The White Bull (24 page)

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 surprised 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.

But when we looked for the bow he had brought with him from Thera, we found it had been unaccountably lost during the struggle with the pirates.
Of course we had aboard no replacement weapon that was worthy of his strength. He broke several bows, as well as several borrowed strings, before he gave up in frustration at their weakness, and sat down in a black mood to sulk. The owners of the ruined weapons did not quite dare to protest openly.

Naturally I had already begun to speculate on the best way, if I could be given the necessary materials, tools, and time, to create a weapon worthy of this warrior's power. But lacking a workshop aboard our ship there was nothing I could do to solve the problem.

One look at the face of Theseus convinced me that there was no hope of convincing him to abandon his hunt for Dionysus. He remained determined to go ashore on Crete, and so we faced the immediate problem of how to get ourselves ashore alive.

Heracles, as usual, was no help at all in planning. He continued to sulk, grumbling and mumbling that he had to find some way of coming to grips with his own most challenging enemy ashore, while remaining faithful to his new oath of obedience to our king. Theseus had already forbidden the strong man to simply swim ashore and hurl himself at the foe.

Theseus shared Heracles's impatient attitude, but approached the problem somewhat more constructively, as befitted his position as a military commander, his royal standing, his much greater experience in the world—his formal education in the school of the Bull may have had something to do with it, but I am not sure.

Before long the well-schooled King of Athens was able to come up with a plan that at least satisfied himself. Theseus decided that we should stand well away from the land until darkness fell. Then I would fly ashore by night, coming to earth at some spot well inland, where he intended to meet me later.

Meanwhile our ship, under command of the Athenian mate, would sail round the island, while Theseus, Heracles, and anyone who wanted to join them dropped off one at a time and swam ashore under cover of darkness. The mate and whatever crew remained aboard would keep the ship in Cretan waters, and try the shore again and again at various landing-places around the island.

No one voiced objections to this scheme�chiefly I suppose because none of us could suggest a better one—and we began to put the royal design into effect. But just before I took off from the rail, while the ship was coming close to shore, we were at last struck directly by a sizable missile from the hands of the Bronze Man. It was a large rock that stove in two of our deck planks, though luckily it did not penetrate the hull. Our simple assumption that the darkness of night would offer us protection from his bombardment was shown to be a fallacy.

But our heroes were not men who could be so easily forced into retreat. Heracles vowed that nothing was going to keep him from eventually coming to grips with his terrible opponent. Yet the strong man was still under his vow of obedience to Theseus, which prevented him from immediately leaping into the water and charging the enemy.

He was soon in action, though. Shortly after my departure on wings (as I learned later) Heracles, sitting on one plank and paddling with another, was able to make such speed through the water that he managed to get ashore without encountering Talus directly—this may have been due largely to the fact that Talus was coming after me instead, as I flew inland. Fortunately for me some formidable cliffs stood in the Bronze Man's way, and one thing he could not do was fly.

Theseus meanwhile also came safely ashore by swimming, though in the process he had to leave his armor either in the ship or on the bottom of the sea. But he counted on being able to acquire more weapons once he had the chance.

Knowing nothing of what might be happening behind me, but trusting in the Fates, I flew inland, over the firesparks of cottages and camps, and came down, as my king had planned, somewhere in the hills.

I had come back to Crete, back to the soil in which I had buried Kalliste, whom I loved. Crete was also the land where I had watched our son grow up as far as he would ever grow. And yet my thoughts on returning were not chiefly of grief and loss, or even of danger; this coming back felt in a strange way like coming home.

As I winged my way inland over the firesparks of that darkened coastline, I found that I was leaving most of my fear behind me. Somehow, during the long journeying from Sicily, my awe of the Bronze Man and the other dangerous powers that might now rule in this island had diminished. By degrees, especially during the last stages of the journey, something of the fury and determination of King Theseus had caught in my heart and brain, and now I found I had abandoned my timid wish to flee immediately to the safety of a snug workshop somewhere in Athens.

You must understand that I make no claim that I was free of fear entirely.

There were mountains ahead of me now, and little enough moonlight by which to see their gray and ghostly shapes. I spent another hour or more in dark loneliness aloft, seeking a good place to come down. I wanted a place not too far from my ultimate goal, the arranged rendezvous which was not far from the House of the Axe. At the same time I thought it vitally important that I not be seen on landing. At length I chose a hillside that appeared in darkness to be uninhabited, in a region that I thought would be within a day's walk of the rendezvous.

It was not without some trepidation that I managed my landing in the dead of night. Getting my feet safely on the earth was a difficult task, and I was forced to abort my first landing attempt, when a darkened shepherd's hut loomed up in front of me at the last moment. But I switched my attentions to another hillside nearby, and at last I accomplished my goal successfully, my sandals crunching and sliding on gravel as I stumbled to a stop.

Once I had attained solid footing, I looked around me as best I could in the faint moonlight, then cautiously removed my wings and rolled them up. I was unable to see much, but I smelled familiar Cretan vegetation, and heard the cry of a nightbird that I had often heard from my window in the palace when my beloved Kalliste and Icarus were with me.

All seemed peaceful; apparently my arrival had caused no alarm. But somewhere, a few hours away at most, Talus had sought to find and kill me. And if half of the stories that I had heard since my departure were true—and I knew of no reason to disbelieve them all—then somewhere on this island now, probably at the center of the Labyrinth that I had built, the White Bull was still alive. If the Bull was still alive he was almost certainly my mortal enemy, despite all the soft words and the worrisome gift I had had from Minos. And I considered the Bull, being intelligent, a vastly more dangerous enemy than Talus. I knew that the Bronze Man had no thoughts, no plans, no desires of his own; if he had sought to kill me and had killed my son, it was only because the doctor of education had ordered him to attack us.

Shortly after I came to earth, the moon went down behind the mountain to my west, and the darkness of the night intensified. I sat waiting on the hillside till nearly sunrise, when something like a path became visible on the slope beneath me. Then I began to walk downhill.

The point of rendezvous where I was to meet Theseus and Heracles was near the summit of one of the lower hills in the vicinity of the palace at Knossos, and I thought I now knew exactly the best way to reach it from my present location without encountering unnecessarily large numbers of people, or drawing undue attention to myself. Theseus, who had selected the place, had given me the impression that he knew it well. Perhaps, I thought, that resulted from his having held secret rendezvous there with Ariadne or Phaedra. Or perhaps with both of them.

As the light increased, I found myself making my way among familiar-looking Cretan farmsteads, orchards, and vineyards. Of course I was now carrying my wings concealed in a small pack on my back. When I came to a handy thicket, I paused, and with a bronze knife I had borrowed from one of the sailors on the Athenian ship, cut myself a traveler's staff. Then I pressed on.

As soon as full daylight overtook me on the road I began to encounter small numbers of people. They were peasants and bird-catchers, women fetching water, and young priests climbing to a mountain shrine. No one appeared surprised to see me, and I had no reason to think that I was recognized. Each time I met someone, we exchanged nods or gestures of greeting. Once or twice, when I thought some useful information might be obtained, I approached the other party boldly and spoke to them; each time we exchanged a few words. And I learned what I considered valuable facts, along with the usual hearsay and rumor.