Cassandra and Apollo

Chapter 9

A/N:  Apollo sketch above--sorry it's black and white...imagine the gold :P

A/N 2 - I goofed and uploaded the same thing twice.  Here's the right chapter!

*

A year passes. She tries to hold on, but time is like sand through her fingers. The minutes tick away and, as they do, she sees them retreating to the nothingness of memory.

She sees too much.

She sees dead soldiers, Greek and Trojan alike. To the Trojan soldiers, she says Be careful of the man with the red crested helmet, or Do not lunge with the right foot today, but they do not listen. She is but a woman, after all. Who is she to gainsay the proud priests who urge every soldier forward, guaranteeing glory and honor?

The soldiers come back through the gates on their shields.

Widows wail, children say their last to fathers they will know only through borrowed memories and dented armor.

Apollo has gifted her with sight, but fate cursed her with being a woman.

She persists. If she cannot convince the damned to change their future, perhaps she can trick them. But fate always finds a way, like a stream breaking its levy. It flows, it winds, it rears up again.

See? it laughs; you were working in my favor all along.

**

"Did you see him today?" she asks Hector, just as she always does.

He shakes his head in reply. For some reason, the dread Aristos Achaion, the Best of the Greeks, will not fight him.

Some Trojans have started calling Achilles the Unseen One, for he moves like the god of death. He cuts through the Trojan formation like a thresher, separating the stronger warriors from the armed farmers. The farmers he sometimes spares, for there is no glory is killing untrained men. But the warriors are a different matter; he dispatches with a thrust of his spear or a wink of his blade.

Hector is the best of the Trojans; of that, there is no question. Which makes it all the stranger that Achilles does not seek him out. But, then again, Hector does not seek Achilles, either.

The Greeks call Hector the flame of the funeral pyre, for the deep red of his beard and the crimson path he carves through the field. Even Cassandra, who knows nothing of battle, sees his skill from her perch atop the battlements. She follows his armor—a bronze so dark it might be onyx in the dawn light—as it cuts through the Greek ranks. He does not tarry long with any one soldier; two, five, ten, fall beneath his spear. The bow and arrow he does not use, though he is the best archer on the field—save perhaps one—because he will not fight at a distance while his men risk their lives in close combat.

Paris fights, because he must, because King Priam has ordered him to fight. After all, the prince did say he would do anything for his beloved, his mortal Aphrodite, as he calls her. But Paris fights from the ramparts. He learned the basics of archery growing up. That is enough to placate Priam. His arrows kill weeds, mortally wound sand, and, occasionally, graze a Trojan shield.

When Paris returns to his chamber after a long, harrowing day of watching the battle, he throws himself on his cushioned bed and buries his face in his bride's lap. Will you not caress my cheek? he says, or brush my hair with your delicate fingers? I have gone to war for you! Dutifully, but stone-faced, she smooths his soot-blackened hair and rubs his weary shoulders. I know, my dear, I am grateful, she replies. He makes love to her but she merely endures it. Their affection lasted for the first three years of the war, but now it is curdled, like spoiled goatsmilk.