The Firebrand

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  As the halfway mark was reached and the sixth horse fell to the ground, there was a small sound like a very distant thunderclap, and the ground beneath them rolled slightly. An omen? she wondered. Or was Poseidon simply acknowledging His sacrifice?

  Apollo Sun Lord, she implored, can You not save this city which has been Yours for so long, even if You first took it from Serpent Mother?

  The glare of the sun was bright in her eyes, and the well-known voice seemed to crash in her ears like the distant surf.

  Even I cannot contend with what the Thunderer has decreed, child. What is to come must come.

  The sacrifice went on, but she was no longer watching. What was the use of sacrificing to Poseidon if He was bound by the Thunderer—who is no God of mine, and no God of Troy’s—to destroy the people who sacrificed to Him, while Apollo Sun Lord stood helplessly aside as the Earth Shaker ravaged the city—His own city?

  If this was all ordained anyhow, why sacrifice and petition the Immortals? Defiance struggled in her, never again to be wholly silent, the old cry still unanswered: What good are these Gods?

  It seemed now that high above the city, as she had seen once in her vision, two mighty figures, fashioned of cloud and storm, stood toe to toe like wrestlers, struggling and casting blows of lightning and thunder at each other. The sound seemed to slam through her consciousness. She swayed, her eyes fixed on the battling Immortals.

  Then she stumbled and fell, but lost consciousness before she touched the ground.

  When she woke, she was lying with her head in her mother’s lap.

  “You should have stayed out of the midday sun,” Hecuba reproved gently. “It was not right to make a disturbance at the sacrifices.”

  “Oh, I don’t think the Gods cared that much,” said Kassandra, pulling herself upright through the stabbing pain behind her eyes. “Do you?” But seeing the faintly bewildered look on her mother’s face, she was sure the Queen did not understand what she was talking about; she was not sure herself. “I am sorry; I meant no disrespect to the Gods, of course. We are all here to do Them honor; do you think They will feel in honor bound to return the courtesy?” But all she saw in Hecuba’s eyes was the old look—the look that said I don’t understand you.

  “What in the name of all the Gods are they doing out there?” Helen asked.

  “Polyxena heard that they’re building an altar to Poseidon,” Kassandra replied.

  Down below, on the open space which had been so long a battlefield, what looked like the whole Akhaian army was lugging lumber, and under the protection of a veritable wall of lashed-together leather shields, hammering and sawing frantically.

  “Their priests drew up the plans,” said Khryse, strolling up to join the women.

  Paris came toward them and bent down to kiss his mother’s hand.

  “It looks unlike any altar I have ever seen,” he said; “more like some form of siege machine. Look, if they build it this high they could shoot down over the walls, or even climb over into the city, like boarders on a ship.”

  Hecuba seemed troubled by the tone of his voice. She demanded, “Have you spoken to Hector about this?”

  Paris bent his head and turned away, but not before Kassandra could see that his eyes were filled with tears. “How can you bear it when she talks like that?” he murmured.

  “The question is not how we can bear it, but that she must,” Kassandra said sharply. “You at least can go out and try to avenge the ills that have broken our mother’s mind and are breaking down our father’s. Tell me, can they really build that thing high enough to climb into the city?”

  “Probably; but they shall not while I live,” said Paris. “I must send to rally all the remaining charioteers and archers.” He kissed Helen, and went down the stairs. Soon after, they heard the battle cry as Paris and the remaining chariots dashed breakneck at the structure, shooting flights of arrows that all but darkened the sky. The wild charge actually knocked off one corner of the structure, sending it down with a crash, and half a dozen men fell screaming to the ground.

  The Akhaian soldiers broke and began to run, with Trojans in hot pursuit in their chariots, cutting them down as fast as they could. When they were in full retreat and appeared to be trying to run as far as the ships, Paris called off the chase and rode back to the unprotected structure. Finding a barrel of tar on the site and sloshing it liberally about, he set the whole construction alight. As it burned, the Trojans heard the cries of Agamemnon uselessly trying to rally his men, and they rode back inside the walls before Agamemnon could assemble the Akhaians together for a renewed attack.

  The Trojans on the walls were cheering wildly. It was the only battle they had clearly won since the burning of the Akhaian ships. Paris came up and knelt before Priam.

  “If they want to build an altar to Poseidon, they will not build it on Trojan ground, sir.”

  “Well done,” said Priam, embracing him heartily, and Helen came to help him out of his armor.

  “You’re wounded,” she said, seeing him flinch as she removed the vambrace from his upper arm.

  Paris shrugged; the movement made him flinch again.

  “An arrow wound. It didn’t touch a bone,” he said.

  “Kassandra,” Helen said, “come and look at this; what do you think?”

  Kassandra came and folded back the sleeve of Paris’ tunic. It was a flesh wound, a small depression just above the elbow. Purple and puffy, like pouting lips, it had already closed, and from it a drop or two of blood oozed.

  “It is not, I think, too serious,” she said, “but it should be washed in wine and bathed with very hot water and herbs; if a puncture wound closes too quickly, it can be serious. At all costs it must be kept open and made to bleed freely to cleanse it.”

  “She is right,” said Khryse, bringing a flask of wine, which he began to pour over the wound; but Paris grabbed the flask.

  “A waste of good wine,” he said, and poured it into his mouth instead, making a wry face. “Ugh, not even fit for that. Might be good to wash my feet with.”

  Khryse shrugged. “There is better wine for the drinking in the Sun Lord’s house, Prince Paris; this is a poor vintage kept for cleansing wounds. Come and have some of the better vintage while we tend you.”

  “Better yet, come to our rooms in the palace and let me tend you,” Helen said. “You have had enough fighting for one day—and there is nobody left to fight.”

  “No,” Paris said, walking to the wall. “I hear Agamemnon; he’s got some of those archers of his to attack again. Let’s go down and drive them off. Already they say I spend too much time in your boudoir being cosseted, my Helen; I am weary of a coward’s reputation. Here, tie this up with your scarf and let me go.” He pulled his armor together over the bound wound and was off down the stairs. They heard him shouting to his men.

  “Oh, why did he have to have a damned attack of heroism right now?” Helen said angrily. “And if it was really an altar to Poseidon, do you think the God will be angry because he burned it down?”

  “I don’t see what else he could have done, whether the God is angry or not,” Kassandra said. “Perhaps the Earth Shaker will remember all those nice fat horses that we gave Him courtesy of Odysseus a couple of hours ago.”

  “I pray it does not hamper his riding and shooting,” Helen said. “When he comes back—if he survives this charge—I will take him off to be tended by the best of the healers.”

  “I will go and send our best healer-priests to the palace for him, Lady Helen,” Khryse said, and went off up the hill. Kassandra watched the charge; Paris fought like a madman, as if the War-God’s self inhabited him, and she lost count of how many of the Akhaian soldiers he cut down and left bleeding on the ground.

  “I have never seen him fight like this before,” Helen said.

  Pray you never do again, Kassandra thought.

  “Maybe the wound is as slight as he says; he seems not to be favoring the arm at all.”

  �
��He rides like Hector himself,” said Priam, watching him from the wall. “We have all been unjust to the boy, thinking him less heroic than his brother.”

  Helen shut her eyes as a sword came down toward Paris; he parried the blow at the very moment when it seemed it must strike his head from his shoulders. It was the last blow; a moment later Agamemnon’s men broke and ran. Paris yelled as if he were going to chase them into the water, but before long he called off his men.

  “If there is a bullock, have it killed for the men’s dinner,” he said to Hecuba, as he came up the stairs to the waiting women. “I have never seen such fighting.”

  Helen hurried to embrace him. “Praise to Aphrodite that you are safe still!”

  “Yes, She is still watching over us; She did not bring you here to Troy only to abandon us now.” Paris looked down at the ashes of the structure the Akhaians had been trying to build.

  “If this is dedicated to any God, I pray He will forgive me. Now, if you will find that healer, my Helen, I will be glad of his good offices; my arm aches.” He leaned on her as they went down into the palace, and Kassandra looked after them with dread.

  “You had better go,” said Khryse. She had not heard Khryse come back. “You are as good a healer as any in the Sun Lord’s house.”

  Kassandra was not sure of that, but did not know how to say so. “You saw the wound closer than I; you know how bad it is,” he added. “I do not like such wounds even when they look harmless.” She hurried off to Paris and Helen’s chambers, only to be told that her services were not required.

  That night was quiet, but in the morning the scaffolding had been raised again and the Akhaians were hammering and sawing away as if they had never been interrupted.

  “Well, we’ll make short work of that, as we did yesterday,” said Deiphobos, who had come out this morning with Priam. The old man leaned heavily on his son’s shoulder. “Where’s Aphrodite’s gift to womankind this morning? Still hiding behind Helen’s frilled skirts?”

  “Be quiet,” Priam said sharply. “He had a wound yesterday; perhaps it is worse or he has taken cold in it.” He summoned one of the younger messengers and said, “Go to Prince Paris if you please, and ask why he is not here with his army.”

  “A wound,” said Deiphobos scornfully. “I saw that wound; a cat-scratch or, more likely, a love-bite.”

  The boy hurried away and came back looking pale. He bowed to Priam and said, “My lord, the lady Helen asks that the priestess Kassandra come and look at her brother’s wound; it is beyond her power to cure.”

  “My father,” Deiphobos said, “have I your leave to take out the chariots and drive off these ants as Paris did yesterday?”

  “Go,” Priam said, “but when Paris is healed, you will give over command to him again; nothing that is his will ever belong to you.”

  “We’ll see,” said Deiphobos. He saluted Priam and left.

  Kassandra went down into the palace, through the halls which seemed, this morning, dank and cold and still, with wisps of sea-fog hanging in the air. In the rooms allotted to Paris and Helen, Paris, half-clad and very pale, was lying on a pallet, muttering. Helen, at his side, trying to bathe the wound with steaming water scented with herbs, sprang up and came to Kassandra.

  “Aphrodite be praised that you have come; perhaps he will listen to you when he will not to me,” she said. Kassandra came and drew back the veil with which the wound had been covered. The whole upper arm was grossly swollen, the puncture still obstinately closed and weeping clear fluid; the arm looked purplish, with red streaks fanning down toward the wrist.

  Kassandra drew breath; she had never seen an arrow wound quite like this. She said, “Have the priests of Apollo seen this?”

  “They were here twice in the night. They told me to bathe it with hot water, and said it should probably be burned with a hot iron; but I had not the heart to make him suffer that, when they could not promise that it would cure him,” Helen said. “But just in the last hour he seems worse, and he does not know me now; until a few minutes ago he was yelling to the servants to bring his armor, and threatening them with a beating if they would not help him get up and put it on.”

  “That is not good,” Kassandra said. “I have seen worse wounds heal, but—”

  “Should I have let them burn him?”

  “No; if I had been there I would have said to dress it with wine and sweet oil; and sometimes I have known a poultice of moldy bread, or of cobwebs, to cleanse a puncture wound,” she said. “The healers are too quick with their hot irons; I might have cut it last night to make it bleed more freely, but nothing more. Now it is too late. The infection has taken hold, and either he will live or he will die. But don’t despair,” she added quickly. “He is young and strong, and as I told you, I have seen worse wounds heal.”

  “Is there nothing that can be done?” Helen asked wildly. “Your magic . . .”

  “Alas, I have no healing magic,” Kassandra said. “But I will pray; I can do no more.” She hesitated and said, “The river priestess Oenone—she was skilled in healing magic.”

  Helen sprang up in excitement.

  “Can you not send for her?” she implored. “Beg her to come and heal my lord! Whatever she asks, it shall be hers; I promise it.”

  But the only thing she wishes for, you have already taken from her, Kassandra thought. She said, “I will send a message to her; but I cannot promise that she will come.”

  “But if she loved him once, could she be cruel enough to refuse him her help, if it meant his death?”

  “I don’t know, Helen; she was very bitter against him when she left the palace,” Kassandra said.

  “If I must, I—Queen of Sparta—will kneel before her with ashes in my hair,” Helen said. “Should I go to Oenone, then?”

  “No. I know her; I will go,” Kassandra said. “You pray and sacrifice to Aphrodite, Who favors you.” Helen embraced her and clung to her.

  “Kassandra, surely you do not wish me evil? So many of these women of Troy hate me—I can see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices. . . .” Helen’s voice sounded almost like a pleading child’s, and Kassandra touched her cheek gently.

  “I wish you nothing but good, Helen; that I swear to you,” she said.

  “But when first I came to Troy you cursed me—”

  “No,” Kassandra said, “I foretold truly that you would bring sorrow on us. The fact that I saw the evil does not mean that I caused it. It was the doing of the Immortals, and no more of your doing than mine. No one can escape the working of Fate. I will go now to the headwaters of the Scamander and find Oenone, and implore her to come and heal Paris.”

  Khryse greeted her as she left the palace. She looked at him in surprise; this morning she had forgotten and simply taken his presence for granted.

  “I thought by now you would be on a ship bound for Crete or Egypt,” she said. “Why have you not gone?”

  “There may still be something I can do for the city which has sheltered me, or for Priam who has been my King,” Khryse said, “or—who knows?—even for you.”

  “You should not stay for me,” Kassandra said. “I would be glad to know you are safe from what will come.”

  “I want nothing,” he said in a queerly sober tone, “except that you should know at last, before the end comes for us all, that my love for you is true and unselfish, desiring nothing except your good.”

  Why, that’s true, she thought, and said gently, “I believe you, my friend; and I beg you to go to safety as soon as you can. Someone must remember and tell the truth about Troy for those who come after; it troubles me that in legends, our children’s children should come to think of Akhilles as a great hero or a good man.”

  “It is not likely to do us any harm, or Akhilles any good either, whatever they may say or sing of us in times to come,” Khryse said. “Yet if I survive, I swear I will tell the truth to anyone who will listen.”

  Kassandra climbed quickly to the Sun Lord’s house a
nd took off her formal robe; she put on an old dark tunic, in which she could come and go unheeded, solid leather sandals and a heavy cloak which would keep out wind or rain. Then she went quietly out the small abandoned side gate and took the road up toward Mount Ida, along the drying stream of the Scamander. The track was beaten now into a road; many horses and men had come this way, and the water which had once run strong and clean was muddied and fouled. When last she had taken this path—how many years ago now?—the water had been clear, the path almost untrodden.

  Even now, had her errand been less urgent and desperate, she would have enjoyed the journey. The sun was hidden by clouds, the tops of the tree-clad hills lost themselves in thick rolls of mist and the light winds promised rain and probably thunder. She went up quickly; but although she was a strong woman, the grade was so steep that she was soon out of breath and had to stop and rest. As she climbed, what had been a river ran thinner and clearer, and no man or horse had polluted the pathway or the water. She knelt and drank, for in spite of the clouds and wind, it was hot.

  At last she reached the place where the water sprang forth from the rock, guarded by a carven image of Father Scamander. She struck the bell which summoned the river nymphs, and when a young girl appeared, asked if she might speak with Oenone.

  “I think she is here,” the girl said. “Her son was ill with a summer fever; she did not go down to the sheep-shearing festival with the others.”

  Kassandra had forgotten that it was so near to shearing-time.

  The child went away, and Kassandra sat down on a bench near the spring and enjoyed the silence; perhaps when Honey was older she might come here to serve among the nymphs of the River God. A pleasant place for a young girl to grow up—not, perhaps, as pleasant as riding with the Amazons, but that was no longer possible. Kassandra began to understand that she had hardly begun yet to feel her grief for Penthesilea. She had been so busy with vengeance and then with other deaths that her grief had had to stand aside for more leisure to mourn.

  It will be a long time before I can mourn for my brother, she thought, and wondered what she had meant by it.