The Arms Of Hercules

by Fred Saberhagen

  For almost a full minute after the general heard those words, he seemed unable to speak. At last he managed to choke out a brief response: "But why?"

  The question got no answer—not then. At that time the seer knew no more than the cuckolded general exactly what purpose Zeus might have had in committing this outrage, beyond relieving his chronic lust. No doubt that was purpose enough for the Thunderer, to whom legend attributed all the fine moral stature of a rutting beast.

  Tiresias had to repeat his unwelcome message several times before the general began to believe what he was being told.

  Amphitryon's first reaction, when at last he began to believe what he was being told, was violent anger. Jealous rage swelled in him, and he stalked about, muttering.

  Then he stopped and looked at the closed door of the room. "Where is my wife now?"

  "It will do no good to question her," the seer advised him.

  But Amphitryon, angry, would not listen to advice. Summoning Alcmene, he brought her into the room and closed the door again, shutting the three of them off from the rest of the world, and made her listen to the prophet's story.

  In a low and deadly voice he ordered: "Tell my wife what you have just told me."

  "Tell her yourself." Tiresias, himself more puzzled and uncertain than he wanted to admit, was in no mood to be ordered about.

  "What have you to say to that?" the general demanded of his wife.

  "Oh, my lord. I don't know what to say." She who had just become my mother felt confused and injured—and at the same time, secretly, gloriously honored at the thought that the greatest god in the universe had chosen her as his lover, if only for a night.

  Her first thought, on hearing the prophet's revelation, had been that Zeus had simply lusted after her; only now, as she listened to the two men talking, did it occur to Alcmene that she might be going to bear the god's offspring.

  Mixed in with shame and surprise, my mother felt a wonder and a gratitude that she dared not show. She fixed pleading eyes on Amphitryon. "My lord . . . I repeat, I don't know what to say. Last night I was sure that I was with you—as I am sure of your identity at this moment."

  Her husband grunted something, a stunned and almost unintelligible sound. "For now," he said at last, "better go on about the business of the household."

  * * *

  Obediently Alcmene bowed her head and moved away. When she was gone, her husband turned back to Tiresias.

  "Prophet, I am sorry if I spoke rudely to you a moment ago. I apologize, and humbly I ask your advice."

  The blind head nodded slowly. "Your apology is accepted, great general. My first advice is that you do nothing in haste or anger."

  Amphitryon might not have heard him. He almost seemed to be mumbling to himself. Another wave of shame and anger had come over him and seemed about to overwhelm him. "The law says—tradition has always said—that a woman so grossly unfaithful can be, even should be, burned alive."

  Before he could even begin to pursue that idea, there came what might have been a response that effectively prevented any serious consideration. A burst of savage thunder sounded from not far overhead. Looking out the window, the general gazed incredulously at the thick clouds which had been gathering, with amazing swiftness, since his arrival home.

  Moments later, rain poured down. There would be no outdoor fires today, anywhere in this vicinity.

  Over the next few hours and days, suspicions of some baser plot began to creep in on Amphitryon, taking possession of his imagination. For a time, even despite the warning cloudburst and its thunder, he almost managed to convince himself that Zeus was not really involved. Rather it seemed to him possible that the king or someone else had been playing him false, and Tiresias was in on the plot somehow.

  My young half-brother, Iphicles, moped about for a day or two after his father came home, upset by the knowledge of what had happened, and worried about what might happen next. Any suggestion that his mother might be burned would have terrified him, but fortunately for his peace of mind, he never had to hear it.

  Tiresias and his armed escorts took their leave of the estate on the afternoon of the day of their arrival. The ancient seer was accustomed to unpopularity, but he was still unshakably certain that he had seen the god descend.

  Of course the seer made sure that his concubine was with him when he left. Meanwhile she had spent the time chatting with the kitchen girls, delaying them in their work; and Tiresias in the intervals of his own conversations had enjoyed listening to their voices, even at a distance.

  And that is basically the story of that day as it has been told to me. There are questions which I have never been able to answer to my own satisfaction. For example: Was it Tiresias who told the general what my name was to be? If so, was it his own idea, or did it come from Zeus? And did the seer advise that the name should be well publicized, on the theory that calling the child "beloved of Hera" might forestall the wrath of the Thunderer's jealous spouse?

  In any case, I can now assure you, with the benefit of firsthand experience, that the gods, the real gods, are not bound in their behavior by what the legends say they ought to do, how they ought to feel.

  The next days—then weeks and months—were difficult for everyone on the estate. Amphitryon, like any other general, was not averse to handing out punishments when he deemed them necessary—he enforced his will firmly enough, but he took no particular joy in making people suffer.

  But he was jealously possessive of Alcmene, and he took his own honor very seriously. In this case there seemed no one else to blame for his wife's infidelity, no one to punish except her. But any move along that line had been effectively forestalled.

  Once Amphitryon had firmly put out of his mind his first wild impulse to burn his wife alive, he meditated taking a great vow never to touch her again, for fear of bringing down on his own head the jealousy of Zeus. And it is a fact that my mother had no more children.

  In later years, when my personal history began to be severely confused with legend, until matters had reached a point where even I could scarcely be sure where one ended and the other began, some stories had it that the mother of Hercules, still "fearing Hera's jealousy," caused me to be exposed, shortly after birth, just outside the walls of Cadmia.

  There the goddess Hera herself was said to have come upon me by accident and to have been tricked into nursing me, not realizing that the sturdy infant at her breast was the illegitimate spawn of her lecherous husband.

  In fact, the truth about the relationship between the goddess and myself is even a little stranger than the stories. Time and the gods permitting, I will have more to say about it later.

  People love wonders almost as much as food and drink, and sometimes more, and so they insist on creating legends. But mere mortals lack the storytelling skill of Fate, and legends tend to be less marvelous than truth.

  Some nine months after god and prophet had made their respective visits to our house (visits which were never repeated, by the way) my mother gave birth to me; and an hour after giving birth she was tottering on her feet, sacrificing at the altar of Zeus, giving extravagant thanks that I had not come into the world with a bull's horned head, or any such overt indication of my paternity—such a consequence of the god's mating with a woman was not unknown.

  Years later, Alcmene became fond of telling me that for the first few months of my life, everyone around me had the impression that I was entirely normal. Mother always shook her head in wonder when she told me that.

  Chapter Two

  Lessons Gone Awry

  In later years my mother always told me that I had been a gentle child. Somewhat moody now and then but, fortunately for myself and others, almost never aggressive or quarrelsome. I have the impression that my mother controlled me easily, during most of those early years, with soft words and much love. But as the wife of an important general, she had many obligations, and a large part of my upbringing was left to others. As for the general who played
the role of my foster father, I saw even less of him than I did of my mother. Only very recently have I begun to develop some real sympathy for this man, Amphitryon, whose own scruples would allow him neither to adopt me wholeheartedly as his son, nor cast me out as a nameless, shameful bastard.

  I suppose my childhood was happy enough, as mortal childhoods go. Yet a few unpleasant memories endure, beginning very early. (I am not talking now about the snakes, for on the day they came to kill me I was much too young to retain any memory of the event—more later on the snakes.)

  The earliest scene of any kind that I can recall with any accuracy took place when I was three or four. One of my succession of nurses, irked I suppose at having been sternly forbidden to administer even the mildest paddling, locked me in a closet as punishment for some childish offense. Standing alone in the dark was not frightening so much as boring, so I put my hands on the door and gave it one determined but still easy push, which broke it neatly from its hinges and shoved it flying across the room. Standing out most clearly now in memory are the wide eyes of the woman who had locked me in, and the way that I, ready to accept the whole business as some pleasant game, laughed at her astonishment.

  Being shut up in a dark place had meant no more to me than brief inconvenience, and I might have continued to assume the whole episode was only one of play, except for the frightened look on the face of the nurse when she heard the loud splintering of wood and saw how I emerged—and worse, the expression on my mother's face when she came in response to the noise, beheld the wreckage, and learned what had happened. The adult reactions, which were more of fear than of disapproval, puzzled me and brought on in me a deep, unsettling anxiety as well.

  Very much the same thing happened also some years later, on the one time when Amphitryon beat me, in an effort to inflict punishment. He may have been half drunk at the time.

  Up to that point in my life, you understand, I had been given no official account of my true origins. I suppose it was not until late in my childhood that I began seriously to doubt that Amphitryon could be my real father. When the suspicion arose, I found it not particularly disturbing. The man had rarely demonstrated any enthusiasm regarding me—his parental energies seemed to be concentrated almost entirely on Iphicles, for whom he arranged a promising marriage when the lad was only sixteen, and I was only two or three. Not that my half brother and I engaged in open rivalry. As long as I remained a child, there was too much difference in our ages, and afterward I was rarely home. And Iphicles was assured of inheriting the whole estate.

  Nor was Amphitryon especially cruel by nature—actually I can only recall him beating me that one time, and for that he had some justification. In the process of testing the strength of a certain object that he valued highly, a fine steel dagger that was a present from the king, I had broken its blade.

  As a child I was credited with being stoic, because I had no clear idea of what real pain was like; and fortunately my special powers had always protected me from real injury as well.

  Their onset must have been gradual, and at first they were restricted to purely defensive service—I never bit a nipple from the breast of my mother or any of my wet nurses, never crushed an adult's finger in my instinctive baby grip. My seeming stoicism on the day when Amphitryon beat me was not the result of any grim attempt at fortitude, but rather a near indifference to what was happening. Having reached the age of ten or so, I had practically full voluntary control over all my powers. I might of course have pulled the strap out of his hands and torn it into shreds, but I was well aware that any such feat would only have worsened an emotional climate that had already become extremely unpleasant.

  As the flogging went on, and on, without having any noticeable effect, the man who had never quite been my father—though I still called him that—grew frightened by my reaction, or rather by my lack of any that he could understand. Suffering and fright on my part would have reassured him, and sturdy defiance would have been understandable. But I remained sullenly unmoved, and he grew fearful. Only then, by contagion, did the experience become frightening for me in turn. Thus, by means of a complicated process, the thrashing did at last have its intended effect, causing me to mend my ways.

  As proof of the impact the experience had, the images are with me still. Amphitryon's arm rising and falling, rising and falling, swinging a leather strap, while I stared impassively and wondered at the ritual in progress. I realized that any normal child would have been left bruised and screaming, but I was in no way qualified to play my expected part. Each loud impact on my exposed flesh was met precisely by an involuntary countersurge of invisible power from within my body, a nullifying force that afforded me virtually complete protection. After the beating had continued for what seemed many minutes, I began to be aware of a faintly unpleasant stinging sensation, not enough to keep me awake had I been sleepy, and later in a mirror I noted a slight reddening of the skin.

  At last the man who had never been my father cast the strap away from him and left the room in silence. I suppose he must have spoken to me—uttered threats, admonitions, curses, something—while the punishment was in progress, but whatever it might have been, I retain not a word. And he never spoke to me of the matter again.

  When I had outgrown my succession of nurses, my mortal parents provided me with a series of tutors in their stead. Mathematics, geography, an elementary grounding in certain languages (for language I had an aptitude), literature. Of these instructors the last one, Linus, taught me music. More accurately, he made an effort to do so.

  I liked the pure sounds of Apollo's instrument, the lyre, or of a good singing voice—mine was not. I could be entranced by intricate melodies, calling up captivating dreams that went beyond what could be put into words. But the musical details I was actually expected to learn, all the tedious-seeming business of tones and notes and scales, remained as indigestible as bits of gravel.

  Linus was middle-aged, and not a large man physically, though he could seem so when he made the effort, which he did fairly often. As far as I knew he lived alone, and whether he had wife or family he never said. He had gray curling hair, very little beard, a fondness for jewelry, and an aristocratic manner, more so than many of us who were supposedly the genuine aristocrats. He knew much about music, and cared much. But I soon learned that he cared about power more. There was in him also a sadistic strain, which he for the most part kept concealed.

  I was already fifteen years old when Linus arrived to teach me. For the past few years it had struck me as odd that Amphitryon never said anything about starting me on a course of military training. The other boys with whom I was best acquainted, those of my own age and class, were all now keenly concerned with sharp blades and other military matters. I had never been encouraged to play with weapons, except that practice with the bow was tolerated, and I had acquired moderate skill in archery. Not that I was particularly eager to be a soldier, but the fact of my special treatment left me uneasy, because it emphasized the importance of my difference from everyone else. I suppose I dimly understood that my parents were afraid of what might happen if someone put a sword or spear in my hand and urged me to use it, even in a controlled practice. And now here I was, for some reason expected to do well in music.

  I suppose it is hardly necessary to mention that my peers respected me for my strength, although I carefully controlled it when in their presence, using only just enough to outwrestle any one of them when called upon to do so, or lift a slightly greater weight than any other boy could manage. I think my efforts at concealment succeeded, to the extent that none of my companions, with the notable exception of my nephew Enkidu, had the faintest suspicion of the true state of affairs. I myself had reason to believe that my powers went far beyond anything they had yet been called upon to do. But I did not know that for a fact. I had no wish to know the true extent of the gulf dividing me from everyone else.

  * * *

  The immediate cause of my problem with the tutor Linus had t
o do with a certain servant girl attached to our household. Megan had come from somewhere among the savage tribes to the far north; she was a couple of years younger than I, and I had started an affair with her.

  In a way I suppose that was almost inevitable. Young masters in manors, from time immemorial, have begun affairs with young servants, slave or free. Down through the years I have often told myself that, more often than not, the menials are rather pleased, at least at first, to be so singled out.

  But in contrast with the way such affairs usually progress, I had fallen in love with Megan.

  Linus came upon us when we were making love in one of the makeshift hideaways we favored. Perhaps his intrusion was sheer accident. I will not repeat now exactly what he said or what he did (some incidents are not worth telling), but it involved a kind of blackmail—as far as I knew, my mother and foster father were not aware of my serious involvement with a servant.

  The girl was much in my thoughts. But she was absent when the crisis came.

  There arrived a certain summer afternoon, in the courtyard shaded by trellises and grapevines where I usually had my lessons, when Linus, unwisely going beyond mind games for the moment, struck his unmusical student. It was a casual, contemptuous, almost absentminded slap, of a kind he had administered to me two or three times before. The impact of a music teacher's hand was no more painful to me than a falling feather. But this time the teacher had chosen precisely the wrong moment, had overstepped an invisible line, and the unmusical student immediately, impulsively hit him back.

  He ought not to have attempted blackmail and then struck me with such casual contempt. The two together added up to a fatal mistake. He thought he had established a new hold over me that gave him the privilege of inflicting such abuse, but in fact the very opposite was true: he stood in special danger. His words and act together were like a spark in the air of a granary filled with dusty grain. My anger flared explosively.

  * * *