The Firebrand

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  The city was very different from Troy. Women went everywhere freely in the streets, carrying jars and baskets on their heads. The women’s garments were long, thick and cumbersome, but for all their clumsy skirts and their eye paint, the women looked strong and competent. She also saw a forge where a woman, dark-faced and soot-stained, with a warrior’s thick muscles, was working. Bared to the waist to tolerate the fierce heat, she hammered on a sword. A young woman, not much more than a girl, worked the bellows. Kassandra had, in her months with the Amazons, seen women doing many strange things, but this was the strangest of all.

  The sentries on the walls were women too and might well have been members of the Amazon company, for they were armed and wore breastplates of bronze, and carried long spears. As the Amazons rode through the streets, the sentries set up a long, whooping battle cry; and before long half a dozen of them, with their spears laid at rest in token of peace, appeared in the streets before them. Their leader rode forward and embraced Penthesilea from the saddle.

  “We greet you rejoicing, Penthesilea, Queen of Mares,” she said. “The Lady of Colchis sends you greeting and welcomes your return to us. She bids your women make camp in the field within the Southern Wall, and invites you to be her guest in the palace with a friend, or two if you wish.”

  The Amazon Queen called back the news the sentry had brought.

  “And more,” the woman of Colchis said: “the Queen sends your women two sheep as a gift, and a basket of bread baked this day in the royal ovens; let your women feast here while you join her at the palace.” The Amazons sent up a great cheer at the thought of all this long-untasted food.

  Penthesilea saw her women encamped in the field, their tents raised and the sheep slaughtered. Kassandra, standing by as a good rump portion was burnt for the Huntress, noted that the sheep were quite ordinary-looking, like the sheep of Troy. Penthesilea, watching her, said, “What is it? Were you expecting to see the sheep of Colchis with golden fleeces? They do not grow that way; not even the herds of Apollo Sun Lord are born so. But the Colchians lay their fleeces in the stream to catch the gold that still washes down the rivers; and though there is less gold than, perhaps, in Jason’s day, still before you depart from Colchis you shall see these fleeces of gold. Now let us dress to dine at a Queen’s table.”

  The Amazon Queen went into her own tent, took off her riding clothes and put on her finest skirt and boots of white doeskin, with a tunic leaving one breast bare as the custom was here. Told to dress in her best, Kassandra put on her Trojan dress—it was too short for her now, and came only halfway down her calves—and her sandals.

  Penthesilea had taken a stub of kohl from her pack and was smudging her eyes; she turned and said, “Is this the only dress you have, child?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “That will never do,” said Penthesilea. “You have grown more than I thought.” She dug into her own saddlebag and pulled out a worn dress dyed pale saffron. “This will be too big for you, but do the best you can.”

  Kassandra dragged the dress over her head and fastened it with her old bronze pins. She felt so awkward and encumbered by the skirts about her knees that it was hard to remember that once she had worn this kind of garment every day.

  Together they walked up through the streets of Colchis. It was so long since Kassandra had been inside city walls, she felt that she was gaping at the tall houses like a barbarian.

  The palace was built somewhat like the palace of Troy, of the local gray marble. It stood on the high place at the center of the city, and not even a Temple stood above it; Kassandra, raised in the custom in her land that the dwellings of men might not rise so high as the Temples of the Gods, was a little shocked.

  As they stood on the palace steps, they could look out over the sea. Just as it is in Troy, thought Kassandra; only this sea was not the intense blue she remembered from her home, but dark gray and oily. Men were peacefully loading and unloading the ships lying at anchor in the harbor; they were not pirates or raiders, but merchants. This many ships near Troy would be a sign of disaster or war.

  Yet she could see them lying off Troy, ships so many that the blue of the sea was darkened. . . .

  With an effort she brought herself back to the present. There was no danger here . . .

  Penthesilea touched her arm. “What is it? What did you see?”

  “Ships,” Kassandra murmured. “Ships—threatening Troy ...”

  “No doubt, if Priam goes on as he has begun,” her kinswoman said drily. “Your father has attempted to grasp power he is not strong enough to hold, and one day that power will be tested. But for now we must not keep Queen Imandra waiting for us.”

  Kassandra had never thought to question her father’s policies; yet she could see that what Penthesilea said was true. Priam exacted tribute from all ships that went through the straits into this sea; thus far, the Akhaians had paid it because it was less trouble than mustering a navy to challenge it. She looked at the iron gates and realized that they meant a whole new way of life, sooner or later.

  She told herself she was unrealistic; her father was strong, with many warriors and many allies; he could hold Troy forever. Perhaps one day Troy too will have iron gates, like this city of Colchis. As they passed through the wide corridors, women guards in bronze breastplates and leather helmets inlaid with metal raised their fists in token of salute. Now they came into a high-ceilinged room with a skylight inlaid with translucent green stone, and at the center a high marble seat where a woman was sitting.

  She looked like a warrior herself, with a beaten silver breastplate, but under it she was clad in a fine robe of brocade from the Far South, and a light chemise of Egyptian gauze, the kind that was known as “woven air.” On her face she wore a false beard, gilded and tied like a ceremonial wig: token, Kassandra felt, that she ruled not as a woman but as King of the city. Around her hips was a belt inlaid with green stones, and a fine sword hung from the belt. She wore leather boots embroidered and dyed, which came up to her calves. Just below her breastplate, about her waist, was a curious belt which seemed to rise and fall with her breathing; as they came nearer, Kassandra realized that it was a living snake.

  As they approached, the Queen rose and said, “I greet you rejoicing, Cousin. Have your warriors been properly welcomed and feasted? Is there anything more I can do to make you welcome, Penthesilea, Queen of horsewomen?”

  Penthesilea smiled and said, “Indeed we have been welcomed, Lady; now tell me what you want of us. For I have known you since we were girls, and I know well that when not only I but all my warriors are made welcome and feasted, it is not just for courtesy’s sake. Kinship alone would require that I put myself and my women at your service, Imandra; ask freely what you desire of us.”

  “How well you read me, Penthesilea; indeed I have need of friendly warriors,” Imandra said in her husky and pleasing voice, “but first let us share our dinner. Tell me, Cousin, who is the maiden? She is a little too young to be either of your daughters.”

  “She is the daughter of our kinswoman Hecuba of Troy.”

  “Oh?” Imandra’s delicately painted eyebrows went up in an elegant arch.

  She beckoned to a waiting-woman and snapped her fingers lightly; this was the signal for a number of slaves bearing jeweled dishes covered with an assortment of food to come forward: roast meat and fowl in various delicious sauces, fruits in honey, sweets so richly spiced that Kassandra could not even guess what they were made of.

  She had been hungry so long that all this food made her feel slightly sick; she ate sparingly of the roast fowl and some hard cakes of bread, then at the Queen’s urging tasted a rich sweetmeat spiced with cinnamon. She noted that Penthesilea too ate little, and when the trays had been carried away and rose water poured over their hands, the Queen of Colchis said, “Cousin, I thought Hecuba had long forgotten her days as a warrior. Yet her daughter rides with you? Well, I have no quarrel with Priam of Troy. She is welcome. Is it she who is to ma
rry Akhilles?”

  “No, that I had not heard,” said Penthesilea. “I think Priam will find, when he tries to find a husband for this one, that the Gods have claimed her for their own.”

  “Perhaps one of her sisters, then,” said Imandra indifferently. “If we have need of a King in Colchis, perhaps I will marry my own daughter to one of Priam’s sons; I have one of an age to be married. Tell me, Priam’s daughter, is your oldest brother yet pledged in marriage?”

  Kassandra said shyly, “Not that I have heard, Lady, but my father does not confide his plans to me. He may well have made some such arrangement many years ago that I have not heard about.”

  “Honestly spoken,” said Imandra. “When you return to Troy, my envoys shall go with you, offering my Andromache for your father’s son; if not the eldest, then another—he has fifty, I believe, and several are the sons of your royal mother, are they not?”

  “I do not believe there are as many as fifty,” said Kassandra, “but there are many.”

  “Be it so, then,” said Imandra, and as she stretched out her hand to Kassandra, the serpent coiled about her waist began to stir; it crawled up onto her arm, and as Kassandra put out her own hand, the creature thrust out its nose, and its coils followed; it began to wind itself around Kassandra’s wrist like a slender bracelet.

  “She likes you,” Imandra said. “Have you been taught to handle snakes?”

  Kassandra said, remembering the serpents in the Temple of Apollo Sun Lord, “They are not strange to me.”

  “Take care; if she should bite you it would make you very ill,” said Imandra. Kassandra felt no fear, but a sense of elation as the snake crawled along her arm, the soft dry sliding of the scales distinctly pleasurable to her flesh.

  “And now to a serious matter,” said Imandra. “Penthesilea, did you see the ships in the harbor?”

  “Who could help seeing? They are many.”

  “They are laden with tin and iron from the North, from the country of the Hyperboreans,” she said, “and naturally, it is coveted by my fellow Kings. Since I do not, they say, sell them sufficient tin for their bronze—they say I fear the weapons they will make, whereas the truth is I have little enough for myself, and they have nothing I crave—they have taken to attacking my caravans of tin and carrying it off without payment. In this city, there are too few trained warriors. What payment will you ask, to bring your warriors to guard my shipments of metal?”

  Penthesilea raised her eyebrows. “It would be simpler—and cheaper, I suspect—to sell them what they want.”

  “And let them arm themselves against me? Better that my smiths make weapons and let them pay with gold for such weapons as they want. I send some tin and lead and also iron south to the Hittite Kings—those who are left of them. Those caravans too are robbed. There is gold in it for you, then, and for your women if they crave it.”

  “I can guard your caravans,” said Penthesilea, “but the price will not be small. My women have traveled here under an omen and are not eager for war; all we want is to return to our own pastures in the spring.”

  Kassandra lost track of the conversation; she was absorbed in the snake that was coiling around her arm, gliding into the front of her dress, curling up warm between her breasts. She looked aside to one of the slave women juggling three gold-colored balls, and wondered how the girl managed it. When she returned to paying attention to what was happening, Penthesilea and Imandra were embracing, and Imandra said, “I shall await your warriors the day after tomorrow; by that time the caravans will be loaded and the ships sailing away again to the secret mines in the northern countries. My guards will escort you back to the field where your women are encamped; the Goddess give you a good night; and you too, little kinswoman.” Then she held out her hand. “My snake has abandoned me. Bid her return to me, Kassandra.”

  With a certain reluctance, Kassandra reached into the bosom of her dress and scooped out the snake, which draped itself loosely over her hand, twining around her wrist. She loosened it awkwardly with her other hand.

  “You must come back and play with her again; usually if I ask someone to hold her for me, she is likely to bite,” said Imandra. “But she has taken to you as if you were a priestess. Will you come?”

  “I would find it a pleasure,” Kassandra murmured, as Imandra scooped the snake from her wrist; it crawled swiftly up her arm and slithered down into the Queen’s dress.

  “Then I shall welcome you another day, daughter of Hecuba. Farewell.”

  As they returned, with the women guards walking two paces behind them, Kassandra thought they were more like prisoners being escorted than honored guests being protected. Nevertheless, as they walked through the busy streets, she heard scufflings in alleys and once a muffled scream, and felt that here in this strange city it might not, after all, be entirely safe for women who were not a part of Colchis.

  9

  TEN DAYS later, Penthesilea rode out of Colchis with a picked group of Amazon warriors, Kassandra among them. They would accompany the caravans of tin, unloaded from the harbor ships, on their way southward to the faraway country of the Hittite Kings.

  Secretly Kassandra was remembering the words spoken in prophecy: “There remain till the spring stars fall!” Was her kinswoman, then, defying the command of the Goddess? But it was not her place to ask questions. Across her shoulder she carried the Scythian bow, formed of a double span of horn, strung with the braided hair of her horse’s tail. At her side was the short metal-tipped javelin of an Amazon warrior. Riding next to Star, she remembered that her friend had already fought in a battle.

  Yet it seemed so peaceful this morning, the bright clear air adazzle with pale sunlight, a few clouds flying overhead. Their horses’ hooves made a muffled sound on the road beneath, a counterpoint to the heavy rumble of the carts, each drawn by two teams of mules, piled high with the wrapped bundles and crude ingots of the dull-shiny metal and covered with black cloth as heavy as a ship’s sail.

  The night before, she had stood, with the other warriors, guarding the loading of the wagons; remembering the dense blackness of the ingots of iron, the dullness of the lumps of tin, she wondered why this ugly stuff should be so valuable. Surely there was enough metal in the depths of the earth that all men could have a share; why should men—and women—fight wars over the stuff? If there was not enough for those who wished for it, certainly it would be easy enough to bring more from the mines. Yet it seemed that Queen Imandra took pride in the fact that there was not enough for everyone who wanted a share.

  That day was uneventful; the Amazons rode along in single file over the great plain, slowed to the pace of the trundling wagons. Kassandra rode beside one of the blacksmith-women of Colchis, talking with her about her curious trade; she discovered to her surprise that the woman was married and had three grown sons.

  “And never a daughter I could train to my trade!”

  Kassandra asked, “Why can you not teach your sons your trade of a smith?”

  The small muscular woman frowned at her.

  “I thought you women of the Amazon tribes would understand,” she said. “You do not even rear your own men-children, knowing how useless they are. Look, girl: metal is ripped from the womb of the Earth Mother; what would be Her wrath should any man dare to touch or mold Her bounty? It is a woman’s task to shape it into earthly form for men to use. No man may follow the smith’s trade, or the Earth Mother will not forgive his meddling.”

  If the Goddess does not wish this woman to teach her sons her craft, Kassandra thought, why did She give the woman no daughters? But she was learning not to speak every thought that crossed her mind. She murmured, “Perhaps you will yet have a daughter,” but the blacksmith grumbled, “What? Risk bearing again when I have lived almost forty winters?” and Kassandra made no answer. Instead she pulled her horse ahead to ride beside Star. The older girl was cleaning dirt from under her fingernails with a little chipped-bone knife.

  “Do you really think we
shall have to fight?”

  “Does it matter what I think? The Lady thinks so, and she knows more about it than I do.”

  Rebuffed again, Kassandra withdrew into her own thoughts. It was cold and windy; she drew her heavy mantle about her shoulders and thought about fighting. Since she had lived among the Amazons, she had been set every day to practice shooting with the bow, and had some skill with the javelin and even with the sword. Her eldest brother, Hector, had been in training as a warrior since he was old enough to grasp a sword in his hand; his first set of armor had been made for him when he was seven years old. Her mother too had been a warrior maiden, yet in Troy it had never occurred to anyone that Kassandra or her sister, Polyxena, should learn anything of weapons or of war. And although like all Priam’s children she had been weaned on tales of heroes and glory, there were times when it seemed to her that war was an ugly thing and that she was better out of it. But if war was too evil a thing for women, why, then, should it be good for men? And if it was a fine and honorable thing for men, why should it be wrong for women to share the honor and the glory?

  The only answer she could summon to her perplexity was Hecuba’s comment: It is not the custom.

  But why? she had asked, and her mother’s only answer had been: Customs have no reason; they simply are.

  She believed it no more now than she had believed it then.

  Withdrawing into herself, she found herself seeking inward, for her twin brother. Troy, and the sunny slopes of Mount Ida, seemed very far away. She thought of the day when he had pursued, and caught, the girl Oenone, and the curious passionate sensations their coupling had roused within her. She wondered where he was now and what he was doing.

  But except for a brief and neutral glimpse at the sheep and goats grazing on the slopes of Mount Ida, there was nothing to see. Usually, she thought, it is men who travel and women who remain at home; here I am far afield, and it is my brother who remains on the slopes of the sacred mountain. Well, why should it not be so once in the world?