WRATH OF THE GODS Page 11

  Then he heard the lowing of cattle coming from behind the walls, and understood that this building was home to King Augeias’s herd; this was the source of the smell that pervaded the city and the countryside around it. But as for what lay behind the walls of the monolithic stables, he could see nothing. At his command, Iolaus had driven straight to the palace, where several slaves had rushed out to greet them. Some had unyoked the horses and led them away to be fed and watered; others had escorted the newcomers into the palace, where they were bathed and clothed.

  It was in this same courtyard now that they stood with King Augeias. It was late afternoon and the pale winter sun was making its descent towards the hill overlooking the palace. Two slaves ran towards the small stable block to their right and returned a short while later driving two chariots. Augeias stepped into one, which sank heavily onto its axle, while the driver of the second invited Heracles and Iolaus to mount beside him. They took the road across the grassland that separated the palace from the rest of the city, turning north as they reached the gate. The road followed the interior wall to the point where it met the outer battlements, then continued past the gate-tower with its handful of guards, towards the stables.

  The vast enclosure had been built on the same shelf of land as the palace, which was slightly higher than the grassland and the rest of the city to the east. Its walls ran south from the battlements, then west and finally north again, where it joined with the outer fortifications. Its monotony was broken by a single gate where the road ended. This was made from thick, weathered oak decorated with hundreds of pairs of cow horns. More horns had been affixed to the top of the gate, to prevent intruders climbing into the stables beyond. Not that Heracles imagined anyone would want to, for the stench as the chariots approached made him gag. The muffled groaning of cattle from the other side grew in volume, though he guessed the stables only contained a dozen animals at most.

  The chariots pulled to a halt and Augeias stepped down. He signalled for Heracles to join him, then opened a small hatch halfway up the gate. Lifting his cloak to cover his nose, Heracles peered into the gloom. The stables were roofed and unlit, and for a moment he could see nothing but shadows. Then, as his eyes adjusted to the little sunlight that found its way in, he saw that there were no interior walls and no stalls for the animals, only row after row of wooden columns disappearing into the darkness, each bearing an iron cage stuffed with hay. Only the upper halves of the columns were visible, the lower halves being mired in a sea of semi-liquid, foul-smelling dung.

  A few animals were tethered close to a second gate in the north wall, their outlines visible against the light filtering through the oak panels. They stood up to their chests in the accumulated filth, lowing pitifully. The rest of Augeias’s cattle were out to pasture, while these few had been kept for slaughter.

  Heracles’s heart sank at the sight before him. Eurystheus might as well have asked him to move Mount Erymanthus from Arcadia to Tiryns. The light of hope that had burned within him guttered and dimmed.

  He sensed Iolaus behind him. The next moment, his nephew was staggering towards the wall. He leaned the flats of his hands against it, dropped his head and vomited on the grass. Augeias simply laughed.

  ‘You must get used to it, boy, if you’re going to shovel the stuff out.’

  ‘Iolaus won’t be helping me,’ Heracles said. ‘I have to do the task alone.’

  ‘And you still think you can clean my stables in a day?’ the king asked, incredulously. ‘Very well. I’ll have my slaves provide you with a shovel.’

  He was beginning to realize that Heracles was serious about the challenge, and the thought of watching his struggles seemed to amuse him.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like a day to make your plans and prepare?’

  ‘No, my lord. I will begin when the sun goes down, and if the gods are with me I’ll finish before it sets again tomorrow.’

  ‘If the gods are with you?’ Augeias said. ‘It seems to me they are very much against you, my friend. But have it your way.’

  He shrugged his shoulders and remounted his chariot, ordering his driver to take him back to the palace.

  ‘Are you really going to try?’ Iolaus said, watching the king go. ‘Just look at the place. You could fill fifty wagons, and what difference would it make? You might clear out one hundredth part of it, but for what?’

  ‘So you think I should just give up?’

  His squire sighed and shook his head.

  ‘You might as well.’

  Heracles stared at the vast stable, its furthest corners shrouded in shadow. The reek of the refuse that filled it was unbearable. It was enough of a battle just to remain standing there. It oppressed his spirit, quenching the hope he had brought with him to the labour and leaving him with an overwhelming sense of despair. How could any man, however strong, clear out such a volume of filth in a single day? Iolaus was right: it was impossible. Hera had won before he had removed the first shovelful of waste.

  Yet he refused to give up. For each task Hera had set him so far, Zeus had ensured a way was left for it to be completed. Every other labour had seemed impossible at first, right up until its darkest moment. And then a door had opened. He had to believe that there was a door in this new labour.

  ‘No,’ he said, turning to Iolaus. ‘I will not give up. Not until tomorrow’s sun has set and there’s even a single wagonload of dung remaining in those stables. There must be an answer, Iolaus – I just have to find it.’

  He looked at the battlements and the gate-tower guarding access from the city to the palace. Then he raised his eyes to the hill, which was mostly in shadow as the chariot of the sun rolled westward to its place of rest.

  ‘What’s the quickest way to the top of that hill?’ he asked the slave waiting by the horses.

  ‘There’s a path, my lord. It isn’t easy, but I can drive you to the bottom of it.’

  ‘Then we haven’t a moment to spare,’ Heracles said, mounting the chariot. ‘Come on, Iolaus.’

  At the top of the hill, they sat on a sward of grass and looked out over Elis and the surrounding countryside. Though in shadow, everything was laid out clearly below them: the city with its walls and streets; the encircling loop of the river, which was in full flow from the winter rains; and the marshy valley beyond, hemmed in by low mountains on either side. Vast herds of cows were spread over the fields to the north, and the sound of their lowing had a hypnotic, quieting effect. From his vantage point on the hill, Heracles estimated there were at least three thousand of them. With the going down of the sun, the many herdsmen had started rounding them up and driving them towards a stone bridge that spanned the northern stretch of the river. Hundreds had already crossed and were entering the stables through a gate in the outer battlements.

  Heracles’s gaze wandered to the large semicircle of land contained by the river. The farther half contained the main part of the city, while the nearer half – separated by the inner wall – was dominated by the empty grassland he and Iolaus had crossed earlier to reach the palace. The roofs of the palace were visible below where he sat, but his eyes were drawn inevitably back to the sprawling stables that he had been ordered to clean. It was only from the top of the hill that he was able to fully appreciate the size of the task before him.

  ‘It looks even worse from up here,’ Iolaus commented. ‘Why won’t you let me help you?’

  ‘You know the rules. If you remove one shovelful of dung, Eurystheus will discount the labour.’

  ‘How will he know, so long as neither of us tells him?’

  ‘The gods will know,’ Heracles said. ‘You remember Charis saying that you’d loaned me your sword to fight the Hydra? And that you suggested fire to seal its wounds? We didn’t tell her that – it must have been Hera. Besides, I have to earn my redemption by myself. It was my hands that murdered Therimachus, Creontiades and Deicoon, so my hands will make payment for it.’

  ‘Unless you can turn them into spades the size of wagons
, then there won’t be any redemption.’

  Heracles rested his jaw on his fist and frowned.

  ‘I could shovel that stuff for a year and not make much difference. That’s not the answer.’

  ‘If they hadn’t put a roof on the stables, then a heavy rainfall might wash some of it away,’ Iolaus said. ‘Perhaps you could strip it off, and if Zeus was to send a powerful thunderstorm… But that wouldn’t work either. You’d need a whole ocean of rain to get rid of all that slurry.’

  ‘Not an ocean,’ Heracles exclaimed, sitting up. ‘Just a river! Iolaus, you’ve opened the door I was looking for. Come on, the sun’s about to set and I’ve got a lot of work to do.’

  Chapter Seven

  THE BROKEN OATH

  Taking their own chariot from the palace stables, Heracles and Iolaus drove out through the north gate to the strip of land between the city walls and the river. This was a sea of mud, churned up daily by the hooves of the cattle as they traipsed out to the fields in the morning and back again in the evening. The last few cows were still trudging over the stone bridge as they arrived, driven by shouting herdsmen towards an arched gateway in the battlements. This was the northern entrance to the stables, the gates of which stood wide open to receive them. The air inside was filled with a great, mournful lowing, as if all the souls of Hades were trapped within its dark shadows, lamenting the lives that had been taken from them.

  As the last cow entered and the herdsmen shut and barred the gate, Heracles approached them and told them he had come to clean the stables. Either they were too intimidated by his size, or they had already heard about the stranger who had arrived in Elis promising to achieve the impossible, for none laughed at him or stared back in surprise. Instead, they just nodded as he asked them to gather as much wood as they could from the trees that dotted the banks of the Peneius. After telling them to pile the wood at a certain point, he started work.

  Iolaus tethered the horse to a nearby tree stump, then found a large rock to sit on to watch his uncle as he worked. The moment Heracles had explained his plan, he knew it was the only way to fulfil the labour. Ten ordinary men could not do it, but with Heracles there was a chance.

  His colossal figure now moved with new vigour in the twilight, picking up huge stones from the mud as if they weighed no more than sacks of grain, and using them to mark a route from the stable gate to the riverbank. As he worked, a line of ten wagons that he had requested began crossing the bridge from the surrounding countryside and lining up before the city walls. Calling one of the drivers over, he started filling the cart with rocks and stones cleared from the course he had chosen. By this time, the cowmen had finished stacking the wood and sat down beside Iolaus to marvel at Heracles’s strength. When the wagon had as much weight as it could bear, Heracles ordered its driver to take it to the middle of the bridge and wait for him there. Meanwhile, a second wagon was called, and was already a quarter full by the time the first squealed to a halt on the apex of the bridge.

  Heracles ran to it and immediately began throwing the rocks into the river below. When it was half-empty, he moved to the other side and thrust his shoulder beneath it, heaving the wagon onto its side. It hit the stone parapet with a bang and the rocks tumbled out into the river. Heracles then returned to the second wagon and continued filling it with rocks.

  When the first stars began to show, he ordered Iolaus to light the pile of wood. By now, most of the rocks had been removed and Heracles lined up several wagons in the middle of the course he had marked earlier. Throwing off his lion-skin cloak, he picked up one of the shovels Augeias’s slaves had brought and began filling the carts with soil. He threw himself into the work, never seeming to flag and only stopping to take an occasional swallow of water. If a shovel broke, he tossed the halves into the back of the nearest cart and shouted for a new one. And as each wagon was filled, he would send it to the bridge and empty the soil into the river. Most was washed away, but with the rocks that had been dumped there earlier acting as a foundation a low dam began to form, forcing the water to back up before rising over it.

  A crowd of guards, townsfolk and farmers joined the herdsmen. They watched him working by the light of the pyre, talking noisily and cheering every time he tipped a cartload of soil into the river. Several fetched wood to keep the fire ablaze, but as the middle of the night approached, most drifted back to their homes or barracks. Eventually, only Iolaus and the wagon drivers remained. And still Heracles worked on, driven by his goal and the belief he could achieve the impossible. As Iolaus watched, he smiled at the thought he had offered to help. What possible difference could his comparatively puny strength have made, other than to act as a hindrance? Even watching his uncle made him tired, and before long, his eyelids became too heavy to keep open.

  He woke to a sense of light and the sound of many voices. For a while, he could not tell whether the voices were part of his dream, in which he had been in a palace surrounded by female warriors arguing over whether to sleep with him or kill him. But the voices were male, and chief among them was Heracles’s.

  He opened his eyes. To his right, he could see the hills of the Peneius valley outlined against a pale, cloudless sky. The ground around him was hard with frost, except for the circle of ash where the fire had burned itself out. To his surprise, he was covered by Heracles’s lion-skin, which his uncle had recently had lined with fur. For all his determination to complete the labour, Heracles must have taken a moment to cover his sleeping nephew against the cold. The thought shamed him, and he sat up.

  Several dozen herdsmen were standing in a crowd by the outer walls of the stables. Inside, the cows were lowing noisily, but the herdsmen could not reach the gate because Heracles was standing in their way.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Use the other gate and bring them out through the city walls.’

  He pointed to the gate-tower, from where several semi-interested guards were watching the commotion. One of the younger cowmen stepped up to the giant and, to Iolaus’s amazement – and that of the men around him – dared to poke his finger into Heracles’s bare chest.

  ‘We always bring the cows out through this gate. Who are you – a foreigner – to tell us we have to bring ’em out another way?’

  Heracles’s brow furrowed. He seized the man by his tunic and lifted him from his feet.

  ‘I worked all night to create that ditch, and I won’t have hundreds of cattle undo my work. Do you understand?’

  ‘We’ll use the other gate,’ the man said, nodding frantically. ‘It’s no trouble.’

  Heracles let him go and he fell onto his backside. His friends hauled him to his feet and together the herdsmen retreated towards the gate-tower, throwing frightened glances over their shoulders. Heracles now turned his gaze on Iolaus. Only then did he realize how filthy his uncle was. His arms, legs and chest were brown with dirt, and his hair and beard were the colour of soil. The eyes that stared out from the grimed face were red-rimmed and bloodshot.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked.

  Iolaus nodded, then pushed himself to his feet and looked around. The wagons stretched in a line towards the bridge, their drivers sleepy-eyed or nodding where they sat. The river was almost overflowing its banks, and the channel Heracles had been digging when Iolaus had fallen asleep was now finished. It ran from the barred stable gates to within a few paces of the river, and with the banks of earth that were piled on each side it was deep enough for a man to stand in up to his ribs.

  ‘I don’t believe it. How did you––?’

  ‘Only a quarter part of the work has been done,’ Heracles said, and for the first time Iolaus saw doubt in his eyes. ‘I need to cut a second trench down to the southern loop of the river and make a breach in the wall there. But these men have worked all night and are tired out. I’ll need fresh drivers for the wagons.’

  Iolaus nodded.

  ‘Of course. I’ll go to the palace and ask for replacements. Do you need more shovels?’

  ‘B
ring a dozen.’

  ‘And what about yourself? Have you had any sleep? Anything to eat?’

  ‘Sleep be damned,’ Heracles replied. ‘Though some wine and a bowl of hot porridge would be welcome. See to it, will you?’

  He set off for the gate-tower, his long strides making it difficult for Iolaus to keep up. As the guards let them through, they saw the cowmen leading the first of the cattle from the side entrance of the stables towards the gates. The animals were half-covered in their own filth, and their lowing was deafening as they spread across the open space, forcing the herders to work hard to keep them from straying. Iolaus followed Heracles over the open grassland to the road that led from the city to the palace, where their paths diverged. Iolaus turned towards the palace, conscious of his uncle’s desire for haste, while Heracles headed towards the dilapidated southern stretch of the battlements.

  The sun had nudged above the eastern hills by the time Iolaus left the palace again, with a skin of wine hanging from one shoulder and a large bowl of porridge in his hand. Ten slaves followed him out into the courtyard. He directed them towards the northern gate-tower with orders to bring the wagons down to the southern ramparts. As they ran off, he heard a crash. Heracles was standing on the battlements, looking down at a pile of rock with a cloud of dust hanging over it.

  He had already removed a section of the upper wall and part of the walkway. In the short time it took Iolaus to reach him, two more cyclopean stones had been hurled down. It usually gave him great joy to see his uncle’s displays of strength, but as he watched him now – prising another giant block free from its neighbours and heaving it down onto the growing pile below – there was a desperate urgency to his exertions that made the spectacle unpleasant. It was like watching an animal trying to fight its way out of a trap that it had no chance of escaping.