Collected short fiction, p.375
Collected Short Fiction, page 375
“Come, Gothung!” The voice of Snish was a husky rasp, and his face had turned yellow-green. “This street is no place for us.”
THESEUS shrugged off his clutching arm, strode back toward the silently sobbing child. But the horn blared again, and two black stallions came prancing around a bend in the street. They filled the narrow way, and the bronze greaves of their riders brushed against the walls on either side.
“Make way!” an angry voice barked above the jingle of spurs and bits. “Make way for the white palanquin of Ariadne!”
“Run!” Snish overtook Theseus. “The Etruscans—”
“But the child!”
Theseus ran back, toward the brown, naked infant, lying petrified with fear on the edge of the gutter.
He was too late. It shrieked once, under the great hoofs, and lay still again.
Trembling, Theseus snatched the bits and stopped the horse. He looked up at the swart, helmeted rider. Dark with anger, the Etruscan dropped the silver horn to its thong, tugged furiously at a long bronze sword.
“Wait,” Theseus said softly. “Let the people get out of the way.”
“Loose my bits, gutter rat!” roared the Etruscan. “For this outrage, you will be flung into the games.”
“Probably,” said Thespis. “But there is no haste.”
The other horseman, meantime, had cleared his own saber. He swung down with it, savagely, at the bare, magically blond head of Theseus. But Theseus leaned under the neck of the horse he held. And the dark-stained Falling Star, whipping up, slashed the Etruscan’s fingers and sent the bronze blade rattling into the gutter.
The wounded Etruscan made a bellow of rage and pain. The other jerked and spurred his mount, attempting to ride down Theseus. But Theseus clung to the bits, swung clear of the pawing hoofs. And the steel sword, with two swift strokes, severed girth and reins.
The saddle slid down the back of the rearing horse. The Etruscan sat down upon it, violently, in the open sewer. There was an unpleasant splash and a louder buzzing of flies. In a moment, however, the man was on his feet, gripping his saber and mouthing soldierly curses.
Theseus released the unsaddled horse, and crouched to meet the Etruscan. But steel had not touched bronze, when a woman’s voice, clear and full as a golden bugle, pealed to them:
“Hold! Who halts my guard?”
Theseus saw that a rich palanquin, carried by four sturdy, panting slaves, had come up behind the disarmed horseman. The white curtains were drawn open, and its occupant was sitting up on her couch, to look out.
Ariadne!
ARIADNE of the white doves, sorceress of the serpent! The woman in the palanquin, Theseus knew, could be no other. Daughter of Minos, and divine vessel of the All-Mother, Cybele.
“Who dares halt Ariadne?”
Her proud voice was a golden melody. It touched an eager chord in the heart of Theseus, and he stood with wide eyes drinking in her loveliness.
Her skin was white, white as the dove on her smooth, bare shoulder. Her full lips were red as hot blood, her eyes green and cold as ice. And the hair that foamed about her shoulders was a flaming splendor.
Her hair was red, redder than the locks of Captain Firebrand had been. Soft lights rippled and flowed in the thick wavy masses of it. It was a cascade of shining glory, falling over her long, white body.
Theseus struggled for breath. He had sworn to win Ariadne, as a trophy of victory in the games. Now he made a hot renewal of the oath. He saw that she was worth all the storied wealth of. Knossos, that her beauty was a power vast as the wizardry of Crete.
Briefly, Theseus wondered if she were as old as the woman of the street had said, and he saw a confirming shadow of wisdom and weariness in her cold, green eyes. And h? thought that none but a goddess could ever have been so beautiful.
A gasping curse brought him back to himself, and he found the unhorsed Etruscan close upon him. He crouched, and the Falling Star flashed out to parry the long bronze saber.
“Stop!” Ariadne’s golden voice pealed out again. “Let him speak.” The cool, green eyes surveyed Theseus haughtily. “The savage is clever with his blade. Ask him his name, and what he seeks in Crete.”
“I have ears.” Theseus rang his steel defiantly against the saber. “Tell her that I am Gothung, a wanderer from the north. Tell her that I came to Crete, to hire my sword to Minos. But say that, having seen the people of Crete, I would fight for them instead.”
Her splendid head tossed angrily, and she shouted:
“Call another detachment, and take the insolent Northman!”
Nursing bleeding fingers, the mounted man spurred his horse down the street. The one on foot came at Theseus, with bronze saber upflung. But the steel blade turned the stroke, a swift slash opened his arm to tendon and bone, and the saber dropped in the mud.
Theseus leaped forward, menaced the palanquin slaves.
“Set down the litter,” he commanded.
At the point of red-dripping steel, they obeyed. Theseus ripped aside the white linen curtains, and looked in upon Ariadne. Clad in a flounced green gown, her long white body sprawled lazily on the cushions. Her cool green eyes met the hot eyes of Theseus, without hint of fear.
“When my rider comes back with aid, Northman,” she said softly, “you will regret your insolence to a goddess.”
“Meantime, I am the master.” The flat voice of Theseus was equally soft. “And the All-Mother should display compassion. Get out.” His red sword gestured. “Pick the dead child up out of the gutter.”
She lay still, and the green eyes turned frosty.
“No man would dare!” she whispered.
The palanquin slaves gasped mutely as Theseus shifted the sword, and reached his red-dripping hand through the curtains. Her white arm went angrily tense under his fingers, but he dragged her out into the muddy street.
“Northman!” Her quivering words were almost soundless. “For this, you shall feed the Dark One!”
“Perhaps,” said Theseus. “But pick up the body.”
Tall, defiant, the red handprint bright on her skin, she made no move. Theseus shoved. She went sprawling sidewise into the sewer, thrust white hands into its reeking muck to check her fall.
Breathless, silent, she got slowly back to her feet. Flies swarmed dark about her, filth dripped from her hands and her gown. She tried to scramble out of the ditch. Theseus met her with his red steel.
“The child,” he said, “All-Mother!”
For a moment her green eyes stared at him. They had turned dark, and something glittered in their frosty depths. Her dripping hands clenched, and slowly relaxed. Silently, then, she bent and lifted the small, brown body in her arms.
Theseus caught her elbow, helped her back to the palanquin.
“Thus, Cybele,” he whispered, “you have begun to prove your motherhood. But the proof is not done, and we shall meet again when the games are played.”
The red lips moved, but she spoke no word.
Another horn snarled, and the dram of hoofs and the rattle of weapons came down the narrow street. Gripping the Falling Star, Theseus turned away from the white palanquin. He glimpsed the pallid face of Snish, peering furtively from the doorway of a wine shop.
“Well, cobbler,” he shouted, “there was no need to volunteer!”
IX.
THESEUS made a necessary gesture toward his own defense. In fact, the Etruscans being the fighting men they were, he was able to make the gesture quite vigorous, with no danger of escape.
An officer in a chariot whose axle spanned the street, was followed by a dozen men on foot. He left the chariot at the corner, with a slave to hold the horses, and led six men up the street. The others vanished, and Theseus guessed that they were going around the block to take him from behind.
A dozen alleys and doorways beckoned, but he brushed the humming flies off his red hands, and waited quietly. Three tall, notched shields made a moving barrier, from wall to wall, and long bronze blades lifted through the notches.
Waiting, Theseus snatched another glimpse of Ariadne. One of the palanquin slaves stood ready to assist her back into the litter. But she was standing in the mud beside it, the child’s brown body, dripping blood and filth, still clutched against her. Her green eyes were fixed on Theseus.
“Wait, slave!” Theseus caught her muted golden voice. “Let me see the Northman fight.”
He fought. The Falling Star was thin and keen enough to probe far through the bull-hide shields, and the narrow slippery way hampered the rigid formation of the Etruscans. One man, and then another, slipped down behind the wall of shields.
If he had really sought escape, Theseus knew, he could have leaped through the wall when it wavered. But he waited for men to replace the fallen, waited for the second wall to form behind him. And he heard the ring of Ariadne’s voice:
“Take the savage alive, for the games!”
The probing steel found a heart behind the second barrier. But the walls came inexorably together. Bronze blades reached Theseus, from before and behind. But it was a mace that reached over the raw-hide wall, and crushed him out of consciousness.
With bitter mouth and splitting head, Theseus came back to life in a dungeon whose fetor was thicker than the street’s. This was a square pit, twenty feet deep. The walls were polished, well-fitted stone, unscalable. A faint, gray light came through a grating in the roof.
Dimly, that light revealed his five companions, groaning or snoring on the bare stone floor. They were all condemned criminals, he learned, waiting for the games. A slave who had been indiscreet with his master’s wife. A palace scullion who had got drunk and burned a roast. An unemployed carpenter who had stolen bread. Two merchants who had neglected to pay certain tithes to the Dark One. They were all hopeless as men already dead.
The pit was not a pleasant place. Water trickled down the walls, to make foul little pools on the porous gypsum floor. Sanitary arrangements did not exist. Molded bread and rotten meat were dropped at uncertain intervals through the grate. Time was marked by the daily fading of that faint, gray light.
Days dragged by, and Theseus knew that bad food and exposure were sapping even the rugged strength of Gothung. His body was stiff and ulcerated from sleeping on the foul wet stone, and monotony numbed his mind.
To fill the days, he began speculating upon the possibility of escape—even though this hard imprisonment was a thing that he had risked his life to gain.
“It can’t be done,” the scullion assured him. “In three hundred years, no man has escaped from the dungeons of Minos. We are stripped. We are not thrown even a bone, to serve as weapon or tool. The walls are strong masonry, and there is only living rock behind them. Only a fly could climb to the roof. And nothing much larger could pass through that bronze grate—which is locked with a wizard’s secret.”
“Still,” Theseus insisted, “I believe I could escape even from such a pit as this—if it had to be done!”
They counted the days, until the moon of Minos, when the games would be observed. No word was spoken to them through the grate. Even when the carpenter died, after days of coughing, the guards ignored their calls. The body crumbled into a pool of decay.
The day arrived at last, the grate was unlocked, and lassos hissed down and caught them one by one. Theseus stood waiting under the door, while the others crouched moaning with dread in the corners, but he was the last taken.
The rope whipped under his arms, hauled him upward. Black-mantled Minoan priests dragged him down a dark stone corridor. A door opened, to make a square of dazzling light. Lances prodded him, and he walked out into blinding sun.
The dry heat was good to his naked body, stiff as it was from his wet stone bed, and caked with filth. The clean air was precious. For a moment it seemed enough to be out of the pit, and he forgot that this must be the moment for which he had planned and fought and endured the dungeon.
Weak from hunger and hardship, he stood swaying in the sun. It was a little time before he could see anything. But he felt hot, dry sand under his feet, and heard the deep-throated murmur of a great crowd. Somewhere a bull was bellowing. And his nostrils caught the faint sweet odor of blood.
Abruptly, behind him, bronze horns made a strident fanfare, and a harsh-voiced herald began a monotonous chant:
“This man, called Gothung the Northman, now enters the sacred cyclic games, to seek the throne of Minos. Therefore let him be faced with the nine trials, to test the will of the Dark One in his three aspects.
“For the Dark One is a deity of three aspects, bull and man and god. And if all the aspects of the Dark One shall favor the candidacy of this man, then he shall be seated upon the sacred throne of Minos, and wed to the All-Mother, Cybele, who dwells in Ariadne the daughter of Minos, and shall reign over all Crete as regent of the Dark One. And Minos shall go into the Labyrinth to meet the deity who has disowned him.
“But if the Dark One fails to show favor to this man, in any aspect, then he shall die, and his carcass shall be flung into the Labyrinth so that the Dark One may feast upon his craven soul.”
BY THE TIME that the herald was done, Theseus could see. This was the same oval bowl that he and Snish bad marked from the hill. Blood splotched the blinding white sand that spread the long arena. The seats above the curving wall were crowded with the upper tenth of the hundred thousand of Ekoros.
Apprehensively, Theseus searched for the gleaming brazen bulk of Talos. For the brass giant, having met him as he came ashore and listened to the lie about Captain Firebrand, might—if he really were no fool—penetrate the guise of Gothung. But Talos was not in sight.
Hopefully, then, Theseus looked for Snish. Since the little wizard had not come to share his dungeon, Theseus believed that he must have escaped, might be useful again. But Snish, he knew, had courage for no real risk. He was not surprised when he failed to discover the little Babylonian.
Above the center of the arena he found a section of curtained boxes, and glimpsed faces that he knew. He saw the sallow, hawk-nosed visage of Amur the Hittite, and the thin, dark face of Admiral Phaistro. He even caught the husky, excited voice of the Hittite:
“Half a talent, that the first bull kills the Northman!”
Flashing past them, the eyes of Theseus found Ariadne. She sat apart, in a white-curtained box. A white dove rested on her bare white shoulder. Her green gown heightened the green of her eyes.
She was watching him, fixedly. A curious, eager smile touched her smooth, white face. Her flaming head made a lazy little nod, as if of satisfaction. Her smooth arm beckoned to one of the busy slaves, bearing the yellow arm bands of Amur, who were taking wagers.
“Three talents,” she called softly, “that the Northman dies in the first three trials.”
Theseus dragged his eyes, with an effort, away from her haunting and insolent beauty. He found a black-curtained box beyond her. And his heart checked when he knew that he looked at last upon the dreaded warlock who had ruled Crete for twenty generations.
Curiously, Minos looked like neither wizard nor king. He was a short, fat man, and the hands folded in the lap of his white silk robe were short-fingered, plump, pink, and dimpled. His face was round and red and dimpled, too, his eyes small and blue and merry. Perfectly white, fine as a woman’s, his hair was long and daintily dressed. His pink, plump arms were laden with silver bracelets.
Theseus stared again. For this looked like the sort of man who would keep a tiny shop, and be always poor from giving dates and honed cakes to children. He didn’t look like the wizard-god who held half the world in cruel subjection. But he was.
Then something moved in the rear of the curtained box, and Theseus saw another figure. A gaunt, stooped man, all in black, with a seamed, shrunken face that was like dark wax, and hollow, flaming eyes. The cadaverous face, the whole dark-swathed frame, carried an impression of leering, sinister power. Here was one who looked like a warlock, and doubtless was. For this, Theseus guessed, was the dreaded and infamous Daedalus.
The two spoke briefly in the box. Theseus heard their voices. That of Minos was soft and limpid as a woman’s, silver-sweet. The tones of the other were sepulchral, with a cold, rasping harshness that set Theseus to shivering.
They used the secret priestly tongue, so that Theseus could not understand. But in a moment Minos beckoned to one of the slaves, and the woman-voice said softly:
“Nine talents on the Northman—one that he wins each game!”
Then Theseus shuddered indeed. Had these warlocks already pierced his guise? Were they merely playing a game? Else why did Minos calmly wager on the loss of his empire? Theseus searched that genial dimpled face. The small blue eyes of Minos twinkled back at him merrily.
X.
SILVER HORNS snarled again, at the lips of three black-robed priests. And the harsh voice of the herald rang once more across the sun-flooded, hushed arena:
“First let the challenger test the will of the Dark One in his aspect of the bull. The first three steps are three wild bulls from Thessaly, and their horns will show the Dark One’s will.”
Bull-leaping, Theseus knew from the tales he had heard, was the dangerous national sport of Crete. The performers, usually slaves or captives, required years of training. Often, on less solemn occasions, this same arena must have been devoted to that sport.
A dark passage opened in the end of the arena, and a great black bull lumbered out upon the blinding white sand. Its mighty head was flung high, and the sun gleamed on its cruel polished horns.
Standing naked on the hot sand, Theseus found time to recall Cretan paintings that showed bull-vaulting scenes. The daring acrobat seized the horns of the charging bull, to be lifted gracefully over the animal. He wished briefly that he had been trained in that perilous art, but he had not.
The bull stopped, stood for a moment as if bewildered by the walls and the watching thousands. Its bellow was a deep, ominous sound. It pawed up a cloud of sand, dropped its horns to gore the earth.
Then its eyes discovered the lone straight figure of Theseus, and it charged. Theseus waited, motionless. His senses seemed queerly sharpened. He felt the dry hot grains of sand under the bare soles of his feet, and the sting of the sun, and the sticky legs of a fly crawling up his abdomen.
