Atlantis and Other Places (20 page)

All old Regin Fafnirsbruder did was, he kept laughing. He was laughing his ass off, to tell you the truth. He really was.

Well, that just made old Brunhild madder. “You will pay for your insolence!” she said, and so help me if she didn’t charge right on out through the fire. I halfway thought she’d cook. But she was hotter than the flames, and they didn’t hurt her one bit.

Anyway, I figured I’d better try and get outa there, too. Old Regin Fafnirsbruder had said Brunhild was my only chance of doing that, and
she’d
said I was supposed to guard her back even though I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do if somebody did go and jump on her. So I ran after her. People always say I never listen to
any
body, practically, but that’s a goddam lie. Well, it was this time.

I didn’t run all that goddam
hard
, though, on account of I didn’t
know
for sure if the fire would let me go the way it did for old Brunhild. But it felt like it did when that goddam sonuvabitch moron bastard Regin Fafnirsbruder pushed me through it going the other way—it was hot but not
hot
, if you know what I mean.

Let me tell you, old Regin Fafnirsbruder didn’t look any too happy when Brunhild burst out of the ring of fire with me right behind her—not that he paid all that much attention to
me
, the lousy crumby moron. Actually, when you get down to it, I can’t blame him for that, to tell you the truth. Here was this ordinary guy, and here was this goddam
girl
with chain mail and this sword coming after him yelling “Now you shall get what you deserve!” and swinging that old sword like she wanted to chop his head off—and she
did
, honest to God.

But old Regin Fafnirsbruder was a lot sprier than he looked. He ducked and he dodged and she ran right on by him. The sword went
wheet!
a couple times but it didn’t cut anything but air. And old Regin Fafnirsbruder laughed his ass off again and said, “
Your
blade is my life to drink not fated.”

Well, old Brunhild was already madder than hell, but that only pissed her off worse. She started swinging that sword like a madman—up, down, sideways, I don’t know what all. I swear to God, I don’t know how old Regin Fafnirsbruder didn’t get himself chopped into dog food, either, I really don’t, Hou
di
ni couldn’t have gotten out of the way of that sword, but Regin Fafnirsbruder did. He was a bastard, but he was a
slick
bastard, I have to admit it.

Finally, he said, “This grows boring. I shall another surprise for you one day have.” Then he was gone. One second he was there, the next second he wasn’t.
I
don’t know how the hell he did it. I guess maybe he really was a magician, for crying out loud.

Old Brunhild, she needed like half a minute to notice he’d disappeared, she really did. She just kept hacking and slashing away like there was no tomorrow. She’d already hit the ceiling in fourteen different places, and she wasn’t anywhere close to ready to calm down. I wanted to keep the hell out of her way, was all I wanted to do right about then, if you want to know the truth.

Only I couldn’t. There was this castle with the ring of fire around it, and there was the slope that headed down towards old Isenstein and the Rhine that didn’t stink any more, and there were me and old Brunhild. That was it. Talk about no place to hide. If she decided I was in cahoots with old Regin Fafnirsbruder after all, she’d chop me in half. I didn’t know how the hell he’d dodged her, but I knew goddam well
I
didn’t have a chance.

Anyway, Brunhild
fi
nally figured out old Regin Fafnirsbruder’d flown the coop. She didn’t rub her eyes or go “I can’t believe it” or anything like that. She just sort of shrugged her shoulders, so the chain mail went
clink-clank
again, and she said, “Curse his foul sorcery.”

Then she remembered I was there. I swear to God, I wouldn’t’ve been sorry if she’d forgotten. She walked over to me, that crazy armor jingling every step she took, and she looked up into my face. Like I said before, she didn’t have to look
up
very goddam far, on account of she had almost as much heighth as I did.

“You came through the fire for me,” she said. “You did it unwittingly, I think, and aided by Regin Fafnirsbruder’s magecraft, but the wherefores matter only so much. What bears greater weight is that you did it.”

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

Old Brunhild nodded. The sun shone off her helmet like a spotlight off the bell of a trombone in a nightclub. She took this deep breath. “However it was done, it was done. As I said when first you woke me, if you would claim me for your bride, you may.” And she looked at me like if I was crumby enough to do it, she’d spit in my eye, honest to God she did.

Isn’t that a bastard? Isn’t that a bastard and a half, as a matter of fact? Here’s this girl—and she’s a
pretty
girl, she really is, especially if you like blondes about the size of football players—and she was saying, “Yeah, you can give me the time, all right, and I won’t say boo,” only I know she’ll hate me forever if I do. And when old Brunhild hated somebody, she didn’t do it halfway. Ask Regin Fafnirsbruder if you don’t believe me, for crying out loud. And she was holding on to that sword so tight, her knuckles were white. They really were.

I said, “When I woke you up back there, in that crazy old castle and all, didn’t you tell me you were in there waiting for Sieg—for somebody?” I couldn’t even remember what the hell his name was, not to save my life.

“For Siegfried.” Old Brunhild’s face went all gooey again. I’d kind of like to have a girl look that way when she says
my
name—or else I’d like to puke, one. I’m not sure which, I swear.

“Well,” I said, “in that case maybe you’d better go on back in there and wait some more, dontcha think?”

She swung up that old sword again. I got ready to run like a madman, I’m not kidding. But she didn’t do any chopping—it was some kind of crazy salute instead.
“Ja,”
she said, just like old Regin Fafnirsbruder, and then she put the sword back in the sheath. “I will do that.” And then she leaned forward and stood up on tiptoe—just a little, on account of she was pretty goddam tall, like I say—and she kissed me right on the end of the nose.

Girls. They drive you nuts, they really do. I don’t even think they
mean
to sometimes, but they do anyway.

I wanted to grab her and give her a real kiss, but I didn’t quite have the nerve. I’m always too slow at that kind of stuff. Old Brunhild, she nodded to me once, and then she walked on back through the fire like it wasn’t even there. I heard the door close. I bet she laid down on that old sofa again and fell asleep waiting for old Sieg-whatever to get done with whatever he was doing and come around to give her a call.

As soon as that door closed, I decided I wanted to kiss her after all. I ran toward the ring of fire, and I damn near—
damn
near—burned my nose off. I couldn’t go through it, not any more.

No Brunhild. Damn. I shoulda laid her, or at least
kissed
her. I’m
always
too goddam slow, for crying out loud. I swear to God, it’s the story of my life. No Regin Fafnirsbruder, either. I don’t know where the hell he went, or when he’s coming back, or if he’s
ever
coming back.

If he’s not, I’m gonna be
awful
goddam late making that Rhine boat connection to old Düsseldorf.

What’s left here? A crumby castle I can’t get into and that little tiny town down there by the river where Isenstein used to be or will be or whatever the hell it is. That’s it. I wish I’d paid more attention in history class, I really do.

Well, what the hell? I started towards old—or I guess I mean new—Isenstein. I wonder if they’ve invented scotch yet. I swear, I
real
ly wish I’d paid more attention in history class.

Jesus Christ, they’re
bound
to have beer at least, right?

THE DAIMON

Simon the shoemaker’s shop stood close to the southwestern corner of the Athenian agora, near the boundary stone marking the edge of the market square and across a narrow dirt lane from the Tholos, the round building where the executive committee of the Boulê met. Inside the shop, Simon pounded iron hobnails into the sole of a sandal. His son worked with an awl, shaping bone eyelets through which rawhide laces would go. Two grandsons cut leather for more shoes.

Outside, in the shade of an olive tree, a man in his mid-fifties strode back and forth, arguing with a knot of younger men and youths. He was engagingly ugly: bald, heavy-browed, snub-nosed, with a gray beard that should have been more neatly trimmed. “And so you see, my friends,” he was saying, “my
daimon
has told me that this choice does indeed come from the gods, and that something great may spring from it. Thus, though I love you and honor you, I shall obey the spirit inside me rather than you.”

“But, Sokrates, you have already given Athens all she could want of you,” exclaimed Kritias, far and away the most prominent of the men gathered there and, next to Sokrates, the eldest. “You fought at Potidaia and Delion and Amphipolis. But the last of those battles was seven years ago. You are neither so young nor so strong as you used to be. You need not go to Sicily. Stay here in the polis. Your wisdom is worth more to the city than your spear ever could be.”

The others dipped their heads in agreement. A youth whose first beard was just beginning to darken his cheeks said, “He speaks for all of us, Sokrates. We need you here more than the expedition ever could.”

“How can one man speak for another, Xenophon?” Sokrates asked. Then he held up a hand. “Let that be a question for another time. The question for now is, why should I be any less willing to fight for my polis than, say,
he
is?”

He pointed to a hoplite tramping past in front of Simon’s shop. The infantryman wore his crested bronze helm pushed back on his head, so the cheekpieces and noseguard did not hide his face. He rested the shaft of his long thrusting spear on his shoulder; a shortsword swung from his hip. Behind him, a slave carried his corselet and greaves and round, bronze-faced shield.

Kritias abandoned the philosophic calm he usually kept up in Sokrates’ company. “To the crows with Alkibiades!” he burst out. “He didn’t ask you to sail with him to Sicily for the sake of your strong right arm. He just wants you for the sake of your conversation, the same way as he’ll probably bring along a hetaira to keep his bed warm. You’re going for the sake of
his
cursed vanity—no other reason.”

“No.” Sokrates tossed his head. “I am going because it is important that I go. So my
daimon
tells me. I have listened to it all my life, and it has never led me astray.”

“We’re not going to change his mind now,” one of the young men whispered to another. “When he gets that look in his eye, he’s stubborn as a donkey.”

Sokrates glanced toward the herm in front of Simon’s shop: a stone pillar with a crude carving of Hermes’ face at the top and the god’s genitals halfway down. “Guard me well, patron of travelers,” he murmured.

“Be careful you don’t get your nose or your prong knocked off, Sokrates, the way a lot of the herms did last year,” somebody said.

“Yes, and people say Alkibiades was hip-deep in that sacrilege, too,” Kritias added. A considerable silence followed. Kritias was hardly the one to speak of sacrilege. He was at least as scornful of the gods as Alkibiades; he’d once claimed priests had invented them to keep ordinary people in line.

But, instead of rising to that, Sokrates only said, “Have we not seen, O best one, that we should not accept what is said without first attempting to learn how much truth it holds?” Kritias went red, then turned away in anger. If Sokrates noticed, he gave no sign.

 

 

I am the golden one
.

Alkibiades looked at the triremes and transports in Athens’ harbor, Peiraieus. All sixty triremes and forty transport ships about to sail for Sicily were as magnificent as their captains could make them. The eyes painted at their bows seemed to look eagerly toward the west. The ships were long and low and sleek, lean almost as eels. Some skippers had polished the three-finned, bronze-faced rams at their bows so they were a gleaming, coppery red rather than the usual green that almost matched the sea. Paint and even gilding ornamented curved stemposts and sternposts with fanlike ends.