Then, deliberately, she went down into the most secret room of the temple, and from a chest to which only a few of the high priests and priestesses had the keys, she took a certain robe adorned with gold, and the golden sun-mask. With hands schooled to steadiness, she put them on and tied the strings.
She was not entirely sure whether what she did was the highest of sacrileges - she thought of Khryse putting on these things in an attempt to cajole an inexperienced girl into serving a lust he could not satisfy any other way - or whether she was serving the honor of Apollo by doing what the God ought to be doing and would not.
Sandals were a part of the costume; gilded sandals with small golden wings attached to the heels. She laced them on, wishing they were really winged so that she could fly down over the Akhaian camp. Silently she climbed to the balcony which overlooked the battlefield, remembering how Khryse had stood here in the aspect of Apollo to shoot down the arrows of plague into the Akhaian camp. He had cried out, too, in Apollo's voice.
The bodies of the Amazons lay at the center of clustering clouds of flies. The horses were gone; the Trojan chariots and foot soldiers who had marched out this morning had retreated within the walls of Troy. Akhilles strutted in the midst of his own guards, apparently waiting for someone to come and challenge him to a fight. Couldn't his own soldiers see that the man had gone outside every limit of sanity and decency? Yet they still respected him as their general!
She did not cry out as Khryse had done; Apollo had given her nothing to say, even though he was the God of song. Perhaps someone else would make a song about this, but it would not be with her words. She simply strung the bow, took careful aim at Akhilles and let fly. The arrow fell a little short; but now she had the range. The Akhaian hero had not seen the arrow and continued his strutting between the chariots. Now where to shoot, when the iron armor covered so much of his body? She looked up and down to see that though the helmet covered face and hair, on his feet he wore sandals which were no more than a couple of narrow strips of leather. So be it then; she let fly at his feet.
The arrow struck his bare heel; he evidently thought it no more than an insect bite, for she saw him bend to brush it away. Then he drew out the shaft, and looked about to see where it had come from. One by one the Trojan soldiers looked up at the walls to see what Akhilles's Myrmidons were staring and pointing at. Kassandra stood motionless - she was probably out of ordinary bowshot when it had to be directed straight upward, even if anyone had the courage to shoot an arrow at what could have been the God. She felt completely invulnerable, and even if an arrow had come out of the blinding noon, she had accomplished what she set out to do.
Akhilles was still standing, gazing upward at the source of the arrow, apparently unaware of the nature of the wound; but after a time she saw him reach down and claw at his foot, signalling one of his men to bind it up. Well, let them try; she knew that even if they should now cut his foot off - and that had been tried for small localized wounds such as this - the poison had entered his blood, and Akhilles was already a dead man.
For a few more minutes he strode arrogantly about the field, then stumbled and fell; he was on the ground now in convulsions. There was confusion in the Akhaian camp - and then a great cry of rage and despair went up, not unlike the death-cry raised over Patroklos. Down lower at the wall where the other women were watching there were cries of jubilation, and at last a great shout of thanksgiving to Apollo. But by this time Kassandra had slipped down from the wall and was in the secret room returning the mask and robe to their locked chest. When she came out again everyone was crowding to the wall, pushing and shoving to find out what had happened.
"One of the Akhaian leaders is dead," someone told her. "It might even be Akhilles. Apollo himself appeared, they say, high on the walls above Troy, and shot him down with his arrows of fire."
"Oh, did he?" she replied, sounding skeptical, and when they repeated the story, said no more than, "Well, it's about time."
CHAPTER 13
Now that Akhilles was gone, a mood of confidence swept through Troy, everyone was looking forward to a swift end to the war. There was no formal period of mourning, and no funeral, games; Kassandra suspected that there was little genuine mourning, though some ritualized wailing arose around the funeral pyre. She remembered Briseis, who had gone to Akhilles of her free will and wondered if the girl mourned the lover she had idealized. She almost hoped so. Even for Akhilles, it was not just that there should be no one to mourn.
Yet Agamemnon, who had assumed command of all the Akhaian troops, and even commanded the Myrmidons to go on fighting, seemed to have no doubt of the final outcome of this war. The Akhaians began building an enormous earth-rampart to the south, from which they might assault the wall partially tumbled in the last earthquake. It was a few hours before the Trojans noticed what they were doing, and when they did Paris ordered all available archers to the highest wall to shoot the soldiers down. The Akhaians worked for a considerable time under cover of extra-large shields held over their heads, but as the shield-bearers were shot down one after the other, faster than they could be replaced, the Akhaians finally gave up the attempt and withdrew the builders.
Kassandra had not watched Akhilles's funeral pyre, nor the battle of the archers, though the women in the Sunlord's house reported every move to her. The temple was in mourning for the Great Serpent, and would continue to be so for a considerable time. Serpents of this variety were not found on the plains of Troy and they must send forth to the mainland or to Colchis or even to Crete for another one. Privately she believed that the death of the serpent was an omen, not only of the death of Akhilles which it so briefly preceded, but of the fall of Troy which could not now be long delayed.
She spoke of this one night in the palace when she had gone down to see her mother.
Hecuba had never really recovered from the death of Hector. She was appallingly frail and thin now, her hands like a bundle of sticks; she would not eat, saying always, "Save my portion for the little children; old people do not get as hungry as they do' -which in fact sounded sensible enough - but there were times when Kassandra thought her mother's mind had gone. She spoke often of Hector, but seemed not to realize that he was dead, she talked as if he were out somewhere about the city, overseeing the armies.
"What are the Akhaians doing now?" she asked Polyxena.
"They have felled a good many trees along the shoreline, and are hacking them into lumber; I spoke with the woman who sells honey cakes to the Akhaian soldiers, and she said they spoke of a plan to build a great altar to Poseidon and sacrifice many horses to him."
Poseidon would indeed be a friend to those Akhaians, if they should persuade him to break our walls. And their soothsayers know it, if they have persuaded the attackers to invoke the Earthshaker.
She rose from Polyxena's side and went to speak with Helen. She had learned long ago that Paris would not listen to her but he could sometimes be approached through his wife. Helen greeted her with her usual affectionate embrace.