Trying War

by S. D. Gentill

  Medea stood at the prow with eyes that seemed to hold the heart of the squall within them. Her face was raptured as she held her arms high, swaying and praising Hecate.

  The Herdsmen let her be and descended into the hold with Hero to see out the storm. The hold had been the exclusive realm of Medea and Oenone since they had left Kolchis so they were unprepared for what the space held. Amongst the jars of wine and water, and the boxes of figs, honey and olives, were urns of blood and caged animals and birds. A small altar had been squeezed in and upon it was Medea’s silver basin, emptied of water by the pitching sea. The interior hull had been painted with symbols and signs.

  Hero gasped.

  “In case you had any doubt we were harbouring a witch,” Cadmus murmured.

  “Do not be alarmed,” Oenone said. “Medea’s craft is an ancient one, learned at her father’s side. The sorcery of Aietes is legend.”

  “And now his power is second to mine!” Medea laughed as she climbed lightly down the ladder. Her dark hair was wet and wild and her eyes sparkled. She was both terrible and enchanting, as darkly seductive as danger itself. The princess manoeuvred herself in the close space of the hold until she was pressed up against Machaon. She put her hand on his chest and pulled it away distastefully. “You’re sticky.”

  Machaon glanced at Hero. “Honey.”

  Medea laughed again. “Oh yes, the Amazonian child and her funny rites.” The Kolchian witch stroked the Herdsman’s hair. “Brave Machaon,” she crooned. “I can see your suffering though you refuse to let it bend you… I can see Alecto with her flaming torch, her blistered lips and bloody cloak; I can hear the screech of Megaera, the crack of her whip… and Tisiphone, I see how she wants you, how she longs to kiss your lips and bite off your face.” Medea glanced disdainfully at Hero. “But the games of Pentheselia’s daughter will not help you—you cannot fend off the Erinyes with the contents of a larder.”

  “We are already going to Attica,” Machaon replied. “No more can be done.”

  “When I loved the Greek, I too was pursued by the Erinyes, for the murder of my brother. We sailed then to Aeaea, the home of my aunt.”

  “Circe…” Machaon said. They had been to Aeaea in their pursuit of Odysseus, the King of Ithaca. They had known the seductress Circe. The sorceress had taken Odysseus as a lover, but she had in her own way helped them and offered the sons of Agelaus the delights of her arms.

  “Yes, Circe the daughter of Helios,” Medea confirmed. “She performed a rite to cleanse me of my brother’s murder.”

  “Then why are we going to Attica?” Lycon exploded. “We need to take Mac to Aeaea.”

  Cadmus agreed. “Circe will help us… you may have to share her bed for a year or two, Mac, but there are worse penances.”

  “No!” Medea said icily. “Aeaea is on the other side of the world—your brother will be dead or worse by the time we reach it. In any case, my aunt’s magic did not stay the Erinyes forever, just for a time. When they returned they were angry… and all I could do was slay the precious sons of the Greek.”

  For a moment the children of Agelaus said nothing, struck silent with horror and revulsion. Could the Erinyes really have driven Medea to murder her own children?

  “You know this rite, my Lady,” Hero asked hesitantly, “that your aunt invoked in your aid.”

  “I do.”

  “And it will keep the Erinyes from Mac for a time?”

  “It will hide him from their eyes. It will stay their whips and give him back his mind until they find him again.”

  “Why did you not tell us this in Kolchis?” Lycon asked suspiciously.

  “I chose not to. I choose to tell you now.”

  “Are you just going to tell us, or are you going to help him?” Cadmus asked irritably.

  Medea glared at him. “When we next make land, I may choose to do so.”

  “Why not here?” Lycon pressed. Medea turned away. “Please,” he added.

  “Ly.” Machaon heard the concern, the desperation in his youngest brother’s voice. “It’s all right… Hero can—”

  “The girl’s prayers will make you sticky but nothing else. You cannot be hidden from the Erinyes with the leavings from a peasant’s table,” Medea spat. “I will require a hearth, and fire. And we will need to be on solid ground for that.”

  “Then we will sail for land,” Cadmus said, climbing onto the ladder.

  “Where are you going?” Hero asked.

  “I’m going to let the ship know that we need to find land—any land—as soon as possible.”

  THEY WERE TWO DAYS and two nights being tossed on the dark open sea. In the churning sky Hero could see the gods at war. Zeus the Thunderer sent the storm to punish them for betraying their host and taking his daughter. He summoned the clouds and pierced them with his well-aimed bolts, raising winds from the east and the north. But there was also Helios, the sun, who was Medea’s grandfather and who loved her beyond his own child. To him, she had appealed for help when it seemed the king of gods would sink the Phaeacian ship. He drove his golden chariot through the clouds, parting the tempest and softening the water with his warmth.

  Medea stood on the deck, her black hair streaming behind her and laughed in triumph. Hero prayed, terrified that the Thunderer would repay the princess’ insolence by punishing them all.

  Machaon had deteriorated in the past days. Though he refused to speak of what was happening to him, Hero could see him struggling to fight some terror or impulse. The whip marks appeared from time to time without any visible cause… never more than three or four at each instance, enough to torture but not to kill. Even Oenone’s draught of poppy and Lupa’s vigilance was of little effect now.

  Hero was startled as Lycon knelt beside her.

  “Don’t get excited, I don’t want to pray,” he whispered. “I just wanted to talk to you.” He glanced surreptitiously at Medea. “Do you trust her, Hero?”

  “What do you mean?” Hero closed her eyes as if she were deep in devotion.

  “The Erinyes are a curse,” Lycon murmured. “Someone has to call them.”

  “Pentheselia…”

  “Maybe,” Lycon said carefully. “Could someone else have summoned them?”

  Hero’s eyes moved to Medea. Was this what Lycon was thinking? “But why? Why would she…?”

  “I don’t know, I’m just uneasy.”

  “The rite,” Hero said, panicked. “Perhaps we shouldn’t…”

  “Mac’s really struggling, Hero,” Lycon said. “Who knows how long it will take us to find the Pantheon even if they are really in Attica. I don’t trust Medea, but I believe she does know how to hide Mac from the Erinyes.”

  “How can we be sure she won’t hurt him during the rite?” Hero felt sick and cold. She had always worried about Machaon, as she had all her brothers, yet by some irrational conviction, she had thought him invulnerable. But he could not fight both the Erinyes and the Kolchian witch.

  Medea spoke without turning from the sea.

  “I give you my oath, by Helios who crosses the sky, by the immortals who brought low the old gods, that I will perform the rite faithfully and hide your brother as well as I can. Will that satisfy you, Amazonian child?”

  Hero looked at Lycon, horrified. How much had Medea heard?

  “We will hold you to your oath, my Lady,” Lycon said, standing. “If he is harmed, we will return you to Kolchis ourselves.”

  “My father will kill you before you set foot in his kingdom again.”

  “Even so, we will return you.”

  Circe began the rite which would absolve the murderer who seeks asylum at the hearth. Taking a suckling pig from a sow with dugs still swollen after littering, she held it over Jason and Medea. She cut its throat allowing the warm blood to fall on their hands. Next she appealed to Zeus with other libations, calling on him as the Cleanser, who will hear a murderer’s prayers with compassion. And still she remained by the hearth, burning cakes and pouring wineless
libations with her prayers, in the hope that she might convince the loathsome Erinyes to relent, and that Zeus himself might once more smile upon this pair, even if the hands they lifted up to him were stained with a kinsman’s blood.

  Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, Book 4

  BOOK XIV

  AS EOS RAISED HER BLUSHING palms to welcome her brother Helios into the lightening sky, the coastline of a new country came into view; a fertile land of rocky peaks and pine forests which grew down to the sea. White houses dotted the hillsides and on one peak stood a towering palace of sun-bleached stone, cast rose in the light of dawn.

  “Where are we?” Lycon murmured as he looked out from the prow.

  Cadmus shrugged. “I just told the ship to find land.”

  They took the Phaeacian craft onto the white sands of a wide beach and dragged her beyond the reach of the tide. Local fishermen approached them curiously, exclaiming at the wonders of their ship and asking their business on Skyros, which it seemed was the name of this land.

  “We are on our way to Attica,” Cadmus replied. “We have stopped here because my Lady wishes to spend a night on solid ground by a friendly hearth.”

  “Where is your king?” Medea asked. “We must make ourselves known to him.”

  The fishermen welcomed them, bowing to Medea as if they sensed the nobility of her station. They directed the Herdsmen to the palace. “Lycomedes is the lord of Skyros.”

  The road up to the peak against which the royal house was built was paved with river stones and lined with lavender. It spoke of wealth. At Medea’s insistence, and with the silver she provided, Cadmus procured horses after haggling and trading with a merchant from the port. The Herdsmen all wore swords on their backs, hidden beneath their cloaks. They were in an unknown land, but it was not wise to seek aid and welcome whilst obviously armed.

  “Mac?” Lycon checked his eldest brother.

  “I’m fine, Ly,” he replied, mounting. But there was no smile, no glance that did not seem focussed on something else.

  They rode for most of the morning, moving with the river of people surging up the mountain path towards the stronghold of Lycomedes, King of Skyros. The palace was still some distance away when they heard screams and the movement of people pushed back against them.

  Lycon reined in his horse and reached out to steady Hero’s. “What’s going on?”

  The screaming continued and the panic intensified.

  “Run!”

  The Herdsmen moved their horses forward against the tide of flight.

  “Over there.” Cadmus pointed up the paved road.

  Machaon squinted. “Is that a bull?”

  “A big one,” Lycon said, rising on the back of his horse.

  It was indeed a colossal beast—a white bull with a horn-span that was as wide as a man was tall. Enraged, it charged wildly, its great head lowered as it tossed and trampled through the crowd. The cries of fear before it, and pain behind it, seemed to spur it on.

  The sons of Agelaus did not delay but urged their horses towards the beast.

  “Leave them, my Lady,” Hero said as Medea looked about to follow. “My brothers are herders—they will subdue the creature.”

  Machaon dismounted first and stood before the bull. He approached it slowly. It lowered its head, bellowing dangerously. Machaon did not recoil, locking his gaze with its eyes and keeping the beast’s attention on him. He did not hurry.

  Lycon slipped off his horse, taking a rope from the pack it carried. Cadmus had ridden around the bull and approached it from behind.

  Machaon battled to concentrate over the screeching in his mind. Unceasing Alecto and her bloody-eyed sisters fought to pull him back to their torturous realm, but gentling bulls was the art of his people, a skill Machaon had learned at his father’s side… familiar… instinctive. Then avenging Tisiphone cracked her whip. He did not to react so much to the burning of the stripe which opened on his back, as to the noise which seemed so loud he thought it must startle the bull. The creature had heard nothing, but the flinch broke the spell of Machaon’s gaze. The bull charged, tossing its head as it ran. Lycon threw his rope, knotted to tangle the hindquarters of the beast. It stalled the bull momentarily and then it was free again, bearing down on Machaon, who was now bent double by the merciless assaults of the Erinyes.

  Cadmus leapt suddenly and was upon the bull’s back, straddling the powerful neck. The creature was unnerved and twisted and bucked, but still it ran towards Machaon. Cadmus reached over the top of the bull’s head, stretching for the creature’s muzzle and seized the sensitive septum of its nose. The bull screamed, tossing and shaking its head erratically but Cadmus hung on grimly, bracing himself against a horn. At last its charge faltered. Lycon threw his rope again and this time it tangled tightly around the hind legs, and the bull was hobbled.

  Now other men found courage and came forth with more ropes to restrain the beast.

  Cadmus removed his hand from the soft nose of the bull and ran to Machaon’s side.

  “Come on, Mac,” he said, putting his brother’s arm around his shoulders and helping him to stand.

  “By the Lords of Olympus, is he hurt?” A richly dressed band of men on fine steeds stopped before them. At their fore was a very heavy old man in lavishly crafted, if ill-fitting, armour.

  “Of course he’s hurt!” A second man, equally elaborately clad, though his figure was less plentiful, reined in beside the first. “Your cursed bull charged him down—we’ll be collecting the injured between here and the palace.” He nodded at Cadmus. “You boy, who are you?”

  Cadmus bowed his head. “I am Cadmus, son of Agelaus. This is my brother Machaon and my brother Lycon. We are travellers seeking rest on unmoving ground as we sail to Attica.”

  “What is your business on this road, son of Agelaus?”

  “We wish to make ourselves known to Lycomedes of Skyros.”

  “Are you supplicants?” the man replied, dismounting.

  “Not exactly,” Cadmus said uncomfortably.

  “Well then you shall be guests!” the man boomed.

  “Of whom?” Cadmus was a little confused by the sudden welcome.

  “I am Lycomedes, Lord of Skyros. This beast shall be sacrificed to the Earthshaker, Poseidon, in thanks for your intervention.”

  The fat man cleared his throat indignantly. “Come now, my friend, I had the situation well in hand. This beast is nothing in size and ferocity against the famed bull of Marathon.”

  “Two men were gored, another five, including one of my personal servants, were trampled. The statue of Lady Athene has been toppled and a cart of bread up-ended,” Lycomedes retorted. “I think the situation might have slipped out of your hand.”

  “Nonsense! If these men hadn’t blundered in I would have dragged the beast back to be offered at the feet of Poseidon’s statue!”

  Lycon decided to help broker peace between the men. “We apologise, my Lord, if we have intervened without cause. We did not mean to offend.”

  The fat man sighed plaintively, his chin sinking into the flesh of his jowls. “You weren’t to know, I suppose. This is, after all, not my kingdom—my fame here is limited.”

  Lycomedes rolled his eyes. “This is my guest, Theseus. He was once the king of Athens.” The Lord of Skyros signalled to his servants and spoke to Cadmus. “Take your brother in my chariot, and I will have my physician attend to him.”

  And so the sons of Agelaus completed the last part of their journey to Lycomedes’ palace in the king’s own chariot. Hero and Oenone rode beside them, but Medea stayed behind the chariot and veiled her face with the cowl of her cloak. The children of Agelaus were preoccupied with Machaon, who had fallen into some deep abyss where there were only the loathsome Erinyes and the suffering they inflicted. But Oenone watched as the witch of Kolchis kept her face turned away from the court of Lycomedes.

  The castle of Skyros was a wonder belied by the strength of its exterior. Within the fortified walls was
room after room of opulent and delicate luxury. Bathing pools were set in mosaicked tiles, steaming, heated by some natural source within the mountain. The walls were painted with frescos of such vibrant colour and detail that it seemed they were standing on the edge of the battle or celebration depicted.

  The king was a hospitable man. He accommodated them in his finest rooms and instructed his own daughter to see that their beds were made with his best linens. Convinced that Machaon had been gored by his bull he was determined to make amends.

  Cadmus refused their host’s repeated offer of a physician. “We have among our party two learned healers.” Cautiously, he did not reveal the nature of Machaon’s malady. “We beg only the use of a hearth and perhaps the ingredients for some medicines, my Lord.”

  To this request, Lycomedes was happy to agree and commanded his servants to provide them with whatever they needed.

  “Forgive me if I leave you in the care of my daughter for a time, I must see to the damage this accursed bull has wreaked.” The king shook his head. “I was a fool to allow Theseus to attempt gentling the beast… he has forgotten that we have all grown old.”

  “You say he was the king of Athens, my Lord?” Medea removed the draping hood of her cloak and beheld him with tempest-driven eyes.

  “No longer, I’m afraid, now he is just a difficult guest.”

  DEIDEIMARA, LYCOMEDES’ DAUGHTER, WAS a handsome woman with a sad but kind set to her face. Solid and strong, she managed her father’s house and made them welcome as his honoured guests. Lycomedes, it seemed, was a widower and Deideimara was unmarried.

  She appeared a little curious about Machaon’s condition, but she did not interfere, and she brought to them the wineless cakes, ocean salt, sea onions and suckling pig that Medea requested. That done, she left to arrange beds and a feast befitting both the splendour of her father’s house and the guests within it.