Blood of the Heroes

by Steve White

  Jason nodded again. Most of his questions had been answered. He only wished he knew what to do with those answers.

  *

  They proceeded beneath the waters off the western shores of Elis and Messenia, then turned east to round the Peloponnesus. Jason occupied his time by observing Oannes at the controls and trying to memorize as much as possible, just in case.

  Mountainous Cape Taenarum was off the port bow in Oannes’ light-gathering periscope, when the attack came.

  Jason got his first intimation of it when Oannes tensed, and bent over his instrument panel with a concentration he’d never displayed before. At first Jason thought nothing of it. But then came a soft beeping and a blinking of lights.

  “What is it?” Jason asked quietly, maneuvering himself between the controls and the other humans’ suddenly curious eyes.

  “A pattern of seeking missiles has been dropped into the water in our vicinity. These missiles have a submersible function. They are now homing on us.” Oannes spoke as quietly as Jason had, as though recognizing the need to keep this from the latter’s companions—especially Perseus. He indicated a screen. The symbology meant nothing to Jason. But he saw the semicircle of tiny glowing dots beginning to converge on the larger dot at the center of the screen. He also felt the surge of acceleration as Oannes manipulated the controls. Deirdre and Nagel felt it too, for they looked up in alarm. But the little predatory dots in the screen must have accelerated in response, for there was no sign of escape from their encirclement.

  “Uh, Oannes, what can be done?” Jason kept his voice level.

  “It is already being done.” The Nagom manipulated more controls. “The missiles, of course, use the same kind of motive power as this craft—”

  “Of course.” Reactionless drives converted the angular momentum of their cores’ atomic particles directly to energy and angular momentum. Jason knew better than to expect an explanation in Achaean.

  “—and there is a device that can nullify this power within a certain radius. We carry such a device, and I will now activate it.”

  “Well, then …” Jason felt his tension dissolve in relief. Such an interference field was a theoretical possibility in his own world, although no one had actually built one—or at least the public wasn’t allowed to know if anyone had.

  “There is, however, one complication,” Oannes remarked as he manipulated his controls.

  “What’s that?” The question was barely out of Jason’s mouth when the acceleration halted with an abruptness that forced him to grab onto the edge of the control panel to steady himself.

  “The device affects all such propulsion within its radius of effect, including our own.”

  ” What ? ” Jason yelped. There was no longer any point in keeping his voice down, for the other humans had felt the sudden cessation of acceleration and looked almost as alarmed as they should have. He looked at the scope. The missiles were drifting aimlessly. The blip of their own craft was lent a spurious steadiness by the fact that it was, by definition, the center point of the display.

  “There was no other alternative,” Oannes said quietly. “However, now that we can no longer maneuver, I am releasing the water from the ballast tanks. Our momentum and the current are taking us toward Cape Taenarum, and we should not be too far from shore when we surface.”

  “But, Oannes, why surface at all? Why not wait it out down here? Their missiles can’t maneuver either.”

  “Now that we have been detected, they will find another way to attack us—and we will be unable to evade it. It is going to become necessary to abandon ship. And for that, we must surface, because …”

  Because we nonamphibious humans are along , Jason finished for him mentally, thinking what the alien shrank from voicing. Their eyes met in a moment of shared understanding and mutual embarrassment. The other humans looked on, bewildered.

  But then the little submarine broke the surface under the sunset sky, with the peaks of the Taygetus Mountains black against the darkening east. It rose from the water like a released cork, and hung for a bare instant before flopping back down and hitting the surface. The impact sent them all staggering, but Oannes swept one alien hand across the controls while holding on with the other. The transparent canopy clamshelled away, leaving them exposed to the first stars that were beginning to appear.

  “Abandon ship and swim for shore!” the Nagom shouted, and in a movement of otterlike fluidity he was over the side and into the water.

  The humans scrambled to obey. They were scrambling over the side when Jason glimpsed the lights sweeping in on them—the running lights of the Teloi “chariots.”

  “Jump!” he yelled. It wasn’t fully out of his mouth when a coherent lightning bolt stabbed out with a crash like thunder.

  Some kind of charged particle beam weapon they’ve attached to external hardpoints on their aircars, thought Jason, with a calmness that surprised him, as he dived. He hit the water just as the artificial lightning struck, staggering the little submarine and disabling all its electronics in a shower of sparks.

  He raised his head above the water and looked back. Nagel was jumping clumsily from the rapidly listing craft … and Deirdre was falling from it, apparently unconscious. She sank, and did not come up.

  Jason started to swim frantically toward her.

  “I’ll get her!” shouted Perseus between powerful strokes. He was swimming toward the spot where she had sunk, and he was closer to it than Jason.

  In the sky behind him, Jason saw another of the “chariots” swing around, lining up for a shot.

  Trained survival reflexes thought for Jason. He pulled his knees up under him and plunged underwater.

  The water above him exploded into steam, scalding him and sending him into an uncontrollable spin. He somehow managed to continue holding his breath, and reestablished the rhythm and direction of his strokes.

  His lungs were knots of unendurable agony when he finally broke the surface, took a gasping breath, and looked around. There was no sign of Perseus or Deirdre. There was also no sign of the glowing predators in the sky.

  He couldn’t let himself think about it—at least not yet. He located the shore and started swimming for it.

  *

  The sun had finished setting by the time Jason crawled ashore, lacerating his hands and knees on the shale of the narrow beach beneath sheer cliffs.

  He took stock. His sandals were gone, and his tunic was the worse for wear, but he still had his sword-dagger. He looked around in the twilight. A short distance down the beach, a cavern gaped at the base of the cliff. In the opposite direction, a prone figure was vomiting weakly. It was Nagel. Jason forced himself to his feet and staggered to the historian’s side. He grasped Nagel by the shoulders and shook him into awareness.

  “Have you seen Deirdre?” he demanded.

  “No … no,” Nagel said vaguely, and collapsed as soon as Jason released him.

  “Nor have I,” came an unmistakable alien voice.

  Oannes was still wearing his utility harness with its array of devices. One was an incongruously ordinary-looking flashlight. Its wavering light approached them through the gloom. “I came ashore well before you,” he said. “I have seen no sign of your female companion, or of the local male Perseus.”

  “He was trying to rescue her.” Jason felt leaden in a way that transcended mere physical exhaustion. “They must have both drowned.” Or been cooked by that particle beam, or boiled alive … He veered hurriedly away from that line of thought.

  “Perhaps,” Oannes acknowledged. “But there is another possibility, suggested by your account of the interest the Teloi—specifically the one called Hyperion—took in her. They may have retrieved her from the water and conveyed her to their … sanctuary. You will note that they ceased to attack us just after the female vanished.”

  Jason forced his battered mind to think. He checked his implant display. There was still no sign of Deirdre’s implant, so it must still be inside the
Teloi’s private pocket universe. “So you think the Teloi brought the … idol here from the Echinades?”

  “Actually, I know they did. As you may recall, my submersible had a device which could detect the … opening when it activated. This occurred just before the attack. I had time to note the location.” Oannes pointed down the beach toward the cave mouth. “It is in there. In my judgment, that is where the female has been taken”

  ” No ! “

  They all whirled around at the sound of that despairing scream. Perseus stood statue-still in the shallows, with small waves lapping his knees. Even half seen in the gloom, his expression was chilling. No one of Jason’s world would have worn it—or could have worn it, for it held a primal terror that not even those remaining religious believers who self-consciously rejected the rationalistic world-view could any longer feel.

  “So Deianeira is dead,” he said in a hollow voice, staring down the beach at the mouth of the Underworld.

  “She may be, Perseus,” said Oannes, “but I do not believe she is. Unless I am mistaken, she still lives, but the Old Gods have taken her into Hades for purposes of their own.”

  Without warning, Perseus threw back his head and howled—a long, quavering howl that prickled Jason’s skin and raised the hairs at the base of his neck. As its last echoes died away, Perseus fell to his knees in the water. Then, with just as little warning as that eerie scream, he spoke in a voice that was thick with emotion but rock-steady.

  “They have taken the living into Hades! This is a wrongness in the heart of the world. By this, the Old Gods have forfeited all that I have ever felt for them except fear. And fear is no longer enough.” He got slowly to his feet. “I failed to protect Deianeira. This is a disgrace I must wipe out. I must go into Hades and bring her out.”

  For a moment that stretched into eternity, they all stared at him.

  Nagel was the first to speak. “You would dare to violate the wall between the realms of the living and of the dead?”

  “The Old Gods have already broken that wall. I am the son of one of the New Gods. He will help me, even though I have nothing here to sacrifice to him.” Perseus turned to Oannes. He did not kneel or otherwise abase himself. That, Jason recalled, had not been the way of the historical Greeks, who had stood like men before gods who did not view men as worthless.

  Could it be that we’re seeing the start of that right here and now on this beach? Jason wondered.

  “Oannes,” said Perseus, “you are a deity, and I know you are no friend of the Old Gods. Will you help me?”

  Oannes’ eyes met Jason’s, across a few feet of space and an abysm of biology and culture and inability to speak openly in Perseus’ hearing. The Nagom had lost his submarine and all his technological wonders except those he carried on his person. He owed nothing to Deirdre or Perseus or any other human. But … the Teloi were in that cave, and the struggle with those bioengineered abominations was what he was for.

  “We may not succeed, Perseus,” he said. “Indeed, we probably will not. But if you are resolved to try, I will do what I can to aid you.”

  “We all will,” Jason added. He looked through the gathering darkness at the deeper blackness of the cavern. Then, for what he knew was probably the last time, he looked around at the sea and the stars and the world, and smelled the salt air and listened to the wind.

  It was, he decided, a good night to harrow Hell.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Oannes’ lamp, set cautiously low, lit their way as they entered the gaping cave mouth and scrambled down a treacherous slope.

  “There is a more direct route, through another cavern at the end of an inlet a short way along the coast,” the Nagom explained. “But its very directness means that it will be watched. They feel no need to guard this one; the fears of the local populace are enough.”

  “I can believe it,” muttered Jason. He had seen the look of arcane terror return to Perseus’ face as they had passed the threshold of what was, to him, the realm of the dead. But the Hero hadn’t even paused. Jason knew he could never fully appreciate the kind of courage that lack of hesitation implied.

  “We have almost reached—” Even as Oannes said it, Jason momentarily lost his footing … and gasped in shock as his feet landed in ice-cold water.

  “Perhaps we need more light,” Oannes conceded. He adjusted the power output.

  Jason gasped again, but this time not from cold.

  “The River Styx,” Perseus breathed.

  They were on the bank of an underground river whose beginning and end were lost to sight in the distant gloom. Its waters were pellucidly clear, and in the light of Oannes’ high-tech torch the bottom glowed emerald-green. Overhead was an inverted forest of gleaming, multicolored stalactites. The banks were narrow and gravelly, lined by what looked like abstract sculpture in eons-shaped semiprecious stones.

  It was like being inside a jewel.

  “We have no boat,” said Oannes matter-of-factly. “So we must proceed along the bank. Fortunately, we are on the correct side. Very fortunately, inasmuch as the water is extremely cold.”

  “So I noticed.” Jason couldn’t help thinking Oannes could have given him some warning. It reminded him that he might need to talk to the Nagom in private. “We’re obviously going to have to go in single file. Perseus, scout ahead.”

  For a moment, the young Hero didn’t move. Jason had never imagined anything that could faze Perseus’ resolve. But this was too close to his innermost horrors.

  “Perseus,” Oannes said slowly, “you are going to find that some of the things you have been taught are … not untrue, just not precisely as you have interpreted them. In particular, the actual realm of the dead is on a lower level of Hades. What you are going to see at first is reserved for the living dead: the prisoners the pirates of the Echinades bring here and work to death with the consent—and, indeed, at the orders—of the Old Gods.”

  The fear vanished from Perseus’ face, replaced by the anger of disillusioned faith. “So … another betrayal by them. My father Zeus doesn’t treat mortals so.” He hefted his weapon and went ahead on point, sidling along the narrow bank. The others followed. The crudely statuelike formations were more fragile than they looked. Whenever Jason brushed against them, fragments of topaz or amethyst broke off. It seemed like a desecration.

  The underground waterway seemed to go on forever. But presently Perseus signaled back to them, pointing at a small side tunnel through which a narrow tributary trickled. They had to stoop to enter it, and the bank became so narrow that they had to step into the shallow but icy water. Oannes adjusted their light to the minimum they could see by, which made the tunnel seem even more confining. It was, Jason thought, fortunate that full-blown claustrophobia was one of the things that automatically disqualified would-be time travelers. Still, sweat gleamed on Nagel’s face in the dim light.

  They went about a hundred yards, although it seemed longer. Then a faint glow appeared up ahead. Oannes turned his lamp off altogether, and motioned them to proceed with caution. They crawled forward in the chill shallows, seeking the light.

  They emerged into a scene that took away whatever breath Jason had left after his partial immersion in the freezing water.

  They were looking out over a large, roughly circular cave, illuminated by many torches inserted in sconces chipped out of the rocky walls. The stream they had been following trickled down a slope and over a steep pile of fallen rocks into a pool that reflected, mirrorlike, the inverted forest of stalactites fifteen yards or so above the corresponding stalagmites that fringed the motionless dark water. Around the perimeter of the cavern, dark corridors branched off.

  But Jason barely noticed these natural features. He was staring at the activity that filled the central cave and the portions of the branching passages that could be seen.

  Everywhere, moving through the flickering torchlight like resident demons, were armed, leather-armored men, mostly of the swarthy eagle-nosed Echinades bree
d. Many of them carried whips. Jason saw none of those whips used. The barely human creatures—grime-encrusted, shaggy-headed, cadaverously thin, practically naked despite the subterranean chill—who labored in the cavern had evidently been brutalized into a level of submissiveness where that was no longer required. They cringed and whimpered at the mere approach of one of the guards, then returned hastily to their tasks—most of which seemed to involve one phase or other of pottery-making.

  “It is a sideline of the pirates,” Oannes answered Jason’s unspoken question, and pointed toward one end of the central cavern. There was a pit where clay was being tempered. Beyond that was a huge, crude kiln. Smoke from the latter was rising straight up; nature had obligingly provided an efficient chimney. It must, Jason thought, also be drawing up the smell from another pit, where, as he watched, the guards tossed the limp form of a slave whom death had liberated. It landed on top of a heap of corpses in varying stages of decomposition, all the way down to skeletons at the bottom. The vent above could not remove the stench altogether, but no one seemed to mind it. Jason suspected that the guards were very little further above the subhuman level than their charges.

  Jason glanced at his companions. Nagel looked like he was going to be sick. Perseus was staring with horrified fixation.

  As well he might, thought Jason. If this isn’t really Hell, it’s close enough.

  Still, alarm bells began to sound in Jason’s mind. There was something disturbing about the Hero’s expression, something Jason knew was beyond his own understanding because it belonged to a mental universe his own world had left behind. Perseus’ features were firm—it was hard to imagine them any other way—but the firmness had something brittle about it. Something, in short, that suggested his behavior was unpredictable. In a situation like this, unpredictability was the last thing Jason needed.

  Oannes pointed again, indicating the largest of the openings. “That leads to the surface, through a cave mouth at the beach … and it is guarded. The others extend further into the depths, in all directions. They are lined with niches where the prisoners sleep. And then there is that one… .” He pointed at an exceptionally large opening about fifty yards around the cavern’s perimeter, to their right. “If the readings I obtained are to be trusted, the … gateway is in there.”