“You’re too kind,” he said. “And I am indeed going to lend a hand in your problem too. The least I can do, for my rescuer. Suppose—“ Looking around for inspiration, Charles’s gaze fell on the immense pigeon pie. “Suppose you moved to England, and gave my chef some hints? Can all you Cyclops cook so wonderfully?”
“Well, sure, but—you mean, cooking? As a job?” The Cyclop’s shark-like mouth dropped in amazement. “Hey, we only play around amongst ourselves—we couldn’t cook like pros!”
“You already do, believe me!” Recklessly Charles drained his glass and poured more for both of them. “I’ve got it now. I’ll go on ahead, and sack the kitchen staff at Balmoral. That’s the Scottish castle where my family holidays. Then you Cyclops follow along to take up the jobs. Scotland’s a lot like Greece, mountainous and full of sheep, you’d fit right in. If all goes well, a few of you could branch out a bit in a couple years—start a restaurant, open a B & B, write a cookbook—I could write you a foreword. Maybe get on the telly with a cooking show . . .” The entire scheme seemed to leap, fully grown, from Charles’s head.
The Cyclops goggled at him, if a single eye may be said to goggle. “Are you sure? You don’t think that being fifteen feet tall and one-eyed will spoil people’s appetite?”
“No one will see you in the kitchen,” Charles pointed out. “On your TV show you could stand in a trench on the set, to hide your height—actors do that. You could even bring Phylax the sheepdog. Englishmen love people who love dogs.”
The Cyclops jumped up, overturning his chair, and enveloped Charles in a bear hug. “That’s fantastic. You’re brilliant. We’ll be in your debt forever. And don’t think I’ve forgotten your problem. We’ll reform British cooking if it kills us. And you’re gonna get the credit. You’ll go down in history as the prince who gave England a cuisine.”
Tears rose in Charles’s eyes too. “You do that,” he said, “and Connie Bedlington won’t be the only mythological figure on the Honors List.”
An hour later Charles stood on the rocky shore again while the Cyclops brought around its motorized fishing boat. The storm had almost blown away, with only ravellings of cloud scudding across the moon’s face. His hands were clasped behind his back in his customary stance. He was still a couple sheets to the wind, but Charles’s head was clear. There was no reason why the relationship shouldn’t be mutually profitable. Palace employees had an excellent dental plan, so the Cyclops could get its shark-teeth capped before kicking off its TV career. And Charles could dine, at last, like a prince, for the rest of his life.
It occurred to him that he had even done Odysseus King of Ithaca one in the eye. Charles of England had escaped from a Cyclops too, and without any ungentlemanly poking about with sharpened stakes either. Just sympathetic conversation, solid British diplomacy, and four bottles of good Greek wine. “To each hero his own weapons,” Charles said aloud with satisfaction.
Red Nails
The Skull on the Crag
The woman on the horse reined in her weary steed. It stood with its legs wide-braced, its head drooping, as if it found even the weight of the gold-tasseled, red-leather bridle too heavy. The woman drew a booted foot out of the silver stirrup and swung down from the gilt-worked saddle. She made the reins fast to the fork of a sapling, and turned about, hands on her hips, to survey her surroundings.
They were not inviting. Giant trees hemmed in the small pool where her horse had just drunk. Clumps of undergrowth limited the vision that quested under the somber twilight of the lofty arches formed by intertwining branches. The woman shivered with a twitch of her magnificent shoulders, and then cursed.
She was tall, full-bosomed and large-limbed, with compact shoulders. Her whole figure reflected an unusual strength, without detracting from the femininity of her appearance. She was all woman, in spite of her bearing and her garments. The latter were incongruous, in view of her present environs. Instead of a skirt she wore short, wide-legged silk breeches, which ceased a hand’s breadth short of her knees, and were upheld by a wide silken sash worn as a girdle. Flaring-topped boots of soft leather came almost to her knees, and a low-necked, wide-collared, wide-sleeved silk shirt completed her costume. On one shapely hip she wore a straight double-edged sword, and on the other a long dirk. Her unruly golden hair, cut square at her shoulders, was confined by a band of crimson satin.
Against the background of somber, primitive forest she posed with an unconscious picturesqueness, bizarre and out of place. She should have been posed against a background of sea-clouds, painted masts and wheeling gulls. There was the color of the sea in her wide eyes. And that was as it should have been, because this was Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, whose deeds are celebrated in song and ballad wherever seafarers gather.
She strove to pierce the sullen green roof of the arched branches and see the sky which presumably lay about it, but presently gave it up with a muttered oath.
Leaving her horse tied she strode off toward the east, glancing back toward the pool from time to time in order to fix her route in her mind. The silence of the forest depressed her. No birds sang in the lofty boughs, nor did any rustling in the bushes indicate the presence of any small animals. For leagues she had traveled in a realm of brooding stillness, broken only by the sounds of her own flight.
She had slaked her thirst at the pool, but she felt the gnawings of hunger and began looking about for some of the fruit on which she had sustained herself since exhausting the food she had brought in her saddle-bags.
Ahead of her, presently, she saw an outcropping of dark, flint-like rock that sloped upward into what looked like a rugged crag rising among the trees. Its summit was lost to view amidst a cloud of encircling leaves. Perhaps its peak rose above the tree-tops, and from it she could see what lay beyond—if, indeed, anything lay beyond but more of this apparently illimitable forest through which she had ridden for so many days.
A narrow ridge formed a natural ramp that led up the steep face of the crag. After she had ascended some fifty feet she came to the belt of leaves that surrounded the rock. The trunks of the trees did not crowd close to the crag, but the ends of their lower branches extended about it, veiling it with their foliage. She groped on in leafy obscurity, not able to see either above or below her; but presently she glimpsed blue sky, and a moment later came out in the clear, hot sunlight and saw the forest roof stretching away under her feet.
“Convinced that his death was upon him, the Cimmerian acted according to his instinct.”
She was standing on a broad shelf which was about even with the tree-tops, and from it rose a spire-like jut that was the ultimate peak of the crag she had climbed. But something else caught her attention at the moment. Her foot had struck something in the litter of blown dead leaves which carpeted the shelf. She kicked them aside and looked down on the skeleton of a man. She ran an experienced eye over the bleached frame, but saw no broken bones nor any sign of violence. The man must have died a natural death; though why he should have climbed a tall crag to die she could not imagine.
She scrambled up to the summit of the spire and looked toward the horizons. The forest roof—which looked like a floor from her vantage-point—was just as impenetrable as from below. She could not even see the pool by which she had left her horse. She glanced northward, in the direction from which she had come. She saw only the rolling green ocean stretching away and away, with only a vague blue line in the distance to hint of the hill-range she had crossed days before, to plunge into this leafy waste.
West
