Age of Heroes

by James Lovegrove

  “With the implication that – what? If I don’t comply you’ll hurt me? Here? In full view of all these people? Dozens of witnesses, some of them members of the national and international press?” Gottlieb snorted.

  Theo realised then that the choice of venue for this meeting had been neither accident nor miscalculation. Gottlieb had prepared for a clash; worse, he had his own suspicions about Theo and Chase.

  It was paranoid. But then Theo was starting to feel a tinge of paranoia himself.

  “Look,” Theo said. His tone was as mollifying as he could make it. “I’m not asking much.” He slid a cocktail napkin across the table to Gottlieb. “Just jot them down on this. The what and the where. Then we’re all on an equal footing.”

  “Why does it matter to you, this knowledge? How is it going to help?”

  “At the risk of sounding bleak, what if something happens to you? What if, heaven forfend, you go the way of the other three?”

  “I’m too wily for that.”

  “One can’t be too careful. I’m asking you for a gesture of trust.”

  “Trust? Seems more like mistrust to me. You don’t think I’m being straight with you. You don’t think I’ve arranged for those drones at all.”

  “Perhaps I like to cover all the bases.”

  “And should I agree to do as you ask, what will you do with it? This could all be a charade, a scheme to wheedle the locations out of me, enabling you to get your own hands on the artefacts.”

  “You know me,” said Theo. “You said just now that we don’t change, and you know the sort of person I am. I’m not a murderer.”

  “You’ve killed.”

  “Those who deserved it. Thieves, extortionists, torturers. And, yes, murderers. But not fellow demigods.”

  “Some demigods have been thieves, extortionists, murderers and worse. Orion was no saint. Neither was Aeneas, for all that called him Pious. He mistreated Dido of Carthage egregiously, his conquest of the Latins was far from peaceful, and he didn’t show the warlord Turnus any mercy when they duelled. Orpheus too was hardly a paragon of good behaviour.”

  Theo almost laughed. “Come on. If I’m the guy who killed them, why would I have come to you for help?”

  “As a ruse, to allow you to add me to the tally. I’m sure there are things I’ve done that the self-righteous Theseus would disapprove of.”

  “That’s crazy. Besides, if I’m already using the divine artefacts to go on a slaughter spree, why would I be asking you to tell me where they are?”

  “Another ruse. You don’t have them yet. You want them, and you’ve set this all up to get hold of them.”

  “Crazier still. What’s it like in your head, Harry? All these thoughts going round in circles, chasing their tails, eating themselves? You’ve been in politics too long. You can’t see anything for what it is any more. You can only see motives behind motives, wheels within wheels, plots inside plots. Just write down where the artefacts are. For my sake, for yours. Think of it as an insurance policy. You must see the sense in that.”

  Gottlieb was silent for a long while. Cogs were turning in his intricate brain. Theo wondered if he had pushed him too hard. It was conceivable Gottlieb might just stand up and walk away, and then what? Could Theo pursue him and beat the information out of him? Of course he couldn’t.

  He didn’t even want to know where the artefacts had been stowed, not that badly. He was just keen for Gottlieb to give some indication that he was on the side of right. With a man as slippery as Odysseus, you needed a show of earnest, a bargaining chip, to keep him honest. Otherwise he would treat you as just another malleable fool to toy with and manipulate. Gottlieb would not be a reliable ally until he had proved beyond all doubt that he could be.

  Slowly, reluctantly, the self-styled Sage of Georgetown reached into an inside jacket pocket and produced a beautiful fountain pen, a Montblanc Meisterstück with solid gold nib and black resin barrel. He applied it to the humble cocktail napkin, writing neatly for a couple of minutes. Then, capping the pen, he slid the napkin back to Theo.

  “There. Happy?”

  Theo scanned the list of artefacts and their locations:

  In no particular order:

  Trident (Poseidon) — Deception Island, Antarctica

  Bident (Hades) — Atacama Desert, Bolivia

  Bow (Apollo) — Svalbard, Norway

  Bow (Artemis) — Pitcairn Island, South Pacific

  Hammer (Hephaestus) — Kerguelen Archipelago, South Indian Ocean

  Axe (Ares) — Tristan de Cunha, South Atlantic

  Helm of Darkness (Hades) — Novy Tolkatui, Siberia

  Spear (Hephaestus) — Motuo, China

  Sickle (Hermes) — Taklamakan Desert, China

  Aegis (Zeus) — Socotra Island, Yemen

  Scythe (Kronos) — Cape York Peninsula, Australia

  Club (Dionysus)— Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland

  Chase, peering over his shoulder, let out a whistle. “Holy shit. I’ve been remote places, but there’s some there even I haven’t heard of. Novy Tolkatui? Socotra Island? And I’m not even going to try to pronounce that last one.”

  “Imagine travelling to such far-flung destinations in the days before airliners,” said Gottlieb. “Before helicopters. Before even steam. Imagine how damn long and arduous the voyages were. Sail, then mule train, slogging across ice or sand dune or mountainside for mile after mile, lugging building materials and urging on slaves who were reluctant at best, at worst mutinous... Made my ten-year journey home from Troy look like a two-week pleasure cruise.”

  “Is this all true?” Theo said, indicating the list.

  “You mean have I made any of it up? No. Do you think me capable of coming up with a dozen obscure place names right off the top of my head?”

  “Look on it as a compliment that I do. I have to point out, too, that you’ve not been very specific. The Atacama Desert, for instance – that’s big. Where in the Atacama Desert?”

  “You were hoping for GPS coordinates, perhaps?” Gottlieb’s smile was smug. “I’m not going to give away everything, Theo. You’ve plenty there to be getting on with, and it’s all you’re going to have, for now.” He stood to leave. “I would say that it’s been a pleasure, but I doubt you’d believe me. I will be in touch as and when I have anything further to impart. Goodnight.”

  LATER, LYING IN bed in his hotel room, wakeful, Theo mulled over the conversation. Typical Odysseus, laying down his hand while keeping some up his sleeve.

  Then, all at once, it hit him. He remembered.

  “And only you would know where they were.”

  “Only me.”

  But that wasn’t quite accurate, was it?

  FOURTEEN

  Piraeus, Athens – 5th Century BCE

  ODYSSEUS WAS LATE.

  Six weeks late.

  But, Theseus thought, that was hardly unexpected. The man was famous for arriving well behind schedule. Known for it, some would say.

  Besides, they had arranged this rendezvous twelve summers ago. What was a few weeks extra, in light of that? Relatively speaking, nothing.

  He would turn up. Of that Theseus was confident. Odysseus had his failings, but when he set himself a goal he kept on going until it was met.

  So, for six weeks, Theseus had been kicking his heels in Athens. Every morning he would set off from the city along the narrow strip of land that ran between the Long Walls, the fortified defences built recently by General Themistocles as a bulwark against invasion by the Spartans. The Long Walls offered a safe corridor between Athens and its port, and fenced enough territory that in times of crisis the entire Athenian populace might be afforded a refuge, with room to cultivate crops and graze cattle for the duration of any siege.

  Reaching Piraeus, Theseus would take a table at a taverna in Kantharos, the harbour’s commercial sector. From there he would watch the merchant ships put in, offload their cargos and set sail again. Around him, sailors drank and roistered. They were of ma
ny nationalities, predominantly Greeks but with Phoenicians, Persians, Carthaginians, Nubians and even the occasional Iberian mixed in. Their voices were a polyglot babble.

  Just visible from this vantage point were the other two sectors of the harbour, Zea and Munichia, between them providing berths for the entire Athenian navy, the three-hundred-strong fleet of triremes which gave the city-state unsurpassed supremacy in the Aegean and Ionian Seas. During peacetime, as now, the ships were drawn up above the shoreline and housed in pillar-sided sheds, to protect them from the elements and keep their timbers from rotting in the water. Slaves were engaged in scraping barnacles off the hulls and slapping on a coating of tar and wax.

  Every day Theseus would eat lunch, usually lentil soup, flatbread, fruits and vegetables, washed down with a skyphos or two of thinned wine; and he would wait. Odysseus had been precise in his instructions. They were to meet this year at noon on the noumenia – the first day – of Hekatombaion. The meeting place was this taverna or, if for some reason it had closed down, whichever one was closest by.

  Hekatombaion passed with no sign of Odysseus, and Metageitnion began, and by the middle of that month Theseus was finding it hard to think of a reason to remain. Summer was at its height, and Athens was dusty, stinking and hot. He was lodging at a tolerably well-appointed inn, but missed the comforts of home, which at present was a small farm up near Thessaloniki where cooling breezes blew even in humid weather and cypresses offered scented shelter from the sun.

  There was the theatre, so he wasn’t starved of entertainment. There was the state-sanctioned Solonian brothel in the Kerameikos district, so that was another need taken care of. He could socialise in the Agora if the mood took him, or attend a symposium. These were all pleasures.

  But there was no getting around it: he was becoming bored and impatient. He had taken to roaming the streets after dark, on the prowl for thieves and rogues, cutpurses and rapists. Athens had its police force, the astynomia, but they did not patrol at night, and when the sun went down, the lawlessness went up. The clusters of narrow streets nestling at the foot of the Acropolis became dark, winding warrens of danger. Several times Theseus was set upon by cudgel-wielding gangs or lone knife-men, all of them keen to relieve him of his money and, if he refused to surrender that quietly, his life. He taught them the error of their ways.

  The irony was not lost on him. Here was the city he himself had for a time been king of, and had fostered and helped grow. Now, centuries on, he came to it as a visitor, an outsider, and while Athens still flourished and was everything he could have hoped it would be, the world’s pre-eminent nation-state, it had also developed social cankers, as all great cities did. Parts of it festered and demanded to be purged, just as a person in ill health must be bled in order to restore the balance of the humours. Its one-time monarch now fulfilled the role of secret surgeon.

  On the day he seriously began to contemplate leaving Athens and heading homeward, Odysseus at last showed up.

  The wanderer trudged into the taverna, looking footsore and exhausted. Theseus remembered Odysseus as lively-eyed and neatly turned out, his beard trimmed, his curly locks oiled, his clothes always freshly laundered and pristine-looking. This man was gaunt, sunburnt and unkempt. His beard straggled, as did his hair. His chiton and cloak were worn, torn and threadbare. Several of the leather thongs on his sandals had broken and been knotted back together rather than replaced.

  He sat down at the table, helped himself to wine, and was silent for such a long time that Theseus began to wonder if he had lost the power of speech.

  Then he croaked, “It’s done.”

  “All hidden?” said Theseus.

  “All. I said it would take twelve years, a year apiece, and so it did. You have no idea the places I’ve been. To the ends of the Earth and back. The storms I’ve weathered. The conditions I’ve endured.”

  Odysseus’s Ithacan accent, which he had contrived to shed since his ignominious expulsion from the island of his birth, was back thicker than ever. For all his articulacy, it made him sound like a bumpkin. It seemed that the further he had travelled on this globe-girdling mission of his, the more he had returned to his roots.

  He talked of a desert at such a high altitude, higher even than the peak of Mount Olympus, that the air was almost too thin to breathe. Of flyspeck islands so far from any land, you found them more by chance than by skill. Of icy wastes so vast and desolate, the sunlight glaring off the snow could turn you blind. Of uncharted wildernesses inhabited by bears and wolves that had no fear of humans because they had never encountered any.

  In spite of all that, all the hardships and privations, the harshness of the environments he had ventured into, he had accomplished what he had set out to do, pulling off a feat he had thought nigh impossible. By comparison, Heracles’s Twelve Labours were nothing. Theseus’s Six Labours, likewise, were nothing. The poets would sing of the Labours of Odysseus, they would compose epics on the subject, if only they knew of them. Which of course they would not. Not ever.

  “And you aren’t going to tell me where the artefacts are,” said Theseus.

  “No. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? It’s not that I don’t think you’re trustworthy. Of all of us, I adjudge you probably the most trustworthy there is. But knowledge as important as this needs to be contained. After the fate Pollux meted out on Castor, we can’t afford anyone else gaining access to the artefacts, least of all one of our own.”

  The murder of Castor had been the impetus for Odysseus collecting and sequestering the divine artefacts. The final straw. Castor and his twin had squabbled over the women they wished to marry, Phoebe and Hilaria, who happened to be their cousins and, as it happened, married already. The row had escalated, ending with Pollux bludgeoning his sibling’s head to a bloody pulp with a hammer.

  The hammer was not just any hammer but one forged by Hephaestus himself, presented it to his son Philottos, to help him slay a Mormo, a vampiric creature that was attacking and killing children in Philottos’s kingdom. Destroying the Mormo was a noble feat, unquestionably heroic, but Philottos was a conflicted, complicated figure, prone to vice and rashness. Running out of money during a drunken game of dice with Pollux, he staked the hammer on the result of the next throw – and lost.

  After Pollux used the hammer to murder Castor, a rumour had gone round that Castor had been merely mortal, Pollux inheriting the full dose of their father’s godhood at his twin’s expense. There was also talk that the women’s husbands Idas and Lynceus were the actual culprits. Theseus reckoned Odysseus was the one who had spun these webs of disinformation, in order to veil the truth: that there were weapons capable of felling demigods as surely as if they were human. The vast majority of mortals were unaware that demigods still walked among them, but some knew, and some of those who knew might be glad to learn that they were not as indestructible as they were reputed to be, and might try to exploit that vulnerability. In addition, demigods themselves, as Castor and Pollux had amply shown, could be their own worst enemies. Hundreds of divine offspring had been born during the Age of Heroes, and that number was still being added to, although the rate was tailing off steeply as the gods interacted less and less with mankind. Disputes and feuds cropped up among them, sometimes simmering for decades before suddenly turning bloody. The divine artefacts made it that much easier for them to slay one another, and that much likelier.

  At any rate, after a long and determined campaign of cajoling and browbeating by Odysseus, a consensus was reached among the principal demigods. The vast majority of the divine artefacts had been reclaimed by their creators; they had been on loan only, each a gift given for a specific purpose and duly returned to the gods once that purpose had been fulfilled.

  Twelve, however, still remained on Earth. Either the gods had forgotten about them or didn’t require them back. Gods weren’t known for their consistency, or their mindfulness. They were as profligate with their gifts as they were with their philandering.


  These twelve artefacts, it was agreed, should be handed in to Odysseus for disposal. They could not be destroyed; the divine numen was too strong in them for that. Even the heat of a furnace would not so much as singe them, and throwing them into the ocean was no guarantee that they might not later wash ashore. But through Odysseus’s cunning they could be put beyond use.

  Achilles was loath to give up his spear, but he did. Heracles did not want to lose the bow which Apollo had bequeathed him, but was persuaded. Orion was the hardest of all to convince to part with his own bow, which had been gifted to him by his one-time lover, far-darting Artemis. Odysseus had had to work on him for days before he could be made to see sense.

  “For this amnesty to succeed,” Odysseus said to Theseus in the taverna, “it has to be total and unbreakable. I can’t have, for instance, Heracles come bleating to me at some future date, asking please can he have his bow back, and getting all stroppy when I refuse to tell him where it is. He might threaten to kill me unless I confess, in which case I can simply point out that if I die, he’ll never find out. That should be enough to deter him, or at least leave him so paralysed with indecision he’ll give up.” Odysseus sniggered. “Poor Heracles. Blessed with great brawn but little brain. It’s almost too easy, bamboozling a lummox like him.”

  “So you’re willing to stake your life on the fact that only you know where the artefacts are?”

  “Nobody would want to call my bluff; it would be entirely self-defeating. Heracles, or whoever, could dangle me over an active volcano, but wouldn’t dare drop me in.”

  “Let’s say someone does, though, or you meet with some horrendous accident from which even a demigod can’t recover. What then? How will we ever find the artefacts if we need to?”

  “Why would you need to?”

  “I don’t know. The situation might arise. And it’s not like you not to have a contingency plan, Odysseus. Something to fall back on in case of emergency.”