LITMIR.BIZ

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Hush, little brother. You are here to watch.'

      I watched. I saw Milanion's finger scratching at his jaw, where the spear point was immovably fixed in the hinge of the bone. I had examined him myself. The injury had partially locked the jaw, and no force would have removed the metal. Now he was so relaxed by poppy-laced broth and the holy sleep that he was clawing a slit in the skin and removing the spear point with his own fingers.

      A priest in the mask of Apollo lay down next to the barren woman. In her sleep, she moaned, an animal noise full of desire, and pulled at the robe, dragging the priest on top of her. I do not know who it was, the mask covers the whole head. Should she have opened her drugged eyes she would have seen the golden face of the god looming over her, a man's body caught in her arms.

      I watched in astonishment as the suppliant's robe was pushed aside and the bodies joined. The barren woman cried aloud in what sounded like triumph.

      Itarnes laid a whole hand over my mouth, sensing that I was about to say something unwise and far too loud.

      `While he is in that mask he is the god,' he hissed. `Sit down, Chryse!' When I struggled, he said coldly, `Diomenes!' At the sound of my real name I sat still and listened. `He is the god, and she needs a child. It may be that there is no fault in her, but that her husband is barren. However good the soil, it needs fertile seed. The god will give her a child. Will you behave if I let you go?'

      I nodded and he released me. I was shocked and said nastily, `What of the impotent man? Do we mate with him, too?'

      `No need. His impotence is in his mind. The mind is our province, little brother. There. The birth is imminent.'

      Païs' cries had changed. She was panting. Shudders were running up and down her body. Her legs twitched. Two attendants lifted her gently onto a stretcher and carried her up the direct path to the outside world. They moved at a brisk jog trot and I followed them, blinking and crying in the sudden sunlight. They laid Païs in the cool temple of women and her attendant priest Achis caught the baby as it emerged, blue and red and ugly, on a burst of blood. I felt ill.

      He then wiped the creature clean, and tied and severed a throbbing blue cable which attached it to the girl's body. There seemed to be blood everywhere. It was the first birth I had seen and after the revelation that there were no gods, it was too much for me. I sat down suddenly and closed my eyes.

      I heard a thin wail and Achis' voice crooning `There, there, little man! Mother,' he urged gently, `here is your son.'

      Païs gave a tired laugh. I heard the swish of a cloth on the marble floor. The slaves were cleaning up, as a mess is distasteful to the god. Achis hauled me to my feet and I was led outside.

      `Overcome by the mystery, little brother?' he asked lightly, smiling. He knew what went on in the fraudulent dark. I hated him, violently and suddenly. I shook off his hand and ran, tears streaming down my face, into the temple and slid, falling in an ungainly heap at my master's feet.

      I did not look up but held onto a fold of his robe as the whole story tumbled out - the soldier removing the spear point and the barren woman mating with the priest in her sleep and the Achaean screaming. He heard it all, in grave silence. Then he raised me to my feet and dusted down my tunic.

      `Was it possible to remove the metal from Milanion's face?'

      `No, Master.'

      `Why not?'

      `It was too firmly fixed, Master, and the muscles had contracted.'

      `So the only way it could be removed was to make him sleep.'

      `Yes,' I agreed dubiously. `But we could have just drugged him.'

      `Yes, we could. Then where would have been the story?'

      `The story, Master?'

      `If consulting a god is as easy as ordering a wheel fixed, would men believe in it enough for it to work?'

      `I don't know, Master.'

      `Would the Achaean have screamed in any other place?'

      `No, Master.'

      `And the barren woman, would she have accepted a lover?'

      `No, Master.'

      `And the birthing woman - would she ever have allowed a man to touch her?'

      `Probably no, Master.'

      `Well, then. We need to heal, Chryse. It is our great task.'

      `But, Master...' I grabbed a fold of the dark robe, `Master, there are no gods.'

      `You saw a god yourself, once, little brother.'

      `That was Death, Master. There are no gods but Death, then,' I said mulishly. He smiled at me and patted my shoulder.

      `Every asclepid knows that, Chryse,' he said sadly.

      `You have saved him from death and removed him from belief,' commented Poseidon. `And your maiden is in love with her twin brother. I don't understand how those two can ever come together. Meanwhile, what about my revenge? Is Troy to stand?'

      `Troy will fall,' said Apollo absently, staring down into the water at Diomenes asleep in the temple. `Have patience, Sea God.'

      `Troy will not fall' said Aphrodite with equal certainty. `See how brave she is, how beautiful! Your puppet will surely love my daughter Cassandra as soon as he sets eyes on her.'

      `Then he shall not set eyes on her. There is another he shall see first,' chuckled Apollo.

      III

      Cassandra

      I was not supposed to see the mystery called childbirth until I had become one of the Mother's maidens with my first bleeding of sacrifice blood. But I teased my teacher Tithone so incessantly that she set me fifteen pectoral herbs to learn perfectly and said that after I had managed a broken bone all by myself, I could come to watch Clea give birth. She was expected to do so very soon.

      I was twelve and convinced I knew everything.

      I spent a week annoying my twin by insisting on haunting the exercise field, where the young men practised fighting and the maidens shot their bows. Eleni only stopped complaining when Hector gave him spear-throwing lessons along with Polites, our brother, who was four years older. This was an honour and Eleni stripped and took to the field with as much pride as any Trojan warrior. I giggled at the contrast between slim fifteen-year-old Polites, with his long oiled thighs under the war skirt, Hector as tall as a tree and little Eleni with his stumpy ungrown shape. However, I did it privately and behind my hand.

      I was waiting for someone to hurt themselves. Childbirth is the great female mystery and I was eager to see it. I was not a nice child.

      I sat watching the warriors, instructed by Hector, practising with the spear. Our Trojan spear is shorter than the common, but heavier, with a barbed bronze head. It is used for stabbing at close quarters and can be thrown a long distance with a spear thrower, a longish piece of wood with a crook at the end. This is a Trojan skill and takes learning, but it can cast a spear three times the distance that an unassisted man can throw it.

      I wriggled into a more comfortable seat with my back against the sun-warmed wall of the temple of Apollo, the sun god aspect of the Lord Dionysius. He rules prophecy, so he was my god. I felt very comfortable in his temple but was always on the brink of falling asleep when there, and I wanted to watch. I pinched my wrist and sat up straighter.

      The maidens, a flutter of coloured tunics, were further away, near the little hill, between the city and the river Scamander. I could see a purple tunic among the pale green, ochre and rose. It was probably Andromache, our playmate and destined wife of our brother Hector. She resembled Eleni and me, being pale skinned with dark golden hair and the grey eyes which marked the god-touched, although she had not shown any sign of prophecy or skill in healing. In fact, she had no interest in healing but was good at arms. The elders thought that she might be protected by War, him whom the Argives call `Ares'. The Amazon Myrine, who was of course War's

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