by Tom Holt
Jason winced. ‘Mum,’ he said.
‘This instant.’
There was a brief silence, charged with strong emotion. Then Jason let out a plangent sigh, leaned the Sword of Glycerion in its canvas case against the door-frame and sprinted up the stairs. When he came back he was wearing a different pair of shoes.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now, if you don’t mind . . .’ He picked up the sword-case and reached for the door-handle.
‘Hanky?’
‘Yes,’ Jason growled.
‘Show me.’
‘You what?’
‘Show me that you’ve got a clean hanky.’
Jason turned slowly round and gave his mother a look that would have turned the Gorgon to stone and had the Hell-Dragon running in search of the nearest battered dragons’ hostel. On his mother it had absolutely no effect.
‘Hanky,’ she said.
‘I’m going beheading monsters,’ Jason said, ‘I don’t think I’m actually going to need . . .’
‘Hanky.’
My mother, Jason said to himself, a woman of iron will and limited vocabulary. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m late already, so . . .
This time, Mrs. Derry didn’t even say Hanky; she just looked it. That was somehow infinitely worse.
‘All right,’ Jason snapped. ‘All right.’ He hurried back up the stairs again. A moment later, his voice floated down over the bannisters.
‘Mum . . .’
‘Yes, dear?’
‘Where are my handkerchiefs, Mum?’
‘In the airing cupboard, dear, second shelf down at the back, where they usually are.’
‘Oh. Right.’
‘And don’t run up and down stairs like that, Jason. It’s not good for them.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
Having proffered a spotless handkerchief for inspection and picked up the Sword, Jason lunged for the doorhandle and rotated it. Even if it turned out that Jupiter had lined up the entire race of Titans for him today, he felt things could only get easier from now on.
‘Jason.’
He froze. ‘Yes, Mum?’
‘Don’t forget Sharon’s coming over today.’
‘Mum . . .’
So make sure you’re back by quarter to six at the latest, because you’ll need to have a bath and wash your hair.’
‘Mum . . .’
‘Have a nice day, dear. Go carefully, now.’
‘Yes, Mum.’ And so saying, the Seed of Jove crawled out of the door and slumped across to the golf cart.
‘Morning, boss.’
‘What?’ Jason hurled the sword-case onto the back seat and sat down.
‘I said Morning.’
‘Be that as it may,’ Jason replied. ‘What’s the old git want me to do today?’
‘Shh!’ George was cringing. ‘Keep your voice down, boss.’
Jason shook his head. ‘If I want to call the Old Git an old git,’ he said loudly, so that a passing milkman nearly dropped a crate of gold-top, ‘then I shall call the Old Git an old git, and if the Old Git doesn’t like it, then the Old Git knows what he can do. All right?’
George nodded. Since he was hunkered down almost under his seat, all Jason could see was the top of his head, but from its movements he could extrapolate a nod.
‘Fine,’ said Jason. ‘So what has the . . .’
‘Nemean Lion,’ George whispered quickly, ‘followed by Storm-giants, then half an hour for lunch, followed by wrestling with Time and ending up with stealing the Golden Pear of Truth from the Temple of the Nine Winds which is guarded by . . .’
‘I know,’ Jason said. ‘Right, let’s get on with it. And if I faint from boredom halfway through, don’t forget to wake me.’
George put the cart in gear. ‘Right you are, boss. Oh, and boss . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘ ’Scuse me saying this, but it’s good to see you back to normal, boss, after you went over all funny. I said to myself . . .’
‘George.’
‘Yes, boss?’
‘Drive the cart.’
George shrugged and released the brake. ‘Still,’ he added, ‘Glad to see you’ve put all that defecting crap behind you, boss. I could have told you no good would come of it.’
‘George . . .’
‘The lads were saying,’ George went on, and Jason wondered why saying someone’s name quietly didn’t seem to work when he did it, ‘he won’t be able to keep it up, they said. Not once his mum’s sorted him out. Right old battleaxe . . .’
‘George!’
‘Boss?’
‘For crying out loud, George,’ Jason hissed, glancing over his shoulder at the front door of the house, ‘keep your voice down!’
The eagle banked sharply and dived, slicing through the cold air like a worried knife. Behind her, ten winged chariots full of Spectral Warriors pulled up, wobbled in thin air, and changed tack. A flash of lightning narrowly missed the eagle’s wingtip.
Nothing left for it, the eagle realised, but to climb. Try and outmanoeuvre them. G-forces, gravitational pull, power-to-weight ratios, Sopwith Camels, all that sort of stuff. It wasn’t exactly her forte, but there it was. As the careers officer at theological college had told her, it is extremely ill-advised to overspecialise too early. She rose as sharply as she could, nearly pulling her own wings off in doing so, and soared.
‘After her!’ shouted the Captain of Spectral Warriors.
‘But . . .’ said his charioteer.
‘No buts,’ snapped the Captain. ‘Follow her!’
‘OK, boss,’ said the charioteer.
Not long afterwards, ten empty winged chariots drifted away towards the ground, their crews having all fallen out when they tried to follow an eagle who was looping the loop. For a moment the eagle slowed down, exhausted, and rested on the crest of a strong thermal. Then she saw another ten winged chariots emerge from behind a bank of cloud, and jinked just in time to avoid a burst of lightning bolts.
Grimly, she started to climb; but the chariots didn’t try following her this time. Instead they split up and spread out, rising in slow circles around her. Obviously, she decided, these were the teeth of one smart dragon. Wisdom teeth.
She reset her wings and dived, sending rabbits on the far-distant surface scurrying for cover in all directions. When it looked as if she was certain to hit the deck with extreme force, she pulled up as hard as she could - was that a bone in her left wing breaking, or just a few tendons? - and skimmed parallel to the ground. When she cocked her head over her shoulder, she could see that the chariots were following. Good. In a manner of speaking, of course; really good would have been if they had stopped following her and gone away, but this would have to do for the time being.
As well as making good starters for a dinner party, the eagle recalled, larks are good teachers. She slowed down slightly and zagged about, exaggerating the slight malfunction in her left wing. The chariots were gaining on her. They were coming up very fast now, the charioteers lashing the winged horses up to maximum effort. In fact, they were going so fast now that in less than twenty seconds they would have overtaken their quarry easily, if only they hadn’t flown into a railway bridge first.
The eagle spread her aching wings and glided for a moment before looking round and seeing one winged chariot come out from under the railway bridge. With a squawk of furious despair the eagle flapped her pinions and rose up into the air; and the chariot, manned by fifteen Spectral Warriors, all minus their helmets, followed.
It didn’t take long for the eagle to come to the conclusion that this bunch, unlike the others, had rather more intelligence than the average ex-molar. They declined to crash into the branches of trees when she led the way, and when she pitched on a low branch and sat tight, they hovered overhead for a while and then set the entire forest alight with thunderbolts, making it imperative for the eagle to leave. She had managed that, purely by dint of hiding between two large, slow-moving crows, and had been quietly sneaking off back the way she had
just come when they’d spotted her and resumed their pursuit. Nothing flashy, you see, nothing clever; just plain, textbook stuff. Her wings hurt like hell and her head was dizzy from too much climbing and swooping.
Meanwhile, the chariot was closing in; showing, it was true, a certain amount of circumspection, but nevertheless shortening the distance between them to an alarming extent. She’d tried looping a loop again, but they hadn’t followed. They’d just waited till she came back straight and level again and resumed where they’d left off. When she’d hitched a ride in the undercarriage of a passing helicopter they had simply flown alongside throwing lightning-bolts, until the helicopter pilot had bailed out and his craft had gone spiralling away out of control. There really wasn’t a lot left she could do, except maybe try smiling at them; and that probably wouldn’t work, either.
‘No,’ said the Gorgon, ‘not with a G, with a D.’
Jason frowned. ‘You what?’ he said.
‘My name’s Gordon, not Gorgon,’ said the serpent-haired monster through the letter-box. ‘You must have got the wrong address. Gorgon with a G lives - oh, a long way from here. Over the other side of those mountains over there, I think.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Jason said.
‘Don’t you?’ The flap of the letter-box quivered slightly. ‘Whyever not?’
Jason looked around at the large number of extremely lifelike stone statues that lined the drive of the house. Statues of postmen. Statues of milkmen. Statues of Jehovah’s Witnesses. ‘I just don’t, that’s all,’ he said. ‘Now are you coming out, or do I have to kick the door down?’
The flap snapped shut and Jason could hear a sound like a heavy stone statue being dragged against the door. Probably, he reflected, a double-glazing salesman. He shrugged, strolled round to the back door, and kicked it in.
It was a curiously furnished house, to say the least, what with everything in it being made of stone and there being no mirrors or reflective surfaces; but Jason had a cousin who lived in one of those new developments in Docklands, so it didn’t come as too much of a surprise to him. He made his way through the kitchen - there was a cup of coffee, literally stone cold, on the worktop; however did the poor creature ever manage to eat anything, he wondered; or did it live on nothing but gravel? - and arrived at the living-room door only to find it locked. He sighed and knocked politely.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Go away.’
‘I can’t,’ Jason said. ‘Sorry.’
‘No you’re not,’ replied the voice. Jason fingered the edge of the Sword and gave the surface of his brightly-polished shield a final rub.
‘What I mean is,’ he said. ‘I’m not doing this for fun, you know. Left to myself, I couldn’t care less. If you insist on turning people to stone, that’s really a matter between you and your conscience. But I’ve got my job to do and I’m going to do it, so we can either do this the hard way or the easy way.’
There was a long silence. Then the voice said, ‘So what’s the easy way?’
‘You come out,’ Jason said, ‘I cut your head off with this sword, that’s it.’
‘I see,’ replied the voice. ‘Let’s give the hard way a shot, shall we?’
‘I don’t know what you’re making all this fuss about,’ Jason said. ‘After all, I’m the one who should be scared. All you have to do is look me in the eye and I turn to stone, right? Me, now, I’ve got to smash my way in, avoiding looking at you, of course, then fight with you, somehow keep myself from getting bitten by your hairstyle, cut your head off and wrap the bits up in a black velvet bag. Just ask yourself, where’s the smart money going to be on this one?’
There was no reply. Jason considered this for a moment, then dashed quickly out through the kitchen and back to the front door. It was open.
‘Oh bugger!’ Jason said.
He lifted the shield and examined the reflection of his surroundings in it. There was a statue just by the door which hadn’t been there before. He considered his next move carefully, while whistling.
‘Ouch!’ said the Gorgon, shortly afterwards.
‘Don’t blame me,’ Jason replied. ‘I gave you the choice, remember. Now, this may hurt a little.’
‘You cheated.’
Jason drew his brows together, offended. ‘I did not cheat,’ he said. ‘I just used my intelligence, that’s all.’
‘You cheated.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘If you don’t call pretending to wander away and then rushing back and jamming a flowerpot over my head cheating, ’ said the Gorgon, ‘then I do. A real Hero wouldn’t have done that.’
Jason drew the Gorgon’s attention to the fact that there were quite a few very realistic statues of real Heroes lining the drive, most of them with birds nesting in highly improbable places.
‘Cheat.’
‘You brought it on yourself, you know,’ Jason said. ‘Anybody else would have been satisfied with a couple of gnomes pushing wheelbarrows or fishing in the water-butt; but no, you had to be different.’
‘So what’s wrong with being different?’
‘Nothing,’ Jason said, ‘so long as you don’t leave large flowerpots lying about the place as well. You can do one or the other, but not both. Now, the next bit is rather tricky, so if you’ll just hold still . . .’
A single snake’s head pushed its way up through the hole in the bottom of the pot and hissed spitefully at Jason. ‘Bully,’ said the Gorgon.
‘Sticks and stones,’ said Jason. ‘Now, then . . .’ He pressed his foot firmly into the small of the Gorgon’s back, swung the Sword up above his head, and made ready to strike. Then he saw something.
‘Hey,’ said the Gorgon. ‘Just get on with it, will you?’
‘Yes, all right,’ Jason said. ‘Just give me a minute, will you?’ He was staring at the sky; or, to be more precise, at an eagle.
Not, let it be stressed immediately, that Jason was or ever had been a bird-watcher; whatever else he may or may not have done, his conscience was clean on that score. In the normal run of events, if a bird wasn’t sitting on a plate with roast potatoes on one side and runner beans on the other, then he didn’t want to know. But this bird was unusual in that it was being chased by a chariotful of Spectral Warriors, who were throwing bits of lightning at it. He lowered the Sword and stood watching.
‘What,’ said a resentful voice, slightly but not unduly muffled by a five-millimetre thickness of terracotta, ‘the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘Shut up,’ said Jason, preoccupied. All eagles looked the same to him, but he could have sworn he’d seen that one before. Twice.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘just wait there a minute, will you? I won’t be two shakes.’ Then he took his foot off the Gorgon’s back and darted away.
For at least ten seconds the Gorgon simply lay there, too bewildered to move. Then it leapt to its feet, dashed its head against the flank of a life-sized marble effigy of an Avon lady, shook the fragments of flowerpot out of its snakes, and bolted. Compilers of dictionaries of mythology might like to note that the orthodox view that it was never seen or heard of again is not strictly true; it was, in fact, shortly afterwards offered a job by Fabergé staring at eggs and became a useful and productive member of society.
It was definitely the same eagle, and as he stood watching it struggling through the air Jason remembered that he owed it a hamburger. He sheathed the Sword, cupped his hands round his mouth and shouted, ‘Hey!’
Aboard the winged chariot, the Captain of Spectral Warriors looked down at the figure on the ground below him.
‘Hold it,’ he said. ‘That’s the Derry kid.’
The charioteer turned his head and glanced quickly. ‘So what?’ he said. ‘We’re way out of range up here. Let’s just keep going and . . .’
‘What’s he doing with that lump of ouch!’
Jason swivelled round, broke the other arm off the fossilised political canvasser who had at last proved useful to so
mebody, and let fly. The winged chariot banked violently and hurtled away across the sky like a frightened comet. The eagle fluttered for a few seconds, flopped to the ground and turned into a girl. Jason hurried across.
‘Hiya, Mary,’ he called out. Then he stepped back, looking puzzled. ‘Or rather,’ he said, ‘Sharon.’
Betty-Lou Fisichelli polished her spectacles on her handkerchief, parked them on her nose and drew in a deep breath. She had never done this before.
Nobody now living - nobody now living and capable of death - had ever done this before. Partly because it was the most sacred of sacred mysteries; mostly because there just hadn’t been any call for it. With a slightly moistened J-cloth she wiped away a thousand years of dust from the imperishable bronze of the statue’s face, opened the manual on her knee, and looked for the place.
She was nervous. Apart from the perfectly understandable apprehension that anyone would feel about attempting the most sacred of sacred mysteries, there was also the fact that she was inside the vaults of the Delphi Archaeological Museum at half-past one in the morning without a pass. If she got caught, what with the Greek police being as they are, she doubted if even Apollo himself could save her.
CHAPTER ONE, she read, SETTING UP.
With trembling fingers, she took the two small, shining chips of metal from the matchbox in her handbag and pressed them carefully into the statue’s empty eye-sockets. They fitted easily, and there was a faint click. At once, the broad bronze shield on the statue’s arm began to glow, the verdigris giving off a bright green light. Then, suddenly, it went black, and a row of green lines materialised from nowhere. Once she had got her breath back, the Pythoness glanced down at the manual again.
Operating the Keyboard, it read.
The shield had stopped flashing green lines at her. Instead it displayed a message in sparkling green letters. It said: © Copyright Olympian Software dlc. Unauthorised use of program material shall render the user liable to civil and criminal penalties.
Then it went black again, and the statue said bleep, though without moving its lips. And then there were more letters on the screen, which read: Hi!