Trying War Read online

  “So we just hope that Lycomedes and Theseus believe that whatever sign Zeus sends is in our favour?”

  “I don’t think Lycomedes will step aside and let Theseus have his throne… if Zeus decides against us it will be seen as a decree in favour of Theseus—Lycomedes won’t allow that.”

  Cadmus looked doubtful. “His people are enamoured of Theseus… they could well support a coup.”

  “Lycomedes will find a way to prevent it.”

  “How?”

  “He will interpret the sign from Zeus, or dissuade Theseus or—”

  “He could kill you himself.” Cadmus groaned. “Then he would be the hero and he would steal Theseus’ legend.”

  Machaon nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, perhaps… we cannot know exactly what Lycomedes will do, but there’s Medea…”

  “You can’t be serious,” Cadmus scoffed. “Her only concern is winning the love of Lycomedes.”

  Machaon’s brow rose sceptically. “I’m not sure what Medea is up to but I am pretty certain that love has little to do with it.”

  IT WAS DIFFICULT TO follow the passing of time in the small cell. It was uniformly dark and close. The stone was cold and damp, gouged in places by the maddened scratching of past prisoners and rats. The Herdsmen quickly became restless and each moment seemed an age. They were of a people unused to walls. In the confinement they brooded on the safety of their siblings.

  “Gods, I hope Ly doesn’t try anything stupid,” Cadmus muttered. He looked at Machaon and shook his head. “Have you noticed he doesn’t listen anymore?”

  Machaon smiled. “It had to happen at some point.” He frowned. “Ly will keep his head. I’m more worried about Lupa actually.”

  Cadmus paced the small space in frustration. They hadn’t seen Lupa in a while but the protective she-wolf always kept them in sight. Theseus’ claims of a wolfish monster probably had all of Skyros on edge.

  The sturdy oak door opened wide, suddenly and silently. The brothers were on their feet immediately.

  “Medea!” Cadmus exclaimed.

  The witch of Kolchis regarded him coldly. She was alone. “Do not forget your place, Herder.”

  “My Lady…” Machaon spoke before Cadmus could retort, which he seemed more than ready to do. “What are you doing here?”

  “I am releasing you and your ignorant brother,” she said, holding out her hand to Machaon. “Come, we must go.”

  “Theseus…?”

  “He is dead.”

  “And Lycomedes?”

  “He is breaking the news to his people. It is our chance to escape.”

  “Do we need to escape?” Cadmus asked suspiciously.

  “Lycomedes may wish to keep me.”

  “No doubt.”

  “And us?” Machaon asked.

  “Make no mistake, Herder,” Medea spoke slowly, definitely, “The King of Skyros is as cunning as he is old. He will kill you if only to win back the love of his people. He will place the head of a wolf on your shoulders, and fling yours into the sea—and the common men of his kingdom shall see the monster their noble lord has slain.” Medea’s hand remained outstretched.

  Machaon glanced at Cadmus and nodded briefly. “We’ d better go then.”

  The passages from the cells were for the most part unguarded, and when they did encounter one of Lycomedes’ men, he was soon overcome—first startled by the approach of the beautiful witch and then subdued by the men who emerged from the shadows behind her.

  When the passage parted to lead back into the palace, Medea took them the other way.

  “This takes us into the barracks of the king’s guard,” she said quietly. “The soldiers will all be at Lycomedes’ lamentation for the demise of his friend—we can leave unnoticed.”

  “How did Theseus die?” Cadmus asked, stopping abruptly.

  Medea smiled. “Lycomedes will say he fell from a cliff.”

  “And did he?”

  “Lycomedes is as cunning as he is old,” Medea turned and walked on. “His kingdom remains his.”

  Cadmus did not take his eyes from the Princess of Kolchis. She moved in the dark, slippery passage as if she were stepping out into broad day on soft dry grass. There was no hesitation, no unsure step.

  The passage ended in narrow stairs at the top of which stood another strong oak door, banded with bronze and iron. Medea opened it cautiously. It was dark… Helios had descended in the time they had been imprisoned.

  Machaon stepped through first, into a large hall lined with many well-made wooden beds. They were all empty and the hall silent and lifeless. Motioning to Cadmus and Medea, he moved quickly to the armoury which stood against one stone wall.

  Cadmus caught the sword his brother tossed him. Machaon held out another to Medea, though Cadmus shook his head frantically from behind her.

  “Do not worry, Herder,” laughed the witch without turning. “I am quite able with blades.” She took the sword. “Come, we have not much time.”

  They slipped out of the barracks into the large courtyard in which the guards trained. It was crowded, as it seemed were all the grounds around the palace. The citizens of Skyros were high on rumour, a kind of festive violent excitement. Medea pulled the cowl of her cloak around her face and she and the Herdsmen became unremarkable in the crowd.

  “He is dead! Lord Theseus is dead!” The news rippled through the gathering.

  “What of the monster… the wolf-man? Who will save us if Theseus is dead?”

  The murmurs escalated, becoming frightened and raised with hysteria.

  “The king has it imprisoned—we do not need Theseus.”

  “Lycomedes goes to slay the beast now.”

  Cadmus put his hand on Machaon’s shoulder and spoke quietly into his ear. “Let’s move before it’s discovered that their beast is gone.”

  Machaon nodded. They kept Medea between them and moved with purpose through the crowd. In the press of people anxious for some sort of spectacle, they were not noticed.

  They had left the courtyards and pleasure gardens of Lycomedes’ palace before the first whisperings of the monster’s escape began. Cadmus led them into the woodlands and away from the paved road. It was a less direct path to the seashore but, among the tall pines and soft ferns of the hillside, they could disappear.

  Horns sounded from the royal stronghold, calling men to arms.

  “They have discovered your escape,” Medea said grimly. “Soon all the able men of Skyros will join the hunt. When it is over, no one will remember that Theseus wished to be their king.”

  Machaon glanced at the long robes of the Kolchian princess. “Can you run?” he asked.

  She looked at him contemptuously. “I am the granddaughter of the sun.”

  Neither Herdsman was sure whether or not that meant she was swift or not, but they lingered no longer. They would find out.

  The way was steep and perilous but the sons of Agelaus had been raised running the slopes of Ida. Their feet were sure and almost silent despite the darkness. Though the moon had waned just a sliver from the night before, its light did not fall strongly through the canopy of the tall pines.

  Medea stumbled often in the darkness. As it turned out neither her gown nor her disposition was ideal for flight through the wilderness, regardless of her divine heritage. Cadmus took her hand and saved the worst of her falls, but in the end he was all but carrying the witch to ensure she did not slow their escape.

  Then Machaon stopped.

  He put a finger to his lips. “Listen.”

  For a moment all Cadmus could hear was the heaviness of their breathing, the pounding of his own heart and then, faintly, he heard it too. He groaned. “Dogs.”

  “We’d better keep going,” Machaon said quietly. He glanced at Medea. “Are you all right, my Lady?”

  She glared back at him. “I would be well enough if this clumsy oaf was not intent on dragging me down the mountain!”

  Cadmus snorted scornfully.

  Machaon
bit his lower lip as he thought. Medea was slowing them. He was fairly sure that he and Cadmus could outrun even the dogs, but with the princess they would be caught.

  “You head for the shore as fast as you can,” he said.

  “Where are you going?” Cadmus asked in alarm.

  “Same place,” Machaon assured him. “But I can circle back and weave around the route—confuse the dogs. You and Medea go in a straight line if you can and I’ll draw them away.”

  “How do you know they’ll follow your trail and not ours?”

  “I’ll howl. They’re after a beast—they’ll follow.”

  Cadmus nodded. It was a sound plan. The Herdsmen were all swift. On his own, Machaon would stay well ahead of the dogs. “Be careful, Mac.”

  Machaon smiled. “I’ll probably reach the boat before you do.” He glanced ever so briefly at Medea. “You be careful, too.”

  And so the elder sons of Agelaus took separate paths.

  Cadmus and Medea continued in search of the white sands that separated the mountains from the sea.

  Machaon headed back towards the barking dogs. When he had put significant ground between himself and the others, he raised his head and howled.

  He listened for any sign that he had been heard. The distant barking became frenzied… but there was something else which surprised him. A howl in reply. The call of a mother to her cub. Lupa.

  Machaon tensed. Would the Skyrothians find her instead? He howled again—a warning in his cry—but would the shewolf understand? The wild language of the Herdsmen of Ida was based on the call of the wolf, but it was a language of men.

  Again Lupa replied.

  Machaon decided. He ran towards the sound.

  LYCON LOOKED ANXIOUSLY UP towards the white stone palace. There was something going on. Machaon and Cadmus had still not joined them. They had returned the Phaeacian ship to the waters of the quiet bay where they had waited the entire day.

  At twilight Lycon described to Hero the river of torchlight that had flowed up the paved road to the palace. It seemed the citizens of Skyros wished to see their king. Lycon wondered if it was still Lycomedes. Even from the bay he could make out the chant of “Theseus” being sung by certain parts of the crowd, rebuffed at times with cries of “Long reign Lycomedes”.

  “What’s happening, Ly?” Hero asked uncertainly. “Where are our brothers?”

  “They’ll come,” Lycon replied with more confidence than he felt. Skyros appeared to be on the brink of revolution—Theseus was clearly intent on seizing his friend’s throne, and many of Lycomedes’ subjects appeared fickle in their fealty.

  Hero knelt on the open deck and raised her hands to pray beneath the darkening sky. Lycon did not interfere. Perhaps it was a good thing that Hero beseeched the gods on their behalf. They had always mocked their sister’s devotion, seen it as a little mad, but now they were seeking the gods themselves.

  Oenone emerged from below the deck and, glancing at Hero, skirted around the girl to stand beside Lycon. “They should have been here by now,” she said.

  “Perhaps Lycomedes wished to feast them in farewell,” Lycon replied. He turned to look directly at the nymph. “What does Medea want from us Oenone?”

  Hero stopped praying.

  Oenone looked away. “I do not know.”

  “What do you suspect?” Lycon persisted.

  Slowly the nymph brought her eyes back to them. “I think what Medea wants has little to do with you.”

  Hero stood. She spoke plainly, simply, asking what they had all been wondering. “Will you betray us, Oenone?”

  Oenone’s laugh was soft. “I shall try not to, sister of my Paris.”

  “Try hard,” Lycon said tersely.

  They stood silently on the deck watching, waiting. The glowing shadow of Helios faded into the western horizon and the stars became sharp and clear in the heavens. Lycon looked up to the pattern they called Agelaus as he tried to keep faith that all was well. He had promised to leave the next day whether or not his brothers had returned.

  He noticed the tension in Hero’s shoulders, the desperation of her grip on the side of the boat. Lycon knew that by now she could see little—he wondered if that made it worse. His eyes could at least search the moonlit beach… it was something to do, however useless.

  Leaning down, he whispered. “Our brothers will be here, Hero. They…” He stopped as the call of a wolf echoed down from the heights.

  “That’s Mac,” Hero said clutching her brother’s arm. “Ly…”

  “I know, Hero,” he said, already strapping a sword to his back.

  A second howl, different to the first, but familiar. And then Machaon again but the note was changed.

  Hero did not use the cry of the wolf but she understood it as well as her brothers did. “Stay away, he’s saying stay away…”

  Now horns rang from the mountain, a summons to arms.

  “Theseus has won,” Oenone gasped. “Lycomedes sends his soldiers for your brothers.”

  Lycon gripped his sister’s arms. “Listen to me, Hero. Take the boat to the other side of the island. There’s another bay—I saw it from the mountain.”

  “But…”

  “You’ll have to picture it so the ship knows—the pines grow down the shore and the beach is rocky.” He grabbed her hands and shaped them into a cup with one side curling into the other. “The shore line is shaped like this… bring the boat there. I will bring our brothers.”

  Hero closed her eyes, memorising the shape into which he held her hands, trying to conjure an image of the bay he described. “The ship will help me,” she said, her voice determined.

  “As will I.” Oenone took Hero’s hand. “Go, find your brothers, Lycon. Your sister and I will take this craft through the straits.”

  Lycon hesitated, his distrust of the nymph resurging.

  “Go Ly,” Hero said firmly. “We will meet you on the other side of this land. Go… before Cad does something stupid.”

  Medea conceived a passion for Jason. She promised to help him to yoke the fire-breathing bulls and to deliver to him the fleece, if he would swear to marry her and take her with him on the voyage to Greece. When Jason swore to do so, she gave him a salve and bade him to anoint his shield, spear, and body, promising that anointed with it, he could for a single day be harmed neither by fire nor by iron.

  Apollodorus, The Library

  BOOK XIX

  MACHAON’S BREATH CAME IN RAGGED gasps. He’d run up the steep slopes towards the howl, intent on reaching Lupa before the Skyrothians, who may have been much closer than he. When he found the she-wolf, alone on a rocky rise, he collapsed thankfully to his knees and she licked his ears.

  “Come Lupa,” he said, standing again. “We’d better draw the soldiers away from Cad. The Princess of Kolchis is regrettably slow.”

  Lupa gazed at him indulgently for a moment and then turned to make for the trees. Machaon howled before he ran after her. They climbed in a direction opposite to that in which Cadmus was heading with Medea.

  The hunters were no longer distant, the horns loud above the baying hounds. As he ran, Machaon howled again, declaring his presence to hide his brother’s. The Herdsmen were skilled in leaving no sign of their passing and so Machaon stopped at times to make his trail more obvious. He allowed the pursuers to gain dangerously upon them, weaving through the trees and over the most difficult ground. He had stopped again to leave marks in the dense scrub when he heard Lupa a little way ahead of him. Her growl was low and threatening. Machaon tensed, reaching for the sword he had taken from the armoury. The Skyrothian hounds were close now but this was a different danger—he was sure of it.

  Machaon approached from behind Lupa and he saw immediately the red glow of the creature’s eyes. The boar was huge, a mammoth beast the size of a young bull. Its back was bristled black, embedded with the shafts of arrows that had failed to kill it. It wore them now like the spoil of a battle won. Murderous tusks curved like daggers from ei
ther side of a dripping snout. It scraped the ground with its front trotter and snorted.

  Machaon came forward slowly. The boar reacted to the glint of moonlight on the polished bronze of the Herdsman’s sword and turned towards him. Its head was lowered, its nostrils flared.

  “Where did you come from?” Machaon muttered as he crouched ready.

  The creature let out a squealing scream as it charged. Machaon rolled out of the way, his blade making contact with the boar’s thick hide. It turned quickly, surprising the Herdsman with its agility, and charged again.

  Lupa leapt and it bucked to send the she-wolf hurtling into the trees. Machaon heard her yelp. The rage which rose in his chest was now familiar though strange and savage. He did not have time to resist it before the beast ran at him once more. Machaon fell away from the trampling gait, but a tusk caught his arm and tore a gash as it passed. The pain intensified his own bloodlust. Machaon heard himself snarl and he placed himself low. This time when the boar charged, he did not move until the creature was upon him. Instinctively then, he thrust up with all his strength, finding his mark on the soft underbelly. The sword was wrested from his grip with the momentum of the boar as it ran over him, before it collapsed in the trembling throes of imminent death.

  Overcome, Machaon lay panting on the ground, struggling with the fury which still held him. He dragged himself to his knees and Lupa limped to his side. The boar squealed and shrieked pitifully as it died.

  Perhaps this was why the hunters were unheard.

  Machaon became aware of the torches first. He scrambled for his sword and pulled it from the body of the boar. Lupa growled and he turned to see that at least a score of Skyrothians had surrounded them, but they kept their distance, eyeing Machaon and the wolf warily.

  “Look at his eyes… how they glow yellow in the night… he is indeed Theseus’ monster.”

  Machaon fought the impulse to attack despite the odds.

  “Who will slay him? Which one of us will take our place among the heroes?”

  Machaon squinted, trying to see who it was who spoke. The faces were shadows behind the torches.

  Howls echoed from the lower slopes and Machaon tensed as he recognised the calls. Lycon, then Cadmus.