As it burned, they heard the cries of Agamemnon uselessly trying to rally his men, and they rode back inside the walls before Agamemnon could assemble the Akhaians for a renewed attack.
The Trojans on the walls were cheering wildly. It was the only battle they had clearly won since the burning of the Akhaian ships. Paris came up and knelt before Priam.
"If they want to build an altar to Poseidon, they will not build it on Trojan ground, sir."
"Well done," said Priam, embracing him heartily, and Helen came to help him out of his armor.
"You're wounded," she said, seeing him flinch as she removed the vambrace from his upper arm.
Paris shrugged; the movement made him flinch again.
"An arrow wound. It didn't touch a bone," he said.
"Kassandra," Helen said, "come and look at this; what do you think?"
Kassandra came and folded back the sleeve of Paris's tunic. It was a flesh wound, a small depression just above the elbow. Purple and puffy, like pouting lips, it had already closed, and from it a drop or two of blood oozed.
"It is not, I think, too serious," she said, "but it should be washed in wine and bathed with very hot water and herbs; if a puncture wound closes too quickly, it can be serious. At all costs it must be kept open and made to bleed freely to cleanse it."
"She is right," said Khryse, bringing a flask of wine which he began to pour over the wound; but Paris grabbed the flask.
"A waste of good wine," he said, and poured it into his mouth instead, making a wry face. "Ugh, not even fit for that. Might be good to wash my feet with."
Khryse shrugged. "There is better wine for the drinking, in the Sunlord's house, Prince Paris; this is a poor vintage kept for cleansing wounds. Come and have some of the better vintage while we tend you."
"Better yet, come to our rooms in the palace and let me tend you," Helen said. "You have had enough fighting for one day -and there is nobody left to fight."
"No," Paris said, walking to the wall, "I hear Agamemnon; he's got some of those archers of his to attack again; let's go down and drive them off. Already they say I spend too much time in your boudoir being cosseted, my Helen; I am weary of a coward's reputation. Here, tie this up with your scarf and let me go." He pulled his armor together over the bound wound, and was off down the stairs. They heard him shouting to his men.
"Oh, why did he have to have a damned attack of heroism right now?" Helen said, smiling angrily. "And if it was really an altar to Poseidon, do you think the God will be angry because he burned it down?"
"I don't see what else he could have done, whether the God is angry or not," Kassandra said. "Perhaps the Earthshaker will remember all those nice fat horses that we gave him courtesy of Odysseus a couple of days ago."
"I pray it does not hamper his riding and shooting," Helen said. "When he comes back - if he survives this charge—I will take him off to be tended by the best of the healers."
"I will go and send our best healer-priests to the palace for him, Lady Helen," Khryse said, and went off up the hill. Kassandra watched the charge; Paris fought like a madman, as if the War God's self inhabited him, and she lost count of how many of the Akhaian soldiers he cut down and left bleeding on the ground.
"I have never seen him fight like this before," Helen said.
Pray you never do again, was Kassandra's reaction.
"Maybe the wound is as slight as he says; he seems not to be favouring the arm at all."
"He rides like Hector himself," said Priam, watching him from the wall. "We have all been unjust to the boy, thinking him less heroic than his brother."
Helen shut her eyes as a sword came down toward Paris; he parried the blow at the very moment when it seemed it must strike his head from his shoulders. It was the last blow; a moment later Agamemnon's men broke and ran, running as if they did not mean to stop until they reached their ships. Paris yelled as if he were going to chase them into the water, but before long he called off his men.
"If there is a bullock, have it killed for the men's dinner," he said to Hecuba, as he came up the stairs to the waiting women. "I have never seen such fighting."
"Praise to Aphrodite that you are safe still!" Helen hurried to embrace him.
"Yes, she is still watching over us; she did not bring us here to Troy only to abandon us now." Paris looked down at the ashes of the structure the Akhaians had been trying to build.
"If this is dedicated to any God, I pray he will forgive me.
Now, if you will find that healer, my Helen, I will be glad of his good offices; my arm aches." He leaned on her as they went down into the palace and Kassandra looked after them with dread.
"You had better go," said Khryse. "You are as good a healer as any in the Sunlord's house." She had not heard Khryse come back.
Kassandra was not sure of that, but did not know how to say so. "You saw the wound closer than I; you know how bad it is," he added. "I do not like such wounds even when they look harmless." She hurried off to Paris's and Helen's chambers, only to be told that her services were not required.
That night was quiet, but in the morning, the scaffolding had been raised again and the Akhaians were hammering and sawing away again as if they had never been interrupted.
"Well, we'll make short work of that, as we did yesterday," said Deiphobos, who had come out this morning with Priam, the old man leaning heavily on his son's shoulder. "Where's Aphrodite's gift to womankind this morning? Still hiding behind Helen's frilled skirts?"
"Be quiet," Priam said sharply. "He had a wound yesterday; perhaps it is worse or he has taken cold in it." He summoned one of the younger messengers and said, "Go to Prince Paris if you please, and ask why he is not here with his army."
"A wound," said Deiphobos scornfully, "I saw that wound; a cat-scratch or more likely, a love-bite."
The boy hurried away and came back looking pale. He bowed to Priam and said, "My lord, the Lady Helen asks that the priestess Kassandra will come and look at her brother's wound; it is beyond her power to cure."
"My father," Deiphobos said, "have I your leave to take out the chariots and drive off these ants as Paris did yesterday?"
"Go," Priam said, "but when Paris is healed you will give over command to him again; nothing that is his will ever belong to you."
"We'll see," said Deiphobos, saluted Priam and went.
Kassandra went down into the palace, through the halls which seemed, this morning, dank and cold and still, with wisps of sea-fog hanging in the halls themselves. In the rooms allotted to Paris and Helen, Paris, half-clad and very pale, was lying on a pallet, muttering. Helen, at his side, trying to bathe the wound with steaming water scented with herbs, sprang up and came to Kassandra.
"Aphrodite be praised that you have come; perhaps he will listen to you when he will not to me," she said. Kassandra came and drew back the veil with which the wound had been covered. The whole upper arm was grossly swollen, the puncture still obstinately closed and weeping clear fluid; the arm looked purplish, with red streaks fanning down toward the wrist.
Kassandra drew breath; she had never seen an arrow wound quite like this. She said, "Have the priests of Apollo seen this?"
"They were here twice in the night; they told me to bathe it with hot water, and said it should probably be burned with a hot iron, but I had not the heart to make him suffer that, when they could not promise that it would cure him," Helen said. "But just in the last hour he seems worse, and he does not know me now; until a few minutes ago he was yelling to the servants to bring his armor, and threatening them with a beating if they would not help him get up and put it on."
"That is not good," Kassandra said. "I have seen worse wounds heal, but—"
"Should I have let them burn him?"