Atalanta and the Arcadian Beast

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

NIGHT

LOWERING HER BOW, ATALANTA gave a sigh of relief. The noisemaker was Orion, with Evenor close on his heels. Both men had grazes and cuts all over their arms and legs. Evenor’s tunic was torn almost in two and blood was trickling down his leg as well as his arm. But somehow both men still had their packs and their weapons.

“Thank the gods you found us!” Melanion exclaimed.

“Two of you dragging a wounded, bleeding man,” said Orion as the hunters squeezed through the cleft. “You weren’t difficult to track. Even at dusk and in the rain.” He glanced around. “You did well to find a defensible position.”

“It was Melanion who found it,” said Atalanta.

Orion grunted approval. “That overhang will not only shelter us from the rain, but will also keep the mantiger from attacking from above.”

“And the gap can be easily defended,” Evenor added.

“What about Urso?” Atalanta asked anxiously. “What happened to him?”

Orion looked puzzled.

“The bear,” Evenor explained to Orion, then turned to answer Atalanta. “He was badly scratched and bitten, but when I glanced back, he was running off into the trees and the mantiger didn’t seem to be going after him.”

“You know this bear?” Orion asked, his eyebrows making mountains of surprise.

She nodded. “Of course he ran off. He only came to protect me.”

“And a good thing, too,” said Evenor. “Without his help, I doubt any of us would have escaped.”

“We need no help from an animal,” said Orion with a scowl as he gathered what little dry tinder was about. He added some larger branches from the fallen tree. Then he made a quick fire, sparking it with an extra spear point against his whetstone.

When the fire was going, he knelt over Ancaeus, who was curled up into a ball and moaning. Roughly pulling the man’s arms away, he examined the prince’s injuries.

“You’ll live,” Orion said, “but you’ll be no more use to us on this hunt.”

He took out his sleeping roll and cut it into strips with his knife. Then he used the strips of cloth to bind up the prince’s more serious wounds and, with what was left, he bandaged Melanion’s head.

“Perhaps my uncle was right,” said Melanion gloomily. “Maybe we should have brought more men along.”

“More men, more dead,” Atalanta said.

Orion stood up and stretched his great muscles. “The girl is right. We would have fallen all over one another in that small space.” He was silent for a moment, then said with brooding determination, “The beast took us by surprise. Tomorrow we’ll surprise it. First thing in the morning we’ll dig a pit, set snares, lay out bait. It won’t find us napping this time.”

“A pit?” Atalanta couldn’t believe it and shook her head. “A pit won’t be any use against a flying creature.”

“That thing may have wings,” Orion explained slowly, “but it’s still big and heavy. It takes time and effort to get aloft at that size. You’ve seen its tracks. It walks more than it flies.”

“But Atalanta has the right of it,” Melanion said, glancing her way. “Even if it falls into the pit, it will fly right out.”

Evenor understood first. “It won’t have room to stretch its wings.”

Nodding, Orion added, “And we must make sure it doesn’t live long enough to try.”

Ancaeus groaned. “Waste of time. That thing can’t be killed by normal means.”

Atalanta was inclined to agree with him. The one thing that kept bothering her, though, was why the beast had attacked them at all. That hadn’t been its way before. It had killed her father when he threw a spear at it, and maimed Goryx when he’d bumbled into it. But now it had changed its hunting pattern, which was strange indeed. And if it had attacked once, it would do it again. She couldn’t see it waiting for them to dig a pit. The question was—who was it after? And why?

Ancaeus groaned again. “We’re all dead, I tell you.”

But Orion had had enough of Ancaeus. “Has the last of your feeble courage ebbed away, Prince?”

“Courage has nothing to do with it,” Ancaeus said, trying to sit up and failing. “Don’t you understand? This is the will of the gods.”

There was a long silence in the cave until Atalanta stood and went over to stand next to the fallen prince. “You know why the beast is here, don’t you?”

Already pale from loss of blood, Ancaeus turned pure white and averted his face from the others. He groaned as if in great pain. “My brother angered the gods. He told me that the beast won’t disappear until it has been bought off with our family’s blood.”

Only your own blood can save the kingdom now, the words of her dream.

“I thought the beast seemed to be going for you,” said Evenor.

“That’s why Hierax was watching over me,” Ancaeus said. “Iasus ordered him to.”

Orion reached over and pulled the wounded prince to his knees. “It’s time for the whole story, Ancaeus. We’ve been battling half blind. Tell us everything you know.”

Ancaeus groaned again and closed his eyes. “More than a dozen years ago,” he began, “Queen Clymene fell pregnant. Iasus was overjoyed and awaited the birth of the son who would inherit the kingdom. When instead the child was a girl, he raged against the gods and sent Hierax to put the child out on the mountain, saying, ‘Let the gods save her or let her die. Her fate isn’t in my hands but theirs.’ He told the queen the child had been stillborn and, indeed, that was the story everyone heard, but the gods knew the truth.”

Hierax! Atalanta thought, her whole body cold. Had he hung the ring around her neck so that if she survived she might one day reclaim what was hers?

Melanion had been keeping a watch out the front of the cave, but now crept closer. “This isn’t a story I know, Uncle.”

“It was hardly a tale the king wanted told,” the prince said. “But Clymene wept for so many days, that Iasus’ heart was softened and he sent me along with Hierax to retrieve the child. When we got there, no trace remained of the infant, but there were bear tracks all around the spot. Obviously she’d been killed and dragged off.”

Now Atalanta felt hot and then cold and then hot again.

“Uncle, that’s an awful story,” said Melanion. “A girl child abandoned by a distraught father. But—it all happened years ago. What has this to do with what’s going on now?”

Orion had taken to pacing in the small space. “Yes,” he growled, “what has it to do with the mantiger?”

Ancaeus sank back against the wall. “What is time to the gods? They laugh at our calculations.”

“Go on, go on,” Orion said, losing patience with the prince.

Ancaeus wiped a hand across his mouth before continuing. Then, clearing his throat, he said, “For the next thirteen years, Iasus’ efforts to produce a son came to nothing.”

“The beast,” Orion snarled. “Tell us of the beast.”

Ancaeus nodded. “I am getting there. The story is unfolding. Iasus prayed to all the gods, but still Clymene remained barren. Then one day a stranger arrived at the palace, a traveler from Phoenicia in the East, an oily and disreputable creature I thought, but Iasus was taken by him. The man said he was a priest of the dread Astarte, a goddess of fertility and childbirth. He told Iasus that if he built a shrine…”

“Arrrrrr!” Orion bent, picked up a small rock, and hurled it angrily at the wall. “I have seen this shrine. And the ruined statue of Astarte.”

“It was Artemis who smashed it,” Atalanta said, the words seeming to come out of her mouth on their own.

They all turned to her, staring.

“How do you know that?” Melanion asked.

“I…I dreamed it,” she said.

“Dreams—pah!” Orion spit to one side.

“But my brother had a dream, too,” Ancaeus said. “Artemis came to him and told him that because he had worshiped a foreign god, the whole kingdom would be punished. She said only his blood…”

“…could save the kingdom,” Atalanta finished for him. She leaned toward him. “That was in my dream, too.”

“But what does it mean?” Melanion asked.

“Iasus thought the dream was quite clear,” Ancaeus told them. He was sweating now, for the fire had quite warmed up the cave. “He said it meant that only one of his kin can kill the beast. So he sent me to do it, having no closer blood relative. But I have feared all along that Artemis really meant that the beast can only be destroyed once Iasus and all his blood are slain.”

“The gods always speak in riddles,” Evenor said. “It pleases them to puzzle us.”

“You all put too much credence in the gods,” Orion said. “There is nothing they can send against us that can’t be stopped by one good spear thrust.” He stared at each of them in turn, as if daring them to argue with him. When no one did, he slowly nodded, satisfied that he’d established his authority.

“Now eat,” he said, “and get some sleep. I’ll take the first watch and the last. Atalanta will take the second watch, Evenor the third.”

“I can take a turn,” Melanion said.

“We need strength at the door and a huntsman’s eye,” Orion said, his voice coldly distant. “I judge that you have neither.”

“But…”

“And you are also one of Iasus’ blood,” Atalanta said.

“Oh!” Melanion suddenly looked shaken.

“I am the leader,” Orion added. “And therefore I make the rules. And no one—” he glared at Melanion—“no one has the right to question me.”

No one did.

“In the morning,” Orion finished, “I’ll give each of you your tasks and we shall finish this business at last. This I promise.”