Day of the Minotaur by Swann Thomas Burnett

Author:Swann, Thomas Burnett [Swann, Thomas Burnett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Historical
ISBN: 9780583123945
Amazon: 1434441318
Goodreads: 845741
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 1966-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter VII INVASION

We reached the lands of the Centaurs shortly before twilight. Moschus and his countrymen were fighters as well as farmers, the strongest of the six tribes of Beast, and their leader Chiron was the uncrowned king of the forest. We were coming to tell them about the treachery of the Thriae. In times of peace, each of the tribes retained and jealously guarded its independence, but in times of danger everyone looked to Chiron: for example, the cold winter when the wolves came down from the mountains to steal our game and children. “Dip your arrows in the juice of the wolf’s-bane root,” suggested Chiron. We routed the wolves with our first charge, and Moschus acquired his sash.

We crossed an irrigation ditch and entered a trellised vineyard where little kernels, green and hard like sea grapes, would sweeten and purple with approaching summer until they lured the bees even from the houses of the Thriae; an olive grove whose silver leaves had tarnished with the dying sun to the fitful sheen of old jewelry; and then a grove of palm trees imported from Libya and nurtured to the date-clustered, full-branched opulence of a desert oasis. Next, we skirted the enclosed compound of the cattle, whose fence of sharpened stakes withheld nocturnal bears and the occasional hardy wolf which still descended from the mountains, and came to the wall-less town of the Centaurs.

I walked to the edge of the moat and peered at the sharpened stakes which bristled from its depths like the teeth of a barracuda. A surer defense than walls, I thought with a shudder. And yet the shrewd Achaeans were not likely to balk at such an obstacle. I knew of their battering rams which, if two were placed end to end, could erect a narrow bridge, and I noticed a clump of olive trees dangerously close to the moat and offering cover to an enemy wishing to cross in the dead of night.

“Chiron,” I boomed, and the tallest and kingliest of all the Centaurs detached himself from his friends and galloped toward us along a path which was strewn with seashells.

“Eunostos,” he neighed, rearing to a halt on the other side of the moat. “We don’t hear that bellow often enough. And I see you’ve brought your new friends, and little Pandia, hungry no doubt.” He entered a low wooden tower with a flat roof, and presently a narrow, railed drawbridge, supported by bronze chains, eased over the moat with the soundlessness of a great eagle descending from the sky (it was one of my own designs). We met on the bridge and I told him about the Thriae.

His face darkened. “I am not surprised. They are capable of any mischief. We will have to take steps.”

We followed him into the town. His mane seemed a drift of snow, newly fallen and not yet hard, and his wide, unblinking eyes held the blue clarity of a lake in the Misty Isles on one of those rare days without mist.

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