The Arms Of Hercules

by Fred Saberhagen

  Another individual, whom I heard the others address as Chiron, cantered out to a spot midway between me and my opponents and attempted to be a peacemaker. Pholus added his pleas in the name of common sense, but the peacemakers were only two, while all the others, ten or so, seemed bent for some reason on doing me great harm.

  Chiron bravely, even foolishly, I thought, tried to keep himself between me and the angry ones.

  I shouted at him that I didn't need his help and that he should look to his own safety.

  Another well-aimed arrow came at me. I ignored its stinging impact and responded by hurling back a small rock that I snatched up from the bare ground at my feet. It missed the archer I was aiming at, and went on to crisply snap off a branch somewhere in the dark woods beyond.

  A moment later, Chiron sidestepped at the wrong moment, while endeavoring to head off a threatened charge, and went reeling back with an arrow through his upper chest, shot at me by one of the mob behind him. I must correct the legendary error that the shaft was one of mine. I was no longer carrying a bow and had not done so for some time. I had traded the gift of Amphitryon for food, in the hungry days before we reached the cave of Saurus.

  Rocks were fairly plentiful on the ground before me, and I let fly with a barrage that effectively dispersed the mob for the time being. As soon as the crazed centaurs had been temporarily driven off, I went to where the fallen peacemaker lay, and tried to help him.

  The wound in itself ought not to have been fatal, but he warned me, between gasps of his dying agony, that the arrow must have been poisoned. And he gave me another warning, too, that at the time I failed to understand: "Hercules, do not get any of my blood on you."

  Of course I could have picked him up and carried him, but the horse-sized body would have been an awkward burden, and I might have hurt him in the process. Also I realized that it would do little good to carry him inside the house.

  The fumes of wine seemed to have been driven from my brain, and now I regretted my shouted insult. And I still wanted to know, from anyone who was capable of telling me, why the centaurs had grown so angry. Had they somehow realized that Pholus had broached the wine? Was it simply because they wanted that good red stuff for themselves?

  Neither Chiron or Pholus gave me an answer. Perhaps they were unable.

  But before I could learn anything more from the dying Chiron, there came a thunder of hooves in the middle distance, and the mad ones renewed their attack.

  So much for any hopes I might have had for an evening's enlightening conversation. Now I found myself engaged in another all-out fight.

  Looking back over the years, I can now see that, yes, it is quite true that with more maturity, more sense, and a little diplomacy on my part, the worst of the trouble might have been avoided. But three cups—perhaps even a little more—of that strong wine had made me first irritable, then irascible, then launched me well on my way to drunkenness. Naturally, I was no stranger to wine, having been brought up in a well-to-do household, but at home my consumption was invariably quite modest. And the drink in that aged cask was truly something wondrous.

  "What the hell are they so upset about?" I again demanded of Pholus, when another brief interval in the fighting gave me a chance to talk. Looking around, I noted that his house was being ruined in the process. A fire had started in the thatched roof, and I tore down a burning reed bundle and scattered it into dying sparks.

  "Sorry about your house," I added. "But I'll be damned if I'm going to turn tail and run."

  "And I am shamed," he said at last, "that this could happen while you are my guest." After a pause he added: "It is the wine, of course."

  "Are they afraid I'm going to drink it all? The whole damned jar? There's enough to take a bath in. It's great stuff, but I'm only good for . . . well, maybe one more cup."

  My host, I seem to remember, counseled moderation.

  I was having none of it. "Moderation, is it? A bit too late for that. By the balls of Mars, I've half a mind to go out there after 'em. But they're safe enough from me. I'll never catch 'em while they all can run like racehorses. But they'd better not come within my reach."

  And I seem to remember gulping yet another draught of the red wine, which seemed to be running like liquid fire in my veins. No damned horse was going to tell me what to do. Horses in general were a strange, exotic species, and horses like these, that seemed half-human . . . angrily I began to express my contempt.

  With the renewal of the attack, Enkidu once more took shelter in a corner, first thoughtfully refilling his small clay cup to the brim and taking it along. If he was going to die soon, he would have some measure of enjoyment first. Unhappily I thought that the corner was not going to do him much good—the walls of this house were not as sturdy as those of the robber's cave—but I had nothing better to suggest.

  Once more the attack swept in on us, and this time it was better organized. Our assailants had armed themselves with rocks, dead tree branches, and axes like the one that Pholus had earlier been wielding. They charged the house. At the sight of this determined onslaught, Pholus turned away and fearfully tried to hide himself.

  Throwing rocks at me was a mistake, for it only provided me with a supply of ammunition. When a couple of logs were knocked out of the walls by the battering from outside, I used one after another as a swinging club, and then pulled another wall apart to gain more missiles. Horrible screams, half-human and half-animal, went up from the wounded creatures when my thrown logs, coming with the speed of spinning arrows, hit them squarely or scraped them and knocked them down. Had I not been somewhat drunk, I would have killed more of the attackers than I did.

  Among the centaurs whom I failed to kill that night was Nessus, who here conceived a great enmity for me, so that ever afterward he remained determined to do me some lasting harm.

  Enkidu, who somehow came through the fight unscathed, and I spent the remainder of the night with Pholus, in what remained of his house, expecting at every hour that our enemies might return, perhaps with reinforcements, and try again to wipe us out. For an hour or so after the last clash, we could hear them intermittently in the distance, bellowing like drunken men and crashing through undergrowth somewhere. Our host had sustained a couple of minor injuries, and we tried to help him with his bandaging.

  All the centaurs I had yet seen were male, and I wondered if the whole race was of one sex. If so, I thought, reason enough for them to be chronically angry.

  Pholus, when he could pull himself together, did what he could to explain.

  Some of the males of his race, he said, on occasion mated with mares. Some undetermined number actually preferred that sort of coupling. The great convenience, of course, was that the organs of centaur and horse were well matched in physical size. As far as he knew, no issue ever resulted from such unions.

  But, he explained, the majority of male centaurs, himself included, found such intercourse fundamentally unsatisfactory, as their own essentially human minds persisted in regarding women as infinitely more attractive than horses.

  "That seems to me only reasonable," I said. And Enkidu nodded wisely.

  At about that point, it also occurred to me to wonder how any female, even a mare, could give birth to such an odd-shaped body as my host's. But then I supposed that if droms and cameloids could manage, Mother Nature would find a way in this case, too.

  Pholus went on with his explanations. Unions between male centaurs and women were sometimes fertile.

  It was not a subject I cared to hear any more about. In the gray light of morning, the fumes of wine had all but completely evaporated from my brain. I was tired, and my garments were torn in several places where my enemies' weapons had struck home, but otherwise I had sustained no damage.

  No, there was one exception, and excited as I was with wine and violence, I finally had to take notice. On the back of my right hand, a red spot burned, smaller than a small coin, but sharp as fire. Looking closely, I could see there was no wound
, but definitely a blister. Something, somehow, had caused me injury. I rinsed the place in water, which did not help much.

  My host took no notice; he had graver matters than my blister to be concerned about.

  He said: "But to couple with a goddess, now . . ." And with a sigh he left the comparison unfinished. At the time, I took his behavior for a subtle kind of bragging; in my callow innocence I thought it would be difficult indeed to find any goddess willing to pair with a centaur.

  Chapter Nine

  Delivering a Boar

  Before Enkidu and I left Pholus, we helped the noble centaur start to rebuild his ruined house, at least to the extent of clearing wreckage and salvaging materials that could be used in reconstruction. After that, I labored for another hour, cutting and carrying wood, including parts of the house that had been reduced to wreckage, to make a suitable funeral pyre for Chiron. Our host informed us that few centaurs ever found their final resting place in graves—I suppose the reason is that huge holes would be necessary, and the bodies of that race, their arms so high above the ground, are ill-suited for digging in it.

  The moderate chill of early winter soon gave way to bitter, freezing cold as my nephew and I made our way across the high country. We were working our way steadily toward Mount Erymanthus, aided by the fact that the peak itself was now and then visible through a frame of tall pine trees. The mountain above the timberline was covered in pure white and displayed a plume of blowing snow on windy mornings. Even at the lesser altitude where we trudged along, snow lay deep in places and looked as if it intended to remain for many months. The stories we heard from the natives as we toiled through the high country confirmed what Hermes had told us about a wild boar of exceptional size and ferocity, ravaging the land.

  If I had ever been inclined to curse the Lizard, I was almost ready to bless him now for having, however unintentionally, furnished us with warm clothing. My special powers had never afforded me any protection against the common discomforts of heat and cold, though in my more optimistic moments I thought that my father's blood might prevent my actually freezing to death, or perishing of sunstroke. My only other chance to demonstrate a soldier's fortitude, and that in a very minor way, was to stoically ignore the pain of the blister on my hand, and in a few days that had faded, leaving only a small scar.

  Enkidu, too, still clung to the memory of the Lizard and his storeroom, but chiefly as a reason for continued grumbling. My nephew's unsatisfied craving for wealth had transformed that rustic chamber, in his memory, into something like a royal treasure vault. He still regretted that we had left behind any of the gold and gems. I failed to respond to these sullen protests, and in time, to my relief, he gave them up.

  Besides, there were current problems that demanded our continuous attention. For a time we were much concerned that Nessus and some other angry centaurs might be on our trail, determined to cause more trouble. I could not rid my memory of the expression of hatred I had seen on the face of Nessus when I got my last look at him.

  And still the words that Mercury had spoken to me on parting, at our last encounter, lay clear in my mind. The god had been very specific in his instructions—in passing on to me what he said were the commands of Zeus. According to those, it was very important that the beast we were now hunting should be still alive when we carried it to Iolcus. As we traveled, my nephew and I speculated endlessly on possible reasons for this requirement, but as you might expect, we got nowhere.

  Another question that nagged at me from time to time was exactly where we were supposed to bring the Boar, supposing we did manage to capture the beast and carry it as far as Iolcus. Who, if anyone, would take delivery of our strange cargo when we got there? And, beyond that, what precisely was it wanted for? Hermes had left me with the impression that he intended to meet us there in person, but I had trouble imagining any god making an appearance in the middle of a busy city.

  We continually worried at these and related questions, but came no closer to finding answers.

  Other delays compounded those brought on by weather. We wasted, or so it seemed to me, another month or so in an effort to equip ourselves with suitable nets, some of which had to be woven. Only when these problems had been surmounted did we turn our efforts to actually tracking down the Boar.

  All reports agreed that our new quarry was a very big animal. They were in accord also that it left no Hydra-sized trail across the rugged high country, and in this they were proven right. All of Enkidu's tracking skill was necessary. We were by no means always blessed with fresh snow, good for tracking.

  We had now been gone from home approximately five months. Deep winter had come upon us, and the hours of daylight were short indeed.

  After spending many days in a patient, methodical effort to locate the animal, our efforts were at last rewarded with the discovery of tracks that Enkidu swore could have been made by nothing but some kind of giant pig. The size of the imprints was somewhat reassuring, in that the animal producing them could not have been the size of the Hydra, or even much bigger than the lion. And when we actually caught sight of the Boar at last, I was relieved to find this reading of the trail proved correct.

  By dint of much effort, we finally chased the beast out of its hiding place into deep snow—we were high on the mountain by that time—and there trapped it with nets.

  Enkidu's nimbleness and courage were a great help, necessary complements to my strength. Oh, I could tell you in more detail of the various stratagems, involving much patience and many ropes and nets, by which the Boar was subdued and imprisoned, but I have no wish to turn this chronicle into a monotonous catalog of monsters. Finally I had to stun the creature with a series of sharp, comparatively light, blows to its shaggy head.

  One of the local ranchers, overjoyed to see the beast removed (though it caused him much anxiety that I did not kill it while I had the chance; he said he had sworn an oath to boil it into soup), donated a large, strong cart, and another loaned us a team of droms to pull it, with his son as driver. Still others chipped in still more ropes with which to bind the beast, once it was entangled, and some stout timbers from which we cobbled together a crate, or pen, in which it might be carried. And presently we were on our way to Iolcus.

  The air steadily grew warmer in the course of our long, tortuous descent toward sea level, and before we had been on the road for many days the land was free of snow again. Partly this was because we were at the same time moving steadily southward. We did our best to feed our captive and supply him with water, but any merely natural beast confined as the Boar was would probably have expired. As matters actually stood, the odylic force that had made the creature huge and formidable operated also to keep it alive, though caged and bound. Whenever I came in view, its red eyes glowered hate at me.

  We asked directions as we progressed, but actually that would hardly have been necessary. All roads seemed to tend toward our goal. Hermes had been right, and we had no trouble locating the port of Iolcus, on the northern shore of what was by far the largest body of water that Enkidu and I had ever seen.

  When we first came in sight of the Great Sea, we marveled that we could not see the other side of the vast watery expanse that lay before us, slate gray, under a gray sky—although of course we had known all along, from travelers' stories, that it must be so.

  Even before we actually passed through the gates of Iolcus, Enkidu and I found ourselves immersed in a kind of country fair, or carnival, atmosphere.

  As we drew near the city, we encountered more and more evidence that a remarkable gathering of noble heroes was in progress. Some six months had now passed since Enkidu and I had left our homes in Cadmia. Behind us the high country was still deep in winter, and snow capped the peaks of Erymanthus and its neighbors. But here, many miles to the south and at much lower altitude, the weather on the northern shore of the Great Sea was already as mild as spring. Here were green palm trees, pelicans, and other wonders for two country boys to marvel at.


  The city of Iolcus was not as large as Cadmia, nor were its walls as formidable, being mainly logs and not stone; but it still held by far the largest gathering of people we had seen since leaving home.

  As we drew near the chief inland gate, our progress was slowed by the numbers of people who stopped to marvel at the Boar, and at the way we were carrying it alive.

  But our arrival, though it drew a considerable crowd, was not the only or even the chief cause of excitement in that town.

  "Jason himself is here!" more than one of the locals excitedly informed me.

  That name meant something to me, as I thought it must have done, at the time, to almost everyone in the world. Jason's fame as a warrior and adventurer had spread swiftly during the last few years. All sorts of heroic deeds were attributed to him, and probably he was even more famous than Theseus, and had not the same piratical reputation. When it became widely known that Jason was seeking forty or fifty volunteer adventurers to accompany him on a special quest, men had come from everywhere, seemingly from every corner of the earth, certainly from as far away as the news had had time to travel. I suppose there is really no need to say that very few of those who applied without a special invitation were accepted.

  Speaking of Theseus, almost everyone we met expected that the youthful adventurer, sometimes called King of the Pirates, would sooner or later put in an appearance. But there was no sign of him yet, and no one knew where he might be. Many assumed that his name was on the list of those to whom Jason had sent personal invitations; if Theseus was not a hero, who could claim that title? True, his remarkable career consisted of little but acts of piracy. But if a consistent concern for others' property was made a qualification, Jason might have a hard time filling his roster.

  Someone had posted on a wall, on one side of the town square, an impressive list of other heroes, whose presence was confirmed.