Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two

by Bernard Evslin

  He spread the wings of his cape and flew out of the throne room. Like leaves in a windstorm, the courtiers were sucked into the wake of his departure, and fluttered back to the king.

  8

  The Nemean Lion

  The king’s palace stood on high ground in the fortress city of Mycenae. A great wall surrounded the city, its only entrance a pair of massive iron gates. When Palaemona came to the city she found the gates closed.

  She shouted. No one came. She saw sentries high on the wall, but they paid her no heed. She pounded on the gate; no one answered. She stepped back, studying the gates, trying to decide whether to climb them or try to wrench the huge grills out of their stone sockets. She heard a clank of metal and saw a file of armed men coming down the avenue at half trot. They unbarred the gates and swung them open. She stepped forward. A hedge of spears formed in front of her; a voice cried, “Halt!”

  The men fell back, forming an isle of metal. Through it rode a man on a white truce horse. He carried a white herald’s staff. He raised the staff and cried, “In the king’s name!”

  He reined up his horse and shouted: “Are you she who is called Heraclea?”

  “I am now, I suppose. My business is with the king.”

  “You will conduct it with me. I bring instructions to you from Eurystheus, high king of Mycenae.”

  “Why are the gates locked against me?”

  “King’s orders.”

  “I don’t understand. Why the soldiers? Why am I barred entry? Why can I not speak with Eurystheus himself?”

  “King’s orders, king’s orders. He does not deign to explain, and no one must question his decree.”

  “No questions? No explanations? He has been king for but three days. His reign promises to be eventful.”

  “I do not intend to tarry here listening to treasonous remarks. If you do not wish to receive the king’s message, I shall return to the palace. The gates will be closed. And you can go back to Thessaly, or wherever you come from.”

  “Forgive me, little herald,” said Palaemona. “If I seem awkward it is because I am only a simple country lass, and feel somewhat overwhelmed by this royal reception. Give me the message.”

  She smiled down at him, and saw his eyes fill with loathing. He had a sly, malicious, cheese-colored face under greasy brown curls. And the herald, looking up at her, felt himself choking with dismay. For he feared and disliked women, especially young healthy ones. And this was more woman than he had ever seen. She towered over him on tall, golden legs. Sitting on horseback he reached only to her breastbone. The muscles of her wide, sleek shoulders and long, tapering arms did not bulge, but writhed, half hidden, like serpents, with every move she made. She cast a fragrant heat like a garden in midsummer. He felt himself growing dizzy. He backed off his horse, took a bit of parchment from his pouch, stuck it on the end of his staff, and held it up to her so that he would not have to touch her hand.

  She took the message and read it. “Kill the Nemean lion and bring its pelt back to Mycenae.”

  “Nemean lion,” she murmured.

  “The Nemean mountains lie between Corinth and Argos,” said the herald. “You had better get started.”

  “What is your name, O courteous one?”

  “I am called Copreus.”

  She smiled again, watching his averted face darken with rage. Copreus in Greek means “dung man,” or one who does dirty jobs.

  “Copreus … odd name for so elegant a herald.”

  “I wear that name with pride,” he said. “It signifies that I am the most loyal of the king’s subjects, the one whom he entrusts with the most unpleasant tasks.”

  “Is this task so unpleasant then?”

  For the first time she saw him smile, a spasm of the lips more dismaying than any scowl. He said, “It’s always unpleasant to send anyone off to certain death, especially one so young and in such blooming health. Our king is but a lad himself, you know, and for all the dread authority vested in him, has a very tender heart. That undoubtedly is why he denies himself the pleasure of conversing with you on this occasion.”

  “Convey my humble thanks to the king,” said Palaemona, “and tell him that I mean to spare him further grief by surviving this lion hunt.”

  Copreus said, “The king has empowered me to give you some information about the game you hunt. Do you care to hear it?”

  “Certainly. I shall be grateful for anything you can tell me.”

  Studying his face, she knew that he relished what he was about to say—which meant that she would not. Nevertheless, she understood that the more she learned about the lion—no matter how discouraging it might be—the better prepared she would be to fight the beast.

  “Tell me, please,” she murmured.

  “First of all,” said Copreus, “it’s of monstrous size—bigger than an elephant, they say. Its teeth are ivory knives, its claws are brass hooks, and it wears a hide that no weapon can pierce. For many years it has prowled the country between Corinth and Argos, killing men and cattle, snapping up children, goats, and dogs. Hunting parties have been sent against the monster. An entire generation of the keenest hunters and strongest warriors have sought to rid the land of its curse. They failed. Many were mauled to death. They were the lucky ones. Others were wounded and eaten alive. Of late, however, no one has hunted the lion, for it seems a hopeless task. His hide, as I said, is armor. Spears and arrows skid off him like hail drops; no blade can pierce him, no net hold him. In short, Missy, the Nemean lion is pure yellow murder.”

  Now the man’s cheesy face was creased in a broad smile as he looked up at her, searching for signs of fear. She gazed back at him—laughed suddenly, reached down, plucked him from his saddle and turned him so that he sat facing the horse’s tail.

  “Dung man, farewell!” she chortled—and bounded away with great leaps, shouting with laughter.

  The likelihood of being killed did not worry the girl. She welcomed the idea of descending to Tartarus, for Melampus was there. What did plague her was the prospect of hurting an animal. In all her life she had never injured a living creature, except for the murderous robber. How then could she bear to kill a beautiful big lion?

  This was the problem she pondered as she traveled from Mycenae to Nemea. Since she could not solve it, she put it out of her mind and concentrated on smaller things. First of all, she had to arm herself. She already owned bow and arrows. Before leaving Thessaly she had found a Titan longbow on the site of the vanished courtyard. It was an enormous bow made of polished ash wood strengthened with stag bone. She did not use it in the mortal fashion, drawing bowstring only to breast, but in the powerful long-armed Titan way, bending the heavy bow almost double. In practice she had driven her bolts through a wall three feet thick.

  Now, she wanted a spear and knew she had to make one. For the spears used by ordinary warriors seemed small as darts to her. Searching along the shore she found a stove-in boat, which she dismasted. She broke the mast in two and took the slender half. She did not wish to tip it with the leaf-shaped spearhead commonly used. That kind of spearhead made a large wound, but she wanted more penetrating power. She found an old iron spike and drove it into the end of the mast. Then she sharpened the spike against a rock, flaking the rust off, bringing it to a needle point. She practiced with this spear, throwing it at trees. After half a day she could split an oak in two at fifty paces.

  She kept busy so that she wouldn’t have to think. Or, rather, she thought of everything but her problem. Nevertheless, her thoughts came back to it; what could she do about not wanting to kill anything? She tried to do as Melampus had taught her, isolate her dilemma from her feelings and treat it as a problem in logic.

  “Yes,” she thought, “but would he ever kill anything? Not likely, not even to save his own life. Perhaps to save someone else’s. I don’t know.”

  But she had to stop thinking about Melampus. Hot tears gushed from her eyes. And it was several miles before she could think of anything ex
cept her grief.

  Nevertheless, she did succeed in taking hold of herself and wrenching her thoughts back to her task.

  “I seem destined to meet some terrible creatures,” she said to herself. “Beginning with this lion—and, in all likelihood, ending with this lion. But if I do get past him somehow, there appears to be an array of other monsters in my future. The question is how to conduct myself. I’m large for a person but tiny in comparison with these creatures. Therefore I must cultivate other qualities. Speed … surprise … I must hone my wits so that I may be swift in decision also, and fertile in tactics. Swift—swift—I must be sudden and swift.”

  She found another use for her spear—as a vaulting pole. On an empty stretch of beach she came across an old temple with crumbling walls, thirty feet high, and practiced there. Holding her spear, she would run full speed at a wall, plant the butt of the spear, and hurl herself up, up. The great shaft bent beneath her, then recoiled—and she, extending her arms and flattening her body, would ride the upspring, releasing the spear as it straightened, and soaring over the wall. She vaulted rivers in this way, and huts. She loved to vault; it was like flying.

  Nevertheless, the critical question was still unanswered when she reached Mount Nemea. How could she bring herself to stalk an animal and try to kill it? And so she was weakened by doubt as she stood on a slope of the mountain, deafened by a great racketing roar, waiting for the beast to approach. Smoothly, ponderously, he came—sulphur yellow, the size of three lions, his teeth a murderous grin in the sunlight. Palaemona crouched behind a boulder, watching.

  And, as she saw him coming toward her, she felt her doubts dropping away. It was no animal she saw, but something else.

  True lions and tigers blend with their terrain. Sun tawny, striped with shadow, they belong to their portion of earth. But this one belonged nowhere; he was an alien presence. Trees shuddered as he passed, the grass shrank away. His eyes were not gemmed with light; they were flat, blank disks, metallic. He stood outside the great life chain of hunting, feeding, flight, and pursuit. He belonged only to death and visited the living as a fatal stranger. He was a monster: a reason for heroes.

  Now, watching him come, Palaemona felt her mouth filling with the taste of honey. A delicious sweet chill laved her body, tuning her reflexes, loosening her muscles. Everything came alive. Trees and rocks loomed with miraculous clarity. The grass became filaments of light. Death slouched toward her and made the world new.

  She unslung her bow and notched an arrow. She waited for the lion to come closer, then launched her bolt. She saw it cleave the air and strike the beast’s chest, clattering harmlessly to the ground. As fast as she could pull arrow from quiver she launched her bolts. One after the other they skidded off the lion and fell to earth.

  The lion yawned, crouched slightly, and came toward her. She tossed her bow away and hurled her great spear. It glanced off his shoulder and split an ash tree. The lion yawned and prowled closer. Now he was very close. She choked in the fumes of his rotting-meat breath. She raised her club, which was a single uprooted tree with its twigs trimmed off, and smashed it down on the beast’s head. The club shattered, and the lion struck. Palaemona sprang away from the lightning jab of his paw—but not quite in time. One razor claw sheared away her sailcloth tunic and touched her thigh, and the touch was a wound. Naked and bleeding, weaponless, she ran for her spear. The lion did not follow immediately but sniffed at the bloody tunic, tail swishing—then raised his huge head to observe the futile antics of his prey.

  And they were futile, Palaemona knew. But futility was no novelty to this girl. Magic salvage had been the lesson of her life. Despised, she had found love. Plain, she had become beautiful. Dwarfed, she had grown.

  “I can’t hurt him,” she thought. “And with a stroke of his paw, light as a caress, he rends my flesh. These are the last moments of my life. I’ll try to keep busy.”

  She whirled and ran uphill. The lion looked up from the tunic again, saw her running, and followed. Her tall legs flashed; she covered ten feet at a stride. The lion, hardly seeming to move, gained ground with every step. The spear weighed her down as she ran, but she held on to it. She dodged behind a huge boulder and stabbed the earth behind it, driving her spear deep—then planted her feet and pulled back on the haft. The boulder did not budge. The lion was coming uphill. Palaemona heard herself crying strange words: “All Mother, help me now!”

  She pulled on the shaft, exerting all her tremendous strength. Red-hot needles jabbed her lungs. She went half blind with strain; everything swam in a red mist. But she did not let go. She bent the shaft toward the ground, feeling the rock begin to move. The movement was joy. Joy mixed with pain and became strength—then ebbed to pain again as the red mist darkened. With her last strength she pressed the shaft. The butt end touched the ground. The boulder leaped out of its age-old socket and began to roll downhill. It rolled terrifically, flattening bushes, picking up speed, going straight for the lion.

  Reacting with incredible speed, he leaped out of its path. But it grazed him and bowled him off his feet. He fell heavily and lay stunned.

  Filling with savage exultance as she saw her enemy fallen, she gave herself time to draw one deep breath that was pure energy. She yanked the spear from the earth. Holding it like a vaulting pole, she charged downhill, planted the butt of her spear, and leaped. The shaft bent, then sprang straight, hurling her high. But she did not release her pole as vaulters do; she clutched the spear, shifting her grip as she reached the top of her leap and turned in the air—holding the spear point-first as she dived.

  The lion tried to scramble out of the way, but kept his head raised. And Palaemona, striking with all the weight of her fall and all the coiled might of her shoulder muscles, drove the needle-pointed spike into the only part of him not shielded by his armor hide—into his eye. Through the thick jelly of his eye the spike drove, deep into his brainpan. Palaemona twisted away as he writhed in agony—flailing at the spear shaft with his paws, snapping at air, snarling, frothing, dying monstrously.

  Palaemona staggered toward him. She was bruised from her fall; her wound bled. But triumph swallowed pain. She stood over the beast, watching him die. He was only twitching now. The twitching stopped.

  Now she had to skin him. “Bring his pelt to Mycenae,” the order had read. But how was she to take this hide that no blade could cut? An idea came to her as she studied the great tawny corpse. She knelt and snapped off one of his claws. It was the size of a dagger, but sharper than any dagger. Using the claw as a skinning knife, she flayed the beast and rolled his hide into a bundle.

  Palaemona was reeling with fatigue now, but she had a few more things to do. She pulled out all the lion’s claws to make arrowheads of. She reached into his maw and wrenched out his teeth, remembering dimly that Melampus had used ivory knives for surgery because he did not like the effect of metal cutting into living flesh.

  The memory of him brought no grief now. This battle had twisted her into a new mode. She had accomplished the first of her tasks. And there was a remote hope, the serpent had said, that if she finished her mysterious labors, she might snatch her beloved from the hands of Hades. It was Melampus restored she must think of now, not Melampus gone. This reeking corpse was the lion-shape of hope.

  PROCRUSTES

  For BOAZ

  Whose name meant strength,

  and will again

  Characters

  Monsters

  Procrustes

  (proh KRUHS teez)

  Also called Stretch; an evil giant who keeps an inn; father of Basher, Bender, and Shady

  Basher

  Procrustes’ bandit son; real name Corunetes, which means “Cudgel-man”

  Bender

  Another son of Procrustes, also a bandit; real name Pithyocamptes, which means “Pine-bender”

  Shady

  Third bandit son of Procrustes; real name Sciron, or “Parasol man”

  Gods

  Zeus


  (ZOOS)

  King of the Gods

  Poseidon

  (poh SY duhn)

  Zeus’ brother; God of the Sea

  Hades

  (HAY deez)

  Another brother of Zeus; God of the Dead

  Hermes

  (HUR meez)

  Son of Zeus; the Messenger God

  Hypnos

  (HIP nuhs)

  God of Sleep, son of Night, father of Dreams

  Mortals

  Theseus

  (THEE see uhs)

  A budding hero; son of Poseidon

  Minos

  (MEE nohs)

  Son of Zeus; king of Crete

  Evander

  (ee VAN dur)

  Son of the bandit Bender; large but not monstrous

  Maktos

  (MAK tohs)

  A donkey breeder

  Bowl-head

  A merchant

  Festus

  (FEHS tus)

  Also a merchant

  Third Merchant

  Nameless, and lean

  The Slave

  An acrobatic Egyptian owned by Festus

  Others

  Melissa

  A talented donkey

  The Great Sow

  Queen of the Swine, who purchased a husband

  Contents

  CHAPTER I

  The Robber Clan

  CHAPTER II

  The Wager

  CHAPTER III

  The Skull

  CHAPTER IV