The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  Aeneas burst into tears. “But I’m founding New Troy. It isn’t fair.”

  Aeneas is my son, and they never grow up. I sighed and stroked what remained of his hair. “I’ll see what I can do.” Be Hadesed if I’d let my sister Artemis get the better of me.

  I was back on Olympus in the nick of Ambrosia Time. Cup-bearer Hebe was already hopping around like a demented grasshopper. Father strode in, sable brows twitching, as he recited the Ode of Thanks to himself for providing us with this eighty millionth (or thereabouts) dinner of ambrosia and nectar.

  “Where’s Artemis?” he thundered, after his tenth glass of nectar.

  I looked round the table at the illustrious assembly of gods and goddesses, which included Ares, god of war, my current flame, staring at me, cannon at the ready as usual.

  “Oh,” I wailed. “She’s gone already. You gave her permission to found a new temple, Father, and she’s going to call it the Temple of New Troy on an island called Albion.” I let one piteous sob roll down my cheek. “You promised New Troy to Aeneas.”

  His brows looked comfortingly sable. “She didn’t tell me what she was planning to call it.”

  “There’s daughters for you,” I sighed. “I do try, myself, to keep you fully informed.”

  Mighty Zeus rose to full majestic height, and his mighty wife Hera (but in girth not power) cast me a venomous look for disturbing his dinner. “Albion?” Father’s brows grew sabler. “I can’t stop her now. I have no jurisdiction there.” The whole world is supposed to be in his jurisdiction, but if it suits him he pretends some places are exempt.

  “But you can watch what’s happening?” He wasn’t going to get away so easily. We lesser gods have to apply for an international viewing permission; only Zeus has the power to see everyone, everything, everywhere.

  He stomped off to visit his Sighting Room while the rest of us looked at each other and tried to decide which side was winning so they could join it. Father came stomping back, even crosser.

  “She’s in her temple on Leogicia. Your great-great-grandson Brutus is there with all those blasted refugee Trojans trailing behind him. She’s told him to sail off into the sunset and find an island lying beyond Gaul. He’s on his way.”

  “How dare she tell my great-great-grandson what to do.”

  “You haven’t taken much interest in his career yourself,” he pointed out.

  “That’s beside the point.” I could hardly say I’d only just heard of his existence.

  Father stomped around some more. “It’s out of my hands,” he roared, sweeping out regally. Laughing her silk socks off, Hera swept out regally after him.

  I sulked for a while and then had a brilliant idea. When Apollo came up to me to ask for my magic girdle to chase a nymph called Daphne, I refused. I’d refuse all such requests, save from Father, who wasn’t going to know anything about it.

  I announced sadly to them all that I was too distraught to consider mundane requests for my girdle, and then I tottered tragically out. There was instant consternation. I could hear it. I gave them twenty-four hours.

  Two was all it took. A deputation to me was spearheaded by Apollo; Ares, Dionysus and Poseidon followed in his wake. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  “We’ll come with you to Albion,” Apollo declared.

  I hadn’t been planning a trip abroad, but I could see the advantages, so I sweetly agreed that was just what I needed.

  Apollo shuffled his elegant little feet. “Hera, Athene, Hephaestus, Hermes and Iris are coming too.”

  “Oh, good.” I was surprised, since their love lives were on the lacklustre or non-existent side.

  “To fight us,” he amplified.

  I shrieked. “Fight?” I only once got mixed up in a battle, and it was most disagreeable.

  “We’ll bring Paean along,” Apollo added hastily.

  “A fat lot of use that dodderer is,” I wailed. The gods’ doctor can’t tell a pharmaka from a flower-pot any more.

  Apollo got tough. “Do you want my darling sister Artemis to have her new temple?” Apollo can’t stand his sister, who, hypocrite that she is, is always sermonizing about his reckless love life.

  Ares piped up: “Go on, Aphrodite, please. I haven’t had a good fight for a long time.”

  I was tempted to say that if he didn’t mind his alphas and betas he could have one in bed tonight, but managed to retain my expression of reluctant compliance. Zeus has strictly forbidden any fighting on Olympus, which means that if anyone feels like a battle royal they have to disguise themselves as mortals. So if Albion proved to have no native mortal inhabitants of its own, the fight was going to be one-sided to say the least. I’d be on the losing side, and I could say goodbye to my temple.

  I packed carefully for the trip. You never know what the weather will be like on unknown islands. I ordered the Three Graces to run me up a few pretty muslin chitons in saffron and red and a travelling wool himation, and I was ready for a showdown.

  There was one snag. Uncle Poseidon whispered to me that Brutus had lost his way and gone to Gaul by mistake, where he was experimenting with fighting a few natives. When at last Uncle reported that Brutus had left Gaul, I was horrified to hear that he was heading straight for Madam Artemis’s temple site in East Albion. There was only one person who could stop him.

  Aeolus, god of the winds, prefers to live in a cave where he can keep his eye on his precious winds, rather than mooch around on Olympus. He is so old now I would have thought he was past sex, be he pinched me as soon as I arrived, breathless and longing for a cup of nectar.

  “You’re a naughty man, Aeolus,” I giggled delightfully. “Would that I could be unfaithful to Ares, but I simply daren’t.”

  Aeolus comes of a generation that believes in faithfulness, so the hand was removed, much to my relief.

  “Do you feel like a good blow, Aeolus?”

  Unfortunately he mistook my meaning, so it was some time before we got down to bronze tacks. After that he was undried brick-mud in my hands, and obligingly trotted out of the cave, taking a blustery strong wind on its lead with him.

  He came back highly satisfied. “I’ve blown all the Trojan ships away from the east of the island and round to the west. There’s a piece of land sticking out from Albion like a fat thigh and boot, and I’ve selected a nice river half-way down the thigh.”

  “How clever,” I said admiringly, quickly donning my chiton again, in case he felt refreshed after his work.

  As luck would have it, Zeus called an emergency meeting of the gods to discuss the political situation in the House of Atreus, and as he might have noticed if we’d none of us been present and all the chariots had been out on hire, we had to postpone our travel arrangements yet again. So when we finally hovered over Albion’s fat thigh, Brutus and his New Trojans had already ensconced themselves, although some kind of mist hid the earth beneath us.

  “I think it’s called drizzle,” Apollo said doubtfully. “It’s a kind of rain.”

  Whatever it was called, I didn’t like it. True, it had the effect of making my gauze cling to me most attractively, but it gave a most unpleasant feeling.

  There wasn’t even a useful mountain like Olympus to camp on, merely a wide high moor – although when the drizzle finally decided to stop we had a good view over the plain and the valley. Poseidon informed us that the settlement we could see below, by the river up which Brutus had been blown, was called Totnes. What a pity it was already founded and so couldn’t be the New Troy. It looked a nice little place, and I rather fancied fortifying it with walls and a castle, then building my temple in the centre, surrounded by plenty of little nectar shops for my worshippers. Ah well, at least its presence meant there were natives around, for if Brutus was anything like his great-grandfather at do-it-yourself he couldn’t have built Totnes in two days.

  From the smell of travelling nectar, the opposition was near by, and I didn’t have far to look. Madam Artemis was busy setting up her altar reg
alia on a pile of rough stones. I was delighted that this drizzle, which had begun again, kept putting out her sacred flame.

  “Darling, we’re here,” I called sweetly, and Madam Snake jumped.

  “Oh, it’s you, Aphrodite.”

  Her fighting troops appeared, and we surveyed the hostile army. They might outnumber us, but at least my troops were all men. Artemis’s included three women and I’ve always had my doubts about Hermes.

  “Is this what you call a temple, darling?” I enquired, looking at the stones.

  She’s got no sense of humour. “No, I’m going to build that in New Troy.”

  “Any local gods who might object?”

  She hadn’t thought of that, and she blanched a little.

  “Are there any natives here?” I continued, while she shuffled stones around.

  “None,” she chortled.

  “Don’t crow too loudly,” I replied sweetly. “Look down there . . .”

  Below us in the valley, the Trojan camp – in other words Brutus, his second in command, Corineus, and a rag-tag collection of expatriate Trojans – was waking up for the morning.

  At last what appeared to pass for sun in this island condescended to appear – Apollo gave me a weak smile and pointed out that his authority as sun-god was limited outside Greece. I told him that would apply to me too, just in case he had any ideas about chasing native wenches, and he promptly decided he could make the sun shine a little brighter.

  I was almost sorry I’d asked. I had been watching Brutus exhorting his troops with the usual boring speeches – so like his great-grandfather–when I observed that some very long shadows were creeping towards them from behind. They emerged from the large round dwellings like beehives, and they belonged to the biggest bees I’d ever seen . . .

  Albion appeared to be inhabited by giants, which was most pleasing. Besides my taking a professional interest in these tall gentlemen, it looked as though our battle would be won for us, and I could sit back and enjoy the show.

  And show it was. At least fifty giants, clad in leathers and skins, four times the size of Brutus, were striding towards the unsuspecting Trojans, who were making so much noise with their hollas and cheers of encouragement to their leader that they didn’t hear their visitors’ approach.

  When they at last noticed, their hollas redoubled and they hastily backed towards their tents. Unfortunately, the tide was out, so there was to be no quick getaway to their ships. Instead, they cowered back, protecting their goods (typical of Aeneas’s family) as the dread shadows advanced.

  Artemis began wailing her head off, threatening to take her forces and leap inside Brutus and his officers to see these rebels off. Her temple looked less certain by the moment.

  “If you do,” I informed her with great delight, “we’ll take over the giants’ bodies.”

  That stopped her in her merry chase. Giants without gods inside them she can manage. She had quite a success slaughtering Otus and Ephialtes. These twin brothers were rather nice young giants, until one of them made the mistake of falling for Madam Artemis, who naturally (or unnaturally according to the way you get your kicks) arranged for them to slaughter each other in her woods while under the impression they were shooting at a white hart. I’m never so deceitful.

  One thing interested me about these giants. I didn’t recognize any weapons. Maybe they were cannibals. Now that was a nasty thought. Zeus wouldn’t thank me if I returned with five or six gods who had to be reconstructed by Paean. At last the leader, an enormous fellow, even taller than the others, produced a weapon, and I relaxed.

  To my surprise, the leader set down his fearsome weapon, a round hairy boulder, in the midst of the space between the two hostile armies, and then retreated. Was he the local god, I wondered, and this his portable altar? Was he going to sacrifice the Trojans, ritually disembowelling them before our very eyes?

  The giant took a loping run, and with the point of his huge leather boot kicked the boulder towards the opening of the foremost Trojan tent. Immediately a brave hero (not my grandson I noticed) stopped it. Did it have a sacred explosive flame in it? Puzzled, I watched our Trojan hero proceed to kick it all the way back to the giants, intent on demolishing one of the beehives. And so it went on.

  I was immortified when Artemis cried with delight: “They’re playing a game!”

  “But that’s terrible,” wailed Apollo, seeing his chance of an Albion nymph diminishing every minute. Even Ares stopped sulking at the size of these magnificent specimens of manhood – I wonder— no, Aphrodite, temples first, love life later.

  “They can’t do that,” I shrieked. “Fight, you giants, fight.”

  After the mortals below us had stopped cavorting around with what we realized were hide water-bottles filled with mud (no problem in this nasty wet little island), Apollo suggested timidly: “Why don’t you appeal to Brutus’s better nature over the temple?”

  “He won’t have one if Aeneas is anything to go by.”

  “Then disguise yourself as the giants’ leader,” Apollo urged. “Tell him there are plenty of fierce local gods around, and they don’t need another.”

  I brightened up. Sometimes Sun-God Apollo, when he can raise his brains from his lower region, has flashes of brilliance.

  Disguising oneself as a giant is an interesting experience. This one, the leader, was called Gogmagog, and I rather took to his boots as I pranced around getting the hang of giant strides.

  I materialized in front of Brutus (or rather in front of his tent since I was three times its height), just as he was finishing his supper, a pile of something which looked unmentionable. His batman proudly informed him they were called blackberries. Brutus came to the door of his tent with a mouth stained red, and I shuddered till I realized Gogmagog would not possess such delicate sensibilities as mine.

  “Good game, wasn’t it?”

  I impatiently waved aside the accompanying pantomime. “Gogmagog speaks,” I began, adjusting my international language calculator, in case he wasn’t brought up bilingual. “Now we friends you go home. Or stay in Totnes. Plenty games. Much fun.”

  Brutus looked wistful. “We’d like that, but unfortunately I’m on my way to found a new city.”

  “Take no gods with you. Me Gogmagog god of Albion. Only god wanted here is goddess of love. Build plenty temples to her.”

  He looked obstinate. Goodness, how like Aeneas he was.

  “Alas, Great Gogmagog, I’m already spoken for. I am follower of the goddess Artemis, and she wants her temple in New Troy.”

  “Gogmagog forbid this new temple,” I declared unpleasantly, folding my enormous arms across my enormous chest.

  “Try and stop me!” Pygmy Brutus made the unsporting gesture of producing a sword, and he wasn’t joking. He dispensed with any official warnings, and decided to kill me there and then, regardless of my claim to be a British god. He ran at me with his sword held high. Even though he could only reach my knee, he could do considerable damage, and I hastily backed away, shrieking: “Don’t kill me. I’m your great-great-grandmother.”

  He lowered the sword, appearing somewhat surprised at this claim from an animal-skin-clad giant.

  It was time to impress: I promptly materialized into my goddess form, glad I’d been wearing my best saffron chiton which flattered my flowing blonde tresses. “Don’t you know any family history, darling Brutus?” I asked winningly. “I’m the goddess of love and your great-grandfather is my son.”

  Brutus was suddenly ashen-faced. “Noble King Aeneas was always boasting about having immortal blood in his veins, but I thought he was just spinning a line, you know the way he does.”

  “For once, he wasn’t.” I looked more graciously on him. “So now you know the truth—”

  He interrupted me. He’d been thinking. “Once I’ve founded my city, does that mean you’ll find me another Helen of Troy to be my queen?”

  Oh yes, a chip off the old block all right. Self, self, self.

&nbs
p; “If you dedicate your city to me by building my temple, of course, dear great-great-grandson.”

  His face fell. “I can’t, goddess. I’ve already promised Artemis. My honour—”

  “What about mine?” I snapped.

  He drew himself up, looking as though he were in search of an epic poet to do him justice. “Perhaps, after New Troy, I could go on to found another city, a greater, more worthy—”

  Smoothie. “New Troy is what I deserve, after all I did for the old one,” I shouted. “It’s war.”

  In an instant my four immortal supporters had each leapt inside a giant, and Sister Artemis’s quintet rushed into Brutus’s merry band. Her stalwart heroes swept into action as though we were going to fight the Trojan wars all over again. Just you wait, sister dear, I thought, as I climbed inside Gogmagog again after rousing my followers. Artemis saw me and leapt inside Brutus’s second in command, Corineus. Once she was out of sight, I cunningly swapped giants with Ares, who was delighted to be Gogmagog. Brutus was left playing himself, it appeared, for he stayed right out of the way. Typical!

  Weapons were real boulders this time, with the odd axe or bow and arrow. Both sides seemed to be enjoying playing Trojans versus giants (even Queen Hera was jumping up and down like a water nymph in big boots – I found out later she’d changed sides because giants were more fun), and I had to remind my followers that this was serious business.

  Three full hours the battle raged; many the stone that was thrown and many the brave warrior who fell. Paean hadn’t done so much work in millennia, and was run off his feet rushing from fallen body to fallen body shouting, “Don’t hit me.” Then fallen bodies would leap up to rejoin the fight once their wounds had had a pharmaka applied. Rivers of ichor ran on that mighty day of battle. I kept out of the way, of course, but it was fun watching Artemis as Corineus, assuming she would get the better of Gogmagog because he was only fragile, delicate old me.

  Eventually we ran out of boulders, most of which had been tossed into the sea or down to the far end of the peninsula, and the battle descended to a wrestling match between Gogmagog and Corineus. This I really looked forward to, for Ares had promised to thrash darling sister. I’d stolen a signed planning permission before I came, so I’d have my temple before Artemis could shout “Give me a hunk!”