Cassandra and Apollo

Chapter 20

AN:  Changing the story a little here; I know it's not really how the Iliad goes but, meh, I think it's more interesting this way.  Also, I couldn't resist throwing another meme about the Hector/Achilles fight...

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She moves through the Greek camp like a shadow. More than once, she trips over something—a pot or jug—and makes a loud clangor. But the guards, the soldiers, they do not notice. It is as if they are blind to her presence.

It is his work, of course, but she is too angry to thank him.

Although she has never seen Achilles's tent, she recognizes it immediately.

It is not that the tent itself looks any different from the countless others dotting the beach. It has the same central beam supported by cable struts, the same oblong shape with tapering sides. But it is altogether different, set fifty pages from from every other tent, and encircled by the only remaining patch of green on the field. Few men had dared approach Achilles's tent, let alone ventured inside.

Cassandra feels no fear; or rather, she wraps her fear around her wrist—twisting it this way and that like a jeweled bracelet. It is something foreign, a relic of her past, this need for self preservation.

She slips past the canvas, hidden from view by the god. If Achilles is surprised to see her, he does not show it. Had she air enough in her lungs, she would have gasped to see Aristos Achaion. She'd seen him thousands of times over the past seven years, learned every curve of his lineless face, every fleck of gold in his ocean blue eyes.

But grief has made him nearly unrecognizable, and so she stares at him for a time, making sure it really is him. The golden shine of his skin has sallowed, the blue of his eyes has grayed. He seems smaller, draped as he is over his lover's tightly wrapped corpse.

There is another body in the tent, which is not wrapped. Its legs are hooked and bound with thick, salt-caked ropes.

Fitting, she thinks, that the Best of the Greeks should sleep next to death and surrounded by it.

Her breath catches as she feels a cold hand on her shoulder. She looks, but there is only thin air.

Two spirits pace the tent, but Achilles does not feel them. His mind is too wild to feel them; it bucks against his lover's gentle whispers.

I feel you, Hector, she says to him with a long, slow blink.

"What god safeguarded your passage, princess?" says Achilles, still pressing his forehead to the body.

"It does not matter; he cannot help me now."

The warrior looks up. It is unclear whether pity or pride glints in his eye.

"And why is that?" he murmurs hoarsely.

"Because only you can help," her voice is steady. "I have come to ask for my brother's body. We would prepare him for the ferryman."

Her eyes return to that corner of the room, the corner where all the light seems to drain.

"I made your brother a promise," says Achilles. "That he would wander the earth for eternity, mute and deaf and restless. I promised him no peace in the afterlife."

He reaches for his spear. Seeing that she does not flinch, he buries the tip in the sand.

"Would you make an oath breaker out of me?"

"I know what you promised him. I have known for seven years."

Achilles's eyes dart to her face, a lion regarding unusual prey.