“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?”
“Fifty, but some are drones and of little account. The queens, I suspect, will guide the Achaeans and show them every secret turning in the forest. There will be no chance for us to lay an ambush, except in the deeply wooded sections where the Thriae can’t fly.”
“But we have you,” said Icarus proudly. “You’re worth an army of Achaeans. I am going to fight at your side.”
“In time you will,” I said. “In time we will fight together like two old comrades. For the moment, however, I want you to stay with Thea and the Telchines to store supplies and guard the house. If the Centaurs and I should lose the first battle, I will need a place in which to lick my wounds, and as you know, this tree is as good as a fort.”
He sighed heavily but did not protest the disagreeable order. Truly, I thought, he is learning to be a warrior.
“I will guard your house,” he said, “and keep it safe.”
“Now look at the shield my workers have made for you!” I said, touched by his vow. Shaped like a figure eight, embossed with luck-bringing serpents inspired by Perdix, it was such a shield as kings have borne into battle to give their names to legend. Accepting the gift from Bion’s two front legs, Icarus held it at arm’s length and waved his free arm as if to brandish a sword.
“Ho,” he cried, “ho,” as he stepped and lunged, parried and ducked, pretending to run me through the chest. Then he remembered to thank the Telchin. He patted his head. “It is very beautiful.” The Telchin was not impressed. “It is quite the most fearful and deadly shield I have ever seen!” he continued. “It will help me to slay a dozen warriors, and mingle their blood with its golden snakes. I will name it for you. I will name it Bion.”
The Telchin bobbed his head in wordless devotion.
It was Pandia who came to tell us that Chiron had blown the conch shell to assemble his army against the Achaeans.
They marched across the field in ragged but resolute lines, their leather boots tearing the yellow gagea and cracking the willow rods of our fallen glider. They moved toward the trees like walking flames, yellow of armor, its bronze enkindled by sunlight; yellow of beard below their crested, sun-bright helmets. The queens of the Thriae, Amber among them, circled busily above the soldiers. The sullen workers had yet to make their appearance, but the drones were dimly visible on the far side of the field, beyond the range of our arrows but close enough for their animated chatter to reach us like a distant droning of bees.
We lurked in the trees, and clumsy shields of cow’s hide, hurriedly made by the Centaurs in our few days of grace, lay at our feet like the belts of animals. At Chiron’s signal we stepped between the trunks, aimed with unhurried precision, and loosed a volley of arrows. The queens of the Thriae shot above the threatening shafts. They shook their fists and their sweet voices piped incongruous oaths; Amber, the youngest, was also the loudest in her denunciation of the “foul horses” and the “rutting Minotaur.” The hundred Achaeans fell to their knees in a ring and raised their broad round shields above their heads. They resembled a giant tortoise, and our well-aimed arrows fell noisily but harmlessly onto their collective shell. Again, the creak of the linden bow, the twang of the arrow guided with the green tail feathers of a woodpecker. Again, the stout, resistant shell. Six times we drew and loosed our arrows. At last a few of them began to penetrate the crevices between the shields, and one of the shields, two, three collapsed as if a giant invisible foot had stepped on the tortoise and broken a part of its shell. But our quivers would soon be emptied.
“Enough,” said Chiron. “Let them advance. We will fight them among the trees.”
Once among the trees, they had to advance in narrow files, and the branches above their heads were so heavy with vines that the Thriae could not guide them and point out our hidden presences. But arrows were useless in such terrain and among the close-set trees the long Centaurs and a tall Minotaur were limited in their prowess. Here, the best fighters were the sly, agile Panisci. Their little hairy bodies could blend with the vegetation. They could crawl where Centaurs could not walk: retreat, advance, circle, harass with their bruising slings. They fired at the areas of flesh which were not protected by armor—the face—the arms, the thighs. Their stones moved so quickly that they might be mistaken for large, soundless insects; they were no less painful for the fact that they disabled instead of killed.
Cries of astonishment greeted the first barrage. Men clapped hands against their wounded flesh and drew them away when their fingers oozed with blood.
“It’s children,” squealed Ajax (I knew him from Thea’s description). “They’ve sent their children against us!”
“Children, Hades,” cried Xanthus, the one who had lost his ears. “It’s goats!” He lunged at a flying hoof and received a blow to his chin. “And watch those hooves!”
One of the Achaeans, harrassed out of his line by the slingers, leaned on the trunk of an oak to catch his breath. A faint groaning of wood alerted him to scan the leaf-shrouded limbs. Did the rascally slingers—children, goats, demons, whatever they were—hide in trees? A noose-shaped vine tightened around his neck and jerked him from his feet. He kicked and waved his arms; he could not scream. The friends who cut him down discovered a corpse who had bitten through his tongue. Above their heads, a woman’s laughter tinkled among the branches; her green hair was indistinguishable from the leaves.
But furtive slingers and gallant Dryads could not be expected to stop the Achaean advance. Only the Centaurs and I could hope for decisive victory, and not among trees but in the first clearing. We watched them stagger with slain or wounded comrades into the open grasses and imbibe courage from the bountiful sun. We counted their losses: three we had killed with arrows; four had been stunned by the slings of the Panisci; and three had been hanged by Dryads. It was time for the Centaurs and me.
By choice I am not a fighter, but a worker of gems and metals, a sometime gardener, a peace-loving rustic, and finally a poet. But who can follow a trade or write a poem when helmeted warriors are stomping about the country and threatening to ravish the women? The time to fight is not the time to garden, and no Beast should hesitate to exchange his hoe for a sword. I preferred the hoe. On the other hand, I did not fear the sword.