"We are travelling to Colchis; can you guide us through these lands?" Kassandra said.
"With pleasure, if it is your wish," the old Kentaur said in his barbarous accent. "But how come ye to be riding away from Troy? The whole world's going there for this war, it seems. If not to fight, then to sell something to the fighters, one side or the other."
This was so true there seemed no purpose in commenting on it.
She had before leaving Troy asked the kitchens for a good half-dozen loaves of bread, knowing that the Kentaurs neither grew nor ground grain and that it was a most unusual luxury for them. When it was unwrapped and given the little man's eyes gleamed - Kassandra thought it was with real hunger - and he said, "Priam's daughter is generous. Does her husband fight in the great battles before Troy? If he does I will gift him with magical arrows which will never fail to bring down her enemies even if they do not strike in a vital part."
"I have no husband," she said. "I am sworn to the Sunlord and will have none but him. And I need none of your arrows, envenomed with poison brewed from toads."
For a moment the little man looked at her and glowered; then he leaned back and broke into a great guffaw of laughter, and did something, Kassandra could not see what, that made his horse rear up and prance, and then bow down.
"Huh-huh-huh," he chortled, "Priam's daughter is clever and good; no man of all my people will harm her as she passes through my country, or anything belonging to her. Not even the old women who peer at my men lustfully from behind their curtains! But if you have no use for the old toads, give them to my men; they are no good for bang-bang—" he accompanied the meaningless syllable with a gesture which made his meaning obscenely clear, "but we could boil them for arrow poison, huh-huh-huh?"
Kassandra struggled to keep her face straight.
"By no means; I do not want to travel without my women; they are good to me," she said, "and I would not travel through your country with young and pretty ones."
"Huh; clever," he said, wheeled his horse and rode quickly away.
She held up her hand to signal that she had not finished her parley and he wheeled and returned a little way. She asked, "Does the wise leader of the Horsepeople know where Penthesilea's women pasture her mares this summer?"
He gestured and gabbled out a quick explanation. Since it would not mean going too far out of their way, Kassandra decided she would ride in that direction. Again she took leave courteously of Cheiron, who had begun sharing out the loaves with his men and already had crumbs around his mouth.
After another long day of riding in the direction the Kentaur had indicated, Kassandra saw in the distance a mounted figure.-The stranger carried a bow, such as Penthesilea's women bore, slung across her back. Kassandra signalled to her and the woman approached.
"Who rides in our country with an escort of men?"
"I am Kassandra, daughter of Priam of Troy, and I seek my kinswoman, Penthesilea the Amazon," she said.
The woman, clad in the leather tunic and breeches of the tribeswomen, her long coarse black hair knotted atop her head, looked at her suspiciously; and finally said, "I remember you as a child, princess. I cannot leave my mares," she gestured at the scattered scrawny herd grazing across the spare grasses of the plain, "and it is not my place to summon the Queen, but I will send a signal that she is wanted, and if it seems good to her she will come."
She dismounted and kindled a small fire, throwing something into the flames which emitted great clouds of smoke, covered it, then let the smoke billow up in successive triple puffs. After some time Kassandra saw a tall figure on horseback, making its way across the plain. When the figure neared, she recognized her kinswoman.
Penthesilea's horse approached and she could see the puzzled look on the Amazon's face; after a moment Kassandra realized that her kinswoman had not recognized her. When Penthesilea had last seen her she had been a little girl, and now, older, robed and attired as a princess, a priestess, she was only a strange woman.
She called out her name. "Don't you know me, Aunt?"
"Kassandra!" Penthesilea's taut sun-browned face relaxed, but she still looked tense and old. She came and dismounted, and embraced Kassandra with affection. Why do you come here, child?"
"Looking for you, Aunt." When she had last seen her kinswoman, Penthesilea had seemed youthful and strong; now Kassandra wondered how old she really was. Her face was lined, with hundreds of small wrinkles around mouth and eyes; she had always been thin but was now positively scrawny. Kassandra wondered if the Amazons, like the Kentaurs, were actually starving.
"How goes the war in Troy?" the older woman asked. "Will you shelter with us this night and tell us about it?"
"With pleasure," Kassandra said, "and we can talk at leisure about this war; though I am weary of it." She gave directions to the bearers to follow the Amazon, and herself rode at Penthesilea's side, toward a cave in a hillside; inside there were a scant half-dozen women, mostly elderly, and a few young girls. When last she had travelled with them there had been a good half a hundred. Now there were no babies, and no young women of childbearing age.
Penthesilea saw the direction of her glance and said, "Elaria and five others are in the men's village. I was afraid, but I knew I must let them go now or I would never dare to let them go again - that's right, you didn't know what happened, did you? Then our shame has not yet been told in Troy—"
"I have heard nothing, Aunt."
"Come and sit down. We'll talk as we eat, then." She smiled and sniffed appreciatively. "We have not eaten this well for many moons. Thank you."
Their meal had been supplemented with dried meat and bread from Kassandra's provisions. Penthesilea said, "All the same, we are not as badly off as the Kentaurs; they are starving, and soon there will be no more. Did you even meet with any of them?"
Kassandra told about her encounter with Cheiron, and the older woman nodded.
"Yes, we can always trust him and his men. In the name of the Goddess I wish—" she broke off. "Last year we arranged to go to one of the men's villages—we made an arrangement for trading metal pots, and horses and some of our milk goats, too. Well, we went as usual and it seemed that all was well. Two moons went by; some of us were pregnant, and we were ready to go. They besought us to stay another month; and we agreed. Then when we were ready to set out, they made us a farewell feast and brought us a new wine. We slept deeply and when we woke - it had been drugged, of course—we were bound and gagged, and they told us that we could not leave them; that they had decided they wished to live like men in cities, with women to tend them year round, and share their beds and their lives—" she broke off, shaking with indignation and grief. "Every animal has a proper mating season," she said. "We tried to remind them of this but they would not hear. So we told them that we would consider it if they would let us go; and they said we should cook them a meal because men in cities had women to cook for them… They even forced some of the women who were already pregnant to bed with them! So we cooked them a meal; and you-can imagine what kind of a meal it was," she grinned fiercely. "But some women wished to spare the fathers of their children -Earth Mother alone knows where they got such ideas. And so some of them had been warned, and when they were all spewing and purging, we made ready to ride; but a few of them forced us to fight. Well, we could not kill them all; and so we lost many of our number - the traitorous ones stayed and did not return to us…"