I opened my mouth, fidgeting for something to say, but he found his voice first. “Thanks. I could never have gotten there before the blood cooled. Even dead, the strong ones push the rest of us around. Especially the unburied.”
A surge of guilt lanced through me. I had abandoned his body, unburied, in the forest. I risked a glance at his face but his expression was innocent.
“It’s the life force in the blood,” he was saying. “It draws us. Human blood would be best, of course.” A white tongue flickered over his lips as I took a step back, almost tripping over a heavy pickaxe that one of the Greeks had dropped. “Sorry,” he added. “Do you mind if we talk about something else, Alexi?”
Good idea. “So, Pen, have you—” I floundered for something to say “—met anyone you know?”
He seized on it gratefully. “Oh, yes. There are plenty of Greek soldiers down here. We’re drawn to the people we knew in life. There are Trojans too, but they won’t talk to me. Well, neither do the Greeks, much.”
A chill ran up my spine. Would Sophronios be around somewhere? It had been the Cyclops that had killed him, not me, but I doubted he’d see it that way. I bent to grab the pick I’d tripped over and started along the bank of the black river, heading away from the trench. Pen trotted eagerly along beside me.
I took a deep breath. “Pen? There’s something I need to say. I’m really sorry. About the night of the feast. And your . . . death. It’s just—”
Pen gave a nimble shrug. “I understand. I know you would have stopped them if you could. You were afraid they’d go for you too.”
Gods, was he trying to make me feel worse? I wanted him to shout at me, to show some anger, but he skipped on happily. “It’s my own fault, really,” he added. “I wasn’t supposed to be here. With the war, I mean. A year ago, when my father sent a ship back for the spring recruits, I was only fourteen, but I stowed away on my father’s ship, with my brother’s armour.”
Pen had never said any of this while he was alive. Perhaps he would have, if I’d been listening. As if reading my guilty thoughts, he added, “I don’t know why I didn’t tell you this before . . .” He shrugged, embarrassed. “Well, you know.” He pointed ahead at the round hill I’d seen earlier. “Want to see something? Come on, I’ll show you. The view is better from the top.” Lopex still seemed occupied with Tiresias, so I followed Pen to the top, breaking a sweat in the humid air.
Looking down the far side I could see a granite boulder, tall as a man and worn perfectly round, halfway down the hill. As I watched, it rocked and shifted slightly. Uphill. Pen glanced over shyly as though showing me a secret. “Do you know what that is?”
I watched as the boulder inched its way up toward us. “Uh, Pen, shouldn’t we get out of the way? At least I should. I guess you’re in no danger—” I broke off as I realized how tactless that sounded, but he didn’t notice.
“Don’t worry. We’re safe here.”
The boulder crept its way up the hill toward us, and now I could hear wheezing from behind it. “Someone’s pushing it!”
Pen nodded. It was almost at the top now, nearly close enough to reach down and touch. I was getting nervous but Pen seemed unconcerned. A gruff voice was panting, “Nearly there . . . this time . . .”
Suddenly the boulder slipped to the side and began to tumble back down the hill. “Gods curse it!” came a despairing shout. “Not again!” It picked up speed and crashed down the hill to rumble to a stop not far from the bottom.
I glanced at the man who had been behind it. Heavy and bald, with short, powerful arms and bowed legs, he stared up at us. Give him more hair and less paunch and he’d look something like Lopex. “Curse all the gods, I nearly had it that time. Better leverage, that’s what I need.” He turned and stumped back down the hill.
I looked at Pen, who shrugged. “All I know is, he hasn’t stopped since I got here. But he’s special, he keeps his life form. There’s a few like that. They say his name is Sisyphus.”
I glanced back toward the Greeks. Lopex was still deep in conversation with the seer. Down the hill, the stocky man put his shoulder to the rock and began pushing it up the hill again. “Hey!” I called. “Why are you doing that?”
As if on cue, the boulder leapt from his grasp and rolled back down. He glared up at me, panting. “Now look what you’ve done, curse you!” He gestured down the hill. “I nearly had it!”
He’d been hardly a quarter of the way up, but I wasn’t about to argue with someone who could push a boulder uphill. Even if he was dead. “Um, sorry.” I walked down the hill after him, Elpenor trailing anxiously behind. “Why are you doing that?”
He reached the boulder and glanced at me. “Something I did,” he muttered. “Doesn’t matter now. But Zeus hates me for it, may his kopros-befouled beard catch fire. Should have known he had no sense of humour. Anyway, this is my punishment.” He gave the rock a kick. “Once I get old Berta here to the very top, I can stop.”
“So why do you keep letting go?”
“You think I’m doing it on purpose?” he grunted. “You try pushing that gods-cursed thing up a hill, boy. It’s enchanted. As soon as I get near the top, it slips to the side and gets away.”
Uh huh. “So why don’t you try something else?”
He gestured impatiently around us. “Look around, boy. See any carpenter’s shops? Nothing to build a ramp out of, scaffolding, winches, not even wood for a rolling channel. And no tools anyway. So I keep trying. Maybe one day Hades will be distracted, curse his flea-ridden armpits, and the enchantment will collapse for just long enough.”
You didn’t meet many people willing to curse the gods like that, and I found myself liking him. I looked at the boulder for a moment, thinking. “Does the boulder have to be in one piece?”
He squinted at me. “In one piece? What do I look like— Herakles? Just how am I going to break it up, boy, chew it to bits?”
I hesitated for a moment before holding out the pick I’d been carrying. “I was just thinking—maybe you could use this.”
He drew a breath to argue, then stopped, frowning. “Bring it up in pieces?” He scratched his chin through his beard. “You know, son, that just might work. Nobody said it had to be intact.” He swung the pick experimentally at the boulder and watched a large flake chip off, nodding thoughtfully.
“Listen, son, you’ve done me a good turn. Let me return the favour. From up here I see everything. You came in through the lake portal.” He gestured at me with the pickaxe. “I tell you this: getting in is hard, but getting out is worse. Hades, curse his filthy feet, lets nothing escape. In my time I’ve seen every exit this place ever had. As he finds them, he seals them. If you’re thinking you can just row back out, think again.”
I nodded. We’d shot down that channel like an oat down a throat. I couldn’t see us getting out that way again.
“Just remember, boy. You’re in Hades now. Hades the god, Hades the domain. He won’t let you go.” He caught my puzzled expression and bent down to look me in the eye. “He has to want you out. Irritate him, boy. That’s your escape.”
Hefting the pick, he added, “Now stand back; I’ve got some gravel to make.”
As we returned to my boulder near the Greeks, I glanced over at Elpenor. To my dismay, he didn’t look solid anymore, his sharp edges fading. “Pen? What’s happening?”
He held up his arms and I realized with a shock I could see through them. “It’s the blood meal. It doesn’t last. I should have sat still.” Why hadn’t he said something? He was reverting to a shapeless wisp before my eyes. A formless hand reached for my shoulder but passed through it like a cold shiver. What remained of his face contorted as he struggled to speak. “Remember, Alexi.” His voice was a fading whisper. “Bury my body. Please. And watch for the dead . . . the dead you knew . . .”
His voice faded into a reedy whisper, and the wisp that had been Elpenor drifted away on an unfelt breeze.
I stared after him, willing him to co
me back, but he was gone. I turned slowly and made my way down the hill to the Greeks and perched on my boulder again. Lopex was talking to a group of shades in armour.
What had Pen meant: watch for the dead I knew? Sophronios, of course. I shuddered. Stupid to have given away that pick. If that creature got his hands on me now, he’d kill me and spend eternity tormenting me. Somehow I was sure he would have been one of the first at the blood trough.
There was movement out of the corner of my eye. A shade had left the few still sipping the last cooling fumes at the trench, slipping toward me across the rocky ground. I sprang to my feet, but as the grey form came closer, I spotted a pale arrow sticking awkwardly out of its chest. That was strange. Sophro had been killed by the Cyclops, his head smashed against a wall.
The figure loomed out of the gloom. It was a man, slimmer than Sophro, wearing a simple chiton, no armour.
I knew him. Gods, I knew him. I swallowed, fighting sudden tears.
“Father?”
The shade slipped up to me and stopped. “Alexi? Son?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fleeing the Dead Lands
MY MOUTH OPEN, I couldn’t make a sound. Suddenly I had my arms around him, a strange, cold sensation, but I didn’t care. It was my father. His voice murmured in my ear. “Lex, Lex. I’m so sorry. You know I would have given anything to stay with you.” A cold afterlife of the arrow that had killed him was rubbing awkwardly against my neck, but I didn’t care.
He steered me back to the boulder and we sat down side by side. “We don’t have much time, son. The spirit meal will give me substance only for a little while. So tell me, what are you doing here?”
My father! As if a floodgate had opened, I began to talk, holding nothing back. The three years after his death on the battlefield outside Troy, three years in which Melantha and I had bartered everything we owned for food. Being thrown out of our house to become street orphans. The fall of Troy, after the Greeks somehow got inside the city walls.
He shook his head. “Past the walls? That can’t be right. Nothing got through those walls, not in seven years of siege.”
I grunted. “Look, I didn’t say I knew how. But I was there. You were—” I broke off.
He nodded heavily. “I’m sorry, son. I wish . . . well, you know what I wish. I’m glad you’ve survived, at least.”
Melantha—he didn’t know. I moved on quickly. “They used some sort of trick to get in. I don’t know what. We thought we’d won! The day after they left, the whole city held a party in the streets. We were wrong, though. The Greeks had all sailed away, but that was a trick too. The whole fleet came back that night, when everyone was drunk or asleep.”
My father had glanced over at Lopex at the mention of a trick. I nodded. “He had something to do with it. Or so he said. He was the one who took me as a slave. I suppose I should be glad. Ury was about to kill me.”
My father rubbed his mouth thoughtfully. “So you’re a slave now?” I nodded. “At least you’re alive. If you want to survive, make yourself as useful as you can, perhaps as a healer’s boy. And for Athene’s sake, Alexi, try not to talk back.”
“If you hadn’t gotten yourself killed, you could have trained me,” I snapped. The words were barely out before I wanted them back. “Father, I—”
“Alexi, you don’t know—” he said at the same time.
I found my voice again first. “I’m sorry, father,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He sighed. “No, you’re right. If I hadn’t been out on that battlefield, perhaps I’d still be alive.”
“I guess.” That reminded me. “Do you remember a Greek soldier, a big man, bald, bulging lower lip, named Aegyptos? He said you took his arm off on the battlefield.”
My father thought for a moment. “I didn’t know his name, but yes, that sounds familiar.” He nodded. “I remember now. It was during the second battle of the Scamander plain. His arm was mangled, half ripped off. The wound filled with mud from the plain. Likely it saved him from bleeding to death, though. I never heard if he’d survived. Why?”
“Did you know you saved my life that day?”
My father looked at me, puzzled, and I described how Aegyptos had saved me from Ury to repay the debt. My father’s eyes were glistening as I finished. “Well.” His hands brushed his ghostly chiton. “Well,” he repeated. “Son, I’m so glad. You don’t know how I’ve felt, leaving you. I’m glad you told me.”
Suddenly he frowned, tilting his head.
“Father?” I asked. “What—”
He put up a hand. “Listen.”
Around me, the background whisper of the milling shades was swelling, becoming shrill and anxious. No longer drifting aimlessly, they had begun to flitter and dart about in agitation.
My father had his head tilted up, listening. “The shades are disturbed. I can feel it too. It’s something . . .” his eyes focused and he gripped my arm. “Alexi, you’d better leave. Right away.”
“What is it?” I began, but broke off. From the distance came an eerie howl that could have escaped no mortal throat. The back of my neck prickled.
“It’s him.” My father’s tone was urgent. He gave my forehead a quick, cold kiss as he hauled me to my feet, then shoved me after the Greeks, already edging nervously toward their ship. I turned back to say goodbye, but he shook his head. “Just run. Don’t look back.” As I started after the departing Greeks, he called out. “May the gods be with you, son. I know you’ll make me proud.”
There was a sound like the crack of a monstrous whip, and another unearthly howl ripped the air apart behind me. Ahead, the Greeks broke into a run, leaving dark footprints in the glowing moss. I put on a burst of speed, darting through a curtain of frantic shades to reach the beach just as the ship pushed into the water. As Lopex went over the bow rail, he turned back to frown at me for a moment before reaching down to haul me up and drop me sprawling on the deck. “Phidios!” he called to the rowing master as he turned away. “Take us across! Find the entrance!”
As the men bent their backs to pull us across the dark lake, I looked back. Coming around the hill I had climbed earlier was something huge. A monstrous, malformed dog-shape, wrinkled and hairless as a newborn rat, as big as the Pelagios herself. Its pale skin was crisscrossed with slashes and half-healed scars. As the creature emerged from behind the hill on its stubby legs, the welts oozed a deep, glowing red, shocking to the eye in this land of grey.
It reached the top of the hill, squatted and raised its snout to unleash a deafening howl, shot through with rage and pain. Another howl joined the first, and I peered through the gloom before spotting the source: hanging like a tumour off the creature’s bloated belly was a second head. As it turned its lacerated snout to bay in our direction, I caught sight of a third head, hairless and long-nosed, snapping rat’s teeth at us from deep inside the creature’s mouth.
Facing backward to row, the men had a clear view of the creature and were pulling hard enough to bend their oars. Ahead, the portal we had come down was coming into view through the gloom. But dry! The water that had swallowed us down had drained away, and the channel sloped upward.
The bald man with the boulder had been right. There was no escaping this way. Wait—what had he said? Irritate him. You have to make him want you out. But how did you irritate a god? I was pretty sure shouting insults wouldn’t work.
A whip cracked behind us and there came another howl, this one tinged with agony. I turned to see a huge, man-shaped figure towering over the monstrous rat-hound, a whip in his hand. His skin, hair and tunic were utterly, completely black. Not just dark-skinned, as I’d seen on some of the fierce Ethiopian fighters who had been our wartime allies, but an absolute black that soaked up any light falling on it like a sponge. Only his eyes had colour, burning the deep red of live coals in their sockets. A chill ran through me. Lord Hades.
The whip cracked again, burning another glowing weal across the dog-creature’s hairless flank. It
howled its pain and anger once more and began to shuffle down the beach toward us, its belly nearly dragging on the ground.
Make him want you out. My father used to mix salt and mustard to persuade sick stomachs to release their contents. A pity we couldn’t force Hades to swallow a dose. He’d spit us out for sure. Or could we? I looked at the rounded walls of the cavern and back at the rocky throat we had come down, thinking—and suddenly I had an idea of what Sisyphus might have meant. Hades the god, Hades the domain. The way he’d said it made it sound like there was no difference.
I leapt down into the bow hold, jarring my shins. There. An urn full of salt. The Greeks used it to preserve their meat for travelling. Snatching up a jute millet sack nearby, I tore it open with my sister’s knife and emptied it onto the floor.
Kassander, hidden in the hold, emerged from between two bales of sailcloth. “What is it?”
There was no time. “Hold this.” I handed him the sack and tipped the urn into it, then took it from him to lug it back up the ladder to the deck.
Behind us, the creature had nearly dragged itself to the beach. Lopex had stationed archers at the stern, but to that thing, arrows would be no more than flea bites. Phidios had halted us at the upward-sloping entrance to the tunnel, and the rowers muttered apprehensively as the creature approached the water.
I poured the heavy sack over the bow rail into the black water below and watched. Nothing. My heart sank. Looking around at the stomach-like cave, I had been sure this was what Sisyphus had meant. I had already turned away in disappointment when a sudden hiss like a pot reaching a boil drew me back to the rail.
The water off the bow was beginning to bubble and spit. A round, frothing crater was somehow growing in the water next to us. A man’s height across one moment, wide enough to hold the ship a moment later. The Pelagios lurched sideways as we were pulled over the lip. Still expanding, the crater became a wave, flowing out in all directions from us, growing and frothing. It struck the beach behind us and rebounded, swelling into a churning mass higher than our prow.
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