Thomas Swann - Day of the Minotaur

“ Ajax,” I boomed. “In the name of the Princess Thea, I challenge you to mortal combat!”

No true warrior, least of all a battle-loving Achaean, can ignore a personal challenge, and Ajax, in spite of his ignorance, lechery, and dirt, was not a coward. He lost no time in answering my summons, though I cannot say that he exactly charged me; rather, he squeaked: “Minotaur, here I am!” and tensed himself to receive my blows.

Somewhat doubtfully protected by my shield of cow’s hide, I charged him with the anything but doubtful deadliness of my double-headed axe, its bronze blade smelted and sharpened in my own shop. My battle-axe was much less wieldy than Ajax’s sword, but much more deadly if I landed a blow. You never jab with an axe like a fisherman spearing fish— you swing and slash in great half-circles, from side to side or head to foot. He jabbed, withdrawing: I swung, advancing. When his potent shield deflected my blows, I discarded my useless framework of hide and pressed him with such abandon that he dropped his shield and clutched the hilt of his sword with both of his hands. The muscles which Thea had once admired in my arms tautened to the struggle; leaped beneath my skin like the slashing claws of a crab. You know, I am clumsy when I walk in the house. I stumble on carpets and trip on stairs. I overturn pitchers of wine and spill bones in my lap. But a furious rhythm directed me as I lunged and parried, lunged and parried, gaining a foot, holding my ground, gaining, holding, gaining. The clash of metal became a martial music which stirred my feet, my hands, my torso to the long exhilarating dance of war. And Ajax started to tire. He blinked the sweat from his hairy-browed eyes; he gasped like a diver wrestling an octopus.

“ Xanthus,” he called at last. “Pluton, help me!” and two of his cohorts, battling a wounded Centaur, leaped to defend their chief. Two, mind you! Three men against one Minotaur. I swung my axe in a rapid, deadly circle. But the earless Xanthus used his sword like a spear and threw it at my legs. It slashed me above the ankle. I gave such a roar that a momentary silence settled across the field; Achaeans and Centaurs poised between their blows and stared at me with gleeful or sorrowful eyes; awaited the fall of the Beast which had walked like a Man.

While Xanthus recovered his sword, Ajax and Pluton pressed their attack. They thought, no doubt, to find me lamed and helpless. But my roar had vented anger and not defeat. The side of my axe bit into Pluton’s neck; in the handle, I felt the spasms of his death-struck body. I had no time in which to recover my axe. Ajax came at me with murder in his hand. He looked like a hungry sphinx. The stench of him struck me in the face.

“ Ajax,” I railed. “You ought to take a bath.” I lowered my horns and butted him off his feet.

Then I heard Chiron’s cry: “Withdraw, withdraw to the woods!”

Withdraw? Unthinkable! Had not my forefathers said: “Never turn tail until you have lost your horns?”

But I saw the reason behind the command. A second army had entered the field.

A hundred fresh Achaeans had entered the field. Probably Ajax had lured them from the coast with promises of gold and slaves: Centaurs to draw their chariots; Panisci to sell in the marketplace at Pylos. Our retreat was rapid but not disorganized. We left behind us five dead Centaurs, their limbs awry in the grim ungainliness of death, and yet their eyes still open and seemingly as sentient as when they had scanned a new network of irrigation ditches or studied the secrets of the Yellow Men. Fortunately, the reinforcing Achaeans did not follow us into the trees; they seemed content to succor their battered comrades, who had lost a fifth of their numbers to hooves and battle-axes.

“We shall go to defend our town,” said Chiron, when a grove of carob trees had separated us from the hateful field. “Eunostos, why don’t you get your friends and join us? We have enough food to withstand a long siege. Remember how we beat off the wolves for three whole weeks?”

“You might bring us a few skins of beer,” whispered Moschus, who followed close on my tail.

“If I stay in my house,” I explained, “we will make the Achaeans divide their strength. Small as it is, it can stand a siege.” I could not admit that I doubted the strength of their town, in spite of its bristling moat.

“Do as you please,” said Chiron, though Moschus audibly grumbled. “I hope your little friends can draw a bow.”

“They are both good fighters. And of course they blame themselves for the war. Thea offered to surrender herself to Ajax.”

“Not a bad idea,” muttered Moschus, but Chiron silenced him with a glare.

“Tell them they aren’t to blame. Sooner or later, Men were bound to attack us. We are too unlike them—our hearts as well as our bodies. Nature to us is sometimes irascible, sometimes unpredictable, but still—a friend. To them, in spite of all their talk about worshiping the Great Mother, she is either a slave or a master. They fear her unless they can put her in chains.”

I traveled home by way of Pandia’s house. Her town was undefended, and I wanted to offer her asylum in my trunk. It was not really a town; a hamlet, no more, with a dozen hollowed logs placed in a ring around a carefully cultivated berry path—blackberries for food, bearberries for a bracing, astringent drink. The patch was crisscrossed with narrow paths and thickly quilled with posts where baskets of berries could be hung on wooden hooks. The open ends of the logs confronted the patch and allowed the owners to keep a watchful eye for the stealthy crows which came with twilight.

I crossed the crooked stream which carried snow from the mountains and laved the town in a cool, perpetual breeze. No one greeted me; no one contested my approach. I paused at a low, thorn-rimmed fence and raised the latch of the gate with as much noise as possible to announce my arrival. The back ends of the logs, sealed with clay and stained with umber, stared at me like lidless eyes. I walked between two of the logs and emerged within the circle and facing the front doors. Each log was high enough to accommodate a standing Bear Girl and long enough to enclose two rooms, their rounded walls hewn and polished to a smooth finish. The first room served as a pantry, whose open shelves abounded with jars of honey and bowls of berries, and also with trays of freshly smoked fish, a little rank to the nostrils of a Minotaur. The second room, invisible behind a curtain of dried black-eyed Susans strung on silken strands, I knew to be the sleeping quarters or, in the term of the Girls, the Repositorium. One of the Girls was moving drowsily through the berry patch and filling a pail which hung from her paw.

“Where is Pandia?” I asked without polite preliminaries.

She pointed to one of the logs. “Asleep. It’s the Afternoon Repose, you know. I was sleeping too till I dreamed about dinner.”

Stooping to half my normal height, I entered the porch of the designated house, flung aside the curtain of black-eyed Susans, and found Pandia asleep beneath a coverlet of rabbit skins, with a pot of Cretan Bears-tail twisting its yellow and purple flowers on a table beside her couch.

“Pandia?” I called. “PANDIA.” She did not stir.

“Bears,” I said.

She threw back the coverlet and almost overturned the pot of flowers. “Bears?”

“Human bears; Achaeans. They have won the first battle and entered the forest. Would you like to come to my house and stay with Icarus and me?”

“Yes.”

“Would your friends like to visit the Centaurs? They would be much safer there.”

“We don’t like the pigs. Besides,” she added, “the Achaeans may not bother us. There is nothing here they could want.”