The Four Legendary Kingdoms

by Matthew Reilly

  It saw Hades’s second son, Zaitan, pitted against the ginger-bearded SAS major, Gregory Brigham, the man who had so convincingly won two of the early challenges.

  ‘And so we fight,’ Zaitan said calmly to Brigham as they stood facing each other. ‘For a chance to win the Great Games and also for the opportunity to kill the fifth warrior.’

  ‘I’ll enjoy doing both,’ Brigham snorted.

  ‘Do your worst,’ Zaitan said.

  The fight began with Zaitan and Brigham engaging in a lightning-fast contest of martial arts, but then at the precise moment that the SAS man seemed to be winning, Chaos entered the fray, lunging at Brigham.

  In the face of Chaos’s attack, Brigham backed up against the big statue of the cows . . .

  . . . where Mephisto emerged from his hiding place, just as he had done with Jack, and unleashed his flail.

  Brigham heard the rush of air created by the flail too late and swerved his head. The move saved him from death but not terrible injury. One of the brass balls of the flail slammed into his right shoulder and the foul crack of breaking bone echoed out from the combat stage.

  Zaitan saw his advantage and took it.

  He rushed in on Brigham and unloaded five savage blows with his fists. The blows drew blood—more blood than such hits would normally draw, thanks to the two ceramic blades hidden in the skin of his knuckles.

  Brigham was almost out on his feet, bloodied and hideous, when Zaitan unleashed a withering headkick that dropped Brigham, putting him flat on his back.

  But he wasn’t dead.

  Brigham lay on the combat stage, pathetic and immobile, gurgling blood, his right shoulder bent at an odd angle, his left arm outstretched.

  Chaos stepped back. Mephisto clambered back up onto the statue of the cows, abandoning his flail.

  The royal spectators—grinning with delight—watched in awe as Zaitan, now sauntering casually around Brigham, picked up the flail and tested its weight.

  And then Zaitan swung the flail and slammed its two brass balls down on Brigham’s left hand and wrist.

  Brigham’s hand exploded in a burst of blood. Brigham screamed, spitting blood. When Zaitan lifted the flail, all that remained beneath it were Brigham’s hideously crushed fingers and wristbone.

  Zaitan whispered to Brigham. ‘It will be hard for you to vanquish the fifth warrior, Major, without your hands.’

  Smash. He flattened Brigham’s right hand.

  ‘Or your knees . . .’

  Smash. Smash.

  Two rapid blows from the flail crushed both of Brigham’s knees. Brigham howled and began gasping for air. His legs now lay at horrific angles.

  Zaitan bowed for the royal crowd and smiled a cruel sadistic smile.

  He had completely destroyed Gregory Brigham. The British SAS major lay behind him, bloodied and broken, a wreck of a human being.

  Zaitan then bent over the blood-covered face of Brigham and leaned close so that only Brigham could hear him.

  ‘You are not worthy, Major,’ he said, ‘and because you are unworthy, I will now go and claim everything you ever desired when you came here: these Games, the head of the fifth warrior, and your life.’

  With those words, Zaitan casually kicked Brigham’s body into the well-hole.

  Brigham fell into darkness, all the way to the base of the mountain, until his heart-rate monitor on the balcony suddenly started issuing a long eerie beeeeep.

  The royal crowd erupted in applause and Zaitan, still smiling, bowed for them again.

  The Seventh Challenge was over.

  Once again, the clamps holding the sphere released of their own accord. Zaitan retrieved it and it was set in place on Hades’s armrest.

  Now, after sixteen champions had started the Great Games, only two remained to proceed to the Eighth Challenge: Zaitan, the son of Hades himself, and Jack West Jr.

  Jack sat in his cell as Dr Barnard once again tended to his wounds.

  Barnard pressed a cotton pad firmly against Jack’s nose, trying to staunch the flow of blood from it.

  ‘We must have you looking your best for your fight against Zaitan,’ Barnard said.

  ‘Is that who my opponent is?’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ the doctor said. ‘I probably shouldn’t have said that. Well, never mind. It is only the two of you left now and you would have discovered it soon anyway.’

  The doctor snapped shut his medical suitcase.

  ‘I was instructed to inform you that you can have an hour to rest before the next challenge, if you want it. Zaitan—I mean, your opponent—has said he is ready to fight now.’

  ‘We fight now,’ Jack said quickly. ‘I don’t want to wait either.’

  ‘Very well,’ the doctor said, standing to go. ‘Good luck, my dear boy. You’ve surprised many of us by getting this far and I’ve got my money on you.’

  With a quick smile, Barnard left and Jack was once again alone in his cell.

  A few minutes later, the minotaur guards came for him.

  Jack was marched out onto the third and final combat stage.

  Whereas the second stage had been a more advanced version of the first one, the third was an advanced version of the second.

  It had a podium with a sphere on it and a central well-hole, just like the first stage.

  And it had a large statue of cows like those on the second stage. Jack kept a wary eye on them, watchful for Mephisto. These cow statues, however, had an extra feature: they had a roof over them that looked like a little hut.

  What made this stage entirely different, however, was the high water feature near its rear edge: it was a thirty-foot-tall replica of Hades’s mountain-palace and from its peak flowed a waterfall that cascaded down several levels before flowing with considerable power down a straight gutter cut into the stage.

  The gutter ended at the well-hole in the middle, so that the water gushing down its length poured into the hole before falling a thousand feet to the floor of the crater below.

  Jack saw the danger instantly. To fall—or be tossed—into that flowing gutter was to be swept into the well-hole to your death.

  His eyes moved from the cattle in their roofed hut to the flowing water. ‘The Augean Stables,’ he said to himself. ‘Which Hercules cleaned by diverting a river through them.’

  Zaitan was already waiting on the stage.

  He glared at Jack with deadly eyes, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  Chaos stood off to one side, waiting patiently, holding his sword at the ready.

  To Jack’s surprise, there was another of Hades’s warriors on the stage: the Hydra, dressed in his grey armour and gripping his deadly blade-tipped whip.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Jack said.

  It was another escalation in the fighting environment, another hazard to avoid while Zaitan, his primary opponent, tried to kill him.

  Vacheron’s voice cut through the night.

  ‘Zaitan, son of Hades, representative of the Kingdom of the Underworld! Captain West, of the Kingdom of Land! After two days and two nights of valiant effort, only you remain. Alas, only one of you will proceed to the final challenge and have the chance to etch his name in history alongside Osiris, Gilgamesh and Hercules. The other will die forgotten, for history doesn’t care for those who run second. Luck to you both.’

  He turned to Hades.

  The Lord of the Underworld stared down from his throne at both champions.

  ‘Let the fight begin,’ he said softly. ‘To the death.’

  Jack vs Zaitan (vs Chaos vs Hydra)

  Zaitan didn’t move.

  He just stared at Jack, a cocky grin creeping across his face.

  Jack frowned.

  What’s he up to? he thought.

  Then Jack’s eyes found Zaitan’s knuckles and he glimpsed
the sharpened ceramic shards sticking out from them. A few of the shards dripped with blood.

  Jack looked up at Zaitan. ‘I thought I’d be facing Brigham. You beat him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With those?’ He nodded at Zaitan’s sharpened knuckles.

  ‘They are the same claws that will finish you. You should know something, fifth warrior. My brother, Dion, and I are very close. We have planned for this day for a long time. Our father, Hades, is far too noble for our tastes—he actually believes in ruling without fear or favour.

  ‘We do not. We like fear. As soon as these challenges are over, we have arranged for our beloved father to have an unfortunate fall in his private rooms. He will die and Dion will ascend the throne and receive the Mysteries during the final ceremony. We will rule the world as brothers-in-arms. We will share everything: power, wealth . . . and his bride. Know this, fifth warrior: after you are dead, my brother and I will have our way with your daughter every miserable night of her life.’

  Jack’s jaw clenched. His eyes became focused.

  ‘Time to fight, asshole.’

  ‘You didn’t hear me, warrior,’ Zaitan said. ‘I didn’t say I would fight you. I said I would finish you. These two will fight you.’

  Zaitan nodded to Chaos and the Hydra and they advanced on Jack.

  They didn’t even make a pretence of fairness. They were now fighting for their lord’s son.

  It was one against three.

  Jack watched the two armoured figures approaching him. In his mind, he visualised the fight that would happen, saw the attacks, saw the defensive moves, saw the outcome.

  There was no way he could win this.

  He looked from Chaos to the Hydra. Apart from their helmets, the two assassins wore identical Kevlar armour, just painted different colours: Chaos in black, the Hydra in grey. As they advanced on Jack, they both gripped their weapons. The Hydra’s deadly metal-tipped whip dangled from its wooden handgrip.

  And then Jack saw something.

  The Hydra’s armour was not identical to Chaos’s.

  It was different at the neck.

  While Chaos had a low Kevlar collar protecting the back of his neck, the Hydra did not. Between his shoulderplates and his helmet, the Hydra’s neck was bare.

  Only the classically-educated champion will prevail in the Games. Jack recalled Hades’s words.

  He now knew those words were a reference to the Labours of Hercules. If you knew how Hercules had performed his Labours—if you possessed that classical knowledge—that helped you win the challenges.

  And suddenly Jack remembered how Hercules had defeated the Hydra of his day: the Lernaean Hydra.

  Jack now visualised a different fight against these three enemies, and suddenly he saw that if he did a few things right—and did them fast—he could win this.

  The two helmeted assassins were almost on him.

  Jack called suddenly to Zaitan. ‘You really want to do it this way?’

  Zaitan shrugged. ‘This is where it ends, fifth warrior.’

  ‘You got that right,’ Jack said.

  Then he did something very odd: he smacked his own nose, dislodging Dr Barnard’s temporary staunch, causing his nose to gush with blood again. Blood dripped onto Jack’s right hand in large quantities.

  What happened next happened very, very fast.

  Jack sprang.

  Sprang forward with lightning speed . . . at Chaos.

  Chaos swung his sword, just as Jack stretched out his hand and flicked out with his fingers, sending a spray of blood onto the visor of Chaos’s helmet.

  It was the one disadvantage of a helmet: having drops of an opaque liquid on its visor meant that the wearer was blinded.

  As Chaos tried to wipe the blood clear, Jack wrenched his sword from his hand, elbowed him backwards and, leaping forward, swung the sword at the Hydra at the same time as the Hydra lashed at Jack with his whip.

  They crossed in mid-air.

  Jack’s sword flashed horizontally while the Hydra’s whip whistled by his ears, and after they passed each other, they both stopped.

  Then, slowly, very slowly, the Hydra’s head slid off his still-standing body.

  The royal crowd gasped.

  Zaitan’s eyes went wide.

  Jack had sliced the Hydra’s head clean off.

  Just like Hercules had done.

  Thousands of years of myth had transformed the Hydra from a man with a many-pronged whip into a beast with many heads, but the basic method of killing it remained the same: cut off its head.

  That was why the Hydra’s armour had been different from Chaos’s. It allowed for such a death. But only the classically-trained champion would spot it.

  The headless Hydra collapsed to the stage, but not before Jack took something from it.

  For his next move was even faster.

  What he’d taken from the Hydra was its whip, its deadly flail with the metal tips.

  Jack cracked the whip . . . right at the shocked Zaitan.

  Zaitan raised his left arm in defence and the whip’s vicious metal blades lodged deep into the flesh of his arm.

  Zaitan shouted in pain.

  But Jack was still moving. He dived left, over to where Chaos stood—still rubbing his blood-smeared visor—and clipped the whip’s handle to Chaos’s belt.

  Then he kicked the unsuspecting Chaos down into the well-hole.

  Chaos dropped into the hole . . .

  . . . yanking on the whip . . .

  . . . which, painfully anchored to the skin of Zaitan’s left arm, dragged Zaitan into the hole after him!

  Both men disappeared into the hole and fell a thousand feet.

  Zaitan screamed, his shrill wail echoing as it diminished, until there came a distant thump and the scream cut off.

  Which left Jack standing unsteadily on the stage, alone and victorious.

  He glared up at Hades and the royal crowd.

  The royal spectators stared back at him in silent, wide-eyed shock.

  Some of them glanced worriedly over at Hades, but the King of the Underworld just bowed his head momentarily at the death of his second son.

  Only one person in the whole crowd dared to smile: Lily.

  Up on the royal stage, the shell-shocked Vacheron retrieved the golden belt that was the prize for the winner of the combat phase of the Games.

  Of course he didn’t present it to Jack. He handed it to Orlando, the King of Land, Jack’s sponsor.

  Orlando accepted the belt with a satisfied nod.

  Standing near them, Lily saw Dion. The young prince was staring in shock at the combat stage, at Jack, and at the spot where his beloved younger brother had last been seen alive.

  Then Dion blinked and looked over at Lily with pure hatred in his eyes.

  Down on the combat stage, Jack gasped for air, his chest heaving.

  He’d done it. He was the last remaining champion.

  As he caught his breath, Vacheron appeared on the stage in front of him. The stunned Master of the Games nodded at the glowing sphere on the podium. Jack fetched it and handed it to Vacheron who carried it up to Hades.

  No sooner was the sphere set in place on Hades’s armrest than, in the eerie silence, Jack heard something.

  Footsteps.

  Heavy, purposeful footsteps.

  Coming from the bridge that connected this combat stage to the Observatory.

  Another fighter appeared on it and Jack’s heart fell.

  Of course, he thought. That was the final Labour . . .

  The figure stepped up onto the stage, gripping two weapons, protected by impenetrable armour and wearing a most fearsome helmet.

  It was Hades’s personal bodyguard, the biggest of them all, the warrior with the dog-shaped helmet. The on
e everyone said was the best of all of Hades’s warrior-servants.

  It was Cerberus.

  Jack vs Cerberus

  Jack couldn’t believe it.

  He was weary, bloody and wounded . . . and now he had to fight a man, a professional warrior who hadn’t expended an ounce of energy in the past two days.

  Looking at the giant figure of Cerberus, he saw something embedded in the chest region of the man’s body armour: the final Golden Sphere.

  Vacheron grinned. ‘The final challenge of the Great Games is the most famous! The last-remaining champion must overcome Hades’s most loyal and celebrated guardsman, the Hound of Hell, Cerberus. He must bring him—and his sphere—from the combat stage and present them both to Hades himself.’

  Jack sagged.

  He couldn’t see a way to win this.

  There were no weaknesses to Cerberus’s armour that he could discern.

  And the guy under all that armour was huge, at least six foot seven, with tree trunk–like legs and strong muscular arms.

  And the big warrior’s weapons favoured his enormous reach: he gripped a mace in one hand and a curving sword in the other.

  Worst of all, however, was the fact that he was fresh. Jack had faced two days of deadly nonstop challenges yet this guy looked like he’d just got out of bed.

  Okay, Jack thought. Can you remember how Hercules got out of this one?

  On the royal balcony, Lily was thinking the same thing: how had Hercules overcome Cerberus in the famous final Labour?

  And it hit her.

  ‘Hercules didn’t have to kill Cerberus,’ she said aloud. ‘He only had to bring him out of Hell. Come on, Dad, think.’

  The same thought occurred to Jack at the exact same time.

  ‘The final Labour was to bring Cerberus out of Hell,’ he said softly to himself. ‘Not to kill the dog. But how did Hercules do that? No, that can’t work . . . Oh, hell, Jack, what have you got to lose? It’s worth a try.’

  With the massive figure of Cerberus advancing quickly toward him, Jack suddenly turned away from his opponent and faced the royal balcony.

  ‘Hades!’ he called. ‘I ask for your permission! Will you permit me to bring your dog up to you?’