to idle, or to indulge himself. It was an uncomfortable thought, that Hector might have seen Paris clearly while their parents could not, but it had to be faced.

  Because what Paris had done in this went beyond madness. It was a betrayal, exactly as Priam had named it. The lad had been sent as a representative of Troy – a covert one, to be sure, but still bearing the welfare of the city like a mantle on his shoulders. And he had abused it. He had abandoned the plans made with such care, thrown them aside for a smile and the glimmer of a woman’s eye. Priam had never seen that weakness in his youngest son.

  “We couldn’t have sent others anyway,” Antenor said, disagreeing with Hector. “Troilus because he’s even more of a fool than Paris, but for horses instead of women. The other two because Nestor was sure to be suspicious from the moment he was invited here, and we could only allay those doubts by having all the important men of Troy here, where he could see them.”

  “Then we should have given Molion the duty,” Hector said. “Or another captain. Anyone but Paris. It was asking for trouble to send him on a mission that involved a beautiful woman.”

  “If this is true,” Priam snapped, still angry, “then you ought to have mentioned it before.”

  “I did mention it,” Hector said. His tone was calm, not challenging at all. “Once, and then I let it go. Because you don’t listen to criticism of Paris, Father. You never have. I would have wasted my words.”

  Unfortunately that was probably true. But Paris had seemed an ideal choice for the task. The soldiers would follow him, as they would any prince of Troy; but the Argives thought he was a fool when they bothered to think of him at all, and his absence would likely go unnoticed. All that had worked out just as Antenor had planned it. The three Argives had come, and their suspicions had been allayed by feasts and hunting, and the visible presence in the city of everyone who could be a danger to them, in any way.

  Then Paris had gone and wrecked everything by making an insane, ludicrous promise to the Spartan queen, and thrown the whole scheme into disarray.

  “Can we rescue this?” he asked Antenor abruptly. “Even after the noose Paris has put around our necks?”

  “Perhaps,” Antenor said. “It’s hard to say, because it depends how the Argives react. They might decide to bargain with us, in which case we’ll get Hesione in return for Helen. Just as planned.”

  “Paris says he swore a mighty oath to marry her.”

  “Oaths can always be broken,” Laocoon said carefully. “If the gods are properly propitiated.”

  “And if the two of them become lovers, before they reach Troy?”

  “That, too, can be overcome,” Antenor said. “If the Argives decide to negotiate with us.”

  “You talk,” a new voice said, “but none of your words matters.”

  They turned, all of them, to see Cassandra emerge from behind the statue of Tarhun with his stone hand upraised. Priam couldn’t remember the last time she’d come to the throne room, let alone without being ordered to. Since she was a child, probably. She was neat enough too, for a wonder; often Cassandra looked dishevelled, almost wild, as though her hair had never known a comb nor her skin a cloth. Today her white priestess’s robe was unwrinkled, and her face glowed with healthy colour.

  “Words always matter, my lady,” Antenor said.

  “Not these.” She stepped closer, then halted five paces away. Coming closer than that to anyone, man or woman, would have been unusual in the extreme. “You don’t understand, not yet. You will.”

  “Understand?” Hector asked.

  “That this Helen is a brand of fire that will bring the blaze down upon Troy,” she said. “She will start a burning that will ravage us. If she steps within the walls, Troy will be destroyed.”

  Priam stared at her. She was a Bride of Ipirru, given to the god, and sometimes the immortal spoke through the women who served him. That was the point, really; it was why a royal daughter was placed in the temples, if at all possible. Cassandra had never been capable in that way, of course – or in any way, really. She’d been sworn to service because there wasn’t anything else she could do. But prophecies did happen, coming sometimes from the unlikeliest of sources, so he hesitated and glanced at Laocoon.

  “I have seen nothing in the auguries to suggest the fall of Troy,” the Seer of Athena said at once. “The first thing I did when I heard what Prince Paris had done was to consult the goddess, and while the carved bones showed me danger, they didn’t show me disaster.”

  “Pallas Athena is an Argive goddess,” Cassandra pointed out. “Do you think she would warn us, against her own people? Are you a fool?”

  “Show respect!” Laocoon spat at her. “Royal blood or no, you’re still only a simple priestess!”

  “Enough. We will not squabble amongst ourselves.” Priam watched Laocoon until he nodded, visibly calming himself, and then turned back to Cassandra. “Thank you for the warning, my daughter. We will not forget it. Perhaps you should go and lie down now, somewhere quiet.”

  “You mean to do nothing,” she said. She shook her head, pale curls falling in her eyes. “Well, I cannot give advice to those who will not listen. But remember I told you. If Helen of Sparta once sets foot inside the walls of Troy, the city will be doomed.”

  She wheeled and was gone, her robe swishing until she vanished behind the statue and the hidden door clicked shut behind her.

  “That was strange,” Laocoon said. “I apologise, my lord. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

  “She’s right,” Hector said.

  They stared at him, all of them surprised, and Hector shrugged his muscular shoulders. “Not about the fall of Troy, I’m sure. But the taking of Helen will bring a blaze down upon Troy. I am certain of that, as well. Because the Argives will not decide to negotiate with us. They will regard this as an insult to their manhood, and that leaves them only one option.”

  The other two men looked at him, and then both nodded slowly. They both knew what that option was. The Argives always did the same thing when they felt they had been insulted.

  They would go to war.