After the Centaurs came the other Beasts: the Panisci from their burrows, annoyed at being summoned before they had stolen their supper; the Bears of Artemis, who, roused from their hollow logs, were rubbing their eyes sleepily and combing their fur with combs of tortoise shell; the Dryads, tall and beautiful like their trees and redolent of bark and tender buds of spring. And of course the Thriae, ignorant, it seemed, of Amber’s betrayal. They fluttered out of the sky in three swarms: the drones with busy titterings and quick feminine jerks of their wings; the workers dour, unsmiling, and heavy of movement, as if encased in armor; and last, three of the queens (Amber, the fourth, did not appear) with their dignity somewhat lessened by the heavy gold bracelets jangling on their arms.
Chiron, lord of the Centaurs, descended the twelve stone tiers and entered the pit. No sooner had he raised his noble head then silence enveloped his audience. You could hear the bleat of a sheep in the compound of the animals, and close at hand, the peremptory squeal of a pig, whose master silenced him with a thump to his tail.
Chiron spoke. His words had the ringing urgency of a trumpet blast. “Grave charges have been made. Grave warnings offered. We will hear from Eunostos, our esteemed friend.”
Rustic that I am, gardener and artisan, I have no skill at oratory (though perhaps a modicum as a poet), and the sullen crowd dismayed me. Summoned without explanation, they poised rather than sat and waited to be cajoled and convinced—except for my friends, who stood on the edge of the pit. Thea was smiling encouragement; extending her little hand in a gesture of affection and support. Pandia was trying her best to look attentive and conceal the fact that she would rather eat supper than listen to a speech. Icarus looked —well, worshipful. Whatever I said would sound inspired to him.
I spoke: “Ever since we came to the forest to escape the harassment of Men, we have lived in peace and abundance. Each of us has worked in his own way to make his own contribution. Each of us has done what the Great Mother designed him to do. Our hosts, the Centaurs, have supplied us with produce from their well cultivated farms. The Dryads have woven silk on the looms in their trees. The Thriae, the Bears of Artemis, the Panisci—need I remind you of their skill and their dedication?” (It was also unnecessary, I felt, to remind them that the Thriae had always made good thieves as well as workers). “In the past, we have been content to live to ourselves. Self-completeness has been our aim and our achievement. No longer. One of our tribes has hungered for foreign gold.”
I paused, not for dramatic effect like a Centaur reciting a dithyramb, but to catch my breath and find the words for my peroration. I had caught their interest. Now I must goad them to action.
I pointed my finger at the queens of the Thriae. “There stand the guilty Beasts—traders for gold and traitors to our people. I have it from the mouth of their fourth queen that she and her people have accepted gold to betray my friends into the hands of the Achaeans. To gain this end, they have promised to help the Achaeans invade the forest.”
INVASION! An audible gasp, incredulous, astonished, rippled along the tiers like a wind in the boughs of a palm tree. Such was the fear which our bestial characteristics—horns, hooves, tails—had inspired among Men, such was our isolation among the mountains, that invasion had never threatened us in all the years since the Beasts had come to the forest. Only Aeacus, by our own sufference, had strayed among our fastnesses and returned to Knossos with tales or silences to strengthen our legend. Nevertheless, Chiron and other elderly beasts remembered the time when we had lived near the sea and pirates had landed in Gorgon-prowed ships to burn our farms and capture slaves. Remembered the splintering doors, the red dragons of fire constricting their coils around our reed-built houses, the cries of infant Panisci caught in nets and Dryads dragged by their hair through burning olive groves… the haughty sneer of the Cretan king when those who survived the attack demanded justice: “Protect your own. I am not responsible for the chance attack of pirates.”… the final agonizing decision to retreat to the safety of the forest and forsake the Men with whom we had lived in harmony for many centuries… the angry farmers, reluctant to lose our help in the fields, trying to stop us and Chiron confronting them with a terrible ultimatum: “Prevent our flight and Blue Magic will destroy your crops.”… Centaurs burning the fields at night with a cloud of fertilizer… blackened vines in place of luxuriant vineyards and terrified farmers urging us on our way with gifts of milk and cheese and all the while exalting us into Legend, not Men, not Beasts, but four-legged, cloven-hoofed demons who could blight the crops with their evil, witching eyes…
Chiron advanced to the edge of the pit and leveled a steely gaze at the three queens. “What is your answer to these charges brought by Eunostos?”
One of the queens, the oldest, made her way down the tiers and occupied the pit as if it were a throne. A wizened woman, with mottled skin and huge golden eyes, she had hidden her arms with bracelets which clattered when she walked.
Her voice was honey and salt. “His human friends have bewitched our good Eunostos. Whatever plot is afoot, it is they—the girl and her brother—who have perpetrated it, and we poor Thriae are its victims. I know of no gold from Achaean soldiers, unless it has gone to the witch-child Thea and her big-headed brother.”
“And this?” I asked, pointing to a bracelet strung with miniatures of the death masks worn by Mycenaean kings. “Did you get this from my shop?”
She looked at her wrist. “Where else? Your workers traded it to me for six jars of honey.”
“No Telchin made it,” I said. “In my shop or anywhere else in the forest. They can only copy what they have seen. Death masks belong to Mycenae and Tiryns.”
She shrugged. The Thriae are quick to lie and brazen when they are caught. Her wings unruffled, she said: “Suppose it is true that we accepted a few Achaean bracelets in return for the human children. If we let your Thea and Icarus stay in the forest, they will surely bring evil down on us just as their father did. Need I remind you that their mother, Kora, was burned to death in her tree? My people and I merely wish to see these dangerous intruders driven from our midst. We did not conspire to see the forest invaded. If you do fear invasion, I suggest you deliver the children to us, and we in turn will give them to the Achaeans and remove all threat.”
“She calls us the human children,” protested Icarus. His voice was strong and compelling. “She does us a terrible wrong. By her own admission, our mother was the Dryad Kora. Look at my ears and tell me I am a Man!”
“Keep the children! They belong here as surely as I do.” It was Zoe. I wanted to hug her.
And Moschus: “Keep the children!”
“KEEP THE CHILDREN!”
Welling from a hundred throats, the plea had become a command, sharp, imperious, not to be denied. The old queen fluttered her bulging eyes, but Chiron silenced her before she could speak.
“Keep them we will. Defend them we will against invaders. And you,” he blazed at the queen, “you and your people are no longer welcome at our counsels or in our forest. Go to the men who have bought you with gold. Tell them that they attack us at their risk.”
The queen smiled and her thick lips writhed like a jellyfish. “Have you shields to withstand the bite of their axes?” she asked. “Have you greaves and breastplates and helmets? I think we will soon be returning with the conquerors. Fatten your pigs to feast us when we come.”
The Centaurs closed their hooves protectively around their pigs and shrank from the opening wings of the drones, who, tittering nervously, kicked themselves from the ground with a decorous lilt of their toes. The workers lumbered after them, their customary sullenness darkened to a glowering rage, and the three proud queens ascended the sky as if they were climbing the stairs of a palace and extinguished themselves in the labyrinth of night.
Chapter VIII
THE BULL THAT WALKS LIKE A MAN
In the time preceding a battle, the trivialities of peace become eloquent. The lamplit roots of my den
, twisting their friendly protection above our heads, seemed to say: Enjoy while you can the pungent musk of scrambled woodpecker eggs and the amber conviviality of beer poured from a skin. Tastes sharpen, colors intensify, and love, like a friendly ancestral serpent, leaves a beneficent trail across the floor. Thea and I had fought each other in the house of Amber: with blows and crueler words. But no one alluded now to our differences. After the war, we could speak again of the old anger and the old pride and admit, perhaps, that each had needed to speak yet spoken too much. But now, in the forest’s last tranquility, I knew that I loved her with all the ardors of my once fickle heart. It is said that the Great Mother was formerly a maiden, slender and virginal, who lived in a house of willow boughs where all the animals came to bring her food and lay their horns and antlers beneath her hands. Willingly would I have laid my tangled mane beneath my Thea’s hand. She did not touch me, but sometimes her hand trembled in the air between us, as if with the least encouragement it would come to rest like a tired butterfly. Shyness held me from touching her, and the fear that, once having touched, I would love her to my despair and perhaps destruction.
Every morning we met in my shop. Icarus whittled arrows from the boughs of linden trees and Thea fitted them with heads of flint, sharpened to lethal points. My workers and I were hammering a shield for Icarus.
“I ought to surrender,” said Thea. “It’s me they want, much more than you and Icarus. It was I who angered Ajax —hurt his pride. If I went to him now, he might forget his invasion.”
“He’s a warrior,” I said, “with a taste for battle. Any battle. His hurt pride is merely an excuse for launching him on a new adventure. Achaeans are always getting their pride hurt to give them a pretext for war. They hold it over their heads like a parasol and rattle their swords when it catches a few raindrops. Even if you went to him, he would still attack us. In addition to our gold, we’re worth a fortune as slaves. It’s been a long time since Panisci performed in the court of Egypt.”
“And a Minotaur,” said Icarus. “They would probably send you to pleasure the queen. I expect you would bring two fortunes. Much more than my sister.”
“And,” I continued quickly to Thea, “even if you could stop the war, I wouldn’t let you go to him. I don’t mean to let you out of the forest again.”
“I have no wish to leave.” She touched my hand at last. “What are our chances, Eunostos? I have seen those dreadful Achaeans. Their only love is to fight. They are brutally strong and foolishly brave and so girded with armor—greaves, cuirasses, helmets—that their flesh is almost unassailable.”
“The Centaurs also are stout fighters,” I said. “Farming keeps them in shape. Being both horse and rider, they surpass the best cavalry. They can charge like the wind, grapple with their hands, and kick with their hooves.”
“But numbers are against us, I think. How many Centaurs are there?”
“Forty males.”
“There must be a hundred Achaeans with Ajax, and all of them armed to the teeth. The Centaurs have only their clubs and their bows and arrows.”
“Don’t forget the Panisci, and don’t mistake them all for children. Some are middle-aged and very wily. There must be fifty of them.” (They were much too furtive for an exact count.)
“And how many Thriae?”
“Fifty, but some are drones and of little account. The queens, I suspect, will guide the Achaeans and show them every secret turning in the forest. There will be no chance for us to lay an ambush, except in the deeply wooded sections where the Thriae can’t fly.”
“But we have you,” said Icarus proudly. “You’re worth an army of Achaeans. I am going to fight at your side.”
“In time you will,” I said. “In time we will fight together like two old comrades. For the moment, however, I want you to stay with Thea and the Telchines to store supplies and guard the house. If the Centaurs and I should lose the first battle, I will need a place in which to lick my wounds, and as you know, this tree is as good as a fort.”
He sighed heavily but did not protest the disagreeable order. Truly, I thought, he is learning to be a warrior.
“I will guard your house,” he said, “and keep it safe.”
“Now look at the shield my workers have made for you!” I said, touched by his vow. Shaped like a figure eight, embossed with luck-bringing serpents inspired by Perdix, it was such a shield as kings have borne into battle to give their names to legend. Accepting the gift from Bion’s two front legs, Icarus held it at arm’s length and waved his free arm as if to brandish a sword.
“Ho,” he cried, “ho,” as he stepped and lunged, parried and ducked, pretending to run me through the chest. Then he remembered to thank the Telchin. He patted his head. “It is very beautiful.” The Telchin was not impressed. “It is quite the most fearful and deadly shield I have ever seen!” he continued. “It will help me to slay a dozen warriors, and mingle their blood with its golden snakes. I will name it for you. I will name it Bion.”
The Telchin bobbed his head in wordless devotion.
It was Pandia who came to tell us that Chiron had blown the conch shell to assemble his army against the Achaeans.
They marched across the field in ragged but resolute lines, their leather boots tearing the yellow gagea and cracking the willow rods of our fallen glider. They moved toward the trees like walking flames, yellow of armor, its bronze enkindled by sunlight; yellow of beard below their crested, sun-bright helmets. The queens of the Thriae, Amber among them, circled busily above the soldiers. The sullen workers had yet to make their appearance, but the drones were dimly visible on the far side of the field, beyond the range of our arrows but close enough for their animated chatter to reach us like a distant droning of bees.
We lurked in the trees, and clumsy shields of cow’s hide, hurriedly made by the Centaurs in our few days of grace, lay at our feet like the belts of animals. At Chiron’s signal we stepped between the trunks, aimed with unhurried precision, and loosed a volley of arrows. The queens of the Thriae shot above the threatening shafts. They shook their fists and their sweet voices piped incongruous oaths; Amber, the youngest, was also the loudest in her denunciation of the “foul horses” and the “rutting Minotaur.” The hundred Achaeans fell to their knees in a ring and raised their broad round shields above their heads. They resembled a giant tortoise, and our well-aimed arrows fell noisily but harmlessly onto their collective shell. Again, the creak of the linden bow, the twang of the arrow guided with the green tail feathers of a woodpecker. Again, the stout, resistant shell. Six times we drew and loosed our arrows. At last a few of them began to penetrate the crevices between the shields, and one of the shields, two, three collapsed as if a giant invisible foot had stepped on the tortoise and broken a part of its shell. But our quivers would soon be emptied.
“Enough,” said Chiron. “Let them advance. We will fight them among the trees.”
Once among the trees, they had to advance in narrow files, and the branches above their heads were so heavy with vines that the Thriae could not guide them and point out our hidden presences. But arrows were useless in such terrain and among the close-set trees the long Centaurs and a tall Minotaur were limited in their prowess. Here, the best fighters were the sly, agile Panisci. Their little hairy bodies could blend with the vegetation. They could crawl where Centaurs could not walk: retreat, advance, circle, harass with their bruising slings. They fired at the areas of flesh which were not protected by armor—the face—the arms, the thighs. Their stones moved so quickly that they might be mistaken for large, soundless insects; they were no less painful for the fact that they disabled instead of killed.
Cries of astonishment greeted the first barrage. Men clapped hands against their wounded flesh and drew them away when their fingers oozed with blood.
“It’s children,” squealed Ajax (I knew him from Thea’s description). “They’ve sent their children against us!”
“Children, Hades,” cried Xanthus, the one
who had lost his ears. “It’s goats!” He lunged at a flying hoof and received a blow to his chin. “And watch those hooves!”
One of the Achaeans, harrassed out of his line by the slingers, leaned on the trunk of an oak to catch his breath. A faint groaning of wood alerted him to scan the leaf-shrouded limbs. Did the rascally slingers—children, goats, demons, whatever they were—hide in trees? A noose-shaped vine tightened around his neck and jerked him from his feet. He kicked and waved his arms; he could not scream. The friends who cut him down discovered a corpse who had bitten through his tongue. Above their heads, a woman’s laughter tinkled among the branches; her green hair was indistinguishable from the leaves.
But furtive slingers and gallant Dryads could not be expected to stop the Achaean advance. Only the Centaurs and I could hope for decisive victory, and not among trees but in the first clearing. We watched them stagger with slain or wounded comrades into the open grasses and imbibe courage from the bountiful sun. We counted their losses: three we had killed with arrows; four had been stunned by the slings of the Panisci; and three had been hanged by Dryads. It was time for the Centaurs and me.
By choice I am not a fighter, but a worker of gems and metals, a sometime gardener, a peace-loving rustic, and finally a poet. But who can follow a trade or write a poem when helmeted warriors are stomping about the country and threatening to ravish the women? The time to fight is not the time to garden, and no Beast should hesitate to exchange his hoe for a sword. I preferred the hoe. On the other hand, I did not fear the sword.
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