SON OF ZEUS Read online

  Son of Zeus

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Glossary

  Author's Note

  Next in Series

  Also by Glyn Iliffe

  Copyright

  For Jane, Again

  Prologue

  Ithaca

  King Odysseus’s palace was filled with the sound of voices and laughter. Sandalled feet scuffed across the floor, and bowls and cups clattered together as numerous slaves attended to the guests. The hearth crackled and spat, spreading its warmth throughout the great hall.

  Omeros leaned back against the wooden column, breathing in the smell of roast meat and freshly baked bread. He groped for the wine on the table before him, feeling the base of the cup with his fingertips before raising it to his lips. It tasted cool and refreshing, a local vintage from Ithaca or neighbouring Samos. Passing footsteps paused and he felt the cup taken gently from his fingers, followed by the glug of wine being poured from a skin.

  ‘I’ll have one of the maids bring you some more bread and meat,’ said a female voice, as the cup was pressed back into his hand. ‘We can’t have our famed bard going hungry.’

  ‘No thank you, Eurycleia,’ he replied. ‘I’ve had my fill already.’

  He could almost sense her smiling at him, and then she was gone again, off to refill more cups. He scanned the hall, remembering it how he had last seen it twenty-one years ago, before the gods had taken his sight from him: the high ceiling – painted with moon and stars – and the four soaring columns that supported it; the long tables with the benches for the guests; the royal dais where the king and queen sat in their carved chairs; and the walls with their small alcoves, from which crude figurines of the gods stood and watched. He recalled the elaborate battle scenes painted on the plaster – of the Lapiths and the Centaurs, and of the wars between the gods, the Titans and the Giants. He was told they were the same as he had known them, though the smoke stains had been cleaned off and the tarnished frescoes touched up. But the east wall – which had once depicted a battle between Odysseus and the Taphians – had been painted over with a mural of the city of Troy in flames and the Wooden Horse at its centre. Not that he needed anyone to tell him what that looked like. He had witnessed it himself.

  The voices around him began to quieten. The feasting was drawing to a close and soon he would be called on to give the gathering a song. Unconsciously, his hand fell to his side and touched the tortoiseshell lyre leaning against the column. It was ten years now since Odysseus had returned to Ithaca and reclaimed his throne, slaughtering the men who had taken over his home in the hope of marrying his wife. They had assumed the true king had perished on his journey home from Troy, and that through Penelope one of them would become king of Ithaca in his place. They had paid for their arrogance with their lives.

  And what better way to celebrate the memory of Odysseus’s victory than with a new song? A song about another man of courage and strength. The greatest hero of them all.

  ‘Come on, Omeros,’ called Telemachus, Odysseus’s son. ‘What will you give us tonight?’

  Telemachus was thirty years old now, a king in waiting. His wife, Polycaste, had recently given him his first son, but Omeros still pictured him as the little boy he had last seen before leaving for Troy, on a ship full of untrained farmers and fishermen being sent to replace Ithacan losses in the war.

  ‘What will you have, my lord?’

  ‘Bellerophon and the Chimera,’ Polycaste suggested.

  Her voice was beautiful to hear, and he imagined her face to be equally captivating.

  ‘How about the death of the suitors?’ Penelope asked. ‘After all, it’s ten years to the day since my husband fought them in this hall.’

  ‘And not ten weeks since Omeros last sang it to us,’ Odysseus said.

  ‘Since when have you ever tired of hearing about your own exploits?’ asked Eperitus, close friend of the king. ‘Unless you’d prefer to hear about the Wooden Horse again, or maybe the Cyclops…?’

  ‘Not the Cyclops,’ Odysseus said, the cheer leaving his voice. ‘And unless I’m mistaken, our bard has been working on a new song. Isn’t that where you’ve been hiding these past few days, Omeros?’

  ‘It has been the work of many months, my lord,’ Omeros answered. ‘The last week has been spent rehearsing my performance.’

  ‘But performance of what?’

  ‘A new poem to celebrate the anniversary of your return. A song about the most famous of all heroes – Heracles.’

  ‘Then let’s hear it,’ Odysseus said.

  Omeros fumbled for his lyre and the last murmurs of conversation died away. Taking a flat piece of bone from the pouch at his hip, he drew it along the strings. The notes resonated gently, casting their spell over his audience until they thought of nothing but the sound of the music. And then he began to speak.

  ‘Sing, Muse, about the madness that struck Heracles, that famed son of Zeus, and of the terrible deed it led him to commit. Sing of the tragedy that forced him to become a slave to his most hated enemy, and of the great labours that were imposed on him. But sing first of the love Zeus, his father, had for a mortal woman, and the jealous hatred Hera, Queen of Olympus, bore for their offspring…’

  Omeros’s voice was measured, his words weaving between the notes of his lyre as he told about Alcmene, the beautiful daughter of King Electryon. She was happily married to Amphitryon, but Zeus desired her for himself. Assuming the form of her husband, he bedded her and she fell pregnant.

  Shortly before she was due to give birth, Zeus declared that the next male offspring born from the line of Perseus – father of King Electryon and his brother, Sthenelus – would inherit the twin thrones of Mycenae and Tiryns. Guessing that Zeus had slept with Alcmene, Hera was filled with a jealous rage and swore by the River Styx to take her revenge. She delayed the birth of Zeus’s son and hastened the pangs of Sthenelus’s wife, so that she gave birth first. And so it was that Sthenelus’s son, Eurystheus, became king of Tiryns and Mycenae in Heracles’s place.

  When Alcmene gave birth a short while later, it was not to one son, but two. Though Heracles was the first, he was followed soon after by his twin brother, Iphicles. Whereas Heracles was the son of Zeus and was a strong and healthy baby, Iphicles was the son of Amphitryon, and was born weak and sickly, an unhappy child from the moment he left the womb.

  That night, Zeus visited Alcmene as she lay with her sons on either side of her, revealing to her that he was the father of her firstborn. Seeing Heracles, Zeus’s heart was moved with love for him. As he picked him up – intending to speak a blessing of long life and riches over him – the child seized his father’s finger and refused to release his hold on it. Understanding his son’s nature, Zeus changed his blessing to one of immense physical strength – a gift that, in time, would also prove to be a great curse. But in his wisdom, Zeus also balanced his son’s fierce might with a heart to defend the weak.

  Returning to Olympus, Zeus boasted to Hera of his blessing. She quickly realized that he intended to glorify Alcmene’s son above all his other children – even Ares and Hephaistos, whom she herself had borne him. Driven by a consuming
hatred, she decided to kill the boy before he could develop the abnormal strength that Zeus had promised him. Waiting until Alcmene had laid the twins down to sleep at the foot of her bed, she sent two venomous snakes in the dead of night to kill Heracles. Alcmene and Amphitryon woke to Iphicles’s screams, only to find that Heracles – not even a year old – had caught both snakes in his brother’s fleece and crushed the life out of them with his bare hands.

  From that point on, Alcmene knew Heracles was destined for greatness, and treated him as such. When he was old enough, she told him who his true father was and the blessing he had spoken over him. But Iphicles never forgave his brother for being their mother’s favourite, even when Heracles was sent away to the best teachers in Greece, to learn the disciplines that a nobleman was expected to excel in.

  Having completed his education, Heracles – ever keen to test his limits, and never finding them – went seeking adventure. He proved himself many times, especially in the immense strength of his arms and in his skill with a bow. Eventually, fate led him to Thebes, at a time when the city was forced to pay an annual tribute to Erginus, King of Orchomenus. Taking pity on the Thebans, Heracles killed the heralds who had come to collect that year’s levy. When King Erginus brought an avenging army to the city gates, Creon, King of Thebes, was ready to give Heracles up to them. As Erginus had forced the Thebans to give up all personal weapons and armour, Heracles armed the Thebans with spears, swords and shields that had been dedicated at the city’s many temples. In the battle that followed, Heracles killed Erginus and led the Thebans to a great victory, freeing them from the yoke of Orchomenus.

  ‘His fame spread throughout northern Greece,’ Omeros continued, ‘and in Thebes the people held him in even greater honour than their own king. Creon was jealous of his renown, fearing a rival for his throne. But he also knew his own position depended on recognizing the saviour of Thebes. So he offered him his eldest daughter, Megara, in marriage.

  ‘Heracles’s renown in battle only just exceeded his reputation as a lover. He once bedded every one of the fifty daughters of King Thespius, and his appetite for women was insatiable. And yet Megara tamed him. The moment he saw her, he fell in love with her, and within five years she had borne him three sons: Therimachus, Creontiades and Deicoon. He loved them even more than he loved their mother, and for years he lived happily in his home on the hills outside the city. But Hera had not forgotten her enmity towards him.’

  Omeros paused and reached for his wine. As the cool liquid ran over his tongue and down his throat, he listened to the silence that still dominated the great hall. With a sigh, he bowed his head over the lyre and stroked his fingers over the strings again.

  ‘It was in the midst of this harmony that she struck,’ he said. ‘In the space of a few days, everything that Heracles had built his happiness upon was brutally torn from him: wife, children, friends, home and reputation. All that remained to him were his courage, his superhuman strength and the compulsion to know why . And in all of Greece, there was only one place that could give him the answers he needed…’

  Chapter One

  The Mother and the Child

  The day was hot, so hot that even the breeze drifting down from the mountains gave little comfort. The hum of insects filled the air, mingling with the sound of water floating up from the valley below, where the wandering line of a stream was marked by twisted olive trees. A few goats picked their way across the stony slope below a dirt road, the bells around their necks chiming gently as they tugged at the bleached grass.

  Heracles stood on the road and stared westward. He was tall beyond the measure of ordinary men, with a broad, thrusting chest and thickset arms that hung stiffly at his sides. He wore a travel-stained tunic and a cloak that reached down to his bulging calves, which did little to hide the ridges of hardened muscle and sinew beneath. From the slope of his broad shoulders and the swell of his biceps, down to the flat bulk of his stomach and the great girth of his thighs, he was a colossus.

  His face was dark and fierce, not the sort of face that most men looked at for long. Behind the thick, black beard, the features were well proportioned – handsome, even – but his stern grey eyes were troubled, as if trapped in some thought or memory. Slowly, he raised a large hand to his forehead and swept a few strands of his shoulder-length hair back into place. He looked along the rutted track, shimmering glass-like in the heat. Some way ahead, it swung around a shoulder of rock – thrust out from the tree-clad foothills of the Pindos Mountains – and disappeared. The smoke of several cooking fires drifted across the clear blue skies beyond, telling him he was not far from the next village. He breathed deeply, taking in the heady fragrance of the pines on the slopes that climbed up to his right, and walked on.

  As he neared the bend in the road, he heard the sound of voices and the rattle of a cart coming from up ahead. A dozen men at least, he thought, and instinctively his hand felt for the sword at his side. Only then did he remember Iolaus had insisted he leave his weapons behind, even his beloved bow. Pilgrims did not need weapons, his nephew had said – especially not if they had the height of a bear and the build of an ox. Or if they might be inclined to use them on themselves.

  Two men turned the shoulder of rock, too deep in conversation to notice Heracles on the road ahead. One was stocky with dark, serious eyes and a flattened nose that gave his face a sunken appearance. The other was tall and good-looking, but for the pink scar that ran from his left eye to his jaw, carving a track through his neatly cropped beard. Both wore rough woollen cloaks, thrown back over their shoulders to reveal short swords hanging from their belts. That they had once been soldiers was clear to Heracles’s knowing eye, though he doubted they served anyone now but themselves. At best, they might be mercenaries. At worst, they used their skills to rob pilgrims going to the oracle on Mount Parnassus.

  Three others followed a short way behind, plainly attired and similarly armed, though one carried a half-moon shield slung across his back and another wore a battered and ill-fitting leather breastplate. Two oxen trudged after them, drawing a cart that rattled and shook as it bumped over the furrows in the road. The driver was a fat Aethiope who used his whip with cruel frequency on the backs of the shambling beasts. Another man lay in the rear, snoring loudly with his head thrown back among sacks of grain and jars of wine. A dozen others walked behind the cart, talking and laughing in voices that echoed from the hillside above.

  Finally, a woman and a small child came into view, holding hands. Unlike the others, they were silent with downcast faces. The wife and child of one of the men, Heracles wondered? Or a prostitute and her daughter?

  As the track was narrow, he decided to let the approaching group pass. Sitting on a boulder beneath the shade of an old olive tree, he uncorked the skin that hung from his shoulder and took a swallow of water. The movement caught the eye of the scar-faced man, who nudged his companion. They stared at Heracles, taking in his great height and heavily muscled frame, noting the broad set of his jaw and his intense, unflinching gaze. Though they could see he carried no weapons, they could not have missed the faded scars on his sun-browned limbs, gained in the many battles he had fought. The shorter man scowled, as if taking offence at the sheer size of the stranger. He spoke to his companion, who shook his head.

  As they walked by, Heracles took another mouthful of water and held the skin out towards them. The scar-faced man shook his head. The other spat in the dust, muttering some unheard insult as he wiped a dribble of saliva from his beard. A few months before, Heracles would gladly have taken up the challenge. But he was not the man he had been then, stiff with pride and precious about his hard-won reputation. Events had changed his perspective on life, so that he no longer cared what others thought about him. Indeed, he cared little about anything any more.

  The scar-faced man pulled his companion away by the elbow. Their comrades followed, eyeing Heracles’s size and build with respectful mistrust. The driver of the cart took a swallow from th
e wineskin at his side and, staring at Heracles, let out a rolling belch. He tossed the skin onto the stomach of the man behind him, who woke with a start. At a word from the driver, he blinked groggily at Heracles, then turned his attention to the leather bag. He pulled out the stopper and took a long swig, before closing his eyes and dropping back onto the sacks. The group following the cart stared silently at the giant figure sitting beneath the olive tree. Some sneered or made inaudible comments to show they were not afraid. Heracles ignored them.

  Of all the party, only the woman did not look at him. He was used to female glances, but she kept her gaze fastened on the road before her feet. She was young and good-looking, and the torn and grubby dress she wore had once been a fine garment – not the clothing of a slave or a peasant. Then he saw the bruises on her arms and the mark on her left cheek, and felt a stab of indignant anger. For a man of violence, he hated to see it inflicted upon the weak and defenceless. But her affairs were no business of his, he reminded himself. Besides, he had problems of his own to sort out.

  The girl – no more than five or six years old – trailed along behind her mother, clinging limply to her hand as she stared at Heracles. Children had always delighted him. They bore the concerns of the world more lightly than adults, and yet they were more vulnerable, a quality that had always appealed to his protective instincts. As he looked at her, he thought of his own children: of Therimachus, his oldest boy, who was the same age as her; of Creontiades, just three, who never walked anywhere if he could go there on his father’s shoulders; and of Deicoon, still a babe, but who looked so much like his mother. He had always thought that he could keep them safe. But he had been wrong.

  He felt his despair return at the thought of them. Clenching his fists on his knees, he fought against the rising darkness. The girl was still looking at him, and though her eyes were filled with sadness, they showed no fear or mistrust – not of him, at least, despite his great size and fierce looks. Unexpectedly, her grimy face broke into a smile. It was as if she sensed the torment inside him and wanted to tell him it would not last forever. He smiled back, but she was already being pulled away by her mother.