“Which is precisely why it would be much safer for you to fly down and check it out.”
“Safer for you,” he said.
“You really are selfish.”
“Would I be here if I weren’t?”
I grumbled, unwinding the rope from around my waist.
“Do be careful, though. If you get to the end of the rope and there is no earth beneath your feet, it could be a long drop.” Then he wound the cord around his waist and slowly assumed the shape of an ox.
I peered over the edge. Nothing but gray. I dropped the rope into the swirling fog, passed a loop through my belt, and eased myself over.
CHAPTER 10
THE SEVENTH ARROW
THERE’S NOTHING quite like backing down a sheer cliff face into the roiling fogs of lowest Hell. I could hardly breathe for fear of slipping into that uncertain void, and when I reached the end of the rope, there was no sign I was anywhere near the bottom. I loosed the sword from my belt and dropped it into the mist. I was relieved to hear it clatter to the ground close by. Then, of course, I regretted not dropping something duller. But by then, it was too late. I shouted to Proteus that I was going to jump the rest of the way, and taking silence for consent, let go of the rope.
It wasn’t much of a drop, but the ground was so hard, I thought my knees would burst. Then when I tried to stand up, I slipped and fell again. Proteus heard my cursing and asked if I was all right. I told him I was. Shortly after, a large white pelican landed beside me, skidded several feet, and tumbled head over webbed feet into a rock. I looked on as it struggled to right itself and fell over again. “Proteus?” I said, rising unsteadily. The ground was uncommonly slippery.
The beak softened into a pair of lips, and the pelican spoke. “I did not enjoy that.”
I shuddered and poked him with the toe of my sandal. “Choose a shape, would you? Those bird lips give me the creeps.”
“I told you it is not so easy,” he groaned, “and it is even more difficult when all I have to work with is mist.” I could see he was telling the truth. His little yellow eyes winced at every word. He rolled over, and with a sort of grunting gasp, the feathers along his left side disappeared. Then he rolled over and repeated the process. As I watched the pale, helpless little half man roll back and forth, grunting and gasping, I couldn’t help wondering if it might not be prudent to kill him while I had the chance. After all, he had told me that he would kill me when the time came. And hadn’t he driven that first wedge of mistrust between Diomedes and me? He deserved worse than death, if truth be told.
I drew the last arrow from my quiver and nocked it. As he rolled onto his back, I placed my foot on his neck and aimed at his face. “You aren’t actually immortal, are you?”
His eyes grew wide, and he shook his head. “No.”
“You can change your shape, but you can’t change your guts.”
Proteus nodded slowly.
“Then your time has come,” I said.
He closed his eyes. “Pray for me.”
I released the arrow.
Proteus deserved to die. He had betrayed me repeatedly. He was a liar and a coward. And frankly, he was more beast than man anyway.
But I couldn’t kill him.
Just as I released the arrow, I jerked the bow to the side and sent the shot skipping off across the ice. The shaft splintered, and the head bent sideways—my last arrow wasted.
Proteus blinked at me for several seconds. “That was imprudent.”
I turned away.
At length, he appeared beside me. “I suppose I now owe you some sort of debt.”
I shook my head. “You owe me nothing.”
“You have acted with honor.”
“I acted out of weakness.”
Proteus nodded. “I still plan to betray you,” he said.
“I know.” I looked over at him. The back of his head was still covered with feathers. “You . . . uh . . . missed a few,” I said. For some reason, this oversight struck me as vaguely obscene.
“Eh?” He put his hand to the back of his head. “Oh.” Then, with a sort of hiccup, the feathers sucked back into his skull, and hair grew in their place. He muttered a word of thanks. “You know,” he said, still looking away into the mist, “I cannot help asking—
But that’s when the enormous feet appeared.
CHAPTER 11
EXPECTING SOMEONE TALLER
THEY WERE HUGE—each one easily the size of a mule. The nails alone (dark yellow and thick as tower shields) might have served to armor a battering ram. Yet for some reason, the scene struck me as funny. After all the terrible things I’d seen in Hell, a pair of enormous feet just didn’t inspire the sort of terror it might have under other circumstances. No doubt, there would be some horrendous body attached to those feet, but thanks to the mist, I could see it only from the knees down; and what I saw just wasn’t scary. In fact, I found a sudden and irresistible urge to laugh.
It was the sort of situation that would have been best met with silence. But as usual, I spoke: “Here’s something I wasn’t expecting to see, but now that I have, I’m rather sorry I didn’t bring along a nail file.” I laughed at my own wit. “Can you imagine what this fellow spends on sandals?” I laughed again, louder. “I’ll bet he’s a phenomenal swimmer.” I dissolved in a fit of laughter, but there was no response at all from Proteus, and when I looked over my shoulder for him, there was nothing but a slowly freezing puddle of water. I sobered quickly.
“Hail to you, stranger,” I shouted up into the mist. “Greetings and great blessings of the gods!” Well, it was as good a greeting as any under the circumstances.
The feet disappeared and were replaced by a pair of colossal hands, then a face and shoulders. I tried not to look anxious. “Sir. Lord of the Sandy Cliff. Great-Footed Giant, whose mighty toes—”
“Shut up,” said the giant. “Who are you who laughs in the lowest pit of Hell?”
“I am Odysseus, Son of Laertes. Lord of Ithaca. I am making a great journey at the request of—”
“Who?” the giant asked, squinting at me and looking me over, head to toe. “You? You’re Odysseus? Son of Laertes? Surely not.”
“Well . . . yes,” I said, unsure whether to be insulted or pleased.
“Funny,” he said, shaking his great head, “I would have expected you to be taller.”
I sighed.
“Nonetheless, Odysseus, Son of Laertes, we are well met.” He extended his index finger and wagged it up and down. I inferred from this gesture that he meant to clasp hands, so I reached for his finger and did my best to hold on. When this awkward exchange was concluded, the giant smiled and spoke again. “We have a friend in common.”
“Do we?”
“You knew Hercules, did you not?”
I decided to tell the truth. “Alas, my grandfather knew him well; but I did not.”
“Your grandfather?”
“Autolycos. King of Phocis.”
“Ah,” he gasped, “the great Autolycos!”
“And who might you be?” I asked. It seemed I had given him a lot of information without receiving much in return.
“My name is Antaeos,” he answered, lacing his fingers and setting his chin on them. “I am one of the twelve sentries of Lake Cocytus.”
“Antaeos?” I said. “Antaeos, the wrestler?”
“The same,” he said, smiling.
“I thought Hercules killed you,” I said.
“He did. He did. But it was a fine match. And like I always said, if you’ve got to die, you might as well die at the hands of a demigod. I meant it as consolation to the folks I killed, but Fortune is a fickle goddess. My own words came back to haunt me eventually. Every man is immortal until he is suddenly—and unexpectedly—not.”
All this made precious little sense to me, but his tone was friendly. “Antaeos, since you clearly mean me no harm, may I ask you a question?”
The giant looked at me as though he’d just noticed I was t
here. “I never said I wouldn’t harm you. In fact, I probably will. It is my job to stand guard here, you know. But all the same, you may ask your question. My neighbor, Nimrod, isn’t much of a talker, and these others, well . . . they’re a little arrogant,” he whispered, holding up one hand as though that would prevent his voice from carrying.
“Well, Antaeos, I was going to ask for your help, but since you’ve answered that question already, allow me to ask you another: Why aren’t you chained up like the rest?”
Antaeos frowned and poked about in his nose with his thumb. It was a very large thumb, and his nostril appeared to have grown to accommodate it. “Well, you see,” he said at last, “ever since I lost that wrestling match to Hercules, I just haven’t had much fight in me. I don’t think the Boss figures I’m much of a threat.” He pursed his lips on one side of his face and nodded. “I am, though.”
“You know, I’m a wrestler myself,” I said, sidling up to him with my thumbs in my belt.
“Is that so?” he answered. He looked me over with a critical eye. “I’d heard as much. But you don’t seem to have the shoulders for it.”
“No,” I admitted, “but it takes more than shoulders.”
“You don’t really have the legs either.”
I forced a smile and nodded.
“But you’re short, and that helps.”
“And I can think on my toes,” I added, feeling somewhat self-conscious.
“That can go a long way in wrestling,” he conceded, but his voice had the ring of polite condescension.
“I once wrestled the giant Ajax to a draw,” I added. “I took him out behind the knees when he stopped for breath. I might even have pinned him if the match hadn’t been called.”
“A giant?” he exclaimed. “You wrestled a giant?”
“Yep.”
“A giant like me?”
“Well, not as big as you, but he was pretty big.”
“You say you took him out behind the knees when he wasn’t looking.”
“I was in a tight spot.”
“Fighting dirty is what that is.”
“That’s fighting to win,” I said, “and mind you, this was Ajax, the Bulwark of the Achaeans.”
“I have heard of him,” Antaeos said. “He is a giant I would like to meet.”
“Alas,” I said, and the regret was genuine. “He was on his way here with me, but I had to leave him behind.”
The giant assumed a thoughtful look. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “If you tell me where you last saw him, I’ll let you go without smashing you.”
“I have to warn you . . .” (I didn’t have to warn him, and I wondered even then why I felt the need.) “The odds of finding him alive are rather slim.”
“No matter. It’s an excuse to be up and about.”
“And you wouldn’t hurt him if you did find him?”
“Goodness, no. I’d just like to wrestle him.”
I looked at the giant again in disbelief. “Pardon my candor, but you aren’t much of a sentry.”
“No,” he said as he worked an enormous finger into one enormous ear. “But you can’t be good at everything.”
I wanted to ask more, but it seemed to me that I was already pressing my luck. Instead, I told him where I had left Ajax, and without so much as a good-bye, he stepped over me into the mist.
CHAPTER 12
LAKE COCYTUS
OF THE MANY strange encounters I have observed in the course of my long life,” said Proteus, now suddenly at my shoulder, “that is surely one of the strangest.”
Of course, I could smell him long before I saw him. “Honestly, you don’t smell that?” I asked.
He raised his sparse eyebrows and shook his head.
I grunted and unrolled Chiron’s map.
“Oh, don’t be sour. Surely you did not expect me to help you fight a giant.”
I grunted again, but now because I was thinking.
“What is it?” he asked, matching my mood.
“There’s something wrong with the map,” I said. “It says here that we are standing in the Lake of Cocytus.”
Proteus looked at his feet. “We are not.”
I looked up at him. “No, Proteus, you’re quite right. We are not standing in the Lake of Cocytus. And might I commend you on the ripping genius of that insight.”
“Really, now?” sneered Proteus, mimicking my sarcasm. “Which of us blindly jumped into this lake without looking?”
“Neither,” said I. “We jumped onto it—and it’s not a lake.”
“And a good thing too, because you did not think to consult your map first, did you?”
“Yeah, well, I handled the fall better than you did.”
Proteus frowned. “I would have been fine if your map had been correct. Pelicans are excellent swimmers.”
“Not so good on land, though, it would seem.”
Proteus shook his head and took several steps into the mist. Then both feet slid out from under him. He landed flat on his back with a crunch.
“Oh,” he groaned from where he lay, “I think I know where we are.”
“So you do now?”
“Yes,” he said. I heard bones popping back into place. “This is Lake Cocytus.”
I scratched my head for a moment, and then it hit me. “Ah! Of course! The lake is frozen. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You don’t have my ‘ripping genius’.”
“Whatever the case,” said I, rolling up the map, “one thing is clear: we have arrived at our destination.”
“Strange, though,” continued Proteus, still flat on his back. “I am finding it hard to congratulate myself.”
“We have arrived,” I continued, “at the ninth—and last—circle of Hell. This is where the most abhorrent members of the human race are sent when they die.”
“Such as?”
“Well . . . traitors, I expect. Really despicable sorts. Though it doesn’t look so bad to me.”
“Bad enough,” answered Proteus, still supine.
I stood up carefully and shouldered my shield. I shuffled over to Proteus. “Good or bad, we’ve no time for naps.” I poked him with my toe. “Get up. We have a long march ahead of us.” Proteus snarled, rolled over, slowly assumed the form of a great white bear, and plodded past me into the mist.
I turned to follow, but my sandals proved no match for the ice. I hadn’t advanced a step before I was on my rump again. Then I slipped getting to my feet and dropped my shield. When I stooped to retrieve it, I noticed odd shapes beneath the surface of the ice—blurry patchworks of brown and gray. I looked more closely, spat, and rubbed a little window into the frost with the edge of my tunic. And there, just below the surface, an ashen face glared up at me.
Corpses. The ice was littered with corpses. Everywhere, just beneath the surface, frozen into contortions of agony. Human bodies. Here and there a twitching hand, a foot, a face occasionally broke the surface like stones in a pond.
I gasped, leapt backward, fell down, scrambled to my feet again, panting.
“Proteus!” I shouted. “Come back!”
I slipped again and this time rose slowly, closing my eyes to focus on swallowing the panic. “Miserable man,” I moaned. “Miserable! Nothing but misery.” I walked carefully back to my shield and plucked it from the ice, trying not to look at the shapes beneath.
I called for Proteus again, and he appeared, plodding toward me through the mist. Despite myself, I was relieved to see him.
“Are you coming?” he said.
“There’s a . . . there are people in the ice.”
“Yes,” he said, lowering his great bear’s head and sniffing. “I noticed that.”
I swallowed hard and did my best to adopt a casual demeanor. “Regardless, my feet don’t adapt to ice quite as well as yours. You’ll have to slow down if you expect me to keep up.”
He growled. “Oh, just climb on.”
I frowned at him.
“Do
it. We will get there faster if you let me do the walking. I will not cross you—not yet. I am not ready. Besides, I owe you for sparing my life—you know . . . earlier . . . when I was a pelican.”
I accepted his offer but kept a wary hand on my sword, and in this manner, we began our slow trek across the ice, Proteus sniffing and growling at the thick fog, I watching him for any hint that he might turn on me.
Despite my fears, an odd sense of well-being crept over me, inspired perhaps by the cool air and mist, the plodding of Proteus’ furry feet, and the ubiquitous monochrome of white on white. Before long, I settled into an agreeable sort of stupor. For his part, though, Proteus seemed to want to talk.
“Mmm,” he sighed. “Mm hmm hmm.” Then a little louder, “Oh, hmm.” And a little louder still, “I wonder . . .”
“Oh, by the immortal gods, what is it?” I snapped.
He swung his head around and eyed me over his shoulder. “Goodness! I thought perhaps you had fallen asleep up there.”
“Right. Right. What do you want?”
“Me? Why, nothing. Never have. Certainly you, of all people, have nothing to offer me.”
“Fine, then.”
“And yet . . .”
I growled. “Have out with it, will you?”
“Goodness! You would think I’d be the one to act like a bear.”
I growled again.
“Well, I was wondering—just wondering, you know—why in fact you did not kill me back there when you had the chance.”
“A better question is why I’m not killing you now,” I snapped.
He chuckled. “No, really. Tell me—one liar to another—why did you not kill me when I was trying to un-pelican myself? You know how to hurt me now.”
“It is not the way of a Greek to strike a man when he is helpless.”
“Did that ever stop you before?”
“Careful, old man. I’ll kill you now.”
He laughed. “Well, you cannot kill me now. I would snap into an eagle and flit away.”
“Except that we’re on ice.”
He swung his head back around again to look at me over the other shoulder. “You are a sharp one,” he said. “But the fog has thickened. Still, if I knew not better, I should say you felt pity for me.”
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