Or he could cross the Pillars of Heracles - it could be done, further up past Mount Idus - thence into the kingdoms beyond or across into Thrace. Yes, that would be best. Now, I would need to steal a horse, some gear and food. I was not going to take anyone into this conspiracy, not even my brother Hector, whom I would unfailingly trust with Eleni's life. I knew the power of the gods.
I wondered afresh why the Maiden whom the Achaeans call Athene, Goddess of Battles, she of the Glittering Helmet, would be taking their side against her faithful city of Troy. Our lady queen had sacrificed to that goddess in the heat of the battle, but this might have been cancelled out by the curse I had invoked against the gleaming lady, while she was supporting Diomedes. I wondered if the gods were on anyone's side but their own. I decided that their ways were unfathomable, and climbed the steps and the ladder to the Scamander tower as the drum sounded for the night watch.
I sat down knee-to-knee with Hector as we stared out across the darkening plain.
He sighed. `Cassandra, that woman of Caria was right.'
`What do you mean?'
`That it is our fault that the Achaeans are here; our fault that they are raiding the coast; and our most irreparable fault that Achilles Man Slayer has come.'
`My lord brother,' I said soothingly, `it is not. Do not say so.'
`My lady sister,' he responded in courtesy, `it is. Pariki stole Elene and this is the harvest.'
`Is this the brother who lectured me about the Atreidae making war on us for years, raiding our ships enslaving our crews, because of sheer greed for our wealth and position?' I asked rhetorically.
Hector nodded. `Yes, this is the same brother,' he agreed. `But I feel responsible, nonetheless.'
`That is your burden along with the heavy bundle of all the lives in Troy,' I said, copying Tithone's manner. `You must balance one load against the other, Hector.'
`And that's true too,' he agreed.
We watched Státhi, hunting moths, in silence for a long time. He always caught them. He would crouch in what seemed like an unlikely position, until the moth fluttered close. Then a clawed paw thudded down on it and it was extinguished. Then, being Státhi, he ripped it wing from airy wing and ate it. We were surrounded with the litter of little lives when Státhi paused, swallowed, pricked his ears and leapt onto the wall in front of Hector.
He stared down into the dark under the gate, interested.
`Can you see anything?' asked Hector. By now the moon was down and it was black dark, but I listened and thought I heard something breathing.
`A straying horse, perhaps,' I said, but Hector had walked away from the gate and was calling his archers to the wall.
He lit a torch and ripped it down into the space under the Scamander Gate.
It gleamed on helmets and breastplates as it fell.
`Alarm,' called Hector and the trumpet blew, first the general alarm and then the signal for the Scamander Gate. I heard voices in the palace as the sons of Priam stumbled down the street, half asleep, but by now so used to the calls that Deiphobos said he could reach his own gate with his eyes still shut.
I was kindling torches to provide light for the archers to aim at. Lighting three, I tossed them high and wide. Before they were crushed out under mailed feet I estimated a hundred men and a battering ram slung between them.
I seized my bow. A runner flashed past me, carrying orders for oil and torches. A line on a hook, such as sailors use for climbing cliffs, snaked up and shook under the weight of a climbing man. I dropped the bow and drew my knife, calling for an axe. Another runner leapt down the ladder returned with four battle-axes such as had not been used for generations. They had come, she said, from the temple of Dionysius. By then I had sawed through the rope, but the man was clinging to the wall with both hands. For a moment I stared right into his face; just an ordinary man. He had brown eyes. I stabbed down with the knife into his throat. He cried out and fell, indicating that I had missed the great blood vessel I had been aiming for.
Now grapnels clanked and the defence grew confusing. I helped three staggering men with a cauldron of pitch and oil. We man-handled it up to the tower and emptied it with a swish and wallop, then rained down torches. The ram was metal sheathed, but the handlers were of flesh. They screamed as they burned.
Hector had sheathed his sword and had taken an axe. He clove the ropes as they attached, and the attackers fell howling into the fire below.
The smoke was thick; it was impossible to see. A runner screamed and I grabbed her; felt along the little body and found the wound. A hook had gone right through the shoulder joint and out through the other side; she was caught like a fish on a line.
Hector's axe flashed. He cut the rope and I carried the child to the bottom of the ladder, passing her to someone below.
By torchlight and our pitch fire, I saw them retreat, but only a little way, a bowshot from the gate. There a young man in a red tunic was tending the wounded. He scraped up Scamander mud and applied it in gooey handfuls to the burns. This was a good treatment and I approved. The Amazon Eris, standing at my side, bent her bow.
`No,' I said. `No, Eris, he is not a soldier and he is the only one left standing - see, the others have run away. Don't kill him.'
I was interested. He had treated all the burns; now he was encouraging the wounded to walk and drag the others back toward the Argive camp. I heard horses whinnying; it seemed that someone was bringing some transport.
The dying pitch-fire gleamed off the young man's golden hair, the only Achaean I had not instantly tried to kill. He was tall and slender and he was handling the wounded with tenderness and skill. Most of his patients were moving away, now, out of our sight. As he searched among the slain for any who might not be dead, he heaved away the pile of fallen climbers, testing each one by the pulse-point below the jaw and passing on as he found no life within.
Then he found a body in a red robe stuck through with an arrow, and knelt over it, his head bent. I thought that he might be weeping.
`He's one of mine,' said the lady of the Amazons. `Had I known that you were a protector of healers, Princess, I might have spared him. Or I might not,' she added with a snap of teeth. `For those who comfort our enemies are our enemies also. If he values his life, he had better get out of range.'
I leaned over the wall to call to him. `Healer,' I yelled. `I cannot restrain my allies. Go back. Your friend is dead.'
He lifted his wet face. He was handsome and young. `You have done good work for Troy tonight,' he called bitterly. `This is - this was Macaon the surgeon, son of Asclepius.'
`I'm sorry, but in a night attack it is hard to distinguish between healer and hurter. Get away, now, or the Amazons will kill you like they killed Macaon.'
`What is your name, Lady?' he said, laying the dead man's head gently on the ground. `To whom do I owe my life?'
`Cassandra, Princess of Troy,' I replied. He paused in plain view of all those archers and bowed to me, hands on breast before he followed the wounded out of sight.
I found that the things that had crunched and slipped under my sandals were detached Argive fingers, and I was sick.
Next morning, when we went out to take in the cooling battering ram for the sake of its bronze, I had the body of Macaon the healer carried to our own citadel, to be burned in honour, not left to rot.
Â
Aphrodite huddled at the feet of Demeter, whimpering. Her wounded hand was wrapped in a fold of tunic. Ichor, the blood of the gods, had dripped down the front of her white chiton.
`No one has ever hurt her before,' said Zeus, stroking her hair. `Poor lady, made only for love, attacked by a mad Argive! Go no more into such forays of desperate mortals, sweet Aphrodite. For the rest of you, you have disobeyed me. Did I not order you to refrain from the battle? You were all there, even the Lady of Doves.'
`Divine Father, I went to rescue Aphrodite,' protested Ares, dangling his helmet and plume. `I broke no word.'
Zeus nodded and went on, his great voice echoing, so that the birds of Aphrodite rose in a panic of silver wings.
`You, daughter Athene, and you, son Apollo, you are forsworn.'
`Lord, there is a wager,' argued Apollo. `Mortals must dance to our piping - otherwise we are not gods. I say that the city must fall, as does my sister, in support of the men who give us worship. We will fade, Lord Zeus, if they forget us. Must I starve for the scent of the burning sacrifice? The altars will be ashen cold if we do not manifest our power to men.'
`I will take a hand myself,' threatened Zeus,`if this continues. Do you pit your strength and will against me, children?'
He drew himself up. Lightning forked from his hands and the corner of the balustrade broke and fell. The air was offended with the stench of burned stone.
`Lord, I do not oppose you,' Apollo argued. `Consider the state of these mortals. My favourite is brought to Troy when Demeter kills his wife.'
`I did not kill her,' Demeter said slowly. `She died.'
`You did not save her, then, old woman. Diomenes has met the daughter of Priam, my ex-priestess Cassandra - and as I said, he is not stricken. I am so close, Father, so close to winning the golden apple that is rightfully mine. Let the wager run a little longer, Father. It would be just.'
`Just?' objected Aphrodite tearfully. `What is just? You interfere in the life of my darling, tear all her loves away from her, though I have given her back her twin to keep her from despair. You have tormented her with visions and she is drenched in death. You fly into the battle with Ares at your side to turn the Trojan flank.'
`I cannot keep you out of this war, it seems,' mused Zeus. `And your point about mortals is well made. Who will fear us, if we are not seen to be powerful? Very well. I give the armies and the city of Troy into your hands. More battles I will give you, children - more chances to settle this wager. But if you may join the battle, all may join. We will see who rules Olympus,' said Cloud-Compelling Zeus, and walked away.
I went with the soldiers when they dragged away the slain from the walls of Troy, but I could not find the body of my master's son Macaon. The Trojans had taken it; there could be no other explanation. So I waited until the Argives had loaded their cart and led it away, then I walked to the Scamander Gate, with my hands out and empty and called up to the watch, `I would speak with the Princess Cassandra.'
`Go away, Argive,' said a man's voice. I thanked Heaven that it was not one of those implacable Amazons; they would not have wasted time talking to me.
`I wish to speak to the Princess Cassandra. I am alone and I am unarmed. Tell her that it is the healer Chryse.' There was a silence, then I heard the voice repeat my request to someone he called `Lord'.
`What do you want with my sister? It is Polites, son of Priam, who asks.' It was a cultured voice speaking very good Achaean.
`I wish to thank her for saving my life, and to ask her what has happened to my brother Macaon's body.'
`Macaon? The Argive in the red tunic?'
Bitterness flooded into my heart, but I answered, `Yes, he wore a red tunic, as I do.'
`Cassandra is a healer herself. She restrained the watch from killing you; she feared that the Achaeans would not come for the bodies before they putrefied, and she ordered the healer to be taken in honour to the citadel to be burned with our dead. She has a gentle heart, for all that she is cursed by the god.
`Stay where you are healer, in plain sight, and I will send for her. You are greatly honoured, enemy,' he added.
I was fighting down a mixture of emotions: outrage at this mistreatment of Macaon, who deserved to be buried in his own grave at Epidavros with his brother Asclepids; wonder that the Trojan woman had been so bold and had the power to order such things to be done; and a desire to see her closer, she who was to me only a voice over the battlements and the shadow of a face.
`I am not your enemy,' I said quietly.
They did not reply, but I heard some orders given and feet moving on wooden steps. I stood in clear sight and range of the archers for some time; long enough for the wind to chill me through the tunic which was my only garment. Some sort of argument was going on at ground level in front of me. I could not hear the words but one was a female voice and one a deeper male voice. It was a short dispute, but fierce.
Then a voice hailed me. `Healer, we are opening the gate. You will not move. The archers have you in their sight.'
I stood still. The gate creaked a little open and two figures came out. One was a huge man, bigger even than Agamemnon. He wore full bronze armour but no helmet. A grey furry creature was clinging to his harness; the mou or cat which Eumides the ex-slave had once told me was Egyptian and the constant companion of... oh, of course. This must be Hector, the Prince of Ilium, Cuirass of the Trojans. He had long golden hair, plaited on either side of a big, broad face and a jutting wiry beard. His sword was in his massive hand and he looked at me coolly, up and down, checking that my hands were empty and that I had no weapons concealed under the tunic.
Behind him, bearing a casket in her hands, was a girl with a great bruise staining one side of her face, from temple to cheekbone. She had grey eyes alive with concern in a pale, beautiful face and the same hair as her brother, unbound and flowing over her dark green tunic. She wore horsemen's boots, lacing up her shin. Her arms were bare and tanned, her hands strong. She bore no weapons, not even a knife.
`Healer?' she said gently. `I don't know your title.'
`I am Chryse God-Touched, Lady, the Asclepius Priest, healer of Epidavros. How shall I speak of you?'
`As you find me.' She almost smiled. `I am Cassandra God-Cursed, once priestess of Apollo, now healer of the holy city of Tros. My brother Prince Hector has accompanied me.'
I bowed, and the great warrior moved his sword to salute across his armoured breast. The mou shifted a little out of the way of the point, perfectly at home on the giant's shoulder. Both sets of eyes, green and grey, considered me dispassionately.