The men jumped up in turmoil, and raced for the door. “Wait!” I shouted. “Get yourselves armed!” There were old war-trophies on the walls, and some men who had come a journey had stacked their arms by the door. I took a Lapith battle-ax, and a sword. As we were arming, three or four children came pelting in, their bridal clothes dusty and torn, their screams of terror pulsing as they ran. We had no time to comfort them, but dashed out into the dusk.
The courtyard was empty, the peasants’ benches overturned. The noise came from beyond the gates. Outside was a scene like the sack of a city; shrieking clawing women thrown down upon the tables among spilled meat and curds, with Kentaurs grabbing and gobbling over them, or growling at one another; the peasants, who had run to help, yelling for help themselves as loud as the women. No shame to them, for Kentaurs have Titan blood, and when they are maddened have two or three men’s strength; one had torn a poor wretch’s arm off. Through all this I ran, shouting my war-cry and Hippolyta’s name; when she answered, it was like black night lifting. Running over bodies writhing or dead, over food and crocks and torches, I found her fighting with a knife from the carver’s table, guarding the bride. The old lord, her father, lay trampled and bloody on the ground before them. Just as a Kentaur got the knife away, I got there in time to split his head. It was so thick, it nearly turned the ax in my hand, and I had trouble to wrench it free. I gave it to Hippolyta, and drew my sword, and we fell to it side by side. Pirithoos set the bride behind him against a tree, and got to work with his long spear. The women’s screams grew less; the war-cries rose, and the great bellows of the Kentaurs.
I have been in some bloody fights; but this was the bloodiest, and the ghastliest too, for it was neither war nor beast-killing, yet the worst of both. I have forgotten most of it and am glad. But I remember barking my shins on the huge wine-jar which the Kentaurs had sneaked out from the courtyard, smelling their way to it as they do when they raid the folds. And I remember seeing Old Handy. His table was overturned, and he stood before his chair of honor, with a boy in either arm. He had them clasped to his sides, like his own young; his old yellow teeth were bared, defying the rest to touch them, and the hair had lifted on his back. He was roaring to his people in the Kentaur tongue, trying to make them stop. But they were too mad to hear; and as I watched, the boys writhed in his arms, and twisted free, and drawing the little gold daggers from their jewelled belts flew screeching like hawks into the battle. I was busy then for some time; but near the end I looked that way again. Old Handy was standing alone, his hairy arms hanging by his bent knees so that the knuckles almost swept the ground, his head sunk in his shoulders, looking before him. I have heard it said that Kentaurs are too near the earth to weep as men do. But I saw it then.
At last it was over. The Kentaurs ran howling to the hills, whence later the Lapiths hunted them like wolves. Those that were left fled to the wild back-country, and there are none in Thessaly today.
As the sound of the chase grew less, we who were guests of the land did what we could for the wounded, and carried in the dead. Those of mankind, I mean; the Lapiths no longer counted Kentaurs as men, and burned them the next day without rites, like murrained cattle. Yet I have thought that in time they might have grown more manlike, from being friends with men, but for this unlucky feast that roused the beast and quenched the man in them. Maybe Old Handy had bred some sons; and no doubt we killed them. He went off with the remnant of his people, to take up the burden of his priesthood on some other mountain; so I cannot tell.
Hippolyta, all bruised, was inside helping the women, and I was making for the courtyard fountain to get clean, when I met in my way the youth Menestheus, white in the face. There was plenty to do, but he stood there looking sick. I was mired and bloody and plowed with Kentaur claws; I thought of the dead, of the young bride crying on her virgin bed, for her father was unburied, and who would get children on such a luckless night? My wounds smarted at the sight of him. I said, “This is your work, you meddling, smug young know-all. Does it please you still?” And I gave him a clout on the head.
He gave me one look, and went. I daresay he saw his father once again. Sometimes I have wondered how much good was mixed with his self-conceit, and whether, like the Kentaurs, with a little more trying he might have been changed. I doubt it; it was his nature to believe anything, before he would believe he could be wrong. In any case, I was out of patience. He went off to think his own thoughts, which he ceased to tell me; and when next I knew them, it was too late.
VI
WE GOT HOME TO find the boy thriving in Chryse’s care; even in that short time he had been growing. The barons and the commons had not, as I had hoped, forgotten Crete; but that was little, beside some news Pirithoos had given me in Thessaly, which I had to carry alone.
Far to the north, beyond the Euxine and the Ister, there was a great movement of the peoples. The Endless Plain, at the back of the north wind, is so far from the sea that if you bring an oar there, the folk take it for a winnowing fan; but storms were blowing there, and nations foundering like ships on a lee shore. The southern Thracians had heard it from the northern ones, who had it from the southern Scyths, and they from the Scythians northward, that a people called the Black Cloaks were coming out of the great northeast wastes, and eating the plains before them. What kind of people they were, he could not tell, only that they worshipped no gods but the night and day, and that the fear of them ran before their tufted spears like the cold wind before the rain.
Pirithoos did not think they would come to the Hellene lands; they were too far, and having great herds moved slowly. “But,” he said, “if they come southwestward, they will push the Scythians south, and those will come down, landless and hungry, as they say our own fathers did. Let’s hope we can hold harder than the Shore Folk who were here before us. If the Black Cloaks move some other way, it may never come. But, Theseus, look; if it does I shall have my hands full. If you want good friends in the bad time, you had better think again of this Cretan marriage. You know I don’t mean to slight your lady; she has more sense than any woman I know, and I swear she never had a wish that could do you harm. She must see it as well as I.”
Those were his words to me. If he had any with her, I do not know. But one night in Athens, when I was lying awake in bed and thinking of these things, she laid her arm across my breast and said, “Theseus, we are what we are. But you must marry the Cretan.”
I answered, “We are what we are. And if I give her what you ought to have, you will never have it.”
“I am a warrior,” she said, “who took you for my king; my honor is in serving yours. Nothing undoes that vow; it is the truth of my heart. So don’t make me a traitor.”
“And the boy? There is bad blood in the House of Minos. Must I graft on that stock, to pass him by?”
She lay, silent awhile, then said, “He is in the hand of some god, Theseus. I felt it while I was bearing him; he seemed stronger than I. I think he feels it too. Sometimes I see him listening.”
So we talked about the child; but she broke off, and said again, “Marry the Cretan, Theseus. Since you were betrothed to her, you have not been there once. Can you trust your governors and the Cretan lords forever? Of course not; and it has been upon your mind.” She always knew my thoughts without telling.
She slept at last, but I lay waking. When the first birds called and the sky lightened, I knew what I would do.