by Glyn Iliffe
Heracles had seen villages and townships sacked by war, but this was different. Soldiers killed and raped. They kicked down doors, smashed clay jars in their search for hidden wealth, and set light to anything that would burn. They were driven by revenge, lust and greed, and by the madness that follows the collapse of order and civilization. Here, though, the buildings were untouched. There was no sign of wanton destruction or pillage. Nothing had been burned. There were only the dead.
A small cart stood in the centre of the village, half-loaded with sacks of grain. The bones of the lower half of the driver lay sprawled over the back of the cart, while the skull, shoulders and an arm lay in the dirt below. The remains of the ox that had pulled the cart lay in a jumble beneath the wooden yoke. At the rear, a dozen more sacks lay where they had been unloaded before disaster had overtaken the village. The skeleton of a second man lay beside them.
Perhaps twenty other skeletons lay spread around the circle formed by the houses. In every case, they had been picked clean of flesh, barring a few scraps of skin that clung tenaciously to skulls or ribcages. Even clothing had been torn to shreds, often with little more than a few fibres surviving the whirlwind of destruction. Three or four figures seemed to have curled up into protective balls, with their arms wrapped over their heads. Others were in attitudes of flight. Some had been dismembered, with hands or feet, whole limbs or heads separated from the torso by several paces. And bronze feathers were everywhere: among the remains of the victims; scattered over the damp, black earth; even stuck fast in doors, and in the wheels and body of the cart.
‘Whatever caused this,’ Iolaus said, ‘we had better be gone before it returns.’
‘It was the birds,’ Heracles said. ‘The villagers were caught totally by surprise. A cart halfway through being unloaded; children everywhere; the houses undamaged. These people were attacked where they stood, and not by some band of murderous brigands. It can only have been the birds I was ordered to find. A great flock of them flew over, and perhaps the villagers looked up in surprise and wonder, but it doesn’t seem they were inclined to run. Not immediately, at least. Then the birds attacked, and whatever followed was quick and deadly.’
‘And the bronze feathers?’
‘That I can’t think of an answer to. Or why only skeletons remain.’
‘Isn’t that clear?’ Iolaus said. ‘The birds ate them. They came in a swarm, just like locusts; and like locusts, they devoured everything in their path. Not crops or vegetation, but flesh.’
Heracles shook his head, refusing to consider the possibility of what his nephew was suggesting. Then one of the skeletons caught his attention. He shouldered his bow and crossed to the building opposite. It had a large, open front with a furnace against the back wall and a bronze anvil on a block of wood in the centre. The walls were hung with hammers and other tools, while on the floor was the body that had caught his attention. Several bronze feathers were protruding from its chest.
Kneeling beside it, he saw that it wore a leather cuirass. The feathers stuck in the breastplate like arrows, but the thickness of the leather had prevented them from penetrating the wearer’s abdomen. Indeed, from the smell, he realized the flesh inside had not been picked clean like the rest of the body, and had started to decompose.
‘What was a soldier doing in a place like this?’ Iolaus asked, joining his uncle.
‘He was a blacksmith,’ Heracles said, ‘though he was a warrior in his youth. He must have grabbed his old armour when the village was attacked – see, only two of the buckles are tied – and rushed out to fight these birds. But look at this.’ He pointed to a hole over the heart, large enough to fit a finger through. ‘That’s what killed him, and it wasn’t one of these feathers.’
A noise came from inside the nearest house. Heracles’s bow was ready in an instant, a black-feathered arrow aimed at the door. Iolaus clutched his sword in both hands and moved quietly forward. Reaching the curtainless window, he peered inside. After a moment, he glanced at Heracles and shook his head, then continued to the door. Heracles followed him, the string of his bow taut and the fletch scratching against his cheekbone. Iolaus opened the door and stepped inside, his uncle close behind him.
The transition from bright daylight to the gloomy interior of the house left Heracles temporarily blinded. As his eyes adjusted, he found himself staring at a cluttered but orderly room.
‘It’s empty,’ Iolaus said.
Heracles glanced quickly from corner to corner, but there was no sign of movement. Cautiously, he shouldered his bow. Though the hearth had burned itself out, it seemed as if the occupants had left only a short while before and might return at any time. The table was set with two cups of water and three bowls of porridge – two half-full and the third almost empty. There was a thick skin on the porridge, and a basket in the middle of the table held a single piece of bread with a few patches of fresh mould. That meant the massacre could only have taken place two or three days ago, a realization that he found hard to reconcile with the skeletal remains that littered the village outside.
Another skeleton lay on a bloodstained mattress in the corner of the room. Scraps of long black hair showed that it had once been a woman, though there was little other trace of humanity left. If the birds had killed her and eaten her flesh, then they must have come in through the window. He glanced over his shoulder at the square of light in the otherwise shadowy room, then looked back at the mattress. It was slightly raised, as if it had been thrown on top of something, and a cup lay on its side next to it. Then he realized there was a small puddle of water beside it – water that should have soaked into the earth floor long ago. Unless it had only just been spilled.
He loosed the club from his belt, raised a finger to Iolaus for silence, and approached the mattress. Not wanting to disturb the woman’s remains, he took one corner and dragged it aside. Squeezed into the angle against the wall was a boy of no more than six years old. The child stared up at the bearded giant standing over him and let out a cry of terror.
Heracles dropped down beside him, his fierce expression mellowing at once.
‘Shush, lad. Be brave,’ he said, reaching out and taking the child in his arms. ‘You’re safe now.’
He held the boy tightly against his chest until his struggles abated and his shouts of fear fell silent. He nodded to Iolaus, who went to the window and looked out. After a moment, he turned and shook his head.
‘Find something to cover her,’ he said, glancing at the skeleton on the mattress.
The child’s mother had hidden her son under the mattress and thrown herself upon it to protect him, while the birds ate her alive. He must already have seen her remains, when hunger and thirst had brought him out from his shelter. He must also have known his father – there were three bowls at the table – had perished outside. But the child had not fallen apart. He had shown enough foresight not to eat all the porridge at once, or drink all the water. Perhaps he had seen the birds still in the village and returned to his hiding place, knowing the food and water would have to last him.
Iolaus found a blanket and laid it over the mattress. Then Heracles sat the child down on a chair and knelt before him, looking at him sternly.
‘Your mother’s dead, son, you know that? Your father too.’
The boy was staring at his bare knees, his eyes red with tears but his expression angry – resentful at a world that could rob him of everything he had. He nodded in reply to Heracles’s question.
‘He must have been a brave man, your father. He died fighting these… What were they? Birds?’ The boy nodded again. ‘Then he died trying to save you. Just as your mother sacrificed herself to keep you alive. And you’ve honoured their courage by surviving. You’ve done well, son.’
He reached up and laid his huge hand on the boy’s narrow shoulder, giving him a gentle shake of encouragement. For the first time, the child raised his head and looked Heracles in the eye. There was terrible pain in his expression – an anguis
h that reopened Heracles’s own emotional wounds – but there was determination, too. He reminded Heracles of Therimachus, who had always been a resolute child. He felt the heat rise to his cheeks at the memory of his oldest son, and he dropped his gaze. After taking command of himself once more, he stared hard at the boy.
‘I’ve come to drive these birds away. With Zeus’s help, I will kill as many as I can and leave them with such a fear of this place that they never return.’
‘They will kill you first,’ the boy replied.
His voice was small, but there was no doubt in it.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Leucus.’
‘Listen to me, Leucus. I will drive these birds away, and I will make them pay for what they did to your village and to your parents. But I need your help.’
‘How many arrows do you have?’ the boy asked, looking at the bow over his shoulder.
‘Thirty.’
‘Then there are too many for you to kill. There’s hundreds of them, with metal feathers and metal beaks that stab into people and pull away their skin, and––’
‘Peace,’ Heracles said, stroking Leucus’s unkempt black hair and wiping the fresh tears from his cheeks with his thumb. ‘Iolaus is going to stay and look after you, while I go hunting for the birds. I know you’ve seen the terrible things they can do, but you haven’t seen what I’m capable of yet. All I want you to do is tell me where to find them.’
‘Please don’t go, sir. Wait here until nighttime – they don’t come after dark – and then we can go to the village where my aunt lives. It’s far away, by the sea – we’ll be safe there.’
‘We will take you back to your aunt,’ Iolaus promised him.
‘But first you must tell me where the birds are,’ Heracles insisted. ‘They can’t be left to bring destruction to more villages and towns; to make orphans of more children. I’ve been sent by the gods to stop them.’
Leucus stared at him, then hung his head and pointed westward.
‘Put something against this window,’ Heracles told his squire, then opened the door and stepped outside.
The skeletal remains of the villagers remained fixed in their stricken poses, a strange and macabre sight. How much more terrifying they must have seemed to a child, peering out of a window at night. Were they warning him to get out now, while he still could? Even if the birds had bronze beaks and ate human flesh, they could not be more dangerous than the Nemean Lion, or the Hydra. But his instincts were unsettled by the knowledge that the dead lying before him had been killed with such swiftness. One moment they had been carrying out their normal business – loading sacks, beating hot metal into horseshoes, laying out breakfast for their families – and the next the flesh was being ripped from their bones, in an agony of pain as unexpected as it was sudden. Would his own bones shortly be lying in the long grass, unburied and with nothing to say who he was or the things he had done in his life?
And then there was the lingering smell. It reminded him of the stables of King Augeias from a distance, but sharper and even more unpleasant.
He walked through the village to the fields. A dirt track led down to the river, where he guessed there would be a ford, leading to the meadows and hills beyond. To his right – eastward – was the wood they had come through to reach the village, while to his left were more trees. That was the way the boy had said the birds would be found. He readied his bow with an arrow and prepared to advance.
Suddenly, the silence was torn open by a high-pitched shriek. Turning, he looked up and saw a cluster of birdlike figures – five in all – flying over the wood. They were as large as storks, with wide wings that made exaggerated movements as they beat the air, and long legs that trailed out behind them. But they were not white or black, like the storks he had seen. Instead, their feathers flashed like gold in the westering sun, enchanting his gaze so that for a moment he could do nothing but stare. Then he saw the struggling figure of a man held between the talons of two of the birds, his legs kicking helplessly as they clutched at his shoulders. The leading bird gave another shrill call, which was answered by the four birds behind it.
The spell was broken. Heracles raised his bow and took aim, pausing briefly as he instinctively took account of the speed of the birds and the trailing wind. Then he released the string, which twanged loudly as it sent the arrow speeding upwards. The point found its mark in the wing of one of the birds carrying the man. It gave a despairing cry, released its grip on his shoulder, then fell in a spiralling, lifeless dive towards the ground.
Heracles did not watch to see where it hit. The remaining bird struggled in vain with its heavy charge, losing height rapidly as it stubbornly refused to release the man, until his weight had pulled it almost to the height of the treetops. Suddenly, it let go. The man’s arms and legs flailed briefly as he plummeted into the long grass below.
Heracles had no time to regret the man’s death – he had surely saved him from a worse fate – for the other birds were already swooping down towards him. He fitted a second arrow and shot the foremost through the chest. It died instantly, its outflung wings sending it spinning off to crash into the eaves of the wood. Notching a third, he pulled the bowstring back to his cheek and squinted along the shaft of the arrow. At the same moment, the man struggled up from the long grass and began hobbling towards him.
‘Help me!’ he wailed. ‘Help me, please!’
He was young, and by his rough clothing a simple farmer or shepherd. His chest and shoulders were soaked with blood, and his left arm was hanging limp at his side, a shard of bone protruding from the forearm, near the elbow. At the sound of his voice, two of the birds broke off and dived towards him. The third continued its attack on Heracles, narrowing the distance between them with frightening rapidity.
Heracles aimed hurriedly and fired. The arrow skimmed over the plummeting bird’s shoulder, leaving him no time to fit another. He dropped his bow and reached for his club, but it was too late to unslip the knot that held it to his belt. The attacking bird showed no sign of opening out its wings to slow its descent, as an eagle might do before sinking its talons into its prey. Instead, it aimed its bronze beak directly at his chest, its sole intention to skewer him through the heart.
Heracles threw out his arm, catching the creature by its long neck as he fell backwards into the grass, the tip of its beak a mere finger’s breadth from his breastplate. He did not have time to marvel at how he had caught it. The bird fought desperately against his grip, staring at him with its red eyes as it lunged again and again at his chest. He felt its feathers cutting into the soft skin of his fingers and palm, and had to battle the instinct to let go. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he seized the monster’s beak with his other hand and twisted it hard, until he heard the satisfying snap of bones. It fell limp and he relaxed his grip, throwing the body to one side.
He looked at his bloodied hand, then – as a frightful cry rang out from nearby – remembered the farmer. Jumping to his feet, he loosed his club from his belt and ran towards the one-sided tussle taking place only a spear’s throw away from him.
The two remaining birds were flapping over the struggling figure, their bronze feathers beating the air as their vicious beaks jabbed repeatedly at him. His piteous cries rang out across the meadow, urging Heracles forward in the knowledge that, somehow, he still lived. One of the birds saw his approach and pushed itself upwards with a single beat of its wings. Spreading them wide, it opened its beak and voiced its hatred in a shrill call. Then it released a volley of bronze feathers at him. Instinctively, he half-turned and covered his body with his cloak. The quills smacked against the black hide and sprang back into the grass. Now he understood the feathers he had found in many of the skeletons in the village, and realized how so many had died so suddenly.
The bird flew at him, flapping its wings and screeching loudly as it jabbed at his eyes. He threw his forearm across his face, ducking aside from the blows as it circled around him. The p
oint of the beak sank through skin and muscle to jar against the bone near his wrist. He cried out against the stinging heat of the pain, then, in furious reaction, grabbed for the creature’s neck. It twisted away, stabbing at his hand. The bronze beak passed between his splayed fingers, cutting the skin but missing the bone. With an angry shout, he heaved his club at his attacker. The bird beat its wings in an effort to escape the blow, but the weapon crashed into its body and it fell shrieking to the ground. Stepping on its wing to prevent it dragging itself away, he brought the club down onto its head.
The brief duel over, he became aware again of the farmer’s screams – which had continued unceasingly throughout his battle with the bird – and ran to help him. The man lay in the long grass, his broken arm lying awkwardly across his face while his other beat blindly to ward off his attacker. Four of the five fingers were missing, and blood was pulsing down over the torn flesh of his arm. His already blood-soaked tunic had been ripped to shreds, and red flesh and exposed ribs were visible through the rends. His stomach had been torn open and his entrails dragged out onto the earth. As Heracles grimaced at the sight, the bird fell on its victim again. Anchoring its talons in the shredded flesh of his thigh, it buried its beak in the man’s liver, snapping hold of a piece of brown flesh and tugging it free, while the farmer’s screams reached new heights of pain and despair.
Yelling at the top of his voice, Heracles swung his club at the monster. Incredibly, it pushed itself away, and with a half-twist of its body and a flap of its wings, threw itself clear before the gnarled wood could smash its bones into splinters. Leaping over the injured man, Heracles pursued the bird towards the trees on the other side of the meadow. A few beats of its wings, though, took it up beyond his reach, stretching the gap between them rapidly until it cleared the top of the trees.
Heracles watched its escape in frustration. Then, remembering the farmer, he ran back to where he lay in the grass. It was clear at a glance that his wounds were mortal, and what little life remained to him would be filled with excruciating pain. Kneeling at his side, Heracles lifted his broken arm – as gently as he could – away from his face. At first, he thought the man’s spirit had left him. Then he gritted his teeth and groaned. Opening his eyes, he stared groggily at Heracles.