Ariande's Web

by Fred Saberhagen

Meanwhile, a couple of members of the Dianite ruling council, pudgy men in merchants' gowns, had come aboard to confer with Nestor. These were his employers, and he sat up straight and began to explore options with them. With the situation as it now stood, he thought it would be best to lure the raiders farther inland, and destroy them, rather than merely drive them away.

  Nestor was strongly in favor of this plan. But the ranking civilian, president of the ruling council, let it be known that he would actually be better satisfied with a less drastic result.

  The other man from the council was wringing his fat, white, merchant's hands. "Captain Nestor, if the attackers are now trying to withdraw, then does it make sense for us to be standing in their way?"

  "Seems to me the whole idea is to keep these bastards from doing whatever they want."

  "What we want to do is get rid of them!"

  "Of course, chief. But you don't want them coming back next month, do you?" Nestor paused, staring at his two visitors. Then he added, "By all the gods, I think you're scared you're going to make them angry."

  The civilian drew himself up. "I'm afraid of what may happen to our people."

  "Right now, I'd say your people are winning. Sure, war is a scary business. But as the proverb says, there are four or five things in the world even worse than war, and most of them happen to you when you're defeated."

  Nestor was telling the truth; he viewed the current situation as a considerable victory in the making. There was a good chance that most of the enemy who had come ashore could be trapped and slaughtered.

  In fact the council president, listening to the list of his own dead and wounded, was beginning to view the situation as a disaster. Someone had just brought him a paper bearing what appeared to be a list of names, and he shook the paper almost in Nestor's face. "Have you seen this? Have you heard the reports of the slain? Fifteen massacred in the Temple of Apollo. Is this what you call victory?"

  Conflicting reports kept coming in from scouts who had been ranging inland, as was usual when a protracted fight was on, even a small one like this. Nestor was sure that many of the details of slaughter and destruction would prove unfounded, while others would be unhappily confirmed.

  One of the merchants suggested that it might be a good idea to deliberately allow a few of the marauders to escape. "Let them spread the word among their pirate brotherhood, all across the Great Sea, that Dia is now well armed and capable of resistance."

  "That's not a bad idea," Nestor admitted. "But you see, two of their ships did pull out before we could board them. Looks to me that some of these mother-humpers are likely to get away whether we want 'em to or not."

  Presently the excitable young man reappeared again, panting, to report that there was now a hole in the planking of the hull, and some water coming in.

  "That's what I kind of expected, once you made a hole." Nestor got to his feet, dusting off his hands as if the thumb-twiddling might have dirtied them. "Let's go ashore." After a last glance around at the still-smoldering fires, Nestor took the rescued prisoner gently by the arm. "We're going ashore, lady."

  Ariadne came with him meekly, saying nothing.

  While guiding her splashing through the water toward the shore, he tried the young woman again with more questions, thinking maybe a moderate dunk in the sea would prove refreshing enough to wake her up. But she came out of the water as glassy-eyed as she went in. She still couldn't or wouldn't give him any helpful answers. Vaguely he wondered if whatever the pirates had done to her might have driven her completely mad. That would be too bad, but meanwhile other folk were dying, including men under his leadership, and he didn't have time to worry much about one girl.

  Nestor made sure that Ariadne got safely ashore, a process which required swimming a few strokes, as well as some heavy wading. The brackish water near the creek mouth felt good, cool and clean after her confinement in the cabin. But she let out a gasp of relief at the feel of solid ground under her feet once more.

  Nestor urged her along a path that ran inland.

  "Take her back to headquarters," he told a small group of armed youth, who were standing around with the air of being temporarily unemployed. "Go easy, she's had a rough time."

  "She's a prisoner, Nestor?"

  "Not our prisoner, by Hades. Not anyone's anymore. Just take care of her."

  The princess hadn't gone far with her new escort, when he was summoned away to attend to some other emergency. Before leaving, he assigned a gray old man to carry on as Ariadne's guide. In the background men were cheering. Now it appeared to her that the ship she'd just left, the one with the hole chopped in her bottom, might be going to catch fire after all.

  The way along which she was now being conducted led past the intermingled bodies of slaughtered attackers and defenders. Ariadne had rarely seen such gruesome sights before, and never on such a comparatively large scale. It crossed her mind that one or more of these inanimate things might have been her living shipmates for the past several days, but she could recognize no one. And in any case she would have felt no sense of loss had Theseus's entire crew been wiped out.

  What she could see of the landscape stretching inland from the rocky coast looked peaceful and pastoral. In one place she could see the red, tiled roof of a distant farm. Most of the grass in the rolling fields seemed to have been cropped short, though at the moment she could see no grazing animals. She wondered if these efficient defenders had somehow rounded up their herds and driven them to safety.

  The silent old man who now had Ariadne in charge, ushering her along courteously if not very helpfully, was following a path that ran along the bank of a small creek or stream.

  Part of the time they were walking knee-deep in the stream, so the banks on either side reached over their heads, and kept Ariadne from seeing much of what might be happening in the nearby countryside. Here she wished earnestly for shoes or sandals; the stones in the stream bed and along the path were too much for her tender feet. When she limped and stumbled, her elderly escort showed not the least concern, and it appeared fantastically unlikely that he was going to offer to carry her. Had he done so, she would have been afraid to accept.

  When the path brought them up out of the creek again she was able to see, beyond two or three miles of rolling countryside, a building of white marble on a rocky promontory, bathed in brilliant sunlight. Without thinking about it, she knew that building must be the temple of Apollo where the raiders had launched, or were going to launch, their main attack.

  To distinguish individual people at such a distance would be impossible. Some figures were visible at a range of two or three hundred yards, but Ariadne could not tell if they were soldiers or shepherds, or even if they were men or women. Certainly they were not in uniform, but then none of today's combatants were regular troops.

  So far, since she'd come ashore, everyone had been treating Ariadne kindly, as a rescued prisoner. But the terrible numbness that had settled over her mind and spirit still had her in its grip. Now and then someone asked her a question. All the princess could think of in the way of answer was to keep murmuring that she did not know. Since they were assuming she had been a prisoner on the ship, they seemed to find this acceptable—until another man in his excitement began to question her all over again. But no one pressed her very hard.

  Exactly where Nestor's senior auxiliary was taking her, she did not know, but as things turned out, it didn't matter what goal they had in mind. Before she and her escort could reach their destination, some other men wearing white armbands appeared in the middle distance, shouting something to the old man. Ariadne couldn't catch the words, but they must have indicated some military emergency, for her escort immediately turned his back on her and scrambled away at surprising speed to join the others. Whether they were trying to get into the fight or away from it she couldn't tell, and didn't care.

  Ariadne ran away.

  Their weapons were urgently needed somewhere, and they all ran away from her. Barefoot,
she could not have kept up with them had she tried—and she felt no wish to try.

  Now she was left to her own devices.

  Glancing back to the ships she had just left, she saw how a second one was burning now, smoke black with the tar and pitch of caulked seams, the resin of pine and fir, going up and up into the clear sky.

  Looking inland, she saw the pirates, twenty or thirty men in a band, running along a distant trail. They appeared to be hell-bent on getting back to their ships, at the moment dreaming no dreams of pillaging or conquest. Ariadne's heart was briefly in her mouth. But they were out of sight again before she could distinguish Theseus among them, and for one more moment that was her chief concern.

  For the space of a couple of breaths she came to a full stop on the path. Then she left the path and moved off at a fast walk, sore feet notwithstanding, instinctively heading away from the sounds of fighting. Somehow the worst fate she could imagine for herself at the moment was being retaken by Theseus and his corps of raiders.

  The princess slowed her pace as soon as she felt herself out of immediate danger. But she kept moving, away from the screams and the sound of clashing metal, away from the column of smoke that still went up from the burning ship. Still her feet refused to take her far inland. To a Corycan princess the sea was much less strange, after all, than the rocks and vegetation of this alien island.

  Eventually the last sounds died away. When she thought she must have come at least half a mile, she paused to catch her breath and rest.

  Wondering if the man called Nestor had already forgotten about her, or if he had set some of his men to searching, she sat down wearily and closed her eyes, only a pebble's toss from the shoreline. Now she had got clear away from all the men of both factions, and all their fighting. Here on this desolate portion of the coast, all she could hear was the sound of seabirds, and unhurried waves as they came in splashing and gurgling between huge rocks. Here it might almost be possible to believe that she had the entire island to herself.

  But now the numbness that had gripped her all through the fight, ever since Theseus had ordered her shut up in the cabin, was failing, like a broken dam. She could no longer avoid coming to grips with the truth: the man who had played the role of her lover had locked her away as a kind of afterthought, a toy he might someday want to play with again. And then he had abandoned her. Maybe he was dead by now. But the truth was, she no longer cared whether he was or not.

  A storm of rage and weeping swept the princess now, followed by helplessness and hopelessness.

  Ariadne fell asleep, in a total exhaustion of mind and body, nestled in the sand between a pair of wave-worn boulders.

  She woke again after only a short doze, feeling hungry and thirsty and cold, just in time to see, at a distance of less than a hundred yards, her lover and one of his men in a small rowboat. The face of Theseus was turned in her direction, and Ariadne was sure he saw her, but he made no response to her calls and waves.

  She stood up, waving with both hands, and he would have to be stone blind not to see her now. A strong arm might have thrown a stone across the gap of open water in between.

  "Theseus!" One last time Ariadne stretched out her arms to him.

  He saw her clearly, there could be no doubt. He must have heard her calling. But when he spoke to the man with him, the man only rowed the boat away, intent on making sure there were no more pirates in need of rescue.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Much later the bards would sing it, and most of those who heard them would believe: how the hero Theseus abandoned the Princess Ariadne, shortly after he had carried her to the Island of Dia. In the songs the reasons for his behavior were left obscure. There was no reason to doubt that the princess was still a very young and attractive woman when he left her there—but heroes were generally considered to have their pick of attractive women, and those who listened to the bards were generally more interested in hearing about heroic deeds.

  Above all, the Prince of Pirates intended soon to become a god, and to a god, no woman ought to be worth the effort to woo and keep her. It was a law of nature that to a prince, let alone a god, all women should be readily available.

  She watched Theseus climb aboard the ship, the size and beauty of his body conspicuous amid a tangle of other men. Soon he had them getting up sail, and when everyone who could make it to the ship seemed to have been gathered aboard, the vessel headed out to sea. It remained in sight for what seemed a very long time, and Ariadne had sat down on the rock again long before it disappeared.

  Once she had possessed a home, and family, and friends, and it seemed an evil dream that all of that could have been swept away so rapidly. Half a year ago her vicious uncle and his cruel god had deprived her of her father, and now, over the past few unhappy days, fate had robbed her of all the rest. Everything had been sacrificed for Theseus, who had pledged her his eternal love—and now he, too, was gone, and his promises had meant no more than the whisper of a stableboy to a kitchen maid.

  In a profound sense he, the man she loved, had never existed. Now she supposed the best fate she could reasonably hope for was to be taken captive by the Dianites and held for ransom. Not that Uncle Perses, who if he thought about her at all must consider her a threat to his power, was likely to reward anyone for bringing her back—more likely her uncle would judge himself well rid of her. Quite possibly he would even pay someone to make sure she never did come home.

  The only ray of hope the princess could discern, and that not very bright, lay in the fact that her brother Asterion would almost certainly be doing all he could, working in the world of dreams, to try to help her—but in her current situation, she needed much more than dreams. Not even visions as powerful as those her brother could invoke were likely to bring her any benefit.

  But she couldn't even be certain that her brother was still alive. He had stayed behind on Corycus, perhaps by his own choice, and Shiva and Perses might well have taken their anger out on him. That thought in itself was enough to bring on tears.

  The questions kept forcing themselves upon her tortured mind. Why had Theseus abandoned her? How was it possible for the man she had loved so desperately to do a thing like that? Maybe there was some other woman in his life. Maybe . . . but a storm of weeping came, wiping away all thought in pure emotion.

  He wouldn't have had to fight his way to me, or anything like that. Only a short row across an open stretch of water. He saw me, but he turned away.

  He might have come to get me, as he went back to the beach to pick up his pirates.

  Ariadne roused from an exhausted sleep in her lonely hiding place. For a moment she was utterly confused, then she remembered she was on Dia. She had just awakened from a strange and twisted dream in which her supposed lover, Theseus, had returned and come ashore to watch her sleeping, and then had faithlessly stolen away again. In the dream he had come and gone without even leaving her any message, and the only explanation she could think of was that he had never learned to read or write. Somehow that seemed unlikely.

  Her body ached, as if she had been through some great physical exertion. Slowly, cautiously, she moved to a slightly higher spot where she could see more of the sea. All the ships of the raiding party were completely out of sight by now, the hulk of the one that had been burned evidently sunk beneath the waves, and she could just see in the distance, along the shore, the mast of the one that had been sunk, protruding above the water.

  A wave crashed on the rocks, almost at her feet, wetting her borrowed pirates' clothes with spray. The tide had changed, she realized, and now was coming in.

  Now, once more left to her own resources, Ariadne remained in hiding. Theseus had sailed away, but she imagined there must still be pirates on the land. And the defense forces, the irregulars captained by the man called Nestor, might be searching for her. She preferred that they not find her either, though perhaps that attitude did not make sense, because sooner or later she would have to come out, if only to beg s
omeone for food in this alien and probably unfriendly land.

  Hunger was fast becoming a problem, and the princess could foresee that it was quickly going to get worse. In her last day on the ship she had eaten only some hard biscuit, and a couple of raw carrots, gone rubbery with dehydration. It seemed to her that she had not had a hearty, solid meal since the evening before the great escape effort had begun. If she now had one of those boardlike dried fish from the cabin floor in hand, she would have tried to chew on it.

  As the tide came in and the wind shifted, the spray from incoming waves kept wetting her, so she moved. Then she moved again, cowering first behind one rock and then behind another, but reluctant to go anywhere out of sight of the sea—it was as if with part of her mind she still expected her lover to come splashing up boldly out of the waves and rescue her. But that was not going to happen. The truth was that she had no lover, no such being existed. Men had paid court to her from time to time, and one of them, to save his own skin, had managed to seduce her. (There were names for men who behaved like that, though a Corycan princess was not supposed to speak such names.) But there was no man who loved her, and probably there had never been.

  And another truth was that she was hiding now because she hated and despised them all, all the men with swords in their hands, like the one who had killed her father.

  Now she must find her own way; and since her earliest childhood, she had never been entirely helpless. Settling herself in the driest corner she could find between tall rocks, in a position that minimized her various discomforts as much as possible, she closed her eyes and tried to visualize a web.

  When the familiar, gossamer strands began to glisten in her inner vision, they formed a pattern that Ariadne had never seen before. They came together to form a great, complex network, with herself at the center, nexus, of many radiating filaments.

  In the circumstances the vision was frightening, and she quickly opened her eyes again. Never had she seen the threads do that before. They seemed to be telling her to stay right where she was—advice that did not seem to make any sense at all. Unless it meant that her condition was now utterly hopeless.