“Don’t be concerned,” I answered him. “No woman hereabouts will squeal under yours. Not girls but birds will be getting their fill of you, when our business is done.”
“Birds?” he said, raising his brows. “Don’t you mean to eat me yourself, then? You are not the man they told me of.”
“You should come down oftener from the hills,” I said, “and learn the ways of folk who live in houses.”
He laughed, standing with a loose shield and half his right side bare to me; he knew I would not take him off guard. I could not make him lose his head, nor get really angry myself. But it was no use to dawdle and wish we had met some other way. “Listen, Pirithoos; this boy brought me your challenge. He is a sacred herald: if I fall, don’t chance your luck. And now let us stop calling names like a couple of women yattering over a cracked jar at the wellhead. Come on, stand up to me, and let us try each other’s bronze.”
I threw my shield before me. He stood a moment, looking straight at me with his big green cat-eyes. Then he shrugged his shoulder out of the shield-sling, so that the tall shield fell clattering, and tossed away his spear.
“No, by Apollo! Are we mad dogs or men? If I kill you, you will be gone, and I shall never know you. Thunder of Zeus! You came alone to me, with a child for shield-bearer, trusting in my honor. And I your enemy. What would you be for a friend?”
When I heard these words, it was as if a watching god had stepped down between us. My heart lightened; my spear fell from me; my foot stepped forward and I held out my hand. His with the blue snake round the wrist came out to meet it; the grip seemed one I had always known.
“Try me,” I said, “and see.”
We clasped hands, while the Lapiths rumbled through their hair. “Come,” he said, “let us start clear. I will pay your fine for the cattle-lifting. I have done well this trip, my holds are full, meeting my debts won’t break me. You’re the King; you make the judgment. If you weren’t to be trusted, you’d never have trusted me.”
I laughed and said, “I saw old Oinops squaring his own score. Feast me one day and we’ll call it quits.”
“Done,” he cried. “I’ll ask you to my wedding.”
After that we exchanged our daggers as a pledge of friendship. Mine had a gold inlay of a king in a chariot, hunting lions. His was Lapith work, and very good, not what you would expect from looking at Lapiths; the hilt was covered with fine gold grains, and the blade had running horses done in silver. As we embraced to seal the pledge, I remembered the boy who had come to see a battle. But he did not look downcast; even the Lapiths, when their slow thoughts had come abreast of us, cheered and waved their shields.
I knew, as one sometimes may, that I had met a daimon of my fate. Whether he came for good or ill to me, I could not tell; nor, it may be, could a god have told me plainly. But good in himself he was, as a lion is good for beauty and for valor though he eats one’s herds. He roars at the spears upon the dike-top, while the torchlight strikes forth fire from his golden eyes; and one’s heart must love him, whether one will or no.
VI
WHEN WE HAD SACRIFICED and feasted, I took it without saying he would stay as my guest at Athens. He said, “Gladly; but not till after the hunt at Kalydon. I have come south ahead of the news, it seems. They have one of those giant boars there, that Bendis sends for a curse.” That is an up-country name for the Moon Mistress; there was a good deal of Lapith in him, as well as Hellene.
“What?” I said. “I killed a big sow once in Megara; I thought she was the only one.”
“If you hearken to Kentaurs’ tales, there used to be a mort of them.” His Greek was partly stiff and stilted, the work of his boyhood’s tutor where even the Court did not speak it daily; the rest was the coastwise jargon that pirates talk, and only better than his men’s because his mind was quicker. “They say their forefathers killed them off with poisoned arrows. Kentaurs don’t hunt like gentlemen; they are too wild.” I thought of his Lapith band, and wondered what folk were like who seemed wild to these. “They eat meat raw,” he said, “and never come down off the tops except for mischief. If the pigs had killed their forefathers, it would have been all one to me. Or if their fathers had made a right end to the pigs, that would have been something. Kentaurs are curse enough; and once in a while there are pigs as well.”
I had been offended with him for refusing to be my guest; but he had always some odd yarn to turn one’s anger.
“In Kalydon,” he said, “they sacrificed some virgins to Artemis.” He had remembered her Hellene name this time. “Three they burned, and three they shipped up north to that shrine of hers, where the maidens sacrifice men. But she sent them omens that what she wanted was the boar. How they angered her I don’t know, but she is a goddess needs watching out for. Even Kentaurs look out for her. So the King has a hunt on, and open house for warriors. This, Theseus, forgive me, I cannot miss. Friendship is dear where honor is dearest.” (I could see the tutor, beating the old lays into him.) “Well, no need to part company. We’ll go together.”
I opened my mouth to say, “I have work to do.” But it seemed I had been working harder than a plowboy for months and years. I thought of a foot-loose journey north, with Pirithoos and his Lapiths. It tempted me like a sweet look from someone else’s wife.
He said laughing, “You can stretch your legs aboard, I left deckroom enough for your cattle.”
I was still young. Not far behind me was the Isthmus journey, not knowing at dawn what the day would bring; Crete, and the bull-dance. I had had the sign of Poseidon; I was born to be a king; and while I moved to it, everything within me worked the one way. Now I had got it. The King had enough to do. But there was another Theseus fretting idle; and this man knew him, too well.
“Why not?” I said.
So I put my business by, and went to Kalydon. I saw ships rolled over the peaceful Isthmus, the Gulf of Corinth blue between mountains, and Kalydon by its mouth. And a fine boar-hunt we had there; great deeds, good company and a rich feast. It was good only while it lasted; for it started a blood-feud in the royal house there, and, as happens often, the best man died. Still, it was a great victory feast, for young Meleager and the long-legged huntress he shared the prize with; the grief was all to come. But the faces round the board grow dim to me, and I see, when I look back, Pirithoos everywhere.
I have been the lover of many women, never of a man. It was the same with him, and our friendship did not change it. Yet if I picked up a spear or a lyre, mounted a chariot, whistled a dog or caught a woman’s eye, it was his eye I thought of. There was emulation mixed in our friendship, and even in our faith a kind of fear. From the day I met him, I would have trusted him with the woman of my heart, or my back in battle; and so would he have trusted me. But what he loved best in me, I myself had doubts of; and he could charm it like a bird out of the wood.
I went out of my way home from Kalydon, westward to Thessaly, to be his father’s guest. We travelled light, cross-country, with the men he could spare from working home his ships; for speed, he said, but from the love of trouble as I could see. We had enough of it, from wolves and robbers and leopards and the mountain cold. Once, where the track clung to a steep gorge-side, a gale tore through it that made it sing like a great flute of stone; our shields were plucked and tugged by the hands of the wind-god, and would have sailed us off the face if we had not laid them down and filled them up with stones. One Lapith was lost that way.
At last we were looking down upon the plains of Thessaly, where the rich land lies in broken stretches between long arms and shoulders of wooded hills. The Lapiths encamped beside a spring, and prayed to the god of its river; then they washed and combed themselves, shaved their upper lips, and trimmed their beards. They came out likely and proper men, and three parts Hellene. When they had signalled with smoke, the Palace Guard came out to meet us. Then first I saw the real Lapith wealth: not growing in the ground but running on it, with the thunder dear to Poseidon. This is the home of the great horses, that can carry a man.