by Eric Flint
"fStarving! We haven't had a bite . . . jufst thofse fseamen. Nothing. fSince you left ufs!" Smitar's accusing, soup-plate-sized slanty eyes were full of misery.
Bitar nodded. "Yefs. And they were much too fsalty."
"We need fsome chewy food. We're teething." Smitar proudly displayed tiny flecks of white in his pink gums.
"fSome fsquid would be nifce." Biter showed his gums too. And then the sphinx turned up with Cruz. Liz's assessment of the bio-dynamics of a flying creature the size of the sphinx was not inaccurate. Only with effort could Throttler carry more than one adult human.
Still. The "gap" between Ur-Egypt and a sphinx in Ur-Greece seemed to be a narrow one. She was able to ferry them "through" quite fast. The dragons left Lamont to cavort around Cruz.
"How old are they?" Lamont asked.
Medea shrugged. "Quite young, I think. My grandfather stole the eggs from the mountain eyrie. About sixty years old, I suppose. They're very slow growing. And quite rare. Apparently they do not breed until they are at least half a century old. And they lay very few eggs."
Liz, standing nearby, began to understand why the species might have become extinct.
* * *
The small coastal town, with its sphinx-guarded temple, was abandoned. Understandably, as the dragons had been hanging around for a few days.
Looking at the nets hung out to dry, Jerry cleared his throat. "Look, this is what I suggest. Let's feed Bitar and Smitar . . . "
"Good idea!" Bitar caressed him affectionately with a long forked snaky tongue. At least Jerry hoped it was a caress. Snakes tasted with their tongues, didn't they?
"Yefs! Ecfthallent!" agreed Smitar, sticking a snaky tongue-point into Jerry's ear.
"Shut up. Let him finish," said Medea. "Go on, Doc Jerry."
"Um, as I was saying, get them full of gas. Then hook up one of those nets . . . "
"Can we use it to catch fsome fsquid firfst?"
"Shut up, Bitar. Or I won't scratch you any more," said Cruz.
"Hook the net between the two of them and get Throttler to tow it. That should be much lighter for the dragons than a chariot, and much faster than their `swimming' through the air."
"One of you dragons wouldn't like a fight, would you? I haven't fought anything like you before," said the small bowlegged man, clad only in a loincloth and his short leopard-skin cloak.
"Bes! What the hell are you doing here?" demanded Liz.
Bes scratched his topknot so that the ostrich plumes danced. "Told you. I came for the fighting. My sort of fight, against the odds. Besides, I'm the Protector. I've got a feeling you might need me. Oy! Leave off with the hugging!"
* * *
The concept worked remarkably well. Of course, in practice it meant you only had some flax cord from a fishing net between you and a long fall. The sphinx needed to take advantage of thermals to fly any real distance. That meant getting up really high. A long way above that wrinkled landscape.
Looking across the water from a height, they could see a dark pall to the west. "Greece. It is burning," said Throttler grimly.
Jerry clung to the netting. The four layers of net seemed pretty fragile from up here. But he was doing better than Henri, who had been sick several times. The Frenchman was gray and sweating, and rather blue around the lips.
Still, by the time the sun was sinking and the thermals were getting harder to find, they'd covered many miles.
They landed in an open meadow, in the late afternoon. The sphinx and the dragons were tired. Besides, the dragons needed regassing. The rest of the party, glad to be on terra firma, set off for a small village they'd seen from the air. It looked like there were about six little buildings, surrounded by a patchwork of fields and gray-green olive groves on a little plateau above the blue Aegean. It hardly seemed a threat, and it beat hunting for food. They could trade some metal, and everyone would be happy. Bitar and Smitar didn't understand why they could not come along.
"Phtt! Why do you want to trade for food when we can frighten them all off and just help ourfselvefs?" hissed Smitar.
"Yefs, and maybe there'll be some maidenfs." Bitar was ever hopeful. "I fstill want to tafste maidenfs cooked American-fstyle."
Cruz raised his eyes to heaven. "Just stay here, willya? Please."
The dragons were putty in his hands. "All right, Cruz."
"You promifse to bring back fsomething nifce?"
"Do our best. Promise," he said, giving them each a farewell pat with the butt of his spear.
The seven of them set out, leaving Henri, who still did not look well, to recover from the flight with the resting sphinx and dragons.
* * *
The path led down into a little valley. In the olive groves, between the twisted and pitted gray trunks, they suddenly discovered just what a mistake leaving the dragons behind had been.
Liz was the first to hear it. "There is something in the bushes . . . "
And there was also something between the trees. Webs.
Cruz stepped forward to break the web. The looted spear was no substitute for the steel of his bayonet, lost back when the priests of Sebek had captured them. But the solid spear shaft would make short work of a spider web.
"No, Cruz." McKenna grabbed his arm, and held him back from smashing the web.
The burly sergeant looked puzzled. "It's just a spider web, Mac. And it's between us and the village."
"Yeah, but you don't have to break it," said McKenna. "Or at least let me take the spider out before you do."
He leaned forward and let the spider walk up onto his arm.
Cruz gaped. "You crazy, Mac? It'll bite you, man!"
McKenna shook his head. "Not unless I scare it or try to squash it. Here, spidey. Climb onto this bush. You'll be safe there."
Cruz shook his head. "It's just a goddamn spider, Mac."
McKenna shrugged. "They're good little critters. Never do any harm and they eat lots of pests."
The myrtle bushes shuddered. "You are a very wise man," said someone with a voice like the tinkling of chimes. The webs and bushes were suddenly alive with spiders. Myriads of them. Enough to swarm over a small army, never mind a handful of travelers.
Medea clung to Cruz.
"What the hell . . . " muttered Lamont.
The spiders moved aside to allow passage to a giant among their kind. The spider coming forward was huge . . . for a spider. At the same time she was delicate. And she was definitely a she. She had a very feminine head. Feminine and human, with beautiful, luminous dark eyes, framed by long lashes. Her cascading tresses were pinned with a fine silver comb. A few strands fell back onto her long spider body.
Jerry cleared his throat. "Arachne, the daughter of Idomon of Colophon, I presume."
"You're very cool for a man who is moments away from death." The spiderwoman's voice was very musical.
McKenna had gone down on his haunches. "Your voice is nearly as lovely as your face."
"You have a very smooth tongue." She didn't sound displeased about it. "Now, explain. Why do armed men come creeping down on my father's estate by the back trail?"
"We were just passing through," said Cruz, in as calm a voice as possible. "We were hoping to buy some food."
"Buy? With spears? And traveling across the mountains! A likely story," she tinkled scathingly.
Cruz threw out his hands. Nearly dropped his spear. "For God's sake! We left the dragons and the sphinx behind, so that we didn't frighten anyone."
"Appealing to me in the name of the gods is unlikely to get you any sympathy," snapped Arachne.
"Does the fact that we're trying to attack Olympus alter that?" asked Jerry.
"Attack Olympus?" Again, the tinkling scoff. "Another likely story!"
Jerry sighed. "Sounds crazy, doesn't it? And, to be honest, I've got no inkling of an idea just how we are going to set about doing it."
"But we're tired of being victims, lady-spider," said Lamont. "We're going to take the fight back to
them. Somehow."
Arachne seemed to relax slightly. "You are plainly mad. Not that I don't agree with you. But not even one of my spider-sisters can scale the cold heights of Olympus. And when it comes to power, not even the great Titans could overthrow the Olympians."
Lamont spoke up. "Hey, Jerry. How's about if we enlisted the Titan Prometheus?"
"Hmm . . . " Jerry pursed his lips, considering the idea. "It's a thought, now that you raise it. He should be chained up to Mount Caucasus."
One thing at a time, he reminded himself. He turned back to Arachne. "Honest, ma'am. We're just passing through. Apparently there are a few others gathered on Lesbos. Ares is ravaging mainland Greece."
"My spider-sisters say that half of Thrace is burning. And there are cruel sacrifices being demanded in the other half. But whatever the Olympians are doing, it is yet confined to the area around the mountain. We are prepared here, however. The Olympian gods are capricious and cruel. They and their servants will not leave Lydia in peace for long. You stumbled into one of the traps we have prepared for their reivers."
"Well, can we stumble out?" asked Jerry, carefully suppressing any arachnophobic thoughts. "All we want to do is to buy some food, and then we'll be on our way. You can even keep the rest of us here. Mac can go and dicker about some food, and then we'll leave."
The spiderwoman nodded. "My sisters confirm: there are two dragons, a sphinx and a man resting in the high pasture. Come, follow me."
* * *
"Listen, Doc," said McKenna quietly as they walked along. "You obviously know who she is. How come she's a spider?"
Jerry grimaced. "For the same reason I never really liked working on ancient Greek mythology. She was a skilled human weaver. She dared to challenge Athena to a weaving competition. There are variations to the story, but basically she chose as a subject the philandering of the gods of Olympus. And she did weave better than Athena. Either for her disrespectful choice of subject or because she was a better weaver, Athena turned her into a spider, doomed to weave eternally, and to spin her own thread from her body. There is another version, which has Athena destroying her work in a rage and the girl committing suicide and being changed into a spider out of pity. It seems that here, anyway, you can guess the former story to be the true one."
McKenna ground his teeth. "You mean she was human and some so-called goddess did this to her 'cause she just couldn't cut it in competition with a human?"
Jerry pulled a wry face. "That about sizes it up, yes."
McKenna's eyes narrowed. His normally cheerful face was hard. Jerry was just glad not to be on the wrong side of the man when he looked this serious. "Look Doc, I admit I don't know one hell of a lot about this mythology stuff. But I thought Athena was one of the good guys. This is a bit petty and childish for a so-called goddess."
Jerry shrugged. "The ancient Greek gods were prone to pettiness, to be honest. And they weren't what you'd call a particularly ethical bunch, either. Zeus, for instance, had affairs by the score. Jealousy and revenge were an intrinsic part of the mythology. A lot of it was petty. In this case, it was also a message reinforcing the social order of the day. Athena was just explaining to anyone else who got uppity that it wasn't what you could do, it was who you were. If I remember right, Colophon was a bit of a maverick society anyway."
"Any way you can turn this Athena into a cockroach? Or help Arachne?" asked McKenna.
Jerry shook his head. "Mac, Egyptian mythology and magic were different. Firstly, power there is vested in words. I could manage those. Here, it is in the commanding of the `spirits' of what we'd regard as inanimate things—you know, wood, rocks, rivers—all controlled by a hierarchy of gods. Medea draws much of her strength as a sorceress because of the powers over these `spirits' given to her because she was a high priestess of Hecate and granddaughter of Helios. I don't have any skills here. Secondly, a mortal could make even the Egyptian gods do his bidding, with magic. The ancient Greek pantheon were there for supplication, and are pretty much beyond mortal command. Ask Medea if she can do anything, but Athena was one of the most powerful of the ancient Greek pantheon. I doubt if she can help."
The red-headed corporal nodded determinedly. "I'll ask her."
Lamont, coming up behind them, put a hand on Mac's shoulder. "One thing I'd like to know is how come you like spiders so much?"
McKenna smiled. "They're useful critters. Like bees, Lamont. Bees don't hassle you, do they?"
Lamont looked at McKenna and shook his head. "I'll tell you straight. I'm not crazy about either spiders or bees. Spiders make cobwebs and bite you, and bees sting you."
"My Ma would give you what-for, Lamont Jackson. Spiders eat bugs. Bees make honey. And neither bees nor spiders will ever attack you on purpose."
"I don't think we're going to agree about this," said Lamont, looking at the army of spiders accompanying them.
* * *
Olives, sun-dried, black and wrinkled; pastries bulging with delicacies; five different cheeses; cyclamen-pink wine, with a bouquet of honey and old roses, and the strength of a lion; barley bannocks crusty and slightly flavored by wood ash; chopped cucumber and yogurt; pomegranates; skewers of cumin-scented lamb; roasted kid with garlic and lavender. And eight-legged allies . . . was all they could bring back from their expedition. True, those were a lot of allies.
Everybody liked the food. And it was entirely due to McKenna getting on well with spiders. Opinion was divided as to what the quality of the allies was—depending on how much you liked spiders.
As far as Lamont, Cruz, Medea, Throttler and Bes were concerned, that was not at all. Jerry and the dragons were ambivalent; Liz, Henri (when he could muster breath) and Mac enthusiastic.
And Pan, when he arrived from Lesbos a few hours later, was downright miserable and depressed about everything, never mind allies.
"Orpheus is dead." Pan burst into tears.
38
The parting of ways.
"They hit us in the morning while we were yet at our rest. We were woken by the terrible rumble of the bronze-tired chariots of the gods of Olympus and the thunder of the hooves of their great horses. War was joined, and we were all unprepared. Apollo, Athena and Ares scythed through our camp. Our heroes fell like corn before the reapers, before their cruel stabbing spears and arrows with heads of wrought iron. But Orpheus took up his lyre and played. The magic of his music would have stilled the wolves of battle—as he soothed even the terrible sirens. But then Apollo cast his bright spear. It struck Orpheus between the shoulder blades and pierced him through."
Pan burst into tears again. Gradually the story emerged. The army at Lesbos, small, and still arguing about what course to take against Olympus, was no more. And with the death of Orpheus, Pan had no more heart for the fight.
Cruz took a deep breath. "Well. We'll have to raise another army. One that understands `sentries.' "
"I don't think that's worth doing," said Jerry with a sigh. "We're not going to beat the Olympian gods at a straight slugging match."
"So what do you want to do now, Doc?" demanded McKenna hotly. "Give up? Run away?"
The sneering undertone made Liz snap. "Mac, you better hope for bloody cold weather so that your head can contract and the two brain cells in there can make contact with each other. What Jerry is saying is that a dumb-ox-brute-force solution isn't going to work. We've got to out-think the bastards."
"Well, I wouldn't have put it quite like that . . . " said Jerry, pacifically.
Liz snorted. "No, you're too polite, except when you've eaten lotus-cookies."
Jerry winced, acknowledging a hit. "But in a nutshell, that's right. We've got to either out-think or out-modern them. Look . . . "
"So all we need now are a couple of Blackhawks," said Mac, sarcastically. "Brilliant, Doc. Brilliant—Sir. Only we've lost most of our gear and the only things that work are primitive stuff."
Lamont stood up. "That's enough, Mac. Liz, settle down. There's no point in fighting each ot
her. Let's think of things and ways they didn't have in ancient Greece. Mac, you came up with that brandy. That was a winner and it didn't take stuff we haven't got."
"He's right," said Cruz.
Jerry nodded. "In a way, Mac's right too. We're still going to have to do some fighting. But mano-a-mano against an Olympian we're going to lose. So I think we need to look at two things. Allies. And something Olympus won't have heard of. Or, at least, something they think they've got the monopoly on."
Jerry smiled at Cruz and McKenna. "Your field of expertise, not mine. Airborne assault."
McKenna scratched his head. "I suppose, even without 'chutes we could use the sphinx and the dragons. But, well, how many of these gods are there?"
"Many, and they're enormous, and immortal," Jerry said quietly.
Cruz tensed his massive forearm. "Yeah. Look, I'm not washing the idea out, but what advantage does it give us to attack them? If we take the fight to them, and let it be on their home ground, we're worse off, Doc."
Jerry smiled. "I want to get some allies. Or at least one. A big one."
Liz chuckled. "Besides, we've already got a lot of allies. Expert parachutists, too. Spiders."
Cruz shrugged. "Liz, I suppose the spiders can bite a few of these gods . . . but they're supposed to be immortals. Gonna take more than spider bites."
Liz smiled. "Even immortals got taken captive, didn't they? Arachne. Show him just how strong spider silk is."
Arachne smiled sweetly. "I just have. Try to free your legs."
Cruz hadn't even noticed the silken strands going round his legs. Try as he might he couldn't pull them apart.
"Let me try," said Bes.
He snapped the web like a rotten carrot. "Strong."
Cruz took a deep breath and said to McKenna: "Remind me not to wrestle with that guy, Mac."
Liz shrugged and Arachne looked totally taken aback. "Oh well. So much for that idea," she said, looking regretful.
"But it is very strong," said Bes with a chuckle.
"So is he," said Medea.
