The view from the crag top proved that they were on an island.
Just like the Doc said it was, thought Cruz. He was quietly but enormously relieved to find that the absentminded-looking professor had known what he was talking about—again. The tough sergeant was developing a genuine respect for Jerry Lukacs.
There was no sign of smoke to show where the home of this "Circe" was. All you could see was a lot of forest. It was an island all right, but not a small island. Maybe fifteen by twenty miles of island. Searching it was going to be next to impossible.
Among the rocks and out of the forest it was hot in the sun. Hot enough to make Anibal remember the stream—and just how far away it was . . . especially as that South African girl had pointed out those paw prints in the mud. The leather that their canteens had turned into made the water taste odd, but it was better than walking back.
The sergeant repressed a shudder. Lions! First that boar. And now lions. And if Doc Jerry was right there'd also be leopards and wolves. The little guy said that ancient Greece had them. Bears, too. And a whole lot of monsters on top of that, if all the mythical stuff were true.
He sighed softly. Ranger school had taught them every damn thing. How to live off the land. How to stalk. It had been physically and mentally demanding—more than surviving here had been, for the most part. It just somehow hadn't included wild boars and lions and legendary monsters at the same time, along with the other uncertainties of this place. It also hadn't included keeping untrained people alive.
Still, they were doing pretty well. Cruz knew that although he and Mac could move at twice the speed, they'd not have survived so far if it wasn't for the civilians. But they really needed something better than those spears if they were going to go on surviving. Fire was good for predators. It was also difficult to get going in a hurry. He resolved to look for a good dry branch full of twigs. It could be more useful than the M16s that they were lugging along. As far as he could work out, they were just dead weight. He decided to try burning some of whatever the stuff was that was in a cartridge now. That might be useful . . . more than some other things. Even being good at powerbreaking wasn't going to help in this wilderness.
He sighed again. He was a city kid, fer chrissake. You knew where you were, there, just like you did in the Army. And, sure, Ranger school had been tough. But it was school. You got out at the end of it. And you didn't have civilians to worry about.
Which led him into the other truly scary idea: They could be here forever. One of the most precious things that any soldier can take into battle is the knowledge that if he survives—he can go home. It wasn't true in this case. You only got shipped home if you got a bad case of "dead."
He looked across the forest again. Yeah. They were in deep shit. They were going to struggle just to survive the animals. Not to mention all of this "magic and gods" crap.
His eyes nearly bugged out. At first glance he'd thought they were horsemen. It was only at second glance he saw they really were horse-men. Centaurs. With bows. And they looked pissed.
Really pissed.
"Quick! Over the cliff!" shouted Cruz.
Liz had been musing, gazing over a panoply of forest greens that certainly was nothing like the modern Greece she'd visited in that long ago time with Nick. Her wandering thoughts—about just what impelled logic and hormones in the female of the species and why they seemed to work in diametrically opposite directions—was disturbed by a yell and the clatter of hooves. A second's glance was enough to tell her that Cruz had the right idea.
Alas, climbing down is never easy. It was touch and go on the lichenous rock. And then, when she reached the overhang—clutch and grow . . .
But that overhang was a blessing. The centaurs had showered a good few rocks down after them.
"It's a good thing they're half horses, not half goats," said Jerry, massaging his ankle with a grimace.
Liz smiled. "One thing we primates can do better than horses, and even goats, is climb. And run long distances too, for that matter."
"Run? I didn't think we could outrun those things," said Lamont, checking his homemade jacket-and-bandolier backpack, complete with his precious boombox.
"The size of their mouth and lungs is going to make sufficient respiration interesting," mused Liz. "They're probably much less efficient runners than a horse, at a guess. And humans can outrun horses, over a stretch."
"Well, I certainly couldn't outrun them. Not now—or ever," said Jerry. "Although I could eat a horse right now."
"That lot looked more ready to eat us," complained McKenna. "They just saw us and went on the hunt, no questions asked. Good thing they didn't catch us out on the flat."
Jerry chuckled. "True. So here we sit like a row of monkeys on a ledge instead."
Lamont smiled. "Me see-no-evil, you hear-no-evil and him speak-no-evil. Who are the last ones then, Jerry?"
"Well, the corporal is feel-no-evil, now that Odysseus is gone," said Liz, with a wry grin, "and in my case, I'm smoke-no-evil." She sighed. "I'm going up to have a look-see. Been no rocks or noise for a while now."
Feel-no-evil looked up. Listened carefully. "Yeah, but where do you want to go to, Liz?"
Smoke-no-evil stood up and felt for a handhold above the small overhang. "In search of dinner. If we go back down to the coast I can always catch something. Even up here we might be able to snare some small game."
"Yes, but what about the centaurs?" said Jerry.
She shrugged. "We'll just have to keep a lookout. If we get down to the beach again we can probably swim away from them. Although there are probably sharks and sea monsters and heaven knows what else in this water. It's that or sit here and starve. I've been meaning to go on a diet for a while, but this is a bit radical."
It went without saying that the only sign of the ship on the beach, when they finally found their way back there, was the keel mark on the sand.
Off to one side of the bay, there was a low cliff with steep and seaweedy rocks around its base. "Should be safe from centaurs along there," mused Cruz, looking at it.
Lamont nodded. "We'll have to see if we can find an overhang or a cave or something. You guys scout. Jerry needs to sit for a bit."
"I'm fine," said the mythographer.
"If you weren't sunburned, you'd be as pale as a ghost," said Liz grimly. "You look as if you're about to fall down."
McKenna nodded his agreement. "Yeah, Doc. Take a rest."
Jerry sat down on the sand. "Liz is as much a 'Doc' as I am."
McKenna grinned. "I think I'd rather call her 'Sir.' "
Liz threw the rock she'd been carrying at him.
"It smells and even looks like garlic," Jerry said doubtfully.
Liz nodded. "It's certainly a species of allium. And this is definitely fennel. I saw some sage back there, too. And there was lavender at the edge of the gorge."
"You certainly know your herbs," said Jerry, impressed.
She scowled fiercely. "My mother. She's kooky about all that herbal stuff. I have drunk more vile-tasting tisanes than I care to think about."
"Well, at least we can flavor anything we catch," he replied, pacifically. "And if the worst comes to the worst we can eat the herbs."
She pulled a face. "Yuck. I'll try my hand at fishing." The cornucopia-shoulderbag had yielded a spool of dental floss. The changes had probably altered its nature but it was still a fine strong line. She'd claimed a five-yard piece as her own, before offering the rest for future bird snares. There were no pins or safety pins, but the bag debris had yielded no less than seven paper clips of different sizes. Liz had been painstakingly trying to fashion hooks, when Lamont had come along. "Can I do it for you, Miz?"
She held it out to him. "Please call me Liz. Please." She smiled appealingly.
Lamont was not proof against the smile. "I'm a maintenance man . . . Liz. I'll turn those into hooks."
Liz smiled again. "I'm not handy. I'd be glad if you did."
Lamont picked up a rock. Looking at it, Jerry thought it had been beach sand not long ago in its geological history—assuming this weird place had a geological history.
"Going to be hell sharpening anything with this," grumbled Lamont. "I'll try to rub a hole through it."
"There are some good rocks back at the stream," said Jerry.
"Wait a minute," said Liz. "Do you really think you could make holes through this rock, Lamont?"
Lamont regarded the fist-sized but flattened piece in his hand. "I think so. Why, M . . . Liz?"
"I read every Gerald Durrell book ever written." She had a nostalgic smile on her face.
The two of them looked at her blankly. "Naturalist. Grew up in Greece. Well, for some of his childhood. And then he collected animals all over the world. Anyway, in the one book about South America he had described this thing called a . . . bolas."
Jerry nodded. "Ah. Yes. I know what you're talking about. Weights on a rope that are thrown to entangle things."
Liz pulled a wry face. "Well, my brother and I made one with ball sinkers. I killed a guinea fowl with it."
Lamont raised an eyebrow. "Liz, are sure your name isn't really 'Indiana Jones' or something?"
She looked embarrassed. "It was a tame one. And Dad nearly killed us. I cried."
Cruz and McKenna had gone off with the newly contrived bolas and, in case that didn't work, their spears. Lamont had just painstakingly constructed a hook . . . when Jim McKenna realized what he was doing and pulled out a sewing kit which also contained several hooks. But Liz had insisted on using Lamont's. She was fishing.
Gathering black mussels was all that Jerry was judged to be fit for. It was stationary if wet work. Lamont had first collected some firewood and then promoted himself to gulls'-nest-robber-in-chief on the low crag above their Robinson Crusoe beach-cave camp.
Jerry looked up to see Lamont in the act of discovering that Greek mythworld gulls were just as keen on having their eggs stolen as the ones back home. "Shit. It's just been sick all over me!" Jerry saw him snatch angrily at the gull. And catch it.
It all happened terribly fast. The ledge, about twenty feet off the beach, was made of the same soft sandstone as the bolas weights. Maybe a piece of it gave way. Maybe the gull pecking furiously at him caused him to lose his grip. Liz, fishing a few yards further out from Jerry on a rock point, and Jerry with a lap full of black mussels, saw Lamont plunge to the sand still clutching a large, angry gull. By a miracle he missed the projecting rocks. The gull's squawk even eclipsed Lamont's shriek.
They landed together in a flurry of squawks, yells and flapping wings. By the time Jerry and Liz got there, the gull had clumsily fluttered free. With a derisive final squawk and last vicious peck, it expressed its heartfelt opinion of all nest molesters. The piece of physical opinion landed with a white splat on the rock ten inches from Lamont's head.
Lamont sat up, amid their anxious entreaties. He waved a rueful handful of feathers. "I thought I had us a bird for dinner." He held out the other hand. In it was a mottled egg, miraculously intact. "All I got was the egg."
"Well, now we know which one comes first." Jerry waved his hand in front of his nose. "Phew. Fish!"
"Yeah. I think I need to wash. Jeeze, that thing made some holes in me."
"There's a nice deep spot next to where I was fishing." Liz cleared her throat, looking shamefaced. "Um. I think I've just lost the fishing line and that hook you made me, Lamont."
"And I've lost all those mussels I gathered." Jerry inspected the older man. He looked, miraculously, none the worse for the fall. "You've got all the luck. If it had been me, I'd have dashed my brains out."
"That might have stopped you punning for ten minutes," said Liz dryly.
Most of Jerry's mussels had indeed washed away. But, to their amazement, Liz's line was still visible. It was tangled around the seaweed on a wave-washed rock, a few yards off the shore. "I'll get it," said Lamont. "I need to wash this stuff off anyway."
It was not hard to get free, and Lamont did get his wash. He also got a fish.
"I don't believe it! I've got a fish! I've got a fish! I never catch fish!"
It was a monumentally ugly fish. Black and large-mouthed.
Liz snatched the line, allowing the fish back into the water. "Careful with that thing! It looks like sea catfish. Their spines are toxic." She led it through the water back to the shore, and dispatched it expertly with a piece of driftwood.
"Pity we can't eat it," said Lamont, admiring his catch from a good safe distance. "That's the only fish I've ever caught. Never had much luck fishing."
Liz looked puzzled. "They're nice eating. You've just got to avoid the spines."
They were so busy admiring the catch of the day, that they failed to notice the arrival of Hermes.
As Lamont later said, it was a pity—because it was worth watching.
The pictures of the winged, sandaled and helmeted messenger are well known. Only . . . well, as Liz later said—it was asking rather a lot of very small wings.
"Why are you not going to the castle of Circe?" demanded Hermes, messenger of the ancient Greek gods, while rubbing his jaw with both hands.
"How come you can speak English?" demanded Jerry in reply.
Hermes looked down his long nose at the mythographer. "Is it not written that 'the gods, after all, can do anything.' Come. I must give you the moly, the herb which will protect you from the goddess Circe, so the legend can be fulfilled."
"But what . . . "
"Enough talking. My jaw hurts from that cursed helmet." Hermes led the way to the forest margin where he pulled up an herb and handed it to Jerry. "This will protect you. It is called 'moly.' And when she offers her favors to you, you must not refuse. Now I must go. I am needed in Boeotia."
Hermes took up a stance as if running. The wings on the sandals began to flap furiously. So did those on the helmet. When they'd reached hummingbird speeds, Hermes took off and flew away rather like an oversized bumblebee.
Jerry stared at the herb in his hand. "There is something wrong with all this," he said quietly.
"You're telling me! There is no way that should be able to work. He's just too damn big for those wings."
"No. I mean with this." Jerry held out the herb.
"Looks like wormwood," said Liz, inspecting it.
"Well, it's supposed to be 'moly.' But that is supposed to have a black root and a milk-white flower. The authorities more or less agree it was some species of alliam."
"Allium," corrected Liz. "The onion family. Like that wild garlic."
Jerry cocked his head sideways. "So why did he get it wrong? And the instructions he gave me weren't complete."
"I thought he said you were to bed Circe," said Liz. Her smile was a little tight-lipped.
Jerry flushed. "Yes . . . That is what he is supposed to have said to Odysseus. But first he had to make her swear by the gods not to try any more tricks on him. Whatever is going on is trying to make the legend happen. And it's cheating. It wants Circe to bespell us."
The Krim device had no teeth to grind in frustration, or it would have ground them. The humans must believe. Their legends must enmesh them. Yet these ones were filled with doubt. They must be killed. They must be removed from the Ur-legend dimension. But these once-human gods were amazingly intransigent. Just like this species. Obstinate and doubting.