The White Bull (29 page)

At last, for the first time since the dawn had come without the sun's appearing at all, Theseus ordered me to slip on my wings and scout. It needed courage for me to soar up into that unnatural haze. The cloud was very low over the city and Labyrinth, and the inside of it was unexpectedly warm. The atmosphere there choked me in a way that no normal cloud ever did. I was breathing dust and noxious gases, not watery fog. Yet I determined to press on, and was at last rewarded by a thinning of the shadow above me.

When at last I broke out, I was perhaps higher in the air than I had ever flown before, though it was hard to be sure, as the ground was almost nowhere visible. The higher cloud was still above me, but it was thinner than before. With tears in my eyes I gave thanks to all the gods of creation that the sun and sky still existed, that all the powers of the greatest curse the Bull could devise were unable to destroy them. The cloudscape around me and below me had a magnificence beyond anything I had ever seen, even in the educational visions induced by the Bull.

At last I descended, finally regaining the territory held by my friends. Happily I was able to report to them that above the unnatural blackness, sun and sky existed just as before.

Some of the men whined fearfully: "But what good is that to us if we are never more to see them?"

I tried to be reassuring; what I had seen of the sky had convinced me that eventually, this cloud, like any other cloud, would pass.

Meanwhile we heard that the students of the upper school, chronically rebellious, had turned against their teachers and administrators, and tried to seize control of the school. They had had at least some limited success.

I was worried anew about Thorhild, who had survived the collapse of the Labyrinth dungeons and had managed to rejoin us a day later. Since the fighting had started she had been never far from my side, and indeed she had become my constant companion by day and night. Now, almost the only times we were separated were when I put on my wings and soared into the sky.

For days the panic, the strange smoky darkness in the sky, and the rebellion raged together, each phenomenon seeming to draw strength from the others. Then the darkness weakened. There were no longer periods in which it was absolute, for which we thanked the gods. Yet the unnatural gloom persisted, with only occasional tantalizing periods when the cloud lightened enough for the sun to seem on the verge of breaking through. Meanwhile the aftershocks of the great earthquake continued, though on a diminishing scale. Everywhere in Crete, people going abroad at midday had to grope their way, muttering fearful incantations against the divine wrath. Sometimes armied clashes began, only to break off in mutual terror when the combatants felt some renewed trembling of the earth beneath their feet.

Within a few days, all across the island, or so we heard from harried refugees and other travelers, most of the palaces that had been built by Minos over a period of decades lay in ruins.

And wherever music and wine could be found, the worship of Dionysus raged—there is no other word for the license and the savagery, as they were reported, and as I was able to see with my own eyes on one or two occasions. Comely young men and women alike were kidnapped, and I feared for Thorhild, who was an attractive girl. Also the god himself was reported to have returned to Crete, and to have been seen in several places on the island. It was not impossible, though I believed that Dionysus would not risk the situation as it now stood, and would be conducting his parties elsewhere.

So fragmentary and contradictory were the reports that Theseus had reluctantly come to the same conclusion. He accepted that his plans for a confrontation with Dionysus must be indefinitely postponed. The young king resolved to find glory in the fighting and the danger of the revolt, and when the two of us were alone he once or twice whispered to me his dreams of adding Crete to an Athenian empire. For the moment even his revenge for humiliation at the hands of Dionysus could be forgotten or at least delayed.

And another event took place that caused me to rejoice. Sometimes in the midday darkness it seemed likely that the whole world more than a mile from our shores might have been destroyed, but it was not so. My friend Kena'ani still lived, and with his shipful of shaken men, came sailing into port at Heraklion a few days after the explosion. Fortunately he and his men, on coming ashore, immediately fell in with a rebel patrol and were brought to us.

For once Kena'ani was unnerved, and had no thought of making a profit out of his situation. His ship had been much closer to Thera than to Crete when the smaller island literally exploded.

We believed the testimony of the captain and his crew when they reported that the island of Thera was no more—only a mere fringe of rock was left of it, they said. Eventually we were to learn that they were exaggerating the degree of destruction, but not by very much. Most of the island was indeed gone, totally destroyed in the great explosion. The sea had rushed in, over what had once been solid land, and for months thereafter renewed explosions under water sent geysers of steam up into the clouds, as the gods of sea and earth contended.

But at the time of the great darkness, the people of Crete knew nothing of all this, and they cared less regarding events beyond the shores of their own island. The monumental disaster, as Theseus and others told them again and again, had to be considered as a punishment visited upon the land and people of Crete for their toleration of the unnatural union of their late queen with a beast—no one seemed to think it mattered that the beast had some claim to being some kind of a god.

It was only later, when the great darkness was gone at last, that those disposed to be irreverent wondered aloud why the people who had lived on Thera should have been so punished.

In the time of the greatest darkness and the repeated earthquakes, as I have said, the great majority of the people of Crete turned against the faction of the queen and the Bull.

But the Bronze Man, that we had dared to hope had been destroyed in the avalanche sent down on him by Heracles, returned intact two days later. Heracles speculated that it might have taken Talus that long to dig himself out from the mass of rock that had been precipitated upon him.

Once back in the vicinity of the Labyrinth, Talus once more fought on the side of the White Bull, and Talus was as invincible as ever.

The first squadrons of spearmen and pikemen sent against him by Theseus were slaughtered to a man. No human force survived once it was placed in direct opposition to the metal man. Arrows and slung stones rebounded harmlessly from his bronze skin. As a pursuer he was impossible to shake, even temporarily—unless one could hurl avalanches, or happened to have wings—and he cared no more for kings and heroes than he did for peasants who marched against him only to die with their useless spears in hand.

I was with Theseus when the king surveyed the battlefield a short time after the slaughter. The march and countermarch of our contending armies had moved away, and there was a chance for the commander to try to determine just what had happened here.

A battlefield is never a pretty sight, but this one had a mystery about it that made it especially horrible. Some of the men appeared to have been burned to death, while still an arrow-shot away from Talus.

Theseus had some grim comments to make, and warned me to say nothing of the special horror of the burning. But of course word of the horror got out somehow. Whole units of the military who had deserted the established government and joined our cause, or had wavered in their loyalty, now swung their allegiance back to Bull and queen.

During the next few days we were driven into an ever more constricted territory. Theseus feinted swift attacks upon the Bull and the queen themselves, and caused them to hold Talus in reserve as their personal bodyguard, and only this saved our remaining forces from swift destruction.

Still the time came when the remaining rebel forces in the region of the palace, Theseus and myself with them, were, outnumbered and surrounded, bottled up in a small valley not far from the harbor.

The White Bull had himself carried on his old uncomfortable litter to a high place from which his voice, still powerful, could reach us. He spoke to us sadly, saying that we were doomed to defeat by the science and engineering of a vastly more advanced society. To those of our army who surrendered, he promised that their lives would be spared, and that eventually they would be set free again, after a period of re-education.

It was at this moment, while the Bull was still speaking, that the sun came out in perfect clearness for the first time since the great unnatural darkness had descended. Its rays gleamed impersonally on the bronze-colored and undamaged metal of Talus, who stood by the White Bull's side. This was taken by everyone as a significant omen, and a cheer went up from the loyalist army.

On our side, Heracles still grumbled, and uttered low-voiced challenges to the metal man. Still the two had never yet come into direct personal confrontation, and it seemed unlikely that they ever would before the very end. The orders given by Theseus still stood, and I thought that only they had saved his soldier Heracles from certain destruction in combat against the man of metal.

When the White Bull had finished his speech the fighting resumed, the men on our side now fighting mainly for survival. Few had surrendered, because they were suspicious of the Bulls idea of education, and some of them feared it more than death. Still it was becoming plainer and plainer to everyone that the revolt was a hopeless cause, doomed now to an early collapse.

The fighting, as I say, resumed. Heracles and the Bronze Man once more dueled with missiles, Heracles holding the high ground atop a cliff that was all but impossible for even Talus to scale quickly.

Unfortunately there was not enough loose rock on the height to afford the material for another avalanche. And at last Heracles was stunned, by the flying fragment of a hurled rock that exploded because it hit the cliffside near him with such force.

Looking down from my position of aerial advantage, I saw to my dismay that the loyalist infantry were closing in, and that Theseus too had somehow been knocked out of the fight, at least temporarily. He was down on the ground, and his helmet had been knocked off.

With a sinking heart I realized that in terms of leadership, the main burden of what remained of the resistance had now fallen upon me. Not that I was, or had ever been, a military leader; but my possession of wings gave me a status in the eyes of friend and foe alike, far beyond what the mere possession of a brain had ever done.

I resolved to do my best. I thought that at least, perhaps, I could distract the enemy long enough to give Theseus some kind of a chance to recover.

As I circled nearer over the chief combatants on the ground, dodging arrows and slung stones as best I could, I caught a glimpse of Thorhild watching. From the stillness of the pose I realized that she must be preparing herself for my death as well as for her own.

Talus, methodical and untiring as always, was now climbing upon a minor crag to get himself that much closer to me. I realized at once that he meant to bring his throwing arm and his deadly heat-ray within easy killing distance of his chief remaining enemy. Fear whispered in my heart that winged escape was still easily possible for me, and there was nothing more for me to do. Anger and weariness replied that I might indeed get away for a moment; but hardly more than that. Nowhere on Crete would now be safe for me to land. And I was too weary, too much weakened with the minor wounds I had sustained in recent fighting, to be able to fly far.

Soon, quite soon, I would have to come down out of the sky somewhere, and Talus would be waiting for me when I did. Then, if not sooner, he would kill me as he had killed my son.

Something, a great shadow of some kind, came across the face of the sun, and I turned in the air to look up and behind me, even now alarmed to think the mass of atmospheric dust and ashes might be returning. But this was only an ordinary, or almost ordinary, summer cloud, presaging and carrying rain. No help there in omens for the lost cause.

I thought I heard the voice of Icarus, crying his fear and pain to me, crying out of the fresh wind that blew in advance of the approaching thunderstorm.

The wet mists came closer and I rose into them. Dodging flying in and out of the lowering cloud, I maneuvered as if to reach a position from which I could handily dive and attack the litter of the Bull�and that of the queen—as they were being carried away from their victory.

As I came marginally closer, Talus aimed his heat-ray and fired it at me. There was a violet burning of the air around me, and a violet afterimage in my eyes. Sudden, blasting heat seemed to make the vaporous cloud boil around me as I dodged through it as best I could.

Thunder crashed again. I remembered the Bull, talking to me in a friendly way long months ago, telling me that his people came from some world where for some reason there were no thunderstorms or lightning.

I prayed to Gaea, the goddess of Earth, and what I can only describe as divine guidance came to me�perhaps some special education from the Bull, received earlier, helped me to the essential insight. The voice of my dead son spoke to me again, out of the steaming whirlwind that the cloud around me had become. This time I was assured that the gods of earth had heard my prayers.

I saw blue fire, such as will sometimes visit the mast of a ship at sea, dance along my own limbs, radiating vibrantly from each of my moving wingtips.

Talus fired his beams at me again.

But at that very moment the blessed Gaea entered the combat on my side. Her great spear flashed in the air, blinding and deafening me, but striking down my enemy. Unable to see clearly, still I sensed the dazzling pathway of that spear-thrust, I felt and understood the force that followed the electrified track made in the air by the much smaller searing beam of Talus, the overwhelming force that traced that track down from the cloud straight to its grounded source, and blasted it, almost into nothingness.