"See, she has more sense than you; she is not afraid of one of the Goddess's creatures. She is born to be a priestess, and she knows it."
Days stretched into weeks on the road as they retraced the long journey. When they came to the Great Plain, they kept a sharp eye for Kentaur bands. Kassandra hoped to encounter them; she had a weakness for the riding folk, although both the waiting women and all the escort and drivers hoped they would be spared any sight of them. But they had no sight of any living Kentaur, although one evening they saw a dead horse in a ditch, and clinging to him, the thin twisted body of his rider, cold and dead; the bones, almost protruding through the skin, told them that the poor fellow had died of starvation and cold.
Kassandra's heart twisted in pity, though her driver and the women said it was good riddance and wished all his fellows a similar fate.
One evening, as they were setting up camp, Kassandra caught sight, far off, of a little group of riders: a single old man, withered and deformed from years in the saddle, and half a dozen of what seemed to be children but were probably undernourished half-grown boys. Kassandra could not tell for certain, but she thought it might be Cheiron. She gestured to them, and called to them in their own language, but they would not approach; they kept circling slowly around the camp, too far away to see clearly, or to hear what they were saying.
"We had better set a watch," one of the drivers remarked, "or while we sleep they may approach the camp and murder us all. You can never trust a Kentaur."
"That's not true," said Kassandra. "They won't hurt us; they are much more afraid of us than we are of them."
"They should all be done away with," said Kara. "They are not civilized men."
"They are hungry, that is all," Kassandra said. "They know we have food and beasts - our nanny-goat alone would give them the best meal they have had this year."
In spite of the disapproval of her women and the escort, she would still willingly have given them gifts and food, and tried to attract them near for some time, but they kept a wary distance, circling on their horses, and did not approach the camp. So as they settled down for the night one or two of the men kept watch; and Kassandra lay awake thinking of the Kentaurs out there in the dark on their horses. In the morning, she left some loaves of barley bread and a measure or two of meal in an old cracked pot they were ready to discard.
As they rode away from the camp, Kassandra saw that the Kentaurs were approaching; at least they would get the food -which might postpone death by starvation for a little while. To Honey, she thought, they will be only a legend - and everyone will tell how evil they were. But there was wisdom there, too, and a way of life we will not see again. Will the Amazons go this way too?
After the almost-encounter with the Kentaurs, the road seemed long and empty; day after day they toiled across the Great Plain, seeing few or no travellers, the days differentiated one from another only by the waxing and waning of the moon, the changes from fine to snowy weather. In passing through the country where she would have expected to encounter tribes of the Amazons, there were no riders at all, neither men nor women. Had all the Amazons perished, or been kidnapped to serve in the men's villages? She would have liked to send a message to Penthesilea but had not the slightest idea how to get word to her, or - even if she still lived. She sought to see her in the scrying-bowl, but could not find her.
Snow lay deep on the steppes and it was bitterly cold. Kassandra feared for the life of her snakes in this weather; she and Honey stayed in their blankets, a brazier keeping them warm, sharing their heat with the serpents. Sometimes the snow was so deep that the cart could not travel and they were cooped up all day, with no light, little heat and unable to cook food. They had to keep the nanny-goat in the wagon too because she could have been lost in the deep drifts.
As the months passed there was a change, too, in Honey -there were times when it seemed to Kassandra that the little girl could be seen growing between dawn and sunrise. It seemed that every day the little girl had some new clever trick or, in growing, had developed something new to fascinate her foster mother. A few days after the appearance of the Kentaurs, she developed her first tooth; soon after she was able to sip her milk from a cup and soon after that, she was eating bread soaked in milk, or soft-mashed foods fed to her with a spoon. Rather sooner than Kassandra had expected, she had a full set of teeth and was grabbing and chewing anything she could reach from everyone's plate; Kassandra could no longer set her down on the ground at their night halts, for she would crawl away and quickly make a game of disappearing for the fun of being called and chased. Finally a time came, fortunately after the worst of the snow was past, when they had to watch her constantly lest she crawl out of the cart, even when it was moving; and soon she was running around at every halt. She was not, Kassandra thought, a particularly pretty child, but she was a strong and sturdy one, never sick, and rarely fretful even when she was cutting her teeth.
As time wore on and travel ate up the long road, they came into country with better roads, and encountered more travellers. It seemed the whole world was bound for Troy with weapons and all manner of goods to be sold to the Trojans. (Or to the Akhaians; it seemed now that the Akhaians were blocking all goods coming into Troy, by land or by sea.) And at last, one day, they sighted the familiar outline of Mount Ida and began to travel along the Scamander toward Troy.
When they came within sight of the city, it seemed to Kassandra that another city, a spread-out city of shacks and tents and shelters, had sprung up at the foot of the great walls, and the z sea was black with ships crowded into the harbor. There was a strong stench as if the very tides had been fouled; the streets of this new-made city were clogged with carts and chariots, and as soon as Kassandra's escort brought the cart near, Akhaian soldiers dressed in the armor she remembered Akhilles's men had borne, came at once and demanded to know her business here.
Her escort had no success in explaining, so Kassandra, who spoke the language somewhat better, got down from the cart, with Honey astride her shoulder, and explained that she was Priam's daughter, returning from a long journey to Col' chis. This news, which Kassandra did not imagine would be particularly surprising, went from mouth to mouth, and finally there was a general outcry that the commander should hear it himself.
She had supposed this might be Akhilles, but instead it was the somewhat taller, stronger, dark-haired young man she had seen in Akhilles's company. They spoke of him as Patroklos, and he came and spoke to her with a certain amount of politeness; more at any rate than she remembered in Akhilles himself.
"The old king's daughter, you say you are, then? Wait a minute; there's a girl in Lord Agamemnon's tent who was brought up in the palace up there, or so she says. She can tell us whether or not you're who you say you are. Wait here," he ordered, and went away.
Honey felt heavy on her shoulder, and Kassandra asked leave of one of the soldier-guards to set her down. "Stay close to me," she admonished; she did not suppose any of the soldiers would knowingly harm a child except perhaps in the heat of battle, but she was not certain, and she did not trust these Akhaians enough to wish to test the theory.
After a time Patroklos returned with a veiled woman; she put back her veil and looked at Kassandra. "Yes," she said,"this is Priam's daughter." To Kassandra's shock and dismay she recognized the girl as Chryseis.
Kassandra, however startled, was relieved to know that Chryseis was alive and well. She said, "Chryseis, my dear, I have worried about you and I know how troubled your father must have been." Chryseis had grown tall and heavy-bodied, but she still had the astonishing blonde hair which had given her her name.