Paris had the deceived guard hanged, and when Odysseus was brought before him, said to him:
"Is there any reason I should not hang you from the topmost wall of Troy for the horse-thief you are?"
Odysseus said, "In my country, we hang woman-stealers, Trojan. If you had not shown us all how fast you could run, you would now be nothing but bare bones hanging outside the great walls of Sparta, and none of us would have had to leave our homes and come and fight here for all these years."
Priam had been hastily roused from sleep; he looked unhappily at his old friend and said, "Well, Odysseus, you're still a pirate, I see. But I see no reason to hang you. We've always been willing to ransom captives."
"What ransom do you want?" Odysseus asked, looking only at Priam and ignoring Paris.
"A dozen horses," Paris said.
Odysseus waved a hand. "There they are," he replied, and Paris scowled at his effrontery.
"Those are our horses already. We will have a dozen of yours."
Odysseus said, "Have you no piety, friend? Those horses have already been dedicated to Poseidon; they are not mine to give back, they belong already to the Earthshaker."
Paris sprang up, ready to aim a blow at him; Odysseus deflected it easily.
"Priam, your son is lacking in the manners of diplomacy; I would rather deal with you. You can take those horses back if you are willing to risk angering Poseidon Earthshaker with your stinginess; but I swore to sacrifice those horses to him. Do you really think he will favour Troy if you rob him of his sacrifice?" •
Priam said, "If you have vowed those horses to Poseidon, they are his. I will not be more stingy than you with a God. These horses are for Poseidon then, and a dozen more from your people to ransom you."
"So be it," Odysseus agreed, and Priam called for his herald to send the message to the Akhaian army. Agamemnon would not be pleased, though, Kassandra thought. She wished Odysseus no harm; in spite of his place with the enemy host, she could not help thinking of the old pirate as a friend - as he had been in her childhood. She still had, in one of her boxes, the beautiful string of blue beads he had given her years ago.
As Odysseus took his departure to arrange for the actual exchange and delivery of the ransom, Paris said to his father, "You fool! Are you really going to give those horses for sacrifice? What are Odysseus's promises to you? You don't believe he was going to sacrifice them, do you?"
"It may well be," Priam said, "and what have we to lose? We need Poseidon's good will too; and we will be getting a dozen more for Odysseus's ransom, so we have lost nothing."
"I don't think they will do the God half as much good as they would do our armies," Paris still grumbled; but when Priam made up his mind there was nothing to be done.
The next morning, before the walls of Troy, the horses were sacrificed to Poseidon; Kassandra watched the slaughter, troubled; Priam hardly seemed strong enough. She remembered such sacrifices in her childhood, when Priam had been strong and vigorous enough to strike off the head of a bull with a single blow. Now his shaking hands could scarcely close on the axe, and after he blessed the weapon a strong young priest took the axe and completed the sacrifice, chanting invocations to the Earthshaker.
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 Sunlord, she implored, cannot you 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 like the distant surf in her ears.
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 - to break the people who sacrificed to him, while Apollo Sunlord stood helplessly aside as the Earthshaker 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 were 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 one another. 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 are building an altar to Poseidon."
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 chariots 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 down 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 the Trojan chariots in hot pursuit, cutting them down as fast as they could. When they were in full retreat and looked like running 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.