The blood on the willow leaf was still wet.
Artemis caught her foremost hound by the scruff before it could nose the branch aside. Beyond the willows, the Ladon ran white over its stones. Something heavy moved through the shallows on the other bank. Then a golden antler rose above the leaves, tilted, and vanished.
She knew those antlers. She had watched them pass between the trunks in winter, when the forest was bare and no other gold remained on the mountain.
She left the hounds behind.
The man climbing out of the river had the hind across his shoulders. One hand held its forelegs; the other supported its belly. Water poured from his lionskin. An arrow stood in the animal’s leg, trembling with every step he took.
Artemis set a shaft to her bow.
“Put her down.”
Heracles stopped with one foot on the bank. He looked first at the arrowhead, then at her face. His fingers tightened around the slender legs.
That small movement brought her string against her cheek.
“Carefully,” she said.
“If I open my hands here, she’ll fall.”
She could see the truth of it. His rear foot was planted between two submerged stones; the bank beneath his raised knee was wet clay. She moved the point of her arrow a finger’s breadth aside.
“Come up.”
He climbed without taking his eyes from her. The hind’s muzzle hung near his elbow. Its nostrils widened, seeking air, and a shiver passed along its flank.
Artemis stepped close enough to see the arrow’s entry. Not through the bone. The man had chosen his shot.
For that, she hated the wound more.
“You knew what she was.”
“Yes.”
“And shot her.”
“I had to take her alive.”
The hind lifted its head at his voice. Its golden horns struck a low branch, shaking drops onto his shoulder.
Artemis drew him away from the tree with the point of her arrow.
“Who taught you that taking something alive leaves it unharmed?”
He did not answer. She saw the raw place on his neck where the animal’s hoof had rubbed it, the old scratches beneath the new river mud. He had not caught her easily.
Behind Artemis, a pebble rolled down the path.
“A year,” Apollo said.
He stood among the willows with his bow in his hand. Her brother’s gaze passed from the hind to the man carrying it.
“He has followed her for a year.”
“Then he had a year to turn back.”
Heracles’s mouth tightened.
“Eurystheus sent me.”
“Is he standing here with his hand upon your string?”
“No.”
“Whose arrow?”
“Mine.”
The answer came roughly. He shifted under the hind’s weight, then stopped when Artemis looked at his hands.
Apollo came no nearer. For once he offered neither counsel nor a song to soften what had been said. The river filled the silence.
The River Between Them
There was a patch of pale gravel beside the water. Artemis pointed to it.
“Kneel there. Lower her onto her sound side.”
“She’ll run.”
“With that in her leg?”
“She has run with me behind her through a winter.”
Artemis knew how a wounded creature could spend its last strength. She knew, too, the feel of a killing shot waiting in the fingers. The animal between them knew neither command nor excuse. It smelled a hunter on one side and a drawn bow on the other.
She eased the string forward.
Heracles knelt. He lowered his shoulder until the hind’s forefeet touched the gravel, keeping his other arm beneath its weight. Artemis crouched at its head. She could see herself, small and dark, in its open eye.
“Let go of the legs.”
He obeyed.
The hind twisted before her hand reached its neck.
Its sound hind leg struck Heracles across the wrist. He caught at empty air. Golden antlers swept past Artemis’s cheek, and the animal plunged between them into the river.
She was on her feet before the splash had fallen.
For three strides it held against the current. Then the wounded leg folded. Water struck its flank and turned it sideways.
Artemis ran downstream. She knew the river: the shallow crossing, the deep run beyond it, the shelf where the water fell between two boulders. The hind was going toward that narrow place with its legs beneath it.
Heracles splashed in behind her.
“Stay above her,” she called.
He lunged for an antler.
“Not the horns!”
His hand closed on nothing. The current drove the hind against the nearer boulder, and its forelegs scraped stone. For an instant its head rose clear. Water streamed from its mouth.
Artemis had an arrow in her hand. She had taken it from the string without knowing she had done so. One clean flight could end the terror before the river broke the animal.
The hind struck out again.
She laid the arrow and the bow on the bank.
When she stepped into the deep run, the current pressed her tunic flat against her thighs. She reached the boulder and put a hand beneath the hind’s jaw, keeping its nose above the foam. Its hooves battered the stone below her.
Heracles was waist-deep on the other side.
“Lift her,” he said.
“The shaft will catch.”
The arrow lay crosswise against the rock. Each struggle levered it in the wound.
“Can you hold her still?”
He reached under the animal. The water struck his broad back and divided around him. For a moment the hind stopped turning.
Artemis gripped the exposed shaft close to the wound. She broke the long end away.
The hind jerked. Heracles’s foot slipped, and his shoulder struck the boulder hard enough for her to hear it over the water. He kept his arms beneath the animal.
“Now,” she said.
Together they raised it over the shelf.
Apollo was waiting on the gravel. He caught his brother’s arm as Heracles stumbled out and guided the burden clear of the rocks. They laid the hind beneath the willows.
It did not move.
Artemis knelt beside it. Water dripped from her hair onto the gravel. She rested her palm behind its foreleg and waited.
A beat. Another.
The hind coughed, throwing its head forward. Heracles drew a breath so sharply that she looked at him.
His hands were empty now. He held them open before him, as though the weight remained.
A Living Burden
“Your knife,” Artemis said.
He gave it to her hilt first.
She opened the cloth at his shoulder with it, cut a strip, and set the blade down. Then she took the broken arrow from the hind’s leg. The animal flinched and tried to rise. Heracles moved to hold it, but stopped at her raised hand.
Artemis kept her palm along its neck until it settled. She bound the wound. Beneath the damp hide, its muscles trembled with the effort of lying still.
If she drove the man away, it would try to follow its own terror into the woods. If she kept it there, it would need guarding from everything that smelled blood. She could protect it. She could carry it herself.
And Heracles would return without it, receive the same command, and come hunting again.
“Must he have her dead?” she asked.
“Alive.”
“What will he do with her?”
“I don’t know.”
It was the first answer he had given that offered him no shelter.
Artemis looked toward Apollo. Her brother stood with her bow across his hands. He waited for her to take it.
She turned back to Heracles.
“You will tell him whose animal you carry.”
“He knows.”
“Then tell him again.”
Heracles looked down at the hind. One ear turned toward him.
“You’ll let me pass?”
Artemis lifted the animal’s forequarters. At once it struggled, reaching for the ground. She lowered it again before the bound leg could take its weight.
“You will carry her because she cannot walk. Come here.”
He knelt beside her. She placed his arm beneath the hind’s chest, away from the throat, and drew his other hand farther under its body. His injured wrist shook.
“That hurts you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Can you keep it there?”
He tested the weight before answering.
“Yes.”
She let him take it. Slowly, with one knee still on the gravel, he settled the hind across his shoulders. This time he did not close his fist around its legs. He supported them along his forearm.
Artemis stood in front of him until he raised his eyes.
“His command brought you here. Your hands carry her now.”
“I understand.”
She did not move aside.
He looked at the bound leg, then at the river, where the broken length of his arrow had caught among the stones.
“I will answer for her,” he said.
Only then did she give him the path.
Apollo returned her bow. The grip was dry; he had kept it beneath his cloak. She took it without setting a shaft to the string.
Heracles walked uphill through the willows. At the first turn the hind stirred, and he stopped. Artemis watched him loosen his arm, shift the weight away from the wound, and wait until its head rested again.
Then he went on.
One of her hounds came down to the river and found the bloodied leaf. At her touch it left the scent. Together they climbed to the turn in the path, where the wet prints of a man’s feet led toward Mycenae.
