The Eighth Arrow

by J. Augustine Wetta

  BOOK III

  REALM OF THE LEOPARD

  And therfore, yif thou wilt stonde and not falle,

  seese never in thin entent, bot bete evermore

  on this cloude of unknowyng that is bitwix thee and thi God

  with a scharpe arrewe of longing love.

  —Anonymous fourteenth-century monk, The Cloud of Unknowing

  CHAPTER 1

  LOWER HELL

  IN DUE COURSE, we arrived. I had grown so accustomed to the sway of Geryon’s flight that the sudden stillness made me dizzy. I released my grip on the monster’s fur and slid off his back into a puddle. Ajax lay nearby, more shaken than I. Without a word, Geryon sprang into the air and was gone. I didn’t even have a chance to thank him—not that I would have.

  “I feel sick,” moaned Ajax.

  “Men are not meant for flight,” I agreed.

  Even Diomedes looked a little green.

  Not far away, Proteus alighted in a puddle of his own, shook his wings into arms, and pushed himself back into the shape of an old man. Again there was that appalling odor of dead fish. Then, achingly and with enormous effort, he stood upright, unaware that we were watching. He bent over stiffly, coughed up something, and passed wind. How frail he looked.

  “You trust that over me?” I said to Diomedes.

  “You chose a dog over me.” He stepped forward, still gripping my sword. I reached for my bow.

  “Not here, lads,” said Ajax, stepping between us. “I don’t quite get what’s going on between you two, but I figure we got bigger eggs to crack.” He turned to Diomedes. “Give him back his sword.”

  Diomedes balked. “Do you trust him?”

  Ajax considered the question. “No. But then, I don’t so much trust you neither, all a sudden. And I know it en’t right to take a man’s sword when he’s in a pinch. So give it back, and let’s get a move on before somethin’ ugly eats us.” He waited for Diomedes to comply. “Go on, now.”

  Diomedes handed me the sword, scowling. With Ajax towering over us, we must have looked rather like a couple of chastised children.

  “He started it,” muttered Diomedes.

  I stuck my tongue out.

  “So where are we?” said Ajax.

  I looked around. There wasn’t much to see. “Chiron’s map is rather vague from here on out,” I said. Behind us roared the waterfall we had passed on our way down. To our left and right, the terrain stretched out in a featureless waste—the same iron gray that had followed us from the start. Straight ahead, however, the land dropped off sharply, and from just beyond the ridge, a sound like splitting wood erupted at regular intervals amid a steady, crunching thud. I walked to the ridge and peered over.

  Below, in a queue kept orderly by fierce-looking sentries, an endless procession of naked souls jogged in single file along a gravel path. A step to their left, a second line moved in the opposite direction. It was an oddly civilized arrangement, and it reminded me of a phenomenon I had once witnessed at a festival near Kazarma. The bridge there was too small for all the pilgrims to cross at once, and the people trying to get out were packed against the people trying to get in. Some clever soldier had ordered everyone on the north side to walk eastward and everyone on the south side to walk westward. It was a brilliant idea, though it never caught on.

  Next I turned my attention to the sentries, who stood out black as pitch against the pale flesh of their prisoners. They were a great deal shorter than your average man, and their limbs were unnaturally thin. I’d seen a fellow once among the Lotus Eaters who had so succumbed to the lotus drug that he had altogether ceased eating real food. He was such a frightening spectacle, stretched out in a gutter in skeletal despair, that the mere sight of him had shaken me out of my inebriation and sent me running for my ship, towing my shipmates in hand like so many weeping children. The gaunt figures below, however, exhibited none of the emaciated languor of the Lotus Eaters. They leapt about with their whips clutched in bony hands, spry, alert, savagely lashing any unfortunate that lagged behind. They had short goatlike horns growing from their foreheads, and their skin was smooth as polished stone.

  I sank to my haunches, inched back from the ridge, pulled Chiron’s map out of my quiver, and spread it on the ground. “So here we are,” I said to Ajax. Diomedes walked over, but I positioned myself so that he couldn’t see. I pointed to the uppermost of ten concentric rings in the eighth circle of Hell, which Chiron had labeled “Malebolge”.

  “Maleh . . . Muleh . . . Moleh . . . what sort a name’s that?” asked Ajax.

  “Malebolge? I don’t know,” I answered. “It sounds Trojan. Whatever it is, though, it’s bad. Just over that ridge are some nasty-looking little fellows with whips. Luckily, the map says there’s a bridge ahead on our left. Of course, Chiron never saw any of this for himself, so it might not be there at all.”

  “A bridge to where?” asked Diomedes.

  I ignored him.

  “What’s on the other side?” asked Ajax.

  “Nine more of the same, I expect. It seems each ring is like a valley with a bridge spanning over it. The map just says ‘Realm of the Leopard’. But that’s why he gave it to me: to fill in the gaps.”

  By now, Ajax had lost interest and was climbing up to the ridge to have a look for himself. He returned almost immediately, with his shaggy brows thoroughly knit.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Diomedes.

  “I was afraid of that,” he answered.

  “Afraid of what?” I said.

  “Devils.”

  “What?”

  “Devils,” he repeated. “They’re little gods, I think. Or demigods. Like nymphs, but ugly and mean. I seen them before. They make their way up to the woods from time to time, though the Centaurs keep ’em from getting any further. Nasty things. Come in all shapes and sizes, each one uglier than the next.”

  “So it’s settled,” I said. “We take the bridge.”

  “If there is one,” muttered Diomedes.

  We set off to the left, and Proteus, seeing that we were finally on the move, followed at a distance.

  Chiron happened to be right about the bridges. They were hard to miss. Built from the all-too-familiar iron-gray stone, they shot up into the air in extravagantly tall arches. The workmanship was magnificent—“Cyclopean”, we would have called it back home—mortarless, and built of such intricate patterns, one felt that if a single block were moved, the entire structure might tumble into the valley. Yet whoever had built them had not been concerned about appearance. Piles of debris lay strewn everywhere, and on the bridge itself as though the workmen had left in a hurry.

  We kept to the middle of the bridge at first, worried that if we strayed too near the edge, we might attract the attention of the horned sentries, but there was no hiding Ajax, and we soon discovered that the devils had no interest in us anyway—or it appeared so. Here too we were mistaken.

  CHAPTER 2

  WE ARE PURSUED

  HAVING TRAVERSED the first bridge without incident, we set off across the next with enthusiasm but found ourselves engulfed by an odor so repellent, the Laestrygonian cesspits would have smelled like ambrosia by comparison. Proteus hid his nose (and by that I mean that it disappeared altogether). Not for the first time, I envied his ability.

  “I almost wish I were dead again,” gasped Diomedes. I was too nauseated to laugh—and wouldn’t have anyway, since I was ignoring him.

  The entire valley below was filled ridge to ridge with sewage, and the poor souls there were submerged to their chins in it. These were the souls of the flatterers. How they could be compelled to perform such a labor—and where all that excrement came from—we were unable to tell, but neither could we bring ourselves to look closely, for it was so revolting, we could do little more than sprint past with heads bowed and tunics drawn over our faces.

  We were just about to the next bridge when the air began to clear. It was only then that Proteus noticed our pursuers. “Gentlemen,” h
e called from where he stood at a distance, “it would appear that someone is following us. I can see him at the top of that bridge there.”

  I strained my eyes into the brown miasma that hovered over the valley of flatterers but could see nothing. “And why should we believe you?”

  He walked a little closer. He had his nose again, but his eyes were bright yellow. “Dear me. Why would I lie?”

  “One of them horned devils?” Ajax asked.

  “Possibly. From this distance, it is difficult to tell, even with eagle eyes.” Proteus spit on his fingertips. Then he stuck his fingers in his eyes, and they resumed their normal color.

  “That’s disgusting,” I said.

  He winked at me and grinned. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to me that he was missing a different finger this time.

  “I have an idea,” said Diomedes. “Why don’t you change yourself into a bird and go have a closer look?”

  The old magician blushed and scowled at his sandals. “It is not so easy as all that.”

  “Looks easy enough to me,” I said.

  “It hurts,” he answered, and he looked as though he meant it.

  “Should we wait for that fellow to catch up with us?” said Ajax.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “How fast is he moving?”

  “Fast,” said Proteus.

  “In that case,” I concluded, “it’s best we keep moving. If he means well, he’ll catch up. If he means ill, then the more progress we make before he gets to us, the better.”

  Again, my logic turned out to be flawed, but at the time it seemed to me that anything was preferable to sitting within sight—and smell—of the flatterers.

  At the top of the next bridge, Proteus was able to identify our pursuer.

  “Who is he, then?” I asked, wiping the sweat from my eyes. We had assumed a brisk pace, and the bridges were steep.

  Proteus glared, yellow eyed, into the distance. “Not he. They.”

  “They?” I groaned. “Please tell me they are a crowd of luscious women looking for someone to comfort.”

  Proteus looked at me blankly. “They are armed.”

  “Devils,” sighed Ajax. “I knew this was too easy.”

  “And I should say they are making very good time,” Proteus added.

  “So we need to make a decision,” I said. “Either we dig in here and fight, or we run.”

  “We fight,” said Ajax, planting his shield in front of him.

  “We fight,” said Diomedes.

  “We run,” said Proteus.

  “We run,” said I.

  The four of us contemplated one another in silence for a moment; then Ajax rolled his eyes and shouldered his shield. “It en’t my style, but I can run if I have to.”

  The decision made, off we dashed.

  At the top of the next bridge, we stopped again. This time, our pursuers were close enough for us all to see—a dozen or more, loping after us with whips tucked under their bony arms. They moved in quick, twitching heaves like the ugly spiders I used to collect as a child.

  “Enough rest,” announced Proteus. “Those devils are not to be trifled with.” But Ajax refused to budge, so he relented. While the others rested, I stepped up to the edge of the bridge to see what new torture lay beneath; I had, after all, promised Chiron I would fill in the gaps in his map.

  Here, however, was none of the fire or filth I had come to expect of the Underworld but a simple and steady procession of listless souls trudging mutely along a worn path. It seemed a mild punishment until I looked closely at their heads, which were twisted completely around. Tears of pain rolled down their backs into the clefts of their buttocks as they walked heel to toe along their dismal way. I shuddered. Chiron had insisted that every punishment suited a particular vice, but what crime could these unfortunates have committed that would merit such torment? I searched their faces as they passed beneath the bridge, but all I met were vacant eyes stupefied by pain. They stared past me, through me as they stumbled into the darkness. And then suddenly, a familiar face. Her name didn’t come to me at first, only a sudden visceral sense of shame mixed with loneliness, lust, and fear. It was Circe, the bewitching queen of Aeaea.

  On my way home from Troy, I had spent eleven months with her, feasting in her palace, a slave to her desires while she held my men hostage in her dungeon. She was shrewd and beautiful, gifted in the arts of charm and grace; and she craved me, the royal Son of Laertes, for her bed. So long as I resisted her charms, she refused to release my friends. I told myself that once I had submitted, she would lose interest, but I guess she could see that I was holding back. She was a witch, after all. A seer. She knew that I was not completely hers. So I abandoned myself to her. I loved her. And in time, she loved me—not as a trophy or a toy but as a companion. She released my men, but by then, I no longer desired to leave. To my shame, it was their begging and tears that finally tore me from her side; and as I waved to her from my ship, tears drenching my beard, I told myself that she would never have released me had I not won her love. But oh, the cost.

  Now, looking into her eyes again, glittering green as the bottomless sea, I found that I could not move or speak or even breathe. It was as though she were beside me again, singing me to sleep with bright prophecies. Had she called to me, I might have thrown myself from the bridge. But she remained mute, fading like a ghost into the darkness. Then, once she had passed beyond my sight, her voice, light and soft as a glass bell, echoed from the darkness beneath the bridge: “No hope. The eighth will be broken.”

  The spell was shattered. An old rage rekindled in my breast, and I spat into the darkness. “Prophesy now, will you?” I shouted. “You don’t know my future. You never have.” I grit my teeth. This was her way. This was the way of all seers. Say only enough to cause doubt and misery. I was glad she would spend her eternity looking only back. I spat again into the darkness.

  There was a tap on my shoulder. I looked up into the broad face of Ajax. “Who you talkin’ to?” He looked down into the valley and grimaced. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

  “Our pursuers just picked up their pace,” announced Proteus. “I shall carry on, with or without you.”

  I was happy to be moving again.

  We were almost to the next bridge when the cries of our pursuers began to reach us—high, screeching whines that broke off into throaty barks. It was hard to tell whether this was a language or a battle cry. Either way, the effect was unsettling, and we all stopped to listen.

  “At this rate,” observed Proteus, “they will be on us before we reach the top of the next bridge.”

  “Then we move faster,” declared Ajax. But this proved difficult, as the air began to take on a raw edge that dried the throat and made it hard to breathe.

  “What is that smell?” grunted Ajax.

  “Don’t know,” I wheezed, “but it’s familiar.”

  And the higher we climbed, the stronger it grew, until finally the air was so thick and heavy, even Diomedes was struggling for breath. At the summit, we stopped again to rest.

  “The devils are closer still,” observed Proteus. “They will surely catch us before the next valley.”

  “Then this is where we take our stand,” declared Ajax, wedging his spear between two stones. “I’m done running. If those spiky-headed tooth lickers want trouble, I’m giving it to ’em here.”

  “This would be the place for it,” agreed Diomedes. “I don’t like the air, but if they catch us on the downhill, we lose the advantage.”

  More than ever, I hated to side with Diomedes, but he and Ajax were clearly right. Our current position was more defendable than anything we’d reach in time. So we built a barricade of rocks and waited, Ajax and Diomedes up front, Proteus and I slightly behind.

  “There’s more than a dozen,” observed Ajax, rubbing his head.

  “More than two dozen,” agreed Diomedes.

  “Give or take,” I said.

  “What is a tooth l
icker?” asked Proteus.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE SIXTH ARROW

  IT SEEMED LIKE the closer they came, the more of them there were, and the next time I looked for Proteus, he was gone.

  I’ve never been good at handling those tense moments before battle. While men like Ajax and Diomedes grow quiet, I get fidgety. I tell inappropriate jokes and trip over things. Naturally, this makes me unpopular on the front lines, not to mention something of a safety hazard, so I find ways to keep busy till the fighting actually starts. With this in mind, I decided to have a look at what was fouling the air. I inched over to the edge of the bridge and peeked into the valley. It turned out to be another river, and the moment I saw it, I recognized the smell. I’d known that acrid odor since the day I first set foot on a black-hulled ship. The valley was filled with pitch.

  Coursing along steaming banks, a river of tar scalded the unfortunate denizens of this dismal terrain who fought to lift their heads above the surface, forcing cries through bubbles of black gum. I watched as one of them slogged up to the bank, but here a new breed of devil populated the beach, swarming along the sticky shore like flies on a corpse. They reminded me of vultures, the way they waddled about with outstretched wings, but their bodies were anthropoid and, in certain respects, reminded me of Ignotus, their shoulders so knotted with muscle that they bent double when they walked, knocking their knuckles on the ground. Each one carried a long hooked blade. As soon as they spotted the soul scrambling along the bank, they set upon him like children at a game of ball. I shuddered and pulled back from the edge.

  My sudden movement released a shower of gravel into the river below, and a dozen dark faces turned skyward, their silver eyes flashing through the steam.