"Hector! But what is he doing?" she demanded.
It was all too clear what he was doing; he was dragging
Hector's corpse in the dust behind his chariot, as he raced fiercely in circles around the plain. The Trojans watched, frozen in horror.
"Why," said Kassandra, "he is mad, then. I thought—" she had thought they called him mad rhetorically; but surely a man who could thus abuse the fallen corpse of an enemy - even an enemy who had slain his dearest friend - must be mad in truth. Why, he is not fit to be let out without a keeper, she thought with a shudder.
Aeneas said, "Why, this goes beyond even revenge; the man is inhuman."
"Demented with grief, perhaps," said Kassandra. "He loved Patroklos beyond reason - and when his friend died he lost the last of all ties to sanity—"
"Still, this must be stopped," Aeneas said. "We must send to the Greeks - Odysseus at least is a reasonable man - and get back Hector's body before this comes to his father's ears—"
"So," said Andromache, with clenched fists, "I am to stand here and watch this and not go mad myself with grief, but Priam, a man and a king, must be shielded from the very word, let alone the sight—" She flung back her head and began to scream; "I will go down myself, if I must, and I will persuade that man, with a horsewhip, that he cannot do this thing before all of Hector's kin—"
"No," Paris said, embracing her gently. "No, Andromache, he would not listen to you. I tell you, he is mad—"
"Is he? Or is he feigning madness so that we will offer him a greater ransom for Hector's body?" Andromache asked. Kassandra had not thought of that.
At last Troilus, taking with him two or three of Priam's other sons, went up to tell the King that Hector was dead; while Paris and Aeneas armed themselves and drove forth in a chariot with Priam's favourite herald. They tried in vain to make Akhilles hear them, but he simply went on whipping up his horses into a frenzy and refused to listen to a word the herald said.
After a time they stopped and conferred and went on to the main Akhaian camp to speak with Agamemnon and the other captains. Eventually they returned to Troy looking discouraged; Andromache rushed at them.
"What did they say?" she demanded, though it was obvious they had had no success; down on the plain, Akhilles's chariot was still dragging the body around in circles. It seemed he meant to go on at least till sunset, perhaps longer.
Aeneas said, "They will do nothing to stop Akhilles; they said that he is their leader, and he must do as he will with his own captives and prisoners. He killed Hector and the body is his, to ransom or not as he chooses."
"But that's monstrous," Andromache said. "You hesitated not a minute to grant a truce for burying and mourning Patroklos! How can they do this?"
"They didn't want to," said Paris. "Agamemnon could not look me in the eye. He knows they are violating all the rules of warfare - rules they themselves made and we agreed to honor. But they know they have no chance of triumphing without Akhilles; they angered him once, and they will not risk making him angry again."
The sun had slanted down considerably and the plain of Troy was now partly in the long shadow of the walls. Paris said, "There is nothing for it but this, then. We must go out and fight for his body." He called his arms-bearer and started putting on his armor.
"Summon the Amazons; their charge and their arrows can cover us. They are fierce fighters, fiercer than any man," Aeneas said. "I will vow my best horse to the War-God if he grants us to win Hector's body."
"I'll vow more than that if he grants me Akhilles," said Paris. "Hector and I were not always close; but he was my elder brother, and I loved him; and even if I had not, kinship's dues would forbid me to stand by and see his corpse dishonored. Even Akhilles can have no quarrel with the dead."
Kassandra said, "I remember how Hector said he and Patroklos would have much to talk about in the afterworld."
"Aye," said Aeneas sombrely. "If Akhilles paused to think, he would know that Hector and his friend would feast side by side as comrades in the halls of the afterlife."
"I trust it is no God's will I meet Akhilles as a comrade on the other side of death," said Paris grimly. "Or, I swear, unless I learn something there that I have not been given to know in this life, I shall disrupt the peace of that world itself when I meet Akhilles there."
"Oh, hush," said Aeneas, "none of us know what we shall think or do past that gate; but in this world, we all have been properly taught that enmity ends at death, and what Akhilles now does is an outrage and an atrocity—as well as being plain bad manners. He should show respect for a fallen foe; you know that, I know it, the other Akhaians know it. And I give you my word, if Akhilles does not know it, I shall be happy to give him a lesson, here and now. Are the soldiers armed and ready?"
"Yes," called Paris, "open the gates."
Priam came slowly through the ranks and went to the wall where the women stood. He himself was as white as death, Kassandra thought, and he had been weeping.
"If you rescue the body of my son for honorable burial," he said, as Aeneas passed him on his way down to the gate, "it needs no saying that you may ask whatever reward you will."
Aeneas knelt for a moment before him and kissed the old man's hand.
"Father, Hector was my brother-in-law and my brother in arms; I want no reward to do for him what I know well he would be the first to do for me."
"Then the blessings of every God I know how to call be upon you," said Priam, and as Aeneas rose, embraced him quickly and kissed his cheek. Then he let him go and the men went down to the gate.
As Troilus would have joined them, Hecuba cried out, "No! Not you too!" and caught at his tunic; but Troilus pulled away, and Priam gestured to the Queen to let him go. Hecuba collapsed weeping.
"Cruel old man! Unnatural father! We have lost one son today; will you lose another?"
"He is no child," Priam said. "He wishes to go; I will not forbid him. I would not make him go if he wished any excuse to stay; but you should be proud of him."
"Proud!" she raged, looking down on the chariots as they raced out through the gates. "There is more than one madman here!"
CHAPTER 8
Kassandra had seen the Amazons fight many times before; she wished that she were riding forth with them. Yet if she had thought the morning's battle was fierce, that was nothing to the ferocity of this battle for Hector's body.
Time after time the Trojan soldiers made what seemed like a suicidal dash at Akhilles's chariot trying to overturn or crash it and cut free the body; but the joined forces of Hector's soldiers and the Amazons could not come near him. It seemed that the War-God himself rode with Akhilles and more than a dozen of the soldiers and seven of the Amazon warriors died in these charges before Agamemnon's charioteers, led by Diomedes and the strongest of the Spartan archers, came and drove them off a final time.
When it was almost too dark to see, at last the Trojans retired and when Troilus fell to an arrow shot by Akhilles himself, Aeneas finally yielded and called off the attack, carrying Troilus inside the walls.
"He didn't want to live," Hecuba wept over his body. "He blamed himself—I heard him—that his brother died—"
In the flaming sunset, the cloud of dust behind Akhilles's chariot was undiminished. "It looks as if he means to keep that up all night," said Paris. "There is nothing else we can do."