Poul Anderson - The Dancer from Atlantis

Reid went aft to his, quartermaster. “You remember the drill,” he said. “Aim for the, center, but not straight. That could leave us hung up on them. The idea is to rip out the stakes and sheer off”

“Like a bull goring a bear,” Erissa said.

“May that be no evil omen for you, Sister,” the man responded.

“Gods forfend!” Dagonas called, at his bench just below. Erissa smiled down upon him. Reid saw how smooth and lithe the boy’s body was. His own—well, he kept in fair shape. And Erissa was clutching his hand.

The craft, began to move. The coxswain’s chant gathered speed until water seethed white and the hull sprang forward. Abruptly the target:was horrible in its nearness. As directed, it tried to take evasive action. As expected, the rudder-and-tiller combination was so much more efficient than steering oars that no escape was possible.

Reid’s people had rehearsed the maneuver often, against nets supported on logs. Oars on the inner side snapped erect those on the outer continued driving. The noise and shock were less than he had anticipated. Disengaging was awkward—obviously more practice needed there—but it was managed. By then, the struck galley lay heeled far over. Wooden and unloaded, it didn’t sink; but presently it floated awash and the waves were pounding it to pieces.

Cheers pealed from the victors. The vanquished were too busy, swimming to the boats for a response. Reid and Sarpedon made a thorough inspection. “No harm that I can see,” the yardmaster declared. “This ship by itself could drive off a fleet.” He embraced the American. “What you’ve done! What you’ve done!”

Erissa was there. “You are a god,” she sobbed. They dared not kiss in public, but she knelt and held him around the knees.

Again Atlantis swarmed with preparations for festival. But this was the great one. In the resurrection of Asterion lay that of the world and its dead.

First he must die and be mourned. Forty days before the vernal equinox, the Keftiu hooded altars, screened off caves and springs, bore through the streets their three holy symbols reversed and draped in black, rent their garments, gashed their flesh, and cried on Dictynna for mercy. For thirty days thereafter, most of them abstained from meat, wine, and sexual intercourse; and in their homes, lamps burned perpetually so that beloved ghosts might find the way back.

Not that business stopped. After all, seaborne traffic was starting up again. And however devout, the Keftiu were incapable of long faces for many hours in a row. And the last ten of the forty days were to be pure celebration. The god would not yet have come from hell to claim that Bride Who was also his Mother and Grandmother, but man’s forward-looking joy helped make sure that he would.

Beneath somberness and decorum, excitement bubbled even on the temple isle. Soon the maidens would take ship for. Knossos, to dance with the bulls and the youths: soon, soon. Erissa worked her class daily. Reid stood by, gnawing his nails.

Why did Lydra keep refusing to see him? She couldn’t be that busy. Lord knew she had ample time for Diores, when the Achaean showed up on his frequent missions. Why was she doing nothing about evacuation? She said, when Reid got together the boldness to grab a chance to drop her a few words that she and he alone understood, she said she was in touch with the Minos; and true, boats shuttled across the sixty-mile channel between, written messages borne by male old-timers in her service who were, both illiterate and close-mouthed; she said the matter was under advisement, she said.

Meanwhile the volcano spewed smoke and, ever oftener, flames. Its fine ash made the fields dusty. Sometimes at night you saw fresh lava flow glowing from the mouth; next morning you saw new grotesqueries on those black flanks, and steam puffing white from fumaroles. The ground shivered, the air rumbled. In the taverns men spoke dogmatically and at length of what precautions should be taken against the possibility of a major eruption. Reid didn’t notice that anybody actually did much. Of course, they never imagined what the blowup was going to be like. He himself couldn’t.

If he could tell them!

Well, at worst there were plenty of well-found boats. Practically every Atlantean family owned one and could put to sea, provisioned, on a few hours’ notice. But they couldn’t keep the sea too long; and he didn’t know just when the hammer would fall; and he did know that the time was very short now for him and Erissa to stand on a starlit hilltop, so close together that Pamela and the children couldn’t get in between, and for her to breathe, “We’ll be wedded right after the festival, right after, my darling, my god,” while the mountain growled at his back unheeded save for the glow it cast upon her.

Rain fell anew, but gently, little more than a springtime mist that quickened the earth and if it lasted until morning would not hinder the procession of the maidens to the ships for Crete. But beyond its coolness and the damp odors it awoke lay absolute night.

Lydra confronted Reid beneath the Griffin Judge. In the lamplight her black gown was like another shadow, against which her face thrust startlingly white. From her throne she. said: “I summoned you this late on purpose, exile. There are none to hear us but the guards beyond the door.”

Reid knew with a chill: There need never be any to eavesdrop. The door is thick. Though not too thick for those men to hear a call. And they are wholly vowed to her service.

“What has my lady in mind?” he got forth.

“This,” the Ariadne told him. “You thought to embark tomorrow with your giddy Erissa, did you not? It shall not be. You will remain here.”

Suddenly he knew that his cage had no doors.

“You have been less than candid,” she said. “Did you imagine Diores and I would never talk about your companions in Egypt and so learn what you were withholding about the woman? These are uncanny matters. If you did not tell the whole truth, how can we suppose you did not lie? That you are, not the enemy of him the gods have chosen, Prince, Theseus?”

“My lady,” he heard himself cry, “Theseus is making a tool of you. He’ll abandon you as soon as you’re not needed—”

“Hold your mouth or you’re dead!” she yelled. “Guards! Guards, to me!”

He knew, he knew: Long before, the man with the lion eyes had come into her aloneness and promised her what no other man would have dared, that he would make her his queen if he could: but for this, she must needs aid him in bringing about the downfall of her king.

Why didn’t I see it? he shrieked in his head. Because I wasn’t used to intrigue, but mainly because I didn’t want to kick apart the glittery little paradise she let me spin around myself, he whispered in his head.

He realized: When she passed on to Diores and so to Theseus the word I gave her, that was Lydra’s required service—that, and whatever help she’s been lending to a conspiracy among the metics and the disaffected on Crete, and now her locking me away lest I break the silence.

Through how many springtime nights, while her maidens dreamed and whispered in their dormitory of young men they would meet, through how many years has she prayed for a chance like this? And to what gods?

The ships were coming in. Already the Piraeus strand was full and newcomers must lie out at anchor. There too was Oleg’s great vessel; it could be beached, but with difficulty, and the Russian wanted to avoid curiosity seekers, ‘ thieves, and blabbermouths as much as possible. Most crews pitched tents on the nearby shore and walked to Athens for sightseeing and amusement. But on any given day, many men lounged in those camps.