The Pillars of Hercules (58 page)

“That’s for sure,” said Lugorix. He stepped forward with Skullseeker, putting all his force into the swing—a blow capable of shearing through metal and bone and anything else it needed to. But the curved sword connected first, whipping round his axe and holding on as though it was a rope—and all of sudden Lugorix was in a tug-of-war, clutching onto his axe as the man pulled backward, the blade tightening its grip further. Lugorix had the strength but somehow that didn’t matter. He felt like a great fish being reeled in by a tiny string. One move and he could snap it. But he couldn’t find that move…

“You should let go of your axe,” said Kalyana. “It will be less painful that way.”

“Less painful for you,” said Lugorix. He noticed Barsine was trying to pull herself across the floor even as the tug on his axe intensified. Then the whole chariot shuddered—he and Kalyana were knocked against the instrument panel. To his horror, Lugorix lost his grip on Skullseeker entirely; hurling himself to the side, he tried to get past both weapons and deal with Kalyana directly, even though he knew there was no way the man would let him face anything but steel….

But Kalyana was no longer inside the chariot.

It happened almost too fast to see: a hydra-head shot through the cockpit window and grabbed the Indian, pulling him straight out into space in a single motion, the axe and his whip-sword both falling from his grip as they smashed against the window-frame. Kalyana never screamed, and the expression on his face never changed as he was hauled away, other hydra-heads tearing off pieces of him as they fought for the fresh meat. Lugorix steadied himself against an instrument panel—he could see several more hydra-necks entwined around the right-hand wing of the chariot. They were pulling the entire craft off course even as more hydra-heads reached in toward it. Off on the left, Matthias and Eurydice were still hanging on, but they wouldn’t be doing so for much longer. Lugorix looked desperately around—saw the amulet lying at the back of the craft. He stumbled in toward it—

“That’s no longer needed,” said Barsine.

As though summoning one final reserve of strength, she pulled herself into the chair and slapped her hand down onto an armrest in which (Lugorix only now noticed) the outline of a handprint was clearly visible. Next instant that handprint glowed; the ship’s engines grew thunderous. Wisps of smoke curled up from the hydra-necks coiled around the right wing. They writhed like paper curling in heat.

“Help your friends,” muttered Barsine.

Lugorix grabbed the blade of Skullseeker, extended the handle out to where Matthias was. Eurydice seized the Greek’s hand as the Gaul pulled them both in. Barsine lolled in the chair, looking more dead than alive, staring at her hand implanted in the incandescent armrest as though it wasn’t her hand. Then she raised her head and gazed out at the hundreds of hydra-necks snaking in toward the craft.

“They faced me once before,” she said.

Her whole body shook as the chariot spat fire.

The jagged remnants of the exterior wall framed Perdiccas against the onrushing sprawl of central Syracuse: plume of helmet waving, sword weaving, pieces of the accelerating Helepolis falling past him as he systematically broke down Diocles’ guard. Another blow, and Diocles’
xiphos
flew from his hand. Perdiccas drew his sword back one more time—

And Agathocles ran his last spear straight through him.

Perdiccas staggered back, dropping his sword, grabbing at the spearshaft, the spearhead protruding from his back. He seemed to be trying to tug it out. To the extent he succeeded, he died faster. He muttered something about Macedonia and glory and then stopped breathing as Agathocles pulled himself up onto the platform, still clinging onto the rope that he’d grabbed a few stories down. He knelt over the prone Xanthippus, looked at the blood that was pooling under his cuirass.

“How is he?” he asked.

“I’ll live,” muttered Xanthippus.

“No we won’t,” said Diocles.

There was no way they could. Every part of the Helepolis that had allowed it to retain control was shattered. All the brakes were gone. The engines were blown. Half the wheels had fallen off. Most of the lower levels were in flames. The shrieks of the trapped and the dying were almost louder than the howl of breaking metal as the structure kept on hurtling downhill. The top ten stories had already fallen off—and then the next ten followed, hundreds of pieces flying out behind what was left. Now there was nothing above the men on the platform save sky. Up ahead, the Epipolae ended in a steep escarpment, below which was the central city itself. Diocles knelt beside Xanthippus, holding his hands, cradling him. They were going to die, but they were going to die together. All the shouting and crashing around him began to fade away.

Then there was only silence.

So this was what it was like to be dead.

Except he wasn’t: Diocles looked up to see that he was still on the top of what was left of the Helepolis as it raced downhill. But he was staring out at everything through a weird purple light. It took him a moment to see the source of that light: an amulet that Agathocles was holding, the orb of its illumination enveloping the three men.

“What in the name of Hades is
that?”
asked Xanthippus.

“Something I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to use,” replied Agathocles. The Helepolis reached the escarpment and flew off into space. For just the briefest of instants Diocles could see the whole central city laid out before him as though in a dream—and then they were tumbling down toward it, the indigo orb they were in just one piece amidst an avalanche of debris from the Helepolis as what was left of the structure disintegrated. Wood and metal and bodies flew everywhere as they crashed through into the city’s lower Neapolis district, a hail of shit smashing through rooftops and walls and people. But the purple orb never stopped—it just kept
bouncing,
like a children’s ball, the three men inside it huddled together as they hit the roof of the temple of Apollo and careened over another wall and into the hippodrome beyond it. They rolled along a chariot raceway, slowing down, finally coming to a halt against a wall where they lay in a heap.

Agathocles flicked something on the amulet and the light switched off. He pulled himself slowly to his feet, looking up at the rows of benches stretching all around them.

“Mind explaining what just happened?” said Xanthippus as Diocles cradled him.

Agathocles nodded. He stared around at the burning city, looking like he was about to weep. “It’s what
didn’t
happen,” he said. “From the moment Aristotle reached Syracuse, my whole goal was to loot his lab and kidnap him,” he said. “The only way to save my city: I made one run myself, and another through proxies. The first yielded me
this
”—he pocketed the amulet—“while the second brought me nothing but the news that Aristotle was dead at the hands of Macedonian agents.”

Diocles was scarcely listening. He was too busy removing Xanthippus’ cuirass and tearing off strips of his own tunic, bandaging the wound. It didn’t seem to be deep but it was right next to where the arrow had struck him back on the beach. There was plenty of blood.

“You’ll want to get some wine on that,” said Agathocles.

“I could use some wine elsewhere too,” said Xanthippus, grimacing with pain as Diocles wrapped the makeshift bandage. “So Aristotle made that thing of yours?”

“I doubt it,” said the Syracusan. “I think it’s a piece of ancient magick. From what I’ve learnt, there’re several of them, one for each of the colors of the rainbow, and each of them have different effects. I’d hoped to collect more, use them to stop Macedonia.”

“Too late for that,” said Xanthippus. He gestured up above the arena, up along the trail of wreckage that the runaway Helepolis had left, all the way to the very top of the Epipolae. Steel glinted all along those heights.

Along with the banners of Alexander the Great.

“The Macedonian phalanx,” breathed Diocles.

But Agathocles was looking in the other direction—staring up above the city, an odd expression on his face. The clouds were clearing. The sun was coming through.

“What?” said Diocles.

A vast screaming filled the sky.

Chapter Twenty-Four

T
he chariot turned out to be crammed with guns of every description, crowded all along the length of what Lugorix was coming to think of as the wings. He’d have expected nothing less but he was still in awe as the hydra’s heads disintegrated before the roar of the craft’s weaponry: rays of light, beams of fire, and thousands of tiny iron balls tore through the necks and sent their flesh falling down in pieces, splattering against the chariot, some of it sailing through the open window where it slapped against the back of the wall against which everyone except Barsine was huddling. She looked like total shit. Her head was lolling from side to side as she sent the craft roaring past what was left of the planets, the Earth-disc dwindling beneath them as they hurtled in toward one of the holes in the vast sphere’s shell. The same one they’d come in, in fact. But there was something peculiar about it. It took Lugorix a moment to figure out what.

“Where did all the fires go?” he asked.

“Cauterized,” said Barsine. “Automated processes to wall off further damage.”

“Not like we haven’t done enough already,” said Eurydice. They swept through the hole in the ceiling and out into mist. They could see nothing, though Lugorix could feel the craft banking sharply, the occasional platform and ladder reeling past, way too close. And then they were completely surrounded by mist, getting ever darker. As though her life was linked to that light, Barsine began to slide from the chair.

“Hold me up,” she murmured—but Lugorix was already leaping forward, grabbing her shoulders, steadying her in the seat, keeping her hand pressed against that glowing armrest. To his horror, that hand was icy cold.

“My mother is dead,” her voice said with suddenly renewed strength. “I’m sorry. The shock of direct interface with the chariot finished her.”

“You mean
you
finished her,” said Eurydice from the back wall where she and Matthias clung to each other. It was tough to tell which of them looked more freaked out amidst the vehicle’s headlong rush. Lugorix grabbed Barsine and shook her.

“Come back,” he said.
“Please.”

“I said she’s gone,” her voice said. “I’m all that’s left.”

“I don’t even know who you are,” said Lugorix dully.

“Don’t you
get
it?” said Eumenes. “The one who battles the hydra?”

“Hercules reborn,” said Eurydice and her voice had gone all hollow.

“I haven’t even
been
born,” said the voice, no longer sounding female, no longer sounding anything at all. “This place feels familiar, but I can’t tell if that’s because I’ve been here before or simply because of what runs in my blood.” The mist outside was almost entirely black now—then suddenly they roared out of the top of the tower whose base they’d entered all that time ago, its lights falling away beneath them. They seemed to Lugorix to be the same type of yellow-white illumination as that which winked amidst the levers of the chariot. The tower fell away as they soared toward the vault of the underworld.

But the floor of that underworld was changing rapidly.

The tower they’d just left was shaking—and then toppling. The ground was crumbling all across that great space, collapsing as though into a sinkhole. The rivers were draining away, becoming waterfalls that poured away into darkness—revealing something impossibly huge beneath all that collapsing surface, something with giant gnarled branches sprouting up from around a vast trunk which could only be described as a—

“Tree,”
breathed Eurydice.

“That’s
what holds up the Earth,” said Barsine’s son—for Lugorix could no longer think of it as Barsine. His mind was so far gone he could no longer really think at all.

“But what holds up the tree?” said Eurydice.

“No one’s ever gone down to find out,” said Hercules.

“Not even you?”

“Not when the gods are down there.”

“That’s where the rulers of Hades sleep?”

“Not anymore.
They’re waking up
.”

And maybe it was true. There seemed to be some kind of huge, sinuous
movement
in those depths, as well as a glowing that was altogether different from that of the phosphorescent forests that had just tumbled away into nothing. It seemed almost like the embers of some great fire. Lugorix was happy that the chariot was steadily gaining height, climbing up toward the ceiling. But Eumenes didn’t seem pleased at all.

“You
did it,” he said to the thing at the chariot’s controls.
“You
woke them up. That was the whole point of your coming down here, wasn’t it?”

“You keep on assuming that I have the answers,” said Hercules. “I don’t. When my mother’s body boarded this craft, your friend was ready. You saw what happened: he used the ship’s internal defenses to batter the life out of her and almost kill me too. So don’t make the mistake of thinking I’ve got some kind of masterplan. I’m making this up as I go: I became aware of myself about
half an hour ago
—came to full consciousness inside my dying mother, absorbed her own consciousness as I did so.”

“Thus does your own blood condemn you,” said Eumenes.

“Spare me,” said Hercules.

“Too many have already done so. It’s like Kalyana said: those with the
genetikos
were intended to be tools of the those who created them. So don’t try to—”

“I’m not,” said Hercules. “I probably
am
the tool of those stirring below. Do you think I’m a fool? Turning on this chariot has activated something that lay latent. So now the Chthonic gods themselves are coming back to life, to take charge of the machinery that kept watch over them while they slept. But as to how long they will take to wake—neither you nor I know for sure.” Barsine’s right hand reached out, turned a dial—and suddenly the chariot went vertical, flinging everybody back to the wall. Only Lugorix held onto the flight-chair, held onto Barsine while they burned up a shaft just barely wide enough to accommodate the vehicle. He buried his face in her hair while rock streaked past, tried not to listen while that mouth kept talking: