Atalanta and the Arcadian Beast (15 page)

Iasus shook his fist at the air. “Never. The great Orion is here now. He’ll kill the beast.”

“Only your own blood can save the kingdom now,” the voice said coldly. “Orion has his own sins to pay for. He, too, has dishonored me.”

Atalanta thought suddenly of Orion pushing the statue of the goddess to the ground in his fury at being beaten in the race.
Oh no,
she thought,
he was sorry right after. Don’t punish him, Great Artemis, for that. But she didn’t dare say it aloud.

All at once the statue of Astarte began to sway, leaning from one side to another, almost drunken in its movements.

“Let this be the last time Astarte shows her painted face in Arcadia,” proclaimed the voice.

The statue began to fall forward and Iasus leaped aside, then ran for shelter behind a pillar.

When stone hit stone, the statue broke into hundreds of pieces that rolled across the floor. The noise of the impact echoed over and over in the great chamber.

Atalanta sat upright in bed, the echoes still crashing in her ears. Her heart was pounding. The dream had been so real, yet here she was safe in the silence of her own bedchamber.

Was it the rich food that had caused her night visions? Or the suggestion of the rumor that Melanion had told her?

Or was it something else?

She slid out of bed and put on her hunting clothes. Grabbing up her bow and quiver of arrows, she padded out of the room. She followed the corridor as she’d done in her dream. Sure enough, it brought her to a stairway. And the stairway to the passage and the spiral stair.

She knew then that below would be the lamp-lit tunnel and the great domed room.
How could I have dreamed all this?
she wondered.

Facing a wounded boar was nothing compared to the fear she felt now. She took a deep breath, brushed aside an impulse to turn and run, and started down the spiral steps.

Just as in the dream, the door to the domed room was ajar. She stepped inside without making a sound. The sight that greeted her made her catch her breath. There was a man crouching among the shattered fragments of a statue, examining the pieces.

But it wasn’t King Iasus.

It was Orion.

She thought she’d been silent, but he suddenly said without looking up, “Little huntress, what brings you here?”

She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. “A dream,” she said at last, painfully aware of how foolish she sounded. “I saw the king here and the statue fall.” She said nothing of the goddess. Nothing of Orion’s fate. It had been a dream after all, and she knew she was no oracle.

Orion stood and looked strangely at her. “I came because my instincts told me the king was hiding something. Something important. One should never go on a hunt unprepared.” He stopped as if expecting some response from her.

She nodded.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he continued, “thinking about what it might be. I walked the corridors and heard the sound of breaking stone, which led me to this place.” He picked up a painted fragment from the floor. It was an eye, heavily outlined in black, the eyelid painted green. “I’ve seen such images before, in the temples of the distant East.”

“Is it…is it a goddess?” Atalanta asked, already knowing the answer.

He nodded. “Astarte at a guess. The goddess of childbirth.”

“And the beast is terrorizing Arcadia because of her?” Atalanta asked.

Orion tossed the stone aside. “Whoever or whatever brought the mantiger here, it’s still only an animal. And I have never met an animal I couldn’t kill.” He smiled grimly at Atalanta and walked out of the room.

Remembering the cold voice of the goddess in her dream, Atalanta shuddered. She was amazed that she found herself afraid for Orion.

And for herself.

O
RION INSISTED ON LEAVING
at dawn. Only a few servants were bustling about at that time, more interested in their work than the hunting party gathered in the courtyard. The majority of the Tegeans were still sleeping off the banquet.

Prince Ancaeus looked as if he wished he were still abed. He wore a rough tunic, dyed green, like his nephew and Hierax. But while they were both clear-eyed, his eyes were rimmed with red and his face pale. Atalanta worried about him. A hunt was no place for a sick man.

“Perhaps we should carry you in a litter, Uncle,” Melanion suggested with a smile.

Ancaeus merely glowered. “Where are the chariots?” he complained. “Why aren’t they ready yet?”

Leaning patiently on his spears, Orion cast a disapproving eye over the battle-ax Ancaeus carried. It had a broad, curved blade and a three-foot-long wooden handle. “You’d be better served by a hunting spear, my lord,” he said. “You can’t keep an animal at bay with that. It’ll have your arm.”

“Keeping it at bay isn’t the point, is it?” Ancaeus retorted. “And a spear point can be deflected too easily.” He ran a finger down the edge of the axe. “This will shear through flesh and bone like a scythe cutting corn at harvesttime.”

“The prince likes to deliver the killing blow,” Hierax explained, his voice carefully neutral.

Suddenly Atalanta understood and felt sick with the knowledge. Ancaeus wanted to wait until his huntsmen had the mantiger helpless before he went anywhere near it. But as the ranking noble, he would insist on the honor of killing the beast for himself. She wondered briefly what Orion thought of such a plan. She thought she could guess.

There was a brief flurry at the entrance to the palace, and King Iasus appeared with his queen.

In the weak morning light, she realized that there was something familiar about the queen, something about the eyes and nose that she hadn’t noticed in the firelight.

But I never met her before yesterday,
Atalanta told herself.
What is it that’s so familiar?
Then she realized that she’d seen that same coloration, those same olive-shaped eyes, the same tilt of nose whenever she bent over a pool of water and beheld her own reflection.

Atalanta turned away from the royal family and shook her head.
No,
she scolded herself.
This is only imagination, Atalanta. The royal couple had no children. Melanion said so and surely he would know.

“You have decided where to begin the hunt then?” King Iasus asked Orion.

“Yes, Hierax and I have been going over the various sites of the attacks,” Orion replied. “Here, sire, is a rough map of what we know.” He drew on the loose ground with his sandal. Atalanta had never seen any such thing before, and it looked like nothing more than a squiggle of lines.

“See, Your Majesty, there is a pattern to the way the beast kills,” Orion said. “There. There. There. There. There.” His sandal pointed out places on the rough map. “It moves out of the southwestern mountains, northward around the kingdom, then back again to the south. After that there is always a lull. The beast’s last kill was here.” He jammed the butt end of one of his spears at a point about a hand’s span from Eteos. “Knowing the pattern will let us find him.”

Squinting her eyes, Atalanta tried to understand what the men seemed to know. The pointed shapes Orion called mountains, the circles for Tegea and Eteos, the snaking lines of road and river, and the northern movement of the beast.
I must learn more about maps,
she told herself.
I’ll make Orion teach me.

Orion continued, “The mantiger and creatures like it always have a lair, and in this case I am guessing it’s in the mountains of the southwest. Melanion tells me that there are many caves there.” His sandal touched the leftmost area of the squiggles.

Suddenly the whole thing made sense to Atalanta.

“That’s where we’ll have our best chance of catching up with the mantiger,” Orion said.

“While it’s denned,” Atalanta whispered to herself.

“Succeed in this and any reward you care to name will be yours,” said the king, leaning in close to Orion and speaking in a low voice. “Just remove this curse from my kingdom.”

Queen Clymene left her husband’s side and walked toward Atalanta with an expression of grave concern on her face.

Does she recognize her face in mine?
Atalanta wondered. The thought actually alarmed her. How could she like this queen, if it turned out she was the one who’d left Atalanta on the hillside?

“I am unhappy that this girl should be going on such a hazardous expedition,” said the queen to Orion. “She’s far too young.”

“It was her own choice,” Orion said, “and I can’t deny her a place in the hunt. It’s a point of honor.”

The queen reached out a tentative hand to touch Atalanta’s hair. “Men and their honor.” The queen sniffed. “As if being a hero was all there is to life.” She turned to Atalanta again. “Then, child, you must make the decision for him. The slaying of the mantiger is best left to these hunters. There is no need for you to go. You’re no Artemis. We have quarters here in the palace where you can stay until your friends return.”

Atalanta recoiled from the queen’s touch, her heart hammering in alarm. All at once the palace seemed like a trap to her, one that would spring shut and keep her forever from the woods she loved.

“No, I’m going with Evenor and Orion,” she said abruptly. “I belong with them. I don’t belong here.”

The queen looked by turns angry, puzzled, and hurt by the hostile reaction. She turned to her husband. “Iasus, can’t you…?”

The king waved her aside with a movement of his hand. “This girl’s fate is no concern of ours,” he said as the chariots arrived.

“Here are our rides,” said Evenor.

“Good,” Atalanta said. “Now the hunt can begin.”
Even riding in a chariot is better,
she thought,
than facing the mystery that lies here in Tegea.

Orion turned to the king and queen. Striking himself on the chest with his fist, he proclaimed, “I, Orion, son of Hyrieus, dedicate this hunt to you, King Iasus, and all your kingdom.”

Everyone cheered.

The journey to the southwest lasted two bone-wrenching days that took them through fertile valleys where fields of corn danced in the breeze. They drove past wandering herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and groups of scampering goats. They wound through stands of oak, fir, and cypress, and had to ford two small rivers. It was Melanion who knew the way.

When they finally reached the foothills of the southwestern mountains, the hunting party dismounted, leaving the charioteers to return to Tegea.

Atalanta wasn’t sorry to see them go.

Each member of the hunting party was to carry packs of food and lengths of rope and cord to fashion into snares. Prince Ancaeus was none too happy about this, even though Hierax had volunteered to carry much of his equipment and Melanion took over the care of his uncle’s food.

“Ah, Uncle, as the poet sings—I’ll be ant to your grasshopper,” Melanion said, laughing.

“We could have brought servants to carry all of this for us,” Prince Ancaeus pointed out.

“More mouths to feed,” said Orion. “More feet to give us away with a careless step.” He turned and added under his breath so that only Atalanta, who was standing by his side, heard, “More idiots to protect.”

She was shocked at what he said, more shocked because she agreed with him.

“So what do we do now?” Evenor asked, coming over to Orion. The others joined him.

“Spread out into a line, twenty yards between each hunter,” said Orion. “We’ll move up into the hills looking carefully for any sign of our quarry. Watch out especially for tracks, spoor, a feather from one of its wings. Look out for any animals that have been savagely butchered, their hair and teeth, and bones.”

“What if we spot the mantiger itself?” asked Melanion, who was chewing on a stalk of grass.

“If that happens, then scream for me,” Orion ordered emphatically. “And quickly!”

“I shall be quickness entire,” Melanion responded. “Shall I take the right flank?”

Orion shot him a hard look. “Now, keep in contact with those to either side of you by calling out at regular intervals. At noon, when the sun is high in the sky, we’ll gather together to make reports and eat. Then we’ll resume the search.”

By afternoon Atalanta was beginning to wonder if Orion had made a mistake. For all the tales that were told about him, he was still just a man and as likely to be wrong as any other. Certainly she’d found nothing to indicate they were on the mantiger’s track. No prints, no feathers, no spoor. And more importantly—no butchered animals. At noon the others had reported the same lack of success.

She could only hope that some other member of the party would pick up a trail by nightfall.

All at once she heard a movement behind her. She waited, pretending to be unaware of its approach, then spun around in an instant, spear poised to throw.

“Melanion!” She lowered the spear but kept the spearhead pointed at his middle. “Of all the muddleheaded…Why are you sneaking up on me?” she demanded. “You should be checking your patch of forest.”

Melanion shrugged. “All I’ve come across out here are some bees and a few mice. Have you found anything?”

“Only an idiot who should be tethered up for his own safety.” She walked briskly on, eyes scouring the ground on either side. Melanion jogged after her.

“You know, there’s something familiar about you,” he said, popping a fresh stalk of grass into his mouth and chewing on it thoughtfully. “When I first saw you at the banquet, and then again the morning we left, when you were talking to the queen, and now looking at you in this light, I have a strange tickle at the back of my mind. Something I see but yet don’t see.”

Atalanta could feel her face flush. Unaccountably her hand was clenched tightly around her spear. Too tightly. Carefully she loosened her grip. Lightly, she said, “Did you come to chase the beast or to hound me?”

“Madam, I am wounded by you,” Melanion answered. “As the poet says, a man wounded by a rabid dog sees the beast’s image in all waters.”

“I don’t know your poet, but I’m no mad dog,” she answered. “Except that I’m mad at you for interrupting me. Now will you go back to your line?” She strode quickly away to resume her part of the search.