The Mammoth Book of Awesome Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  Yes? You could have knocked me down with a feather. (Well, you could have, if I’d had a body to blow down).

  “Er.” Sagittarius stamped a hoof, whinnied a bit, and you could see what was going through his head. Nothing like this had ever happened before on Mount Olympus. “Did someone say yes?”

  See, after him asking “Any other business?”, there’s always the same short silence, when everyone pretends they’re trying to think up a question (most of us being more polite than Bacchus). Then we shake our heads, like how we’d all have loved to raise a point or three but since the meeting covered everything on our agenda, boy, were we stumped. At this point, when Sagittarius pronounces the AGM closed, a cheer goes up loud enough to cause a landslip in Crete, followed by a stampede to the wine. Hey! It’s not called the “Amorous Gluttonous Massing” for nothing, you know.

  Except now someone was spoiling the fun.

  “Me,” the voice said. “I have a point I’d like to raise.”

  Necks craned for a better view. Who was this party pooper? we all demanded. And couldn’t someone tear his damned head off or something?

  The reason we couldn’t see him was that, until now, he’d been sitting down. Wise move. Had we noticed him beforehand, we’d all have guessed he’d be trouble and taken the necessary countermeasures to keep him quiet. Like sit on him or something. Because no one wears the full lion’s pelt on a sweltering hot day like this without courting some kind of disaster.

  “Ah. Hercules.”

  I don’t believe it! Sagittarius, the knucklehead, was inviting him up to the front. At the same time, I noticed a lot of eyes turn longingly towards the wine jugs. Not least Bacchus’s. Although, in fairness, I have to say most of Hundred-Eyed Argus’s gaze was directed straight down the bosom of that little wood sprite from Corinth.

  Swinging his olive-wood club as though it weighed no more than a sunbeam, our doughty hero stepped onto the stage. “Mister Chairman,” he drawled, flexing his pecs. “Fauns, satyrs, nymphs, dryads, maenads—”

  “Gonads!” yelled a heckler from the crowd, and you can see where his thoughts were headed. OK, so we all know that sex isn’t everything. But come on. There’s more than enough hanging around in between as it is.

  “—And all my fellow Immortals.” It was satisfying to watch the sweat pour down Hercules’ face under the heavy lion’s head. Not so good that he produced a thick wad of notes from somewhere deep in its pelt. “For some considerable time,” he read, “there has been an awareness among each and every one of us that all is not well on Mount Olympus. Morale has never been lower—”

  How swiftly the mood of the crowd changed! With each bass syllable that carried across the clearing in the woods, they forgot about the wine, the partying, the reason they’d come here in the first place. Ears pricked up. Backs straightened. Lips pursed in concentration. At last they were not forced to endure some nebulous whinge, a trivial piece of planning that needed approval, an excuse for self-congratulation and praise. This speech embraced them all. Their needs. Their hopes. Their ambitions, their prospects. A breathless silence descended as Hercules proceeded to outline the riches he felt the Immortals deserved. What rewards they should reap.

  Page after page turned in the big man’s hand until, having raised them right up, having lifted the crowd to the very summit of spiritual aspiration, cleverly he began to trawl through their grievances. He listed the niggles that had eroded their confidence over the years. The petty bureaucracies imposed by the gods that stood in their way. I felt, rather than heard, the rumble that surged through the clearing. An emotion pitched somewhere between approval, fear and excitement . . .

  Couldn’t they see what he was planning? Didn’t they care? With each fervoured agreement, each enthusiastic nod of the head, each vociferous “Hear, hear!” that fell louder and louder from their lips I myself grew that much colder.

  “So I put it to you, brothers, that the gods – those men and women who laughingly refer to themselves as our masters – have not only grown lacklustre and idle, they have become spiteful and careless, abusing their powers. Moreover, brothers.” Hercules paused. “These presumed masters, these so-called invincible beings, have not only lost interest in the running of mortal affairs on Earth, I say they have proved themselves incompetent here on Olympus.”

  Oh, shit. There it was, out in the open. An overthrow. A coup. A takeover. Revolution.

  “Incompetent,” he repeated forcefully.

  You can say it six times over, brother, but this is not for me. I am out of here . . .

  “By way of example, take little Echo here.”

  “Here!” I protested. Oh, I do so not want any part of this—

  “Look at the spiteful way Juno punished that poor little nymph.”

  Well, that bit was true. Juno’s revenge had been harsh. But hell, I knew the risks when I took them, keeping her talking time and again while Jupiter made his getaway from whichever pretty young thing he’d been seducing. I knew full well what would happen if she ever found out. She’d deprive me the power of speech – and for ever. Only Jupiter’s intervention left me with some kind of voice. The gift, if that’s what it is, of repetition.

  “Not once did Juno punish the poor creature,” Hercules said, “but little Echo was made to suffer twice over. What a bitch! What a spiteful, malicious bitch. And this, brothers, is supposed to be justice under the rule of the Queen of Olympus, the one and only Mighty Juno!”

  “No!” I cried out.

  Not true. Juno played no part in my doomed love for Narcissus. But, alas, no one could hear me . . .

  “Not content with robbing Echo of her voice,” our muscled hero was saying, “she takes the poor kid’s body away, too.”

  “Ooh,” I protested.

  Unfair. Hercules knows damned well I pined away out of love. That was my choice, my decision. You can’t pin that one on Juno. If I could not belong to Narcissus, I would not belong to anyone else. And I tell you something else, brother. I’ve never regretted that. Not for an instant. But Hercules had his audience right where he wanted them. Which meant he wouldn’t let a little thing like the truth get in the way . . .

  “When Juno saw Narcissus waiting for Echo at the pool, she couldn’t resisting adding insult to injury. She made him fall in love with himself.”

  “Sylph,” I corrected firmly.

  No one but me and Narcissus knows what happened down there by that pool. Being dormant right now, Narcissus can’t tell and I sure as hell won’t. Some things are personal. But I won’t have it bandied around that Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection. That just wasn’t true. And frankly it bothers me that if Hercules goes on repeating that rumour, that’s how it will end up being believed.

  Look how he was playing them now! Not a dry eye in the clearing, and that included Hundred-Eyed Argus. Hell, I know everyone’s a sucker for that somebody-done-somebody-wrong shit. I just didn’t approve of Hercules using me to win his audience over. To show them that the deities on Olympus weren’t as intelligent or as resourceful as they’d have us believe.

  And now he was about to muscle in and oust them, with the backing of this gullible band! I looked round at my comrades. Wood nymphs and fauns, gorgons and sirens, cyclops, titans and sibyls. Over there, Arachne, turned by Pallas into a spider for no better reason than having woven a better tapestry than the goddess. Lycaon, changed into a snarling, howling wolf for doubting Jupiter. Midas, given the ears of an ass for siding with Pan against Apollo. Atalanta turned into a lioness by Venus just (would you believe!) for consummating her marriage, poor cow.

  Up they surfaced, though. Grudges that had festered over the centuries. Rancour that had grown more bitter with each passing millennium. Centaurs, bacchants, fountain nymphs, muses, harpies, furies, those unfortunate men and women turned into stone – all began to dredge up their resentment. For most, though, the prospect of power was simply too tantalizing to resist . . .

  “No more tyrants!” Her
cules cried, thumping his fist into the palm of his hand.

  “No more tyrants!” came the rallying chorus.

  “Democracy for Olympus!” he roared.

  “Democracy for Olympus!” they cried, and I thought, Yeah. Io isn’t the only one stuck in a herd.

  “In place of Jupiter and Juno,” Hercules said, “I propose a triumvirate.”

  Took him long enough to get round to it, eh? The tyrant is dead, long live the tyrant. But the baying mob cheered him on.

  “Are you with me?” he urged. “Are you with me?”

  Back came the predictable roar, the applause, the tumultuous stamp of approval.

  “Then I propose three men at its head – myself, and the heroic twins. What do you say, Immortals? What do you say to democracy led by Hercules, Castor and Pollux?”

  I knew what I had to say.

  “Pollux!” I said. And I sighed. Dammit, someone had to put paid to this midsummer madness.

  I just wished that someone didn’t have to be me . . .

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m no fan of the gods, I don’t fawn and flatter them like some I could mention. Well, all right. Who I will mention. Ganymede, for one, the oily little oik. OK, so he was a shepherd boy plucked from obscurity to become cupbearer to the gods, but does he really have to suck up to them in the repulsive way that he does? Then there’s Janus. He’s not two-faced for nothing, you know—

  But you’re right. This is not the time to start bitching. We’ll go into that later, once we’ve got this revolt bedded down. The problem was, of course, how to stop Hercules toppling Jupiter from his throne.

  Now it’s not as though I personally believe the gods are infallible. Hercules made many valid points and I’d be the first to admit there’s ample room for improvement. The Olympians have grown indolent. Mistakes have been made. They’ve become careless, underhanded, ethics have gone out the window and if ever there was a time to wheel out the clichés this was it. Power corrupts, blah, blah, blah. But! And this is the thing. The same would be true if Hercules and the twins took control.

  Within no time they, too, would become self-serving tyrants. Who would notice the difference? Find me an altruistic politician and I’ll show you glaciers on the equator. Oh, and cut the crap about doing it for the Good Of The People. Hercules performed Twelve Labours all right, and magnificently so, I might add. But they were not for the Good Of The People. He mucked out stables and slew lions and hydras and wot-have-you for his own ends, remember. That this son of a mortal might himself become a god.

  And you can forget Castor and Pollux. One’s a wrestler, the other’s a boxer – sporting heroes without doubt. But have you spotted a single brain cell between them? Keep looking! No, in Hercules’ book these brawnballs were nothing more than walking, talking advertising hoardings. “You are safe in our hands” was the message. The Immortals flocked to their feet.

  So what was my problem, you ask? If one order is the same as another, why not go with the flow? We-ell. Ask yourself this. Would you want your destiny in the hands of a group of drunken revellers who yawn their way through their own AGM and who change sides at the first bit of oratory? I rest my case.

  The problem was, where to start. Jupiter was off on one of his wenching sprees, and who knew what disguise he’d adopted this time. Swans, showers of gold, husband impersonations, there was no telling – and certainly not enough time to find out. Hercules wasn’t stupid. He knew full well that he was carrying the Immortals along on the tide. He intended to strike before they changed their minds. So who did that leave? Neptune? Uh-uh. Too busy whipping up storms and sinking the ships of some little Greek island he felt had neglected him. Apollo? Still driving his fiery chariot across the skies over our heads. As for Mars, well, damn me, hadn’t he turned himself into a ruddy bull again? (After Io, I’ll bet!)

  This, then, looked like being a job for the girls.

  After a hard day’s chase through the forests or a bit of postprandial nookie, there’s really nothing quite like unwinding over a good gossip with friends. OK, so I use the term loosely. Maybe the girls meet up more for the mutual massaging of egos than friendship, but who cares? On this particular occasion I hit lucky. It was the A-Team splashing about under the waterfall.

  Diana, needing the usual reassurance that she was the swiftest. Venus, bragging about Adonis, so everyone knew she was the fairest. Minerva, head in a book. (Like we didn’t know she was the brainy one!) Plus, of course, Juno, angling for sympathy now that everyone knew Jupiter was out playing eeny-meeny-maenad-mo again.

  Diana was practising her javelin stance in the water’s reflection. “Where’s Cupid today?” she was asking his mother.

  “That little pest!” You could never accuse Venus of suffocating Cupid with maternal instincts. “I sent him off to practise in the butts.”

  An order, believe me, that Cupid takes literally. And it’s bloody painful, I tell you, when that arrow hits home. I heard Adonis couldn’t sit down for a week and Vulcan says his scar still won’t heal.

  “I don’t know what he sees in these mortal women,” Juno was saying. “Strumpets, the lot of them.”

  “Ahem,” I said. It invariably takes an age to catch someone’s attention. You have to wait for just the right moment. Bugger. This wasn’t it.

  “Well, you know what they say about husbands, darling,” laughed Venus. “They’re like fires. They go out if you neglect them.”

  “Ahem!”

  “Are you suggesting I’m not stoking Jupiter’s passions, you bitch?”

  Oh-oh. This wasn’t going the way I had hoped. They were too busy starting a cat fight to listen to echoes round the edge of the pool. Briefly, listening to the squabble break out, I was tempted to call it a day. Let Hercules lead his taggle-taggle band to glory.

  I slipped away at the point where Venus was offering to give Juno lessons in techniques of the bedchamber. I was willing to bet that, at this rate, the next time I saw Venus, she’d have her fringe combed over one eye to hide the shiner.

  What do do, what to do . . .

  Back in the clearing the Immortals were drunk with both power and wine. Not so much ambrosia and nectar for them, I thought. More like lotus eaters. One taste and everything else is forgotten. I looked at them. Sons and daughters of mortal women rising up against their own parents. Even Hercules, son of Jupiter and fostered by Juno at one stage, was prepared to overthrow his own father and that, I thought, told the story. That was what separated men from the gods.

  Olympians might throw tantrums.

  Mortal men yearn only for violence.

  That’s why Hercules would never be King of the Gods. OK, Jupiter has his faults. Serial adultery by no means the least. But was Hercules – indeed, were any of the rabble massed in the clearing – genuinely interested in the welfare of ordinary people? Did they see them as anything other than pawns in their own selfish power game?

  Back at the pool, Juno and Venus had joined forces to turn on Diana.

  “You can shut your trap,” Juno was saying. “The day I take advice from virgins about sex is the day my husband turns celibate.”

  “How dare you!” Diana snarled. “I value my virginity—”

  “Rubbish,” Venus sneered back. “No man will have you, you prissy little cow. That’s why, after all these millennia, you’re still a virgin. You’re frigid.”

  “Frigid?”

  Diana’s spluttering drowned the splash of the waterfall and, since it was turning into a right old scrum over there, I left the three of them to it. It was Minerva I focused on. You notice she hadn’t uttered a squeak about Jupiter’s philanderings or Diana’s chastity bent? (Told you she was the brainy one.) I waited until she came to the end of the scroll she was reading – or at least pretending to read, take your pick. Because I know which I’d have sooner been watching, kiddo. Three top goddesses at it hammer and tongs or a dull old page of poetry? No contest. Anyway, as Minerva reached down, I gave the signal.

  With a
groan that cut through to the marrow, my old friend Boreas, the north wind, spread out his feathers, beat his grey wings and scattered Minerva’s scrolls to all points of the compass.

  Everyone shivered at the unexpected drop in temperature. Even me. It had been ages since I’d dallied with Boreas; I’d forgotten how icy his embrace could be. But Boreas whipping up Minerva’s papers was the signal for Daphne to start. The distinctive rustle of her leathery leaves echoed round the wooded glade, a cue for Myrrh to begin weeping thick, sticky ooze from her bark. Suddenly, all my other friends descended. Ceyx and Alcyone, whose wish to become seabirds had been granted, swooped out of nowhere. Snakes rustled among the long grasses. All those gentle creatures who had asked – yes, asked! – to be changed from human shape descended now round the pool, calling at the tops of their voices as Boreas kicked up a din of his own.

  “What the hell’s up?” Juno was forced to shout over the racket of birdsong and animal sounds and the wild woodland echoes.

  “Up!” I yelled back.

  “It’s that bloody AGM,” Diana snapped, rubbing the goose pimples on her arm. “Happens every time we leave them alone. Something always goes awry.”

  “Wry,” I said, fixing hard on Minerva.

  “What the blazes does Apollo think he’s playing at up there?” Venus said, glancing up at the sun, still blazing brightly in its innocence. “I’m bloody freezing.”

  “Zing!”

  “Did you hear that?” Juno sniffed. “Even scatty little Echo has got in on the act.”

  Ooh, you don’t know how much I wished she’d said something that I could have replied to at that!

  “Sssh,” said Minerva, and the other three goddesses swung round on her, ready to lay into Jupiter’s favourite daughter. (You notice how quickly they change sides, these girls. Loyalty changes hands faster than coins in a pickpocket gang.)

  “Don’t tell me to shut up, you bossy cow—”

  “No, listen,” Minerva said, and there was a tone to her voice that made everyone shut up, not just the three squabbling beauties. The glade plunged into silence. Even the tears of the cataract seemed to fall softly. The laurel stopped shivering. The bird calls ceased. The serpents stopped writhing. Only Myrrh’s resin continued to weep.