Chimera

Pegasus would not go down.

Bellerophon pressed his heels against the horse’s sides and pulled the left rein, aiming for the bare strip of earth below. There was room to land. He had seen it between two outcrops: level ground, a clear view, nothing between his bow and the lion.

The horse climbed instead. A white wing struck across Bellerophon’s sight.

Then fire came through the place where he had meant to land.

Heat slapped his cheek. Pegasus rolled, and for an instant Bellerophon hung sideways above the hillside with one knee slipping from the horse’s flank. He caught a handful of mane. His bow struck his thigh. Below them, dry grass flashed and shrank into black threads.

He had been watching the wrong mouth.

The lion stood on four heavy paws at the foot of the rocks. Its jaws were open, but the fire came from farther back, from a goat’s head rising between its shoulders and haunches. The narrow muzzle lifted after them. Smoke curled around its horns.

Pegasus carried him beyond the next ridge before Bellerophon could persuade his fingers to release the mane.

“All right,” he said. His voice sounded thin in the wind. “All right.”

A burnt feather tip fluttered past his boot.

Iobates had spoken of the creature across a table laid with bread and meat. The king had named the cattle it had killed, the country it had emptied. Bellerophon remembered nodding. He had been a guest too long; a task was welcome, something he could accomplish and set before his host.

Now a black edge marked the white wing opening beside him.

He loosened the rein and let Pegasus settle on the far ridge.

The horse stood trembling, nostrils wide. Bellerophon dismounted and ran his hand above the scorched feathers without touching them. The damage seemed confined to the tips. When he moved toward the wing’s base, Pegasus stepped away.

“I know.”

He looked back over the ridge.

The Chimera had left the burnt strip and was walking toward a shelf of limestone. Its lion head swung low. Behind it, the tail dragged over the stones, long and dark, with a movement that seemed too deliberate for balance.

Bellerophon took an arrow from his quiver. From this side, he thought, the rocks would screen him from the goat’s mouth. He could bring Pegasus along the slope, shoot as they passed the shelf, and turn away before the creature faced them.

He remounted. This time he kept the horse above the ground.

They came along the ridge in a shallow glide. Stone slid past beneath them. The Chimera’s head disappeared behind the shelf, then its shoulders. Bellerophon drew the string halfway, waiting for the ribs to emerge on the other side.

The tail lifted.

At its end, a serpent’s mouth opened toward him.

Pegasus jerked upward. The snake struck through the air beneath the horse’s forelegs, close enough that Bellerophon saw the pale lining of its mouth. His arrow went loose against the rock. It broke with a small, useless crack.

He pulled hard to turn them away.

The goat’s head rose over the shelf.

Pegasus beat upward, fighting the rein. Bellerophon hauled again, trying to bring the horse around before the fire reached them, and felt the wing stroke falter under his command. One breath more and they would hang there, broadside to the raised muzzle.

He opened his hand.

The rein slid through his fingers. Pegasus surged almost vertically. Fire washed the rock below; its heat rose after them, but the horse was already carrying them into cooler air.

Bellerophon bent over the white neck and stayed there until the wingbeats steadied.

The lion in front. The serpent behind. Fire above the back.

He had been looking for the safe side of an animal he knew. Each time he found one, another head was waiting there.

Below, the Chimera backed under the shelf. Only the lion’s face remained in sunlight. It watched their circling shadow cross the grass.

Bellerophon took another arrow, then stopped. His hands were shaking enough to make the shaft tap against the bow.

He put it back.

“Once around,” he said.

Pegasus banked. Bellerophon let his own weight follow the movement instead of trying to correct it. The hillside tilted beneath them, then levelled. He felt the horse gather for each stroke, the small lift before the downbeat, the brief floating pause afterward.

On the next circuit, he took the arrow out again.

There would be no shot through the limestone. He had to draw the creature into the open. And he would have to come close enough to persuade it to leave its shelter.

He chose the slope beyond the shelf, where the grass gave way to scattered stones. There was space above it, clear all the way to the sky.

Bellerophon lowered his body against Pegasus’s neck. He guided the horse down with a gentle pressure and kept the reins slack enough to move. The lion’s face turned. Its lips lifted.

They passed outside the shelf.

The Chimera sprang.

For a moment Bellerophon saw the whole creature in the air: lion forelegs stretched toward them, goat neck thrust forward, serpent tail lashing behind. He wanted to pull away. His hand tightened.

Then he felt Pegasus rise under him.

He gave the horse the rein.

The claws fell short. Stone rang beneath the creature’s weight as it landed, and Pegasus climbed above it, one wingtip dropping into a turn. Bellerophon braced his knees and brought up the bow.

The goat raised its mouth.

He waited through the downward wing stroke. Drew in the lifting pause. Let go.

The arrow struck behind the goat’s jaw.

Its flame went crooked across the hillside. The lion twisted, wrenching the shaft with the movement of its body, and the serpent lashed upward at empty air.

Bellerophon had another arrow in his fingers before they completed the turn.

This time he saw the creature beneath him without searching for a familiar outline. The shoulders moved the goat’s head. The lion’s twist dragged the serpent around. All its terrible parts belonged to one body, and that body was exposed from above.

He shot again.

The Chimera lunged toward the shelf, but a foreleg folded under it. Bellerophon circled once more and loosed his next arrow into the broad back before the creature could drag itself beneath the stone roof.

The lion fell on its side.

For a while the serpent still struck at the grass. The goat’s mouth opened, smoke leaking between its teeth. Bellerophon kept Pegasus high. He watched until the tail lay still, until the grass moved only where the wind passed through it.

He had imagined a cry at the end. His own voice carrying across the emptied hills.

When he tried to speak, he could only swallow.

Pegasus landed well beyond the blackened ground. Bellerophon slid down and stood with his forehead against the horse’s neck, feeling the hard breathing gradually slow.

A loose, scorched fragment clung to the edge of one wing. He lifted it free. Beneath it, the remaining feathers lay clean and white.

There would be time to tell Iobates what had happened. First there was a stream in the hollow below, a narrow line of green he had seen from the air.

Bellerophon unfastened the bridle. With the bow over his shoulder and the reins gathered in one hand, he walked beside Pegasus toward the water.