The Amazon Queen gestured to her kinswoman to walk beside her and Kassandra came to her side.
"What land have we come to, Aunt?" she asked.
"This is the country of the Thracians," Penthesilea told her, "and northward," she gestured, "lies the ancient city of Colchis."
Kassandra remembered one of her mother's stories. "Where Jason found the golden fleece, by the aid of the witch Medea?"
"The same. But there is little gold there, these days; though there is much witchcraft."
"Are there people living hereabouts?" asked Kassandra. The countryside seemed so barren after the fertile fields of the Trojan plain, that it seemed impossible that people would choose to live in this desolate place.
"Fields of rye do not plant themselves," Penthesilea reproved her. "Where there is grain, there is always someone, man or woman, to plant it. And here there are people and also—" she pointed, "horses."
Far away on the horizon, hardly visible, Kassandra made out small moving flecks which seemed no larger than sheep; but from the way they moved, she could see they were horses. As they surged nearer, Kassandra made out that they were very different from the horses that she and the other Amazons rode: small and dun-coloured with heavy-set bodies and thick shaggy hair almost like fur.
"The wild horses of the north; they have never been ridden nor tamed," Penthesilea said. "No God has touched them to mark them for mankind or women. If they belong to any God they are the property of the huntress Artemis."
As if moved by one spirit, the whole herd wheeled and dashed away, the lead mare pausing with her head up to stare, nostrils dilated and eyes shining, at the women.
"They smell our stallion," said Penthesilea. "He must be watched; if he scents a herd of mares he might well try to add them to our own and these horses are no use to us. We could not feed them and there would not be enough pasture."
"What are we doing here?" Kassandra asked.
"The Goddess is wise," her kinswoman replied. "Here in the country of the Thracians, we can trade for iron and replenish our weapons. There will be grain for sale in the city of Colchis, if not nearer; and we have items for trade; saddles and bridles, leather work, and more. We will go this afternoon to the village and see if we can buy food."
Kassandra looked at the grey sky and wondered how anyone could tell whether it was morning or afternoon. She supposed that Penthesilea had some way of knowing.
Later that day Penthesilea summoned Kassandra and one of the other young maidens, Evandre, and they rode toward the village which lay at the center of the grainfields lying beneath the snow. As the women entered the village—only a few small round stone houses, and a central building open to the sky where women were working at the shaping of pots - the inhabitants came out to see them.
Many of the women were carrying spindles with wool or goat's hair wrapped round them. They wore long loose skirts of woven goat's hair dyed green or blue; their hair was dark and ragged. Some had children in their arms, or clinging to their skirts.
Kassandra saw, with a little thrill of horror, that many of the children were curiously deformed; one little girl had a raw-looking cleft through her lip, running up through her face till her nostril looked like an open sore; another had but a thumb and one deformed finger on her tiny hand which looked like a claw. She had never seen living children like this; in Troy a child born deformed was immediately exposed on the slopes of Mount Ida for wolves or other wild beasts to destroy. Women and children hung back without speaking, but looked curiously at the Amazons and their horses.
"Where are you going?"
"Northward at the will of our Goddess, and at the moment, to Colchis," said Penthesilea. "We would like to trade here for grain."
"What have you to trade?"
"Leather goods," said Penthesilea, and the women shook their heads. "We make our own leather from the hides of our horses and goats," said a woman who appeared to be a leader among them. "But sell us a dozen of your little girls and we will give you all the grain you can carry."
Penthesilea's face turned pale with anger.
"No woman of our tribe is ever sold into slavery."
"We do not want them for slaves," said the woman. "We will adopt them as our daughters. A sickness has raged here and too many women have died in childbirth, while others cannot bear healthy babies; so you can see women are very precious to us."
Penthesilea was paler than ever. She said softly to Evandre, "Pass the word back that no woman is to dismount from her horse for an instant in this village; not for any purpose, no matter what the need; we will ride on."
"What is the matter, Aunt?" Kassandra asked.
"We must touch none of their grain," Penthesilea said, and said to the woman, "I am sorry for your sickness; but we can do nothing to help you. Nevertheless, if you would be free of it, cut down your standing grain and burn it, do not even let it lie to fertilize the fields. Get yourselves fresh seed corn from somewhere south of here. Examine the seeds carefully for any trace of blight; it is this that has poisoned the wombs of your women."
As they rode away from the village, Penthesilea, riding through the rye fields, bent down and plucked a few of the green stalks. She held them up, pointing to the place where the seeds would be forming.
"Look," she said. Pointing out the purplish threadlike fibers at the tips of the stalks, she held it towards Kassandra. "Smell it; as a priestess you must be able to recognize this whenever you encounter it. Do not taste it, whatever you do, nor eat of it even if you are starving."
Kassandra smelled a curious mouldy, slimy, almost fishy smell.
"This rye will poison any who eat fresh grain, or even the bread which could be baked from it; and the worst form of poisoning is that it kills the children in the womb and can destroy a woman's fertility for years. That village may already be doomed. It is a pity; their women seem handsome and industrious, and their spinning and weaving is notable. Also they make fine pots and cups."
"Will they all die, Aunt?"
"Probably: many of them will eat the poisoned grain and not die of it, but no more healthy children will be born in that village, and by the time they are desperate enough to enforce, perhaps, a year's famine on their people, it may be too late."
"And the Gods permit this?" Kassandra asked. "What Goddess is angry enough to blight the grain in the village?"
"I do not know; perhaps it is not the doing of any Goddess at all," said her kinswoman. "I only know that it comes, year after year, especially when there has been too much rain."
It had never occurred to Kassandra to doubt that the grain of the fields was watched over and made to grow through the direct agency of Earth Mother; this was a frightening heresy and she put it out of her mind as quickly as possible. She was aware again of hunger - she had been without substantial food for so long that she had almost ceased to be aware of it for days at a time.
As they rode, they began to see small animals jumping in and out of burrows in the ground. A young girl quickly strung her bow and loosed a hunting-arrow shaped of fire-hardened wood instead of the precious metal and the animal it struck fell over and lay kicking. The archer leaped off her pony and clubbed it over the head. A flight of other arrows followed the first, but only one or two found their mark. At the thought of hare roasted on the spit, Kassandra's mouth watered.
Penthesilea drew the riders to a halt with a gesture.
"We will camp here, and I promise you, we will not ride on until we are all fed somehow," she said. "You warriors, take your bows and hunt; as for the rest of you, set up the targets and practice with your arrows. We have neglected practicing our hunting and righting skills in these days while we ride. Too many of those arrows went far from the targets. In my mother's day, that many arrows would have brought down enough hares to feed us all."