CHAPTER FORTY
WE DRAW UP TO THE docks when it is still early – the air crisp and cold and sudden.
Tiryns is nestled on a gulf in the mainland.
We pass towns and villages, sail past fishermen and merchants and then, the moment we must cross into the waters of Argos, everything falls quiet.
The few settlements appear abandoned – though I spot a shutter quickly drawn or a shadow flitting into darkness.
The port is empty – no people, no boats. And I wonder if Perseus burned Naxos not only to weaken Dionysus, but as a declaration of war – to lure him here. To his lands. Where he might stand a better chance.
Dionysus must feel it too, because he comes up behind me as we unload our supplies from the ship.
‘Stay close to me,’ he says. ‘I am prepared for almost anything, but if Perseus attempts to leverage you, then, well, this may all come crumbling down.’
‘Dionysus,’ I say, turning. ‘You can’t –’
‘Too late, I’m afraid. I may be immortal but my heart is not, and as you are the one encasing it, I’d appreciate it if you’d protect it.’
I run my gaze over him, taking in his every fragility – the soft fluttering eyelashes, the gently flushed skin, the lip he’s worried at.
Immortal, yes. But not impermeable, nor a thing to be weathered.
I’ve seen the labyrinth of his mind and the pain within, seen the ghosts of myself that haunt it, and I will, whether today or in a few decades’ time, hurt him once more.
Losing me is an inevitability, and he’s going to spend every single day that we are together tormented by it.
Apparently, so will I.
‘I don’t suppose I can tempt you to stay on the boat?’
‘I thought you had no interest in doing anything without me?’ I tease, like it might disguise my own fear. Dionysus’s gaze softens, and he entwines his fingers with mine.
‘This is an exception,’ he says. ‘It is unlikely he could kill me. He’d need a Stygian blade, Greek fire or a monster to unleash upon me. Mortal bronze isn’t going to cut me in a way that won’t heal. But you? All of you …’
‘He might not be able to kill you but he could catch you off guard, subdue you, strike before you can ready a defence,’ I counter.
‘Imprison you somewhere, or we must assume that he might have got hold of any one of those things you just said have the power to kill you. So you look out for us and we’ll look out for you. ’
Dionysus presses his lips together, his displeasure clear, but he evidently can’t fight the point.
Myrto scrambles up beside us – Zosime beside her, with the apparent honour of holding her wax tablet.
‘Come on, you two,’ Myrto says with forced joviality. ‘We’re just here to host a revelry. So let’s party.’
She gestures, and behind us maenads take up instruments and start to play.
We are only here to spread a little happiness – and if that is a threat then so be it.
We pass a few dozen houses on our journey from the port.
Abandoned, much like those we sailed by.
But to my left, a curtain twitches. To my right, smoke sputters from a chimney – as though a fire has been quickly doused.
And, at last, a door creaks – a startled shriek of Apollonia! and a girl of thirteen or so darts out.
She reaches us, panting – her eyes are frightened and quick but there’s anticipation there too.
Opora holds out her tympanon – and the girl takes it. She stares at it a moment – then taps her fingers against its skin. The others play on – and soon she has the beat.
She laughs, delighted – and turns back to the house, raising the tympanon aloft.
And a curious set of eyes meets her – an older sister, perhaps. Hesitantly, she steps out too.
Then other doors creak.
It is the same in every village we pass – hesitancy, and then a brave first step that leads the others into the fray.
Dionysus, we sing – and I feel the beat strike within me because on our tongues it is not the god twirling his thyrsus at my side but us.
It is as he said so long ago – his name only the thing they gather beneath.
And now, sung out like this, it is a calling, a heralding of freedom, of jubilation, of the first bright spark amidst so much gloom.
By the time the walls of Tiryns rise above us, we have amassed at least a hundred of Perseus’s own people, singing and dancing with the rest of the thiasus – and I’m a little more confident that even if Perseus will not allow full revelry in his lands, he will not stop its first beats.
And maybe fun will seep into the cracks of his rule, no matter how hard he tries to stopper it.
The dirt path leads to two enormous gates set into the city walls.
Dionysus takes a step towards knocking upon them.
‘Everybody down!’ a voice screams, and around me there is movement – above, a sudden shower.
Dionysus jabs his thyrsus aloft as I dive for the ground, colliding with the bodies beside me. My heart thumps violently, reverberating in the sudden silence.
A silence that lingers.
I toss my head back. A volley of arrows hover above us, refusing to sink lower than the pine cone topping Dionysus’s staff.
On the city walls above, archers are notching second arrows.
In their centre, I catch the raven glint of Perseus, his hair fluttering in the breeze, his robes silken in the sun.
No helmet. No armour. No weapon that I can see, just a bag slung over his shoulder and an outstretched hand holding his archers at bay.
‘That’s him,’ I say, scrambling to my feet.
Dionysus follows my gaze. ‘Shall I hurl these back at you?’ he calls. ‘Or should we speak with more civility?’
Perseus smiles. ‘Of course. Leave your weapons and come to the gates. I’ll have my men prepare for your arrival and we can negotiate your surrender.’
Dionysus flicks his wrist and the arrows fly towards Perseus, landing in a perfect circle around his feet.
Perseus cowers, his hands flying to cover his face, and when he looks back at Dionysus he makes no effort to hide his fear. Hermes was right – I don’t believe Perseus anticipated Dionysus wielding this sort of power.
‘We will negotiate,’ Dionysus agrees. ‘That is all.’
Around us, the rest of the thiasus peel themselves from the ground.
‘Would you like to rethink that?’ Perseus snarls.
Behind us, there is a dull rumbling, growing ever greater. They are upon us at once – men on horses’ backs or in chariots drawn by them, curved blades raised that make ours look like little more than flint fire-starters.
There is no moment to rethink because they do not pause to hear our shouts of surrender – we anticipated disgruntled townspeople or the efforts of guards, not soldiers, not the full might of an army.
Dionysus races forward like he might place himself between the soldiers and the thiasus but they’re already surrounding us – and then all at once they are among us.
Dionysus is quick but each donkey bleat or dolphin squeak erupting from a struck soldier is drowned by clashing iron and he falters, turning and reaching but not risking hitting our own people.
I clutch his arm. ‘Come on! We need to get to Perseus. It’s the only way to stop this.’
He leaps across me, his staff held out to block a blow that had been aimed my way, and that thyrsus is twirling, taking hits, iron bouncing off the gods-cursed gold.
Another blade catches the sun, and I sense that – the light arcing through it – before I discern the whistle of metal swinging towards me. I grasp the soldier’s wrist, and draw up those walls. The labyrinth slams into place and I let go, leaving the man staring at what is not there.
I pluck the sword from his hand.
And use it to deflect a jab aimed at Dionysus – just enough to hit them with my other hand, the jolt all it takes to draw up another labyrinth and leave them staring into the abyss.
Dionysus throws his arm above me and arrows rain on to the invisible shield.
‘You’re right,’ he says – eyeing Perseus on those walls, watching the carnage with unabashed delight.
We battle our way through and, gods above, Medea was right.
I am stronger. It is not even that my powers deplete less readily or that I am not so easily exhausted, but that using them feels invigorating – and it is enough to blunt the sharp edge of so much iron, and the tang of blood in the air.
I am a whisper weaving through the battlefield.
A gentle touch in so much harshness, immobilizing and incontestable.
Dionysus does not need a true immortal form for his divinity to be evident – he is a blade cleaving through the conquering masses.
Men who try to attack us trip over sudden grapevines or scramble to gather imaginary pine cones with ardent, desperate fervour.
In the fray, soldiers shift and morph, collapsing wherever Dionysus spots them into all manner of beasts until their squawking, braying, bleating rings out over the shrieks.
Where he falters, I reach out and walls spring up and around, paths wind through, visions leap and fade.
In moments, we are at those gates – a slam of his thyrsus against it and the lock falls apart.
We race up the steps of the walls, soldiers backing away from us, or else snatched by vines and left dangling over the precipice, and there is Perseus, blood draining from his face – scrambling back.
Dionysus jams his thyrsus beneath Perseus’s chin, the tip of the pine cone wickedly sharp.
‘Call them off, now!’
Perseus sneers but he glances to his men. ‘Blow the horn. End this.’
Its answering blast is thunderous.
The clash of metal ceases. But their weapons are still in hand.
Soldiers lift their swords high, or else hold maenads at spearpoint.
Around us, arrows are nocked, ready to fire.
And littered among them are the wounded, the bleeding, the dead.
Not all in armour. Some in the linen of the thiasus or the rough-hewn weaves of the villagers.
I see horns covered in blood. Or braids trodden into the mud …
No. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.
‘Try anything,’ Perseus snarls – like a weapon is not still held to his throat, ‘and they resume. But you’ve quite made your point. So let’s discuss your options.’