Atalanta and the Arcadian Beast (17 page)

“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.”

T
HE THUNDERSTORM WAS PASSING
now, but even as the clouds cleared, night rolled in across the wine-dark sky. Atalanta found a spot in the cave across from Melanion and next to Evenor, and circled it like a dog getting ready for sleep. Ancaeus was stretched out at her feet, dozing fitfully, exhausted by his wounds.

Lying down across the entrance to their little den, his spears on his lap, Orion was clearly ready to defend the gap should the mantiger try to take the cave.

Atalanta’s mind was reeling, her thoughts flying about like leaves in a gale. She’d suspected the truth of her parentage the moment she’d seen the royal banner. The queen’s face in the morning light had confirmed those suspicions. Still Atalanta had refused to really credit such a possibility until now.

Now she could look away from the truth no longer. Iasus was her father, Queen Clymene her mother, and the child in Clymene’s womb was her brother.

But how could she love them when they had given her away with such ease? Her real mother and father were the ones she’d buried by the little house in the woods.

She thought about all this muzzily, fighting sleep; but eventually sleep won the battle, though it was a sleep haunted by dreams. In her dreams Atalanta saw Queen Clymene lying prostrate on her bed, hands across her milky breasts, weeping for the loss of her child. She heard the baby on the hillside crying out in hunger and in fear, its wails growing louder and louder until she was startled from her dream by the noise.

Only then did she realize that what she was hearing was no dream-child at all. It was the sobbing of a grown man.

She sat up quickly in the half dark, wondering who among them could be weeping so. Prince Ancaeus in pain? Melanion in fear? Evenor missing his family?

“What’s wrong?” she called out.

“Are we being attacked?” That was Evenor, his voice fuzzed by sleep.

“Atalanta, is that you?” Melanion called.

Prince Ancaeus struggled up, leaning heavily on one arm. “What? What? What?”

The awful cries went on and on.

There was only one of them left who hadn’t responded.

“Orion!” they all said together.

The great hunter, clutching his head and screaming in pain, was suddenly outlined against the lightening sky.

“Aieeeee! Aieeeee!”

It was an awful cry that echoed inside the little cave until it sounded as if his voice were coming from everywhere. He stood shakily, lurching from side to side, slapping at his right ear, shaking his head till his hair stood up like flames.

“Aieeeee! Aieeeee!”

He bounced against the stone walls, staggering as if drunk, his limbs trembling.

“Aieeeee! Aieeeee!”

Then all at once he fell to the ground and lay still.

“Orion—what is it?” Melanion scrambled toward him.

But Atalanta was already there at the body, cradling Orion’s head in her lap. She watched as a small shape dropped past her arm and scuttled away across the ground. Holding out her hand, she stopped Melanion from coming any closer.

“Scorpion!” she cautioned, setting Orion back down on the stone floor and standing up carefully.

It was the most dangerous kind of scorpion, its back marked with a pattern of green and red, and its tail the length of her hand. The deadly stinger was curved forward over its body, twitching, as if looking for another victim.

“Keep still!” she hissed at the others.

Pulling out her knife, she waited for a second, then leaned over and drove the blade right through the scorpion’s jointed body, impaling it. Its pincers and eight legs wriggled helplessly until Melanion picked up a rock and crushed its head with a single blow.

Evenor hurried over and put his ear to Orion’s mouth, listening for a breath that didn’t come. Atalanta laid a hand over his heart. She couldn’t find any beat.

They sat in that attitude for almost an hour, silent, not knowing what else to do. Then dawn broke across the valley and by its light they could all see that Orion’s ear was red and swollen and his face discolored with the scorpion’s deadly poison.

“It must have stung him in the ear while he slept,” Atalanta said.

Evenor spoke in a harsh whisper, “We came to kill a mighty monster, but the mightiest hunter has been killed by one of the smallest creatures on the earth.”

“One great man, one small death,” Melanion said.

“But why…?” asked Evenor.

Indeed, why?
Atalanta thought.
Why should he have been the one punished?
He
didn’t have any of Iasus’ blood.

Suddenly she remembered her dream in the palace, how Artemis had said that Orion had his own sins to pay for. Was this what she meant?

“Orion was our hope,” groaned Ancaeus getting to his knees. “Our
only
hope. What are we to do now?”

“The first thing we must do,” said Atalanta, “is to give him the proper honor.” She struck her breast with her fist. “I, Atalanta, daughter of the forest, sister to the bear Urso, will avenge your death, Orion. I dedicate this hunt to you and to my father, who also died because of the king’s sins.”