Age of Heroes

by James Lovegrove

  “I vote we attack,” said Salvador. “Rush at them. Flush them out of hiding.”

  “For once Mr Musclebound talks sense,” said Chase. “But I’m going to hazard a guess that Captain Cautious here will say we should just keep on walking.”

  “You know me so well,” said Theo.

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Why startle them? They’re not being actively hostile.”

  “Not yet,” said Salvador. “But I for one do not like being stalked like game.”

  “Not bothered about that so much,” said Chase. “Me, I’m more worried that these are local yokels. What if this is some sort of Russian Deliverance scenario? Or maybe The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? They’re hillbillies out to rape us or eat us, or maybe both, and not necessarily in that order.”

  “They can try,” Salvador growled, “and they will fail.”

  “What’s the Russian equivalent of banjo music? Balalaika music? There’s going to be a lot of that in our future if we’re not careful.”

  “Will you two just calm down?” said Theo.

  But he couldn’t deny that he was more than a little creeped out. Once, in a forest not dissimilar to this one, he had faced Sinis, a bandit who liked to strap hapless travellers by the wrists and ankles to a pair of bent pine trees and then released the trees so that his victims were ripped in half. Theo had been young then, still on his way to becoming a fully-fledged thief beater and crook killer. He remembered vividly the unnerving experience of coming upon the remains of Sinis’s handiwork littering the forest floor: decaying corpses, skeletons picked clean by scavenging animals, each two distinct parts separated by some distance. It had simultaneously sickened and enraged him, and after overpowering Sinis and bringing him to his knees, he had had no compunction about executing him in the exact same manner. There was no justice like poetic justice.

  “If they’re locals,” he added, “then they have much more to fear from us than we do from them.”

  “And if they’re not locals?” said Chase. “What are you thinking, Theo? That it might be the demigod slayers?”

  “It might be. We might be straying into Gottlieb’s trap, just as he hoped.”

  “All the more reason to take them out now,” said Salvador. “Make our move before they make theirs. Element of surprise.”

  “Or,” said Theo, pointing ahead, “we draw them in to a place where we can find a defensible position and hole up.”

  They were rounding a corner and Novy Tolkatui was coming into view, a pitiful cluster of wooden shacks and huts in various states of dereliction. Few windowpanes were not cracked, and some windows had fallen out altogether and been replaced by sheets of cardboard or fibreboard. Moss and ivy vied to see which could cover more surfaces.

  “Then let’s make a run for it,” said Chase. “All together. On my mark. Three, two, one, go!”

  They were in the heart of the village within seconds, and even more quickly inside one of the sturdier-looking structures, Chase kicking the door down and raising a great cloud of dust by doing so. The three demigods scattered to different corners of the single room that occupied the entire interior of the hut. They stationed themselves beside different windows and peeked out through the grime-caked glass.

  “Hear anything?” whispered Theo. “See anything?”

  “Not a thing,” said Salvador.

  “Me either,” said Chase.

  “Okay.” Theo returned to the entrance, righted the door, and reinstalled it in its jamb, securing it in place by leaning a crude table of warped, splintery planks lengthwise against it. The light in the hut became dimmer and hazier, and the smells of damp and rotting wood seemed to strengthen.

  “What now?” said Salvador. “Haven’t we just made ourselves sitting ducks?”

  “Think about it,” said Theo. “If it’s the demigod slayers out there, what weapons do they have? Bow and arrows, axe, sword, spear, scythe, trident. They can’t hit what they can’t see, so arrows are out. That leaves only one option: they’re going to have to charge. Which means they’re going to have to show themselves, and when they do, it lets us see them, gauge their numbers, and counterattack – meet them head-on.”

  “I like the sound of that, Theo,” said Salvador. “What appears to have been rank cowardice, the act of mice scurrying away from the cat to their hole, is in fact shrewd cunning.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. I’m sure it was meant as one.”

  Long minutes passed.

  “Come on, you bastards,” Chase muttered. “Come and get it. We’re waiting.”

  Another minute.

  Then...

  “I see movement,” said Chase. “Over there. In that barn. Someone’s –”

  Theo looked in time to catch a glimpse of a body in motion. Fast. A whirlwind.

  Then the door and the table supporting it flew inward, and there was suddenly a fourth person in the hut, and before any of the three demigods could react the person alighted on the nearest of them to hand, Chase, and spun him around, sending him reeling headlong against a rickety shelf where sat a tarnished copper samovar and some enamel crockery, all of which crashed to the floor, as did Chase.

  Salvador lunged across the room at the interloper and was flattened by an artfully placed blow, an elbow jab to the back of the neck that seemed to steal all the rigidity from his body. He flopped onto his belly like a wet fish, with a cry that was half grunt, half yelp.

  The intruder placed a foot on Salvador’s back, pinning him prone, and turned to Theo.

  “You’re next, Theseus. Or do you surrender?”

  Theo gaped.

  “Queen Hippolyta?”

  “JUST HIPPOLYTA, IF you please,” said the one-time ruler of the Amazons. “The race I reigned over are gone. Or you can call me Sasha Grace, as the mortals do now. And again, your surrender. Shall I have it, or must I incapacitate you as I did these two lummoxes?”

  Salvador groaned on the floor beneath her foot. Chase, meanwhile, was picking himself up, but Sasha Grace snapped a telescopic baton out from her hand and tapped the back of his head with its tip.

  “I’d stay put if I were you, Perseus,” she warned. “Unless you want me to crack your skull open.”

  Chase stiffened. Theo could see him weighing up his options. Could he disarm her before she struck? Was he quick enough? Whose reflexes were swifter, his or hers?

  From personal experience, Theo knew the answer to that, and it wasn’t Chase.

  “Do as she says,” he told him. “This woman does not mess around.”

  “Listen to your cousin,” said Sasha Grace. “He speaks wisely for someone with a cock and balls.”

  Theo studied her. Lithe, slender, with steely eyes and a haughty beauty. Still every inch a queen, even in jeans, biker boots, a leather jacket and a white halterneck T-shirt, with her hair tied back in a ponytail.

  “You’re trying to remember when we last met,” Sasha said. “London. 1888. You were going by the name of Templeton Stevens, consulting detective. I had adopted the alias Meg Adams.”

  “No need to remind me. I was hunting the Ripper. You were fishing for him. We pooled our resources and caught him together.”

  “Caught him and punished him for his crimes against females. I cherish the memory of how he pleaded for his life in that deserted wharf we took him to. How he howled and sobbed as I carved off parts of him and lobbed them into the Thames. How long did he last? It was fairly impressive. Nearly an hour before the life left him.”

  Her eyes flashed in the gloom of the hut, and Theo felt a small chill. Not much scared him quite like this bloodthirsty warrior woman did.

  “And he was such a nobody, too,” she went on. “All those grand theories that have sprung up since, about royal doctors and prominent lawyers and heirs to the throne, and he was just a common-or-garden dockworker who, as he told us himself, couldn’t get it up and thought a knife an adequate substitute for a limp dick.”

  “We parted as friends, t
hough, didn’t we, you and I?” said Theo.

  “Allies, perhaps.”

  “But on good terms.”

  “Yes. I believe I told you that you could consider yourself forgiven for your role in the theft of my girdle. Him, though...” She ground her foot harder into the small of Salvador’s back. “Him I find it harder to forgive.”

  “I can rise from this position at any time,” said Salvador. “You know that, don’t you? You do not have the better of me.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, Heracles, if it salves your wounded pride.”

  “But why are you here?” Theo asked her. “What brings you to Novy Tolkatui?”

  “Duh!” said Chase. “Can’t you see, cuz? It’s her. She’s the one. She’s the demigod slayer. It all makes perfect sense. Every victim so far has been male. Madame Ballbreaker here hates males, but especially the ones who wrong women. Aeneas – skipped out on Dido. Orion – king of the rapists. Orpheus – got those Maenads mad at him, and as Del Karno he wasn’t exactly the poster boy for feminist sensitivity awareness training. Sasha Grace has embarked on a one-woman vendetta, getting payback for the abuse her gender has suffered at the hands of –”

  “I’m going to stop you there,” Sasha said, “before you make an even bigger asshole of yourself than you’re already doing. One-woman vendetta? I’ve never heard such a load of horsecrap. What do you take me for?”

  “Uh, a crazy broad who starts wars over stolen underwear?”

  “For your information, I launched the Amazonomachy because I was trying to get my sister back. I was under the impression – mistaken, as it turned out – that Melanippe had left Themiscyra with Theseus against her will. She had not. She had actually taken a liking to him.”

  “Thanks for the note of surprise,” said Theo. “I’m not without my charms.”

  “The matter was settled amicably, once the first skirmishes between Amazons and Athenians were over and Theseus and I were able to parley. As for my girdle, it was not ‘underwear’, it was a ceremonial belt symbolising my regal authority. If you don’t know that...”

  “He does,” said Theo. “Chase just enjoys pushing people’s buttons. It’s his thing. But if you’re not here to kill us, Sasha, what are you here for?”

  “The same reason as you.”

  “And that would be...?”

  “So sly. Wanting me to be the one to tip their hand first. Very well. Odysseus sent me. I’m here to collect the Helm of Darkness. And unlike you three clowns, I actually have it.”

  AN UNEASY TRUCE was reached. Sasha let Salvador up off the floor and put away the baton. Chase and Salvador retreated to a corner of the hut and tried not to look as though they had just been humiliated, while Sasha explained to Theo how she had come to Novy Tolkatui. Long story short, she had received an email from Harry Gottlieb sketching out the situation with regard to the divine artefacts and the demigod killings. He had recommended that she join the expedition to recover the twelfth artefact, giving Theo and Chase the benefit of her assistance.

  “Good old Gottlieb,” said Chase. “Didn’t think we could manage on our own so he drafted in backup.”

  “That or he wished to ensnare yet another of us in his trap,” said Salvador. “Four birds with one stone.”

  “If this is a trap,” said Sasha, “where is it? Where are our enemies? I did wonder whether Gottlieb’s email was a ruse of some sort; never trust the man of stratagems. For that reason I took a circuitous path through the forest to get here. There’s nobody in the vicinity. Nobody for miles around.”

  “Doesn’t mean the killers couldn’t still spring an ambush,” said Chase. “Maybe parachute in or something.”

  “All the more reason to grab the Helm and go,” said Theo. “Where is it, Sasha?”

  “Hiding in plain sight. Come with me.”

  The Amazon strode outside and crossed to the barn where she had been lurking prior to storming the hut. The doors stood wide open, but within there was nothing except a few scraps of straw, some antique farm implements, and roughly a million cobwebs.

  “There,” she said.

  “Where?” said Chase.

  Sasha rolled her eyes. “The very man who used the Helm, and he still doesn’t get it.”

  “I do,” said Theo. “As we walked to the village, there were two people following us. Remember? One of them was stealthy, making an effort not to be noticed. The other was being less subtle about it. ‘Trampling like an elephant’ you said, Chase. It seems that the two of them weren’t together. I’d go so far as to say that at least one of them had no idea of the other’s presence.”

  “It’s so delightful watching a man puzzle something out,” said Sasha. “It’s like an infant learning how to eat its food, slow and sloppy.”

  “The stealthy one was you, Sasha.”

  “Bravo. I heard your helicopter coming in and latched onto your whereabouts more or less as soon as you landed.”

  “And the other one, the ‘elephant,’ was an ordinary man who didn’t feel the need to move quietly because he knew he couldn’t be seen. Because –”

  Before Theo could finish, Sasha stepped smartly towards the centre of the barn and reached out in front of her. Her groping hand found what it was looking for. She grabbed at thin air at waist height and swept her hand up, and all at once a man appeared. He was sitting slumped and cross-legged on the packed-dirt floor, his arms and legs bound with a length of mouldy old rope. He was shaggy-haired and emaciated, with a long tangled beard and clothes held together by patches and twine. He looked up and blinked blearily around, as though surfacing from a deep sleep.

  Above his head Sasha was holding a bronze helmet with a nose protector, tapered cheek guards and a pointed crown. It seemed like something any Hellenic soldier might have worn in battle, an unremarkable piece of armour made of humble beaten alloy – and yet it exuded a strange dark radiance, a feeling of oppression and claustrophobia, like a sky heavy with thunderclouds.

  Sasha dropped it neatly back onto the man’s head. Tendrils of blackness shot down from the helmet, enveloping him, and he vanished. There was just an empty space where he had been.

  She lifted the helmet off, and both it and the man popped back into visibility.

  He was wide awake now, and anxious. His eyes focused on the four demigods and he began to babble in Russian. Theo knew some of the language, but the man was speaking too rapidly for him to understand everything he was saying, and anyway he kept stumbling over his words and stuttering. The gist seemed to be that he was ashamed. He was begging for forgiveness. He had done something wrong. Please don’t hurt him.

  Sasha, in fluent Russian, told him to take a deep breath, calm down, put his thoughts in order, then start talking again.

  The man did his best. He said he was sorry; he should not have used the helmet. It was forbidden. For generation after generation in his family, there had been one key rule: you never put the helmet on. You kept it safe, you told no one about it, but above all you never ever put it on.

  But now look at him. He was the last of his line. Gennady Ulyanov, the last of the Ulyanovs of Novy Tolkatui. The last man still living in Novy Tolkatui, period. All alone. No wife, no children, no family, nothing. Stuck here while everyone else had left. Stuck because of his duty to look after the helmet. This had been the Ulyanovs’ solemn, sacred responsibility since as far back as anyone could remember. Since Novy Tolkatui was just plain Tolkatui. Since before that, when it was a clearing in the forest inhabited by a tribe of elk herders. Since the day, way back at the dawn of time, when a traveller had come from far, far away and left the helmet with the tribe’s chieftain, with strict instructions that it be kept hidden for all time.

  From father to first-born son, the secret of the helmet had been passed down along the family line. Through wars and empires and conquests and pogroms. Then came glasnost and perestroika. The villagers, liberated from the yoke of Communism, feeling freer than at any time they could remember, began to migrate
to the towns, the cities. One by one they went until in the end only Gennady – stalwart, unswerving Gennady – remained.

  That was eleven years ago, and not long afterward Gennady had broken with tradition and started using the helmet when he went hunting for food. How much easier it was to sneak up on a deer or a rabbit when his prey could not see him. And there was no one around to tell him not to do it. No one to know what the helmet could do, how it miraculously masked the wearer from sight. Just him. The only living soul in this great wilderness. Until now.

  Theo wondered why Odysseus had chosen to use human beings, this once, to protect an artefact. Did he run out of inspiration? More likely he just didn’t consider the Helm of Darkness to be as dangerous as the rest. It wasn’t bladed or pointed. It wasn’t something for bashing or smashing. It was a passive weapon, and of the twelve, least consequential to him; and so he had expended the least effort on securing it.

  “So you were out hunting,” he said to Gennady, “and you spotted us and decided to follow us, using the helmet’s power?”

  “That’s right. That’s right. I was curious. Your helicopter made such a din. ‘Gennady,’ I said to myself, ‘who has come to Novy Tolkatui? Who has come to your village, where no one but you has set foot for many a year?’ I had to see for myself. And then, as I was tracking you through the trees...” He tipped his head in Sasha’s direction. He was so tightly bound, it was the only part of his body he could move. “This woman came. Out of nowhere. Somehow she found me even though she could not see me.”

  “Wasn’t hard,” Sasha said with a shrug. “No disrespect, Gennady, but your personal hygiene leaves something to be desired. I just followed my nose.”

  “An arm around my neck. I remember nothing after that. I blacked out. And now you, all of you,” said Gennady, “you want the helmet. You were not surprised by it. By what it is capable of. You knew already its power. You have come for it.”

  “We have,” said Theo. “I know you’ve been entrusted with its care, but...”