Collected Short Fiction, page 374
For Talos, the giant of brass, patrols the coasts of Crete.” The croak became a breathless whisper. “Captain—look!”
Far away toward Knossos, between the blue of the sea and the rising green of the hills, Theseus thought he saw a glancing flash that had the color of brass.
VII.
SNISH slid fearfully off the spar into the sea. His squat brown body was shivering with cold and fear, his huge yellow eyes bulging out.
“My soul!” wheezed the little wizard. “My naked, helpless soul! Why did I let fate drive me out of peaceful Babylon? Captain Firebrand, we are doomed!”
“Don’t drown yourself!” Theseus laughed, just a little uneasily. “That gleam was far off. Perhaps it was only the sun on some housewife’s well-scoured pot.”
Snish clung trembling to the ropes.
“I am wizard enough to know the sight of Talos,” he croaked anxiously. “The brass man is fleet enough to patrol all the coasts of Crete from sunrise to sunset. And wizardry guides his eyes, so no intruders can escape him.
“Oh, if I had stayed a cobbler in far Babylon!”
He pulled himself up beside the spar, and his popping yellow eyes peered over it for a moment toward the shore. But nothing moved there, and he slipped back into the sea.
“I was a cobbler in Babylon,” he wheezed. “But Babylon is an old city. Its empire has crumbled, and all its greatness is but a haunting memory. The caravans pass it by. And business is terrible.”
He sighed, in the water. “Even the wizards in Babylon are poor, for they have no such power as the warlocks of Crete. There was one whose boots I patched for seven years, and he was never rich enough to pay even a copper bit upon his bill.
“It was he who taught me the small arts of wizardry that I know. One day when he brought his boots to be soled, I told him I had no leather and no money. He offered to teach me all his sorcery, if I would only sole the boots. And I did. But I had better remained a cobbler!” His hand quivered on the ropes. “For wizardry made me an exile from my own Babylon.” His voice was a nasal sob. “It cursed me with this perversity of the elements. And now it is bringing the monster Talos down upon me!”
“But you are still a wizard!” Theseus was intently watching the dark shoreline, shading his eyes for another warning glint of brass. “And now I am going to call upon your wizardry. The Cretans have been warned that Captain Firebrand is destined to victory in the games, and all the fleet is hunting for him. But they know nothing of Gothung the Northman, who is the Gamecock’s steersman. You saw him—a squareheaded giant, with long yellow hair.
“Snish, give me Gothung’s likeness!”
Waiting for the change, Theseus looked down at the little brown man shivering in the water. His sword belt began to feel uncomfortable, and he automatically let it out. A heavy strand of hair fell across his face. He saw that it was straw-yellow.
“It is done, Captain Firebrand,” the little wizard wheezed. “But remember—the spell is feeble. A close touch—even a kiss—will make you the hunted pirate again.”
Theseus was staring at his hands. They were not the lean hands he knew, but huge as hams, sun-reddened, freckle-splotched, covered with white-bleached hair.
“Forget Captain Firebrand,” he whispered. “I am Gothung the Northman—a simple mariner, wrecked on the coast of Crete.” He looked down at Snish. “But what of your own guise?”
The little wizard sank lower in the water.
“Not in Crete!” he croaked. “The warlocks of Knossos are Too many and too jealous. The peculiar welcome they reserve for visiting wizards is famous, even to Babylon.” His teeth chattered. “And it is a ghastly thing! No, I am just the poor cobbler, Snish. And I shall attempt no sorcery, master, save what you demand of me.”
THE WIND had carried them on toward the shore. The beach was no more than an arrow-flight ahead, when Snish pulled himself up beside the yard again, and his yellow face went lax with dread.
“Captain—Gothung!” he wheezed faintly. “It is Talos—coming around the headland!”
The little wizard had professed an inability to swim. But now he caught his breath and released the ropes and dived with the skill of an otter. The spar drifted on. Theseus watched the wooded point. And a gleaming metal giant came stalking into view, and waded out through the breakers.
Talos stood twice the height of a man. The metal of his huge body seemed pliant, living; the bright skin flexed as he moved. And the waves that struck his mighty legs hissed away in steam, so that Theseus knew he must have been uncommonly hot from his race to meet them.
“Man,” a vast brazen voice reverberated across the surf, “who are you?”
The eyes of Talos were like holes into a furnace; their yellow glare was blinding. His immense bright face reflected a simple and terrible strength—a strength, Theseus thought, that lay chiefly in his metal thews. With the water bursting into white steam about his naked middle, he waited ahead of the spar.
Theseus looked again for Snish, and began to suspect that the little wizard had transformed himself into a fish. He cupped hands to his lips, and shouted back across the surf: “I am just a simple mariner, trying to reach land from the wreck yonder.”
The burning eyes looked past him, toward the rocks, and the mighty voice of Talos boomed: “What ship is that?”
“That was a pirate,” Theseus told him. “The magical wind of Minos drove it on the breakers last night. I was a prisoner, chained to the oars. I cried out to Minos and the Dark One, and they spared my life.”
The fiery eyes of Talos came back to him. “Who was captain of the pirates?”
“He is a lean tall Achean, with red hair.”
“Was his name Firebrand?”
“The pirates,” said Theseus, “called him Captain Firebrand.”
“Captain Firebrand!” The voice of Talos was like thunder. “Where is he now?”
“He lies on the wreck,” shouted Theseus. “He was wounded in a battle with the fleet, and most of the pirates slain. He was running before the storm, to escape, when the ship went on the rocks. The mast fell across his legs, and pinned him to the deck. He cursed me, when I left him, and mocked the names of Minos and the Dark One.”
Talos waded forward, with the water hissing higher about his bright hot body.
“That is his last folly,” rolled the brazen voice. “For Minos knew that the pirate would approach this coast last night, and he sent me to destroy him.”
The brass man abruptly halted, and his flaming eyes flashed cunningly.
“Talos is no fool,” he boomed. “Are you not one of the pirates yourself, seeking to escape before the admiral takes you for the games or the Dark One?”
“Ask Captain Firebrand,” advised Theseus, “when you find him.”
“I shall ask him,” roared the brass man, “before I pick the limbs from his body. And if you have lied to me you won’t escape. For, mark you, Talos is no fool!”
He waded past the spar. The waves came hissing up over his shoulders. They made white steam about his head, and covered him. Briefly his bright head came up again, as he crossed a bar, and once more vanished.
THE SPAR touched gravel. Theseus splashed ashore. He looked back, wondering what had become of Snish. The little wizard popped out of the water and came stumbling up the beach. His seamed face was blue, and he sobbed painfully for breath.
“Splendid, Gothung!” he gasped. “You lie like a Cretan, already. But I thought I would drown before the brass man passed. Let’s get out of sight before he returns.”
They crossed a wide dusty trail, where enormous prints of metal feet were spaced three yards apart, and started climbing up the steep forested hill beyond. Theseus broke the way, and the short-legged wizard fell panting behind.
Presently a distant brazen reverberation reached Theseus, and there was a far-off crashing among the trees.
With a miraculous second wind, Snish overtook him. “Our brazen friend,” he wheezed, grinning, “who is no fool!”
But Talos did not overtake them, and presently Theseus and his companion crossed the wooded summit and came into view of the valley beyond. Flocks grazed on grassy slopes. Low hills were green with vines and olives, and a stream, below, wandered through fields of wheat and barley. The bright-walled houses of a distant village peered through the groves.
“A beautiful land!” sighed Snish. “It is as fair as the plain about my own far-off Babylon.”
“It is a beautiful land.” The voice of Theseus was grim. “Its beauty slumbers, fast in the bonds of an evil wizardry. But we have come to set it free!”
They went on down into the valley. Snish begged Theseus to leave the Falling Star hidden beside the way. The sword was too splendid, he said, to be carried by any common shipwrecked mariner; it would betray them.
Theseus would not abandon the weapon. But he wound the inlaid hilt with a rawhide thong, to disguise it, and stained the bright blade with soot.
A shepherd gave them a breakfast of barley cakes and ripe cheese and sour wine. When they reached the village, Snish found the chief merchant of the place, and sold one of his green jade bracelets for a handful of silver shekels.
From the village they followed the westward road, toward Knossos. It was a good, stone-paved way. Trains of laden donkeys plodded along it, and sometimes they met a noble in chariot or palanquin.
As the wandering Northman, Theseus spoke to the travelers they met and the peasants toiling in their little fields and vineyards by the way. He found them a busy, pleasant folk; yet all of them were haunted, it seemed to him, with an unceasing dread of the dark powers that ruled Crete.
Terror came into their eyes when a Minoan priest went by, carried by silent slaves in a black-curtained litter. The blue pinch of hunger was on many faces, and some spoke hopelessly of crushing tithes and taxes. All the young folk hid, when a file of black lancers passed, lest they be seized to perish in the games at Knossos.
That night Theseus and the yellow wizard reached the highway that ran southward from Ekoros to Bandos, the second city of Crete, whose revenues were enjoyed by the noble Phaistro. They slept at an inn on the highway.
When they came out of the tavern, next morning, Snish gulped and stared at a notice that a scribe was painting on the plastered wall. The scribe signed it with the double ax of Minos, and Theseus read:
A reward of twenty talents of silver will be paid from the imperial treasury for the head of a certain Achean pirate, called the Firebrand, who was recently cast on the shore of Crete. The guild of magicians, in addition, offers half a talent of silver for the head of a minor Babylonian wizard, believed to be with the pirate.
Snish had turned a pallid green. Theseus caught his trembling arm, and led him out of the little circle of staring pack drivers and peasants, and down the road toward Knossos.
VIII.
KNOSSOS, the dwelling of Minos, was itself a city. The greatest and oldest and most splendid palace in the world, it stood upon a low eminence beside the Kairatos River, three miles above the harbor town. Built and rebuilt for a thousand years, it covered six acres, and its mass rose five stories above the long central court. The wonders of it were known in every land, and the guarded magazines beneath it were rumored to hold the greatest treasure hoard ever gathered.
To seaward of Knossos lay the city of Ekoros, which was the metropolis of Crete. Scattered all about upon the low hills were the villas of the nobles, the great merchants, and the more powerful magicians, their gay-painted walls gleaming through groves of palms and olives.
The harbor town, below Ekoros, walled the river’s mouth with docks and warehouses. There lay the trading ships that sailed to Egypt and Troy and Mycenae and Tiryns and a hundred other coasts, to carry wine and oil and purple cloth and bronze tools and the graceful pottery of Crete, to bring back silver and gold and amber and tin and furs from the north, copper and murex-purple from the islands, papyrus and incense and grain from Egypt, even silk and jade and pearls from the far-off east.
Theseus and Snish paused for a time where the road topped a hill, looking across at the vast rambling maze of the palace, and the crowded houses of sprawling Ekoros, and the busy shipping in the harbor beyond. At the outskirts of the city, below the palace, they could look down into a long oval bowl whose sides were tiers of seats.
“That must be the place of the games,” whispered Theseus. “I shall fight there. And, when I have won, all this will be mine!” He made a broad gesture, over the palace and the city and the harbor, and out toward the sea. “And the reign of the warlocks and the Dark One will be ended.”
“Easy words,” returned the cynical nasal voice of Snish. “But the doing will take more.” His frog-face grinned. “How are you going to get into the games?”
“They are open to any who would challenge the reign of Minos.”
“But none ever do,” said Snish. “Now Minos is searching for Captain Firebrand, because he has a prescience of what might happen in the games. If you volunteer to fight, it will take no wizard to penetrate the guise of Gothung!”
Theseus tugged at the wide thick brush of his yellow beard.
“Then I’ll not volunteer.”
A woodcutter overtook them, driving two donkeys laden with faggots. They spoke a little with him, asking the questions that strangers would ask, and presently he pointed out a grove of olives upon a low hill.
“That is a sacred grove,” he told them. “In the midst of it is a little temple, that covers the most ancient shrine in Crete.” His voice lowered, and his gnarled fingers made a quick propitiatory gesture. “For it is there that the womb of the Earth-Mother opened, and Cybele came forth in her human likeness to be the mother of mankind.”
His short whip cut viciously across the nearest donkey’s rump.
“I have seen Ariadne,” he boasted. “With her dove and her serpent, she comes to the shrine in a white-curtained palanquin.” He cut at the other donkey’s belly. “Ariadne is the daughter of Minos, and the vessel of Cybele. She is a sorceress, and a goddess, and her beauty is as blinding as the sun.”
His brown face twisted into a leer. “When my wood is sold,” he told them, “I will have three drinks of strong wine, and then I am going to the temple of Cybele.” He grinned, and his cracking whip brought blood from the nearest donkey’s flank. “Three drinks of wine, and any temple slut becomes as beautiful as Ariadne.”
THESEUS NODDED at the panting Snish, and they strode ahead again.
“Perhaps Ariadne is a goddess,” he said softly. “But, nevertheless, she is going to be mine—for she is part of the prize that belongs to the victor in the games.”
“Or a part of the bait,” croaked Snish, “that the warlocks use to lure men into the arms of death!”
They crossed a stone bridge, and came into Ekoros. This was the poor section of the city, where dwelt the lesser artisans, small shopkeepers, and laborers from the docks. Flimsy buildings, three stories high, confined a powerful stench to the five-foot street.
Most of the street was a foul, brown mud, the rest a shallow open sewer in which a thin trickle of yellow slime ran through piles of decaying garbage and reeking manure. Flies made a dark cloud above the ditch, and their buzzing was an endless weary sound.
Gaunt women trudged through the mud with jars of water on their heads. Screaming hucksters carried little trays of fruits and cakes, that were brown with crawling flies. Blind beggars screamed for alms. Slatternly dark women screamed conversations out of windows and doorways. Naked brown babies, standing in the mud, screamed for no visible reason at all.
Or perhaps, Theseus guessed from their bloated bellies and pinched cheeks, they were hungry.
“Crete is a splendid empire.” His voice rang hard above the shrieking din. “Knossos is the most splendid building on earth, crammed with treasures of art. The nobles and the merchants and the warlocks lounge in their green-shaded villas. But these are the people of Crete!”
“And a foul lot they are!” Snish held his nose. “They make even the slums of Babylon smell like a garden in bloom. We have money; let’s get on to a better quarter.”
He quickened his pace, but Theseus stopped him.
“Give me the money.”
Reluctantly, Snish surrendered the little handful of tiny dump-shaped silver shekels. Theseus began buying the stocks of astonished hucksters, passing out dates and honey cakes to beggars and shrieking children. Intelligence of this incredible bounty spread swiftly, and soon the narrow street was packed. Snish tugged fearfully at the arm of Theseus.
“Caution, Gothung!” he croaked faintly. “Men with prices on their heads should not gather mobs about them. Come—”
A horn snarled, and his voice died. A hush fell upon the street, disturbed only by gasps and fearful murmurs. The silent mob began to melt past corners and into doorways. A woman slipped to the side of Theseus.
“Come with me,” she whispered. “Hide in my room until the Etruscan guards are gone. I want a strong, brave man again. Once I was in the temple of Cybele. But the high priestess turned me out, because men said that I was more beautiful than Ariadne!”
Theseus looked at her. She was bent a little, and the white-powdered shoulders revealed by her open bodice were thin with years; the rouged face was hollow-eyed and haggard.
“Here is money.” He dropped the rest of the rough silver coins into her lean hand. “But I am seeking Ariadne herself.”
“You think I am too old.” Bitterness cracked her voice, and her fingers closed like brown claws on the silver. “But Ariadne is ten times my age, and more! It is only sorcery that gives her the look of youth and beauty.” She tugged at his arm. “But come,” she urged, “before the goddess overhears our blasphemy. For here she is!”
Then the horn sounded again. The woman fled, lifting her flounced skirt from the splashing mud. Magically, the street had cleared. There was only a lame, naked child, that the rush had pushed into the gutter. It tried to run, fell, lay still, as if too frightened even to scream.
