Tamer of Horses

by Amalia Carosella

  “No horse would have the patience to carry you in the state you’re in,” Theseus said, pushing him back down when he tried to sit up. “How you have the strength even to fight with me, I cannot guess.”

  “You never should have let her go,” he accused. “You ought to have stopped her. What good are you if you cannot even keep my wife safe while I lie ill?”

  Theseus had the gall to roll his eyes, shoving him back again, more forcefully this time. “There is no stopping your wife when she has made up her mind. Surely you must realize that by now. Or do you think I would have let her lead the charge against Peleus, to start?”

  Pirithous closed his eyes, not wanting to admit that the room still spun. “I felt the ground shake beneath me, the bed shudder…”

  “If Poseidon spoke to her, then that is some assurance she has come to no harm. And it means she had reason to go, Pirithous. It was Poseidon himself who woke you from your fell sleep.”

  He let out a breath. “Am I to raise a son of Poseidon as my own, the way Ixion was forced to raise me?”

  Dia had never taken another man to her bed after Zeus had come to her. Not even after Ixion’s death. To be given back his life, only to lose Hippodamia’s love—he could not bear the thought. He could not bear to think that bright, burning light of her love might never touch him again, when he had only just realized how desperately he needed her, wanted her, loved her.

  Gods above, how he loved her. The fierce heart that sent her up the mountain to bargain with a god for his life. The brave spirit that had ridden out against Peleus in his place. The queen who had known precisely what words to use to end the slaughter at their wedding feast.

  “The centaurs?” he asked suddenly. “You did not let her ride out with the centaurs still roaming the mountain!”

  “No,” Theseus said, the word far too soft. And he would not meet his eyes. “Hippodamia—she is as strong as an Amazon, Pirithous. Even Antiope is in awe of her.”

  But the sentiment brought him little reassurance. “What happened while I slept, Theseus?”

  He grunted, sinking to the stool beside the bed. “For good or ill, that wild child Centaurus gave you as a bride has become a queen, my friend. Your queen.”

  “She was never wild,” Pirithous murmured, his gaze going to the window. “Or a child.”

  He could see nothing from this angle, and he wanted desperately to find her upon the mountain. To see her returning to his side. To see her. Particularly when Theseus refused to speak in anything but riddles.

  “Help me to the wall, Theseus. I beg of you.”

  His friend sighed. “It could be half a day, yet, before she returns.”

  “And when she does, she will see me waiting for her, whole and awake. Whatever price she paid, she will know it was not for nothing.”

  “You risk your health, you know.”

  Pirithous snorted. “As if it ever stopped you.”

  “Glaukos!” Theseus called out, and the man opened the door almost at once. No doubt he’d been waiting with his ear to the panel. But Theseus was already half-lifting him, and he had not the breath to speak sharply. “Your fool king insists upon a better view of the mountain. Support his other side, will you? Perhaps if we make him walk, he’ll give up before we make the stairs.”

  Pirithous gritted his teeth, ignoring the stab of pain in his leg, set and splinted properly. Even plastered, this time, though his physician knew he hated to be so confined. He could look forward to a long lecture about walking on an unhealed limb, later, he was certain. But so long as Mia sat beside him while he endured it, he did not care.

  “If I collapse, you’ll simply have to haul me the rest of the way,” he managed to spit out. “But under no circumstances will I be returning to that bed without my wife.”

  Glaukos steadied him, and he hung half-suspended between the two men, his arms across their shoulders. “I tried to talk her out of it, my lord, I promise you.”

  “Yes, yes,” Pirithous said, unable to focus on much more than the awkward hop of one leg after another. “And if she’d listened, I’d still be flat on my back, waiting to cross the River Styx. Just get me to the wall, the both of you, and leave me in peace.”

  “Forgive me, my lord, but the queen said you weren’t to be left alone while she was away,” Glaukos said.

  Pirithous stared at him. “The queen said, did she?”

  Theseus turned a laugh into a cough. “You certainly can’t say you weren’t warned. And it’s hardly fair to Glaukos to make him choose which one of you he’ll disobey.”

  The queen said she didn’t want him left alone.

  He’d never let her out of his sight again.

  He was half-dozing against the stonework when he heard a shout from the guards a ways down. Dawn painted the sky in shades of orange and pink, washing out the deep purples of night. It had been long and dark and cold, and his muscles ached from keeping upright when he had lain so still for so long. Ached, but did not betray him. He’d even managed to drink down a healthy cup of broth, which was all his thrice-cursed physician would allow him.

  Glaukos stirred, then rose stiffly from his stool to look out over the top of the wall.

  “The queen!” the same guard called out. “Open the gate for the queen!”

  “Glaukos, your arm.” Pirithous managed to rise, leaning heavily on his friend, but his stomach turned to ice at the sight that greeted him.

  Mia, moon-white and slumped over Podarkes’s neck, barely kept herself upon the horse’s back, and Podarkes himself moved far too gingerly, as if afraid she might fall. As if she had fallen already.

  “Get me to the gate,” he demanded. “Quickly!”

  Glaukos cursed, and then called for another man—Leukos. Pirithous had never been so glad for his raiders as he was in that moment. He could only imagine the huffing and hemming a man like Plouteus would make when he asked for aid. Leukos and Glaukos had him braced between them in a handful of heartbeats, and Pirithous did not even bother to pretend to hop down the stairs, but let them carry his weight completely. If reaching Hippodamia cost him a little pride, so be it. The thought of Mia falling from a horse…

  She would have to be gravely ill, that much was certain. And if Poseidon had done her harm, or taken her by violence, Pirithous would climb Olympus to make the god pay, if he must! He would dive beneath the depths of the sea and tear the god’s palace apart stone by stone to reach him. He would—

  “Mia.” He shoved free of his men and stumbled toward her, clutching at Podarkes’s mane with one hand to keep upright, and the other cupping her cheek, stroking her hair, her face. She was covered in the finest dust. Like the silky powder in a sculptor’s room, and it streaked beneath his fingers. “Little mouse, open your eyes. Look at me, please. Just a glance. Just a word!”

  Her eyelashes fluttered, followed by a soft groan. She was breathing, stirring at his touch, and some of the tightness in his chest eased.

  “My brave mouse,” he murmured, pressing his forehead to hers. “My brave, foolish mouse.”

  She opened her eyes, then, and a strangled noise rose from her throat, her whole body going tense, first with surprise, and then cool, blue relief. One arm wrapped around his neck, weakly, and she slithered slowly from Podarkes’s back, nearly over-balancing him with her weight. But he didn’t care. He didn’t care if she toppled him to the ground, so long as she lay in his arms, safe and whole.

  Her lips moved without sound, shaping his name, and then she hid her face against his throat, shuddering in his hold. Hot tears spilled against his skin. Thank the gods for Podarkes, standing solid beside him, or he’d never have kept himself upright, and he had no intention of letting Mia go, not then, when she gripped him with all that was left of her strength and wept.

  “It’s all right, now, mouse,” he mumbled into her hair. “We’re both all right.”

  At least he hoped so. But from the way she cried all the harder at his assurance, he was beginning to doubt the tr
uth of his own words.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Hippodamia

  Somehow they had managed to make it to his bed. How exactly, with his broken bones and her weakness, she was not so certain, but when she woke, it was daylight and she was wrapped in Pirithous’s arms, surrounded by the lavender of his bedding and the spice of his skin. Maybe it had all been a dream. One long nightmare, to be forgotten in the sunlight streaming through his window, warm and bright and caressing.

  “I worried you would never wake,” he murmured, pressing a kiss against her temple. “You were so still, so limp, and so deeply asleep for so long.”

  “How long?” she asked, her voice rough. As if she had been screaming.

  Or singing herself hoarse with hymns.

  She buried her face in the curve of his shoulder, pushing the thought away. It had to have been a dream. Eurytion and Centaurus’s death, Cyllarus’s attack, Peleus… all that came after. She wanted to believe it was a dream, just a little bit longer.

  “The night you returned, through the day following and straight through last night again, until morning,” he said. “I feared we had only traded places. But Ariston had arrived, and he and Niko both pronounced you well, if exhausted, and I suppose Niko was pleased that I kept to my bed while you slept beside me. I’d be cautious of any drinks he offers you, now that he knows how to keep me off my feet. He’s liable to dose you for my sake.”

  His voice was soft and teasing, filled with good humor to match the tickle of the sunlight along her limbs. Gods above, but she was glad of it. So glad to hear his voice again, to know his laughter brimmed just beneath. She burrowed deeper into his arms, beneath the linens, into her desire to forget everything else but this moment. Pirithous was well, and she was with him, and surely none of the rest mattered beyond that.

  “Will you not tell me what happened, Mia?”

  She tugged one of the furs over her head, his question squeezing her heart, twisting her stomach. Because it wasn’t a dream. It would never be a dream, and he did not know, yet, just what she had cost them. She didn’t want him to know.

  “Ah, mouse.” He pulled the fur back, his fingers finding her chin, tipping her face up, until she met his eyes. So bright, and warm as the sun at her back. “Whatever passed between you and the god—you needn’t fear I will turn from you. If a child comes, I’ll raise him as my own, I swear to you. He’ll never know he isn’t mine, unless you wish it otherwise.”

  She blinked, her forehead furrowing. “What on earth are you talking about, Pirithous?”

  “Theseus said—” He cleared his throat. “That is, I worried, when he said you had gone up the mountain to make sacrifice…”

  It must have been her expression that stopped him, or the absolute befuddlement he felt from her heart, because he trailed off, then, and she was more than glad of it. “You think Poseidon took me as his lover? That I offered my womb to the god?”

  His face flushed. “My mother—”

  “I gave him my blood,” she said, before he could go on. She couldn’t bear it, for him to dwell upon the thought a moment longer. And never mind what else the god had taken. It was not a lie. She did not need to lie to reassure him of this. “Only my blood. Though I cannot say for certain that I do not carry a child. Your child.”

  He let out a breath, and then laughed, thick and throaty and delighted, as he drew her in all the more tightly, burying his face in her hair as his hand found her waist beneath the bedding, slid over her stomach. She could feel his joy leaching into her skin with the contact, bubbling in her throat.

  “I suspect you have Zeus to thank for it,” she said, trying not to think of the child’s face in the rock. It was promise and curse, and she did not know how he might respond—she did not want Pirithous to blame the boy for the choice she had made. “Theseus was right about his wanting your heir. But Poseidon took pity upon me, after I’d bled myself half to death. Or else Zeus feared for the babe in my belly. It hardly matters, now. Whatever their reasons, Poseidon gave you back to me.”

  “I ought to have known that Dia would choose me a bride strong enough to stand against the gods,” he said, lifting his head enough to search her face. “I never should have doubted. Not for a moment.”

  She stroked his cheek. “I loved you too much to let you die. After all you had done for me, I could not sit by.”

  He caught her hand, pressing a kiss to her palm. “It’s all behind us now. We’ve nothing left to fear.”

  She would let him believe it, she decided. To repay him for everything he’d done, all that he’d given her. For the precious days she had wasted in blame and hurt and anger.

  If they had only three years, she meant to fill them with love enough to last for the rest of his life.

  For Pirithous.

  For their son.

  For herself.

  She would not let the gods take anything more.

  EPILOGUE

  Pirithous

  Polypoetes, at two years old, rode with all the skill of his mother. Just watching him atop Podarkes’s back made Pirithous ache with grief still too fresh to ignore. The funeral banquet was tonight, but he had not wanted their son to steep in the palace, listening to the weeping and mourning as the women prepared the feast. And he had wanted him to know where Hippodamia had been laid to rest, that he might know she was at peace in the caves of her people.

  Theseus had helped him find them. Just as he rode with them now, behind the cart where her body lay shrouded in gossamer silk. The finest, lightest fabric he had ever seen. Pirithous had made the proper sacrifices, going all the way to Mount Pelion to speak to Chiron, the half-horse son of Cronus, about the proper rites for Mia’s funeral. He’d marked himself with blood at the throat and the heart, since Hippodamia’s body carried no visible wounds.

  Apollo’s arrows did not always leave marks, no matter how deadly their aim.

  “Papa, look!” Polypoetes leaned forward on Podarkes’s back. His legs, too short to fit the stallion properly, were tucked up beneath his bottom, allowing him to rise up on his knees. Pirithous swore he was more at home on the back of his mother’s horse than he was walking on two legs.

  He followed his son’s gaze to the peak of the mountain. The end of another path, long overgrown with wiry scrub oaks and pines, but still visible as a trace of packed earth. Looming at the top were three stones. Perhaps it had been one large boulder once, cracked by lightning, or wind or water over time. Two large stones and one small, huddled together like a family.

  Pirithous glanced back at Hippodamia’s shrouded figure, then slid down from his horse. “Stay with Theseus,” he told the boy, patting Podarkes’s neck absently as he passed.

  But of course he didn’t. Polypoetes was his mother’s son, after all, and it wasn’t long before he heard Podarkes’s hooves on the path behind him, the horse’s world-weary sigh blowing against the back of his neck. Pirithous shook his head and pushed his way through the brush and trees, grateful the path was not too terribly steep for the horse. It wouldn’t be, he supposed, if the centaurs had made use of it.

  And then he reached the rocks, stopping so abruptly that Podarkes huffed, startled and annoyed.

  “What is it?” Theseus called up from below.

  Pirithous reached out, letting his fingers trace the features in the stone. Roughly carved, but distinct, with two bright smudges of brown quartz where the eyes should have been. Hippodamia’s eyes. Her lips. Her face.

  He lifted his gaze, searching beyond the rocks. The shallow depression, the broken and rotted wood at its heart, and the stone, somehow still clear of windblown debris, but stained black with spilled blood. He could even see where she had knelt. The impression of her knees and her toes in the center of a spiraled crack in the rock.

  “It’s Mama. An’ you, Papa,” Polypoetes said.

  Pirithous brought his attention back to the stones. Carved with their images. Small Polypoetes just as he stood today. Their little family. And he kne
w what he was seeing now. The sign of Poseidon. The Earth Shaker had touched these grounds, hallowed them with his power.

  And Hippodamia.

  Gods above.

  All these years, she’d known. She’d seen it in the stone, and when she had come back down the mountain, she’d known their time was short. Known what was coming.

  It explained so much. Her peace when she had fallen ill. Her bravery. The love she’d lavished upon both of them.

  She’d traded her life for his, for their son’s. For three years of joy.

  He would have laughed if he had not wanted to weep.

  “My brave, foolish mouse,” he whispered, touching her face in the rock. “My bride, my queen. My love. Enjoy your days in Elysium, for it is impossible the gods would find you undeserving.”

  “Pirithous?” Theseus called again, from below.

  “Come, Polypoetes. Let us see to your mother’s body, that her shade might find the peace in death she has earned by her life.”

  For the first time since Mia had fallen ill, he felt some small measure of comfort. She had not died for nothing. It was not some greater cruelty of the gods, sent to punish them both. Hippodamia had bargained with the gods for his sake. For love. She had bargained and she had won them three years of glory.

  And Pirithous did not mean to waste her sacrifice.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Huge thanks to the usual suspects: Diana Paz, Zachary Tringali, Valerie Valdes, L.T. Host, and particularly Nick Mohoric, who demanded a Pirithous book and ended up getting a lot more than he bargained for. Extra special thanks to Libbie Hawker, who gave me a shove when I otherwise might have despaired of ever getting this book into the world. And a million thank yous to Lane Brown for his fantastic work bringing Hippodamia to life for the cover.

  And of course I would be terribly remiss if I did not thank my family: Adam, naturally, but also Mattias and Emilia who both read early versions of this manuscript and provided valuable insights and opinions. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate those early reads!