Claiming Ariadne (9 page)

What a stupid question, she realized. Of course he had. Not six weeks earlier she’d watched him kill Pelinos and take his head. Taranos was a man who had killed many times before.

Gazing curiously at her, Taranos unsheathed the sword and handed it to her. While Ariadne had held the cumbersome sacred
labrys
, she’d never touched a sword. “How in the world do you fight with anything so heavy?”

Give the man an excuse to flex his muscles and he would, as Taranos did now. “Battles don’t last very long. We often fight in the summer, and even strong men get tired eventually.” Taking the sword from her, he sheathed it and set it back on the table. “Achaean women have no trouble handling swords or helping their men into their armor. They don’t fight, of course, but when their men leave for battle, they’re right there to tell them to come back with their shields or on them.”

Taranos next picked up the helmet, circled by five rows of split boar tusks set into a bronze framework; when he turned it over Ariadne saw the inside was padded with layers with soft felt. “I killed the boars whose tusks made this. Do you want to try it on?”

It looked uncomfortable. Ariadne shook her head. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that your women can wear them?”

“No, but they insist on a man’s war gear being properly displayed where everyone can see it and he can get to it easily. Now you know that gallery above the Hall of Poseidon, where the shield fresco surrounds the light-well? In our palaces, those would be real shields.” Taranos put down the helmet. “But I have seen women warriors.”

“There’s no such thing as a female warrior.”

Chuckling, he winked at her. “Beyond the Hittite lands, on the far shore of the Euxine Sea, there are women who ride on horseback and fight as fiercely as any man. Fiercer, perhaps, because a man often knows what another man is thinking. What those women think, only they know. I wouldn’t want to meet any of them in battle.”

Ariadne perused the gear a second time. “No armor?”

“I once had a beautiful shirt of gleaming bronze scales. My father gave it to me.” Taranos shrugged nonchalantly. “Too much Egyptian beer and some bad dice took care of that.”

An awkward silence passed between them. Ariadne tensed, feeling anticipation coil in her belly. “Why did you invite me in?”

“Why did you invite me to go with you to meet your great-grandmother? I haven’t even met your mother yet.”

Ariadne let out a ragged sigh. “You don’t want to meet her, Taranos. She serves the Snake Goddess and is a rather snaky person herself.”

“You mean she licks the air with her tongue?”

Their mutual laughter dispelled the tension. “No, she doesn’t. Mother isn’t very warm. She finds fault with everything and everyone.”

“So I should avoid the Serpent Sanctuary then. You know, you never answered my first question.”

How did one explain an impulse? “I thought you’d like Iphame, and I knew the moment I mentioned you, she’d want to know why I didn’t bring you along.”

“So you intended to mention me?”

Now he was just teasing. Ariadne assumed an air of haughty indifference. “It’s nothing, really. Great-grandmother asks about all the Sacred Kings.”

A step closer, close enough to feel his heat, and Ariadne wondered how wise it was to be alone with him. When Taranos set a hand on her shoulder, she knew he wanted her, and her damp thighs told her the feeling was mutual. “What were you going to tell her about me? How handsome I am?”

“An old man with two dozen scars,” she snorted.

“Or perhaps how strong I am?” His arms closed around her, letting her feel that strength.

“I was
going
to tell her that you’re an insufferably arrogant Achaean armed to the teeth.”

Taranos tilted her chin up for a kiss. “I rather think you like me that way.”

She opened her mouth to receive his tongue. She hadn’t come looking for sex and certainly wasn’t going to let him have her this easily. But she waited until the kiss ended to pull away. “Isn’t it a bit early in the day to seduce a woman?”

His erection pressed against her thigh. “It’s never too early.”

“I believe I have some weaving to finish.”

As she withdrew, he seized her again. “You’re not going to tease me like this.” His mouth descended on hers again, harder now.

Had she not been so excited, she might have fought him. “I don’t know, I really need to finish that hem, and your bed isn’t really large enough.”

A playful snort told her he understood the game. “My cock is much more interesting than your loom, woman.”

“That might be, but…”

“I’ll let you wear the helmet.”

* * * *

 
“Just do as the Sacred King wants, or we’ll be here all morning.”

Brow furrowing, the hapless charioteer escort glanced back at Taranos, who insisted on taking his own reins. Ariadne ignored his grin and wink, and turned her attention back to the man in front of her. “I am not going to have a scene out here.”

Particularly not here, with the schoolroom overlooking the east entrance. Two men shouting back and forth, with an exasperated High Priestess adding her voice to the commotion, would draw every child who could cram onto the portico to watch.

“High Priestess, this is—”

Goddess, was the man still arguing with her? “Do I need to remind you that the Sacred King is an Achaean who could snap your neck with his bare hands? Just get in and let him drive.”

Donning her wide-brimmed hat, Ariadne climbed into a second chariot behind its driver, clutched the wooden railing, and hung on as the light, two-wheeled vehicle started east, then turned south toward Archanes. Once the well-paved road descended the hill and crossed the boundary stones that delineated the sacred precinct of Knossos, it rose again toward the green Gypsades heights. A chariot proceeding at a leisurely pace could make the trip in two hours.

Ariadne widened her stance to improve her balance. A litter, her mother informed her, was a more proper conveyance for a High Priestess. Fine enough for a wealthy woman traveling from one residence to another, who could waste the better part of a day going six miles. Ariadne wanted to arrive by midmorning, before heat and dust made the going unpleasant, and enjoy a leisurely visit before returning in the late afternoon.

Fields and olive groves crept past on either side, with sacred Mount Juktas looming steadily closer. Only once, as a shepherd lazily drove his flock across the road, were they forced to stop. Ariadne glanced over at Taranos, then at the charioteers. All three men had been warned against bellowing at the local peasantry to make way for the Great Mother’s High Priestess. It wouldn’t clear the road. Instead, people would swarm out seeking her blessing on their crops or their unborn children, and she wouldn’t reach Archanes until nightfall.

Morning sickness didn’t trouble her today. So she thought, until an all too familiar spasm seized her. She signaled her driver to halt, leaned over the side, and vomited into the dirt. There she hung, retching, gasping for air, as Taranos doubled back and came alongside. He handed the reins off to his escort and climbed out. “Are you all right?”

Ariadne waved him back. “This isn’t the first time I’ve done this.” Slowly straightening, she tugged at her driver’s arm. “Give me some water.”

Taranos didn’t move as she rinsed out her mouth. “Do you want to ride with me?”

His escort sharply interjected. “That isn’t permitted.”

“Duripi, do you want to walk the rest of the way to Archanes? Then mind your own business. If I wanted to carry the lady off, you and your friend there certainly couldn’t stop me.” Taranos indicated the sword hanging from his belt, and the shield crammed into the chariot. Who did he expect to attack them within sight of Knossos? Ariadne rolled her eyes. Achaeans and their obsession with fighting!

Sensing trouble, she stepped down from the chariot and drew him aside. “Now don’t make trouble. Honestly, you men pummel and bruise each other bloody every day boxing and wrestling, and think nothing of it, but a pregnant woman gets a little nausea and suddenly you all lose your minds. Get back in your chariot and behave.”

“You’d be better off riding with me,” insisted Taranos.

“Your chariot bounces just like mine, and with your shield taking up half the room, where do you expect me to stand? I don’t suppose you have your helmet in there as well?”

A conspiratorial grin told her he did. She threw up her hands. “What am I doing to do with you? We’re visiting an old woman in the country, not riding off to war.”

Taranos remained in earnest. “Where I come from, venturing unarmed into the country with a woman and only two guards is asking for trouble. Now climb in behind me. You take up far less room than that flatulent idiot Duripi.”

Still Ariadne hesitated. “I don’t think I ought to. Every time you and I are this close…”

“Woman, you just spewed your breakfast onto the road. A good many things you do make me hard, but that isn’t one of them. Now come with me and I’ll show you how an Achaean drives a chariot.”

Climbing into the narrow car, jostling his helmet with her right foot, and crammed up against his figure-of-eight shield, she expected him to snap the reins and take off with breakneck speed. To her surprise, he gently flicked the reins, and they set off again toward the gorge where the Kairatos River ran past the cemetery of Phourni.

Duripi and the other charioteer glumly followed.

Tucked below the eastern slopes of Mount Juktas, Archanes was a prosperous small town surrounded by fields, orchards, and vineyards. Its residents could afford to color their three-storied houses with subtle washes of yellow and soft ochre. Women strolling with their jars down to the well-curb wore flounced skirts and glass beads, and the children playing in the streets had a sleek, well-fed look. As Taranos drove past, the boys gawked at the shield standing upright in his chariot, and the silver-studded sword hanging from his belt.

Ariadne directed him to the far end of the town, where a large house bordered a small vineyard and olive grove. She let the chariot wobble to a halt before loosening her grip on the rail. Taranos jumped out and gave her his hand. “Is this it?”

She noted the admiration in his voice. “Great-grandmother is a thrifty manager. She’s had this property since before my mother was born. Ah, look there. Do you see the smoke rising up there on the peak?” Suddenly she recalled that he was descended from a god. “That’s Zeus’s sanctuary. I’ve never been, but I’m told the priests there give oracles.”

Taranos squinted, nodded toward the roughly conical summit. “Father Zeus’s shrine at Knossos is very small.”

Achaeans who had settled and came to make offerings at Knossos said much the same; they liked to pay their respects all in one place and didn’t relish being told they would have to journey another six miles just to honor the sky god. “Poseidon takes precedence at Knossos,” Ariadne explained. “We must honor him because the earth shakes so often. But sometimes, even with all our sacrifices and rites, it isn’t enough. Knossos has been destroyed and rebuilt many times, but we never turn our backs on Poseidon, even to please Zeus.”

As they reached the cypress-shaded portico, a small brown woman came out to greet them. “Ah, so you’ve brought company! Well, bring him inside. You’ve had a long trip and need to rest.”

At seventy-nine, Iphame radiated as much vigor as a woman forty years younger. Wrinkled skin resembled burnished bronze rather than worn leather, and merriment danced in her gray eyes. Iron-gray hair hung in a thick braid down to her waist, around which she wore a bright yellow apron. Copper earrings swung from her ears like hollow suns, and a bracelet of jasper beads encircled her left wrist. Ariadne stooped to hug her, this diminutive woman who smelled like milk and the sweetening herbs she placed in her clothes chest.