She tried to think how to answer without sounding as if she were giving in. “I’m not saying I need anything. But I could give you some help. In exchange for a share of the kill.”
“A fair share of anything you help us catch,” Evenor agreed, offering his hand.
She drew back warily. “What are you doing?”
“This is how we seal a bargain,” Evenor explained. “We clasp hands.”
Herma’s eyes were wide. “Have you never…?”
Atalanta shrugged. “It seems a funny way of doing things, when a promise should be enough.” But she suddenly recalled her father at a market fair shaking someone’s hand. She held hers out and Evenor took it in his, squeezing the fingers gently.
“But remember this,” Atalanta said sternly, pulling her hand back, “we’re not hunting any bears.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE HUNT
IN THE MONTH THAT followed, the hunters swore they’d never known such a summer for game. “Especially after last winter and spring,” said Evenor one day when they were heading home with a brace of quail and seven rabbits. Over his shoulders was slung a gutted stag. “We feared all the game was gone.”
Atalanta thought briefly about the orange-tufted creature that had killed her father. Had it moved on to a fresh supply of food?
Not that she had given the creature much thought lately. Now she had a comfortable life, and on her own terms, too. As long as she could find the villagers what they needed, she had a choice spot next to a hearth on cold nights—when Urso was off on one of his solitary jaunts—and a healthy share of the meals.
Of course the littlest children, led by Daphne, shadowed her whenever she stayed over, pestering her with questions.
“Do you always sleep on the ground?”
“Do you have your meat raw, like a bear?”
“Do you and the bear ever eat people?”
Sometimes Atalanta answered. “We never ate a person yet, but if we did, we’d have to start with something small.” Then she’d pounce on them making growling sounds, and they scattered like hens before a fox.
The village children her own age, though, ignored her or made faces. One or two still called her names under their breath. She guessed they were jealous, especially the girls, that she had such freedom.
Gradually, as summer blossomed and then faded under a brilliant blue sky, Atalanta found herself changing. For example, she took more care with her hair when she visited the village, combing it out and braiding it up again. At one time she’d given some thought to simply cutting it off short.
Herma had been aghast at the idea. “Only slave women have short hair.”
“I’m no one’s slave,” Atalanta had retorted. She kept her hair long.
She’d also begun to enjoy talking with the villagers—not just to Evenor and Herma but with many of the others—even the ones who’d shunned her before. However, one or two of them still grumbled about her presence and the influence she had on the children, a few of whom now liked to play “wild child,” which mostly meant not washing and going too far into the woods on their own.
Only Goryx still complained openly.
“She’ll turn on us one day,” he muttered aloud. “You mark my words, she’ll turn on us just like a wild beast.”
One day Urso returned from marking trees around the forest to set the boundaries of his territory. He seemed reluctant to join in their usual game of gentle rough-and-tumble and didn’t answer Atalanta’s snorts and snuffles. Instead he growled irritably at her when she persisted.
Eventually Atalanta sat back on her haunches and fixed narrowed eyes on him.
“I know what’s bothering you,” she said. “I’m starting to smell of baking and wine, hearth smoke and soft covers.”
Urso made a whining noise.
“It’s the deal I’ve struck,” she explained. “It’s my plan. I help them out—and they leave you alone. Besides, what right do you have to grump about what I do? I don’t complain when you go off by yourself, do I?”
She batted him playfully on the nose and he knocked her onto her back with a shove of his paw. Then he rubbed his nose against her ribs until she started laughing uncontrollably.
At last he stopped and she caught her breath.
“Yes, that’s right,” she said. “No matter where I live, you’ll still be able to sniff me out, won’t you. No matter how I age. No matter if I get soft. You’ll still smell the wild in me.”
The next time Atalanta joined Evenor and three other hunters on a two-day trek through the forest, Urso had been gone for nearly a week.
At the end of the second day, Atalanta had helped them find a great stag, which she finished off with one well-placed arrow.
“Orion himself couldn’t have tracked so surely,” said Evenor. “Or flung a spear so true.” He treated Atalanta like a daughter now, and she burned red and happy under his praise.
“Who’s Orion?” Atalanta asked, as she knelt to gut the deer, for by rights the one who killed had to field-dress the creature. But she also got to keep the best parts.
“Why, Orion is the greatest huntsman in all Achaea,” Evenor replied. “Orion-of-the-two-spears, he’s called.”
Phreneus added, “He’s famed from far Colchis to the gardens of the Hesperides.”
“What—you’ve never heard of Orion?” interjected Goryx. He turned to the others, a sneering disbelief on his face. “Hasn’t she heard how he’s killed every wild beast on the island of Chios?”
“Then I’m surprised there’s any game left for the common folk,” she said.
Evenor laughed and slapped his thigh!
Goryx glared at him before continuing. “There wouldn’t be except every now and again Orion stops to dally with a nymph or a goddess.” He nudged Phreneus. “And that gives the beasts time to multiply again.”
“They say he can throw a discus as far as other men can shoot an arrow,” added a hunter named Demas, a gray-haired man who rarely spoke up.
“And he’s so surefooted he can walk safely across the surface of the sea,” Goryx added.
Atalanta snorted through her nose. “If he tried that, he’d have drowned long ago.”
Evenor laughed again.
Meaning to have the last word, Goryx said, “Orion is a true huntsman, not a hound that sniffs out prey the way you do.”
Atalanta ignored him. “Have any of you ever met this wonder, this Orion?”
“No,” answered Phreneus, “but everyone from Phrygia to Pylos has heard the tales.”
At that, silence fell upon the little band, and they trekked back quickly to their camp. There they built up the fire and took turns with the wineskin.
Only Atalanta sat outside the circle of men, tasting the wine but once, a soft white wine that had a touch of lavender she found refreshing. But she never took more than a taste, hating the lethargy of the next morning that came from drinking much wine. Her father had always said, “Wine is a good friend and a fierce foe.”
As she sat looking into the fire, she felt a strange tingling on the back of her neck, a sure sign of some danger nearby. Without meaning to, she shivered visibly.
Seeing her uneasiness, Evenor asked, “What is it?” He had long since learned to trust her instincts.
“Ach, it’s the wine,” Goryx said, spitting into the fire. “Too strong for her tender belly.”
Before she could put her feelings into words, a great roar shook the branches of the trees as if a gale had blown down from the north. Atalanta remembered that sound and the swallow of wine threatened to back up into her throat. She stood.
Evenor snatched up his spear, and the others followed his lead.
“What was that?” Goryx said.
“Hush!” Atalanta held up her hand.
Through their silence, they could hear a disturbance in the forest. An animal, a big one, was charging through the trees, breaking branches and trampling bushes as it came nearer.