The White Bull Page 18

  He also expressed a wish to try my wings sometime, but he did not press the point when I explained the need for correct sizing. Anyway, the straps of my wings could never have been made to fit his shoulders.

  We had to climb another difficult stretch, this one of sharp and barren rock, to reach the lip of the crater. Or at least everyone but myself was required to climb.

  We climbed, or flew, and then looked down into a fiery scene of smoke, scorched rock, and blackened lava. Even in daylight, a faint reddish glow could be perceived in the depths of the crater. If this volcano was asleep, its sleep was restless; below us molten rock, in places barely crusted with dark ash, bubbled heavily and stirred thickly as if some unimaginable monster could be in restless motion beneath its surface.

  After appropriate prayers—Kena'ani was always good at extemporizing these invocations as required—I handed the precious chest to Heracles, who without further ceremony hurled it still unopened into one of the high volcanic vents. The actual vent aperture was small and distant, but his arm was very strong and his aim accurate. The box bounced once, without bursting open, and disappeared into what seemed the very heart of earth.

  At this the rest of us sent up a small cheer, assuring Heracles that this gesture had completed his release from his ill-considered vow, freeing him to enter the service of Theseus.

  Heracles now formally swore an oath, on the bones of his father and his mother—though as he said he did not know where they were—to serve the King of Athens faithfully, and to accompany us on our expedition to Crete.

  A few minutes later, when we were all on our way down to the meadow once more, there were strange rumblings behind us, sounding as if they came from deep within the crater, and a puff of thicker smoke went up. Perhaps this demonstration was a result of the sacrifice, perhaps not, but I at least was happier the farther we retreated from the overhanging lip of rock.

  "Now let us go to our ship," said Theseus, a man never willing to waste any time. The King of Athens was more determined than ever to go on to Crete, now that the presence there of his chief enemy seemed to be confirmed.

  Heracles delayed briefly to enter one of the broken dwellings on the meadow, there to pick up what he said was his favorite bow—it was almost as thick as his club—and some arrows. Then he pronounced himself ready for anything. Filled suddenly with a presentiment of evil, I protested once more to the king that I would never be able to build him wings unless we first returned to Athens to rest and refit. But, as I had feared and expected, my protests did no good.

  * * *

  HOMECOMING

  If the way Heracles handled his club had not been enough in itself to convince me that he was far stronger than any other man on earth, the outcome of the wrestling match would certainly have brought me to that conclusion. I did not doubt for a moment that our new recruit might have slain a lion in equal combat. I remained convinced that he was—in some way that I could not get perfectly clear in my own mind—in a class with Dionysus. Whether those two were fully human, or whether they were something greater than mankind, was a question on which I could not yet make up my mind. But they certainly fell into a special category. How much their special category differed from that of the White Bull was yet another difficult question.

  Assuredly our new shipmate was a moody and dangerous man, the possessor of a quick and violent temper. If ever someone on our small ship jostled him accidentally, or sat in the place on deck where he had decided to sit, he would frown and mutter ominously. On the other hand, his mood calmed as quickly as it became disturbed, and when he was calm again he was ever anxious to make amends for any offense his display of temper might have given. Utterly lacking in guile, he was not in the least ambitious, and in his heart thought himself to be a good man. I could not help but concur with him in this last opinion, dangerous though his companionship could sometimes be.

  We had no more than completed our high sacrifice upon the crater's rim, and were starting down together from the high plateau, when the talk among us turned, as men's talk will, to the subject of women. Somewhat to my surprise, given his claim to have lived his entire life in relative isolation, young Heracles considered himself something of an expert on the matter. He had lain with his first woman, he informed us, many years ago, at a truly precocious age. Though he was reticent on details, in this as in other matters pertaining to his personal background, I gathered that there had been females among his siblings and playfellows on the island; and also that a fair number of the girls and women of the villages below had not been at all reluctant to visit him in his high meadow. In earlier days, we were informed, before the Bullheads had all gone, Dionysus had organized some truly memorable parties. But celebrations shared with Dionysus always left a man with a terrible hangover.

  Heracles showed a greater willingness to discuss the sport provided him by the female islanders during their visits to the high plateau, after the departure of the mysterious Bullheads. To hear our newest hero recount his amorous exploits�which he did in a calm, matter-of-fact way�he was as far superior to all other men in male potency as he was in sheer muscular strength. We all listened to him noncommitally; no one was going to lightly suggest that this man was a liar, even in good-humored jest.

  I had been somewhat apprehensive that Theseus and he would no more be able to get along on one small ship than two young bulls in a single pasture; yet, as I should have realized, men are frequently more than animals. Despite their natural rivalry, the two heroes quickly began to evolve a strong friendship in a way that I had not foreseen. But that developed gradually, and its full maturity came later.

  Again, while we were still making our way on foot down to the ship, before we had descended half the distance to the harbor, Heracles spoke to us of a pair of giant snakes that had been sent to kill him in his cradle. We let this incredible tale pass at the time, but a little later, when we were all aboard ship and had some time to spare, we questioned him curiously about this incident. To no avail, for by then he had decided—or so he pretended—that it would be wise to say no more.

  The strong man was very vague about the role of his human parents in his upbringing; he could remember his father and mother, he said, but they seemed to have faded totally from his life long years ago.

  He was sure, he said, that he had been born on Thera. And he had actually never set foot off the island until now, except for a couple of brief boat rides, which he had of course enjoyed in the days when the Bullheads were still in residence, long before making his ill-considered vow never to leave.

  Coming aboard the Athenian ship, therefore, was really a new experience for him. And yet he knew the function of oars, and sails, and weapons, as soon as he saw them. He even, as we realized later, understood something of the sailor's art, enough to help in managing the ship; in one way or another this strange man garbed in a lion's skin had already managed to learn a good deal about the world. I wondered privately if he had been subject to the strong, strange, teaching that can only be imparted by those who belong to the race of the White Bull.

  On his catching sight of our modest shipboard stores, the eyes of Heracles brightened, and he began to tear open skins and boxes of food and devour the contents. Then he stopped suddenly, on realizing that he really ought to have waited for an invitation. This was promptly offered by the king, and the newest member of our crew promptly resumed his feasting, which he topped off by a draught of wine so prodigious that the rest of us gazed at one another in wonder. Any ordinary mortal would have collapsed shortly after such a drink; but Heracles only belched, blinked, wiped his beard with the back of his hand, and pronounced himself satisfied for the moment. Since we were now saddled with the Heraclean appetite, we thought it fortunate that there were other islands nearby where we should have little difficulty in replenishing our supplies. As we sailed out of the silent Theran harbor, Heracles—speaking as clearly as if he had never tasted wine—began to tell us a little about some of the other companions of h
is childhood and early youth, people who like himself and Dionysus had grown up from infancy on Thera under the tutelage of the Bullheads. These included one called Orpheus, who like Dionysus seemed to be a skilled hypnotist; Tiphys, also called the Helmsman, who had an unerring sense of direction; and Idmon, a soothsayer to whom the veils of chance and time were frequently transparent. Where any of these people might be now, Heracles did not know, or so he said. There had been other companions, too, he concluded vaguely; but he was not minded to talk of them just now. I remember the names of Calais and Zetes, Castor and Polydeuces.

  All went smoothly on our voyage to Crete, despite a few minor difficulties with supplies, until we came near the halfway point, where we had an encounter with real pirates.

  There were two large ships full of these buccaneers, else our sturdy-looking Athenian vessel would probably not have been attacked. Altogether our attackers must have numbered at least fifty or sixty men, as each of their vessels boasted about thirty oars—it seemed likely that one of their objectives in pursuing us was to capture another seaworthy vessel and thereby expand their enterprise.

  Surely many poets more eloquent than I have already sung the glory of the Athenian arms upon that day. The pirates had picked the wrong victims this time, though they outnumbered us by about four to one.

  Hastily extracting my wings from their place of concealment, and putting them on again, I armed myself lightly with a few stones, and took off from the rail, ready to drop missiles upon the heads of our attackers if I were unable to frighten them away.

  Better for them if they had been willing to be frightened. Some indeed displayed fear when they saw me hovering birdlike in the air, but by the time I got well into action, the pirate commanders had already committed both of their ships to attacking us.

  It was a sorry parody of a battle, with Heracles and Theseus arrayed against a mere two pirate ships, whose crews were disheartened from the start by the sight of a winged man flying above their heads.

  Apart from a certain amount of fear and confusion I undoubtedly caused among the enemy, my effect on the outcome was actually quite small. The pair of stones I dropped had little effect. But while soaring and hovering above the three ships, I had the ideal position from which to view the progress of the fight.

  As soon as one of the enemy ships had come within bowshot, Heracles plunged into the sea, swam with incredible speed to the attacker and climbed its nearest bank of oars; while clutching six or eight of the long shafts together in his two arms, he succeeded in breaking some of them, and terrorizing a whole bank of rowers, thereby effectively immobilizing the whole ship.

  But only when Heracles was able actually to set foot upon the pirate deck did he reach his full effectiveness in combat. And that was truly a marvel to behold. I saw some arrows actually bounce back from his skin, while others penetrated only a finger's width. Slung stones that would have crushed ordinary flesh and broken normal human bones rebounded from his hide; after the battle he had no worse than pinpricks and bruises to display as wounds.

  Theseus, on the other hand, retained his royal dignity even as he fought. Made of humanly vulnerable flesh inside his bronze armor, he remained aboard his own ship, a commanding figure with sword in hand, bravely defying the enemy, who were so greatly superior in numbers, to try to cross onto our decks. Thus, defending skillfully with his shield, he drew to himself much of the storm of stones and arrows that would otherwise have fallen on our men who were less well-protected than their king. He sustained several wounds, fortunately light. Meanwhile his sturdy Athenian crew were free to man their oars, which they did admirably, pulling their smaller, lighter vessel out from between its two attackers. And still the crew had some time to fire their own missiles back at the foe.

  Meanwhile I, flying above, had little to do but dodge a few arrows and slung stones that were launched at me in midair. None of our shaken adversaries came close to hitting me.

  Within moments after Heracles had gained the deck of the first of the enemy ships, the carnage there amongst the pirates became truly frightful. Putting his god-like strength to effective use, the strong man bestrode their deck with one of their own long oars in hand, making it do the work of scythe and spear and lance. Pirates swarmed toward him at first, and then those few who survived the first passages at arms fell back. In the end, of course, the enemy's rout was total.

  Before the commander of the remaining pirate vessel could begin to comprehend what sort of foe he faced today, his ship too had been boarded by the superhuman attacker, in the same amazing way, and the slaughter had recommenced. Now Theseus gave orders to his oarsmen to close with the remaining enemy, and he and several of his fellow Athenians boarded the foe and were fighting on the pirate's deck when the end came.

  I landed on the second pirate ship at about the time that enemy resistance ceased. Heracles appeared before me, moving through the carnage at the end of the fight as a figure from the underworld, a broken oar in hand, his lionskin torn and hanging from him, his hair and beard and body all smeared and caked with blood, only a very little of which was his own.

  At first our inhumanly powerful recruit was smiling, but that did not last long. Already his chronic tendency to remorse and guilt was showing itself. We had some small difficulty in convincing Heracles that there was really nothing wrong in exterminating pirates to the last man. The crippled survivors who lay about their gory deck we dispatched efficiently, and hurled into the sea. Incredible as it seems, the casualties on our side had consisted of no more than a few light wounds.

  The unequal battle had occupied no very lengthy period of time. And when it was over, we found ourselves in possession of three ships, though with hardly more crew than was required to man the smallest of them adequately. After some discussion, Theseus decided to sacrifice the two larger vessels to Poseidon, setting fire to them after removing from them such piratical stores as we thought might prove valuable. These included not only food and water and wine, but a spare sail that we thought could be made to fit our Athenian mast, and a good selection of abandoned weapons. As to gold and other treasure, we searched both of the enemy hulls thoroughly but were disappointed.

  Then we sailed on.

  As our royal ship drew near to Crete, and even when we came in sight of the chief harbor, we saw surprisingly little maritime activity. Things here were not quite as lifeless as they had been on Thera, but certainly the volume of shipping and of naval activity was considerably down from what it had been when I escaped by wing some months before.

  Flying close to shore to reconnoiter, I was recognized at a distance of two stadia or more by the Bronze Man, and promptly greeted by a series of hurled rocks, the first of which howled past me before I had any indication that my inanimate enemy was anywhere near. It was as if Talus had been waiting for me during all the months of my absence, and was ready to resume hostilities just where he had left off.

  As had been the case on my departure, some of the rocks he hurled missed me only narrowly. I remembered the searing heat-ray, and feared it would be the next weapon turned against me. Obviously it would be suicidal for me to try to approach the island now, and so I turned sharply in midair, deciding to return to the ship.

  This was a natural enough decision, but as I soon realized, it might have been a mistake. It informed our enemy that I was no longer alone, but had returned with a shipful of allies. But where else was I to go?

  Once Talus had made sure that I was connected with this particular ship, he hurled more stones, and larger ones and to a greater range, that threatened to cripple our vessel, or even sink us well offshore.

  We were still at a distance from shore that made it hard for any of us to see the Bronze Man at all, and I remember wishing that at least one of our heroes might be gifted with exceptional eyesight.

  Heracles was not so gifted. But at last, squinting into the distance, he made out the Bronze Man, and said that he had never seen the like of him before, but that a metal man surp
rised him no more and no less than some of the other wonders of the world.

  Soon, when Heracles realized how hard Talus could hurl rocks, our shipmate began to view the situation as a serious challenge. Searching aboard our ship, he soon found some small rocks and a sling with which to respond in kind.

  Regrettably, this hero's efforts with the sling proved to be more of a danger to his shipmates than to our enemy. Several men actually leaped or fell overboard, trying to get out of the immediate danger posed by their own formidable ally. The leather thongs in the mighty hands of Heracles sang through their airy circle with an awesome power, and each rock on his releasing it went shrieking through the air toward the shore faster than any arrow, indeed faster than I could well follow with my sight.

  But all this heroic effort went for naught, because the strong man's accuracy with the sling was very poor.

  Still, a few of the many missiles he hurled came quite close to Talus—I could see a distant splash or two, and puffs of rock-dust bursting on the rocky shore. But the chief result was that our opponent on shore, taking a cue from Heracles, switched to using smaller missiles, and attained better accuracy as a result.

  The duel went on, while the rest of us, even Theseus, could only watch, keeping ourselves low in relative safety, trying to dodge when necessary, and holding our breath. A few of the stones launched by the Bronze Man now began to strike the ship, splintering wood even with a grazing touch, and puncturing sails, so that at last we were forced to put out away from land again.

  Heracles, who had been running out of rocks anyway—his only supply on board was of course the miscellaneous gravel left lying about by other slingers after the encounter with the pirates�was not discouraged. Next he assured us all that he was quite skilled with the bow, which had been available to him for practice during his boyhood on Thera. He had not tried to use the bow to begin with, he said, because he feared there were no suitable arrows on the ship.