The Trials of Hercules (25 page)

Pain sears through me faster than my eyes can register the birds’ swooping attack. Claws rip into my shoulder. Beaks peck into my hands. The whoosh of flapping, black-feathered wings swarms my head. I drop the rattle, but the birds continue their assault. The crow-like things overwhelm my vision so all I can see is blood and black. All I can hear are angry caws as they fight for position to drive beaks and claws into my face, neck, ears, head, and shoulders.

I beat at the birds, pounding them with my fists, but this only diverts the attention of a few of them who stab their dagger-like beaks into my hands instead of my head.

“Stop. Keep your hands down,” Herc shouts. Against all instinct, I lower my hands. Bird bodies smash up against my head but then begin falling away one after another. Once I can see light again, the remaining birds flap away, screeching at one another.

At my feet lay seven of the devil birds, blood dripping out of them into the swamp. I kick one and then the other until the boardwalk is clear of the sight of them. In his hand, Herc holds his dagger.

“You were stabbing at my head?” I yell.

“It worked,” he says with a shrug.

My face throbs with scratches and gashes, but I pick up the rattle, my hands shaking from pain and fear. The birds come again. The sound of their flapping wings makes me want to fling the rattle into the swamp and run. Using all my willpower, I hold tight to the noise maker and continue twirling it back and forth. The sky is no longer black with the birds’ wings and the devils now approach us more cautiously. I’m finally able count them. Twelve. I look to the stash of arrows Herc has left. Twelve.

“You’re going to have to put on quite a show,” I say. A few crows plunge toward us but make no direct attack. Still, it sends a chill through me to have them close enough to feel the wind of their wings against my cheeks. “Don’t let those things touch me again.”

Herc’s first three arrows find the breasts of three birds in succession and send them splashing lifeless into the swamp. The fourth only grazes a wing, but the poison at the arrow’s tip is enough to kill the bird. The fifth arrow pierces a neck and the sixth punctures a leg. When Herc shoots his seventh arrow, the bird it’s intended for swoops down, diving under the arrow that continues its trajectory until the weapon arcs and pierces nothing but the surface of the murky water. Herc curses and, barely taking time to aim, delivers three more arrows into the sky. He takes out three more birds, but only with grazing nicks.

“Easy,” I say over the sound of the rattle. “Keep your calm.”

Herc takes a deep breath and shakes the tension out of his shoulders. In the time his bow is lowered, the three remaining birds draw in closer. My hands tremble on the rattle. I try to hold it tighter, but my palms are sweating so profusely I can hardly keep a grip on the thing’s smooth surface. Every caw, every whoosh as a bird whizzes over my head makes me think all the flesh of my face will soon be in their gullets.

Two of the three remaining birds fly in tandem toward us. Herc raises his bow, taking time to aim. I can see what he hopes to do, drive a single arrow through two birds. It isn’t impossible. I’ve seen him take down two ducks with one shot, but those had been placid waterfowl. These are war birds.

The crows angle themselves to fly side by side. Herc takes the shot. Only one bird crashes into the swamp as the other swoops aside giving out a laughing caw.

One arrow, two birds. Herc hesitates and they careen toward us.

“Just let them attack me again,” I say with fear raising the pitch of my voice. “Stab them like you did before. You can’t risk wasting the arrows.”

He doesn’t respond. Instead, he holds the final arrow taut in his bowstring, watching along the arrow’s shaft as the birds narrow in on us.

Two beaks and four claw-filled feet dive in. Five arm lengths. Four arm lengths. My raw skin screams at me to run, to cover myself from another attack. Three arm lengths. Two arm lengths.

“Behind me now,” Herc commands.

Still clutching the rattle, I dash behind Herc. The birds, forced to change their direction to aim at the metallic clang, cross in front of one another. Herc fires.

As if all the world has slowed, I watch the arrow. The poisoned blood at the tip seems to flame red as it pierces through the lead bird’s breast. The second bird adjusts its wings’ angle to steer away and avoid the body of its companion. The proximity and force of the shot forces the arrow through the chest of the lead bird, driving the body of the creature back. Before the rear bird can swerve away, his companion’s carcass barrels into him. The protruding arrow tip slips into and through the bird’s neck. Both birds drop onto the boardwalk, skewered on the final arrow.

Herc places his hands over mine. In my panic I’ve continued to twirl the rattle. His hands stop my twirling and all is quiet. After so much noise, the silence overwhelms my ears. Blood trickles across my cheeks and neck as my limbs shake. I meet Herc’s eyes.

“Regardless of what Athena says,” I say, “I think you may be insane.”

He turns, a look of worry crosses his face as he sees the damage the birds have done to me. In an instant, he drops his bow and pulls me to him in a tight hug.

“No, I’m not.”

18

E
URY

The morning after my final celebration day greets me with a thudding headache. Regardless the price of the Illamosian wine, it never fails to leave me suffering the next day. But what can one expect after downing four bottles over the course of a night’s festivities? My agony doesn’t improve when Baruch’s knock rattles my bed chamber door and bounces off the delicate walls of my skull.

There can be only one reason he would disturb me at such an hour: Hera is waiting.

I untangle myself from Adneta’s long limbs and a blurry memory of her and Baruch dancing to a languid tune wisps through my pounding head. It’s so good of her to include the lesser people in our revels. I kiss her on the forehead, grab a silken robe from the floor, and step out of the room into the hallway.

“Excellency, Hera—” Baruch starts, but I put up a hand to silence him.

“No doubt was in my mind that it was Hera who sent you pounding on my door when my brain is already pounding against my skull.”

“I’ve prepared your clothes,” Baruch says trying to guide me toward my dressing chamber door.

“Forget it. If she insists on rousing me from my bed before noon, she’ll just need to appreciate that I bother to cover myself at all.”

Baruch remains silent and gives a slight bow as I brush past him. So much for the delightful festivities I’d had. All those revelries, all for me. The feasting, the games in the arena, people cheering my name even if not as boisterously as I would prefer, and my cousins completely out of sight.

The only moment when the foul taste of my cousins hit me was yesterday morning when Baruch had handed me a folded piece of parchment stamped with the seal of Stephos Augeus—a horse head surrounded by grape clusters. I’d broken the seal and given a half-hearted glance at the contents. The words of praise for my two cousins from Phylos Augeus were enough to make me hurl a wine bottle—empty, of course—against the wall of my study as my nose gave one of its betraying pulses. I wadded up the letter and threw it to the ground hoping Herc and Iolalus would be enjoying all the comforts the swamps had to offer. I have to admit the birds were a stroke of genius. Unless Adneta has developed a taste for crow meat, there’ll be no gift for her coming from the chore, but it did keep the great heroes out of the city another day—I consider it a gift to myself.

My head throbs with each step up the stairs to the Gods’ Room. I bend over on the twenty-eighth step and suck in several deep breaths to keep from throwing up. By the thirty-seventh, I’m using the rail to pull myself up hoping to ease the
thud, thud, thud
echoing in my head from my footsteps. It doesn’t. By the fortieth step I’m pressing my head between both hands to keep it from bursting. When I pull open the door, the blindingly bright sunlight sends a harpy screaming through my brain. It takes several moments for my eyes to adjust well enough to see Hera. Even her beauty can’t dispel my painful annoyance.

“Well?” I ask.

“It’s your cousin’s birthday. I want him wed and out of my House.”

Lost in the enjoyment my own festivities, I’d forgotten Herc’s birthday. He was actually born only a few hours after me and throughout our childhood I was made to celebrate my birthday with Alcmena’s bastard. My grandfather insisted it would bring us closer together. The year he died, the year my mother took regency and I became Solon, I changed Herc’s birthday to officially be two days after mine so I would no longer have to share my day with him. My thirteenth was the first birthday I truly looked forward to.

From rumors going around the city, Herc is desired by many women and I should have made a decent profit taking bribes—
donations
, I call them—from women who want to ensure their name is selected from the lottery. After the first few tasks, many applicants had put in their name, but I was so angered by his popularity, I threw their requests into the fire and have yet to earn a single drachar from what could possibly be the biggest round of wedding bribery in Portaceae’s history.

To drum up some fervor, rally a few of Portaceae’s wealthiest single women, and quietly accept their donations, I will need to delay Herc’s wedding day for at least a week. Hera can’t argue with that. After all, her only hurry is to get Herc away from Iole and I’m already seeing to that with the tasks.

“I haven’t had time to pick a wife for him,” I say. “Give me a week or two to sort out the paperwork.”

“There’s no need. I have someone in mind.”

Damn the gods. I know I gave her the task, but with her hatred of him, I hadn’t expected Hera to give Herc or his nuptials a second thought.

“Who did you have in mind?”

“Deianira Devos.”

I can’t help but laugh at Hera’s choice and then regret making the sound for the screeches of pain it sends through my head. Deianira Devos has a body that is straighter than some stretches of the Osterian Road and a pile of hair that grows like a rampant blackberry shrub over her head. Although she’s known for an aggressive passion for bed sport that makes even the brothel whores blush, she also carries a possessive streak to rival Hera’s own jealousy. Her desperate clinging sends men who sample her fruits running after only a few tastes. But, if married, Herc cannot run.

I take Hera’s hand and bend to kiss her fingers.

“A delightful choice,” I say with a smile.

The next morning, as Adneta and I breakfast in the courtyard, Baruch delivers two crows with dangerously sharp beaks. The birds dangle from an arrow he is holding by its feathered end. A disgusted look crinkles his normally placid face.

“A new bit of décor for the garden?” I quip.

“These were left at the door.”

A week ago, gods, two days ago I’d have throttled someone for Herc’s insolence. To not even present them to me directly would have been an outrage. But the knowledge of his upcoming nuptials and his potential misery within them has me in too good a mood to be bothered by the stiff and stinking carcasses before me.

“I see my cousins have returned. Good. Send a letter to the House of Hera stating that Herc must make himself presentable at the arena this evening. He has his wedding to attend, after all.” Baruch nods and turns to leave the courtyard. Before he can get too far, I snap my fingers to call him back. “And when you deliver the message, be certain it passes through the fingers of the head priestess.”

19

I
OLE

The news hits me harder than if one of Portaceae City’s buildings had collapsed onto me. It was inevitable though. Whenever a polis grows weak there will be another polis ready to claim its land and, more often than not, it’s the Areans who are the first to strike.

As head Herene, I will have to be the one to forward the news to the Solon and help decide a course of action. If he will only take what money is left over from the extravagance of his celebration festivities, we can use it to repair the city walls and to hire more vigiles to form a larger army. But how much is left?

People, always glad for a distraction, had enjoyed the daytime festivities, but when Eury invited only the wealthiest of Osteria’s families to his private dinner parties, the grumbling began. It was from numerous pairs of lips that I heard rumors of the vigiles naming Herc Solon as soon as he’d served his tribute, and some lips were saying they wouldn’t bother to wait that long. It would go against all precedent, but my position as head priestess could allow me to turn those rumors into reality.

And something needs to happen soon. Portaceae’s vigiles and volunteers can’t hold off the Areans long. The people from Ares’s polis are the most aggressive and land hungry of Osteria. When Portaceae was strong the Areans would never have dared to invade, but three days ago they had crossed the eastern border and, using poison-tipped arrows, had slaughtered anyone who stood against them in Nemea. With Portaceae’s weakened finances, the vigiles are spread too sparsely across the polis leaving Portaceae’s outer areas poorly defended. The Areans have claimed Nemea as their own. If this news is current, they seem to have settled there for now, but how long will it take before they reach Portaceae City?

I would have to plead to Hera to intervene. Only she has a chance at convincing Ares to reign in his people. Let the Areans snatch land from the Middish or the unoccupied lands between the poli, not from other Osterians. But will she listen, or will my pleas fall on ears that seem deaf to any news regarding the downfall of her polis?

I stare at the map of Osteria on my wall, tracing the line the Areans will most likely take to Portaceae City while Maxinia clacks away at her abacus and curses at the results. A knock at the open door startles me.