‘Copreus is right,’ the king said, glancing at his daughter. ‘I can’t decide on the next labour without the agreement of the gods. I can’t simply ignore the will of Hera.’
‘Then doesn’t my will count for anything?’ Admete demanded, backing away from him. ‘I want that belt. Besides, you’re always saying you want Heracles dead, so why not send him to Themiscyra? It’s your best chance to be rid of him, and you don’t even have the courage to take it!’
Iphicles stepped forward.
‘Of course, Copreus is right,’ he said. ‘I would never presume to know the minds of the gods. But the labour did not come from me; it came from Charis.’
The priestess lifted her face, as if caught unawares.
‘Is this true?’ Eurystheus asked her.
She looked at Iphicles, and then at the king and his herald.
‘Yes. The labour was revealed to me last night, in a dream. I mentioned it to my lord Iphicles this morning, and—’
‘Then what more is there to argue about?’ Eurystheus said, enthusiastically. ‘Copreus, arrange for a ship and a crew. Heracles will go as soon as they are ready.’
He did not look at Heracles, but the order had been given – the labour was to start at once. Admete gave a squeal of delight and hugged her father, while Copreus scowled and turned on his heel, striking the flagstones hard with his staff as he limped away.
‘What of your son, Iphicles?’ Eurystheus asked. ‘I can command Iolaus to stay here, if you wish it. If he goes, he’s unlikely to return.’
Iphicles looked down at Iolaus, then shook his head.
‘My son is a man now. He can make his own decisions.’
‘I have already chosen, Father,’ Iolaus replied, bowing his head. ‘I will accompany Heracles. I’m still his squire, and my place is at his side, though I am grateful that you did not order me to stay.’
Iphicles’s expression was wistful as he watched his son turn and walk between the escorting spearmen, who parted before him. Heracles looked up at his brother and gave a small nod of gratitude, then followed his nephew to the gates, where he retrieved his club from the guards.
Beyond the walls of the citadel, Tiryns seemed as it always did. Merchants were setting out their stalls and several women were already haggling over their goods. Bands of soldiers marched through the narrow streets, barging people aside with impunity. The mingled aroma of fish, bread and manure filled Heracles’s nostrils, while the growing cacophony of voices, squealing cartwheels and distressed animals assailed his ears.
Yet something was different. The soldiers were more watchful and angry than usual, and the people more afraid and sullen. They looked at Heracles and his squire as they passed. Some seemed to resent his presence, though others nodded or bowed before the giant warrior. A few whispered blessings on him, or reached out to touch his lion’s cloak, as if to do so would impart some of its supernatural protection upon themselves.
They reached the city walls and were watched closely as they passed through the gates, into the ramshackle streets and alleys of the outer city. There were no soldiers beyond the walls, and the gates were closed and barred behind them. The main road leading out of Tiryns was strangely empty and quiet. Then Iolaus grabbed Heracles’s arm.
‘Look!’ he said, pointing further down the road. ‘In the names of all the gods, how can they do such a thing?’
Heracles stared at the rows of poorly made homes ahead of them. In each doorway was a figure. Some were kneeling and some were standing, but every one had its hands crossed above its head. His mind fumbled briefly to understand why they were in such curious poses; and then he realized they had been nailed to the doors by their wrists, and protruding from each corpse were two or three arrows. There were twenty bodies in all, their heads lolling on their chests and their hair hanging down over their faces. Most were men – some of them greybeards – but seven were women. Most sickeningly, two were young children, one a girl of no more than five years old, and the other a boy of perhaps eleven. The bloodied corpses of his own sons flashed before his eyes. For a moment his thoughts and emotions were too shocked to engage with the scene before him.
Strangely, anger was not the first sentiment to break through the numbness. He walked towards the girl. Ignoring the flies clustered around her wounds, he placed his hand gently under her chin and raised her head. Brushing the hair away from her pale, begrimed face, he could see at once that the child was dead. Slowly, as if afraid to wake her, he drew the arrows from her chest. Then, with finger and thumb, he grasped the nail that had been driven through her crossed wrists and pulled it from the wood. The girl slumped into his arms, and he carried her carefully to the middle of the road and laid her in the dirt, placing her arms at her side.
Looking up, he saw Iolaus by the body of the boy, trying to work free the nail that held him to the door. There were tears in his eyes and his teeth were gritted in frustration. Crossing to his side, Heracles took his nephew’s hands away.
‘I’ll do this,’ he said. ‘Go fetch some water to clean their wounds and wash the blood from the doors. These are people’s homes, after all.’
Once he had removed the boy’s body and laid him out beside the girl, he moved to the corpse of a man. He recognized him as a blacksmith he had once bought several arrowheads from. Had the man done anything to deserve his fate, he wondered? Or had he just been selected at random by Tydeus, to be made an example of for the death of two of his soldiers?
Before he had laid out a fifth body, Iolaus returned with several women carrying bowls of water and cloths. As they knelt beside the dead and began to bathe their wounds, the city gates were thrown open and four soldiers in full armour emerged, led by an officer in a black-plumed helmet. Half a dozen archers appeared at the battlements.
‘Those bodies are to be kept where they are, by order of the king!’ the officer shouted.
It was the trigger Heracles’s rage had been waiting for. He arose from the corpse he had just laid on the road and slipped the club from his belt, wrapping the leather thong round his wrist. The officer commanded his men to form a shield wall, but as Heracles strode towards them – his eyes dark with murderous intent and the huge olive-wood club gripped menacingly in his fist – their courage buckled. Throwing down their shields, they pressed back through the gap in the gates, fighting against each other in their panic to escape the coming fury. The officer glanced over his shoulder and saw that he was alone. Then, trembling visibly, he drew his sword and raised it over his head. The archers on the walls drew their bowstrings, firing a volley as the officer brought his sword down.
Heracles lowered his head and broke into a run as the arrows flew towards him. One sprang from his shoulder, turned aside by the impenetrable skin of the Nemean Lion. Another thumped against its skull, shattering on impact. The rest peppered the ground around him. There was no time for a second volley.
The officer raised his shield and swung his sword at Heracles’s ribs. It was met by a blow from Heracles’s club, which tore the blade from his hand and sent it wheeling through the air to clang against the city walls. Gripping his club in both hands, Heracles swept it back towards his opponent, who held up his shield in desperation. The wicker frame broke under the impact, deflecting the club upwards into the officer’s helmet. It sheered off the socket that held the horsehair plume and knocked the bronze cap from his head, sending him sprawling in the dust. Heracles planted his feet either side of him and raised his club.
He had fought the Tirynian officer in a rage, angered by the ruthless murder of men, women and children. But as that same fury strained his muscles for the death blow, the mist that had clouded his thoughts thinned momentarily, just enough for him to look into the eyes of the man below him. And he saw that he was not a man at all, but a boy: the handsome son of some high-ranking noble, who had used his influence to gain him an early commission in the royal guard.
The boy’s eyes were wide with fear, and in them Heracles could see the
horrified knowledge that he was about to die, that everything he had known in the few privileged years of his existence was about to end. Only moments before, his thoughts had been all about life, the prospect of death nothing more than a distant shadow. Heracles hesitated. This officer, with his downy beard and pleading eyes, was barely more than two or three years older than the boy whose body he had just laid out in the road. Perhaps only a year younger than Iolaus.
He lowered the club and let it hang at his side. He sighed, feeling the bitter blend of emotions still churning inside his stomach, then leaned down and pulled the boy to his feet.
‘You are brave, son,’ he said. ‘Don’t waste yourself on this army of thugs. And don’t ever try to stop me again.’
He returned to where Iolaus and the women were watching him in silence. Behind him, he heard the gates creak open and slam shut again. Then he went to one of the doors and began removing the arrows from the body of an old woman.
By the time the last corpse had been taken down and laid in the street, a large crowd had gathered. Many were the relatives of the dead, their faces streaked with tears, and the women keening in high voices. Heracles thought of Megara, wailing over the bodies of her sons, and knew he had to get away. Iolaus met him at the edge of the crowd and handed him his bow and arrows, which he had fetched from the hovel they shared.
‘We should go at once,’ he said. ‘I can’t bear the thought of Megara suffering a moment longer than she has to at the hands of those Amazons.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Heracles agreed.
He wondered at his nephew’s concern, and chided himself for momentarily forgetting that the woman he loved was a hostage in the hands of barbarians – vicious termagants who hated men, but despised foreign women even more. Looping the bow and quiver over his shoulders, he pushed his way through the throng, determined to reach the small harbour that served Tiryns before noon. But he had barely gone a few paces when a hooded figure stepped in front of them.
‘Why did you let him go?’ he demanded. ‘He was an officer. You should have killed him!’
He recognized the young man who had once tried to incite him to lead a rebellion, after Tydeus’s soldiers had levelled the homes of several of Heracles’s neighbours in the outer city. But rebellions were bloody affairs that rarely achieved anything but the slaughter of innocents and an increase in the power of their oppressors. He had rejected the appeal out of hand.
‘Stand aside, Thyestes.’
‘Didn’t taking down those bodies have any effect on you?’
‘What do you think?’ Heracles snapped, pushing the man aside. ‘As for that officer, he was just a boy.’
‘I hear you excel at killing boys,’ said another man standing at the edge of the crowd.
He was as tall as Heracles, with a hulking torso and a fierce expression that was utterly without fear. Heracles’s lip curled back in a sneer and his hands balled up into fists.
‘Forgive Atreus,’ Thyestes said, standing between the two giants. ‘My brother is as stupid as he is ugly. We shouldn’t fight among ourselves. We’ve been doing that for far too long; it’s why Eurystheus can sit safely in his palace, eating and drinking his fill while a bowshot away his own people are left naked and starving. We should save our anger for the royal guard, who rule Tiryns with a bronze fist!’
‘Save your speeches,’ Heracles told him. ‘I’ve more important things to do with my time.’
‘More important than standing up to thugs who brutalize women and children? Don’t be a fool, Heracles. You liberated Thebes from King Erginus – why not Tiryns? You were prepared to make Creon true ruler of his own kingdom again – why not do the same for yourself? You know Tiryns and Mycenae were meant to be your birthright, and that Hera stole it from you and gave it to Eurystheus. Now is the time to take it back, claim what should be yours by right! After the murder of those men and women, the people are angry. They’ll follow you, if you lead them. They’ll make you their king.’
Heracles looked into Thyestes’s young face, with his intelligent green eyes and look of naive hope that something could be done about the plight of the city’s disadvantaged poor. His red hair seemed a reflection of the fire burning in his veins, and yet his ideals were little more than dreams. Even with his brutish, lumpen brother at his shoulder, he was powerless against the might of Eurystheus’s army. And if he thought Heracles would lead his rebellion for him, then he was mistaken. He did not want the crown, and had sworn never to try take it for himself.
He shook his head.
‘I want no part in your rebellion. The people need food and clothes, and homes that aren’t infested with rats and don’t let in the rain. They don’t need to be killed by fusillades of arrows, or hewn down in their dozens by well-armed men with spears and swords. So was it you, Thyestes? Was it you and this oaf you call a brother that killed those two soldiers? Then you’re the ones who sentenced those twenty people to death. And unless you stop this stupidity, you’ll cause the deaths of hundreds more.’
He turned his back on the brothers and, with a nod to Iolaus, set off along the road that led out of Tiryns. Before he had gone a few paces, Thyestes shouted after him.
‘You’re wrong, Heracles. Life under a tyrant is worse than death, and if the people rise up without you then that’s what they will get – death, in all its indifference. But what do you care? You can rebuild a wall or fix a roof, and you can give out morsels of food to keep them alive for another day of misery. What do you know about being poor, or suffering under a cruel ruler?’
‘What do I know about it?’ Heracles responded, turning on his heel. ‘How can the son of Zeus and a mortal princess know anything of poverty, though perhaps I understand more of it than I used to? But what of you, Thyestes? Are you and Atreus not sons of King Pelops of Pisa, hiding among the scum of Tiryns because you murdered your stepbrother out of your desire for the throne? What, then, do you know of true hardship? Now leave me alone, and leave the people of Tiryns to themselves – they have enough misery to cope with, without you adding to it.’
* * *
Megara sat in the corner of her cell with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her bare feet were almost numb on the cold stone floor and the cuts and bruises on various parts of her face and body ached dully. The dress that she had worn on the voyage to Themiscyra had been torn open and hung in tatters around her waist, nothing more now than a filthy rag. Whatever pride and dignity she might once have possessed was in a similar state. She could feel the hunger gnawing at her stomach and the lice crawling in her hair and clothing, and wished the gods would remember her and allow her the mercy of death.
But the gods had withdrawn their favour from her long ago. Ever since the night her children had died, she had been cursed to suffer. She wished Heracles had killed her too, but as a sign of the gods’ hatred for her, they had let her live. He had thrown her against the wall of their bedroom – or the monster that the mushrooms had turned him into had done so – and as she fell unconscious to the floor, she had caught one of the window drapes and pulled it on top of herself. After that, Heracles had forgotten about her, and in his insane state had continued his rampage through the rest of the house, not stopping until his bloodlust had been satisfied. How she wished her own blood could have put a stop to his madness instead.
Yet as she sat in the miserable gloom – the only light was a restless orange glow beneath the door that came from the torch on the wall outside – she knew her one hope was that Heracles would find out where she was and come looking for her. But who would tell him? Copreus knew his life depended on her remaining a hostage of the Amazons, so he would not share his secret lightly. And if her hope of rescue was futile, her desire for death was more so. Her captors had no intention of letting her die – not if they wanted the gold Copreus had promised them, gold he had no doubt stolen bit by bit from Eurystheus’s treasury. So they forced her to eat, morning and evening, and dragged her from her dungeon to walk in the sunlit spa
ce of a small courtyard once a day, where the harpies who served as her guards would mock her, spit in her face, and beat her with their fists. Why, she did not know. She did not want to know.
The sound of footsteps stirred her from her thoughts, replacing despair with sudden fear. She squeezed her legs tighter into her chest and buried her face in her knees, begging the gods that the footsteps would pass. Instead, they stopped outside the door of her cell. She had no way of guessing what time of day or night it was, but her instincts told her it was neither time for food nor exercise.
The door opened, almost blinding her with the naked glare of the torch on the wall. The featureless silhouettes of two tall figures stood in the doorway. A third, shorter figure hung between them, and to Megara’s surprise, she saw it was a man. He was thrown onto the floor of the dungeon and the door slammed shut behind him. Megara listened to the laughter of the Amazons as they returned to the guardroom, and tried not to think of who her new cellmate might be.
After a moment, he sat up with a groan.
‘Are you there?’ he asked, his accent heavy.
She was sure he could not see her, so kept quiet. The sudden opening of the door had temporarily flooded her retinas with light, but her eyes were adjusting to the darkness quicker than his would be. Nevertheless, his hands fumbled in a circle about himself, and by chance he began crawling towards her.
‘I won’t harm you.’
‘Then why are you here?’ she demanded, in a voice that was dry and unused to speaking.
‘Who knows? I think they expect me to make love to you.’
Megara tensed. He was closer now, groping blindly along the stone floor on his hands and knees.
‘Stay away! I don’t want you anywhere near me.’
A harsh laugh from the other side of the door told her the guards had not left after all. Then the man touched her foot and she almost screamed. He pulled his hand away immediately.
‘Don’t be afraid! Please – I said I won’t harm you, and I won’t. You see, this is their idea of a joke.’
Hero of Olympus Page 2
