Age of Heroes

by James Lovegrove

  Theo and Salvador stood like statues for several minutes.

  “This is ridiculous,” Salvador said eventually. “Does he expect us to stay put and not move a muscle the whole time ’til he comes back?”

  “Shh,” said Theo. “Dial it down.”

  “But are we here to help him or not?” Salvador said, marginally more quietly. “Is he going to catch this vodyanoy thing all by himself? Won’t we be allowed to share in the glory?”

  “He’s probably not thinking of anything right now except bagging his beast.”

  “He’s forgotten about us?”

  “You saw him – how laser-focused he got. We’re nothing more than a distraction to him now. Not even that.”

  “Well, this has been a waste of our time, then, hasn’t it? I was hoping at the very least that I’d be grappling the vodyanoy to the ground, perhaps pinning it in place so that Chase could finish it off. And what happens? I’m left standing around like a lemon while he goes off and has all the fun. This...” He groped for the word. “This sucks.”

  Theo suppressed a smile. The look of petulant disappointment on Salvador’s face was almost laughable.

  Something shifted.

  It was barely perceptible. A zephyr-like waft in the air, a whisper of movement.

  Theo’s hackles rose.

  “Move!” he yelled at Salvador.

  The muscled giant was slightly slow off the mark, but he moved nonetheless, breaking out of his static pose, lunging forward.

  An arrow thunked into the tree trunk right next to him and quivered there, sticking out like a new-grown branch.

  Theo and Salvador scrambled downslope towards the river.

  Another arrow whizzed between them, past them, arcing down to land with a plop in the Bazhaika’s shallows.

  The two demigods reached the river’s edge a moment later. Theo Chanced a look behind him.

  People were coming through the trees.

  Paramilitaries.

  Padded body armour. Crested battle helmets. Their bodies garlanded with guns and grenades.

  Some of them carried older, more basic weapons. An axe. A trident. A sword. A spear.

  Theo glimpsed a patch on their upper sleeves. An insignia. The letter M.

  He had no idea what the M actually represented, but right then and there, as far as he was concerned, it stood for Murder.

  GUNFIRE.

  Bullets whined and buzzed all around them.

  Theo and Salvador were sprinting along the river’s muddy shore.

  Salvador had wanted to go on the offensive. At first sight of the paramilitaries he had puffed up his chest, stuck out his arms and bellowed defiance.

  But then the paramilitaries had pulled and cocked pistols, and Theo had seized Salvador’s wrist and yanked him away. He had sized up the opposition and known immediately what their tactic was going to be: cripple him and Salvador with bullets first, then deploy the ancient handweapons to finish the job.

  Those weapons were divine artefacts, there was no question about it. They radiated numen. The paramilitaries were the killers, and they were out in force.

  Inwardly Theo cursed Chase. Foolhardy idea, going monster hunting somewhere so isolated and remote. Asking for trouble. His cousin should have known better, and he, Theo, should have put his foot down.

  He and Salvador soon put a safe distance between them and their attackers. They arrived at a bend in the river and abandoned the shore for the sanctuary of the forest. They ran on for a few hundred metres more until Theo became aware that Salvador was flagging.

  “Can’t slow down now,” he said. “Dig deep. Keep going.”

  “I would,” came the reply, “but my leg and back say otherwise.”

  “What do you – ?”

  Blood was leaking down Salvador’s jeans. More blood spilled from his midriff, soaking his shirt.

  “I’ve been shot,” Salvador said. “Didn’t realise until a moment ago, when the adrenaline wore off and the pain finally kicked in. Didn’t even feel the impacts. They got me. One’s in the damn butt cheek, what’s more. The ignominy.”

  “Okay. Okay. But you can still run. Grit your teeth and work through it. You’re a demigod. We’re built to take punishment.”

  Salvador attempted a few steps, but stumbled to his knees.

  “Fuck! Fucking fuck!”

  “Arm around my shoulder,” Theo said, proffering himself. “I can take your weight.”

  “Have you seen how big I am?”

  “No arguing. I’m strong.”

  They forged on together through the trees, side by side, Theo supporting, Salvador limping. Behind them Theo could hear footfalls, low voices exchanging observations, the clank of gunmetal. The paramilitaries were in pursuit, and from the snippets of conversation he could make out, they knew they had winged one of their targets. He even overheard a comment from one of them about picking up a trail of fresh blood. “Piece of cake, following them now,” the person said.

  Under normal circumstances he and Salvador could have outrun the paramilitaries without any difficulty. No human could match a demigod’s speed, or a demigod’s stamina. Going full tilt, they could have left their attackers far behind in their wake and kept up the pace for a full hour before needing to slacken off.

  As it was, they were moving at not much above a brisk stroll. The paramilitaries were gaining on them.

  A granite boulder loomed ahead, the size of a large car. Theo steered himself and Salvador into its lee. He lowered Salvador to a sitting position. Salvador, wincing, perched at an awkward angle with one buttock slightly off the ground.

  “Let me take a gander at those wounds.”

  The damage to Salvador’s backside looked painful. A sizeable chunk of flesh had been torn away. As for the bullet hole in his back, Theo reckoned the round had nicked his ribs and perforated his colon. It was the less immediately debilitating of the two injuries, but the one he would take longer to recover from.

  “We can’t stay here,” Salvador said. “They’re coming.”

  “We can’t go on either, not with you hobbling like that. They’re going to catch up with us either way. Our best bet is to hole up here, let them pass, and then head back the way we came.”

  “That won’t work. They’ll spot us. We’re hardly hidden from view, are we?”

  “If we’re lucky...”

  Salvador shook his head. “In another age, I might have prayed to the gods to preserve us. And they would have answered, no doubt, unless my father’s wife was in one of her moods.”

  “We can’t call on them now. We have to rely on ourselves. I just hope Chase is okay, wherever he’s got to.”

  “I’m sure my grandfather is fine. With his Helm of Darkness, he’ll have been able to elude them. As for us, there’s only one sensible option.” Salvador hauled himself to his feet, using the boulder for leverage. “No point in us both dying when one of us can help the other live.”

  “Salvador, no.”

  The sturdy giant stooped to pick up a fallen fir branch, as long as a baseball bat and twice as thick.

  “Not quite my warclub of old,” he said, hefting it, “but it’ll do in a pinch.”

  “Don’t do this. Really. We can still –”

  “Theseus. You don’t mind if I call you that? For old times’ sake? Theseus, you must run now. Run like you’ve never run before. Get out of here and survive. I’m asking this of you because you’re the one who can prevent them killing any more of us. You can get to the bottom of this affair and end it.”

  “No. I mean yes, I can. I think I can. But it’ll be easier with you backing me up, Heracles.”

  “Not going to happen. Listen. They’re very near now.”

  They were. The paramilitaries were, by Theo’s estimation, no more than a couple of hundred metres away, and closing in rapidly. They were moving in a line, stretched out through the forest like a net.

  “I can provide a distraction,” Salvador said. “Buy you time. You
have to get away, rendezvous with Chase, regroup, retrench, and then destroy these fuckers. Kill every last one of them. For me. I will count it a personal favour. Promise?”

  Theo’s mouth had gone dry. His eyes stung. “Promise.”

  “We had some times, didn’t we?” Salvador said with a smile that did not seem forced. “Our exploits will live on, even if we don’t. Fighting, feasting and fornicating. I always thought, if I went out, I’d go out doing one of those things. Now it looks like I am. I’d have preferred feasting or fornicating, perhaps, but if this is the way it has to be...”

  He stepped out from behind the boulder, brandishing his makeshift club.

  “Come on, you bastards,” he called out. “Here I am. Come and get me.”

  There was a rush, a hiss.

  Now an arrow was protruding from Salvador’s meaty pectoral muscle.

  “Is that all you’ve got?”

  A second arrow whizzed into him, piercing his thigh clean through.

  He staggered but regained his poise, and strode on towards the paramilitaries.

  Theo turned and began loping off in the opposite direction, pausing after a few steps to look back.

  Gun reports rippled. A hail of bullets came Salvador’s way. He was hit two, three, four times. He tottered on, remorseless.

  One of the paramilitaries hurtled into the open, swinging a sword.

  Salvador swept the man aside with a bludgeoning blow from his fir-branch club. The paramilitary flew through the air like a toy. He hit a tree trunk head first, with neck-snapping force, but was probably dead already, chest stove in and heart crushed as soon as Salvador struck him.

  “Who’s next?” Salvador shouted, coughing blood. “Who wants some?”

  He trudged onward, but then all at once crumpled, as though his legs had been cut from under him. He sprawled prone on the forest floor, the arrows snapping beneath his weight. The club rolled from his grasp.

  He forced himself to his hands and knees but couldn’t get any further. He was crimson all over with blood.

  “This is not fair,” he murmured. “This is not how it should be at all. You –”

  More bullets thudded into him.

  Theo was sickened. It wasn’t even murder any more. It was slaughter.

  He felt an almost overwhelming impulse to go to Salvador’s side. He couldn’t simply let his friend – his kin, his companion in adventure – be hacked to pieces by these animals. Every cell in his body cried out at him to defend Salvador, help him, save him.

  But he knew, if he did, he would most likely wind up dead too. His overriding imperative was to make sure Salvador wasn’t sacrificing his life in vain. That meant leaving him to his grisly fate.

  It was the hardest thing Theo had ever had to do, turning away. His final glimpse of Salvador – Heracles – etched itself into his memory. He resolved, on the spot, never to forget it. He wanted it crystal clear in his mind, so that next time he faced these paramilitaries – and there would be a next time, and it would be at his initiative, not theirs – he would have fuel to keep the fires of retribution well-stoked.

  The paramilitaries had Salvador surrounded. There were a half-dozen of them. The one carrying a trident hoisted it above his head, prongs downward.

  It was a trident very much like Poseidon’s own, that symbol of authority with which the sea god could trigger earthquakes and shatter rocks to make springs of water flow forth. This one, smaller but otherwise identical, had been gifted to one of Poseidon’s many half-human sons; Theo could not remember which one. At this moment, it hardly mattered. What mattered was that the trident was lethal. To anyone, but above all to a demigod.

  Theo didn’t stay to watch the trident descend, but he heard it. The wet thunk of the prongs piercing flesh, a scream which trailed off into a gurgling choke. Silence.

  The forest became a blur around him. He was aware he was running, but just that. The rest was a welter of grief and rage.

  IT WAS PERHAPS a minute later that he found himself once more at the river’s edge and stopped to take his bearings. When he and Salvador had made their bid to escape from the paramilitaries, they had headed downstream, with the water’s flow. It made sense for him to continue in that direction, so that he would be moving away from the enemy, not towards – although he was sorely tempted to go straight back and just lay into the paramilitaries, punching them, strangling them, breaking their limbs, taking as many of them as he could with him before they inevitably finished him off.

  On his own, it would have been a suicide run. Had Chase been with him, he might have given it serious consideration. They would, at worst, give the the killers something to think about. At best, they’d wipe the floor with the lot of them.

  Damn his cousin, wandering off like that when he did. Talk about irresponsible.

  As he prepared to set off again alongside the river, Theo spied movement at the periphery of his vision.

  He wheeled round.

  There was someone lurking amid the trees, in a patch of shadow.

  “Chase?”

  The dim, silhouetted figure moved out into the light: one of the paramilitaries.

  Without hesitating, without even thinking, Theo charged at him.

  The man raised both hands above his head.

  “Stop,” he said.

  Theo skidded to a halt, inches from the man. He could, if he wanted to, smash his fist into his face, shatter his skull like an eggshell. He wouldn’t even see the blow coming.

  “You’re Theo Stannard,” the paramilitary said. He had an English accent. Not a Londoner’s, but close to it. Estuary English, was it called?

  “So what if I am?”

  “You’re the author.”

  “And you, pal, are a dead man. You and your cronies just killed one of my oldest friends back there, so you’d better give me a damn good reason why I shouldn’t rip your head off and –”

  “I surrender.”

  Theo frowned. “Say again?”

  “I surrender. Take me prisoner. But do it quick. The others know I’m on your tail, but I’m maintaining radio silence. They don’t know I’ve caught up with you and they’re not worried about me yet. Not if their comms chatter’s anything to go by. They’re busy setting up a perimeter around your friend’s body. As far as they’re concerned, I’ve gone ahead solo to scout for you, see if I can’t flush you back towards them. You’re a loose end. If they don’t hear from me in five minutes or thereabouts, they’re going to start wondering whether I’m okay. At least two of them will come looking for me. I am no threat to you. I just want to talk. I want some answers.”

  Theo studied the Englishman’s face. The guy was sincere; every instinct he had was telling him that. It wasn’t a trick. The Englishman really was surrendering. He really did want to talk.

  Still, Theo’s desire to kill him was almost unendurable, a primal urge. Blood called for blood. It had been that way back in the Age of Heroes. You killed those who killed your kin, to restore the balance, to right the injustice. Theo could snuff out the Englishman’s life and feel not so much as a twinge of conscience. The cold-blooded murder of Heracles demanded nothing less.

  On the other hand...

  Theo wanted some answers too.

  Tamping down the white-hot loathing that seethed inside him, he said, “Okay. You’ve got five minutes. Talk.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Banks of the Bazhaika River

  “OKAY. YOU’VE GOT five minutes. Talk.”

  Roy lowered his hands a fraction.

  “No,” said Theo Stannard. “Keep those up high. The further they are from your sidearm, the better – for you.”

  Solemnly, obediently, Roy lifted his hands back where they had been.

  He still could not quite believe what he was doing, the risk he was taking. Had the man before him been anyone but Theo Stannard, he wouldn’t even have contemplated approaching him. When he’d caught sight of Stannard’s face as the Myrmidons were homing in on their ta
rget, he had been stunned. He had recognised him from the publicity headshot on his Amazon author page. Why was Stannard, of all people, accompanying the target, Salvador Vega? What connection did he have to the big bearded luchador? Roy had to find out. There was, he felt, something about this situation that he might be able to use to his advantage.

  “I’ve read one of your Jake Killian books,” Roy said.

  “So? You a fan?”

  “That’s irrelevant.”

  “Not a fan, then.”

  “My point being, I reckon you’re someone I can reach out to, maybe even trust. You’re also someone who may well be able to explain what’s going on here.”

  “You got that from reading my novel?”

  “Writers reveal a lot about themselves in their writing, without always meaning to. The author of the Jake Killian series strikes me as a moral person.”

  Stannard looked at him askance. “Which one?”

  “Huh?”

  “Which Jake Killian?”

  “Killian’s Rage. Third in the series, I think. Does it matter?”

  “Just curious. Asking myself if there’s anything special about that one, anything that particularly screams ‘trustworthy’. Can’t think of anything.”

  “It’s the main character. The protagonist. A bad man trying to do good. A black knight turned white. I suppose, in a way, I identify with that.”

  “You’re part of a paramilitary unit that’s going around killing people.”

  “It’s complicated,” said Roy.

  “I’ll bet it is. So is this a book club? Are we spending this truce discussing my fiction, or are we using it to get some shit sorted out? Who are you, anyway? Give me a name.”

  “Roy Young.”

  “From the UK?”

  “Yes. And who are you?”

  “You know that.”

  “No.” Roy put some force into his voice, as much as he dared. “Who are you really? Who is the Theo Stannard who I’ve just watched run three times faster than an Olympic sprinter? Who are these people, who have such speed and strength and endurance? In fact, the question I should be asking is what are you?”