8

Fighting halts again, this time for funerals. The Greeks are burying the hero that Hector slew the day before his death. Troy is grieving for Hector, though wicked Achilles took his body. We’re mourning Pen, whose body we recovered without having to fight for it. I’m sad for Hector too.

Though I barely have the energy to mount Tall Brown, I return with the band to our camp. I hardly notice my tears. Pen is slung in front of me. I rest my hand on her chest as we go. Her horse follows mine.

After we’ve gone just a few yards, I realize that I’m queen, Pen’s chosen.

When we reach camp and lay her gently on the grass, I say, “If I die, Lannip will be queen.” It’s my first act. The band needs to know who will lead them after me. I’m not sure if Lannip is the right choice, but if she’s queen at least everyone will eat well.

The Trojans and the Greeks burn their dead, but we entomb ours in a burial mound called a kurgan. Using our battle-axes to carve out sod, we begin to dig a shallow pit. I send Zelke to the Trojans for stones and timber.

As I work, I marvel that I still have two legs and two arms. How can I be whole when I lost so much of myself the moment Pen died?

I hate that the kurgan will be here, so far from our other graves.

The sun sets on the last day Pen was alive.

Over dinner, people remember her. I take my bowl and move away. She’d laugh them out of their compliments if she were still here.

After we eat, we wash our bowls and our stewpot in the stream that waters the camp. Here, without dogs to lick them, the task can’t wait until morning.

Then I lie on the grass. Sleep doesn’t come. Who will be proud of me now? If I’m a good queen, the band will look up to me, but no one will be above me to be proud. Pen will be too busy helping Cybele.

If I can’t sleep, I wish I could at least stop my mind from going in circles. When you lose someone you love and who loved you, you still love her, but she can’t love you anymore.

My body feels heavy enough to pull me under the earth. I spend hours awake, often weeping.

In the morning, Pammon and several other Trojans drive oxcarts to us loaded with lumber and stone. Pammon says that Achilles hasn’t returned Hector’s body.

The Trojans are strange, but the Greeks are monsters.

I pity Cassandra, who must be grieving, as I am.

I haven’t forgotten that she had prophesied the deaths of Hector and Pen, but I don’t think of it. And I don’t call to mind her prediction that I’ll die in two weeks.

When Pen is buried, I’ll visit Cassandra, but I’ll sleep with the band until we go back to war and I kill Achilles.

Over the next two days, we build a chamber for Pen’s body to rest in while her spirit is with Cybele. When it’s finished, we spread Pen’s leopard-skin blanket on the dirt floor and lay her on top on her back. I start crying again. Around her, we arrange her battle-ax, her sword, her gorytos, and her arrows. Her bow we keep in case one of ours breaks. Cybele doesn’t want to leave us unprotected. I also keep her sack of potions, elixirs, and herbs. If one of us is wounded, we’ll need them.

My eyes stream as I pull the gold plate off my gorytos and set it on the ground near Pen’s head. Everyone in the band gives Pen something precious. If we had our wagons and the rest of the band, there would be much more. Still, we’re not sending her to Cybele empty-handed.

When Pen has everything we can spare, we close the chamber door and pack sod around and over the chamber. The kurgan rises higher than my head. Grass and wildflowers will grow on it, but people in this flat land will realize that the small hill is no accident. If they know Amazons, they’ll understand that a warrior is buried here.

The next morning, I ride to Troy to see Cassandra and learn if the war has resumed.

I see young men walking on the wide way inside the gate, so I know there’s no fighting today. At the palace, I climb the stairs to the women’s quarters and head for Cassandra’s loom.

Few women are working. Hecuba isn’t at her loom. Most women are there, but they’re sitting, drooping in their chairs. I notice that their hair is wild and their robes are torn. Unbidden, the thought comes that this is why they need so much cloth.

Only Helen’s hair is smooth and her robe unsullied. No men surround her today. She smiles pleasantly.

I see sudden movement. A dog barks. Someone—Cassandra!—rushes at the balcony railing. I run and catch her before she throws herself off.

Holding her bony shoulders, I guide her to her chair. She doesn’t resist me. When I get there, Maera licks my leg.

Were her shoulders always bony?

When she sits, I look her over while she stares dully at my tunic. Her cheekbones stand out above gray hollows. Her head is bald in spots. Clumps of hair lie at her feet. Her forehead is bruised and swollen. Fresh beads of blood dot one arm, and scabs run down the other.

No one has been watching out for her, just as they didn’t protect Hector.

I announce, “I’m taking her to our camp.”

Helen calls, “Goodbye!”

No one else speaks. Cassandra holds my hand obediently and follows me out, along with Maera. I think my friend may be too weak to walk to the gate, but I walk slowly and she keeps up. When we get there, Maera whines, but sits. Outside Troy, I lift Cassandra onto Tall Brown and walk the horse to our camp.

When we’re almost there, she says that Achilles still has Hector’s body. “But Father will get it back in a few days. He doesn’t know that he will.”

I don’t think he will, either. Achilles seems to want to wound the Trojans however he may.

“Father will bring him precious gifts in exchange.”

I doubt we’ll get any spoils from this war. As soon as I slaughter Achilles, we’ll leave. If Cassandra wants to come with us, she’ll be welcome.

As our guest at the camp, she’s no trouble. She eats Lannip’s food and lets us remove her torn robe and dress her in a tunic and leggings. She even smiles when I put a tall hat on her head. When she stands, the tip comes to the top of my head.

After three days, she announces that Hector’s body has been recovered. The next night, she leaves us to attend his funeral, but she promises to come back.

I’m not sure she will, though, so I wait half the night at the east gate for the funeral procession to return. Cassandra comes to me, walking like a wooden doll. In the procession’s torchlight, I see her expression is wooden too.

The next day, she sits motionless near Lannip’s cooking tripod. Her face shows nothing, while tears roll down her cheeks. That night, she doesn’t move to lie down, so I sit with her.

“When I was little, Rin, he carried me on his shoulders as he used to carry Nax. I went to my first festival for Apollo that way. I was the youngest child there. When I was old enough to play in the streets, I used to go to the gymnasium to watch him wrestle. I think he liked for me to be there. When he finished a bout, win or lose, he looked to see me and grinned.”

She lapses into silence.

I say through a tight throat, “I never saw him be anything but good. And he had a light heart.” I wouldn’t be Cassandra’s friend if not for him.

“You understand. I wish everyone in the world could know what we lost.” She pats my knee. “I’ll try to sleep now.”

Her health improves over the next week. She eats whatever we put in her lap and sleeps near me at night. She rarely speaks.

Meanwhile, Lannip and the others work with me on my swordplay and my handling of the battle-ax. My ribs hardly complain.

Once they approve my skill with the weapons, they set up pretend skirmishes and all come at me at once. Whenever one of them gains the advantage, they stop and tell me what I did wrong.

I learn that I have to look everywhere at once. While I’m battling one foe, I have to watch for the next. The battle will be deafening. I can’t rely on my ears to warn me. Greek armor is thick. I should imagine I’m felling a tree.

“A tree that can jump away from you,” Lannip adds.

Gradually, I improve. I use the speed that youth gives me. Accidentally, I deliver a terrible blow to Serag’s thigh, though she laughs away the pain.

Lannip makes a lesson out of this too. “No unintended strikes! Hit where and when you mean to. Don’t waste your strength.”

She tells me the band’s strategy before Pen died, and we decide to adopt it again. It’s a way to continue to shoot as long as possible, since we’re superior to the Greeks with our bows and arrows.

But Lannip says again and again that we don’t know how Greeks think. “Fighting us isn’t like fighting them. We can’t prepare you for what they may do.”

“Achilles’ shield seems charmed,” Zelke says. “There may be more like it. Be careful!” She adds, “All of us!”

I decide that I’ll aim at Achilles’ thighs. His shield seemed to pull arrows down, not lift them up. I have to just nick him, and the poisoned arrow will do the rest.

Cassandra says, “Achilles will die, but not in the coming battle and not at Amazon hands. Rin, you’ll die soon after the fighting begins, and Achilles won’t be your killer. He’ll be an ordinary soldier, not especially strong or skilled, merely lucky.”

Her ignorance makes us laugh and gives us the confidence we need.

She adds, “Your loss will deprive me of my only friend.”