I ran to them, dragging at the milling tangle, shouting for someone to give a hand. The farm people went on scrabbling in their ruins; after the god’s passing, they had no ear for kings. I cut loose with my dagger the horse that was not lame, and knotted the reins together. He could carry my weight that far.
There was nothing left you could call a road. It was all slime and flotsam, channels and slides of stones. The horse had been broke to draw; he slithered and pecked and stumbled, and I dared not press him. I myself could have run faster, a few years gone.
The mud had dying fish in it, flapping and squirming. There was a hissing by the road; the horse shied, and nearly threw me; a great dolphin, whistling through his blowhole, was trying to thrash towards the sea. The road climbed, for the slope grows steep there; it would soon be above the flood-line; yet still I heard horses crying, from where they had cried before, pausing sometimes as a trapped beast will pause from weariness, before it begins again. The bull bellowed once more, a sound of rage, or anguish. Struggling with my mount, which was getting scared again, I listened for another voice. But no voice called.
At the top of the rise, the road bent round. Then I saw, and got off the horse and ran.
Less than a bowshot off, on the shore below the road, a bloody mass of snared beasts struggled and heaved: three mangled horses, lashing and lunging. Above, blocking the road they had crashed down from, stood a bull, head down. He bellowed with fear and anger, and lurched, trying to paw the ground; lamed in a foreleg by the flood-wave that had swept him from his broken pen. Here he had struggled back to land, coated with weed and slime; a black bull of Poseidon, a bull from the sea.
There were men down there. As I ran, they were among the horses, killing them with cleavers. One after another gave a last choked scream. Scarlet blood drenched everything; the struggling ceased. The men clustered, bending, over something beyond.
They had cut him loose from the reins, when I got down there, and were pulling out the splinters of the chariot that had gone through his flesh like spears. He lay in ruin, like the horses; a splendid creature broken everywhere, torn and muddied, flayed on the rocks and sand. But the beasts were quiet; dead meat, out of their pain; while he groaned, and moved. In his blood-wet face his eyes were open, and looked in mine.
The men called out to me, telling me who he was. They took me for some passing wayfarer, seeing me on foot, miry and bruised; and shouted the news at me all together, as shocked men do. They had been working in the fields above; their farm had stood through the shock, and they had watched it all. They told how they had seen him on the road, driving from Troizen; how his horses had bolted at the earthquake, yet somehow he had got them in hand. But the water had come up, with the bull upon it, floundering out clear in the way. And then … they pointed to the hacked-off reins, still lashed round his middle in the double-hitch of the charioteer.
He put one hand to the ground, and tried to lift himself, and sank back with a cry; his back was broken. Someone said, “He is gone”; but his eyes opened again. Two of the men were arguing what farm the bull had come from, and who had the right to keep it now; another said it should be offered to Poseidon, or he would be angry and strike again. But the man who had cut the reins away said to me, “Look, friend; bad news is always best brought by a stranger. Will you go up to Troizen, and tell the King?”
I said, “I am Theseus. I am his father.”
They stared gaping, and knuckling their brows; they could not keep their eyes from running over me, a dirty unkempt man, haggard and stammering, whose face they had scarcely glanced at, one of themselves. I sent them to fetch a hurdle; one offered me his garment to stop the blood with; then we two were alone.
He was bleeding from a dozen wounds, and from within. I knew he was past all help; yet I would not know it, and bent above him doing useless things. As I worked I spoke, telling him I knew everything, begging him for a sign. His eyes were empty. But after a while they changed; and his lips moved. He spoke to me. He did not know me; but dying men are glad of company. He said, “Not even the gods are just!”
He was quiet a long time then. I laid my hand on his head, and kissed him, and tried again to be understood. I could not tell if he heard. For a moment his eyes half wakened; they stared straight upward, in a bitter loneliness; then they grew blank again. His blood soaked through the rags and his face grew whiter. At last came the men with the hurdle. As we shifted him onto it he cried aloud; but there was no telling if his mind was clear. I helped them carry him, till two more men came; they had been killing the bull, since they could not move it. We got him up to the road, and the men said, “Shall we take him to the house, sir? Or on to Troizen?”
I heard a breath from him. His hand moved. I touched it and said, “No. To Epidauros.” Then his fingers closed on mine.
The clouds had parted. Over the sea they still looked dark; but there was a patch of blue above the mountains. All the birds were singing, loudly, as they do after an earthquake, claiming their boundaries, or glad to be alive. Someone had gone ahead to get more bearers; he was too heavy for one set to carry far. He was still, and I hoped that he felt nothing; but when the litter jolted once, I saw his teeth clench with pain.
The men were tired, and the others had not come yet. There was a clump of plane trees by the road, and a trickle of water, a little winter stream. The ground was flat there; and I said to the bearers, “Rest awhile.”
One of them had his bronze cup tied in his belt; he filled it from the stream, and I moistened the boy’s mouth, for his lips were dry. His eyes had been shut; but now he opened them and looked upward, where the bare branches stood against the blue, with a few golden leaves. His hand touched my wrist and he whispered, “Listen!”
There was a lark above. A little tinkle came from the stream. And up the hill was a herdboy piping, who, when the earthquake struck, had had no more to lose than the birds.
“Listen,” he murmured, smiling. “Epidauros!”
I looked at him. It was clear by now he would never get there alive; so I answered, “Yes.”
He shut his eyes again. His breathing was so quiet that I could not hear it, and thought it was the end. The men withdrew a little way; and I knelt beside him, covering my face. Then he said, “Father.”
“Yes?” I leaned down; I could tell, from the way he forced it out, he knew that he was going. “Forgive me your blood,” I said. “Though the gods will not, nor I myself, yet do you forgive it.”
“Father,” he murmured, “I am sorry I was angry. All this had to be. Because …” He looked at me, to say he had not strength to finish, begging my pardon. I saw that his eyes were going blind. His head rolled back, facing the blue sky; like the sky it grew calm and clear. “I have had a true dream,” he said. “I shall die a well man now.” His fingers pressed my hand; so cold, it was as if he spoke to me from beyond the River. “Father … offer Asklepios a cock for me … do not forget.”
I said, “I will remember. Is there anything else?”
He made no answer. Soon his lips parted; his soul went forth in a sigh, and I closed his eyes.
Presently came some of the doctor-priests from Epidauros, who had heard the news. They brought on his body to the sanctuary, though, as everyone knows, it is unlawful for a corpse to lie there. They said they could not be sure that he was dead; talking across me with their eyes, as doctors do. He was very dear to them. Even when his corpse was growing cold, they warmed him and would not own it; and I have been told that, all their arts having failed, they turned to some old magic of the Shore Folk, which their law forbade them, and which had not been practiced for a hundred years. The Priest-King died soon after, suddenly, struck down as he worked, the swift death of Apollo; and it was said that the god was angry with him, for trying to raise the dead.