Dangerous Secrets (99 page)

A few minutes later, after I’d hardly gone
another couple hundred yards, I heard a mix of raised voices and then the
crashing, yelping sounds of someone breaking through underbrush and falling
down. I turned to scan my surroundings. The hooting got louder.

I saw a youth, a sheepskin tied with a thong
over his shoulder, crouching among the white boulders. He saw me looking at him
and his eyes widened. Then he sprang to his feet, running away down the
hillside, rocks and stones bouncing down in front of him. Somehow he kept his
balance. He started yelping, “Captain! Captain!” foolishly, as though Eurytos
were waiting around the next rock.

“He’ll be too out of breath to deliver the
message,” I said out loud. I knew there was at least one more pair of eyes
watching me. I yawned again, stretching my arms wide then bringing my fists in
to make all the muscles along my back and shoulders bulge up like melons on a
vine.

“Hercules....” someone said, his whisper
echoing off the stones. I couldn’t see him but knew that here was one guard who
wouldn’t be joining the fight.

“There’ll be amnesty for anyone who returns to
the Palace by nightfall,” I said idly to the shadowless stones. “King Temas
knows you are not evil, even if your heads were weak.”

There was no answer. I walked on. After a bit,
I looked back toward the top of the hill I’d just come down. A figure stood
there, dark against the chalky path. He hesitated, then gave a half-wave. I
saluted him with two fingers waved in the air and he turned to go back toward
town.

“One down, nine to go.”

Though the hooting had been intended to alert
the next two guards, the shouting, falling and yelping would have worked just
as well. The next two were waiting among some trees that shaded the path where
it leveled out. My eyes took an instant to adjust but my ears were fine. I
heard the creak as an arrow was drawn back on the string and the knock of a
spear-butt against a tree trunk and the soft, involuntary ‘damn’ that went with
it.

I drifted easily to the side to avoid the arrow
which whistled over my left shoulder. The spear-wielder came out with a
ululating yell and a six foot spear. Not the best choice for close-quarter
fighting. I felt no need to take the sword from the scabbard resting between my
shoulders.

I grabbed the base of the metal spearhead and
yanked, forcing him to continue his charge right past me into the sunlight, his
legs flying out in front of him.

Reversing the spear in one cartwheeling motion,
I threw it straight, pinning the archer’s cloak to a tree with it. He fainted,
hanging from the neck-strap.

Walking back, I picked up the former
spear-carrier in one hand, dusting him off with the other as if he were a
fallen-down child. I told him to tell his unconscious friend about the amnesty.
He faithfully promised he would.

“How much farther is it to your camp?” I asked.
“Am I right in assuming your captain is there?”

He nodded, his teeth chattering as if with
cold. “A-another mile, down by the coast. There’s a-a kind of fortress. The
rocks piled up all around there.”

“Sounds like a good place to hole up.” I put
him down gently.

By now his comrade was awake again, twisting
violently to rip himself free of the spear, choking himself uselessly. It had
penetrated past the point, leaving a large hole in his cloak. “Ask a nice lady
named
Doris
to mend that,” I said as
I broke the shaft and yanked him free.

“
Doris
?”
he asked.

“Old woman, wears black.” I helped him up. “If
you hurry, you’ll make it back before the harpy starts flying around again.” I
picked up his bow from the ground and snapped it over my knee and handed him
the bits dangling from the string. “Hurry up.”

Maybe that was a bit cruel but it got them
moving.

So far, I’d only met young men who had chosen
badly when deciding to rebel against their rightful leader. I could see in
their eyes their desperate desire to return to the past, to set things right. I
never knew a youth who didn’t regret big decisions like that almost the moment
they were made. They probably had been praying every night to Father-Zeus to
make everything go back to the way it had been before Eurytos had killed those
first two guards, boys like themselves but with the courage to say ‘no’,
foolhardy though it had proved.

I’d come now to once-plowed fields which should
have been golden with sprouting wheat. But the fields were overgrown, poppies
drooping and bind-weed crawling up and over stalks. Some places the wind or the
rain had beaten down the stalks; other places deer or sheep had trampled and
chomped.

A bit further on and the smell of burning
lingered, reminding me of other fields, other sunny days turned dark with
smoke. I didn’t know if it was a lightning strike or the hand of man that had
set these fields alight.

Then I heard a crackle, a burning roar and a
scream and I had my answer as to the cause of the fires.

There were three of them, one a bald hulk with
a face like a burlap sack. He was laughing, standing back a little from the
others, having a grand time, urging on the other two to evil deeds. At first, I
hoped this was Eurytos but I saw both his hands were human.

They’d captured a girl, a peasant, her hair
bound close to her head with a cloth. Her hands were tied to a stake so she had
room to run a few steps either way but no chance at freedom. She twisted her
thin body and tried to bring one hand to free the other from the rough ropes
even as they cut mercilessly into her wrists.

A fire had been kindled, just a small fire. The
two younger men were busying themselves there and at first I couldn’t make out
what they were doing. All three men’s attention was fixed on it so they never
noticed me as I came up behind them. The shepherd boy had been wise enough not
to come this way. These louts wouldn’t care if his message was urgent. They
were out to play nasty games.

“Now you take the rocks and flick ‘em at her.
Go on!” the big bald one said. “With luck, you’ll set her dress on fire! That’s
a sight worth seeing!”

“But they’re hot....” One of the younger ones had
the kind of whining voice that make you long to drown the owner in a bucket to
make up for parental oversight. “They’re too hot. I’m not burning my fingers
for sport!”

“Dog! Cowardly dog! I’ll show you!” The other
stood gilded by the firelight, with a straight profile and the tight curling
locks sculptors give to statues of Adonis. He bent and fumbled, swearing, for
one of the stones resting on the edge of the firepit. He stood up, juggling the
too-hot stone between his hands and looking around for applause.

He saw me about one instant before I closed my
fist over his. I’d caught his right, the one with the rock in it. I squeezed,
holding on despite his thrashing.

The whiny one stared, opening and closing his
mouth in much the same way he probably chewed, as pasty as if he’d seen a
nightmare in the daytime. I hoped to haunt his dreams for a long, long time. He
backed away fast, tripping over his own sandal lacings. I let go of him. He
fell to his knees, keening over his crushed and burnt fingers.

The big one leapt on me, trying to wrap his arm
around my throat. I grappled on to his hairless, tight arm with my free hand.
An elemental throw, catching him on my hip, tossed him over my head to land on
the other side of the fire.

Even the girl stopped struggling to stare.

I dismissed the snuffly one from my thoughts,
concentrating on the big man. His girth was mostly gut which meant a blow there
would dissipate into the fat. As for wrestling, I already knew he’d be
slippery. I’d caught a whiff of his greasy skin as he’d flown past. I wiped my
hand on my side.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“I’m the one you’re supposed to be watching for
instead of playing these sick games. Why not send these boys to tell Eurytos
I’m on my way?”

“Nobody needs to bother Eurytos. I can take a
dozen overgrown monkeys like you and never break a sweat. Let ‘em stay and get
an education.”

He started to circle around the fire like an
experienced fighting man, one foot feeling out the ground before he lifted the
other. He crouched low to present less of a target. He held his hands in the
classic ‘grasping an iron-ball’ form, ready to grab onto me no matter what hold
I tried first.

“Come on, you bastard!” he cried, showing his
pointy teeth in a fierce grimace but his eyes shifted behind me to where the
pretty one stood. That glance betrayed his worst fear, the fear of looking like
a fool in front of his accomplices. Any pain I’d inflict would be nothing
compared to the agony of that humiliation.

I jumped right through the fire at him, hitting
him in the neck with my elbow to stop blood flow, sweeping a leg behind his to
steal his balance, and coming around with my other fist to snap his head back.
He went down hard, the air going out of him in a whoosh. I stood on him a
moment, thoughtfully wiping my feet on his belly.

“What kind of wrestling rules are those?” the
whiny one asked as I stepped off the body.

“Mine.”

I took two steps toward him and he scrambled
away on his hands and knees.
‶
It wasn′t me,″ he gasped out.
‶
I
just did what they said. I didn′t want to!″

Then I heard the slithering ring of a sword
being drawn behind me.

Chapter 6

The biggest and bravest man can be brought down
by any coward with a rock. But not by some idiot with a sword.

This sword must have been the property of the
bigger and balder villain. In the hands of this younger one, the tip wavered
like a bird drunk on fermented figs. His farm-trained arms shook so that he had
to use both hands to hold it even so steady as that. It showed a tendency to
point down even as he used all his strength.

“Never hold it like that,” I said, coming
closer.

“What? Stay back. I’ll run you through! I
will!” His voice went high, a plucked string on the harp of hysteria.

“All right, then. I’ll just stand here while
you saw at me. Should take you about a week.”

“Don’t you laugh at me!”

He decided that now, while I stood at least a
dozen feet away, was a good time to take a swing at me. Despite the effort of
just holding the sword, he lifted it a little higher and tried one of those
swirling, two-handed exercises that look so very impressive. I confess I was in
something of a sweat, worried that he might lop off a limb...one of his.

When he finished, he had just about enough
breath to say ‘aha!’ After a moment of self-admiration, he remembered to point
it at me again.

By then, however, I was close enough to slap it
out of his hands. I wasn’t about to pay him the compliment of crossing swords
with him. It fell blade-flat on the ground, giving off a dull ring.

With one hand around his skinny throat, I lifted
him up to look me in the eye. His cavalry boots, ridiculously ornate for field
conditions, kicked uselessly around my knees. “Now, you listen to me, you
pipsqueak....”

“Oh, don’t hurt him!”

Amazed, I turned around. The girl, her arms at
full stretch, leaned toward me, imploringly. “Don’t hurt him, please. Please
don’t.”

I had involuntarily tightened my fingers when
she’d spoken. The boy scrabbled frantically at my hand, his pretty face turning
blue and his eyes bulging. I let go. He fell to the ground, gasping.

I picked up the sword and released the girl.
Still trailing the cut ropes, she ran to his side and flung herself down, her
hand resting tenderly on his back. She leaned down to see his face. “Oh, Yanni!
Are you all right?”

“Yanni?” I looked heavenward. “I bet he’s the
only son of a widowed mother, too.”

He was sitting up and coughing now, his hands
to his bruised throat. But his scornful eyes told how little he appreciated the
girl’s concern.

When I came closer, she spread her arms around
him defensively. “Don’t hurt him any more!”

“How did you get here, miss? Did he bring you?”
I gave him a little dig in the thigh with my foot.

“Yes...but he didn’t mean to hurt me. It was
just...it was all that one’s idea,” she cried, pointing to the bald one, who
still lay flat on his back, cradling his middle. Seeing us looking, he rolled
away from us, making noises as if he were choking up his last meal.

Yanni pushed the girl roughly aside. “It wasn’t
his idea; it was mine, all mine. You’re a fool for me, like all you silly
girls. But what do I want with some filthy little peasant who reeks of goats?”

“You don’t mean that, Yanni!” she said,
clasping her arms around him.

“Oh, don’t I!” He put a hand under her chin and
shoved her over. He stood up, tears of rage and pain tracking down his face.
“I’m going to get away from this rotten island. King Eurytos has promised to
make me an ambassador. He says I’d be good at it. I’ll marry the first princess
I see, if she’s as ugly as Hekate, and then I′ll be a king myself. Then
I’ll show you...I’ll show ‘em all!”

He looked the part, I’ll grant him that. As he
stood there, his head thrown back as he posed like a statue of some young
athlete, I could almost see a wreath of laurel or olive decorating his smooth
brow. But a strange expression of surprise and dread wrinkled his forehead and
aged him in an instant. His face distorted into a mask of terror. A deep
shudder rippled through his body, like a palsy-shake.

The girl looked past me and screamed so
violently that it seemed to surpass mere sound. At the apex of it, her eyes
turned white and she fainted.

Only my instinct made me dive to the side,
hurling me down onto my hip in the dirt. Above me as I rolled, rearing up
against the noon-time sky, was the flat, triangular head of a pure white snake,
as long as three horses, its poison spittle already flying through the air.

If I had not dodged, it would have splattered
me. I writhed in the dirt to smother any that might have struck my back but I
felt no burning. I had been in time.

Yanni, poor bastard, turned to run too late,
his mouth still wide open. The greenish-yellow froth had hit him all down the
left side and clung to him like a wet cloth. He raised one slime-covered hand
before his eyes, an expression of horrified wonder replacing his fear.

“Drop and roll, boy!” I shouted.

If he’d obeyed, he might have survived, though
without his good looks.

Instead, he drew breath to scream again as the
pain hit him. Some of the venom went in with the air. The pus-colored froth
turned red, then black, spreading tendrils to wrap around and consume his
flesh.

With a hiss like the rising steam from the
poisonous waters of Lake Aegina, the snake uncoiled, segment after segment
flowing past above me. It unhinged its jaws in mid-spring and swallowed Yanni
whole before the boy’s body had time to do more than sag.

“Yum!” it said, whipping around to face me.
“You’re a big second course, Monkey, but I can always save half of you for
breakfast!”

I fought the urge to turn, to look to see
whether the fat, bald guy had genuinely transformed. I knew he now stood before
me, balancing on his tail, weaving back and forth to keep me hypnotized and
unsure. There was no need to confirm it but I found it surprisingly difficult
not to do so. Evil had not yet departed from this island.

The girl moaned, coming awake. Her eyelids
flickered and she opened them sleepily, trying to focus on what she saw. When
she realized there was a sixteen-foot-long snake not three rods away, she bit
her lip til it bled, knowing that any further screaming would be useless. She
looked at me, but I didn’t dare even nod at her. I had to keep the beast’s
attention on me.

I raised the sword and it laughed, ripples
running up and down the long body. The girl started to crawl away but the tail came
around, knocking the props from under her. “I mustn’t forget dessert!” the
snake declared.

It bent over her. “Such a fresh morsel...how
can I bear to wait?” The long tongue, forked and dripping, flickered through
the air above her. “Mmmm, the smell of fear! So delicious, like the best
cheese!”

“You’ll love me, then,” I said loudly. “I’m
turning to jelly.”

The head twisted toward me, the body following,
coil upon coil. Though it was very definitely a snake, there remained some
vestige of the man he’d been in the eyes. The pupils were not entirely
elongated and there was more of an eyebrow than is usual in reptiles. Not that
I’ve spent a lot of time studying them.

What was completely reptilian was the thing’s
speed. It could twist and change direction without a pause and cover the ground
faster than a running horse. The ground was too open to give me cover by
leading it through trees and we were a long time away from the comfort of
concealing night. It was going to be a stand-up fight but I couldn’t match his
reaction time.

“Don’t run away,” it said. “It makes the thighs
tough.”

“Hera knows I’m sorry about that. Nothing worse
than tough thighs,” I said. “What were you before? A cook in a Carthigian
whore-house?”

“I was a snake, sunning myself on the rocks in
the southern sun. I devoured all that came, insects, mice, my own children. I
grew. I continue to grow.”

It snapped at me. I jumped aside and stumbled
on the loose stones piled near the fire. It laughed. “Men came to slay me. I
devoured them too and found I knew all that they had known. I wanted to see
this world of men.”

“Do you know any cats?”“Cats? Cats? I have
eaten them; what of it?”

“Just curious.” So far, I hadn’t swung the
sword, merely holding it in front of me to keep off the great head. I knew I
was only going to get one chance. If I missed, I was going on the bill of fare.

This sword was heavy, ill-made, and I could see
that the edge was much too dull for my liking. There was no time to drop it and
draw my own. I couldn’t leave myself open against a foe that moved so fast it
almost seemed to be in two places at the same time.

“How did you come to be walking around in human
guise?” I asked both to gain a few minutes and because I really wanted to know.

“Eurytos has been given the power to change creatures
like myself into humans, for a time. He came before me, bearing such delicious
gifts, young, fresh and sweet. While my belly was full, he told me all the
wonders that awaited me. So I agreed.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

The forked tongue flickered again as if to be
rid of a foul taste. “You eat very delicious things, cream sauce and
pomegranate jewels and those wonderful, wonderful stuffed grape leaves. But for
the rest -- ugh! How can you stand it? You all smell so bad, and those tiny, cramped
bodies, always too hot or cold....”

With a sudden slashing leap, it curved around
me so that I had to jump quickly to continue to face the giant head. It was
studying me with even greater intensity than hunger. “Eurytos offered me that
ugly body, the body of a friend of his. He had nothing better on hand. But
you...you, Monkey, can never be cramped in that body.”

“I’m not as big as I look.”

“Big enough.” It struck again, throwing another
loop. I jumped high, pulling in my legs to clear the coil. As I came down, I
slashed, but the sword merely bounced off the overlapping scales along the
outside.

If I hadn’t much cared for the idea of being
eaten, I liked being replaced inside my own body by that creature even less.
Where would the collection of ideas, prejudices, and memories known to me as
‘Eno’ go? I had no interest in finding out. Metaphysics is not my arena.

We were both breathing hard now, ready for
battle. But it couldn’t spit for fear of wrecking my body and I couldn’t cut
because it wouldn’t do any good anyway.

“I don’t need sleep,” it said. “I have eaten
well. I will run you to exhaustion then take the shell to Eurytos. He will
re-animate your body and it will be mine.”

“I’m not that kind of a fellow,” I said but I
knew what it said was true. It could kill me that way.

“Already your muscles are burning,” it said,
weaving that great head back and forth, fixing me with those half-human,
half-reptilian eye each as big as my face. “Your heart is thundering like the
cattle of Geryon across the plains. And your thirst is a torment which cannot
be slaked but which grows greater with each breath.”

I laughed. “Save it,” I said. “I dined very
well with much to drink and my only failing right now is a need to relieve
myself. Which I will do as soon as your head lies beside your body.”

Of course, this was just boasting. The sweat
beaded along my hairline had already begun to gather and run down to my jaw. My
tongue felt swollen and tended to stick to the roof of my mouth. I’m stronger
than most, capable of great endurance, but I am mortal.

The snake knew it and gave another hissing
chuckle. “You are a poor liar. You’ll do better once I have mastered your
form.”

Apollo seemed to have parked his chariot close
overhead for the heat of full noon poured down upon us. Time seemed to slow
like resin dripping down a tree trunk. Even the buzzing of the cicadas had
died. There was only the hot gold of the wheat-field, the weight of the day,
and the pitiless glitter of my enemy’s eyes willing me to fall, to fail, to
surrender. No friendly spirit of tree or waterfall appeared to save my skin as
it had before the fight in the temple. Neither of us dared move now for the
first strike would mean victory or defeat.

Infinitely distant, infinitely lonely, almost
beyond the gift of hearing, the harpy’s keening shriek tore the sky.

And the snake flinched!

“Damn that beast!” it snarled, which, to my
mind, was the pot calling the kettle hard names. “As soon as that idiot boy
Temas is dead, I’m doing to hunt that thing down and choke it.”

“A pity you won’t have the chance.”

It eased itself a little, side to side, never
blinking or looking away. “Why doesn’t it bother you?”

“Does it bother you?”

“Of course it does. Beastly sound. We can
hardly sleep at night in the camp. It seems to infest the air over there.”

That was good information but it didn’t gladden
my heart. The bride-money seemed no closer to my hands. First, I had to get out
of this. If the harpy cried again, I would have to be ready to act.

Naturally, now that it would be useful, the
harpy went silent. But as everything else was also hushed, the snake and I soon
heard another sound, small and muffled. It was the sound of weeping, muffled as
though someone were trying desperately to stifle the rattling sobs, but still
audible to a man and a creature with nerves on the stretch.

“Boy,” the snake said, voice dripping with the
venom of contempt. The sobbing stopped but through fear, not comfort. “Boy, is
that you? Weeping like a woman...I expected nothing better of you.”

A few stalks of wheat shivered. I could imagine
the whiny boy crouched down there, hoping against discovery, knowing it was too
late. Perhaps he was praying for the kindly earth to open and swallow him up, a
far better fate than Yanni’s.

Still the snake didn’t take its eyes off me.
“Come out, boy, come out, come out wherever you are.”