The Dancer from Atlantis

by Poul Anderson

  ‘If one finds us,’ Dagonas grated, ‘the worse for it.’

  ‘We’ll go to your home first,’ Reid suggested to Erissa, ‘and fetch the girl and as many more as we’re able. From them we can perhaps get better information about what’s going on. On the way back, we can try to rescue others.’

  That’s the most we can do, he thought. Pick up some human pieces. But how can this be? She thought she and I – in her father’s house, in a city still at peace – where will we, then? How? When? Could time really be changeable?

  It better not be. If it is, we’ll likely be discovered and killed. I’d never have dared this foray if I didn’t believe it was fated that we rescue the dancer and afterward lose her.

  He glanced at Erissa. In the failing light, silhouetted against a half-crumbled wall, she went striding as if to her bulls. The cameo profile was held so steady that he could almost have called her expression serene. He thought: She would dare.

  The road wound inland for a steep two or three miles. Above the reach of the tsunamis, most of the poplars that lined the way still stood, though some were uprooted and gale-broken boughs were strewn about. Behind these trees, on either side, had been the cottages of smallholders, the villas of the wealthy; but they lay in rubble. A stray cow wandered lowing – for her calf? Reid couldn’t make out anything else. But dusk was upon him and vision didn’t reach far.

  It did find Knossos, whose death flickered red and yellow across the clouds ahead. At last the fires themselves came into sight, scores leaping above a black jaggedness of cast-down walls. When a roof fell in, sparks spouted as if from a volcano. The roaring grew ever louder, the reek and sting of smoke sharper, as Reid’s band trudged on.

  Knossos had not been defended. What need had the sea king’s people for fortifications ashore? Where a gate would elsewhere have risen, the road branched off in several wide, flagged streets. The city had been a larger version of Atlantis. Erissa pointed her spear down one of the avenues. ‘That way,’ she said tonelessly.

  Full night had come. Reid groped along by flamelight, stumbling on fallen blocks and baulks, once in a while putting his foot on what he suddenly knew for a dead body. Through the crackling he heard occasional screams. He squinted into the roil of smoke but saw no one except a woman who sat in a doorway and rocked herself. She did not look back at him, she looked through him. The man beside her had been killed by a weapon. Soot and dust rained steadily upon her.

  Dagonas stopped. ‘Quick! Aside!’ he hissed. A second later they heard what his young ears had: tramping feet, clanking metal. Crouched in the shadows of a narrow side street, they saw an Achaean squad go past. Only two men were in the full gear – nodding plumes, shining helmets, blowing cloaks, armor, shields – that must have been smuggled along. The rest, numbering seven, were clad in ordinary wise and carried merely swords, pikes, axes, a sling. Two were Cretan.

  ‘By Asterion – those traitors—!’ Ashkel’s blade caught the light in a gleam. Two comrades wrestled him to a halt before he could charge. The gang went past.

  ‘We’ll scarcely meet more,’ Erissa said. ‘Theseus doesn’t have many here on his side. It’s only that none are left to fight on ours. Those who might have rallied them, the nobles, were of course seized or slain immediately; and leaderless men can do nothing except run.’ She started off afresh.

  They met more dead, more grieving. Hurt folk croaked for help, for water; hardest was the necessity to pass them by without answering. Or was the worst those glimpsed forms that scuttled out of sight – Cretans who feared this party was also among the looters, rapers, and slave takers?

  When they came to a certain square, Erissa halted. ‘My home.’ Her voice was no longer entirely steady.

  Most of the buildings around had escaped extreme damage. The wavering hazy light of a fire some distance off showed cracked façades, sagging doors, wall paintings blurred by dust; but they stood. On the one at which she pointed, Reid could just make out that there had been depicted, triumphal in a field of lilies, the bull dance.

  She caught his hand. They crossed the plaza.

  Night gaped in the house. After knocking with his spear butt, peering inside at stripped and tumbled emptiness, Reid said slowly: ‘I’m afraid no one’s here. Looks as if it’s been plundered. I suppose the folk fled.’

  ‘Where?’ Dagonas’ voice was raw.

  ‘Oh, I can tell you, I can tell you, friends.’ The answer drifted from within. ‘Wait and I’ll tell you. Shared sorrow is best.’

  The man who shuffled out was wrinkled, bald, blinking from half-blind eyes. Erissa choked, ‘Balon.’

  ‘Aye, aye, you know Balon, do you?’ he said. ‘Old Balon, too old to be worth hauling off and selling – they pensioned him in this family, though, they did, because he worked faithfully over the years for a good master, yes, that I did. Why, the children used to come and beg me for a story…. All gone. All gone.’

  She dropped her spear and pulled him to her. ‘Balon, old dear,’ she said raggedly, ‘do you remember Erissa?’

  ‘That I do, that I do, and will for what days remain to me. I hope he’ll not be too unkind to her. She might charm her way into his graces, you know. She could charm the birds down out of the trees. But I don’t know, I don’t know. They said something about him and the Ariadne, when they came for her.’

  ‘For who?’ Dagonas yelled.

  ‘Why, Erissa. Right after the quake and the darkness and winds, almost. She’d been telling about this man she met on Atlantis – you could warm your hands at her happiness – and then the quake and – her father’s been ill, you know. Pains in the chest. Weak. He couldn’t well move. So she stayed. Then, crash, there they were at the door. They’d been sent special. Theseus, they said, wanted Erissa. They wanted loot and slaves. They got both, after they’d bound my little Erissa who was going to win the garland and marry that foreign man she loved. But not old Balon. Nor his master. Master died, he did, right then and there, when that Achaean tramped into the bedroom and grabbed mistress – said she wouldn’t fetch much but looked like she had a few years of grain-grinding in her – yes, master’s dead in there. I laid him out. Now I’m waiting to follow him. I’d have followed the rest of the family, I begged they’d take me along, but the soldiers laughed. So all poor Balon can do is wait by his master’s bedside.’

  Erissa shook him. ‘Where are they?’ she cried.

  ‘Oh? Oh?’ The servant squinted. ‘You look like her. You really do,’ he mumbled. ‘But you can’t be kinfolk. Can you? I knew this whole house, I did. Every member, every cousin and nephew and baby in the Thalassocracy. They’d always tell old Balon the news when they came visiting here, and I’d always remember. … They’re in some pen or other, I guess, under heavy guard. You’ll not rescue them, I fear.’

  ‘Erissa!’ Reid demanded. ‘Her too?’

  ‘No. No. I told you. Didn’t I? Something special about her. Theseus, our conqueror, that is, King Theseus wanted her special. He sent men after her right away, before she might escape. They’d had to fight on the way here, they told me; I saw blood on them; that’s the kind of hurry they were in. I don’t know why. The rest of the household, brothers, sisters, children, servants, they just collected incidental-like, along with the loot. Erissa was what they really came for. I suppose she’s in the Labyrinth. Now can I go back to master?’

  Mount Iouktas, where Asterion was buried, in whose cave shrine Lydra had had her vision, bulked ebon across the clouds. Approaching from above – the least unsafe, when every path was beset – Reid could make out the palace against the burning further down: Cyclopean walls, high pillars, broad staircases, sprawling over acres, grand even when half shattered. A few watchfires glowed red in courtyards.

  ‘We’re out of our minds,’ Uldin grumbled. ‘Heading into a wolfs den, a maze where we could wander lost till dawn.’

  ‘Blood brotherhood,’ Erissa answered. Since Balon refused to seek the galley, she had masked herself; she moved with fluid sw
iftness as before, but face and voice might have belonged to brazen Talos whom legend said once guarded Crete. ‘I remember those halls. We should be able to get around in them better than the enemy.’

  ‘But for a single stupid wench—’

  ‘Go back if you’re afraid,’ Dagonas said scornfully.

  ‘No, no, I come.’

  ‘If she’s important to Theseus, she must be important to our side,’ Tylisson said. ‘Or at least we may kill a few Achaeans.’

  They continued their stealthy progress. Reid went in the van beside Erissa. He saw her only as a shadow and a spearhead; but bending close, touching the rough wool tunic, breathing a hint of her amidst fumes and cinders, he thought: She’s here. She is. She’s not the girl she was, but she’s the woman that the girl became.

  ‘Should we go through with this?’ he whispered.

  ‘We did,’ she replied.

  ‘Did we? In just this way?’

  ‘Yes. I know now what really happened tonight. If we fail our duty – why, maybe I’ll never meet you again, Duncan. Maybe we’ll never have had those moments that were ours.’

  ‘What about the risk to our friends?’

  ‘They fight in their own people’s cause. This hour is for more than you and me. Tylisson spoke well. Think. Why did Theseus want that girl so badly? Because she’s full of strangeness; she’s fated to return to herself. He – and Lydra, I suppose – dare not let an enemy of such unknown powers go loose. But having taken her, will they not use her? She’s only a girl, Duncan. She can be broken to their will.

  ‘The free Keftiu on the lesser islands could be overrun. But if this Chosen One escapes him, Theseus will be daunted. He’ll stay his hand, rest content with uniting Attica, leave the Aegean Sea in peace.’ For an instant, malice spat: ‘Yes, he’ll become so shy of the Goddess’ faith that he’ll not dare use it for his statecraft as he now plans to. He’ll set the Ariadne off where she can do no more harm.’

  ‘Hsh,’ cautioned Uldin.

  Down on their bellies, they crawled along garden walks. Through leaves, Reid saw the nearest of the campfires. It cast its glimmer around a courtyard, on a fallen pillar and a row of huge storage jars lined along the masonry. Two Achaeans sat drinking. A royal slave scuttled to keep their beakers full; for him life hadn’t changed much. A third man must be on duty, because he was fully equipped and on his feet. The light flowed off his bronze. He laughed and jested with his companions, though. Reid caught a snatch: ‘– When the ships come tomorrow or next day, when we’ve ample men, that’s when the roundup really begins and maybe you’ll find that girl who got away, Hippomenes—’ In a corner lay what the American thought were two asleep. He stole sufficiently close by to discover that they were Cretans. Festival wreaths were withering on their temples, above blank eyes and cut throats. Their blood had pooled widely before it clotted.

  Hugging the wall, Erissa led her group to an unwatched side entrance. The first several yards of corridor beyond were tomb black. Then they emerged in another at right angles, where lamps burned at intervals. Between doorways romped a mural of bulls, dolphins, bees, gulls, blossoms, youths, maidens, everything that was glad. Erissa nodded. ‘I expected those lights,’ she said. ‘The Ariadne, if no one else, would direct the laying down of such a thread so the conquerors can find their way along the main halls.’

  Shadows bulked and slunk, demon-shaped; but the air was blessedly cool and clean. They moved toward that section Erissa believed was their likeliest goal. How full of life these corridors, these rooms must have been one day ago. The passage wasn’t straight, it wound, wildly intersected.

  A voice beyond a corner stabbed at Reid. Theseus! ‘Well, that’s done. I wasn’t sure I could.’

  Lydra: ‘I told you my presence would ward you.’

  ‘Yes. I was listening to your prayers the whole while. Was I wrong to enjoy it? I did. More than I expected.’

  ‘You will not again, will you? Here I am.’

  ‘Enough.’

  Reid risked a peek. Yards off was a door where two full-equipped warriors stood guard, spears grounded, swords at waist, shields ashine in the lamplight. Theseus and Ariadne were departing in the opposite direction. The prince wore only a tunic and glaive; his yellow mane seemed brighter than the bronze, and he walked with the gait of one who has taken more than a kingdom. Lydra, in Cretan priestess garb, clung to his arm.

  What’s going on? Reid wondered icily.

  ‘Hurry, we can kill them,’ Ashkel breathed.

  ‘No, that’s Theseus himself,’ Erissa anwered. ‘More men are sure to be in call.’

  ‘To die killing Theseus—’ Rhizon’s blade lifted.

  ‘Hold. We’re here to save the maiden,’ Dagonas answered. ‘Let him take the soldiers waiting for him out of earshot.’

  They stood. Hearts thuttered.

  ‘Go,’ Erissa commanded.

  Reid led the charge around the corner. An Achaean yelled and cast his spear. Haras took it in the stomach. He fell, spouting blood, fighting not to scream. Reid glimpsed the gray beardless face and thought – events seemed to be happening very slowly; there was ample time to think – Merciful. A major artery was cut, I guess. Otherwise he’d have had to die of peritonitis, by stages.

  The second man prodded with his pike, Reid wielded his own clumsily, like a club, trying to knock aside the point that lunged at him. Wood clattered. Erissa caught the shaft and hung on. The Athenian let go and drew his sword. Tylisson rushed. With a slight movement of his shield, the Athenian sent the Cretan blade gliding off it. His own thrust over the top. Tylisson staggered back, clutching a lacerated arm. ‘Help! To aid, to aid!’ the sentries were bawling.

  Uldin attacked one. His saber whined and belled. When the bronze stabbed at him, he wasn’t there; he bounced from side to side. Fighting, he screamed. The noise clawed. Rhizon dodged in and flung both arms around the shield, pulling it down. Uldin laughed and swung. The Achaean’s head bounced free. It lay there staring at its body. Blood soaked its long hair. Probably some woman and children at home were going to miss it.

  Dagonas had been keeping the other man busy. Now Uldin, Ashkel, and Rhizon could join him. The Achaean backed off, working with shield and sword. Metal clashed; lungs rasped. The door was undefended.

  Reid tried it. The latch had been left off. Opening, he stepped into a chamber that must be a shrine. Life-size in ivory, gold, and silver, the Goddess held out her snakes who were the beloved dead. Behind her was painted the sun bull Asterion, to right the octopus which meant admiralty, to left the wheat sheaf which meant peace and harvest. A single lamp burned before the altar. Young Erissa knelt nearby; but she faced away, sagging, countenance hidden by the loose dark hair. Beneath her was the full skirt of festival, torn off by the hands which later bruised her breasts.

  ‘Erissa.’ Reid lurched toward the shape.

  Her older self brushed past him, bent down, laid arms around the girl. In the young face next to the half-aged one, Reid saw the same emptiness which had been in his men after Atlantis was whelmed. She stared and did not know him.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he begged.

  The woman said: ‘What do you think? Her destiny was supposed to lie with you. Her consecration lay in her being a maiden. Theseus feared them both. So he took them away. I daresay Lydra counseled him to it. We know she helped.’

  Reid thought dully: Sure, her first son was fathered by a tall blond man.

  A yell and clangor outside spelled the end of combat. Erissa held Erissa and said most gently, ‘Come, let’s be gone. I can heal part of your hurt, child.’ More noise broke loose. The garrison elsewhere had heard the fighting.

  Reid glanced out. The second sentry lay slain across the body of Haras. But down the hall came a dozen warriors; and none of this party had armor, and Tylisson was disabled.

  Dagonas sped to the doorway. ‘Get out,’ he panted. ‘We can hold them a while. Get her down to the ship.’

  Uldin spat. ‘Go with them, Cr
etan,’ he said. ‘The lot of you. You’ll need what strength you have. I’ll keep the corridor.’

  Erissa of the white lock, upbearing the girl who followed along like a sleepwalker, said, ‘That’s much to ask.’

  The Athenians stood hesitant, mustering their nerve to attack. They must have heard rumors. Yes, Reid knew: for the sake of what Keftiu remain, she who danced with the bulls and is even now a vessel of Power cannot be let fall back into the hands of their lord.

  They were no cowards. In a minute they’d advance.

  Uldin spat again. ‘A Hun and a dozen waddling charioteers. Good odds.’ His gaze came to rest on the woman. ‘I could wish to die on a steppe where cornflowers bloom, in sunlight, a horse beneath me,’ he said. ‘But you kept your side of our bargain. Farewell.’

  He had taken a shield. Now he planted himself in the middle of the hall, saber aloft. ‘What’re you waiting for?’ he called, and added a volley of obscene taunts.

  Erissa plucked Reid’s tunic. ‘Come,’ she said.

  That departure shocked the Athenians into motion. They advanced four abreast. Those behind the front rank wielded spears. Uldin let them get near. Abruptly he squatted, shield over his head, and smote at a leg where flesh showed between greave and kilt. The man clattered down, yammering. Uldin had already whirled and wounded another. Blades clashed on his defense. He sprang from his crouch, straight at a third man, who fell against his neighbor. They tumbled, and Uldin’s sword went snick-snick. A spear pierced him. He didn’t seem to notice. Forcing his way into the mass of them, he cut right and left. They piled on him at last, but nonetheless they needed a goodly while to end the battle, and no survivor among them was ever quite hale again.

  The galley stood out to sea. It had a number of refugees aboard, those on whom Reid’s party had chanced. There’d been no time to look around for more, though. The hue and cry were out. A patrol found them near the docks, and it became a running fight – hit, take a blow, grope onward in the dark – until they got to their boat. At that point they made a stand and kept the Achaeans busy until reinforcements had been ferried from the ship and a hopelessly outnumbered enemy was ground into meat. Reid was too numb to regret that. And it was necessary, he realized, if the Knossians were to be rowed to safety.