INVASION! An audible gasp, incredulous, astonished, rippled along the tiers like a wind in the boughs of a palm tree. Such was the fear which our bestial characteristics—horns, hooves, tails—had inspired among Men, such was our isolation among the mountains, that invasion had never threatened us in all the years since the Beasts had come to the forest. Only Aeacus, by our own sufference, had strayed among our fastnesses and returned to Knossos with tales or silences to strengthen our legend. Nevertheless, Chiron and other elderly beasts remembered the time when we had lived near the sea and pirates had landed in Gorgon-prowed ships to burn our farms and capture slaves. Remembered the splintering doors, the red dragons of fire constricting their coils around our reed- built houses, the cries of infant Panisci caught in nets and Dryads dragged by their hair through burning olive groves… the haughty sneer of the Cretan king when those who survived the attack demanded justice: “Protect your own. I am not responsible for the chance attack of pirates.”… the final agonizing decision to retreat to the safety of the forest and forsake the Men with whom we had lived in harmony for many centuries… the angry farmers, reluctant to lose our help in the fields, trying to stop us and Chiron confronting them with a terrible ultimatum: “Prevent our flight and Blue Magic will destroy your crops.”… Centaurs burning the fields at night with a cloud of fertilizer… blackened vines in place of luxuriant vineyards and terrified farmers urging us on our way with gifts of milk and cheese and all the while exalting us into Legend, not Men, not Beasts, but four-legged, cloven-hoofed demons who could blight the crops with their evil, witching eyes…
Chiron advanced to the edge of the pit and leveled a steely gaze at the three queens. “What is your answer to these charges brought by Eunostos?”
One of the queens, the oldest, made her way down the tiers and occupied the pit as if it were a throne. A wizened woman, with mottled skin and huge golden eyes, she had hidden her arms with bracelets which clattered when she walked.
Her voice was honey and salt. “His human friends have bewitched our good Eunostos. Whatever plot is afoot, it is they—the girl and her brother—who have perpetrated it, and we poor Thriae are its victims. I know of no gold from Achaean soldiers, unless it has gone to the witch-child Thea and her big-headed brother.”
“And this?” I asked, pointing to a bracelet strung with miniatures of the death masks worn by Mycenaean kings. “Did you get this from my shop?”
She looked at her wrist. “Where else? Your workers traded it to me for six jars of honey.”
“No Telchin made it,” I said. “In my shop or anywhere else in the forest. They can only copy what they have seen. Death masks belong to Mycenae and Tiryns.”
She shrugged. The Thriae are quick to lie and brazen when they are caught. Her wings unruffled, she said: “Suppose it is true that we accepted a few Achaean bracelets in return for the human children. If we let your Thea and Icarus stay in the forest, they will surely bring evil down on us just as their father did. Need I remind you that their mother, Kora, was burned to death in her tree? My people and I merely wish to see these dangerous intruders driven from our midst. We did not conspire to see the forest invaded. If you do fear invasion, I suggest you deliver the children to us, and we in turn will give them to the Achaeans and remove all threat.”
“She calls us the human children,” protested Icarus. His voice was strong and compelling. “She does us a terrible wrong. By her own admission, our mother was the Dryad Kora. Look at my ears and tell me I am a Man!”
“Keep the children! They belong here as surely as I do.” It was Zoe. I wanted to hug her.
And Moschus: “Keep the children!”
“KEEP THE CHILDREN!”
Welling from a hundred throats, the plea had become a command, sharp, imperious, not to be denied. The old queen fluttered her bulging eyes, but Chiron silenced her before she could speak.
“Keep them we will. Defend them we will against invaders. And you,” he blazed at the queen, “you and your people are no longer welcome at our counsels or in our forest. Go to the men who have bought you with gold. Tell them that they attack us at their risk.”
The queen smiled and her thick lips writhed like a jellyfish. “Have you shields to withstand the bite of their axes?” she asked. “Have you greaves and breastplates and helmets? I think we will soon be returning with the conquerors. Fatten your pigs to feast us when we come.”
The Centaurs closed their hooves protectively around their pigs and shrank from the opening wings of the drones, who, tittering nervously, kicked themselves from the ground with a decorous lilt of their toes. The workers lumbered after them, their customary sullenness darkened to a glowering rage, and the three proud queens ascended the sky as if they were climbing the stairs of a palace and extinguished themselves in the labyrinth of night.
Chapter VIII
THE BULL THAT WALKS LIKE A MAN
In the time preceding a battle, the trivialities of peace become eloquent. The lamplit roots of my den, twisting their friendly protection above our heads, seemed to say: Enjoy while you can the pungent musk of scrambled woodpecker eggs and the amber conviviality of beer poured from a skin. Tastes sharpen, colors intensify, and love, like a friendly ancestral serpent, leaves a beneficent trail across the floor. Thea and I had fought each other in the house of Amber: with blows and crueler words. But no one alluded now to our differences. After the war, we could speak again of the old anger and the old pride and admit, perhaps, that each had needed to speak yet spoken too much. But now, in the forest’s last tranquility, I knew that I loved her with all the ardors of my once fickle heart. It is said that the Great Mother was formerly a maiden, slender and virginal, who lived in a house of willow boughs where all the animals came to bring her food and lay their horns and antlers beneath her hands. Willingly would I have laid my tangled mane beneath my Thea’s hand. She did not touch me, but sometimes her hand trembled in the air between us, as if with the least encouragement it would come to rest like a tired butterfly. Shyness held me from touching her, and the fear that, once having touched, I would love her to my despair and perhaps destruction.
Every morning we met in my shop. Icarus whittled arrows from the boughs of linden trees and Thea fitted them with heads of flint, sharpened to lethal points. My workers and I were hammering a shield for Icarus.
“I ought to surrender,” said Thea. “It’s me they want, much more than you and Icarus. It was I who angered Ajax —hurt his pride. If I went to him now, he might forget his invasion.”
“He’s a warrior,” I said, “with a taste for battle. Any battle. His hurt pride is merely an excuse for launching him on a new adventure. Achaeans are always getting their pride hurt to give them a pretext for war. They hold it over their heads like a parasol and rattle their swords when it catches a few raindrops. Even if you went to him, he would still attack us. In addition to our gold, we’re worth a fortune as slaves. It’s been a long time since Panisci performed in the court of Egypt.”
“And a Minotaur,” said Icarus. “They would probably send you to pleasure the queen. I expect you would bring two fortunes. Much more than my sister.”
“And,” I continued quickly to Thea, “even if you could stop the war, I wouldn’t let you go to him. I don’t mean to let you out of the forest again.”
“I have no wish to leave.” She touched my hand at last. “What are our chances, Eunostos? I have seen those dreadful Achaeans. Their only love is to fight. They are brutally strong and foolishly brave and so girded with armor—greaves, cuirasses, helmets—that their flesh is almost unassailable.”
“The Centaurs also are stout fighters,” I said. “Farming keeps them in shape. Being both horse and rider, they surpass the best cavalry. They can charge like the wind, grapple with their hands, and kick with their hooves.”
“But numbers are against us, I think. How many Centaurs are there?”
“Forty males.”
“There must be a hundred Achaeans with Ajax, and all of them armed to the teeth. The Centaurs have only their clubs and their bows and arrows.”
“Don’t forget the Panisci, and don’t mistake them all for children. Some are middle-aged and very wily. There must be fifty of them.” (They were much too furtive for an exact count.)
“And how many Thriae?”
