The Firebrand

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Kassandra said quietly, “Leave him here, then, in Troy; his father will care for him, and so will I, Helen, if that is what you truly want.” After she said it, she realized that Helen was almost the only person in Troy to whom she could talk these days; her mother no longer understood her, nor her sisters. She would miss Helen, if she should return to the country of Sparta.

  Helen frowned. She said, “Why should I give up my own child, because Menelaus is a fool?” After a moment she added, “To tell the truth, Kassandra—unless you are under the spell of Aphrodite, there is not much difference between one man and another; but children are not so easily set aside. I am not responsible for this war; and I think Agamemnon would have made war, sooner or later, whatever I did or did not do.” She sighed and let her head rest against Kassandra’s shoulder. “My sister, I am not as brave as I think I am; I could summon the courage to return to Menelaus, even to leave Paris; but I cannot bring myself to leave my child.” She picked up the toddler leaning against her knee, and pressed him to her heart.

  “To leave your child? And why should you, after all?” asked Andromache, coming to the wall with Creusa just in time to hear her last words. “No woman could bring herself to leave a child she has borne . . . or if she could, she would be no better than a whore.”

  “I am glad to hear you say so,” said Helen. “I was trying to tell myself that it was my duty to return to Menelaus—”

  “Don’t even think of such a thing,” said Andromache, hugging Helen. “You belong to us now, and we would not let you go for every Akhaian down there; even if Paris and Priam and all the men wanted you to go—and they do not. The Gods have sent you to us, and we will keep you—won’t we, Creusa?” she added to the other woman, who nodded and laughed.

  “The Goddess has blessed you, and we will not let you go.”

  Helen smiled faintly. “That is good to hear. All my life men have been kind to me, but women never; it is good to have friends among you.”

  “You are too beautiful for women to love you much,” said Andromache; “but you have been here for two years now; and unlike many beautiful women, you make no attempt to seduce our husbands.”

  “Why should I do that? I already have one more husband than I need; what should I want with yours?” Helen asked, laughing. “I have no great love for Troy; indeed, I would willingly see more of the world, but women cannot travel ...”

  Whenever Kassandra heard anyone say such a thing as Women cannot . . . she was always eager to do just that very thing. She said, “But I am about to travel at the will of my God; and if you wanted to come with me, Helen, I would willingly have your company.”

  “And I yours; but again, I cannot leave so young a child,” Helen said. “Where do you go, and why?”

  “To Colchis; to seek Queen Imandra and inquire for serpent-lore,” Kassandra said. “A moon past, our serpents died or fled from us; I do not want to replace them until I am sure that nothing I did or failed to do was responsible.”

  She told the story, and Andromache looked wistful.

  “Bear my greetings to my mother; and tell her I am happily wed and that I have Hector’s son.”

  “Why not come and bring her your own greetings? Your son is old enough to leave with Hecuba and his father.”

  “I wish I could,” Andromache said. “If you had told me this a month ago . . . but I am pregnant again. Perhaps this time it will be a daughter who can be a warrior for Troy.”

  “A warrior?”

  “Why not? You are, Kassandra, and your mother before you.”

  “Did you not hear what Paris said, when last I would have borne my bow to the walls?” Kassandra asked in disgust. “I could shoot now—and kill Akhilles—and end this war without sending Helen forth from us. But that would not please the men; they do not want to end this war.”

  “No,” said Andromache, “they want to win it; Hector has reserved Akhilles for himself and will never agree to any other way to end the fighting. Can you tell me when this will happen and how much longer we must fight?”

  Kassandra smiled wryly. “Hector has forbidden me to prophesy doom,” she said, “and believe me, I have nothing else to tell.”

  “Perhaps it is as well you are traveling to Colchis,” Helen said. “Kassandra, my friend, the Gods have spoken to me as well as to you, and They have spoken to me nothing of disaster.”

  “Then may your Gods speak truth and mine be false,” Kassandra said. “Nothing would please me more than to return and find Akhilles dead at Hector’s hand, and all of them gone away again.”

  But it will not, it cannot be so. . . .

  13

  KASSANDRA HAD believed that once she made the decision to travel to Colchis, it would be a simple matter of getting leave of the chief priest and priestess, gathering together the clothing she wished to take with her, choosing a traveling companion (or perhaps two) and setting forth.

  But it was not nearly so easy as that. She was reminded that there was officially a state of war between the Akhaians and Troy, so that it must be arranged (by lengthy messages sent back and forth from one Temple of Apollo to the next) that she travel under the Peace of Apollo, being a woman and a sworn priestess and having nothing to do with the war on either side; and she was given to understand that this was more difficult because she was Priam’s daughter and closely related to the main combatants of the war. Long before the official safe-conducts and permissions could be arranged, Kassandra was heartily sick of the whole idea and wished she had never thought of it. In the end, she swore a sacred oath by every God she had ever heard of (and some she hadn’t) that she would deliver no messages relating to the war from either party, and she was declared an official messenger of Apollo and permitted to travel wherever she wished.

  Khryse wished to travel with her, and she had some sympathy for him; he was still mourning the fate of his daughter in the Akhaian camp, and knowing that Agamemnon had chosen the girl for his own mistress did not help. However, though Khryse swore to Kassandra that he would respect her virginity as if she were his own child, she did not trust even his oath, and refused to have him in her party. Since he was a highly respected priest of Apollo, it seemed for a time that she would not be allowed to travel without his escort; but she finally appealed to Charis, saying she would remain within walls till her hair turned gray rather than travel a single step in his company; and at last the matter was dropped.

  Then Priam wished to send messages to many friends along her path, and she had to swear that they were family matters, or religious matters with nothing to do with the war; she could see reason in this because travelers under religious immunity had often taken advantage of it to spy on one side or the other. And finally her mother refused to allow her to travel without adequate chaperonage, so that in the end Kassandra, who would have preferred to travel alone or with a single companion, preferably an Amazon rider like Penthesilea, had to accept two of her mother’s oldest and most timid waiting-women, Kara and Adrea, and to promise that on the road she would always share her bed with them.

  What can she be thinking of? she asked herself. If I wished to indulge myself in lechery, I would certainly not wish to travel to the ends of the world and do so on the hard ground after a day’s riding when I could just as easily do so in my own bed.

  But she knew it was her mother’s way, and there was really nothing she could do about it; and so she accepted Hecuba’s choice of women.

  “For if I refuse,” she said to Phyllida when at last it seemed that all the obstacles had been cleared and she would set forth the next day, “she will believe that I wish somehow to escape her supervision; and she cannot think of any reason I might wish to do so, unless it was to misbehave in some way. What is it in women that makes them suspect such things of one another, Phyllida?”

  Phyllida sighed. “Experience, I suspect,” she said. “Did you not tell me that you had Chryseis watched night and day and still could not vouch for her innocence?”

  Kassa
ndra knew that was true; but it made her angry. She remembered Star saying that city women were so lecherous that they must be locked up behind walls.

  Women, Kassandra thought—except the Amazons—spend their time sitting about and thinking about whom they love only because they have nothing else to occupy their minds. If they had a flock of sheep or a herd of horses to tend, they would be better off. But that had not saved Oenone from pining, she realized, when Paris deserted her.

  She lay awake much of that last night thinking about this mysterious emotion which transformed otherwise sensible women into half-wits capable of thinking only of the men who had inspired them to love.

  It had been determined that she should depart at daybreak; she rose as soon as light began to appear in the sky, and breakfasted on a little bread and a cup of watered wine. She had hoped to ride on a swift horse; but her companions were too old and staid for that, so she had chosen a sedate elderly donkey and to have the older women carried in chairs. Her chair-bearers and attendants—almost guards—were strong young servants of Apollo’s Temple.

  She had expected to slip quietly away; but as she approached the gates she saw a little group of people gathered there: Khryse, Phyllida and a few others who wished to bid her goodbye.

  Phyllida embraced and kissed her and wished her a pleasant journey and a safe return; Khryse came and embraced her too, rather against Kassandra’s will.

  “Come back to us soon and safely, my dear,” he murmured with his lips close to her ear. “I shall miss you more than I can say. Say that you will miss me too.”

  She thought, I shall miss you as I would miss a toothache, but was too courteous to say so. “May the Gods keep you safe and bring Chryseis back to you,” she said, thinking that she did not wish him ill, but she would like it if he would find himself a wife and stop troubling her. Then she clucked to her donkey and they rode forth.

  Before leaving the coast they had to pass the Akhaian ships; here would Apollo’s truce first be tested.

  A watchman outside the Akhaian camp roused and called out; and one of the captains, lavishly armored with metal trimmed with gilt, came toward them.

  “Who passes? Is the Trojan King trying to escape the city and the siege?” he taunted. “I knew they were cowards.”

  “No such thing,” said the guards. “The lady is a priestess of Apollo and travels under His pledge of peace.”

  “Indeed?” the captain said, and looked into Kassandra’s face so directly and rudely that for the first time in her life Kassandra could see the sense of the custom bidding the Akhaian women wear veils. “A priestess, hey? Of the Lady Aphrodite? She is beautiful enough for that.”

  “No; she is one of the Sun Lord’s sworn virgins,” said the leader of her guard, “and she is forbidden to any man save the God.”

  “A virgin, eh? What a waste,” the man said regretfully; “but it would take a braver man than I to argue with Lord Apollo for one of his maidens. And what beauties hide inside the chairs?” he demanded, pulling back the draperies.

  Kassandra was tired of hiding behind her guard. “Two of my mother’s waiting-women,” she said. “To care for me and see that no man offers me any offense.”

  “Quite safe from me, and I dare say from any man,” said the soldier, drawing back respectfully.

  “I’m sorry my ladies don’t meet your approval,” Kassandra said, “but they are for my convenience, not yours, sir; and I am on Apollo’s business, not yours, so I beg you let me pass.”

  “Where are you going? And what business has the Sun Lord outside His Temple?”

  “I am going to Colchis,” she said. “And indeed, I travel on the God’s business; I seek a mistress of serpent-lore so that His serpents may be properly cared for in His Temple.”

  “A little lady like you going so far alone? If you were my daughter, I wouldn’t have it; but I suppose the God knows that what belongs to Him is safe anywhere,” said the soldier. “Pass, then, Lady, and may Apollo guard you. Give me His blessing, I beg you,” he added with a reverential gesture.

  That was the last thing she had expected, but she extended her hands in a gesture of blessing and said, “Apollo Sun Lord bless and guard you, sir,” and rode past.

  She could see so far from the top of the walls of Troy that she had forgotten how long it took to travel; they camped that night and several nights thereafter within sight of the city and woke seeing the flash of sunlight on the house of the Sun Lord. She remembered her trip with the Amazons; she could hardly believe that from that hour to this, she had dwelt behind the prisoning walls of her city. Troy, her home, and her prison. Would she ever see it again?

  In THE long interval between proposing the trip and finally managing to leave she had had ample time for preparation, and she had had two tents made: a lightweight one of oiled linen cloth, and one of leather such as the Amazons had used in rainy weather. For the first days the weather was fine and the tent under the stars was pleasantly cool at night, although her two chaperones, interpreting her mother’s instructions literally, made her sleep with her blankets spread between the two of them. Kassandra, always a restless sleeper, lay awake sometimes for hours, feeling every rock and lump of ground under the tent’s floorcloth dig into her hips, hating to change position for fear of disturbing one or the other of her companions. Nevertheless, she could hear the wind and feel the cool breeze outside the tent, and at least it was different from the unchanging wind at the heights of Troy.

  Day after day, their little caravan slowly toiled without incident across the great plain. They met few travelers on the road, except for one great train of wagons bringing iron bound for Troy, and when they heard that the city was under siege, they wondered if they should turn about and go northward into Thrace or even back toward Colchis.

  “For the Akhaians will not trade with us for metal,” said the leader. “They prefer their own kind of weapons, and most likely they will not let us pass into the city at all; then we will have to go back with only the journey for our pains; or else the Akhaians will seize our whole caravan.”

  Kassandra thought this very likely indeed.

  “Do you know any of the Akhaians who are there?”

  “Akhilles, son of Peleus; Agamemnon, King of Mykenae, and Menelaus of Sparta; Odysseus—”

  “Now, that’s different,” said the caravan leader. “We can trade with Odysseus, same as we would with Priam; he’s an honest man and an honest trader.” He raised his voice to his drivers: “Looks like we’ll be going to Troy after all, fellows.” And then, of course, he wanted to know what she was doing, traveling without her kin, and when she answered he gave the now expected reply that if she were his daughter he wouldn’t permit it.

  “But I suppose your father knows what he’s about,” he concluded, doubtfully. And Kassandra saw no point in explaining that Priam had not been asked for his permission and had been given no chance to consent or refuse.

  “Can I carry any messages for you to Troy, little lady?”

  “Only to let it be known in the Sun Lord’s house that I am alive and well. The message will be passed on from there to my mother and father.” And with mutual expressions of goodwill and blessings they parted, moving slowly apart across the great plain like two streams in opposite directions. After a few more nights, she knew, her party would arrive within the borders of the country of the Kentaurs.

  “The Kentaurs?” said Adrea, one of her chaperones.

  “Oh, not the Kentaurs!” cried Kara, the other.

  “Why, yes, Nurse—they live in this country and we must pass through their territory. It is almost inevitable that we shall meet one or more of their wandering bands.”

  But the women had been brought up on the old nursery tales.

  “And are you not afraid of the Kentaurs, Mistress Kassandra?” asked Kara, and she replied, “No, not at all.”

  She supposed that was an unwomanly answer; Kara looked as if the very fact that any woman might escape the fear of what fright
ened her so much actually gave offense. Kassandra sighed and finished the wine in her cup. “We must drink this up,” she said, “it is beginning to turn sour and will not keep in the heat. We can get some more at the next village, in a day or perhaps two,” and the rest of the talk was of simpler things.

  14

  TRUE TO HER prediction, they saw the Kentaurs early in the next day. At first, riding the sea of endless grass, Kassandra could see nothing; then, very far away, at the edge of her vision she could see movement and shadows, and at last made out a small form . . . no, two . . . no, three, riding, dark against the golden waving of the grasses. They seemed to see her little caravan advancing, then drew together, conferring; at one point she thought they would all flee. Then they wheeled and came riding toward the Trojans.

  Kassandra stopped her donkey but made no other move of withdrawal; she knew from old that one should never let a Kentaur believe you feared him or he would take ruthless advantage of it.

  She said softly through the curtains of the litter where the ladies rode, “Nurses, you wanted to see a Kentaur. There is one.”

  “I?” said Adrea. “Not likely”; but nevertheless she thrust her head out and peered between the curtains. Kara followed suit.

  “What funny ugly little men,” she whispered, “and shameless; naked as an animal.”

  “Why should they wear clothing when there is no one to see or care? When they come into cities, they have garments they can wear if they choose,” Kassandra said, and looked at the approaching band. The foremost among them was gray-haired and gnarled, his legs even smaller and more bowed than the others’. He wore a necklace of lions’ teeth about his throat; Kassandra recognized him, shrunken and old as he was.

  “Cheiron,” she said, and he bowed from his horse’s neck.

  “Kinswoman of Penthesilea, greeting. When last we met, we had honey found in the wild. Our tribe is poor, these days. Many, many travelers on the plain; scare away the game, trample down wild plants. Our she-goats give no milk even for the littlest boys. We hunger much.”