Hero for Hire (8 page)

A few minutes later, after I’d hardly gone another couple hundred yards, I heard a mix of raised voices and then the crashing, yelping sounds of someone breaking through underbrush and falling down. I turned to scan my surroundings. The hooting got louder.

I saw a youth, a sheepskin tied with a thong over his shoulder, crouching among the white boulders. He saw me looking at him and his eyes widened. Then he sprang to his feet, running away down the hillside, rocks and stones bouncing down in front of him. Somehow he kept his balance. He started yelping, “Captain! Captain!” foolishly, as though Eurytos were waiting around the next rock.

“He’ll be too out of breath to deliver the message,” I said out loud. I knew there was at least one more pair of eyes watching me. I yawned again, stretching my arms wide then bringing my fists in to make all the muscles along my back and shoulders bulge up like melons on a vine.

“Hercules....” someone said, his whisper echoing off the stones. I couldn’t see him but knew that here was one guard who wouldn’t be joining the fight.

“There’ll be amnesty for anyone who returns to the Palace by nightfall,” I said idly to the shadowless stones. “King Temas knows you are not evil, even if your heads were weak.”

There was no answer. I walked on. After a bit, I looked back toward the top of the hill I’d just come down. A figure stood there, dark against the chalky path. He hesitated, then gave a half-wave. I saluted him with two fingers waved in the air and he turned to go back toward town.

“One down, nine to go.”

Though the hooting had been intended to alert the next two guards, the shouting, falling and yelping would have worked just as well. The next two were waiting among some trees that shaded the path where it leveled out. My eyes took an instant to adjust but my ears were fine. I heard the creak as an arrow was drawn back on the string and the knock of a spear-butt against a tree trunk and the soft, involuntary ‘damn’ that went with it.

I drifted easily to the side to avoid the arrow which whistled over my left shoulder. The spear-wielder came out with an ululating yell and a six foot spear. Not the best choice for close-quarter fighting. I felt no need to take the sword from the scabbard resting between my shoulders.

I grabbed the base of the metal spearhead and yanked, forcing him to continue his charge right past me into the sunlight, his legs flying out in front of him.

Reversing the spear in one cartwheeling motion, I threw it straight, pinning the archer’s cloak to a tree with it. He fainted, hanging from the neck-strap.

Walking back, I picked up the former spear-carrier in one hand, dusting him off with the other as if he were a fallen-down child. I told him to tell his unconscious friend about the amnesty. He faithfully promised he would.

“How much farther is it to your camp?” I asked. “Am I right in assuming your captain is there?”

He nodded, his teeth chattering as if with cold. “A-another mile, down by the coast. There’s a-a kind of fortress. The rocks piled up all around there.”

“Sounds like a good place to hole up.” I put him down gently.

By now his comrade was awake again, twisting violently to rip himself free of the spear, choking himself uselessly. It had penetrated past the point, leaving a large hole in his cloak. “Ask a nice lady named
Doris
to mend that,” I said as I broke the shaft and yanked him free.

“
Doris
?” he asked.

“Old woman, wears black.” I helped him up. “If you hurry, you’ll make it back before the harpy starts flying around again.” I picked up his bow from the ground and snapped it over my knee and handed him the bits dangling from the string. “Hurry up.”

Maybe that was a bit cruel but it got them moving.

So far, I’d only met young men who had chosen badly when deciding to rebel against their rightful leader. I could see in their eyes their desperate desire to return to the past, to set things right. I never knew a youth who didn’t regret big decisions like that almost the moment they were made. They probably had been praying every night to Father-Zeus to make everything go back to the way it had been before Eurytos had killed those first two guards, boys like themselves but with the courage to say ‘no’, foolhardy though it had proved.

I’d come now to once-plowed fields which should have been golden with sprouting wheat. But the fields were overgrown, poppies drooping and bind-weed crawling up and over stalks. Some places the wind or the rain had beaten down the stalks; other places deer or sheep had trampled and chomped.

A bit further on and the smell of burning lingered, reminding me of other fields, other sunny days turned dark with smoke. I didn’t know if it was a lightning strike or the hand of man that had set these fields alight.

Then I heard a crackle, a burning roar and a scream and I had my answer as to the cause of the fires.

There were three of them, one a bald hulk with a face like a burlap sack. He was laughing, standing back a little from the others, having a grand time, urging on the other two to evil deeds. At first, I hoped this was Eurytos but I saw both his hands were human.

They’d captured a girl, a peasant, her hair bound close to her head with a cloth. Her hands were tied to a stake so she had room to run a few steps either way but no chance at freedom. She twisted her thin body and tried to bring one hand to free the other from the rough ropes even as they cut mercilessly into her wrists.

A fire had been kindled, just a small fire. The two younger men were busying themselves there and at first I couldn’t make out what they were doing. All three men’s attention was fixed on it so they never noticed me as I came up behind them. The shepherd boy had been wise enough not to come this way. These louts wouldn’t care if his message was urgent. They were out to play nasty games.

“Now you take the rocks and flick ‘em at her. Go on!” the big bald one said. “With luck, you’ll set her dress on fire! That’s a sight worth seeing!”

“But they’re hot....” One of the younger ones had the kind of whining voice that make you long to drown the owner in a bucket to make up for parental oversight. “They’re too hot. I’m not burning my fingers for sport!”

“Dog! Cowardly dog! I’ll show you!” The other stood gilded by the firelight, with a straight profile and the tight curling locks sculptors give to statues of Adonis. He bent and fumbled, swearing, for one of the stones resting on the edge of the firepit. He stood up, juggling the too-hot stone between his hands and looking around for applause.

He saw me about one instant before I closed my fist over his. I’d caught his right, the one with the rock in it. I squeezed, holding on despite his thrashing.

The whiny one stared, opening and closing his mouth in much the same way he probably chewed, as pasty as if he’d seen a nightmare in the daytime. I hoped to haunt his dreams for a long, long time. He backed away fast, tripping over his own sandal lacings. I let go of him. He fell to his knees, keening over his crushed and burnt fingers.

The big one leapt on me, trying to wrap his arm around my throat. I grappled on to his hairless, tight arm with my free hand. An elemental throw, catching him on my hip, tossed him over my head to land on the other side of the fire.

Even the girl stopped struggling to stare.

I dismissed the snuffly one from my thoughts, concentrating on the big man. His girth was mostly gut which meant a blow there would dissipate into the fat. As for wrestling, I already knew he’d be slippery. I’d caught a whiff of his greasy skin as he’d flown past. I wiped my hand on my side.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“I’m the one you’re supposed to be watching for instead of playing these sick games. Why not send these boys to tell Eurytos I’m on my way?”

“Nobody needs to bother Eurytos. I can take a dozen overgrown monkeys like you and never break a sweat. Let ‘em stay and get an education.”

He started to circle around the fire like an experienced fighting man, one foot feeling out the ground before he lifted the other. He crouched low to present less of a target. He held his hands in the classic ‘grasping an iron-ball’ form, ready to grab onto me no matter what hold I tried first.

“Come on, you bastard!” he cried, showing his pointy teeth in a fierce grimace but his eyes shifted behind me to where the pretty one stood. That glance betrayed his worst fear, the fear of looking like a fool in front of his accomplices. Any pain I’d inflict would be nothing compared to the agony of that humiliation.

I jumped right through the fire at him, hitting him in the neck with my elbow to stop blood flow, sweeping a leg behind his to steal his balance, and coming around with my other fist to snap his head back. He went down hard, the air going out of him in a whoosh. I stood on him a moment, thoughtfully wiping my feet on his belly.

“What kind of wrestling rules are those?” the whiny one asked as I stepped off the body.

“Mine.”

I took two steps toward him and he scrambled away on his hands and knees. "It wasn't me," he gasped out. "I just did what they said. I didn't want to!"

Then I heard the slithering ring of a sword being drawn behind me.

The biggest and bravest man can be brought down by any coward with a rock. But not by some idiot with a sword.

This sword must have been the property of the bigger and balder villain. In the hands of this younger one, the tip wavered like a bird drunk on fermented figs. His farm-trained arms shook so that he had to use both hands to hold it even so steady as that. It showed a tendency to point down even as he used all his strength.

“Never hold it like that,” I said, coming closer.

“What? Stay back. I’ll run you through! I will!” His voice went high, a plucked string on the harp of hysteria.

“All right, then. I’ll just stand here while you saw at me. Should take you about a week.”

“Don’t you laugh at me!”

He decided that now, while I stood at least a dozen feet away, was a good time to take a swing at me. Despite the effort of just holding the sword, he lifted it a little higher and tried one of those swirling, two-handed exercises that look so very impressive. I confess I was in something of a sweat, worried that he might lop off a limb...one of his.

When he finished, he had just about enough breath to say ‘aha!’ After a moment of self-admiration, he remembered to point it at me again.

By then, however, I was close enough to slap it out of his hands. I wasn’t about to pay him the compliment of crossing swords with him. It fell blade-flat on the ground, giving off a dull ring.

With one hand around his skinny throat, I lifted him up to look me in the eye. His cavalry boots, ridiculously ornate for field conditions, kicked uselessly around my knees. “Now, you listen to me, you pipsqueak....”

“Oh, don’t hurt him!”

Amazed, I turned around. The girl, her arms at full stretch, leaned toward me, imploringly. “Don’t hurt him, please. Please don’t.”

I had involuntarily tightened my fingers when she’d spoken. The boy scrabbled frantically at my hand, his pretty face turning blue and his eyes bulging. I let go. He fell to the ground, gasping.

I picked up the sword and released the girl. Still trailing the cut ropes, she ran to his side and flung herself down, her hand resting tenderly on his back. She leaned down to see his face. “Oh, Yanni! Are you all right?”

“Yanni?” I looked heavenward. “I bet he’s the only son of a widowed mother, too.”

He was sitting up and coughing now, his hands to his bruised throat. But his scornful eyes told how little he appreciated the girl’s concern.

When I came closer, she spread her arms around him defensively. “Don’t hurt him anymore!”

“How did you get here, miss? Did he bring you?” I gave him a little dig in the thigh with my foot.

“Yes...but he didn’t mean to hurt me. It was just...it was all that one’s idea,” she cried, pointing to the bald one, who still lay flat on his back, cradling his middle. Seeing us looking, he rolled away from us, making noises as if he were choking up his last meal.

Yanni pushed the girl roughly aside. “It wasn’t his idea; it was mine, all mine. You’re a fool for me, like all you silly girls. But what do I want with some filthy little peasant who reeks of goats?”

“You don’t mean that, Yanni!” she said, clasping her arms around him.

“Oh, don’t I!”  He put a hand under her chin and shoved her over. He stood up, tears of rage and pain tracking down his face. “I’m going to get away from this rotten island. King Eurytos has promised to make me an ambassador. He says I’d be good at it. I’ll marry the first princess I see, if she’s as ugly as Hekate, and then I'll be a king myself. Then I’ll show you...I’ll show ‘em all!”

He looked the part, I’ll grant him that. As he stood there, his head thrown back as he posed like a statue of some young athlete, I could almost see a wreath of laurel or olive decorating his smooth brow. But a strange expression of surprise and dread wrinkled his forehead and aged him in an instant. His face distorted into a mask of terror. A deep shudder rippled through his body, like a palsy-shake.

The girl looked past me and screamed so violently that it seemed to surpass mere sound. At the apex of it, her eyes turned white and she fainted.

Only my instinct made me dive to the side, hurling me down onto my hip in the dirt. Above me as I rolled, rearing up against the noon-time sky, was the flat, triangular head of a pure white snake, as long as three horses, its poison spittle already flying through the air.

If I had not dodged, it would have splattered me. I writhed in the dirt to smother any that might have struck my back but I felt no burning. I had been in time.

Yanni, poor bastard, turned to run too late, his mouth still wide open. The greenish-yellow froth had hit him all down the left side and clung to him like a wet cloth. He raised one slime-covered hand before his eyes, an expression of horrified wonder replacing his fear.

“Drop and roll, boy!” I shouted.

If he’d obeyed, he might have survived, though without his good looks.

Instead, he drew breath to scream again as the pain hit him. Some of the venom went in with the air. The pus-colored froth turned red, then black, spreading tendrils to wrap around and consume his flesh.

With a hiss like the rising steam from the poisonous waters of Lake Aegina, the snake uncoiled, segment after segment flowing past above me. It unhinged its jaws in mid-spring and swallowed Yanni whole before the boy’s body had time to do more than sag.

“Yum!” it said, whipping around to face me. “You’re a big second course, Monkey, but I can always save half of you for breakfast!”

I fought the urge to turn, to look to see whether the fat, bald guy had genuinely transformed. I knew he now stood before me, balancing on his tail, weaving back and forth to keep me hypnotized and unsure. There was no need to confirm it but I found it surprisingly difficult not to do so. Evil had not yet departed from this island.

The girl moaned, coming awake. Her eyelids flickered and she opened them sleepily, trying to focus on what she saw. When she realized there was a sixteen-foot-long snake not three rods away, she bit her lip til it bled, knowing that any further screaming would be useless. She looked at me, but I didn’t dare even nod at her. I had to keep the beast’s attention on me.

I raised the sword and it laughed, ripples running up and down the long body. The girl started to crawl away but the tail came around, knocking the props from under her. “I mustn’t forget dessert!” the snake declared.

It bent over her. “Such a fresh morsel...how can I bear to wait?”  The long tongue, forked and dripping, flickered through the air above her. “Mmmm, the smell of fear! So delicious, like the best cheese!”

“You’ll love me, then,” I said loudly. “I’m turning to jelly.”

The head twisted toward me, the body following, coil upon coil. Though it was very definitely a snake, there remained some vestige of the man he’d been in the eyes. The pupils were not entirely elongated and there was more of an eyebrow than is usual in reptiles. Not that I’ve spent a lot of time studying them.

What was completely reptilian was the thing’s speed. It could twist and change direction without a pause and cover the ground faster than a running horse. The ground was too open to give me cover by leading it through trees and we were a long time away from the comfort of concealing night. It was going to be a stand-up fight but I couldn’t match his reaction time.

“Don’t run away,” it said. “It makes the thighs tough.”

“Hera knows I’m sorry about that. Nothing worse than tough thighs,” I said. “What were you before? A cook in a Carthaginian whore-house?”

“I was a snake, sunning myself on the rocks in the southern sun. I devoured all that came, insects, mice, my own children. I grew. I continue to grow.”

It snapped at me. I jumped aside and stumbled on the loose stones piled near the fire. It laughed. “Men came to slay me. I devoured them too and found I knew all that they had known. I wanted to see this world of men.”

“Do you know any cats?”
“Cats? Cats? I have eaten them; what of it?”

“Just curious.” So far, I hadn’t swung the sword, merely holding it in front of me to keep off the great head. I knew I was only going to get one chance. If I missed, I was going on the bill of fare.

This sword was heavy, ill-made, and I could see that the edge was much too dull for my liking. There was no time to drop it and draw my own. I couldn’t leave myself open against a foe that moved so fast it almost seemed to be in two places at the same time.

“How did you come to be walking around in human guise?” I asked both to gain a few minutes and because I really wanted to know.

“Eurytos has been given the power to change creatures like myself into humans, for a time. He came before me, bearing such delicious gifts, young, fresh and sweet. While my belly was full, he told me all the wonders that awaited me. So I agreed.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

The forked tongue flickered again as if to be rid of a foul taste. “You eat very delicious things, cream sauce and pomegranate jewels and those wonderful, wonderful stuffed grape leaves. But for the rest -- ugh! How can you stand it? You all smell so bad, and those tiny, cramped bodies, always too hot or cold....”

With a sudden slashing leap, it curved around me so that I had to jump quickly to continue to face the giant head. It was studying me with even greater intensity than hunger. “Eurytos offered me that ugly body, the body of a friend of his. He had nothing better on hand. But you...you, Monkey, can never be cramped in that body.”

“I’m not as big as I look.”

“Big enough.” It struck again, throwing another loop. I jumped high, pulling in my legs to clear the coil. As I came down, I slashed, but the sword merely bounced off the overlapping scales along the outside.

If I hadn’t much cared for the idea of being eaten, I liked being replaced inside my own body by that creature even less. Where would the collection of ideas, prejudices, and memories known to me as ‘Eno’ go? I had no interest in finding out. Metaphysics is not my arena.

We were both breathing hard now, ready for battle. But it couldn’t spit for fear of wrecking my body and I couldn’t cut because it wouldn’t do any good anyway.

“I don’t need sleep,” it said. “I have eaten well. I will run you to exhaustion then take the shell to Eurytos. He will re-animate your body and it will be mine.”

“I’m not that kind of a fellow,” I said but I knew what it said was true. It could kill me that way.

“Already your muscles are burning,” it said, weaving  that great head back and forth, fixing me with those half-human, half-slitted eye each as big as my face. “Your heart is thundering like the cattle of Geryon across the plains. And your thirst is a torment which cannot be slaked but which grows greater with each breath.”

I laughed. “Save it,” I said. “I dined very well with much to drink and my only failing right now is a need to relieve myself. Which I will do as soon as your head lies beside your body.”

Of course, this was just boasting. The sweat beaded along my hairline had already begun to gather and run down to my jaw. My tongue felt swollen and tended to stick to the roof of my mouth. I’m stronger than most, capable of great endurance, but I am mortal.

The snake knew it and gave another hissing chuckle. “You are a poor liar. You’ll do better once I have mastered your form.”

Apollo seemed to have parked his chariot close overhead for the heat of full noon poured down upon us. Time seemed to slow like resin dripping down a tree trunk. Even the buzzing of the cicadas had died. There was only the hot gold of the wheat-field, the weight of the day, and the pitiless glitter of my enemy’s eyes willing me to fall, to fail, to surrender. No friendly spirit of tree or waterfall appeared to save my skin as it had before the fight in the temple. Neither of us dared move now for the first strike would mean victory or defeat.

Infinitely distant, infinitely lonely, almost beyond the gift of hearing, the harpy’s keening shriek tore the sky.

And the snake flinched!

“Damn that beast!” it snarled, which, to my mind, was the pot calling the kettle hard names. “As soon as that idiot boy Temas is dead, I’m doing to hunt that thing down and choke it.”

“A pity you won’t have the chance.”

It eased itself a little, side to side, never blinking or looking away. “Why doesn’t it bother you?”

“Does it bother you?”

“Of course it does. Beastly sound. We can hardly sleep at night in the camp. It seems to infest the air over there.”

That was good information but it didn’t gladden my heart. The bride-money seemed no closer to my hands. First, I had to get out of this. If the harpy cried again, I would have to be ready to act.

Naturally, now that it would be useful, the harpy went silent. But as everything else was also hushed, the snake and I soon heard another sound, small and muffled. It was the sound of weeping, muffled as though someone were trying desperately to stifle the rattling sobs, but still audible to a man and a creature with nerves on the stretch.

“Boy,” the snake said, voice dripping with the venom of contempt. The sobbing stopped but through fear, not comfort. “Boy, is that you? Weeping like a woman...I expected nothing better of you.”