The Firebrand

  Penthesilea scowled, and Kassandra too was shocked: Priam was rich; why should he begrudge a dowry?

  “Priam, Agamemnon already has a wife,” said Penthesilea: “Klytemnestra, the daughter of Leda and her King, Tyndareus. She bore Agamemnon a daughter who must be seven or eight years old by now. I cannot believe they are so short of women in Akhaia that they must resort to stealing them . . . nor that Agamemnon is so much in need of a concubine that he would carry one off when he could have any chief’s daughter within his kingdom.”

  “So he married the daughter of Leda?” Priam frowned for a moment and said, “Is that the one who was, they said, so beautiful that Aphrodite would be jealous, and her father had to choose among almost forty suitors for her?”

  “No,” said Penthesilea. “They were twins, which is always ill fortune. One was Klytemnestra; the other daughter, Helen, was the beauty. Agamemnon managed to inveigle Leda and Tyndareus—God knows how he managed it—into marrying Helen off to his brother, Menelaus, while he married Klytemnestra.”

  “I don’t envy Menelaus,” said Priam. “A man is cursed who has a beautiful wife.” He smiled absently at Hecuba. “Thank all the Gods you never brought me that kind of trouble, my dear. Nor are your daughters dangerously beautiful.”

  Hecuba looked at her husband coldly. Penthesilea said, “That could be a matter of opinion. But from what I know of Agamemnon, unless rumor lies, he is thinking less of woman’s beauty than of power; through Leda’s daughters he thinks to claim all Mykenae, and Sparta too, and call himself King. And then, I suppose, he will seek to gain more power to the north—and make you look to your own city here in Troy.”

  “I think they are trying to force me to deal with them,” Priam said, “to recognize them as Kings—which I will do when Kerberos opens his doors and lets the dead out of Hades’ realm.”

  “I doubt they will seek gold,” said Penthesilea. “There is gold enough in Mykenae—though rumor has it that Agamemnon is a greedy man. If I should make a guess, it would be that what Agamemnon will demand is that you give him trading rights through the strait yonder”—she pointed to the sea—“without the toll you charge.”

  “Never,” said Priam. “A God brought my people here to the banks of the Scamander; and whoever wishes to pass beyond to the country of the North Wind must render tribute to the Gods of Troy.” He stared crossly at Penthesilea and demanded, “What is it to you? What has a woman to do with the government of countries and the payment of tribute?”

  “I too dwell within the lands where the Akhaian raiders dare to come,” said the Amazon Queen. “And if they should steal one of my women, I would make them pay for it, not in gold or dowries alone, but in blood. And since you could not stop them from carrying off your own sister, I repeat: my warriors are at your service if you wish to lead them against those pirates.”

  Priam laughed, but bared his teeth as he did so, and Kassandra knew that he was furious, though he would not say so to Penthesilea. “On the day when I call upon women, kin or no, for the defense of the city, Troy will be in evil straits, Kinswoman; may that day be far away indeed.” He turned round and saw Kassandra in her leather breeches and heavy cloak coming into the room. “Well, what’s this, Daughter? Showing your legs like a boy? Have you resolved to become an Amazon, Bright Eyes?”

  He sounded surprisingly good-natured; but Hecuba said quickly, “You bade me send her to be fostered away from the city, Husband, and I thought my sister’s tribe as good as any.”

  “I have found you to be the best of wives, no matter where you came from, and I have no doubt your sister will do well enough by her,” said Priam, and bent down to Kassandra. She flinched, half expecting another blow, but he only kissed her gently on the forehead.

  “Be a good girl, and forget not that you are a princess of Troy.”

  Hecuba took Kassandra in her arms and hugged her hard.

  “I shall miss you, Daughter; be a good girl and come back to me safely, my darling.”

  Kassandra clung to her mother, Hecuba’s former harshness forgotten, aware only that she was going away among strangers. Then Hecuba released her. She said, “I have my own weapons for you, Daughter,” and brought out a leaf-shaped sword in a green scabbard, and a short metal-tipped spear. They were almost too heavy to lift, but struggling with all her strength and pride, Kassandra managed to fasten their belts about her waist.

  “They were mine when I rode with the Amazons,” said Hecuba. “Carry them in strength and honor, my daughter.”

  Kassandra blinked away the tears that were forming in her eyes. Priam was frowning, but Kassandra was accustomed to her father’s disapproval. She defiantly took the hand Penthesilea held out to her. Her mother’s sister could not be too unlike her mother, after all.

  When the Amazons reclaimed their horses in the lower courtyard, Kassandra was disappointed to be lifted to Racer’s back behind Penthesilea. “I thought I was to ride a horse by myself,” she said, her lip quivering.

  “You will when you learn, my child, but we have no time to teach you at this minute. We want to be far from this city by nightfall; it does not please us to sleep within walls, and we do not want to camp in the lands ruled by men.”

  That made sense to Kassandra; her arms gripped hard around the woman’s narrow waist, and they were off.

  For the first few minutes it took all her strength and attention to hold on, rocked up and down by the bumpy gait of the horse on the stones. Then she began to get the feel of letting her body sway and adjust itself to the motion, and began to look around and see the city from her new perspective. She had time for one brief look backward at the Temple atop the heights of the city; then they were outside the walls and descending toward the green waters of the Scamander.

  “How will we get across the river, Lady?” she asked, leaning her head forward, close to Penthesilea’s ear. “Can the horses swim?”

  The woman turned her head slightly. “To be sure they can; but they will not need to swim today; there is a ford an hour’s journey upriver.” She touched her heels lightly to the horse’s sides, and the animal began to run so swiftly that Kassandra had to hold on with all her strength. The other women were racing alongside, and Kassandra felt a kind of elation through her whole body. Behind Penthesilea she was a little sheltered from the wind, but her long hair blew about so wildly that for a moment she wondered how she would ever manage to comb and tidy it again. It didn’t matter; in the excitement of the ride she forgot it at once.

  They had ridden for some time when Penthesilea pulled her horse to a stop and whistled, a shrill cry of some strange bird.

  From a little thicket up ahead, three horses, ridden by Amazon women, emerged.

  “Greetings,” one of the newcomers called. “I see you are come safe from Priam’s house; you were so long gone, we were beginning to wonder! How is it with our sister?”

  “Well, but she grows fat and old and worn with child-bearing in the King’s house,” said Penthesilea.

  “Is this our fosterling—Hecuba’s daughter?” asked one of the newcomers.

  “It is,” said Penthesilea, turning her head toward Kassandra. “And if she is truly her mother’s daughter, she will be more than welcome among us.”

  Kassandra smiled shyly at the newcomers, one of whom held out her arms and leaned over to embrace her.

  “I was your mother’s closest friend when we were girls,” she said.

  They rode on, toward the gleam of the river Scamander. Dusk was falling as they drew their horses up at the ford; in the last glow of sunlight Kassandra could see the rapid flicker of the sun on the shallow ripples, the sharp stones in the streambed where the river ran fast and shallow. She gasped as the horse stepped over the steep edge down into the water, and was again admonished to hold on tight. “If you fall off, it will be hard to get you again before you are bashed about.”

  Having no desire whatever to fall on those sharp rocks, Kassandra held on very tightly, and soon the horse was scra
mbling up at the far edge. They galloped during the few minutes of light remaining; then they pulled to a stop, gathered their horses in a circle and dismounted.

  Kassandra watched with fascination as without discussion one of the women built a fire, and another, from her saddlebags, pulled a tent and began unfolding it and setting it up. Soon dried meat was bubbling in a caldron and smelled very savory.

  She was so stiff that when she tried to come forward to the fire, she tottered like an old woman. Charis began to laugh, but Penthesilea scowled at her.

  “Don’t mock the child; she hasn’t whimpered, and it was a long ride for one unused to horseback. You were no better when you came to us. Give her something to eat.”

  Charis dipped up a cup of stew and handed it to Kassandra in a wooden bowl.

  “Thank you,” she said, dipping the horn spoon they handed her into the mixture. “May I have a piece of bread, please?”

  “We have none,” Penthesilea said. “We grow no crops, living as we do with our tents and herds.” One of the women poured something white and foaming into her cup; Kassandra tasted it.

  “It is mare’s milk,” said the woman who had introduced herself as Elaria, Hecuba’s friend. Kassandra drank curiously, not sure that she liked either the taste or the idea; but the other women drank it, so she supposed it would not do her any harm.

  Elaria chuckled, watching the cautious look of suppressed disgust on Kassandra’s face. She said, “Drink it and you will grow as strong and free as our mares, and your mane as silky.” She stroked Kassandra’s long dark hair. “You are to be my foster-daughter as long as you dwell with us. In our village you will live in my tent: I have two daughters who will befriend you.”

  Kassandra looked a little wistfully at Penthesilea; but she supposed that if the woman was a Queen she would be too busy to care for a little girl, even her sister’s daughter. And Elaria looked kind and friendly.

  When the meal was finished, the women gathered around the campfire. Penthesilea appointed two of them to stand watch.

  Kassandra whispered, “Why do we post sentries? There is no war, is there?”

  “Not as they would use the word in Troy,” Elaria whispered back. “But we are still in the lands ruled by men; and women are always at war in such lands. Many—most men would treat us as lawful prizes, and our horses too.”

  One of the women had started a song; the others joined in. Kassandra listened, not knowing the tune or the dialect, but after a time she was humming along on the choruses. She felt tired and lay back to rest, looking up at the great white stars far above; and the next thing she knew she was being carried through the dark. She woke up, startled. “Where am I?”

  “You fell asleep at the campfire; I am taking you to my tent to sleep,” said Elaria’s voice softly, and Kassandra settled down and slept again, waking only when there was daylight in the tent. Someone had taken off her leather breeches, and her legs were chafed and sore. As she woke, Elaria came in. She smoothed some salve on the sore places and gave Kassandra a pair of linen drawers to wear under the leather, which helped a great deal. Then she took a comb carved of bone and began combing out the tangles in Kassandra’s long, silky hair; then she braided it tightly and gathered it up under a pointed leather cap like those all the women wore. Kassandra’s eyes watered as the comb jerked out the knots, but she did not cry, and Elaria patted her head approvingly.

  “Today you will ride behind me,” Elaria said, “and perhaps today we will reach our own grazing grounds, and we can find a mare for you and begin to teach you to ride. A day will come, and not too far from now, when you will be able to spend all day in the saddle without weariness.”

  Breakfast was a chunk of leathery dried meat, gnawed upon as she clung to the saddle behind Elaria. As they rode, the character of the land changed gradually from the fertile green of the riverbed to a barren windswept plain rising higher and higher from the low-lying fields. At the edge of the plain were round bald hills, brown all over, with great rocks jutting from their slopes, and beyond them sheer-rising cliffs. On the side of one of the hills she could see flecks moving, larger than sheep. Elaria turned and pointed.

  “There our horse-herds graze,” she said. “By nightfall we will be at home in our own country.”

  Penthesilea was riding beside them. Very softly, she said, “They are not our herds. Look there, and see the Kentaurs, riding among them.”

  Now Kassandra could see more clearly; she made out the hairy bodies and bearded heads of men, rising among the herds. Like all city children, Kassandra had been reared on stories of the Kentaurs—wild, lawless creatures with the heads and upper bodies of men and the lower bodies of horses. Now she could see the origin of the old stories. They were small men, and browned from their outdoor life; the long, unkempt hair down their backs gave the very impression of a horse’s mane, and their brown bodies blended into the horses’ bodies, their bowed legs curled up around the horses’ necks: upper body of man, lower body of horse. Like many little girls, Kassandra had been told that they stole women from cities and villages, and had been admonished by her nurse, “If you are not a good girl, the Kentaurs will carry you off.”

  She murmured, frightened, “Will they hurt us, Aunt?”

  “No, no, of course not; my son lives among them,” Penthesilea said. “And if it is Cheiron’s tribe, they are our friends and allies.”

  “I thought that the Amazon tribes had only women,” Kassandra said, surprised. “You have a son, Aunt?”

  “Yes, but he lives with his father; all our sons do,” Penthesilea said. “Why, silly girl, do you still believe the Kentaur tribes are monsters? Look, they are only men; riders like ourselves.”

  Nevertheless, as the riders came closer, Kassandra shrank away; the men were all but naked, and looked wild and uncivilized indeed; she shrank behind Elaria on her horse where they would not see her.

  “Greetings, Lady of the Horse-women,” called out the foremost rider. “How fared you in Priam’s city?”

  “Well enough; as you see, we are back safe and well,” Penthesilea called. “How is it with your men?”

  “We found a bee tree this morning and have taken a barrel of honey,” the man said, leaning close and embracing Penthesilea from horseback. “You shall have a share, if you will.”

  She pulled away from him and said, “The cost of your honey is always too high; what do you want from us this time?”

  He straightened and rode alongside her, smiling in a good-natured way. “You can do me a service,” he said, “if you will. One of my men became besotted with a village girl a few moons ago, and carried her away without troubling to ask her father for her. But she’s no good for anything but his bed. Can’t even milk a mare or make cheese, and weeps and wails all the time; now he’s sick to death of the blubbering bitch, and—”

  “Don’t ask me to take her off your hands,” Penthesilea interrupted. “She’d be no good in our tents either.”

  “What I want,” the man said, “is that you take her back to her father,” and Penthesilea snorted.

  “And let us be the ones to face her tribesmen’s wrath and swords? Not likely!”

  “Trouble is, the wench is pregnant,” said the Kentaur. “Can’t you take her till the babe’s born? Seems like she might be happier among women.”

  “If she’ll come with us, with no trouble,” said Penthesilea, “we’ll keep her till the child’s born, and if it’s a daughter, keep them both. If it’s a son, do you want him?”

  “To be sure,” said the man, “and as for the woman, once the child’s born you can keep her or send her back to her village or, for all I care, drown her.”

  “I am simply too good-hearted,” Penthesilea said. “Why should I get you out of trouble you made for yourselves?”

  “For a half barrel of honey?”

  “For a half barrel of honey,” said Elaria, “I’ll look after the girl myself, and deliver her child and get her back to her village.”

  ??
?We’ll all share it,” Penthesilea said, “but next time one of your men seeks congress with a woman, send him to our tents and no doubt one of us will satisfy him, with no such complications. Every time one of your men goes after a girl out of season and goes into the villages, all the tribes get the backlash; more tales about how lawless we all are, men and women alike.”

  “Don’t scold me, Lady,” the man said, hiding his face briefly with his hands. “None of us is more than human. And who is that, hiding there behind your companion?” He looked around Elaria, and winked at Kassandra; he looked so droll, with his hairy face screwed up behind his matted hair, that she burst out laughing. “Have you stolen a child from Priam’s city?”

  “Not so,” Penthesilea said. “It is my sister’s daughter, who is to dwell with us for a few seasons.”

  “A pretty little thing,” said the Kentaur. “Soon all my young men will be fighting over her.”

  Kassandra blushed and hid behind Elaria again. In Priam’s palace, even her mother freely admitted that Polyxena was “the pretty one,” while Kassandra was “the clever one.” Kassandra had told herself that she did not care; still, it was pleasing to think someone found her pretty. “Well,” Penthesilea said, “let us see this honey, and the woman you want us to take off your hands.”

  “Will you feast with us? We are roasting a kid for the evening meal,” the Kentaur said, and Penthesilea glanced at her women.

  “We had hoped to sleep this night in our own tents,” she protested, “but the kid smells savory and well roasted; it would be a shame not to take our share.” And Elaria added, “Why not rest here for an hour or two? If we do not get home tonight, tomorrow is another day.”

  Penthesilea shrugged. “My women have answered for me; we will accept your hospitality with pleasure—or perhaps just with greed.”

  The Kentaur beckoned and rode toward the central campfire, and Penthesilea motioned to her women to follow. A young woman knelt before the fire, turning the spit where a kid was roasting. The fat dripping on the fire smelled wonderful, and the crisped skin sizzled. The women slid from their horses, and after a time the men followed.