Then the old king spoke again: “Are you prepared to show us the way to the house by the sea, whither these Thebans, if such they are, have brought the daughter of Teiresias?”
The goat-horned, goat-legged one suddenly leapt to his feet and with a rough and rude gesture pushed past Odysseus and seizing Zeuks by his elbows stared offensively and yet in some queer way possessively and almost paternally into his face. Over the wounded back of Pegasos, which, though still tender to the touch and not by any means healed, had been considerably soothed by its owner’s spittle, it was still possible for Nisos to see Zeuks’ expression, and it was an amazement to him to remark how quietly, and yet with a sort of comical expectation of more dramatic revelations to follow, he took the gross, yet almost cajoling stare of this horned and hairy Being.
“You are! — you are! And yet you cannot be!” blurted out the puzzled and bewildered God-Beast; and Nisos never forgot the mixture of earthy roguery, rustic guile, spontaneous magical power, along with the professional horned-ram propitiation of a cunning old shepherd, in the goat-legged creature’s tone.
But the capturer and dominator of Pegasos and Arion, the man who was more than a match for the Priest of the Mysteries, was once again completely master of the situation. With an easy assumption of authority — and yet our clever young Nisos didn’t miss the shade of something that resembled a curious spasm of play-acting in his tone — Zeuks freed himself from the God-Beast’s hold and turned to Odysseus.
“We are in the presence, O King,” he blurted out with an irresponsible chuckle, while the goat-horned creature leaned his chin upon the head of Pegasos and began whispering in one of the flying horse’s nervous and twitching ears, “of none other than the great god Pan himself. For some curious reason that I cannot explain to you, O king, this great and most benevolent deity has, ever since he first appeared to me on my farm, confused me with a lad he knew on the farm of farmer Dryops, whose favourite Nymph was Erikepaia, though we ignorant farm-labourers persisted in calling her Dryope or Dryopea, but who rejoiced to share Pan’s bed in the moss and ferns of this farmer Dryops’ Arcadian inheritance.
“Unlike the jealous and tyrannical Dryops, whose despotic arms Erikepaia joyfully exchanged for those of this famous god who fills the udders of Arcadian cattle with the richest milk and the hives of Arcadian bees with the sweetest honey, I have been proud, though she was loved by this kindly god, to have myself loved the lovely Erikepaia long and loyally, and long after she grew too old for a god’s embraces I loved her. I loved her when she grew old with the oak of her adoption, which she and I together dug up from that Arcadian valley and planted here, here by the side of this rock, here where thou, O great Pan, whether thou knewest it or not, wast sleeping a moment ago.
“Her oak has fallen into dust and Erikepaia with it; but never once did the Nymph who had been loved by Pan or the farmer, my poor self, who loved the Nymph that had been loved by Pan, ever think of him save with true worship.”
It was only when Zeuks had finished speaking that the last thing anyone of them expected happened.
The goat-legged Being swung away from Pegasos and approached Odysseus. Then with a movement so swift and yet so gentle that Nisos imagined he was lifting the hero’s hand to his lips as a sign that he would himself be his guide to the house of the fugitives from Thebes he bit the king’s hand with such sudden and vicious force that the old man dropped his club to the ground.
In an instant the god was upon the back of Arion, who with mildly startled up-tossed head tore his bridle from Odysseus, and, while what was left of his beautiful black mane was tossed across his rider’s lean, goat-hairy shanks, set off at a gallop in the direction from which they had all just come; but as he rode away, the god of milk and butter and honey looked back over his shoulder at Nisos, as if deliberately wishing to include him also among the victims of his mischievous and shameless amorousness.
“Pegasos has told me,” he cried, “that you’ve left at the palace a sweet little shepherdess called Eione who is just made to delight my simple taste. She’ll suit me better, I fancy, than any prophetic daughter of Teiresias!”
Horse and rider, they were soon out of sight; but the shrewd Zeuks had not missed a swift instinctive move towards Pegasos made by Nisos the moment the goat-horned one flung out that word: “Eione”.
“No, no, my dear boy!” he cried sharply. “’Twould be crazy to try to catch them! And what could you do if you did catch them? All the while I lodged — and in this very place — with Erikepaia, she never once told me of any occasion during the time she was loved by Pan when he made her jealous of a mortal maid.”
He turned to Odysseus with a look of whimsical appeal, which, though it had something at once gravely conspiring and gaily mischievous, contained also an immediate and extremely practical warning. And then, while he kept one hand in kindly restraint on the boy’s shoulder, he boldly laid the other on the Club of Herakles which the king, having picked it up from the ground, had carefully balanced, too absorbed to give it more than a secondary place in his mind, on the unwounded portion of the back of Pegasos.
“Our young friend here, O great king,” protested Zeuks; “is impatient for our return so that he can protect his girl from the advances of this amorous goat-foot; but I tell him that, though, we can wound these immortal creatures and even draw ichor from their veins till they are too weak to move, we cannot plunge them as they can plunge us into that vast company of spirits beyond counting, such as have lately, the rumour runs, broken loose from Hades — into the company of those who can only fly like the flight of birds where no birds are and can only cry like the echoes of voices where no voices are, until the end of time.”
“Let us, O great Master,” begged Nisos, who for all Zeuks’ words could not help vividly visualizing the white soft body of Eione helplessly yielded up to those lean hairy shanks and to those gross bristly lips of the immortal Goat-foot, “pray desperately to Atropos that fate may conquer both necessity and chance and bring us quick, quick, quick, to that House by the Sea whence without delay we can return home! O dear master, O great king, this, I swear, is what Pegasos wants, for I can feel him trembling and quivering under our hands!”
All the while the boy was making this appeal he was working hard with both his hands to get the great sack of treasure nearer the horse’s tail and further away from its shoulders.
“But, my friends,” groaned Odysseus, raising his bowsprit beard and drawing in his breath towards the four quarters of the horizon one by one. “How, in the name of Pallas Athene, are we to know in what direction this accurst place lies? If only we could hear the sea; that would be a surer help than any praying to any goddess of fate.”
For a moment they were all three silent. Then the two men became aware of unrestrained sobs breaking from the throat of Nisos. And for another moment, however intently they listened, that was the only sound.