The Firebrand (12 page)

Toward morning the rain stopped and the dark ragged clouds blew away; the moon came out, and Kassandra could see that they were passing through a narrow gorge of rock, high up; she looked down on broad plains below, covered with small twisted trees and orderly plowed fields enclosed by stone walls. They moved slowly down the steep slope, and gradually the leading horses slowed and stopped. The tents were unpacked, and the fire pot, wrapped in a damp cloth, was set in a central place. Already the first rays of a red sun were coming up across the gorge they had crossed in the night. They sent the young girls to look for dry wood. There was little to be found after days of soaking rain, but under the thick twisted olive trees Kassandra found a few dry chips where the rain had not penetrated, and she ran back with them to the fire.

The sun came up as they sat there, in a flood of red which told of more rain to come, so they sat there enjoying the damp heat and drying their hair and robes. Then the older women started to supervise the setting up of the tent and took a woman about to give birth inside; the warriors told the young girls to set the herds to grazing, and Kassandra went with them.

She was very tired and her eyes burned, but she was not sleepy; a part of her mind was back in the tent where the women clustered, encouraging the laboring woman, and a part of her was still far away, sharing with Paris. She knew he was on the hillside with his flocks, and that his thoughts remained with the girl whose memory obsessed him. She knew the girl’s name, Oenone, the sweet mortal sound of it, and knew hauntingly how Paris clung to the memory that wiped out all awareness of what should have been uppermost in his thoughts, his duty to his flock. And even before Paris sensed it himself, she heard—or felt, or smelled—the presence of the girl stealing toward him through the groves of trees on the mountainside.

The bitter scent of juniper was all around them. Kassandra hardly knew which of them, Paris or the girl, first saw the other, or who moved first to run and crush the other into eager arms. The touch of hungry kisses almost jolted her back into her own body and her own place, but she was ready for it now, and clung to her awareness of
his
emotions and sensations. The next thing she knew, Oenone was sprawled on the soft grass, while Paris knelt above her, pulling at her garments.

Suddenly aware that this was not a moment to be shared even with a twin sister, she pulled back and away and was astride her own horse with drops of a rain shower on her face. She longed for the sunshine of her own country, Apollo’s own sunshine, and for the first time since she had ridden away with the Amazons wondered when she would return.

She felt sick; her eyes burned, and a queasiness attacked her. The memory of what she had shared answered some of the many questions in her mind, but she was not sure whether it was her brother with whom she had shared this curious experience, or the girl Oenone, whether she was lover or beloved.

She was not certain now that she was within her own body, or whether she was still lying in the soft grass on Mount Ida with her brother and the girl, their bodies still locked in the afterglow of desire. Her mind would not stay within the confines of her body, but spread far beyond her, so that a part of her was here in the circle of horses and young women, and a part of her extended downward into the birthing tent, where the woman knelt in a ring of women watching her, crying out instructions and encouragement. The rending pains seemed to be attacking her own inexperienced body. She was racked by confusion, felt the blood leaving her cheeks, heard her own breath rasp in her throat.

She turned wildly around; she pulled so hard on the reins that her mare almost stumbled, and dug her heels into the horse’s flank, fleeing across the plain, as if by fierce physical effort she could bring all her consciousness back into her own body. Penthesilea saw her riding away from the camp and quickly jumped to the back of her own horse, and raced after her.

Kassandra, stretched out along the mare’s back desperately trying to shut out everything outside herself, sensed the pursuit and dug her heels harder. Nevertheless, Penthesilea’s horse was longer-legged, and she was by far the better rider; gradually the gap between the two riders narrowed and the Amazon drew abreast of the girl, seeing with dismay Kassandra’s flushed face and terrified eyes.

She held out her arms and scooped Kassandra from the back of her mare, holding her limp on the saddle before her.

She could feel the girl’s forehead fire-hot as if with fever. Almost delirious now, Kassandra struggled against her, and the older woman held her tight in her strong arms.

“Hush! Hush! What ails you, Bright Eyes? Why, your forehead feels as if you were sun-stricken, yet it is not a hot day!” Her voice was kindly, yet Kassandra felt that the older woman was mocking her, and struggled frantically to be free.

“Nothing is wrong—I did not mean to—”

“No, all is well, child. No one will hurt you; no one is angry with you,” Penthesilea said as she held her, soothing her. After a moment Kassandra abandoned her struggles and went limp in her kinswoman’s arms.

“Tell me about it.”

Kassandra blurted out, “I was—with him. My brother. And a girl. And I couldn’t shut it out, anything, anywhere in the camp . . .”

“Goddess be merciful,” Penthesilea whispered. At Kassandra’s age she too had borne the gift (or curse) of the wide-open seeing. Sharing experiences for which the mind or body was unprepared could indeed touch upon inner madness, and there was not always a safe return. Kassandra was lying in her arms only half conscious, and her kinswoman was not sure what to do for her.

First she must get her back to the camp; so far from the other women, or the horses, there were likely to be strange lawless men in these wilds, and in Kassandra’s present state, such an encounter might drive her sheer over the edge of sanity. She turned about, holding the reins of Kassandra’s mare so it would follow her. She cradled the girl against her breast, and when they were within the circle of the camp, lifted her down and carried her inside the tent, where the new mother was resting beside her sleeping infant. Penthesilea laid Kassandra down on a blanket and sat beside her, her firm hand on her niece’s brow, covering her eyes, willing her to shut out all the intrusions into her mind.

Kassandra’s sobbing subsided and she slowly grew calm, turning her face into Penthesilea’s hand like a baby, curled up against her.

After a long time, the Amazon Queen asked, “Are you better now?”

“Yes, but—will it come again?”

“Probably. It is a gift of the Goddess, and you must learn to live with it. There is little I can do to help you, child. Perhaps Serpent Mother has called you to speak for the Gods; there are priestesses and seeresses among us. Perhaps when it is time for you to go underground and face Her . . .”

“I do not understand,” Kassandra said. Then she remembered when Apollo had spoken to her and asked that she be His priestess. She told Penthesilea of this, and the older Amazon looked relieved.

“Is it so? I know nothing of your Sun Lord; it seems to me strange that a woman should seek a God rather than the Earth Mother or our Serpent Mother. It is She who dwells underground and rules over all the realms of women—the darkness of birth and death. Perhaps She too has called you and you have not heard Her voice. I have heard that sometimes it is so with the priestesses born: that if they do not hear Her call, she will set Her hand on them through the darkness of evil dreams, so that they may learn how to listen to Her voice.”

Kassandra was not certain; she knew little of Penthesilea’s Serpent Mother, yet she remembered the beautiful serpents in Apollo’s house and how she had longed to caress them. Perhaps this Serpent Mother had called her too, not only the bright and beloved Sun Lord.

She had hoped that her kinswoman, who knew so much about the Goddess, would tell her what she must do to be rid of this unwanted Sight. Now she began to realize that she must herself control it, must find a way within herself to shut the floodgates before the visions overwhelmed her.

“I will try,” she said. “Are there any who know about these things?”

“Perhaps among the servants of the Gods. You are a princess of two royal houses: ours of the Amazons’, and your father’s; I know nothing of those Gods, but a time must come when as one of us, you must go underground to meet the Serpent Mother, and since already She has called you, it should be sooner rather than later. Perhaps at the next moon; I shall speak to the elders and see what they say of you.”

Perhaps,
Kassandra said to herself,
this is why the God called me to be His servant.
Yet she had herself opened these doors; she should not complain that she had been given the gift which she had asked.

DAY AFTER day the tribe rode, into the fierce winds and the raw icy rain. The weather grew colder and colder, and at night the women wrapped themselves in all their woolen garments and blankets. Kassandra curled up next to her horse, sheltering in the warmth of the big sleek body. Eventually the skies grew clear and brilliant and the rain stopped. Still to the east the tribe traveled; when the women asked their leaders when they would rest and find pasture for their horses, Penthesilea only sighed: “We must first pass two rivers, as the Goddess has decreed.”

The moon had waxed and waned again when they sighted the first human beings they had seen on this journey: a small band of men dressed in skins to which hair clung, so that the women guessed that the art of tanning skins was still unknown to them.

There are pastures here,
Kassandra thought;
this might be the place to rest our herds and remain. But not with these men . . .

The men stared openmouthed and loutish at the women, and Penthesilea drew up her horse beside them.

“Who owns these flocks and herds?” she asked, pointing to the sheep and goats grazing on the bright green vegetation.

“We do. What kind of goats be ye riding?” asked one of the men. “Never did we see goats so big and healthy.”

Penthesilea started to say that they were not goats but horses; then decided that in their ignorance there might be some advantage for the tribe. “They are the goats of Poseidon, God of the Sea,” she told him, and he asked only, “What be the sea?”

“Water from here to the horizon,” she said, and he gasped, “Oh, my! Never do we see water but what’s in some muddy hole that dries in the summer! No wonder they look rich and fat!” Then he smiled craftily and asked in his rude dialect if the ladies would care to pasture their herds beside his own.

“Perhaps for a night or two,” said Penthesilea.

“Where be yer menfolks?” he asked.

“We have none; we are free of all men,” said the Amazon, “but we will accept the hospitality of your pasture for this night, since we have been riding for a long time. Our animals are weary and will welcome a little of your good grass.”

“They are welcome to it,” replied one of the men, who seemed a little cleaner than the rest, and his garment a little more whole.

As they were dismounting, Penthesilea whispered to Kassandra that they must be wary, and not sleep, but watch their horses even through the night. “For I do not trust these men, not even a little,” she whispered. “I think, as soon as we are sleeping, or they think we are sleeping, they will try to steal our horses, and perhaps attack us.”

The men tried to edge their way into the circle of women and to steal furtive touches, and Kassandra thought if they had been city women, inexperienced in guile, they would not have realized what the men were doing. She rose with the other young girls to begin spreading out their blankets. She slipped hobbles over her horse’s feet, so that it could not go far away in the night, loosened her leather belt and lay down in her blanket, between Elaria and Star.

“I wonder how far we will ride,” Star murmured, hugging her blanket around her thin shoulders against the dampness. “If we do not soon find food, the children will begin to die.”

“It is not as bad as that,” Elaria remonstrated. “We have not even begun to bleed the horses. We can live on their blood for at least a month before they begin to weaken. Once when there was a bad year we lived on the mares’ blood for two months. My first daughter died, and we were all so near starving that when we went to the men’s village, none of us became pregnant for almost half a year.”

“I am hungry enough that I would drink mares’ blood—or anything else,” Star grumbled, but Elaria said, “That cannot be until Penthesilea gives orders; and she knows what she is doing.”

“I am not so sure,” Star muttered. “Letting us sleep here among all these men—”

“No,” said Elaria, “she bade us
not
sleep.”

Slowly the moon rose above the trees, climbing higher and higher. Then across her lowered eyelids Kassandra saw dark forms stealing through the clearing.

She was waiting for Penthesilea’s signal when suddenly the stars above were blotted out by a dark shadow and the weight of a man’s body was suddenly across hers; hands were tearing away her breeches, fumbling at her breast. She had her hand on her bronze dagger; she struggled to free herself, but was pinned down flat. She kicked, and bit at the hand that covered her mouth; her attacker yelped—like the dog he was, she thought fiercely—and she thrust up hard with the hilt of the dagger, striking his mouth; he yelped again and Kassandra felt a spray of blood and curses from his broken lips. Then she got the dagger right way round and struck; he yelled and fell across her, just as Penthesilea shouted and all over the grove women sprang to their feet. Someone thrust a torch into the dying coals and the firelight flared up, reflecting light on bronze daggers naked in the men’s hands.

“Such is your hospitality to guests?”

“I have taken care of one of them, Aunt!” Kassandra cried out. She scrambled free, pushing the groaning man off her body. Penthesilea strode toward her and looked down.