The White Bull

by Fred Saberhagen

  But when we looked for the bow he had brought with him from Thera, we found it had been unaccountably lost during the struggle with the pirates. Of course we had aboard no replacement weapon that was worthy of his strength. He broke several bows, as well as several borrowed strings, before he gave up in frustration at their weakness, and sat down in a black mood to sulk. The owners of the ruined weapons did not quite dare to protest openly.

  Naturally I had already begun to speculate on the best way, if I could be given the necessary materials, tools, and time, to create a weapon worthy of this warrior's power. But lacking a workshop aboard our ship there was nothing I could do to solve the problem.

  One look at the face of Theseus convinced me that there was no hope of convincing him to abandon his hunt for Dionysus. He remained determined to go ashore on Crete, and so we faced the immediate problem of how to get ourselves ashore alive.

  Heracles, as usual, was no help at all in planning. He continued to sulk, grumbling and mumbling that he had to find some way of coming to grips with his own most challenging enemy ashore, while remaining faithful to his new oath of obedience to our king. Theseus had already forbidden the strong man to simply swim ashore and hurl himself at the foe.

  Theseus shared Heracles's impatient attitude, but approached the problem somewhat more constructively, as befitted his position as a military commander, his royal standing, his much greater experience in the world—his formal education in the school of the Bull may have had something to do with it, but I am not sure.

  Before long the well-schooled King of Athens was able to come up with a plan that at least satisfied himself. Theseus decided that we should stand well away from the land until darkness fell. Then I would fly ashore by night, coming to earth at some spot well inland, where he intended to meet me later.

  Meanwhile our ship, under command of the Athenian mate, would sail round the island, while Theseus, Heracles, and anyone who wanted to join them dropped off one at a time and swam ashore under cover of darkness. The mate and whatever crew remained aboard would keep the ship in Cretan waters, and try the shore again and again at various landing-places around the island.

  No one voiced objections to this scheme�chiefly I suppose because none of us could suggest a better one—and we began to put the royal design into effect. But just before I took off from the rail, while the ship was coming close to shore, we were at last struck directly by a sizable missile from the hands of the Bronze Man. It was a large rock that stove in two of our deck planks, though luckily it did not penetrate the hull. Our simple assumption that the darkness of night would offer us protection from his bombardment was shown to be a fallacy.

  But our heroes were not men who could be so easily forced into retreat. Heracles vowed that nothing was going to keep him from eventually coming to grips with his terrible opponent. Yet the strong man was still under his vow of obedience to Theseus, which prevented him from immediately leaping into the water and charging the enemy.

  He was soon in action, though. Shortly after my departure on wings (as I learned later) Heracles, sitting on one plank and paddling with another, was able to make such speed through the water that he managed to get ashore without encountering Talus directly—this may have been due largely to the fact that Talus was coming after me instead, as I flew inland. Fortunately for me some formidable cliffs stood in the Bronze Man's way, and one thing he could not do was fly.

  Theseus meanwhile also came safely ashore by swimming, though in the process he had to leave his armor either in the ship or on the bottom of the sea. But he counted on being able to acquire more weapons once he had the chance.

  Knowing nothing of what might be happening behind me, but trusting in the Fates, I flew inland, over the firesparks of cottages and camps, and came down, as my king had planned, somewhere in the hills.

  * * *

  FINAL EXAMS

  I had come back to Crete, back to the soil in which I had buried Kalliste, whom I loved. Crete was also the land where I had watched our son grow up as far as he would ever grow. And yet my thoughts on returning were not chiefly of grief and loss, or even of danger; this coming back felt in a strange way like coming home.

  As I winged my way inland over the firesparks of that darkened coastline, I found that I was leaving most of my fear behind me. Somehow, during the long journeying from Sicily, my awe of the Bronze Man and the other dangerous powers that might now rule in this island had diminished. By degrees, especially during the last stages of the journey, something of the fury and determination of King Theseus had caught in my heart and brain, and now I found I had abandoned my timid wish to flee immediately to the safety of a snug workshop somewhere in Athens.

  You must understand that I make no claim that I was free of fear entirely.

  There were mountains ahead of me now, and little enough moonlight by which to see their gray and ghostly shapes. I spent another hour or more in dark loneliness aloft, seeking a good place to come down. I wanted a place not too far from my ultimate goal, the arranged rendezvous which was not far from the House of the Axe. At the same time I thought it vitally important that I not be seen on landing. At length I chose a hillside that appeared in darkness to be uninhabited, in a region that I thought would be within a day's walk of the rendezvous.

  It was not without some trepidation that I managed my landing in the dead of night. Getting my feet safely on the earth was a difficult task, and I was forced to abort my first landing attempt, when a darkened shepherd's hut loomed up in front of me at the last moment. But I switched my attentions to another hillside nearby, and at last I accomplished my goal successfully, my sandals crunching and sliding on gravel as I stumbled to a stop.

  Once I had attained solid footing, I looked around me as best I could in the faint moonlight, then cautiously removed my wings and rolled them up. I was unable to see much, but I smelled familiar Cretan vegetation, and heard the cry of a nightbird that I had often heard from my window in the palace when my beloved Kalliste and Icarus were with me.

  All seemed peaceful; apparently my arrival had caused no alarm. But somewhere, a few hours away at most, Talus had sought to find and kill me. And if half of the stories that I had heard since my departure were true—and I knew of no reason to disbelieve them all—then somewhere on this island now, probably at the center of the Labyrinth that I had built, the White Bull was still alive. If the Bull was still alive he was almost certainly my mortal enemy, despite all the soft words and the worrisome gift I had had from Minos. And I considered the Bull, being intelligent, a vastly more dangerous enemy than Talus. I knew that the Bronze Man had no thoughts, no plans, no desires of his own; if he had sought to kill me and had killed my son, it was only because the doctor of education had ordered him to attack us.

  Shortly after I came to earth, the moon went down behind the mountain to my west, and the darkness of the night intensified. I sat waiting on the hillside till nearly sunrise, when something like a path became visible on the slope beneath me. Then I began to walk downhill.

  The point of rendezvous where I was to meet Theseus and Heracles was near the summit of one of the lower hills in the vicinity of the palace at Knossos, and I thought I now knew exactly the best way to reach it from my present location without encountering unnecessarily large numbers of people, or drawing undue attention to myself. Theseus, who had selected the place, had given me the impression that he knew it well. Perhaps, I thought, that resulted from his having held secret rendezvous there with Ariadne or Phaedra. Or perhaps with both of them.

  As the light increased, I found myself making my way among familiar-looking Cretan farmsteads, orchards, and vineyards. Of course I was now carrying my wings concealed in a small pack on my back. When I came to a handy thicket, I paused, and with a bronze knife I had borrowed from one of the sailors on the Athenian ship, cut myself a traveler's staff. Then I pressed on.

  As soon as full daylight overtook me on the road I began to encounter small numbers of pe
ople. They were peasants and bird-catchers, women fetching water, and young priests climbing to a mountain shrine. No one appeared surprised to see me, and I had no reason to think that I was recognized. Each time I met someone, we exchanged nods or gestures of greeting. Once or twice, when I thought some useful information might be obtained, I approached the other party boldly and spoke to them; each time we exchanged a few words. And I learned what I considered valuable facts, along with the usual hearsay and rumor.

  The news of the death of Minos had come as a serious shock to the entire population, but now conditions appeared peaceful, on the surface at least. Queen Pasiphaë ruled Crete at the moment, but with the princesses both gone, the future looked uncertain to everyone. At least civil war had not yet broken out upon the island, though as I was soon to find out, it was already threatening.

  My first real clue as to how things stood in this regard came when I ran into some of the potential combatants, a small group of off-duty soldiers. They were returning to their garrison from a visit to the farm where the family of one of them was living. When I asked them how things were going in Heraklion, and in the palace, they gave me two different answers, and immediately began to quarrel among themselves.

  Gradually the political picture became clear: A large faction of the people, including the army and navy, were ready to rebel against a queen who secretly claimed an alien consort as her lover, and conducted a bestial relationship with him, though she pretended to deny the fact.

  I pretended to be astonished to hear such accusations. My informants asked me where I had been; I replied that I was a scholar recently arrived from Greece, and had been hiking from palace to palace on the island, in search of my old compatriot Daedalus.

  At this the soldiers began to wrangle again among themselves, some claiming that Daedalus had flown away from the island to Sicily on wings of his own invention, while others dismissed that tale as a preposterous invention. The White Bull, they were quite sure, had had the inventor murdered months ago. I bade them goodbye and slipped away almost unnoticed while they continued their argument.

  Half an hour later, during a conversation with certain milkmaids who were engaged in rounding up their goats, I at last heard some word of Dionysus. When I first mentioned the god's name, the young women exchanged sly glances among themselves and tittered. But then they were not altogether unwilling to talk. It was plain to see that they found Dionysus very intriguing. Yes, they told me, that restless god was even now reported to be visiting the island once again, as he had at intervals during the last few months, ever since the reported death of mad Minos somewhere in the petty kingdom of a foreign enemy.

  On this latest trip to Crete, Dionysus had once again arrived in his wondrous chariot, which he had landed more than once during the last few months inside the Labyrinth itself. Some of my informants thought that he was there now, visiting the White Bull; others giggled and refused to speculate. But one of the girls said that she was looking forward to a chance to attend one of the Dionysian parties. Then she burst into laughter and would say no more.

  Soon I walked on, wondering if the presence of that god would destroy the rest of human life on Crete, as it had appeared to come close to doing on Naxos. But no one else I talked to that morning volunteered any information about Dionysus, and when I cautiously mentioned his name I had blank stares for an answer. Probably, I thought, that god (if in fact he was a god) did not really care anything about ruling Crete or any other land. Most likely his primary reason for visiting here was to restock his wine supply from the almost bottomless cellars of the late king. Probably the new divinity of wine and madness was not averse either to recruiting a few attractive Cretan goat-maids for his orgies.

  Around midday a small coin from my light purse bought me a satisfactory dinner from a farm-wife. While munching on my bread and cheese I pondered what I had learned so far, and came to the conclusion, or at least allowed myself to hope, that I need not worry too much about Dionysus—at least not unless Theseus actually succeeded in catching up with him and challenging him directly. On vastly smaller Naxos, where there were not nearly so many people, the more or less steady influence of Dionysus had triggered a vast change in the general behavior of the population. But here on Crete the divine comings and goings tended to be unnoticed by most of the inhabitants. With public attention focused on the strange events taking place in the House of the Axe, one orgy more or less somewhere else caused little excitement. And it occurred to me to wonder whether, if Dionysus ever attempted to control too many people at one time, he became distracted and found it impossible to get them to do anything in particular.

  As for the chance of Theseus bringing this convivial monster (or god) to bay, it seemed unlikely, as long as Dionysus wished to avoid him. The King of Athens could travel from island to island no faster than a sailing ship, while his great antagonist soared overhead and out of reach in what might have been the chariot of the sun. Small wonder that Theseus wanted wings of his own; but fortunately—as I thought�no wings that I could build could ever match the speed of the vehicle borrowed from the departed Bullheads.

  I hiked all the remainder of that day, with brief rest stops, realizing that I was somewhat farther from my goal then I had originally thought. By the time darkness had fallen again, I thought I knew almost exactly where I was in relation to the House of the Axe, and to our planned place of rendezvous. Once it was dark, with the thin moon behind some friendly clouds, I dared to fly again. And as soon as I had risen above some small nearby hills, the distant lights of the great palace and the adjoining town were unmistakable. Thus, with no very great difficulty, I had in the course of a day and a night arrived at a position very near the appointed place of meeting.

  The exact place of meeting, which I managed to reach during that night, was a small cave on a rugged hillside. This cave had been frequented from time immemorial by the local peasants, who considered it a minor shrine to some local god so ancient that I suspect his very name had been forgotten. From the mouth of the cave it was possible to see anyone approaching along the ascending path some time before the visitor actually grew near; thus I suppose Theseus thought it made an excellent place for clandestine meetings.

  A light rain had begun to fall when I established myself snugly just inside the cavern's mouth, and went to sleep. Near dawn I was aroused from a light slumber by the sound of someone climbing quietly along the path below. Arming myself with my staff I waited, ready to fight or retreat along the rough terrain of the hillside behind me, which was marked by innumerable places of concealment. Presently I could be sure that only one person was coming up the path; and a few moments after that, straining my eyes in near-darkness, I determined to my joy that my visitor was Theseus.

  The young king, bareheaded now and wrapped in a long Cretan cloak, with his short sword ready underneath it, was pleased to find me already in place and undetected by the Cretan authorities. He told me with cheerful excitement of the considerable difficulties, including the necessity of abandoning most of his armor, that he had experienced in getting ashore without being destroyed by Talus. But by dint of swimming, wading, and running, he had managed the feat at last.

  I thought, but did not say, that Theseus never would have managed to do so unless Talus had been distracted from pursuing him by some other perceived duty. That duty might well have been the pursuit of me. Of course I too had been fortunate to survive; and I supposed that I could attribute my good fortune to the fact that I had placed enough steep-sided ravines and cliffs between myself and the Bronze Man to keep him from keeping track of me.

  The king asked me: "Have you had any word yet from Heracles?"

  "Not a word, sire." And now it occurred to me to wonder if the strong man had unwittingly sacrificed his life to provide the distraction necessary to save both the king and myself. "Did anyone else volunteer to come ashore?"

  "I think not." The king did not seem in the least perturbed, of course, by this lack of heroism in
his crew. What use would one or two more ordinary mortals be in this situation?

  Theseus graciously heard the story of my ad-ventures since we had separated, then modestly told me something of his own. He too, on his journey incognito overland to this place, had seen and heard things suggesting that the land of Crete now faced increasing anarchy and strife, perhaps intense enough to threaten civil war.

  He had also heard the same stories I had heard regarding the god of wine and celebration. With the tension among the people growing closer and closer to an open outbreak, King Theseus hoped we might be able to count on some support from strong factions among them if we entered the Labyrinth to try conclusions with Dionysus if he were there as reported, and with the White Bull as well, if necessary.

  This struck me as a truly heroic plan. I have said that my fears were much diminished, but I had not grown suicidal. The idea that two of us might be able to defy our enemies in such a way seemed so to me.

  I expressed my doubts that any great number of the Cretan people would support a foreign prince, and my companion had to agree that my objections had some force. Theseus wished aloud that he could have manned one of the captured pirate ships and sent her to Athens for help, so that he might have the prospect of assistance from something of an invading force. But there was no use wishing. In any event, he had been unable to spare the men to work even the smaller of those captured pirate ships.

  The day was now well advanced, and still we had seen no sign of Heracles. The question now was how long we ought to wait for him. Theseus was anxious to reach the Labyrinth as soon as possible.

  "There is one thing that concerns me, though."

  "Yes sir?" I waited, hoping for reasonableness.

  "It is this, Daedalus. Are you going to be able to guide me through that place when we get into it?"