The Firebrand

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Flames were rising now from the seaside houses and buildings down below; houses of the poorer sort built of stacked logs and timbers were going up in flames. The houses built higher up on the hill were all of stone, and there was no way they could be set afire, but the Akhaian soldiers were running into the houses and carrying out everything they could find.

  “They won’t find much treasure or plunder down there,” Kassandra said, and Helen nodded.

  They leaned on the railing, watching the men below. Kassandra recognized one of the Akhaians, a big man who stood out as almost a head taller than his men, his crested helmet glittering as if washed with gold in the rising sunlight. He had once invaded the palace and borne off the struggling Hesione. That had been—how long? Seven years ago, perhaps? Still she shuddered and felt her stomach clench tight.

  Helen said, “That is Agamemnon.”

  Kassandra replied, her voice only a whisper, “Yes, I know.”

  “Look; Hector and his men are trying to block his way back to his ship; will they burn it, do you think?”

  “They’ll try,” Kassandra said, watching the Trojan soldiers attempting to cut off the Akhaians’ leader and making him fight every step of the way back to the ship. The sun was higher now, and they could not see into the burning glare reflected off the sea; Kassandra turned away, shading her eyes.

  “Let’s go inside; it’s cold. It is not at Agamemnon’s hands that Hector will meet his fate,” she said. They went into the room, where the other women were quieter now. The children had fallen asleep on blankets, and half a dozen midwives were gathered around Creusa, who was trying to tell them that she was perfectly well and was not going to go into labor just to provide them with amusement for this night.

  Hecuba, wrapped in one of her oldest shawls over a ragged old house gown, had found some scraps of wool and was twirling a distaff idly; Kassandra gauged by the unevenness of the thread that it was only to pass the time.

  “Oh, there you are, girls—I wondered where you had gone. What is happening down there, Daughter? Your eyes are better than mine. What was it you said about Hector, Kassandra?”

  “I said it is not at the hands of Agamemnon that he will meet his fate, Mother.”

  “I should hope not,” said Hecuba irritably. “That great Akhaian brute would be well advised to avoid our Hector!”

  Some of the women had gone out onto the balcony, and now Kassandra heard them raise a cheer.

  “They are going away; they have reached their ship and are making sail! The Akhaians are gone!”

  “And they cannot have gotten much plunder from the houses along the shore: a few sacks of olives, a few goats perhaps. You are safe, Helen,” said Hecuba.

  “Oh, they will surely be back again,” Helen said, and Kassandra, who had been on the very point of saying the same thing, wondered how she knew. She was no fool, this Akhaian woman, and this troubled Kassandra. The last thing she wanted was to like or to respect Helen; yet she could not help liking her.

  Chryseis came up to Kassandra and whispered, “Charis has said that we may go back to the shrine; are you ready?”

  “No, dear; I will stay for a while with my mother and sisters and my brothers’ wives, if Charis will permit me,” Kassandra said. “I will return when I can.”

  “Oh, they always let you do whatever you want,” said Chryseis spitefully. “I am sure they would not chide you if you wanted to stay away altogether.”

  Hecuba had overheard this, but she was altogether too gentle a person to hear the malice in the girl’s voice. She said, “Yes, they have been very good about lending you back to us, Kassandra. Be certain to tell Charis how grateful I am. I suppose with all these people sent to the palace, I should somehow find breakfast for them; will you help me, Kassandra, if your Temple duties do not summon you immediately?”

  “Of course, Mother,” said Kassandra, and Helen volunteered at once, “And so will I.”

  Kassandra was startled to see Hecuba give Helen an affectionate little pat on the cheek. She said, “I will go and speak to Charis,” and went quickly away.

  “Of course you must stay if your mother has need of you,” Charis said, “with Creusa pregnant, and Andromache with a child still at the breast. Don’t trouble yourself, Kassandra; stay as long as your mother needs you.”

  “What is that?” Andromache quavered, and hid her child’s head under her shawl, as a blow struck on the door. Others among the women trembled and cried out in fear.

  “Don’t be so foolish,” Helen said, frowning at them in contempt. “We saw the Akhaians leave.” She went and flung open the door; her face lighted, making her even more radiantly beautiful, and Kassandra knew who stood there even before she saw her twin brother.

  “Paris!”

  “I wanted to be sure that you and the boy were well,” Paris said, looking around the room for the child. “Surely you did not leave him below while you took refuge here?”

  “Of course not; he is sleeping yonder, in Aithra’s arms,” Helen said, and Paris smiled—a smile, Kassandra thought, that should not have been seen outside their own chamber.

  “Were you frightened, my darling?”

  “Not while we knew we were so well protected, my dearest,” she murmured, and he clasped her hand.

  “I said to Hector that he should come with me to make certain that our wives and children were safe,” Paris added, “but he was too busy worrying about wine and rations for the household guard.”

  “Hector,” said Andromache stiffly, “would never neglect his duty to his men; and I would not wish him to.”

  And what is Paris doing here among the women at a time like this? Kassandra knew that Hector had behaved properly; yet at that moment, she knew, every woman in Troy envied Helen her husband.

  “Was Menelaus there?” she asked in an undertone.

  “I did not see him, if he was,” said Paris. “I told you he was too cowardly to come himself. And now we are well rid of Agamemnon.”

  “Don’t think it,” Kassandra burst out; “he will be back almost before he has time to gather his men, and next time you will not be rid of him so easily.”

  Paris looked at her with good-natured indulgence.

  “Are you still prophesying doom, poor girl? You are like a minstrel who knows only one song to sing and wears out his welcome at every hearthside,” he said; “but I am sorry you were frightened by these buzzards of Akhaians. Let us hope we have seen the worst of them.”

  I hope it too; he does not know how much I hope it.

  “I must go and help Mother provide breakfast for all these women,” she said, and turned away. It seemed incongruous that out of this terror and confusion something like a feast should come; but the men were feasting too, celebrating that Agamemnon had—for now—been driven away.

  “I would rather stay with you,” Paris said, “but if I do not go and join Hector and the men, I shall never hear the last of it. Forgive me, love.” He kissed Helen’s hand and hurried away, and Kassandra stood without moving until Andromache called to her and she went to help prepare the breakfast for the palace’s unexpected guests.

  6

  THAT WAS ONLY the first of the raids; during the rest of that winter, it seemed to Kassandra that every time she looked down into the harbor, there were Akhaian ships lying there, and usually their raiders were in the streets, fighting. Eventually most articles of value had been carried up into the citadel of the palace, or even farther, into the Sun Lord’s house, and the city was under perpetual siege.

  Once the Akhaians had crept round the city, raiding Mount Ida, and before the army could be called out, they captured all Priam’s cattle and most of his sheep. At the time, Kassandra was at her duty in the Temple, tallying jars of oil and noticing that the quantity, if not the quality, of the offerings had fallen off. Out of nowhere she was overcome with a surge of rage, grief and despair so immediate that she burst out in a great wail of mourning. She could not understand what was wrong until she reco
gnized that special quality of strong emotion which always brought her into intimate communication with her brother’s mind; she—or rather, he—was standing on the hillside, and before her, already covered with swarms of buzzing flies, lay the corpse of the old shepherd Agelaus.

  “It was as if he tried to put his single old body, fragile as it was, between Priam’s herds and Agamemnon’s raiders,” Paris muttered, and although Kassandra had seen the old man only briefly at the Games when Paris was welcomed to the city, she felt all of her brother’s sorrow and fury.

  “He had no other son; I should have stayed with him to guard his old age,” Paris said at last, laying his own richly woven cloak gently over the body. At this, Kassandra was able to detach herself enough from her brother to think, Would that you had stayed with him indeed! Better for you, for Agelaus, for Oenone—and better for Troy too!

  Paris had the body brought within the walls of Troy, and Priam gave the honorable old man a hero’s funeral (indeed he had died a hero’s death protecting the King’s herds), with feasting and games. A few foreigners had been caught in the marketplace on the day of the first raid. They had been buried decently in the Temple of Hermes, who was the God of travelers and strangers; but there had been none to claim their bodies, no mourners and no rites beyond what was needful to placate their angry ghosts. The old herdsman was the first Trojan citizen to die in this war, and Paris, at least, would never forget; he cut his hair in mourning, and when Kassandra next saw him, at the naming feast for Creusa’s firstborn, she hardly recognized her twin.

  “Was this necessary? He was no more than a servant,” she said, “though an old and honored one. But even so . . .”

  “He was my foster-father,” Paris said. “All through my childhood I knew no other.” His eyes were red with weeping; she had not known he was capable of so much grief. “May the Gods forget me too if ever I forget to honor his memory.”

  “I did not mean to suggest he was unworthy of your mourning,” Kassandra said, and at that moment she felt that in a sense he was more truly her brother than he had ever been. She had always been the undesired sharer of his feelings, an intruder; now she was beginning to know him for the person he was, faults and virtues too, and to understand him a little.

  They were still standing side by side when the alarm sounded again, and from outside there was the rush of women and children to take shelter in the citadel; Kassandra went to deal with the women who were carrying heavy babies and toddlers, while Paris went, grumbling, to arm himself and join Hector’s men at the wall. Next to the city gates there was an inner stair which led up inside the great wall, and here the men gathered; Kassandra, watching them, felt that perhaps she and her brother would both have been happier if they could have changed places.

  She was busy all day helping to amuse the women and children and keep them quiet; confinement made them fractious, and she wondered sometimes if the men did not have a simpler time of it out there with a target at which to shoot. It would certainly, she thought, be a pleasure to take aim at some of these wretched brats—and then she stopped herself: the children had done nothing except behave as children always did. See how wicked I am, to be provoked by these little innocents. Yet she admitted to herself that she would like to take some of them in either hand and shake them until their little teeth rattled in their heads.

  Chryseis was behaving very well; she had gathered the children round her and started them playing a romping game. And of course that was exactly what a nice young girl ought to be doing; she was playing that game so well that all the palace women petted and praised her. Yet even she left the children after a while and came up to the top of the wall of the palace where Kassandra was standing. This time the raiders had not been content to raid the lower town, but were fighting in the steep streets below the palace, making for Priam’s granaries and treasuries. Soon, she thought, they must fortify the walls and keep the Akhaians out of the lower city.

  If only I had my bow; I am out of practice, but I could still manage to drive back some of them before they come near the palace.

  Patience; that day will come. For a moment Kassandra thought someone had spoken. Chryseis touched her arm.

  “Who are the chieftains among the Akhaians? Do you know any of them?”

  “I know some of them; Agamemnon, that great black-bearded man there, is their leader.” As always, the sight of him made her stomach clench with revulsion. But Chryseis surveyed him with open admiration.

  “How strong he is, and how handsome. What a pity he is not our ally instead of our enemy.”

  Trying not to show her disgust and annoyance, Kassandra murmured, “Don’t you ever think about anything but men?”

  “Not very often,” Chryseis said blithely. “What else should a woman think about?”

  “But you too are one of Apollo’s sworn virgins . . .”

  “Not forever,” Chryseis said, “nor have I ever ridden with the Amazons, or pledged myself to hate men. I am a woman; I did not bid the Gods make me so, but since that is my lot whether I wish it or no, why should I not rejoice in it?”

  “Being a woman need not mean behaving like a harlot,” said Kassandra, annoyed.

  “I do not think you know the difference,” Chryseis said. “You would prefer to be a man, would you not? If the laws permitted, I think you would take a wife.”

  Kassandra was about to give a sharp answer, then caught herself . . . Maybe Chryseis was right. She said stiffly, “We have all forgotten poor old Agelaus and his pyre. He must be consumed now; his bones should be put decently into an urn for burial. I will go; Paris is my brother, and I will do this last office of respect for his foster-father.”

  All THE rest of the winter and into early spring the raids continued, day after day, and eventually, on each of the higher hills south of the city, Priam set up camps where his watchmen could see the approach of the ships and light warning beacons. So the Akhaians, landing, found nothing but bare walls and well-defended heights, and they got nothing but the journey for their pains.

  Then Priam’s men took advantage of a long rainy spell to repair the outer walls and reinforce the great gates; when the Akhaians began to try to fight their way up the high streets into Troy itself, they could not enter. The lower city was a labyrinth of narrow streets built in steep steps, where a defender could easily kick an assailant’s feet out from under him.

  “They are not finding this city quite the ripe apple for the plucking which they thought it would be,” Aeneas gloated, looking out over the palace wall at the streets black with Akhaians running up and down. Even Hector, for once, had been content to let the walls defend them, and most of the women in the city, it seemed, had come out to see the sight of the Akhaians’ frustration. Andromache was there with her now-toddling son, and Creusa had her infant daughter tied into her shawl. These alarms had now become so frequent an event that Hecuba no longer troubled to provide breakfast for the unwilling guests in the citadel after a night’s fighting; but when Hector issued handfuls of grain and flasks of oil to his fighting men, the rule was that any woman accompanying her husband could claim a similar share.

  Kassandra stood by watching the distribution of rations and said, “Tell them to bring back the flasks.”

  Hector protested.

  “The flasks are not worth much; why be niggardly?”

  “It has nothing to do with niggardliness. The potters go out to fight with the rest of the men. If this is to go on for long, there will not be enough of them to make more for every fighting day.”

  “I see what you mean.” Hector gave the order, and no one complained. The storehouses of Troy were still high-piled with grain, and for the moment there was no shortage of food. Kassandra joined the women of Priam’s house in daily refilling the little oil flasks and pouring the rations of wine. Even at the end of winter there was plenty in the palace granaries; but Hector had begun to frown over them in concern.

  “How shall we do the spring sowing if they raid us e
very day?” he asked one night at dinner in the palace.

  “Surely they will not come during spring planting,” Andromache said. “At home in my country, all wars are suspended at planting and harvest to do honor to the Gods.”

  “But these Akhaians do not fear the Mother,” Aeneas said, “and perhaps they will not honor our Gods.”

  “But are not all the Immortals one?” Kassandra asked.

  “You know that. I know it,” Aeneas said. “Whether those Akhaians know it—that is another story. From what I heard, it would not surprise me greatly if they felt war more important to them than any Gods.” He smiled at her and said, “Don’t worry about it, Kassandra. It is men’s business.”

  “Yet if they come,” she said, “it is the women who will suffer more than the men.”

  He looked surprised for a moment. Then he said, “Why, that’s so; I never thought of that before. A man faces nothing worse than an honorable death; but women must face rape, capture, slavery . . . It’s true: war is not for women, but for men. I wonder how a woman would conduct this war.”

  Kassandra said with great bitterness, “A woman would have managed never to provoke it. Then, if the Akhaians wanted the gold and goods of Troy, they would have come against us knowing they were not fighting for ‘honor,’ but out of greed, which the Gods hate.”

  “Remember, Kassandra, there are men who think of this war as a great playing field, a games-ground where the prizes are no more than laurel wreaths and honor.”

  Kassandra nodded. “Hector runs into every battle as if he were to win a bronze caldron and a white bull with gilded horns.”

  “No, you are wrong,” Aeneas said; “there is nothing foolish or reckless about Hector. It is only that we all must live under the rule of our chosen God; and Hector belongs to the God of battles. But his God is not my God; war may be a part of my life, but it will never be my only chosen life.” He touched her cheek lightly and said, “You look weary, Sister; there cannot be so much here for which you must fatigue yourself. The Queen has many women, and any one of them could do these small services. I think the Gods have ordained something more important for you; and we men may need your special strengths before this war comes to its end—whatever end the Gods have decreed for us.”