“We are traveling to Colchis,” Kassandra said. “Can you show us the way?”
“With pleasure, if it is your wish,” the old Kentaur said in his barbarous accent. “But how come ye to be riding away from Troy? The whole world’s going there for this war, it seems. If not to fight, then to sell something to the fighters, one side or the other.”
This was so true there seemed no purpose in commenting on it.
She had before leaving Troy asked the kitchens for a good half dozen loaves of bread, knowing that the Kentaurs neither grew nor ground grain and that it was a most unusual luxury for them. When it was unwrapped and given, the little man’s eyes gleamed—Kassandra thought it was with real hunger—and he said, “Priam’s daughter is generous. Does her husband fight in the great battles before Troy? If he does, I will gift him with magical arrows which will never fail to bring down her enemies even if they do not strike in a vital part.”
“I have no husband,” she said. “I am sworn to the Sun Lord and will have none but Him. And I need none of your arrows, envenomed with poison brewed from toads.”
For a moment the little man looked at her and glowered; then he leaned back and broke into a great guffaw of laughter, and did something, Kassandra could not see what, that made his horse rear up and prance, and then bow down.
“Huh-huh-huh,” he chortled. “Priam’s daughter is clever and good; no man of all my people will harm her as she passes through my country, or anything belonging to her. Not even the old women who peer at my men lustfully from behind their curtains! But if you have no use for the old toads, give them to my men; they are no good for bang-bang”—he accompanied the meaningless syllables with a gesture which made his meaning obscenely clear—“but we could boil them for arrow poison, huh-huh-huh?”
Kassandra struggled to keep her face straight.
“By no means; I do not want to travel without my women; they are good to me,” she said, “and I would not travel through your country with young and pretty ones.”
“Huh; clever,” he said, wheeled his horse and rode quickly away.
She held up her hand to signal that she had not finished her parley, and he wheeled back and returned a little way. She asked, “Does the wise leader of the Horse People know where Penthesilea’s women pasture her mares this summer?”
He gestured and gabbled out a quick explanation. Since it would not mean going too far out of their way, Kassandra decided she would ride in that direction. Again she took leave courteously of Cheiron, who had begun sharing out the loaves with his men and already had crumbs around his mouth.
AFTER ANOTHER long day of riding in the direction the Kentaur had indicated, Kassandra saw in the distance a mounted figure. The stranger carried a bow such as Penthesilea’s women bore slung across her back. Kassandra beckoned to her, and the woman approached.
“Who rides in our country with an escort of men?”
“I am Kassandra, daughter of Priam of Troy, and I seek my kinswoman Penthesilea the Amazon,” she said.
The woman, clad in the leather tunic and breeches of the tribeswomen, her long, coarse black hair knotted atop her head, looked at her suspiciously; and finally said, “I remember you as a child, Princess. I cannot leave my mares”—she gestured toward the scattered scrawny herd grazing across the spare grasses of the plain—“and it is not my place to summon the Queen. But I will send a signal that she is wanted, and if it seems good to her, she will come.”
She dismounted and kindled a small fire, throwing something into the flames which emitted great clouds of smoke; she covered it, then let the smoke billow up in successive triple puffs. After some time, Kassandra saw a tall figure on horseback making its way across the plain. When the figure neared, she recognized her kinswoman.
Penthesilea’s horse approached and she could see the puzzled look on the Amazon’s face; after a moment Kassandra realized that her kinswoman had not recognized her. When Penthesilea had last seen her she had been a young girl; now older, robed and attired as a princess, a priestess, she was only a strange woman.
She called out her name. “Don’t you know me, Aunt?”
“Kassandra!” Penthesilea’s taut sun-browned face relaxed, but she still looked tense and old. She came and dismounted, and embraced Kassandra with affection. “Why do you come here, child?”
“Looking for you, Aunt.” When she had last seen her kinswoman, Penthesilea had seemed youthful and strong; now Kassandra wondered how old she really was. Her face was lined, with hundreds of small wrinkles around mouth and eyes; she had always been thin but was now positively scrawny. Kassandra wondered if the Amazons, like the Kentaurs, were actually starving.
“How goes this war in Troy?” the older woman asked. “Will you shelter with us this night and tell us about it?”
“With pleasure,” Kassandra said, “and we can talk at leisure about this war; though I am weary of it.” She gave directions to the bearers to follow the Amazon, and herself rode at Penthesilea’s side, toward a cave in a hillside; inside there were a scant half dozen women, mostly elderly, and a few little girls. When last she had traveled with them, there had been a good half a hundred. Now there were no babies, and no young women of childbearing age.
Penthesilea saw the direction of her glance and said, “Elaria and five others are in the men’s village. I was afraid, but I knew I must let them go now or I would never dare to let them go again. That’s right—you don’t know what happened, do you? Then our shame has not yet been told in Troy ...”
“I have heard nothing, Aunt.”
“Come and sit down. We’ll talk as we eat, then.” She smiled and sniffed appreciatively. “We have not eaten this well for many moons. Thank you.”
Their meal had been supplemented with dried meat and bread from Kassandra’s provisions. “All the same,” Penthesilea said, “we are not as badly off as the Kentaurs; they are starving, and soon there will be no more. Have you even met with any of them?”
Kassandra told about her encounter with Cheiron, and the older woman nodded.
“Yes, we can always trust him and his men. In the name of the Goddess, I wish—” She broke off. “Last year we arranged to go to one of the men’s villages—we made an arrangement for trading metal pots, and horses and some of our milk goats, too. Well, we went as usual, and it seemed that all was well. Two moons went by; some of us were pregnant, and we were ready to depart. They besought us to stay another month, and we agreed. Then when we were ready to set out, they made us a farewell feast and brought us a new wine. We slept deeply, and when we woke—it had been drugged, of course—we were bound and gagged, and they told us that we could not leave them; that they had decided they wished to live like men in cities, with women to tend them year round, and share their beds and their lives—” She broke off, shaking with indignation and grief.
“Every animal has a proper mating season,” she said. “We tried to remind them of that, but they would not hear. So we told them that we would consider it if they would let us go; and they said we should cook them a meal, because men in cities had women to cook for them, look after their needs. They even forced some of the women who were already pregnant to bed with them!
“So we cooked them a meal; and you can imagine what kind of meal it was.” She grinned fiercely. “But some women wished to spare the fathers of their children—Earth Mother alone knows where they got such ideas. And so some of them had been warned, and when they were all spewing and purging, we made ready to ride; but a few of them forced us to fight. Well, we could not kill them all; and so we lost many of our number: the traitorous ones stayed and did not return to us.”
“They stayed with the men who—who had done this to you?”
“Aye; they said they were weary of fighting and herding,” Penthesilea said scornfully. “They will bed with men in return for their bread—no better than harlots in your cities. It is a perversion of those Akhaians; they say, even, that our Earth Mother is no more than the wife of the T
hunder Lord Zeus. . . .”
“Blasphemy!” Kassandra agreed. “This was not Cheiron’s tribe?”
“No; them we can trust; they cling, like us, to the old ways,” Penthesilea said. “But when this year Elaria led the women to the men’s village, we made them swear an oath even they dared not break, and we made them leave with us all the weaned children. We hide here in caves because with our strong young women away, we have no warriors to guard our herds. . . .”
Kassandra found nothing to say. It was the end of a way of life which had lasted thousands of years on these plains; but what could they do? She said, “Has there been much of a drought? Cheiron told me that food is harder to find.”
“That too; and some tribes have been greedy to own too many horses, and grazed more than the plains could feed, so they would have them to sell in return for cloth and metal pots and I know not what—and so it is that those of us who treat the earth well are dying. Earth Mother has not stretched out Her hand to punish them. I know not . . . perhaps there are no Gods who care anymore what men do. . . .” Her face looked strained and old.
“I do not understand,” Adrea said. “Why does it trouble you so, that some of your women have chosen to live as all women now live within the cities? You women could live well, with husbands to care for you and look after your horses; and you could keep your sons as well as your daughters, and you need not spend all your time fighting to defend yourselves. Many, many women live so and find nothing wrong with it; are you saying they are all wrong? Why do you want to live separately from men? Are you not women like any others?”
Penthesilea sighed, but instead of the instant scornful comment Kassandra had expected, she thought for a moment; Kassandra had the feeling that she really wanted this elderly city woman who so strongly disapproved of her to understand.
At last she said, “It has been our custom that we live among our own kind and are free. I do not like to live inside walls; and why should we women spin and weave and cook? Do not men wear clothes, that they should not make their own? And surely men eat; why should women cook all food that is eaten? The men in their own villages cook well enough when there are no women at hand to cook for them. So why should women live as slaves to men?”
“It does not seem slavery to me,” the woman protested, “only fair exchange; do you say men are enslaved to women when they herd the horses and goats, then?”
Penthesilea said passionately, “But the women do these things as if it were an exchange for sharing their beds and bearing their children. Like the harlots in your cities who sell themselves. Cannot you see the difference? Why should women have to live with men when they can care for their own herds and feed themselves from their own gardens, and live free?”
“But if a woman wishes for children, she needs a man. Even you, Queen Penthesilea . . .”
Penthesilea said, “May I ask without giving offense, ladies: why is it that you have not married?”
Kara spoke first, saying, “I would gladly have married; but I pledged I would remain with Queen Hecuba while she wished for my company. I have not missed marriage; her children were born into my lap, and I have shared in their upbringing. And like Lady Kassandra, I have met no man I loved enough to separate me from my beloved Lady.”
“I honor you for that,” Penthesilea said. “And you, Adrea?”
“Alas, I was neither beautiful nor rich; so no man ever offered for me,” the old woman said. “And now that time is past. So I serve my Queen and her daughters, even to following Lady Kassandra into this Goddess-forgotten wilderness filled with Kentaurs and other such wild folk. . . .”
“So there are other reasons than simple wickedness why a woman might choose not to marry,” Penthesilea said. “If it is well for you not to marry out of loyalty to your Queen, why should Kassandra not remain loyal to her God?”
“It is not that she does not marry,” said Adrea; “it is that she does not wish to marry. How can one sympathize with a woman like that?”
This was too much for Kassandra; she exploded with words she had been repressing for days. “I have not asked for your sympathy, any more than for your company; I did not invite you to join me, and you are welcome to return to Troy, where you will be surrounded by proper women, and I shall travel to Colchis with my kinswomen and their escort,” she said hotly. “I have no need of your protection.”
“Well, really,” said Adrea huffily. “I have known you since you were a baby, my lady, and what I say is no more than your own mother would say, and all spoken for your own good—”
Penthesilea said peacefully, “I beg you not to quarrel; you have a long road before you. Kassandra, my dear child, even if I were free to travel with you myself to Colchis, I could not keep you safe on your road. I pray that Priam’s name and Apollo’s peace will do so. Perhaps it is this war; perhaps it is the spread of the Akhaian ways now that the Minoan world has fallen. You have not even told me why you are traveling to Colchis; is it simply that the Lady is your old friend, or has Priam decided to send even so far afield for allies?”
She told Penthesilea about the earthquake and the defection of the Temple serpents, and the Amazon blanched at the omen.
“Still I will trust the Sun Lord,” Kassandra said. “I have none other in whom to trust; and if I can come safely to Colchis with no other safeguard than His blessing, I shall take that as a sign of His continued goodwill.”
“May He bless you, then, and guide you,” said Penthesilea, “and may Serpent Mother Herself await you and give you blessing in Colchis—and everywhere else, my dear.”
Soon after this they went to rest; but Kassandra lay long awake.
When she slept, her dreams were restless; she was seeking something—a lost weapon, a bow perhaps—but whenever she thought she had found it, it was not the one she wanted, but was broken, or had a broken string, or something of that sort.
What was it that the Gods were saying to her? She was a priestess; she had been taught that all dreams were messages from the Gods, if she could only find the meaning. That she could not interpret this dream meant only that she was, as she had long suspected, unfit to receive the Sun Lord’s favor, that He had withdrawn from her. Try as she might, she could gain from it only a faint ill omen that whatever she sought on this quest, she would not find it.
In the morning, Penthesilea bestowed gifts on her and her women—new saddles, and a warm robe of horsehide.
“You will need it, believe me, in crossing the great plain,” she said. “The winters have been more severe latterly, and there still may be snow.”
As she embraced her in farewell, Kassandra felt like crying.
“When shall we meet again, Kinswoman?”
“When the Gods will it. If it should ever be the will of Earth Mother that I end my days in a city, I will come and end them in Troy; that I vow to you, my child. I do not think your mother would fail to welcome the last of her sisters, nor would Priam turn me from his door. Perhaps I should come with my warriors and seek to drive forth some of those Akhaians.”
“When that day comes, I will fight at your side,” promised Kassandra; but Penthesilea only embraced her with great tenderness and said, “That is not your fate in this life, my love; make no pledges you cannot keep,” and rode away from them without looking back.
15
THE WINTER indeed lingered long on the great plain, and within four days after they had spent the night with Penthesilea and the remnant of her Amazons, the sky darkened, and snow began to fall so heavily that Kassandra wondered how her attendants could follow the narrow and ill-marked trail at all. All that day it snowed, and all the next, and although they continued to travel, they encountered almost no sign of human life. Once, far away through the snow, they saw a watching Kentaur outlined against the horizon; but when they would have signaled to him, he wheeled his horse and galloped away.
Kassandra was not surprised; from what Penthesilea had said, she knew that the inhabitants of the great plain, never par
ticularly willing to trust outsiders, were even less inclined to do so now. It was fortunate that she had no need to trade with them for food or any other commodities. Day after day they plodded across the plain, their animals’ hooves cutting through the soggy mud where there had been frozen grass, the snow never thick enough to be a danger and the dull rains never enough to thaw more than a few inches of the frozen ground. The great steppes were empty and barren; they found little enough food to supplement their dreary travel rations, and Kassandra grew weary of riding over the empty lands, crawling under an endless sky which seemed as gray and hostile as the faces of her companions.
Day followed sullen day while the moon thinned and faded and then swelled again; how long could this winter endure? Then, soon after a vagrant sight of a full moon through ragged clouds, she woke to hear rushing winds and a heavy, thick dripping rain which seemed to be carrying away the very land itself.
The new morning brought a countryside transformed, with little rivers flowing everywhere over the surface of the ground, shining in a new strong sun, and grass springing up everywhere under warm, soft winds. It soon grew so warm that Kassandra folded away her horsehide tunic and rode in her soft cloth chemise.
On one of these spring days they came to a village. It was no more than a cluster of round stone huts on the plain; but surrounding it were fields of greening winter grain uncovered from the fast-vanishing snow. Kassandra remembered the blighted village of her journey with the Amazons years before, with so many of its children deformed. But if this was the same village, it must somehow have survived the blight, for such children as she saw looked strong and healthy. Later, though, she saw some of the older girls and boys who had only two fingers on a hand. Before this they had seen no human dwelling for eight or ten days, and when the headwoman of the village came out to meet them, she seemed glad to see them as well.