I shook my head at this. "You're no deader than the rest of us."
Meleager now resumed his attempts to arrange a marriage. Before his plunge into the Underworld, he had been the surviving male head of the family, and as an honorable man had considered his sister his responsibility.
"Hercules, I should never have gone off with Jason on that mad expedition. Not when it meant abandoning my family responsibilities. I have failed in my duty to my sister, because it was entirely up to me to see to it that she makes a good marriage. Now more than ever she needs a decent husband. I'm serious, I entreat you to take her for your wife."
"Why 'more than ever'?"
"Because—I'm dead."
"Oh yes, I had forgotten. Well, finding an acceptable husband for Danni should not be difficult at all—she is a lovely woman."
"That she is." Meleager paused, looked at me closely. Then in a loud, firm voice, he said: "As for 'acceptable,' my standards are quite high. Hercules, if you are able to return to the world above, I charge you with the duty of marrying my sister."
I stared at him, realizing that he was not just dazed, and wondering if he had gone as mad as Hades. But then I remembered that Meleager had not seen me since the day, long months ago, when the Argonauts had left me and my nephew stranded on the shores of Mysia. How long ago that seemed! So it was highly unlikely that Mel could have heard the news of my marriage to Megan, or her recent death.
I find it hard to reconstruct, or understand, my own mental state at this time. Possibly my grief for my lost loved ones had burned so fiercely that already there were only ashes left. Still, it would seem that no thought could be farther from my mind than that of contracting another marriage. But I can only report what truly happened, and the fact is that I heard myself agreeing to Mel's entreaties—perhaps in those circumstances I would have said anything to stop his raving.
Besides, I had to confront the fact that my search for Thanatos in Hell had failed. Before I went elsewhere seeking Death, I might as well take the opportunity to cheat him out of three more victims.
"Stay close behind me, men," I told the trio who now—yes, even Theseus—were looking to me for leadership. "I'm getting out of here, and I don't think anyone will try to stop me as I leave." Privately I told myself that I would welcome any such attempt.
I chose the direction in which the ground beneath our feet seemed to rise a little as we moved, and set out.
Meleager, as we progressed, tearfully confessed that he felt a great responsibility for the kidnapping of Enkidu, which had resulted in the lad's being thrown into the Pool of Pegae, all because most of the Argonauts wanted to delay and get rid of his powerful uncle. Mel said he had not been directly responsible, but he had failed to properly discourage the attempt.
"I am sorry now that I didn't try to stop them, Hercules." His honest face was woebegone.
"It's over now, and no harm done," I told him shortly. "Let it be forgotten."
I gave serious thought to the possibility of summoning my Skyboat to come cruising right along the Styx, or the Acheron, and enjoyed a moment of sardonic amusement at the thought of Charon's reaction to such competition. But then I thought of the long, long detour the boat might have to travel to get from the nameless stream where I had left it waiting, and decided it had best stay there.
The fact was that I had virtually given up trying to find Thanatos in the Underworld. Since entering Hell, I had repeatedly encountered folk whom I could recognize, a state of affairs which seemed unlikely, considering the vast number of people who must have died since the beginning of the world, and of all those who must be dying now, hour by hour and minute by minute, in every nation and in many of the ships at sea, with or without the personal help of Thanatos or any other god. In an Underworld so heavily populated, why, out of all those thousands, nay millions, should I keep encountering so many people I had known?
Surely something more than mere chance must be involved. So, were the Death God here, I thought, I would have found him by now. Since he was not, I would have to seek him elsewhere.
Besides, there had been something convincing in the way that Hades, whether he was insane or not, had twirled what appeared to be the Face of Death around his finger.
As the four of us moved on from room to room, an obstacle to our departure soon presented itself. There came a huge whining and shuffling in the darkness, and then we saw it: what I can only describe as a three-headed dog, shaggy and elephant-sized, though built closer to the ground than any elephant.
When I was on Corycus, several people had told me that at least two versions of Cerberus had been destroyed in recent years—but here was yet another duplication, or perhaps it was a new edition, of the great dog.
Cerberus was stranger than any beast I had encountered on the surface of the earth, perhaps even more bizarre than Antaeus. He, or it, was neither beast, god, nor human, but rather an artifact of the mysterious odylic process.
Each head was equipped with a pair of wide-set yellow eyes and supported by its own set of forelegs, so that the creature walked and ran upon eight legs in all. Each set of jaws was filled with long, sharp teeth.
Pirithous and Meleager retreated hastily, for which I could not blame them. Theseus danced about alertly, keeping out of reach of those six big jaws.
"I think I can grab one leg and hold it, Hercules," he calmly proposed. "Or would you rather I took the tail?"
I thanked him politely but suggested that his best move would be to stay clear. Then I stepped in close to Cerberus, catching all three of its slow brains by surprise, and stunned the one in the middle with a punch. The two remaining heads howled and snarled and snapped. Both tried to get at me at once, with the effect of paralyzing their shared body with contradictory commands.
A bit of scrambling about was necessary before all three heads could be rendered unconscious, and while that was in progress I considered the idea of bringing back to Hephaestus and Daedalus some sample fragment of the great dog's flesh and bone.
Or, for that matter, the whole thing, as I had once brought the Boar. I could picture myself throwing Cerberus down at the feet of Hermes, or of Zeus himself. "Here, you are so obsessed with monsters, take this one!"
But I soon gave up on that plan. Getting the whole beast out alive, with the three heads probably regaining consciousness at random intervals, would certainly have required a terrific struggle.
Pirithous and Meleager soon returned, and the four of us walked on, leaving the monster dog where it had fallen. We had not gone far when it began to whine and whimper in the gloom behind us. But those sounds faded gradually as we moved away.
Finding my way down into Hell had been comparatively easy. But once the decision had been made to get out again, I realized that I faced something of a problem. Simply retracing my steps seemed out of the question; I had the feeling that the scenery here was slowly and continually shifting, so that finding the right way would be hopeless. Theseus and Pirithous had no more idea than I did of which way we ought to go; and Meleager could not even remember how he had been brought into the Underworld.
Doing the best we could, we groped our way through one room and passage after another, praying for providential guidance and trying to climb when we came to anything like a stair or ramp.
Now the stench of sulphur mounted in my nostrils. We had reached the hinterland of Hell, a dark and smoky place enough in its own right, bathed in some kind of volcanic fumes, and frightening in the way that all deeply unsettled things can be.
How long we kept at it I cannot say, but eventually determination was rewarded. What had looked like only more hellish space, only mere fogbank dimness, turned out when I bumped into it to be a solid wall, painted or naturally colored gray, in shadings that gave it the look of fog when seen from only a few feet away.
As soon as I felt it was solid wall, and had made sure there was no door, I hit the blank surface with my fist, putting some energy behind the blow. Something cracked, in t
he circumstances an encouraging sound. I hit it again, still harder, and then again. Pieces began to fall away, and presently I succeeded in breaking my way through.
Emerging on the other side of the wall, we immediately felt a movement of what smelled and tasted like fresh air. The other aspects of the world were not much changed, but the refreshing draft gave us hope. Finding an ascending slope, we pushed on with fresh energy, drawing in deep breaths.
After a long climb, during which the world around us underwent a gradual alteration, we came to a place where we were undoubtedly aboveground, and the blessed light of Apollo's sun, or Diana's moon, was visible at least dimly, and there were living, growing things about.
I had found my way down into Hell, then fought my way up and out of it again.
But as soon as all immediate challenges had been disposed of, the pointlessness of it all struck me with overwhelming force. The fact that I had survived another adventure was ultimately meaningless. I had really won nothing at all.
Megan was still dead, and so was small Hyllus, whose life I had, without fully realizing it, begun to consider in some ways more important than my own. I saw the world before me as a dark, blank space, devoid of significance.
And when that thought came I collapsed again, sitting on the ground, not knowing what to do or what was to become of me. I felt like most of my self had been consumed in the fires of my own rage and hate.
On my emergence from the Underworld I more than half expected to find Hermes waiting for me, ready to congratulate me on my accomplishments and to tell me that my divine sponsors had a new job for me to undertake. Oh, the Messenger would probably be very glad to see me, having a good reason to fear that a valuable worker had gone to Hell and would not be coming back. And of course he would have good reasons why neither he nor Zeus had gone to Tartarus to look for me.
Not that Zeus was ever going to speak to me directly. But I knew exactly what I was going to tell the Messenger when next I saw him: "If any of you gods have seen my father, I would like to see him, too. No matter if he is not in fact all-powerful. No matter even if there are a hundred Giants stronger than he is, or if he has now gone as mad as Hades. I won't hold any of those things against him. But I have done all that I swore to do, and more; and I intend to hold him to his promise to meet with me. There are some words I want to say to him."
As soon as we could be sure that we were out, my three companions wept tears of joy and hastened to offer prayers and promise sacrifices of thanksgiving. Meleager, finally convinced that he was still alive, was in ecstasy. Their demonstrations of delight evoked in me nothing but the dregs of my rage at Thanatos, and loathing for the world.
The sky in the east turned light, and presently I could see the sun again, but at first the sight meant nothing to me. The light of sun and moon and stars was only mockery.
When my three companions in escape offered me words of comfort and tried to inspire me to new hope, I raised my fist and roared at them. Two of them prudently retreated. Only one remained, who was still standing near me when I once more raised my head. Again I raised my fist menacingly, but the figure before me did not move.
Theseus, the scoundrel and pirate, was the only one who defied my stupid threats and remained with me. Pirithous had taken to his heels—and so, I observed, had Meleager, who an hour or so ago had pledged himself to me in eternal gratitude and friendship. I groaned out curses at the remaining pirate and warned him to be on his way, too.
But when I looked up again, some minutes later, Theseus was still standing there, exactly where he had been.
He said in a firm voice: "Pull yourself together, shipmate."
I gave him a look that would have driven ten ordinary men away. But Theseus stared right back at me.
He said: "Hell of a thing, what Death did to you. Robbed you all at once of everything you had. I don't know if I could take a punch like that—hell, I know I couldn't. I've never had the guts to live that kind of life. Love people and have them love me, knowing it could all be lost. Which is doubtless why I could never pick one woman and . . ."
An interval of silence passed, while my companion looked away from me, as if he pondered the evils of the world, or perhaps had been surprised by something in himself. Then he came a little closer and squatted down at my side. Presently he sighed, and went on:
"I'm older than you, Hercules, and there's some things I do know. When the whole damned world has fallen on a man's head, he's got to suck in his gut and keep going. Do that, and you can still win. Law of nature. Win, even if the bastards kill you. But if you don't do that, then you've let them win."
"I . . ." It was excruciatingly hard to get out any words at all. "I wanted to find Death. Whether I could beat the hell out of him again, or whether he got me this time . . . but instead there sat Hades, gone completely mad. He had the Face of Death in his hands, and he sat there, twirling it around his finger."
My faithful companion nodded, as if he understood. At least he sympathized, and at the moment that was more important. Later I realized that the pirate's understanding went in some ways deeper than my own.
After a while he reassured me: "You'll catch up with him. Sooner or later."
Theseus stayed with me yet for a while longer. Until, I suppose, he saw in me some sign that in my mind I had turned some kind of corner and was going to heed his advice.
"You'll be all right now, Hercules. Yeah, I think you will. Let your friends help you."
And at last he quietly moved on.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Wrestling
Skyboat had not yet rejoined me, and I began to travel on my own two legs, looking for a sizable stream where I might hope that it would soon be able to meet me.
After my descent into the Underworld, and after Theseus had given me his necessary pep talk, and I had made my way through the rest of the limbo of the borderlands, I craved a face-to-face meeting with my father even more desperately than before.
Now I was traveling alone again, even though more than ever I needed to talk to someone who could make sense out of what had happened in my own life, and was still happening in the world. I would have given much to have even an hour with Daedalus, but that was not to be.
Danni's green eyes and slender body kept intruding upon my thoughts, and I yearned toward her as if I might find in her a place of refuge from grief and fear and turmoil. Again in memory I saw the face of her brother, deep in Tartarus, and heard him urging me to marry her. The words took on the character of some mystic revelation.
The first time I feel asleep after returning to the world of the living, I had a dream in which I found myself dueling somehow with my father. I thought in my vision that Zeus, huge, gray-bearded, the image of a quintessential patriarch, came at me armed with the sword and shield of the Amazon queen, and my club was awkward, and suddenly it became too heavy for me to lift at all.
It was all unclear in my mind as to whether the duel had anything to do with my promise to marry Danni.
I crossed a small stream or two, but still had not regained the Skyboat. I was wandering in an unknown country, far from home, vaguely hoping somehow to regain contact with Apollo.
In my alienated state of mind I kept wondering if all the gods that I had ever met had been deranged or even killed by some effort of our terrible enemies. The dream in which Apollo appeared to me was reassuring, but he might of course have fallen in battle after that.
In the course of my waking wanderings, I came to a town of modest size whose name I did not know; nor was I at all certain what border I had last crossed. But I could understand the speech of those I met, or enough of it to meet my needs, and this satisfied me for the time being.
The townsfolk greeted me with a simple, courteous welcome. It seemed that I now found myself in a land set apart from most of the world's wars and upheavals, where the people seemed simple and for the most part honest. Here and there were simple shrines to the usual gods, the figures considered most lik
ely to be helpful and dependable.
The town's mayor, a gray-bearded elder with massive eyebrows and a pleasant face, came out to offer me official welcome, and did so without indicating that he knew he had a celebrity on his hands. I got the impression that any well-behaved traveler might have been given the same reception.
There was a small speech that I had given often since the beginning of my wanderings, and now I used it yet again.
"My name is Hercules, and I am an honest man. I am also a stranger among you, far from my own home, and I ask for what you can spare me in the way of food and clothing."
"That seems a most reasonable request, and it is granted." The old man, who had shown no reaction when he heard my name, briefly paused to study me before he added: "But will you do us one reasonable favor in return?"
"Very likely. What is it?"
Leaning a little forward, he pronounced the one word carefully:
"Wrestle."
"Wrestle?" For a moment I wondered whether I had heard him correctly. "Wrestle who? And where, and why, and when?"
The man looked a little pained, as if the speech he gave me had been enforced upon him. He said: "There is a certain competition pending, in which it is crucial to us that our town should not be utterly disgraced. Understand, stranger, that whether you actually win a single match or not is of small importance. All that really matters is that you make a creditable effort."
"All right." I could feel myself relaxing inwardly. "I can manage that, and it doesn't seem a lot to ask. Far be it from me to bring disgrace upon my hosts."
The mayor smiled. "Good. We will feed you first, of course. We want you to be strong." And he looked at my unimpressive frame with optimistic eyes.
While I attacked the substantial meal that was soon set before me, washing it down with a flagon of good local beer, I heard the explanations of the townsfolk as to why they were in need of another wrestler.
The whole business seemed a little odd, but reasonably straightforward. The wrestling matches were part of a local tradition of competition with a neighboring town. Each town's chosen competitors formed a single line, the two lines approaching each other head-on, from opposite sides of the wrestling ring. The losing contestant in each match, two falls out of three, was eliminated, and the next man in line stood up in his place. When all the members of either one line or the other had been thrown, the opposite team was acclaimed the winner.
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