Chapter 34: Spoils of War and a Thief's Justice
Silence.
It wasn't the peaceful quiet after a storm, but the heavy, ringing stillness that follows a cataclysm. The air smelled of ozone, blood, and scorched earth. Cyd lay flat on his back in the churned mud, staring up at the sky, his chest rising and falling in ragged gasps. The solar runes on his skin had faded completely, leaving him feeling hollowed out and strangely light.
"We… won," he breathed out, the words tasting like dust and victory.
"Yeah. We did."
The reply came from directly on top of him. Atalanta hadn't moved from where she'd fallen back against him. She was sitting on his stomach, her legs tucked to the side, arms crossed over her chest as if they were relaxing after a picnic, not lying in the shadow of a dead titan. Her bow was still clutched in one hand, its divine glow slowly dimming.
"Uh…" Cyd wiggled his fingers, then cautiously lifted his head. "Not that this isn't… comfortable… but the ground is kind of wet. And there's a giant dead pig nearby. It's going to start smelling."
"I'm tired. I'm sleeping here." She didn't open her eyes. Her voice was a low, flat murmur, but there was a thread of something in it—not defiance, but a stubborn, almost petulant exhaustion.
"Right…" Cyd sighed, the sound fond and exasperated. He shifted, sliding his hands under her legs and behind her back. "How about I move us, then? Somewhere less… gory?"
"Do what you want. It's not like you haven't been manhandling me for days while I couldn't stop you." She kept her eyes firmly shut, but a faint pink tinge colored the tips of her ears.
"That was… different," Cyd mumbled, his own face heating as he carefully stood, lifting her with him. She was surprisingly light, all lean muscle and compact grace. "That was necessity. This is… post-victory logistics."
To his surprise, she didn't fight him. She didn't bite. Instead, she shifted in his arms, settling more comfortably, and even looped one arm around his neck for balance. Her eyes remained closed. He decided not to question the small mercy.
"So," he said, walking gingerly around the edge of the colossal, twitching carcass. The boar's death throes were slowing, but occasional spasms still made the ground tremble. "What do we do with our… prize? It's a bit much for a barbecue. Even if we invited everyone from Arcadia."
"The hide is too massive to treat and carry," Atalanta murmured, cracking one eye open to survey the mountainous corpse. "The tusks, maybe. As trophies. The rest…" She shrugged, the movement making her press closer against him. "Let the scavengers have it. Or the locals. It's their land it was terrorizing."
As Cyd began a slow circuit of the boar, pondering the practicalities of butchering a leviathan, a flash of motion caught the very edge of his vision.
Behind a massive, half-splintered oak, a sliver of pure white—not sunlight, but something brighter, more alive—peeked out, then vanished.
Artemis.
He didn't see her, but he knew. The air tasted cleaner, sharper where she'd been, like a mountain stream after a thaw. He felt a sudden, irrational urge to stand up straighter, to look… presentable. He stamped it down. Now was not the time.
Unseen, Artemis herself was having a crisis. She clung to the other side of the oak, peering through a crack in the bark.
"Mmmph… why do they look like… like that?" she whispered to the tree. The sight of Cyd holding Atalanta so effortlessly, of Atalanta allowing it with such uncharacteristic, sleepy compliance, stirred something odd in her divine chest. It was a warm, tight feeling, not entirely unpleasant, but tangled with a sharper, greener sensation she couldn't name. Her goddess instincts screamed that bursting in now would disrupt… something. Something fragile and human and probably involving Atalanta trying to throttle Cyd out of sheer flustered pride.
But the urge to do it anyway, to insert herself into that quiet, post-battle bubble, was growing stronger by the second.
SNAP.
A small, dry branch cracked under a heavy, careless footfall, far from her hiding spot.
Artemis's head whipped around. Her silver eyes, capable of tracking a falcon across a cloudy sky, picked out the movement instantly. A group of men, armed and armored, moving cautiously through the shattered woods toward the clearing. Humans. Led by a man whose face she vaguely recognized from some minor local prayer.
Her playful dilemma evaporated, replaced by a colder, protective irritation. "Tch. Of course they show up now. Vultures." Her form began to shimmer, dissolving into dappled light and shadow. "Fine. But if you insects dare to spoil this… it won't be a boar next time."
Cyd's head came up at the sound of approaching voices. He turned, still holding Atalanta, as the hunting party emerged from the tree line. At their front was a young man with a harried expression and familiar armor.
Cyd blinked. "You're… that guy. The one who…"
"Complained about his sore back after the first day's march from Iolcus," Atalanta supplied, not bothering to open her eyes. "I remember the whining."
The young man's face flushed. "Meleager! My name is Meleager! We sailed on the Argo together! Briefly!"
"Right, right," Cyd said, nodding as if he'd just remembered the color of the sky. "The one worried about his 'endurance.' So, you're here for the pig?"
Meleager's gaze finally traveled past Cyd to the gargantuan corpse behind him. His jaw went slack. The men behind him gasped, a wave of murmurs spreading through the group. "You… you two did this? Already?"
"More or less. It's mostly dead. Just needs to finish bleeding out," Cyd said with a casual shrug that was at odds with the Herculean feat.
"I see…" Meleager trailed off, his expression turning complicated. The hunt was the stated goal, but the glory, the tangible proof—the hide, the tusks—that was the real prize for men like his uncles, who now shoved past him with greedy eyes.
"Out of the way, boy!" his eldest uncle, Toxeus, grunted, barging past Cyd without a second glance. He and his brother, the middle uncle Plexippus, strode up to the still-warm boar as if they owned it.
"Look at the size of it! A single tusk could buy a fleet!" Toxeus exclaimed, slapping the boar's bristly flank.
"Indeed! And to think these two… children… claim to have brought it down? Preposterous!" Plexippus sneered, drawing his sword. "The beast isn't even dead! The kill, and the glory, are still there for the taking!"
Cyd's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. He looked from the brash uncles to Meleager, a silent, amused question in his eyes: How badly are your relatives about to humiliate you?
Meleager's face burned with shame and rising anger. "The boar belongs to Cyd and Atalanta!" he shouted, striding forward to place himself between Plexippus and the boar's head. "They felled it. To steal their victory is to dishonor the very name of 'hero'!"
Huh. He's got a spine after all, Cyd thought, mildly impressed.
High above, unseen, Artemis paused, a celestial-sized basket of furious, magical piglets materializing in her hands. She peered down, curiosity momentarily overriding her wrath. Let's see what you do, little prince.
Plexippus laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "Hero? The only heroes are the ones holding the trophies! Stand aside, nephew. This kill will be the foundation of our legend!" He raised his sword high, turning to address the other hunters. "The Calydonian Boar is slain… BY US!"
Meleager didn't see red. He saw a clear, cold line being crossed—not just of honor, but of his own authority as the leader of this hunt, as the future king. The public disrespect was a poison that would spread.
"I said," Meleager's voice dropped, deadly quiet. "It is theirs."
Plexippus ignored him, beginning the killing stroke toward the boar's neck.
Meleager moved.
It was not a wild, angry lunge. It was a hunter's strike, precise and utterly final. The hunting spear in his hand—meant for the boar—shot forward.
THOCK.
The bronze spearhead punched through the front of Plexippus's throat and burst out the back of his neck in a spray of crimson. The man's triumphant shout died in a wet gurgle. His sword fell from nerveless fingers as he crumpled.
Toxeus roared in shock and fury, his own blade clearing its sheath. "You dare—!"
Meleager was already turning. He dropped the spear, drew his sword in one fluid motion, and met his eldest uncle's charge. He didn't parry. He intercepted. His blade met Toxeus's with a shriek of metal, then with a powerful twist and shove, he forced the older man's guard wide open. Meleager's return stroke was a silver arc in the afternoon light.
It opened Toxeus from hip to opposite shoulder.
The man fell in two distinct, bloody sections.
Silence, deeper and more profound than after the boar's death, swallowed the clearing. The remaining hunters stared, paralyzed with horror.
Meleager stood breathing heavily, his father's brothers' blood painting his armor and speckling his face. He made no move to wipe it away. He slowly turned his head, his eyes sweeping over the stunned crowd. They were no longer the eyes of a harried prince, but of a king who had just defined the borders of his rule with violence.
"The boar," he said, each word a chip of ice, "belongs to Cyd and Atalanta. Are there any… objections?"
No one breathed.
In Cyd's arms, Atalanta had finally opened her eyes. She watched the scene dispassionately, then looked up at Cyd's profile. He wasn't shocked. He looked… thoughtful. Assessing.
"Ahem." Cyd cleared his throat, the sound absurdly loud in the quiet. "Prince Meleager. That's… decisively settled. Regarding the boar… we really only need a portion of the hide. A trophy. The rest—the meat, the bones, the other tusk—consider it yours. For the people of Calydon. A end to the famine this thing caused."
Meleager blinked, the fierce mask slipping to reveal sheer, stunned disbelief. He looked from the mountain of meat and glory back to Cyd. "You… you would just give it? After what just happened?" In Cyd's place, he'd have claimed every last scrap, and rightly so.
Cyd smiled. It was a simple, tired, genuine expression. "I didn't come here for trophies. I came to solve a problem. The problem is solved." The late sun caught his snow-white hair, making it seem to glow with its own gentle light against the backdrop of gore and grim politics.
Meleager stared. In Cyd's clear, pale eyes, he saw no greed, no triumph, no judgment for the bloody family drama that had just unfolded. He only saw… completion. The man had done what he set out to do. Everything else was noise.
A bitter, self-mocking laugh escaped Meleager. He looked at his bloodstained hands, then at the pure, almost alien figure before him, holding his fierce companion without a hint of strain. "A hero…" he murmured, the word tasting different now. "A pure white hero. It seems the title fits you far better than it ever did me."
Cyd blinked, tilting his head in confusion. "Huh? I think you're reading way too much into this. I just don't want to figure out how to haul a pig the size of a barn."
But Meleager wasn't listening. He was already turning, barking orders to his shell-shocked men to begin the work of butchering, his mind already leagues away, wrestling with the image of a hero who didn't seem to know he was one.