Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One (38 page)

Cronos, whose spies were everywhere, soon learned that the Cyclopes were forging magical weapons to ensure his defeat.

“This must not be,” he said to himself. “I'll have to think of a way to stop production.”

When Cronos was threatened, he thought quickly. He stood on a riverbank and whistled in a certain way. From the depths rose a lovely water nymph, naked and dripping. She climbed onto the bank and listened, smiling, as he told her what he wanted.

“What will you give me if I do?” she said.

“The question that should concern you,” growled Cronos, “is what you'll get if you don't.”

T
he crater was so smoky that no one saw the naiad come in. She glided to the center of the great chamber and jumped on an anvil. Standing there, clad only in her long hair, she glimmered like a white birch. And like a tree casting a shadow, she spread a riverine coolness through the sweltering crater. A low, hungry moaning arose from the male Cyclopes as they moved slowly toward her.

Now the female Cyclopes always worked alongside the males, handling the same hot ingots and swinging the same heavy sledgehammers. They were as large and powerful as the males, and as dangerous in any kind of fight.

Shrieking with rage, they attacked the males with swinging mallets. Many of the males had dropped their hammers and were helpless against the savage assault. They fled. Some of them were caught and brutally beaten. Others were thrown into the fire pit and were badly charred before they could climb out.

Two of the females charged the anvil where the naiad stood, meaning to do such dreadful things to her that no nymph would ever again try to steal their mates. But it is almost impossible to catch a naiad—or any kind of nymph who doesn't want to be caught. This one simply melted into the shadows and vanished.

It was upon this day that Brontes proved himself for all time. He had been working hard, concentrating so fiercely that he didn't even see the naiad. When the fighting started, he simply built himself a wall of anvils. Sheltered behind his iron ramparts, he continued to shape the white-hot lump of metal, completely ignoring the wild scuffle that raged about him.

The disappearance of the naiad refueled the wrath of the she-Cyclopes. They boiled out of the crater, rushed to the river, and began to hurl huge boulders into it, hoping to crush whatever naiads might dwell there. They threw in so many rocks that they quite choked the river. But they were still not appeased because they felt that the naiads had slipped away.

Roaming the riverbank, they knocked down trees with their mallets, piled up the fallen trunks and set them afire. They wanted to raze the countryside, but, luckily, it had rained the day before and the flames did not spread. Finally, they straggled back toward the crater, still simmering with rage.

Cronos, hovering above, was very pleased by all this. He knew how badly he had disrupted the work of the smiths and hoped now that they would never be able to complete the weapons destined to defeat him. He was unaware that Brontes, ignoring the whole affair, was working stubbornly, and by this time had finished the helmet of darkness and had begun work on the trident.

9

Before the Battle

Cronos met with the elder Titans that formed his war council.

“I have disrupted the work of the weapon foundry,” he said. “We must now take the offensive before these accursed rebels gain strength.”

“Are you perhaps not overestimating them, my lord?” said one elder. “Can they really be considered dangerous? They're only a rabble of young malcontents, aren't they, with no real support?”

“Very real support,” said Cronos. “The Cyclopes are peerless smiths and savage brawlers, and the hundred-handed giants would be sufficiently dangerous one-handed. Both tribes were delivered from captivity by Zeus and would follow him through fire.”

“They may have to,” said a Titan named Atlas.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that your son's expedition underground was not wholly a triumph. He freed the Cyclopes and the giants, true, and they are strong allies. But in freeing them, he managed to offend those who are even more deadly. I speak of dragon-kind. Zeus humiliated the entire breed by seizing one of their chieftains and using him as a tool, a torch—a
thing
, in fact. Dragon-kind, I say, has declared itself an enemy to Zeus and his brothers and sisters. And a legion of these armor-plated, spike-tailed, fire-breathing monsters stand ready to fight on our side. I can vouch for them. I have been underground myself, getting to know the beasts.”

“That settles it!” shouted Cronos. “We attack immediately. You, my good Atlas, shall be our battle chief.”

“Thank you,” said Atlas. “My dragons will make a living bonfire of your enemies.”

Z
eus went to the smithy. “Lord,” said Brontes, “we have finished the helmet of darkness and the three-tined staff. But we have not been able to finish your thunderbolt, for we lack the most important ingredient.”

He held up a marvelously wrought zigzag lance of polished iron, volt-blue, radiant. Held aloft in the Cyclops's huge hand, it seemed aflame with energy, and branded the shadows just as a lightning bolt brands the sky.

“It's beautiful,” cried Zeus. “Give it to me!”

“Not yet,” growled Brontes. “It's not finished.”

“What does it lack?”

“The magic fire. A spoke of the First Fire, which must be taken from the sun wheel itself.”

“There's plenty of fire right here,” said Zeus. “Your forge fires, the smoldering volcano flames that spring from the white-hot core of the earth.”

“Not hot enough, not hot enough!” roared Brontes. “We have tried tempering your bolt in these fires, and they are not hot enough. We need a spoke of the sun's fire, I say. To that primal blaze our volcanic fires are only embers, feeble embers.”

“Impossible,” said Zeus. “It is the Titan Helios who drives the chariot of the sun. The flaming disk we see in the sky is its near wheel. To steal a spoke of that wheel we must stop the chariot in its journey across the sky. And that journey has never been interrupted since the beginning of Time.”

“You must do it, my lord, or we cannot finish your thunderbolt.”

“And without that bolt, I cannot vanquish my father,” said Zeus. “Brontes, we'll need a net strong enough to snare the sun chariot as it races across the sky, yet light enough to float slowly down when cast off a mountaintop.”

“My lord,” said Brontes, “I can draw out strands of copper into wire so fine that it will be transparent.”

“But will a mesh spun from such a wire be strong enough to hold the plunging, bucking sun steeds?”

“How long must they be held?”

“Long enough for someone to steal a spoke of the First Fire from the wheel of the sun chariot. As long, say, as it would take you to chew the roasted flesh off the thigh bone of an ox.”

“I get very hungry working like this. I eat fast. Can anyone steal the fire that quickly?”

“Can you make such a mesh—so light and strong?”

“As a spider spins a web to hold a hornet.”

“Start spinning,” said Zeus. And he strode out of the smithy. Hera hurried after him.

“What is your plan?” she said.

“Helios is a very good charioteer. Once he has begun his journey across the blue meadow of the sky, he never reins up his horses, no matter what. But he also has a strong taste for nymphs. I have seen him chasing them at night, once his horses are stabled. My idea is to get a beautiful naiad or dryad up there somehow, distract him long enough to cast the net over the chariot, and hold it still until I can steal a spoke from the sun wheel.”

“I know who's perfect for the job,” said Hera. “That leafy vixen who mixed the vomitous drink for our father.”

“My dear Hera,” said Zeus. “Your beauty is matched only by your intelligence. I'll go find her immediately.”

“It is I who will go find her not you, oh fiancé. For I know well that your own partiality for nymphs is at least as strong as the charioteer's.”

10

Different Fires

In those first days before man was planted on earth and the gods had only each other to play with, four Titans managed the winds. Since there were no people yet, there were no ships to capsize, no walls to blow down or roofs to blow off, and no fishing villages to sweep into the sea. When the wind Titans raced each other across the sky, tunics fluttering, looking for mischief, they had to be content with smashing trees or piling up waters and hurling them at the empty shores. Once in a while, they charged each other, colliding, darkening the sky, then whirling in a wild dance called the hurricane, trying to catch theìr brothers and sisters out in the open and blow them away.

Cronos, who disapproved of trouble he did not make himself, forbade the wind Titans to dance the hurricane too often, and they had to live more harmless lives than they preferred. So they were delighted when Cronos prepared for battle and gave each of them work to do.

Boreas, a big blustering brute, flew over the arctic wastelands, filled his lungs with icy breath, and hovered in the sky north of Olympus.

Eurus flew over the swamplands, drew in a great chestful of malarial airs, then flew back to his station east of Olympus.

Zephyrus, the best-tempered of the wind brothers, did not like to harm anyone but did like to bowl swiftly over the sky and whirl and dance. Hovering west of Olympus, he looked for fine sport in the coming battle.

Notus, who seemed the sleekest and mildest of the four, was perhaps the most dangerous. Striped with strange changeable airs, he would blow a hot sirocco at one moment and a freezing blast the next, making it impossible to live in his domain when his mood turned ugly. He lurked south of Olympus.

While the wind Titans waited in their battle positions, Zeus gathered the young gods about him on a section of slope that was studded with boulders. “Brothers, sisters,” he said, “we must fight before we are ready. We face an army of Titans, skilled warriors every one, and enormously strong, while we command only a small band of giants and those few Cyclopes who can be spared from weapon making. Cronos knows about our magical weapons; he knows that they are unfinished yet and that without them we cannot win. That is why he is attacking now.”

“Why fight before we're ready?” said Hades. “Why not avoid battle until we are?”

“We cannot avoid battle,” said Zeus. “We are trapped in this valley. The Titans will charge down the slope of Olympus and the surrounding hills. But let us not be downhearted. The Cyclopes are working furiously. If we attack first and drive the Titans back, we may receive our new weapons before nightfall. And now, let the battle begin!”

He whistled three notes. Each of the twenty giants seized a boulder in each of his hundred hands. Whirling their long arms, the giants hurled the rocks uphill toward the brass armor of the Titans, which glittered in the sunlight. The Titans were amazed when rocks began to rain down on them as if dropping from the sky. The heavy boulders fell, squashing them like beetles in their brass armor. The young gods yelled exultantly and followed the giants uphill. The Titans broke ranks and fled.

Cronos, who was standing on the very crest of the hill, holding the great scythe that he had used to butcher his father, stood motionless under the shower of rocks. He raised one hand and waved it in a circle.

It was the signal the winds had been waiting for. They bowled terrifically across the sky from the north, east, south, and west, caught the arching rocks, clenching them in mighty fists of air, and blew them downhill, right back at those who had thrown them.

The giants had to stop throwing because they could not stand up under the deadly hail. They were forced to crouch among what rocks were left.

As soon as the last rock had been blown downhill, Zeus sprang to his feet and shouted: “Clubs! Clubs!”

The giants rushed to a grove of trees, uprooted them, and charged uphill. Holding their terrible cudgels, they raced toward the Titans.

Cronos could not call upon his winds to blow the giants away, because the Titans were going downhill and they would have blown away, too.

Cronos signaled. A trumpet sounded. The Titans halted and stood fast halfway down the slope.

Now Atlas, who had been held in reserve, came slowly down the hill. The young gods gaped at him. He was the largest of the Titans, taller than a cedar, which is the tallest tree in the forest. Behind him he seemed to be dragging a train of mossy logs. As he came closer, the young gods saw not logs but green, scaly dragons slithering after him, blowing blue puffs of flame.

Atlas stopped and the stream of dragons parted around him. The puff-balls of flame became jets of flame. The dragons crawled downhill spitting red fire at the giants. The fire hit the trees, and they became torches in the giants' hands. The giants hurled the blazing trees at the dragons. The young gods cheered, but the trees bounced harmlessly off the armor-plated beasts, who kept coming, their gaping jaws like open furnaces sending out gusts of flame.

Hera groaned as she saw a giant catch fire. One hand was aflame, then another, then his arms. He was a wheel of fire. He screamed in agony. Two more giants turned into blazing wheels—whirling, screaming. The giants broke ranks and ran downhill pursued by flame. The coldhearted young gods who so rarely wept felt their cheeks strangely wet as they watched one dragon pause to eat a roasted giant.

“Where is Zeus?” whispered Hades to Poseidon.

“I don't see him,” said Poseidon. “Can he have left the field?”

“He's not here,” said Hades, “I don't see him anywhere. The coward has fled.”

“Never!” said Hera.

“Where is he, then?”

“It's too late in any case,” said gentle Hestia. “We seem to be surrounded.”

Indeed, they were. A brass wave of Titans was rolling down the hill. When they turned to flee, the young gods saw that dragons had cut in back of them, blocking all retreat.