Another question occurred to me: “Did you make this great stone circle?”
“We did,” Geraint answered.
“Why?” I asked.
I thought he would speak to me of the gods these mans worshiped, and of how those gods had commanded his folk to make the circle for some purpose of their own. I would not have been surprised that he and the other mans had no idea what the purpose was. That is often the way of gods: to keep those who reverence them guessing, that they themselves might seem the stronger. And I would not have been surprised to hear him say right out that the purpose of the circle was to bring a bane down upon the other folk dwelling in those parts.
But he answered in neither of those ways. And yet his words did surprise me, for he said, “We raised this circle to study the motions of the sun and moon and stars.”
“To study their motions?” I frowned, wondering if I had heard rightly and if I had understood what I heard.
Geraint nodded. “That is what I said, yes.”
I scratched my head. “But . . . why?” I asked. “Can you hope to change them?”
He laughed at that. “No, of course not. Their motions are as the gods made them.”
“True,” I said, relieved he saw that much. These mans were so strange, and so full of themselves, he might easily have believed otherwise. “This being so, then, what is the point of, ah, studying these motions?”
“To know them better,” Geraint replied, as if talking to a fool or a foal.
For all his scorn, I remained bewildered. “But what good will knowing them better do you?” I asked.
“I cannot tell you. But knowledge is always worth the having.” Geraint spoke with great conviction. I wondered why. No sooner had I wondered than he tried to explain, saying, “How do you know you need tin to help harden copper into bronze? There must have been a time when folk did not know it. Someone must have learned it and taught it to others. There must have been a time when folk did not know of wonderful wine, either, or of this fine wheat flour you brag you have brought to trade. Someone must have learned of them.”
His words frightened me more even than his appearance. He carved a hole in the center of the world. Worse yet, he knew not what he did. I said, “Assuredly the gods taught us these things.”
His laugh might have been the embodiment of the cold wind blowing across that cold plain. “No doubt the gods set the world in motion,” he said, “but is it not for us to find out what rules they used when they did it?”
“Gods need no rules. That is why they are gods,” I said.
“There are always rules.” Geraint sounded as certain as I was. “At the winter solstice, the sun always rises in the same place.” He pointed to show where. “At the summer solstice, in another place, once more the same from year to year.” He pointed again. “The moon likewise has its laws, though they are subtler. Why, even eclipses have laws.”
He was mad, of course, but he sounded very sure of himself. Everyone knows eclipses show the gods are angry with those whose lands they darken. What else could an eclipse be but the anger of the gods? Nothing, plainly. Quarreling with a lunatic is always a risky business, and all the more so in his own country. I did not try it. Instead, I answered, “Let it be as you say, friend. Will you come back to the Horse of Bronze and trade tin for our goods?”
“I will,” he answered, and then smiled a very unpleasant smile. “We are many in this land—more all the time. You are few, and no more of your kind will come any time soon. Why should we not simply take what we want from you?”
“For one thing, we would fight you, and many of your hes would die,” I said. “I do not deny you would win in the end, but it would cost you dear. And if you rob us and kill us, no more of our folk will come to this shore. You will have one triumph, not steady trade. Which do you want more?”
The man thought it over. By his expression, he had never before had to weigh such considerations. I wondered whether one orgy of slaughter would count for more with him than years of steady dealing. Some folk care nothing for the future. It might as well not be real to them. Were Geraint and his kind of that sort? If so, all we could do was sell ourselves as dear as possible.
In due course, he decided. “You have given me a thought of weight, Cheiron,” he said. He pronounced my name oddly. No doubt his in my mouth was not fully to his liking, either. Our languages were close cousins, but not quite brothers. He went on, “Trade is better. Robbery is easier and more fun, but trade is better. Our grandsons and their grandsons can go on trading if we do well here.”
“Just so,” I said, pleased he could look past himself. Maybe all his talk of rules, rules even in the heavens, had something to do with it. “Aye, just so. Come back to the ship, then, and we shall see what sort of bargains we may shape.”
We clasped hands, he and I. Though his body could not match mine for speed, his grip was strong. He and his followers turned and went off toward the rest of the mans, who were waiting for them. Oreus and Hylaeus and I trotted back to our fellow centaurs. “It is agreed,” I called. “We will trade. All is well.”
A jackdaw flew up from the stone circle. “Chaka-chaka-chak!” it cried. It seemed as if it was laughing at me. What a fool I was, to let a little gray-eyed bird prove wiser than I.
As I have said, we centaurs were quicker than mans. But Geraint’s folk showed surprising endurance. We could do more in an hour. Over a day’s journey, the difference between us was smaller, for the mans would go on where we had to pause and rest.
We did all we could to take their measure, watching how they hunted, how they used their bows and spears. They, no doubt, were doing the same with us. How folk hunt tells much about how they will behave in a fight. I learned nothing spectacular from the mans, save that they were nimbler than I would have guessed. With our four feet and larger weight, we cannot change directions so readily as they do. Past that, there was little to choose between them and us.
No, I take that back. There was one thing more. I had seen it even before I saw the mans themselves. The other folk of the Tin Isle could not abide their presence. I wondered if Bucca would call on us while we were in Geraint’s company. He did not, which left me saddened but unsurprised. And of the other nuggies, or of the spriggans and piskies, we found not a trace.
Hylaeus noted the same thing. “Maybe the man spoke true when he said they died of embarrassment,” he said worriedly. “Will the same begin to happen to us?”
“If it will, it has not yet,” I answered. “We are stronger-willed than those other folk; no one would doubt that.”
“True.” But Hylaeus did not sound much relieved. “But I cannot help thinking they are all of what we are only in part. Does that not give them more of a certain kind of strength than we have?”
I wished that thought had not also occurred to me. Still, I answered, “What difference does it make? What difference can it make? We will trade with them, we will load the Chalcippus with tin till she wallows like a pregnant sow, and then we will sail home. After that, how can the mans’ strength matter?”
Now he did seem happier, saying, “True, Cheiron, and well thought out. The sooner we are away from the Tin Isle, the gladder I shall be.”
“And I,” I said. “Oh, yes. And I.”
Geraint sent some of his mans off to gather the tin: whether to dig it from the ground themselves or to take it from stocks the nuggies had mined before failing, I could not have said. They brought the metal in the usual leather sacks, each man carrying one on his back. They had no shame in using themselves as beasts of burden. And the sacks of tin did not much slow them. They still kept up with us.
As with our home country, no part of the Tin Isle is very far from any other part. We soon returned to the Horse of Bronze. The hes we had left behind to guard the ship were overjoyed to see us and bemused to see the mans. Anyone of any folk seeing mans for the first time is bound to be bemused, I do believe.
The trading went well: better than I had exp
ected, in fact. Geraint was clever, no doubt about that. But he had little practice at dickering. I gather, though I am not certain, that he was much more used to taking than to haggling. To him, the tin he gave us was almost an afterthought, nothing to worry about. He wanted what we had.
When the dealing was done, when we had loaded the sacks of tin aboard the Chalcippus and his mans had carried off the trade goods, he said, “Let us have a feast, to celebrate the hour of our meeting.”
“You are kind and generous,” I said, meaning it at least in part. The countryside belonged to the mans. If there was to be a feast, the burden of fixing it would fall on them. I did add, “But let it not be long delayed. The season advances. Ocean the Great was harsh enough on the northward voyage. I would not care to sail in a time when storms grow more likely.”
“As you say, so shall it be,” Geraint replied, and so, indeed, it was. Mans brought cows and sheep and pigs to the seashore for slaughtering as the sun went down. Others had slain deer and ducks and geese. Shes of the man kind—womans, Geraint called them—came to tend to the cooking. Many of them were as pleasing in face and upper body as any of the shes we had left behind so long ago. Below . . . Below is always a mystery. The mystery here was to discover whether one part would fit with another. Some of us, I am told, made the experiment, and found it not altogether unsatisfactory. I doubt we would have, were our own shes close by. But they were not, and so. . . .
I do wonder if any issue resulted, and of what sort. But that is something I shall never know.
Along with roasting meat, the womans baked barley cakes and others from different grains they grow in that northern clime. Those were edible, but oats and rye are not foods on which I should care to have to depend. And the womans baked bread from the good wheat flour we had brought from our own home. The soft chewiness and fine flavor of the loaves occasioned much favorable comment from the mans.
In that part of the world, they use less pottery than we. Being rich in forests, they make wooden barrels in place of our amphorae. The mans brought several of them to the feast. I asked Geraint, “What do these hold?”
“Why, cerevisia, of course,” he answered in surprise. “We brew it from barley. Do you not know it?”
“No, though we sometimes use barley-water as a medicine,” I said.
He laughed. “Even as we do with cerevisia. Drink of it, then, and be . . . cured.” He laughed again.
Some of the womans broached a barrel of cerevisia and used a wooden dipper to pour the stuff into mugs, most of them of wood; some of pottery; and a few, for the leaders, of gold. The stuff in the barrel was thin and yellow. It looked, to be honest, more like what we expend after drinking than anything we would have wanted to drink. But the mans showed no hesitation. In fact, they were eager. I also saw that the womans sneaked mugs of cerevisia for themselves when they thought no one was looking.
Geraint, then, had not brought this stuff forth with the intention of poisoning us. He could not possibly have given so many mans an antidote ahead of time, and he could not have known in advance which womans would drink and which would not. He had a mug of cerevisia himself, a golden mug. He lifted it to me in salute. “Your good health!” he said, and drank it down.
A woman brought me a mug of my own, a golden mug similar to Geraint’s. Cerevisia sloshed in it. I sniffed the brew. We centaurs have keener noses than many other folk. It had a slightly sour, slightly bitter odor. I did not see how anyone could care to drink it for pleasure, but I did not see how it could hurt me, either.
As Geraint had done, I raised my mug. “And yours!” I said. I too drank down the cerevisia.
It was not quite so nasty as I had thought it would be from the smell, but it was definitely an acquired taste—and one I had not acquired. Still, for courtesy’s sake I made shift to empty the mug. I even managed to smile at the woman who poured it full again. She was, I own, worth smiling at. I had made no surreptitious experiments with these womans. With this one . . . Well, I might even get used to the idea that she had no tail.
Looking around, I saw I was not the only centaur drinking cerevisia. Some of the hes who had sailed up to the Tin Isle took to it with more enthusiasm than I could muster myself.
A woman also refilled Geraint’s mug. He drank deep once more. When he nodded to me, his face seemed redder than it had. “What do you think?” he asked.
“Of cerevisia?” I tried to be as polite as I could, for it was clear the mans were giving us the best they had. “It is not bad at all.”
“Not bad at all?” As I might have known, that was not praise enough to suit him. “It is some of the finest brew we have ever made. I have drunk enough to know.” But then he caught himself and began to laugh. “I forget. You who live by the Inner Sea are used to wine, and to those who have drunk only wine cerevisia, even the finest, must seem nothing special.”
I drained the golden mug once more. The cerevisia truly was not bad at all as the second serving slid down my throat. The woman smiled at me when she filled the mug again. My brain seemed to buzz. My whole body seemed to buzz, if the truth be known. I told myself it was the woman’s smile that excited me so. On the Tin Isle, I told myself any number of things that were not true.
One of the centaurs let out a great, wild whoop. Another he howled out a similar cry a moment later. The buzzing that coursed through me grew stronger. I tossed back the mug of cerevisia. No, it was not bad. In fact, it was quite good. Without my asking, the woman gave me more. And the more I drank, the better it seemed.
Geraint had said something. I needed to remember what it was. It had mattered, or so I thought. But thought was . . . not so much difficult, I would say, as unimportant. I managed, however, and laughed in triumph. “Cerevisia and wine!” I said, though my tongue seemed hardly my own or under my will. “Why do you speak of cerevisia and wine together?”
I was not the only one who laughed. Geraint all but whinnied, he found that so funny. “You should know,” he told me when he could speak again.
“What mean you?” I was having trouble speaking, or at least speaking clearly, myself. Drinking cerevisia was easier and more enjoyable. Yet another mug’s worth glided down my gullet.
Geraint laughed once more “Why, they are the only brews I know that will make a man drunk,” he replied. “And I see they will make your folk drunk as well. In truth, they must mount straight to your head, for the cerevisia makes you drunk far faster than it does with us.”
“Cerevisia . . . makes for drunkenness?” I spoke with a certain helpless horror. I knew then what was toward, and knew myself powerless to stop it.
“Why, of course.” Geraint seemed tempted to laugh yet again, this time at my foolishness. And I had been a fool, all right. The man asked, “Did you not know this?”
Sick with dread, I shook my head. The buzzing in my veins grew ever higher, ever shriller. Many folk around the Inner Sea make wine, drink wine, enjoy wine. We centaurs fight shy of it. We have good reason, too. Wine does not make us drunk, or not as it makes them drunk. Wine makes us mad. And cerevisia seemed all too likely to do the same.
I tried to say as much, but now my tongue and lips would not obey the orders I gave them. Not far away, a woman squealed. Oreus—I might have known it would be Oreus—had slung her over his shoulder and was galloping off into the darkness with her.
“What is he doing?” Geraint exclaimed. I knew perfectly well what he was doing (as did Geraint, no doubt), but I could not have told him. The man drew his sword, as if to stop Oreus, even though Oreus was now gone. I could not speak, but my hands and hooves still obeyed my will. I dealt Geraint a buffet that stretched him on the ground. When he started to get to his feet, I trampled him. He did not rise after that. No one, not from any folk, could have after that.
The woman who had served me screamed. I trotted toward her. Would I have served her as Oreus was surely serving the other woman? I suppose I would have, but I found myself distracted. There stood the barrel of cerevisia,
with the dipper waiting for my hand. I drank and drank. The woman could wait. By the time I thought of her again, she had—quite sensibly—fled.
All over the feasting ground, madness reigned. Centaurs fought mans. Centaurs fought other centaurs. I do not know if mans fought other mans, but I would not be surprised.
A man speared a centaur in the barrel. The centaur, roaring, lifted the man and flung him into a pit of coals where a pig was cooking. The savor of roasting meat got stronger, but did not change its essential nature. Man’s flesh on the fire smells much like pork.
Some centaurs did not bother taking womans into the darkness before taking them. The mans attacked these very fiercely. With madness coursing through them, the centaurs fought back with an animal ferocity I had rarely known in us before.
Shrieks and screams and howls of rage from both sides profaned the pleasant seaside feasting ground. There were more mans than centaurs, but the centaurs were bigger and stronger—and, as I say, madder. We cared nothing for wounds, so long as we could wound the enemy in return. We drove the mans wailing into the night, the few we did not slay.
Then we were alone on the beach, along with those wonderful barrels of cerevisia. To the victors, the spoils of battle. For us, these were enough, and more than enough.
I came back to myself thinking I had died—and that the gods of the afterlife were crueler than I had imagined. The pale sun of the Tin Isle beat down as if on the valley of the sphinxes. By the way my head pounded, some demented smith was beating a hammer-head into shape just above my eyes. The taste in my mouth I will not dignify with a name. Like as not, it has none.
The sun was just rising. It showed me not all the horror, not all the nightmare, dwelt within me. Mans and womans and centaurs lay sprawled and twisted in death. The blood that had poured from them was already turning black. Flies buzzed about the bodies. Rooks and carrion crows and ravens hopped here and there, pecking at eyes and tongues and other exposed dainties.
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