“The gods be with me,” he whispered to himself.
Oh, we are with you, he heard Brooma’s voice say on the wind. Though I think this Geekus kid will be a real drag.
Hercules almost laughed.
“For once,” he replied to the wacky goddess, “I have to agree with you!”
Chapter 4
Queen of the Amazons
There was great rejoicing going on inside the Amazon fortress at Castletop.
Hundreds of the female warriors were gathered in the great chamber of the fort. Many jugs of wine were being passed among them. Whole cows were being cooked over gigantic barbecues. Trumpets blared nonstop. Huge fires that had been lit in the outside courtyard were lighting up the dark morning sky. The mile-high castle had not seen a celebration like this in hundreds of years.
The Crown of Xas was now in their possession, and for that reason, the Amazons planned to party on for days. Their theft had gone off perfectly. They had been planning it for years. Now the most powerful, most valuable possession of the Kingdom of Zim was sitting in the huge vault in the center of Castletop.
And for Stuka, the queen of the Amazons, this meant nothing less than a chance at immortal life.
But Stuka was not happy. She was sitting on her throne, looking down on the celebration of her female warriors, a huge leg bone of meat in one hand and an enormous cup of wine in the other. She was surrounded by her circle of wizards. They looked as worried as she did.
Stuka’s bad mood stemmed from a troubling report she’d just received from the sorcerers. According to their seeing ball, a small group of “special warriors” had left Xumonia’s castle earlier that morning and appeared to be heading toward Castletop. Just who these special warriors were the wizards could not tell. They might be mercenaries hired from another kingdom, they had theorized, or perhaps a secret military unit Zim had been preparing for just such an occasion.
Stuka had known all along that Xumonia would not give up the Crown of Xas without a fight—that’s why the Amazons had planned the crown’s theft while the army of Zim had been away at battle. And while Stuka assumed all along that her stepsister would call back some of her soldiers to retrieve the crown, such an act might take several weeks, or even a month. And without the crown, Xumonia would not last that long.
But now, with word that some special warriors were coming much earlier than expected, Stuka’s concern had deepened.
She took a huge bite of meat, washing it down with a deep gulp of wine. The fact that her fortress was sitting atop a mile-high mushroom-shaped tower of rock and earth was the Amazons’ best defense. No army had ever successfully attacked the Castletop simply because it was almost impossible to get to. It took nearly a half day’s journey for the Amazons themselves to get to the bottom—and then another day’s climb up the sheer cliffs and into the forest beyond. And this only after crossing the raging river that surrounded the place.
But still, Stuka knew that Xumonia probably picked these mysterious special warriors very well. They were no doubt well trained and extremely loyal-and probably handsomely paid, to boot.
So the Amazons had to be prepared for them. And that’s what Stuka was discussing at the moment with her circle of wizards. How could they best prevent the special warriors from Zim from reaching Castletop?
“We can make their journey here most miserable,” one of the wizards was telling Stuka. “We can make the trip so painful, they will probably turn around and run back home before they’ve even made it halfway!”
Stuka listened closely to her wizards. She didn’t always believe what they said, but she knew they could do some amazing things.
“How would you accomplish that?” she asked, biting off a huge mouthful of meat from the cow’s leg.
“We can make the forest even more haunted than it already is,” one wizard told her. “We can conjure up very scary things—ghosts, horror plants, demons. Things that will make even the bravest soldier run away.”
“That’s good,” Stuka told them between bites of a cow’s eyeball. “What else?”
“We can do simple things like block the road, too,” another wizard said. “With one enchantment, we can put so many rocks and tree trunks across the road, it will take an entire army days to remove them.”
“Again, very good!” Stuka said, wiping her greasy mouth with her greasy hand.
“And then, of course,” a third wizard whispered in her ear, “we always have our secret weapon. . . .”
Stuka thought about that for a moment—and smiled. Yes, they had their own secret weapon, something more frightening than haunted forests and roadblocks.
She took a huge gulp of wine and suddenly felt much, much better.
Let Xumonia send her special warriors to get back the crown.
With everything that would stand in their way, the chances of their success would be less than zero.
Chapter 5
The First Test
Hercules had traveled the Road of Rudes before.
As a boy he’d journeyed all over the realm and he’d used the road to get to many of these places.
His memories of the road were mostly fond ones—long rolling valleys, pleasant hills, trees and flowers everywhere.
But the road went many places in many directions, and the piece of it that connected Zim to Zum went through some of the darkest, most forbidding regions in the world. Again, Hercules knew that the quicker he made this journey, the better.
He’d decided early on simply to ignore Geekus—maybe that way he would get the hint and turn around and go back to Zim, where he’d be infinitely safer. The queen might not be as mad as she would be if Hercules simply told Geekus to go home—or moved so fast that Geekus could just never keep up.
Still, through the first six hours of the trip, they had been forced to stop no less than ten times, all of them because some small calamity had befallen Geekus. He’d dropped his eyeglasses three times, had lost one of his ugly sandals four times. He’d sneezed so loud once that it knocked him off his feet and startled XL to the point of bolting, and he’d simply tripped over his own feet twice.
So those first few hours were not very pleasant. Sure, the road was level and the woods airy. It was an unusually warm spring day, and Hercules would have at least liked to enjoy the sun on his face. But Geekus was like an anchor, constantly dragging them to a stop whenever they got a good speed up.
Hercules knew this was not a good situation, especially since he had such little time to get to Castletop.
Even XL seemed to be upset at the boy. But he also made sure he never went too fast for Geekus. Whenever he sensed that the boy was falling behind, he would slow down and allow him to catch up. XL was a smart horse. He knew it was up to him to protect Geekus as well.
The day wore on, and by the time noon had arrived, Hercules determined that they’d already traveled a good portion of the trip, despite Geekus’s dallying. Maybe they could make the Kingdom of Zum in just a couple of days, Hercules thought, and somehow get the crown back and returned to Xumonia in plenty of time before the next full moon.
But then again, maybe not. . . .
They stopped for lunch just as the sun was overhead. Hercules unraveled XL from his golden reins. The steed took a drink of water from a nearby stream, then wandered away to graze. Hercules had conditioned himself not to eat much on the trip, so he dined on an apple picked from a nearby tree.
Geekus, on the other hand, had produced an enormous meal from his backpack. Bread, jam, a fish burger, two pears, an apple, and a bag of pine nuts. The boy gobbled all this down in less time than it took Hercules to eat his apple.
Hercules watched him as he ate, sitting under a tree some forty feet away. He was sure that the girls in the nearby villages didn’t even acknowledge Geekus’s existence, even though he was the queen’s nephew. His sniffling, runny nose, thick eye specs,
and his absolutely stupid way of dressing was probably too much for even the most generous girls to be friends with him.
Hercules wondered what it would have been like if the poor kid had turned out to be handsome. He would have been by far the most popular kid in the land.
Looks shouldn’t be everything, Hercules thought.
Now, as he watched Geekus stuff his face, lost in a world of his own, Hercules was surprised by something: he would have thought that Geekus would have talked his ear off already. But in amongst the tripping episodes, the dropped glasses, and the sniffles and wheezes, the fact was, he hadn’t said a word to Hercules the entire journey. And in some small way, this made Hercules have a small measure of respect for him.
Very small.
Hercules signaled it was time to go by packing up his bags. Geekus silently packed his own belongings and waited for Hercules to rein XL.
Then they started off again.
Still, not a word passed between them.
Now the road began to twist through some of the deepest forests in the land.
The forest became so dark at one point that Hercules could barely see his hand in front of him. He had to lead XL inch by inch, and did so very carefully. If the magnificent steed stumbled or got hurt, then they’d all be in big trouble.
It was so dark, in fact, that when they came to the roadblock, Hercules nearly walked right into it!
They’d just passed over a shallow stream and turned a bend when they first saw it. It was made of tree trunks, mud, and stone, and looked like it had been blocking this part of the road for years.
“Oh, this is just great!” Hercules murmured when he first realized what it was.
The blockade had been well-placed. To the right was a sheer cliff, straight up. To the left, a steep drop straight down into an even darker part of the forest.
There was no way to go around the roadblock. And because it was so high and covered with jagged stones and metal, there was no way they could climb over it, either.
“By the gods, we spent a whole day getting here, and now this,” Hercules exclaimed. “It’s impossible.”
“No, it isn’t,” Geekus said quietly.
Hercules spun around. Was the kid actually speaking to him?
“It isn’t?” Hercules asked him sternly.
“No,” Geekus stated.
“Well?” Hercules asked, getting into his face. “What can you do about it?”
Geekus took a few steps back and studied the roadblock for a moment. He pulled on his chin in thought.
“Let’s see,” he murmured. “It’s about thirty-five feet high, don’t you think? Maybe thirty paces wide?”
Hercules just rolled his eyes and plopped to the ground.
“Oh, brother!” he groaned.
Geekus did the rest of his figuring silently. Then he came up to Hercules and took off his travel bag and gave it to him.
“I’ll be right back!” he said.
With that, he disappeared around the bend and splashed across the stream.
Hercules just shook his head and sank farther to the ground.
“How did I ever get mixed up with such a birdbrain?” he said to himself.
Geekus came back about ten minutes later.
In his hands he had an assortment of roots, dried leaves, tree bark, and a couple of powdery stones.
“May I use your canteen?” he asked Hercules.
“What do you need my canteen for?” Hercules replied sternly. “What’s the matter with your canteen? And what is all that stuff?”
Geekus dropped everything at his feet.
“Potash. Sulfur. Ginger root,” he said. “My canteen is brand new—and I really don’t want to . . .”
Hercules was looking at the mess at his feet, and really didn’t hear Geekus. The boy snatched his canteen, casually emptied it out, and began putting sulfur into it, all before Hercules could stop him.
“Do you know how to make fire?” he asked Herc.
“Of course I do!” Hercules replied harshly. “Please tell me why you are ruining my canteen.”
“Make some fire,” Geekus said. “And you’ll see. . . .”
Hercules was so mad, he just got up, fond some flint, and made some fire. Meanwhile, Geekus stayed hunched over the ground, mixing up the things he’d found and stuffing the contents into Hercules’ canteen.
Finally he got up, dusted himself off, and walked over to Hercules’ fire. He was holding the stuffed canteen, which now had a piece of cloth running out of the top.
“You’d better go back down the road a bit,” he told Hercules.
“Why? What are you doing?”
“We want this roadblock out of the way, right?” Geekus asked.
Hercules nodded—though he was still miffed.
“Then go around the bend, please,” he told him.
Hercules almost laughed in his face. Man, what a nerd!
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go around the bend. In fact, I’ll go all the way back to Zim!”
“Just around the bend will be far enough,” Geekus said, hardly paying attention to him.
Hercules took XL’s rein and stalked off across the stream.
But just as they reached the other side, he heard a terrific boom!
It was so loud, it nearly knocked Hercules into the water. He spun around and looked back from where he’d just come. There was a cloud of ugly black smoke rising above the treetops.
“Geekus?!” he cried out.
But there was no reply.
He started running, XL close on his heels. Through the stream and up the other bank, the smoke got thicker and the smell got very, very stinky.
He came around the bend and here he found Geekus. He was stumbling a bit, his face and hands covered with soot. His glasses were half off his face, and one of his squirrel-bladder sandals was deflated.
But he was all right. And the roadblock? Well, the roadblock was gone. All that was left of it was a bunch of smoldering rocks, tree limbs, and mudcakes.
Hercules couldn’t believe it. It was as if some great lightning bolt—from the hand of a very powerful god—had blown the roadblock away.
Hercules knew of no other way that it could have happened.
But Geekus did. He’d made a bomb. A very powerful bomb. And it had blown the roadblock to smithereens.
“It wasn’t supposed to be that big!” he mumbled, fixing his eye specs. “I think I used too much sulfur. Yes, that was it. Too much sulfur. . . .”
Chapter 6
A Long Sleep
The day grew older. The road grew darker.
The sun started to sink in the west. From the top of each hill, it was easy for Hercules to see the miles of darkening forests that lay ahead of them. Sometimes, way, way off in the distance, where the earth rose to meet the sky, he thought he could see the faint outline of Castletop as well.
The sun eventually passed down below the trees, and now the day wasn’t as warm anymore. The queen’s wizard had told Hercules that when night fell, they had to get off the road and hide in a very dark place until first light.
But Hercules needed no convincing about this. He knew the stories about what happened on the Road of Rudes at night. As soon as the sun was down, the night creatures would come out. Horrible monsters, demons, giants, and worse emerged to rule the road while the earth was in darkness. Hercules wanted no part of them—especially with Geekus and XL to protect.
So indeed, Hercules intended to find the deepest, darkest place possible before nighttime came. That’s why he decided it was best to start looking now.
They reached a flat part of the road where a small plain separated two thick woods. There was a collection of rocks hidden behind a large group of bushes about one hundred paces off to the right. At the base of the formation was a sma
ll cave. It was just tall enough for XL to fit in standing up.
This seemed to be the perfect spot. It was off the road, but not so much amongst the thick trees where the night creatures tended to live. Plus, the strange-looking plants around the cave’s entrance were so thick, they hid it completely. It seemed like just the place to hide and sleep.
But as Hercules would soon find out, there were plenty of things along the road that just weren’t what they seemed.
XL was a little reluctant to go into the cave, but Hercules made him do it anyway. It was almost dark by this time, and they really had little time for delay.
Geekus followed them inside, and immediately began studying the cave’s walls and rock formations.
Hercules built a very small fire, then took off XL’s saddlepacks and reins. He fed him his oats and water and then settled down to cook a sweetcake for himself.
Geekus sat a respectable distance away. Sniffling, sneezing, eating another ton of his own food, drinking his own water, and looking at the rocks.
Outside, the night grew quickly. Hercules’ throat was parched. He needed a drink. But, of course, he had no canteen. He would have to drink from Geekus’s flask.
They hadn’t spoken much since the roadblock incident, and though Hercules would never tell him, he was impressed that he’d gotten them past their first obstacle. But to ask him now for a drink of water might start a conversation with him, and Hercules just didn’t want to do that.
So he crawled over to him, got his canteen, and took a long swig from it, without saying a word.
Geekus didn’t even seem to notice. He was too busy staring at the cave’s walls.
“Solid granite,” he was mumbling. “I think.”
Night finally arrived outside.
XL got very quiet. Geekus huddled with his food packs. Hercules leaned back against the cold cave wall, ready for anything.
Then the howls started. The squeals, the shrieks of the night creatures waking up.
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