Age of Heroes

by James Lovegrove

  Arlington squatted beside her on his haunches. “You have, and more. But this?”

  “It was something for myself. Something to prove I was more than just Mrs Evander Arlington. I didn’t think you’d mind. You were once a great king! Your word was law, men bowed before you. Don’t you hanker for those times again?”

  “I am still great,” Arlington said. “But the world has changed. Kings take different guises now.”

  “You can’t begrudge me my fun, though.”

  “My darling Hélène, you know I could never refuse you anything.”

  “And to cap it all, I brought Theo Stannard here. Your oldest enemy, the thorn in your side. The man who humiliated you.”

  Arlington shook his head sadly. “I’m over it.”

  “You still talk about him with anger in your voice. I’ve heard you.”

  “Hardly. I think you’re confusing your contempt for him with mine. In a way, Theo did me a favour. The Minotaur was an embarrassment, a stain on my reputation.”

  “You have a statue of it on the island. I assumed...”

  “To remind me of my fallibility. Mine and Pasiphaë’s. I was supposed to sacrifice that bull, the one she slept with, but in my greed I kept it. The Minotaur was punishment for my hubris. So, in his way, was Theseus, but he taught me a lesson also. Thanks to him I ceased to take my kingship for granted. I learned to value the approval of my subjects. I owe him for that, although I’ve never told him so.”

  “You... don’t hate him?” Hélène’s brow furrowed in perplexity.

  “He may not be my favourite person,” said Arlington, “but no, I don’t hate him.”

  “You don’t want him dead?”

  “Not him, nor any of the others you ordered killed. Hélène, Hélène, Hélène... It’s like you don’t know me at all. Forty years together...”

  “Fifty.”

  “Fifty, and am I still such a mystery to you? Or have you seen in me only what you wanted to see? The complacent, compliant husband with the ever-open chequebook, the bottomless credit card?”

  “I hate to interrupt this touching marital moment,” said Sasha, “but I am about to kill your wife, Evander. Just thought you should know.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “She deserves to die, and I very much doubt you’re man enough to prevent me.”

  “You are quite correct on that front,” said Arlington. “I am nowhere near swift enough, nor strong enough, to stand in your way. It would be unwise of me even to try.”

  He reached for the battle-axe.

  “I ask instead,” he said, “to be permitted to do the job myself.”

  Hélène gaped. “Evander?”

  “Kindly hold her still, Sasha.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Sasha planted a foot on Hélène’s chest, pinning her down.

  “Evander, please...”

  “Hélène, I love you dearly, but I cannot ignore the trouble you’ve caused, the deaths you are responsible for. I cannot turn a blind eye. The account must be balanced; debts must be settled.”

  He straightened up, axe in hand.

  “You have brought disgrace on my household and on my name,” he said. “You have shamed me as much as Pasiphaë did, if not more. I cannot condone or forgive your actions.”

  The axe rose, bloodstained twin blades glinting in the brightening daylight.

  Hélène’s expression switched from disbelief to defiance.

  “Go on, then, you bastard,” she said. “If you’ve got the balls.”

  Up until the very last instant, she never thought Arlington would go through with it.

  Neither did Roy.

  And then the axe came down, severing Hélène’s head from her neck in a single clean chop.

  FORTY-THREE

  Kardionisi

  THEO AND CHASE drew apart, both bloodied, wounded, breathing hard.

  “One final time,” Theo said. “Let’s stop this.”

  “We both know it’s gone too far for that,” said Chase. “You won’t let me live, and I don’t want to die.”

  “Maybe there’s a compromise. A middle way.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, cuz. I knew all along there was a good chance we’d wind up exactly this way. You were going to figure out sooner or later that I was dicking you around, and you wouldn’t take it well.”

  “What I still don’t get is what was in it for you. You must have had a motive of your own for siding with Hélène. I don’t believe you went along with her scheme just because of a bad case of nostalgia. There has to be more to it.”

  “Okay. Yeah. You’ve got me. It’s... complicated.”

  “Try me.”

  Chase let out a heavy sigh. “The gods.”

  “The gods?”

  “They don’t notice us. They don’t care.”

  “That’s because they aren’t there,” Theo said impatiently. “The gods are gone. Dead or – or dispersed, or I don’t know what. But they aren’t up in Olympus, keeping an eye on us. Not anymore. They’ve moved on. To Elysium, perhaps.”

  “And left us all alone.” There was a plaintive note in Chase’s voice, something like the despair of a lost child. A touch of petulance. “They’re our parents. They should be looking out for us. Every time I kill a monster, I pray. Did you know that?”

  “You never said.”

  “It’s an offering. I call on Hermes and Athena, but mostly I call on my father. I let Zeus know that I’ve hunted and killed this beast on his behalf. For him. And what do I get back?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Zilch. Nada.”

  “Why would you expect anything else?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “The gods are our parents, sure,” Theo said. “But parents aren’t expected to raise their kids forever. Comes a point when the next generation have grown into adults and are supposed to be making their own way in the world.”

  “Zeus never gave a shit about me. He knocked up my mom – as a shower of golden rain, for fuck’s sake – then disappeared.”

  “You’re upset because you have a deadbeat dad? Join the club. Most demigods are semi-orphans from the get-go. It’s par for the course. But you didn’t have to rope the rest of us into your misery. You didn’t have to get people killed, just because you’re acting out your resentment.”

  “Acting out my – ? Screw you, you sanctimonious asshole! Just because you’ve let the world neuter you, doesn’t mean it has to happen to all of us. Some of us can still be heroes.”

  “That’s how you see yourself? Funny. From where I’m standing, you look like a villain.”

  Face contorting with rage, Chase flung himself at Theo. A flurry of sickle blows rained down. Theo parried with the bident, bracing it in front of him double-handed like a quarterstaff, until all at once he was holding two pieces of it. Chase had cut through the haft with a particularly powerful strike.

  Theo retreated, dropping the bisected bident and drawing Dionysus’s club from his belt.

  Chase pressed forward, hacking relentlessly with the sickle, his eyes clouded with bloodlust. Theo wondered if his cousin was seeing him or some sort of beast he felt it was his sacred duty to eradicate.

  He realised he was being backed into a corner. He couldn’t afford to be pinned down; club or no club, it would be the end of him.

  He barged past Chase, side-swiping him with the club as he went and narrowly missing. He darted across the lawn, aiming for the exit, the route he had entered by. There was greater safety in the maze, surely.

  Chase caught up with him halfway there. Theo jinked to the left and a moment later the sickle cleaved through the air where his spine had been. Chase was between him and the nearer exit; Theo diverted towards the other, his cousin hot on his heels.

  In the shadow of the Minotaur statue, Chase at last made contact. Theo felt an abrupt spike of agony in his flank. The sickle had dug between two of his ribs, deep into the intercostal muscle, snagging him, pulling him up short
.

  He twisted like a fish on the hook, feeling flesh rip as he tore himself free. He stumbled woozily for a few steps before his legs caved under him and he fell prone.

  Chase strode over and straddled him, a foot either side. Theo began crawling, trying to stand upright. Every time he made it to his hands and knees, however, the pain in his side overwhelmed him and he sagged. He could hear himself making urgent grunting noises in the back of his throat. He clawed his way across the dewy grass. Chase stayed with him. At any moment, the coup de grâce would come. The sickle would slice through his neck or sink into his heart and that would be that.

  Finally he could go no further. With the last of his ebbing strength he rolled over onto his back.

  His gaze met Chase’s.

  “You don’t have to,” he croaked. “This isn’t you. You’re better than this.”

  “I wish I was, cuz,” Chase said with a rueful grimace. “Truly I do.”

  He readied the sickle for the killing blow with an almost solemn air – dutifully, like finishing off a badly wounded beast.

  He glanced up at the pristine dawn sky, as though looking for a sign.

  Then, steeling himself, he tensed his arm.

  Blinding whiteness. A deafening bang.

  Is this is? Theo thought. Is this what death feels like?

  His vision cleared, his ears still ringing.

  Chase was frozen in position, just as startled as Theo was.

  Behind him, the Minotaur statue seemed to have come alive. It was trembling, teetering. Tiny crackles of electricity coruscated over its bronze surface. Its lower legs were charred, blackened. Its feet, on the plinth, were more or less destroyed.

  The statue creaked resoundingly.

  “Chase! Move!”

  Even as Theo spluttered out the warning, he himself was moving. Somehow he found the energy to rise to a crouch, to scramble away on all fours.

  The statue bowed forward, tumbling towards where Chase stood. Chase either hadn’t heard what Theo said or was too startled to do anything about it. He only turned round.

  The bronze Minotaur seemed almost to pounce on him. The tortured groan of twisting, rending metal reminded Theo, for a moment, of the beast himself.

  The impact was earth-shaking.

  THEO ROSE TO his feet, unsteady, groggy. His ears were whining as though there were cicadas trapped inside them, and it was hard to catch his breath. One side of his ribcage felt on fire.

  The Minotaur statue lay flat on the lawn, prone. He tottered towards it. He didn’t want to look. He had to look.

  The sickle lay on the grass, inches from Chase’s outstretched hand. Of Chase himself there wasn’t much visible, but what there was told Theo all he needed to know.

  Crushed, pulverised.

  Such thorough destruction that even a demigod couldn’t survive it.

  Theo raised his head.

  The sky was empty. Not a cloud in sight. Just the endless unsullied blue of the firmament.

  But something had hit the statue from above and toppled it.

  Something that had blazed, something powerful from the heavens.

  Something like...

  A thunderbolt?

  FORTY-FOUR

  Kardionisi

  EVANDER ARLINGTON SPOKE to Roy, Jeanne and the other three Myrmidons. For a man who had just ceremonially beheaded his wife, he seemed remarkably calm. A cold fish.

  But then, King Minos, to the best of Roy’s knowledge, had been a despot. Obviously the lives of others, even the life of someone he professed to love, meant little to him. He could snuff them out and square it easily with his conscience.

  “Ladies, gentlemen,” he said. “You have seen things today that perhaps you ought not to have. You have been party to events beyond your accustomed sphere of experience.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to kill us, too?” said Gunnvor Blomgren. “To silence us?” She drew her pistol, chambered a round and aimed at Arlington.

  Roy waved at her to back off. “I don’t think that’s where he’s going with this. Let’s hear him out.”

  “I’m merely saying that you have been victims of my late wife’s machinations,” said Arlington. “As her husband, I bear the responsibility for that. It is...”

  He took a deep breath, and Roy noticed his hands were trembling ever so slightly. There was turmoil beneath the sanguine façade. Arlington was not as emotionless as he wished to appear.

  “It is only right that I make reparation,” he continued.

  “Oh, so you’re buying our silence,” said Blomgren.

  “Gunnvor,” Roy said, “for Christ’s sake, will you just shut up and let Minos speak?”

  Arlington raised an eyebrow. “You know who I am.”

  The name had just slipped out. “Who you were,” Roy amended.

  “Of course. Quite right. Who I was. What the legends don’t tell you is that I am very much a man of honour. Perhaps not back then, but now. My wife was paying you handsomely, I’m sure. I will see to it that you each receive every cent you are owed, plus extra.”

  “Can’t say fairer than that,” said Sean Wilson with a shrug.

  “In return, you will surrender those weapons to me, the antiques. They are worthless in every respect except the one that, as far as I and my kind are concerned, counts. I cannot leave them in your hands. I must round them up and make absolutely sure that they –”

  He was interrupted by a sudden flicker of fiercely bright light, followed an instant later by a crack so loud it made everyone jump.

  For a moment nobody spoke.

  Then Jeanne said, “What the hell was that? Was that... lightning?”

  In the corner of Roy’s eye there was an afterimage – a zigzagging vertical yellow line.

  The bolt of lightning, if that was what it had been, had struck somewhere over in the hedgerow maze.

  Out of a clear blue sky.

  “Where’s Stannard?” said Roy, looking around. It was the first time he’d noticed that Stannard wasn’t anywhere to be seen. “I thought he was still here, but... in all the confusion...”

  Sasha Grace, without a word, broke into a run, heading for the maze.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Kardionisi

  THEO WAS TIRED, bone-deep. So tired he couldn’t face the thought of navigating back through the maze to the exit.

  Instead he employed the sickle, putting it more or less to the use a sickle was intended for. He hacked a path straight through the hedgerows. In one cypress wall after another he carved out a doorway for himself, until at last he staggered clear of the maze’s perimeter.

  Sasha was waiting, scythe in hand.

  She lowered it when she saw him.

  “Theo.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  “You’re alive.”

  “Just about. You look as bad as I feel. That’s a nasty cut.”

  She glanced at the gash in her shoulder as though it was of no consequence. “What about Chase? I saw you run off after something – something I couldn’t see. I assumed...”

  “You assumed correctly. And Chase is... He met his nemesis.”

  “Oh,” Sasha said. “I’m sorry. I know how close you two were.”

  “Apparently not as close as I thought. Same ideals, different wavelengths. What about Hélène?”

  Sasha shook her head. “She met her nemesis.”

  “Crazy woman. Thinking she was triggering a second Trojan War. You know the saying about history repeating itself first as tragedy, then as farce? It’s...”

  Everything greyed. All at once the world seemed distant, as though behind gauze.

  Sasha snaked an arm around him, catching him as he sagged, taking his weight.

  “Thanks,” Theo said. “Bit dazed. I guess, from the sound of it, the fighting’s over.”

  “It is. I think we’re done. Listen, Theo, there’s something I have to say.”

  “Can it wait?”

  “No. It’s just �
�� I may have judged you too harshly. A long, long time ago, when you eloped with my sister, I couldn’t for the life of me understand what she saw in you. I thought you were a prig and a deceiver, too crafty for your own or anyone’s good. I... I was wrong. All the bad blood it caused, the rift between Melanippe and me, not to mention the Amazonomachy. I’ve always regretted it, but I’ve never apologised for it. I’m doing that now.”

  “Better late than never, I suppose. For what it’s worth, Melanippe always loved you, in spite of everything. Why else did we name our son after you? It was her idea. A token of respect.”

  Sasha nodded sombrely. “You’re a far better man than I have given you credit for. It’s a shame it’s taken something like this for me to realise that.”

  “I grow on people,” Theo said. “Like fungus. Shall we re-join the others?”

  “Sure.”

  They began walking, Sasha supporting Theo despite the additional pain it caused her.

  “What happened back there?” she asked. “We saw what looked like lightning.”

  Theo grimaced. “There’s a name for it, and it’s something I never expected to hear myself say in this day and age.”

  “Which is...?”

  “Divine intervention.”

  FORTY-SIX

  Kardionisi

  ROY COLLECTED THE antique weapons off the other Myrmidons.

  “I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation for all of this,” Gunnvor Blomgren said as she handed him the spear. “I’m sure it all makes sense somehow.”

  “It does,” said Roy. “I’ll fill you in when I can. You might have trouble believing it at first, but...”

  “Oh, I don’t think we’ll have trouble at all,” said Sean Wilson. “The strange shit we’ve seen and heard tonight, and before tonight, for that matter.”

  Roy presented the weapons to Evander Arlington. “That’s the lot.”