The woman dropped again from the trees, landing with barely a hush. She took off the fawn-pelt from around her shining hair and scowled at the half-clouded morning sky. She was not altogether sure whether she was happy that the Moon had not been gazing down on what she had done, or frustrated that the Moon had not seen the victory over Her beast of punishment. She was bitterly proud, and she was disdainful. She was hoping that it would have changed something, somehow, doing this. Made things better, or maybe worse, between them. She wanted to feel like she didn’t care.

  “Nicely done,” she told Meleager, letting her eyes fall to him. “It was a very small window to strike in, and you threaded it beautifully. I had been planning to hit it with a few more arrows first before going in myself for the kill. It was an incredibly tough creature, this boar, no real way to attack but from above— everything your stories had promised and more.”

  “The world is safer now, without it,” nodded Meleager. “Thank you for your help.”

  That was what mattered, here, wasn’t it? That was why she’d gotten up before sunrise and slipped out the window of her given chambers, sidled down between the branches of the trees just outside the palace and come rushing here, to the forest.

  “I ran out of arrows halfway through my hunt, and I had to pause to make some more before chasing after it again.”

  She glanced sadly at the two men killed, Ancaeus and Hippalmus, and the third man wounded, quiet Eurytion, sitting scornfully off to the side, glaring at Peleus— glaring at anyone whose eyes happened to wander his way. This was not at all how he’d wanted things to go. This was not at all how anyone had wanted things to go. The woman wished that she’d thought this morning to bring more arrows from the start, or that she’d been faster to make them and bring them, or that the boar had gone running off in some different direction than the city after she’d wounded it. “I’m sorry for any trouble caused,” she murmured to Meleager.

  “I’m sorry, too,” Meleager sighed. This was not at all how he’d wanted things to go, losing two good men like this.

  Ankaion and Kepheus, though, they laughed and jostled each other and clapped their nephew stoutly on the back. “Those men’s loss is their glory— and even more than that, our glory, gained in fierce combat with a fearsome foe! And you, Meleager, your glory is the greatest of all, rushing in and skewering the beast as you did!”

  The boar lay dead in the midst of all of this, its massive hide still and cooling off the last of the fiery life that had just moments ago animated it into such a terrible disaster. Its cursed eyes had gone dead and dull. Its ruined limbs hung limp off of its sides. A few of the heroes were kicking or poking at it, still cautious, still skittish, in spite of themselves.

  “This, my brother!” called out Kepheus to Ankaion. “This is a man who knows how to seize greatness when it is before him!”

  “Glory had nothing to do with it,” muttered Meleager, maybe a little coldly. “The boar was a dangerous menace, and every second that it stayed alive was a second that another one of us might have been killed. Hippalmus and Ancaeus need not have been the only of us to die had we not acted swiftly when we had our chance.”

  For a moment, he considered telling his uncles that they could go right ahead and declare to everyone else that they themselves had killed the boar. He hardly cared about that, and he was sure that none of the other hunters would care much, either, if he consented to it. But then, then he remembered his promise to the woman.

  “And swiftest of all, acted Starchild!” he loudly proclaimed, so that all gathered could hear it. “She was the first of us to face off against this beast, the first to draw its blood with her well-placed arrows— and by far, she has done the most damage to it, of all of us! It was crippled twice over by the time it reached us, and entirely by her doing! The glory of the hunt, this glory should be hers, as should be the spoils— the pelt, the tusks, fine trophies, more than worthy of her accomplishment!”

  The heroes glanced back and forth between each other. Caenus sighed, crossing his arms over his chest, but he did not protest. Orpheus shrugged. Telamon huffed, but he, too, did not protest. Castor and Polydeuces nodded in perfect synchronicity with each other; it was only right, it was only just. “We will help drag it back to the city for her!” declared Peleus. But Kepheus cut him off with a raise of his hand.

  “Now wait a moment, oh Prince,” he said.

  “Wait, indeed,” added Ankaion. “I question this. I think we all question this. What glory is there in shooting arrows while hiding up in the treetops? All of us here who have won our own glory, we know the truth, the true nature of it; glory is facing your foe directly, eye to eye, and bending their strength with your own; glory is winning a fair fight on a flat field at noon, glory is what decides who is the greatest and who is not, and there can be no other judge.”

  Telamon was nodding, now— “Yes,” he said. “Yes, he is right. Glory is won with swords and spears against the tusks and hooves and gnashing teeth of a terrible beast, not with bows and arrows against the defenseless hide of a tricked, ambushed animal, uncertain of even where its enemy is coming from. What true danger has this woman faced from up in the branches, at a distance? What is that compared to the danger we ourselves have faced down here on the ground, staring down the monster directly?”

  “Precisely!” cried Kepheus.

  Ankaion took a step forward, gesturing loosely at the woman— but refusing to look in her direction. “This untamed maiden’s ‘glory’ is whatever story she will tell herself about how she would have been able to be the one to actually kill the boar eventually, if only some else stronger and braver hadn’t come along and done it first— such as our Prince, Meleager!”

  Meleager, though, spat back at him— “My glory, then, will be whatever story I’ll be telling myself about how I would have had the chance to kill the boar in a fair fight on a flat field at noon if only someone else smarter and swifter and more skillful hadn’t come along and weakened it first. But in that story, I’m almost certainly dead, everyone here is almost certainly dead— or at least the boar almost certainly isn’t! In that story, the boar breaks through us and lays waste to the city and all the people!”

  He looked around to the other heroes, searching for support. He looked to the woman, standing silently, watching. What was she thinking? Was he doing the right thing, speaking like this for her? He couldn’t seem to read her face. But he had come this far, already?— what else to do?

  “In any case… the glory and the pelt are hers. And if they aren’t hers, they are mine— and if they are mine, it is well within my rights to give them to her, and so I shall!”

  But Ankaion didn’t miss a beat. “Very well then,” he nodded. “ If the glory and the spoils belong to the woman, then I will challenge her for them, a wager of single combat. Her glory and pelt wagered against… all of my horses, and my spear as well should be a fine enough balance. Perhaps it was that very same spear-tip across the face that meant the killing blow. If it wasn’t your own spear to the heart, oh Prince, that takes the glory, after all, who can say for sure? It’s all muddy, except for that.”

  “And besides,” added Kepheus, “she started out on the hunt before anyone else, didn’t she? That’s hardly fair, is it?”

  The woman frowned. “I did not think that this was a thing to be fair or not-fair. I thought it was a boar to be killed. I thought we were supposed to kill it.”

  She glanced to Meleager.

  “Did I do something wrong? All this talk of prizes and glory and spoils and bravery… I thought this was just a hunt. I had no interest in glory or spoils.”

  “That’s good, then,” said Ankaion. “She has no interest in glory or spoils, so she should have no problem simply handing them over to me— giving glory to those who know it and deserve it, and then retreating back into silence and shadow, up in the treetops. Her in her natural place, me in mine.”

  It was true that up until this very moment the woman hadn’t cared at all about the glory of killing the boar, or the pelt it had left behind. Up until this moment, glory had still just been a sound for her, more than a word. It was a thing that other people had and scrambled over and cared about, took from each other or gave back or lost or found or won. And she had no need of a new pelt, her fawn-skin had been doing just fine— and so had the rest of her clothes and trappings, her quiver, her shoes. Perhaps the meat of the boar might have been tasty. Though more probably, the meat of the boar would be at best tough and gamy, at worst as terribly curse as that awful violet curse that had been shining in the monster’s eyes. Up until this very moment it had been entirely enough that the boar had been killed and the hunt was over.

  But she had glory, now. Whatever it was, she had it. Meleager had just given it to her— she’d heard him say so herself, that it was hers, and it seemed like the sort of thing that would indeed become hers just by him saying so. That was what it meant to be a Prince, after all. And the pelt, too, that was hers now as well. Peleus had just offered to help carry it back to the palace for her, so it was hers. Both of those things were hers, these were her things. And Ankaion wanted to take them away.

  That was a different matter entirely from her not caring about them in the first place. Now that they were hers, they were hers. And he was not going to take them. She was not going to let him take them.

  Meleager could see the storm building in her shining eyes, and he leaned in with a cautious whisper. “Don’t do this. You can do many fantastic things, Starchild, there is no end to the list. But the list is endless, too, of the things you cannot do right now— and one of those things is to fight my uncle. He is a seasoned warrior. He is more than you can handle.”

  But the woman was having none of that. She made a show of ignoring him, of walking right on past him like nothing at all, even though she’d heard everything that he’d said. Yet again, yet again, here was Meleager pushing down her bow.

  Here was the woman again, being left on the mountainside.

  “We’ll have no interruptions this time, as we’d had in the royal hall,” taunted Ankaion, as the other hunters formed a circle for them to fight in. “There will be no King here to intervene and save her from my wrath.”

  “…if that is how you choose to remember things,” muttered the woman.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Someone, bring her a sword or a spear,” called Kepheus, “before she begins taking potshots again at my brother with that cowardly bow of hers. Let her at least one time fight like a proper hero! Let us all see plain and simple exactly what she is worthy of!”

  Telamon stepped up— “Let her take the paltry sword of my brother, Peleus. Surely, that will be dainty enough for her to hold aloft!”

  “Or no, no,” jeered Ankaion, “remember her jokes in the hall! She can wrestle and box, can she not? Let her face me with no weapons at all! Let her fists fly weightless! Let us give her scrawny arms every chance to make something happen!”

  “Fine, then!” grunted the woman, rage properly building now. “Let us wrestle, let us box!— if you will shed that armor of yours, I will gladly take you on!”

  “Oh, only naturally!”

  Ankaion had already shrugged off his shoulder-plates, and Kepheus was helping to untie his breastplate from behind as he loosened the armor from his forearms.

  “A fair fight on a flat field at noon… or as near to it as we can get, that is the combat that she will be granted, to guard her so-kindly-donated glory!”

  A few moments later, all was set. The circle of hunters and heroes was closed, save for Eurytion, still slumped against a tree off to the side, bitterly nursing his leg. Ankaion had removed all of his armor, put aside his weapons— and the woman, too, had discarded her bow and dagger to face off hand-to-hand against her opponent. Even Meleager was in the circle, watching, teeth tight, fists clenched. The hunt was over and done with. Everything should have just been over and done with.

  But instead, here it was, just getting started.

  Ankaion was the first to make a move. He lunged in, quick and fierce, with his fist, straight towards the woman’s face. But all he found was air. She was a better fighter than that, just standing there to be hit— and her feet were faster than anything anyone had ever seen. As soon as Ankaion had even just started to throw his first blow, she had already leapt back and gone circling around, and like a whisper, like the specter of death she was suddenly behind him. Her own fist came lashing out, quick and fierce, a blow of her own straight into the back of his neck— and it connected! Ankaion’s head snapped forwards, and he stumbled just the slightest bit.

  The crowd gasped. And then he laughed. And then he turned. He was grinning. “What was that, a slap?” he asked, and he wasn’t just taunting, he wasn’t just putting on a boast. He hadn’t seen it coming, and he hadn’t been able to stop it, true enough, but he needn’t have bothered. The blow had hurt the woman’s hand more than his head; she was wincing, shaking out her fingers. “Let’s try this again,” chuckled Ankaion. “The fault is mine. You can’t beat a little bird the same way you beat a mighty lion.”

  And now here he was, coming again. He took a great yawning step towards the woman, and out rocketed his fist, right for her face— and again, she was already well and gone long before it would have reached her. She was already away and circling again. But it would never would have reached her anyways. The fist had barely even left its position in Ankaion’s guard— a feint! He was two steps ahead of her; he was already turning, his other fist was already swinging around in a tight arc towards right where the woman had been last time— right where she was about to be.

  Meleager flinched— but the woman, still, she was quick, with her sharpest eyes and nearly as sharp reflexes. She was bending her body backwards, even as she was still moving. Gracefully, she spun under Ankaion’s fist, and then, with a leaping twist of her body, she delivered a swift switch-kick clear into his midsection— “Oof!”— and then, before she’d even landed, her other leg shot off a second kick— clear into his groin— “Gah!”

  This one, he had felt. There was no denying it, or pretending his way around. This one, all the men in the circle had felt. Ankaion doubled over, groaning and growling, as the woman gave him a stiff shove.

  But this… this was her first true mistake. Even as he was staggering back from the force of her push, Ankaion’s arms shot up to grab hold of the woman’s wrists and pull her with him. And he was enraged. A cold shudder ran down Mileage’s body. The woman’s boxing and wrestling had indeed improved a great deal during all the time they’d been practicing together. But she’d never learned to combine the two. This was Pankration, now. The woman resisted Ankaion’s pull, and she widened her stance, expecting him to attempt a throw, or some sort of joint lock. But no, all he wanted to do was pull her. And he was a whole lot heavier than her, and he was a whole lot stronger than her, so there was nothing she could really do to stop herself from being pulled— nearly up off her feet by the sheer force of it, force that Meleager had never used during their practice— her tiny body came soaring directly into the path of Ankaion’s rising knee.

  It hit with a crack, with a crunch, with a cough— a tiny spatter of blood came spraying out from between the woman’s lips. And before she could even grunt in pain, Ankaion had already sent his elbow smashing into her face, with another crack, splintering her nose.

  Meleager’s eyes widened. He broke his spot in the circle, came rushing forward— “Enough!” he cried. “Enough, enough, uncle! She is beaten! She gives up!”

  But Kepheus seized hold of both Meleager’s arms and pulled him back out of the ring. “I don’t see her giving up, nephew. I don’t hear her yielding. If the girl is done fighting, she is welcome to say so herself.”

  The woman was hardly able to say anything. She was reeling backwards, dazed, shocked by the blow, even as Ankaion was shaking off the last of the pain from her groin kick. She tried to take up a stance again, and she managed to get her legs wide, she managed to get her hands back up into a guard position, but her knees were shaking— and when Ankaion charged her for a third time, she could do nothing but backpedal into the ring of men around her. Idas and Telamon caught her by the shoulders and gave her a gentle shove back into the fight— back into Ankaion, waiting for her. His right fist connected directly with her gut, doubling her over, and as she was doubled over before him, his left fist came slamming down onto the back of her neck— the exact spot she’d hit him less than a minute before, but with a hundred times the strength.

  Still, she stayed up on her feet. It was magic keeping her up— the magic of the belt, the magic that meant she could not be tripped up or be knocked off her feet by any will but her own. So long as she was wearing that belt and had the spirit in her to continue fighting, she would remain standing. And so she continued fighting. But her blows were getting weaker, slower— and at the same time, wilder, more desperate. She swung wide punches with her fists, made clumsy kicks with her legs. It was easy, now, for Ankaion to dodge her. And for every strike of hers that missed him, he landed two of his own solidly upon her body. He pummeled her ribs. He battered her face. A stiff uppercut knocked out one of her teeth. There was nothing she could do to stop him, there was no force she could raise to match his own. He beat her mercilessly now, without clever techniques or calculated movements. Just a big man overpowering a helpless woman.

  But still, she was standing.

  “Stop!” pleaded Meleager, and who could say if he was begging the woman or the man. He strained and struggled against Kepheus’s grip; he needed to get free, he needed to put an end to this before it was too late. “Stop! This isn’t worth it! It’s just a pelt! It’s just fur and tusks and a damned story about who killed what! It doesn’t matter!”

  The woman couldn’t hear him anymore. She couldn’t hear anything over the ringing in her ears— and even if she had been able to hear him, would she have listened? There were no thoughts driving her now. She was fighting on raw pride, and panic, and instinct. She took another haymaker punch towards Ankaion, and this time he caught her fist, like a thrown pebble. “She does not quit easily…” he admitted. “There is value in that, I think— even in a woman. It is best to persevere through the housework and the cooking, when there are to be many guests. Childbirth, too, is quite a chore.”

  “She does show promise,” agreed Kepheus. “One who never gives up.”

  Ankaion shook his head— “No, one who must be forced to give up.”

  With his meaty hand, he took the woman’s fist and he peeled it open, finger by finger, all the way to her pinky, and when he’d peeled open her pinky, he didn’t stop— he kept on pulling it, bending it and bending it and bending it until—

  “Uncle, stop!!” howled Meleager.

  Until—

  “That’s enough, Ankaion!” called Caenus, breaking his own position in the circle.

  Until—

  “Gah!” shrieked the woman, as her finger snapped.

  “No!”— Meleager finally broke free of Kepheus’s grip and went racing in towards his other uncle, spear in hand. “No more!”

  “Does she yield?” asked Ankaion, plainly.

  “It does not matter!” declared Caenus. “She is beaten!”

  “Let her go!”

  “Does she yield?” asked Ankaion again, and when the woman didn’t answer, he took a second of her fingers. Without any of the buildup, this time, he snapped it. Simple as that. She let out another wail of agony.

  This was too much. “Ankaion!” growled Caenus, enraged. Meleager didn’t bother growling, or shouting, or using any more of whatever words he might have had left. This was too much. This was past that point. He came rushing, rushing, and without a thought— without even room in his head for a thought, he took his spear and he drove it straight through his uncle’s chest.

  The entire circle exploded into screams and protests and rattling weapons. Even before Ankaion’s body had gone limp, Kepheus was already bellowing with rage— already, he had taken up his own spear and gone charging with it towards Meleager, ready to avenge his brother in blind fury.

  But as Kepheus drew near, his eyes darkened, his steps slowed, his grip on his spear loosened. He knew full well he had no chance of so much as harming his nephew. This was a power bigger than himself. Other hands would not allow it; there was no point. He tried to slow himself, he tried to stop. But it was too late. He was already doomed. Still blinded by his own fury, Meleager turned, pulling his spear from one uncle’s chest— and with a great lunge across the ground, he buried it deep into the other’s. As simply as he’s gone from killing Rhoeclus to Hylaios, he went from Ankaion to Kepheus, the one and then the other, dead.

  An end to things.

  This, though… this was not like killing the centaurs. This was… what was this? Dead quiet overtook the forest. All who could stand stood in horror. Some gazed upon the grizzly scene, unable to look away. Others could not bring themselves to look at all. They stared into the sky, or off among the trees, or they buried their faces in their hands. Peleus turned and vomited— that was the first sound to pierce the stillness.

  The woman’s eyes were locked to Meleager, the Prince. This was not like killing the centaurs at all. This was something else. But what was this? This feeling in the air. Was this the cloudy poison of the shadow killing her mother?— is this what it had felt like in that clearing as she’d died, as she’d been sent up into the heavens as dead stars?

  No. No, this wasn’t that. This was a gray thing, here. This was a foggy moment. The old she-bear had not deserved to die— she had deserved nothing but calm joy, she had never done a bad thing to anyone. But these two…?

  Caenus paced back and forth with his arms crossed in miserable frustration. Orpheus blankly fingered his harp, a few empty sour notes, as if they might undo any of this.

  Meleager himself was looking blankly at Kepheus’s body upon the dirt.

  Finally, the woman spoke. “…why did you do that?” she whispered. But of course, she knew full well why he had done that. She would. Have done the same herself, if she had watched it happening to him. To anyone.

  “Why did he do what?” answered Telamon. “I don’t know what you are talking about, Starchild. All I know is that this has been perhaps the most horrible hunting accident I have ever seen. Is it not the most horrible accident you have seen as well? Four brave heroes dead by the boar’s tusks and hooves… and it would have been even more lost if you hadn’t arrived when you did, great huntress.”

  The woman blinked at him— what was he saying, “hunting accident”? But there was Idas, nodding along. “A terrible tragedy indeed. Who could have expected such wrath from the beast?— even with all the stories. Hippalmus and Ancaeus killed as we cornered it, and now… Ankaion and Kepheus gored by its tusks during our last great charge inwards to end the menace.

  “Yes,” agreed Caenus. “Truly, they knew no fear… and if it had not been them impaled upon the beast’s tusks, surely… it would have been one of us.”

  Caenus dipped the point of his spear just so, and in an instant the meaning was clear. None of what had just happened here had happened. It was the boar that had killed Meleager’s uncles, and if anyone was interested in thinking or saying otherwise, then it would have been the boar that had killed them, too. One by one, mighty Caenus met the eyes of the other heroes, challenging them to disagree. One by one, they stared back, and they did not speak, except to praise Kepheus and Ankaion for their sacrifice, or to profess how deeply they would be mourned and missed.

  “It was a terrible loss,” Orpheus strummed.

  “An awful thing, grim and glum,

  That has become

  Of royal brothers,

  Bold and loyal—

  Golden moss awaits

  Them, greater than all others,

  In bright Elysium!”

  Eurytion, still slumped against his tree-trunk, simply scowled and refused to meet Caenus’s eye— but even he did not say anything against this plan.

  Meleager didn’t react at all when Caenus turned to him. He carried on staring at Kepheus, frozen. His breath was cold, his eyes were quiet hurricanes. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. And then, at last, he turned and started to walk away. Away from the group, away from the boar, away from everything, back towards the distant city of his kingdom. For a moment, all the others watched the Prince go— and then, slowly, they moved to follow. Telamon and Peleus helped wounded Eurytion up from the tree-trunk, and then they started to carry him together until Eurytion shoved Peleus away with a quiet grunt— “…flimsy idiot…”

  Idas and Caenus took up the bodies of Kepheus and Ankaion onto their shoulders and moved after the Prince. The twins Castor and Polydeuces likewise lifted Hippalmus and Ancaeus in perfect synchronization and carried on— but just as quickly, Meleager himself paused, turned. Came striding— taller, now, than he’d been a moment ago, towards the woman, who had yet to move at all from where she’d been standing when Ankaion had been killed.

  Two of her fingers were bent at horrible angles. It was pain like she’d never known, and yet somehow it had become dulled, almost just annoying compared to everything else that had happened. The rest of her body, too, as badly beaten as it was, merely ached. Her mouth was full of blood from her missing tooth, and what must have been a broken rib as well. This blood did not bother her. She was used to her own blood. She was accustomed as well to the blood of animals— the blood of the boar upon her tunic was no matter at all. But the blood splattering her arms and her legs and her face… the blood of Ankaion, that had come bursting out of him as Meleager had punctured his chest… human blood… it felt like molten iron— both in the angry heat of it upon her skin, nearly burning from the fire of life that it once been stoking, and in the strange weight of it. It felt heavy, the blood upon her. It felt as though it rooted her to the spot by the sheer mass of it, it felt as though if she were to move from here, she would have to pull the whole of a mountain’s worth of blood along with her. So she had just stood, waiting.

  Eventually, she supposed, she would have just starved to death, right where she was. That seemed like the simplest way to deal with this feeling. But Meleager, spattered with that same blood and more besides, he came back towards her— and then he carried on right past her, all the way to the boar’s hulking body, dead and dark. He put his spear into its sling on his back— his spear, its tip red-drenched, stained forever, doomed to rust in that same blood, that same blood, that same blood— and he took hold of one of the boar’s great tusks with both hands, and he began to pull. Only an inch at a time, the corpse began to move, just barely, at first. But bit by bit, he managed to pull it further and further, until he was dragging it across the ground at the speed of a very slow walk. When he reached the woman, he whispered to her; “Here, let me help you with this.”— a whisper, barely even a whisper, just the hush of the breeze, that was his voice.

  The woman took hold of the other tusk and began to drag it alongside him, wordless— only grunting in pain with each step she took, every sharp ache of her rib.

  Together, the group made their way back towards the city. Nobody spoke again for the whole walk. Nobody looked at each other. The men all walked with their heads hung, eyes averted from the world, staring down at their feet.

  The whole trip was silent, in that certain way that things are silent, that certain sort of silence after something horrible has happened in a forest.