Timothy Boggs - Hercules Legendary Joureneys 02 (5 page)

It wasn't so much the catch he just knew was involved in this judging invitation as it was a persistent feeling that strings were being pulled. Iolaus claimed he was looking to create problems where there weren't any, and perhaps that was, in some sense, true. But his natural suspicion had saved him on more than one occasion, and he wasn't about to discount it now.

When sleep finally forced his eyes closed, he could have sworn he heard voices floating toward him on the wind.

By the following midday his mood had lifted. Hercules and Iolaus stopped in a village for something to eat, and moved on.

Already the breeze carried a faint hint of salt air, and the hills had begun to level to flatland, leaving wider valleys behind.

Iolaus, however, was curiously silent.

Finally Hercules couldn't take it anymore. "Are you all right?" he demanded.

Iolaus shrugged. "I think so. I didn't sleep all that well last night, I guess."

"Oh? Why?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe it was because I kept thinking I heard voices."

Hercules stopped.

I knew it, he thought; I knew it.

"What voices?"

Iolaus shrugged again, and didn't stop until he realized Hercules was no longer beside him. When he turned around, it was with eyes narrowed and one hand on the hilt of his sword.

He pointed with his chin. "Those voices, I think."

Hercules didn't have to look. If there were as many men behind him as had stepped onto the road behind Iolaus, there probably wasn't going to be a whole lot of time left for discussion.

The bandits were a ragtag lot. Some wore simple clothing; others wore bits and pieces of scarred leather armor. The only things they had in common were their staffs and swords, a dagger or two, and their headgear—a black cloth wrapped around their heads so that only their eyes showed, with the cloth tails tied into a large knot behind their necks.

In the center of each headpiece was a large red rectangle.

Hercules turned to face those behind him, and smiled as genially as he could while he backed up.

Slowly.

"Gentlemen," he said, spreading his arms to show he was neither armed nor carrying anything that could even remotely be construed as treasure. ' 'Gentlemen, I don't think this is a very good idea."

The bandit nearest him swept his sword sharply through the air. "Just be quiet," he snarled, "and this'll be over in a minute."

The other bandits growled in agreement.

Unless it was discord. Hercules couldn't tell. The apparent leader was the only one who had bothered to leave a space in his helmet for his mouth.

He stepped back again, and felt Iolaus bump up behind him.

' 'What do you think?' he asked over his shoulder.

Iolaus drew his sword and ran a judging thumb along its cutting edge. "Well, I suppose, for starters, we could cut off a few heads."

Hercules nodded. "Or we could make them dig their own graves before we hanged them."

Iolaus laughed shortly. "I like that one."

"Hey," the leader snapped. "What are you two talking about?"

"Our plan," Iolaus told him as he eyed the men ranged before him.

"You can't have a plan."

"Why not?" Hercules asked reasonably. "You have a plan, so I think it's only right we should have a plan."

"We don't have a plan."

Iolaus shook his head in disbelief. "He doesn't have a plan."

"I think he does," Hercules said.

"Oh, yeah?" the leader said, snarling and waving his sword again. "If you're so smart, what's our plan?"

Iolaus carved a pattern in the air with his sword. "You're going to ambush us, rob us, and either kill us outright, or leave us here for dead."

The bandits growled something.

The leader hushed them with a wave. "Lucky guess."

Iolaus bowed mockingly.

"But it's a better plan than yours." The man sneered.

"Why?" Hercules said.

"Because there's ten of us and only two of you."

The bandits laughed.

Hercules couldn't help it—he felt sorry for the lot of them. Only the leader looked as if he had any meat on his bones, and their weapons, while no doubt lethal enough, were probably older than most of them.

And in not much better shape.

"I'm bored," Iolaus said. He raised his voice. "Now listen, gentlemen, we're on an important mission to Themon. It'll go easier on you if you just let us be on our way."

Hercules nodded his agreement. "We don't want any trouble. Really."

Somewhere in the pack one of the bandits made the sound of a worried chicken.

Hercules felt Iolaus stiffen, and he sighed. He didn't need any special talents to know what that taunt would do.

'Oh, dear," said Iolaus regretfully. "I really do wish you hadn't done that."

Hercules sighed again. Sometimes it was a real pain when he was right.

"Now look," the bandit leader insisted. "You just—"

Iolaus moved first.

With a shriek worthy of a Harpy in a particularly foul mood, he charged the quintet facing him, swinging his sword wildly. They scattered, but not quickly enough for two to avoid being dropped to their knees by the flat of his blade.

At the same time Hercules charged the leader and the other men. The bandit leaped nimbly to one side and urged his men forward. One of them immediately swung a staff that caught the air where Hercules'

head would have been if he hadn't ducked, reached up, and snatched the staff away. The bandit blinked, first at the loss of his weapon, then at the smack he received on the temple just before he crumpled to the ground.

A second bandit scurried in front of Hercules and used a two-handed spin of his staff to keep Hercules at bay. The man's arms, however, weren't quite up to the task. One end of the staff hit the dirt, snapped up, and clipped him on the chin.

"Get them!" the leader shrieked in frustration.

Iolaus, meanwhile, found himself with one bandit in front of him, one behind, both with swords that they seemed to know how to use. Their problem was coordination—they charged at the same time, weapons extended like lances, and all Iolaus had to do was wait until the last second, then step aside and use his own sword to deflect theirs into the ground with a single slap. Momentum did the rest—when the blades stuck in the road, the bandits were lifted off their feet and they collided crown to crown.

"Get them!" the leader bellowed in exasperation.

After a check to be sure Iolaus was all right, Hercules sidestepped another charge, grabbed the trailing black cloth tail and spun the man off his feet, released the tail, and sent him tumbling down the slope into the high grass below.

"Get..." The leader glanced around, looked at Hercules, and threw up his hands in despair just before he took off down the road. The others soon followed, although not nearly as fast.

When the last of the bandits vanished around the far bend, Iolaus said, "Wow," with a breathless grin.

"Now that's a way to break up a day."

"Not very good, were they?" Hercules said, realizing as he examined himself that he hadn't even broken a sweat.

"Oh, no, they were great," Iolaus assured him, posing with hands on his hips. "We were just better, that's all."

Hercules nodded. "Yeah. Sure."

He started up the road, shaking his head. Iolaus was wrong, of course; the bandits hadn't been great at all. To call them mediocre would have been kind. Pathetic, in truth, was more like it. He hoped they didn't intend to make their living as thieves; with skills such as theirs, they would undoubtedly starve before the week was out. Or kill each other off by mistake.

Several hours later they made camp beside a shallow creek. Iolaus hunted their supper and cooked it over a low fire. Stars pricked the night sky. A faint splash disturbed the water.

"I'd like to know something," Iolaus said as they bedded down for the night.

"What?"

"Why do they always come one or two at a time?"

Hercules frowned.

"I mean, there were ten of them, Herc. Ten! If they had all come at us at once, we would have had a harder time of it."

It was a point. It seemed that in most battles they found themselves in, the enemy tended to hold back its best advantage.

"Maybe the next time we fight outnumbered, we should point it out to our opponents,' Hercules suggested as his eyes closed.

"What, and get ourselves killed? Are you nuts?"

Hercules laughed silently.

A minute later Iolaus wondered if maybe they shouldn't sleep in shifts.

Hercules grunted.

"They may come back, you know. They might try to take us under cover of night. It would give them courage, not having to face me. Us."

Hercules grunted.

"I mean, they were pretty awful, when you think about it, but that doesn't mean they won't get lucky if we can't see them to fight them."

Hercules rolled onto his side and draped an arm over his ear.

It didn't work.

"If we're asleep, they could capture us without much trouble. Or kill us."

Hercules grunted, louder.

"Tell you what—maybe I'll just sit up for a while. I'll wake you when I get tired."

Hercules began to count to himself, betting he wouldn't reach fifty.

When he reached twenty he heard the distinct sputter of Iolaus snoring.

"Good night, friend," he whispered. "Sleep well."

Emerald green and thick, a plain of low grass flowed to the horizon without a tree, without a flower.

Nothing moved.

The sky was too blue to look at, without a cloud or bird to mar its surface.

Nothing moved.

Slowly Hercules looked to his right, turning in a complete circle, fingers twitching uneasily at his sides.

Nothing moved.

Without the sun for guidance, he was lost.

He took a step anyway, and his high woven boots made no sound in the grass, and the guards that protected his arms from wrist to elbow reflected no light.

Nothing moved.

No sense of time, no sense of distance. Neither the plain nor the sky changed as he walked, checking from side to side, checking behind him, checking above.

Knowing he was being watched, and growing angry because he could not find the watcher.

And nothing moved until he felt a faint rumbling beneath his soles, a rumbling that threw him off stride and forced him to stop.

The sky darkened.

The grass began to sway.

Ahead of him the ground began to shift, to swell, to rise into a mound from which the grass fell like stones.

The rumbling intensified, a stampede of invisible creatures much larger than cattle.

The mound split open.

The sky darkened further.

A shadow rose slowly from the mound, thick and wide and filling the air with the stench of something that had rotted for centuries at the bottom of the sea.

He took a step back.

The shadow grew.

When the sky turned to storm-ridden night, lightning on the horizon, wind damp with cold rain, he saw the eyes in the shadow.

They were green.

And they watched him.

Though he wanted to run, the eyes held him; though he wanted to cry out, the eyes refused to give him his voice.

When they expanded, he believed at first they were growing. Then he realized the shadow had begun to glide toward him, soundlessly, and there was nothing he could do but stare at the watcher, struggle to move, and widen his own eyes in terror when he saw the white that began to glow below the eyes.

With a groan that sounded almost like a cry he wrenched around and began to stumble through the grass, not looking back, not daring to look back, not even when he felt the stench of the shadow's breath on his back, not even when the ground bucked and rolled, not even when he knew he would not escape.

When at last he fell, he rolled immediately onto his back.

He saw the eyes.

He saw the shadow.

He saw the white glow, and soon saw that it came from the white of the shadow's fangs.

And that's when he heard the quiet, mocking laughter.

"No!" he yelled, and sat up so quickly a cloud of dizziness passed over him. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, then looked around quickly.

Iolaus was still asleep, snoring. The fire had almost died in its bed. Stars still shone. The moon had begun its slow descent to morning.

There was no monster out there, and no laughter.

He blew out a slow breath and lay down again, cupping his hands beneath his head. Dreams that powerful did not come to him often; when they did, he paid attention.

At the moment he had no idea what the dream meant, or what formed that killing shadow.

But he knew the laughter.

It belonged to Hera.