The charioteers rushed forward, making a charge through the workers who were pulling down the scaffolding around the monstrous wooden horse; they scattered and ran, falling under the wheels of the chariots. There was a queer bitter smell in the air which Kassandra could not identify, and as the charioteers came close to the horse, their flights of fire-arrows went toward it, but they did not ignite.
Agamemnon's soldiers attacked from the shadow of the scaffolding. The charioteers fought strongly, but were driven back to the walls. As the gates were opened for them to retreat to within Troy, there was a battle at the gates to prevent Agamemnon's men and what looked like a host of Akhilles's now-leaderless Myrmidons from crowding in and flooding the streets. A few came in but they were cut down in the narrow streets behind the gate, and Deiphobos's men got the gates shut.
"It looks as though we will have a siege again," Deiphobos declared. "At all costs now we must keep them out of the city, which means these gates must not be opened. The one thing that monstrosity out there does is keep us from a good view of what's happening in their camp and field. We can't even burn it; they've soaked it in something so it won't burn; maybe a mix of vinegar and alum. Burning the scaffolding before may have been a mistake; it warned them what was the first thing we'd try and do."
"If it is intended to be our God Poseidon," Hecuba said, "would it not be a sacrilegious act to burn it?"
"I think I'd burn it first and make my peace with the Earth-shaker afterward," Deiphobos said, "but it won't burn now."
"But we can burn it eventually?" asked Priam.
"Well, sire, I'm certainly going to try my best," Deiphobos answered. "We can try shooting arrows covered with pitch and hope enough of the stuff will stick. I keep wondering if they've put this thing up here to give us something to think about so that we'll not notice what else they might be doing, like trying to tunnel under our walls from the landward side, or climb to the Maiden's Temple and attack from up there."
"Do you think they could do that?" Hecuba asked fearfully.
"I'm sure they'll try, Lady. It's up to us to keep ahead of whatever tricks that Master of Sneaks, Odysseus, might be thinking up while we've got our eyes and our minds on that wretched thing out there." He looked at the horse with loathing and shook his fist at it.
The image of the wooden horse wandered that night through Kassandra's dreams. In one nightmare it came alive, rearing like a stallion and pawing at the ground; then it kicked out, and the stroke of its mighty hoof battered down the main gate of Troy, while from the horse an army poured, raging and pillaging in the streets. Its head rose black and dragonlike above the flames that consumed the city. When she woke, so intensely real had the dream seemed that she went out in her night-shift to the balcony where she looked down over the plain below, and saw
° the horse solid and wooden and lifeless as ever in the pallid moonlight. It was not even nearly so large as it had seemed in her dream. It's just a thing of wood and tar, she thought, harmless as that statue by the Scamander. A few pale torches burned before it - homage to Poseidon? She recalled the vision in which she had seen Apollo and Poseidon battling hand to hand for the city, and went inside to the shrine to kneel and pray.
"My Lord Apollo," she implored, "can you not save your people? If you cannot, why are you called a God? And if you can and will not, what kind of God are you?"
And then, terrified at the form of the prayer, she fled the shrine. She was suddenly aware that she had asked the last question anyone ever asked of a God, and the one which would never be answered. For a moment she was afraid she had committed blasphemy; then she thought, If he is not a God, or if he is not good, then what is there to blaspheme? He is said to love truth; and if he does not, then all of what I have been taught is false.
But if he is not a God, what was it I saw battling for the city? What is it that overshadowed Helen, or Khryse?
If Immortals are worse than the worst of men, small and petty, and cruel, then whatever they are, they are not for mankind to venerate. She felt bereft; so much of her life had been spent in the intense passion for the Sunlord. I am no better than Helen, but I chose to love a God who is no better than the worst of men.
She went back to the walls and stood there, numb with horror, as the sun rose for the last time over the doomed city.
CHAPTER 15
Before her lay the plain of Troy in the early sunlight. Within the city no one was stirring; outside, a few torches sputtered weakly against the sunrise.
The silence was absolute. Even the distant line of the sea beyond the Akhaian earthworks lay dead calm and molten as if the very tide itself had ceased to pull upon the land. The reddish overcast of the sky was like faraway flames swallowing the last dim flicker of the setting moon. It was again as in her dream—the wooden horse before the walls seemed to rear upward, pawing with monstrous hooves at the city. She screamed, hearing her own voice die unheard in her throat, and then screamed again, pressing against the silence until at last she could hear her own voice tearing at her throat.
"O, beware! The God is angry and will strike the city!"
It was as if behind the dead silence she could hear great rolling waves of sound, as if Apollo and Poseidon, toe to toe in their struggle for the city, had broken the deadlock and Poseidon had thrown the Sunlord down.
Her screams had not been unheard; already women were flocking out of the buildings in all stages of undress.
"What is it? What's the matter?"
Kassandra was dimly aware of what they were saying.
It is Kassandra, Priam's daughter. Don't listen to her, she is mad.
No, heed what she says, she is a prophetess, she sees—
"What is it, Kassandra?" asked Phyllida calmly, coming up to speak to her soothingly. "Can you not tell us quietly what it is that you have seen?"
She was still screaming out words. She tried to listen to her-self—for she was as confused as her hearers, and it seemed as if her head had been cloven with an axe—and she thought, If I were listening, I would believe I was mad, too. Yet in spite of the confusion, one part of her mind was clear, with the icy clarity of despair, and she struggled to bring that part into focus and to ignore the part that was a chaos of panic and terror.
She heard herself crying out, "The God is angry! Apollo cannot conquer the Earthshaker, the city walls will be destroyed! Our own God will do what the Akhaians could not do in all these years! We are lost, we are destroyed! Hear and flee!"
But what use was a warning? It was upon her that no one would escape, that she could see only death and disaster. She became aware that she was fighting Phyllida's restraining hands and her friend was saying gently to one of the priestesses, "Give me your sash to tie her, lest she do herself some hurt. Look, her face is bleeding where she has scratched herself." She passed the cloth carefully round Kassandra's hands.
Kassandra said desperately, "You need not tie me; I will not hurt anyone."
"But I fear you will harm yourself, my dear," Phyllida said: 'Go, Lykoura, bring me wine mixed with syrup of poppy seeds, it will calm her—"
"No," Khryse said, striding toward them. He roughly shoved Phyllida away, and he pulled the sash from Kassandra's hands. "She needs no drug; no soothing draught can calm her now. She has had a vision. What is it, Kassandra?" He laid his hands on her brow and said in a strong stern voice, looking compellingly into her eyes, "Say what the God has given you to say; I pledge by Apollo, none will lay hands on you while I live."