Hercules (5 page)

To clean out these filthy stables was Hercules’ next labor.

He learned about it when he came back to Mycenae after killing the Hydra. He didn’t come back immediately. He had gone to Thebes first to leave Iole with his parents. He very much wanted to stay there himself and had to tear himself away. And on the road back, he had a great longing to visit Thessaly and his old tutor, Chiron, and to run with the centaurs in the hills. But Hera’s curse weighed heavily on him, and he knew he had to get back to his labors.

Again the gate was locked. Again he waited outside the walls. Again Copreus came through the gate, but this time he came alone.

“Hail, friend,” called Hercules. “Where’s the army?”

“I left them home,” said Copreus.

“Do you bear a message from the king?”

“I do.”

“Another labor?”

“Yes.”

“How do you dare to come alone? Last time you were afraid to come at all. You sent your niece.”

“Yes,” said Copreus, “and I have learned from the child. She said you were kind. I didn’t believe her then, but I do now. I hear you’ve adopted her.”

“Not exactly. I think she’s adopted me. She’s with my parents in Thebes and will live with them. She doesn’t like it here.”

“No, this is no place for her. I thank you for taking her to Thebes, and I regret very much what I am about to tell you.”

“Tell it, man, tell it. Whatever it is, I know you are not to blame.”

“Well, I’m going to live up to my name of the dung man now, because I’m going to tell you about the biggest pile of dung in the world.”

And Copreus told Hercules about the fat cattle thief and his filthy stables.

“If I understand you,” said Hercules, “this Augeas has penned a thousand cattle for a thousand days, and has never let them out. So the place is a filthy reeking midden, and you can smell it all the way to Egypt. Very well, I understand all that. What about it?”

“You are to go there and clean it up in one day.”

“That is my next task?”

“Yes. It should make a change. You won’t have to fight anything big and dreadful, or kill any monsters who are trying to kill you. Just a day’s cleaning, that’s all.”

“Copreus, I know none of this is your fault; you’re only the king’s messenger, and I’m very fond of your niece who saved my life. But you’d better get out of here before I lose my temper.”

Hercules watched him scurry away. “An easy one, this time,” he said to himself. “No monsters to fight, no claws or spiked tails or poison fangs coming at me … just a day’s work, mucking out stables used by a thousand animals for a thousand days. By the gods, I’d rather take on the lion and the Hydra in one afternoon. My strength and speed won’t help me this time, nor my spear that can split an oak tree, nor my deadly arrows. This requires thinking. And I don’t have the beginnings of an idea. Oh well, I’ll be a week walking to Elis; perhaps something will occur to me on the way, though I doubt it.”

Scowling and muttering to himself, he turned his back on the city and began once again a journey he didn’t want to take.

When Hercules reached the river Alpheus, he knew that he had only a few more miles to go. He stopped to look at the broad rippling river, wishing he could just wander along the shore and forget all about the filthy task awaiting him.

“Well,” he thought, “the sooner I start, the sooner I’ll finish.” He began to walk on, but stopped because he heard a little snuffling sound. There, hiding behind a tree, was a maiden in a blue dress, hands over her face, sobbing.

Hercules went to her and said, “Why are you crying?”

“I’m to be the bride of the river, and I’m afraid … afraid …”

“What do you mean, ‘bride of the river’?”

“Of the River-god—that’s what he calls himself. River-demon is more like it. Many rivers run through my country, which is Calydon. I am Dienera, princess of Calydon. And the River-god told my father, the king, he’d flood the whole country, sweeping away farms and villages and cities, unless he could have me as his wife. And to save his kingdom, my father brought me here.”

Her violet eyes filled with tears. They overflowed and rolled down her cheeks.

“Don’t cry,” said Hercules.

“I’m so frightened.”

“Well, I don’t see any reason for you to marry anyone you don’t want to,” said Hercules.

A mist arose from the river. It became a column of mist and thickened into the shape of a giant turtle standing upright. It spoke in a low grating voice.

“Leave this place or you die.”

“Who are you?” said Hercules.

“I am the River-god.”

“Is this where you live, here in the river Alpheus?”

“I dwell in all the inland waters, as I choose. Right now I am here, and I wish you elsewhere.”

“Why?”

“That girl is meant to be my wife.”

“Who means her to be?”

“I do.”

“How about you?” said Hercules to the girl. “Do you want him for a husband?”

She shook her head silently. Hercules saw that she was afraid to speak.

“The princess doesn’t like the idea,” said Hercules. “Swim away now like a good fellow.”

He felt something touch him and looked down. Dienera had put her hand on his arm. She reached up and pulled his head down so that she could whisper into his ear. “Take care. He’s very evil. He changes form at will. If he doesn’t snap your head off as that giant turtle, he’ll turn into a dreadful horned fish. If he doesn’t kill you that way, he’ll dive into the river and make it flood until it drowns you. If you try to flee, he’ll overflow his banks and chase you through meadows and fields, sweeping everything away in his flood, until he catches you and drowns you.”

“Thank you for the warning,” said Hercules, “but I’ll have to fight him if I’m to save you. I can’t do it today, though. I have another job to do first. I’ll be back tomorrow. Will you be safe until then?”

“I don’t know. I’m so frightened.”

“Tell him you’ll be his bride. But you need two days to make your wedding gown.”

“But then in two days I’ll have to marry him.”

“I promise to be back tomorrow and fight him for you. I can’t promise to win, but I’ll try. Farewell.”

He raced away, knowing that if she looked at him again out of her brimming eyes, he’d forget all about his task and stay where he was. As he hurried on, he began to smell something. It was a beautiful summer day, and among the meadow grass was flowering clover, one of the sweetest scents in the world, but he wasn’t smelling clover now. It was something foul. It grew worse and worse.

“That must be the stables,” he thought. “If I can’t stand the smell at this distance, what will I do when I get there?”

He thought a moment, then ran back a way and searched among the grass. “Well for me now that Chiron taught me herbs,” he thought. He plucked great handfuls of what he had found, which was wild garlic. Then he unslung his lion-skin helmet, packed it full of the wild garlic, and stuck it on his head. It was hard to breathe. And what he was breathing was the fumes of wild garlic, but they blocked the foul stench coming from the farm.

In the distance, he saw an enormous barn, so big it covered ten acres. The barnyard was guarded by a high fence. Through the fence, he saw shapes moving. Before he reached the gate, he heard a racketing yell:

“Stop!”

He stopped. Facing him was a grossly fat man, gnawing on a raw beef bone and spitting out bits of gristle. “Who are you, lion-face?” asked the man.

“My name is Hercules. Who are you?”

“I am Augeas. I own this barn and all these cattle. And I own you too now, for a day, because your master has sent you to me to muck out my stables. Right? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” said Hercules.

“Well, get a shovel and start working. But you’d better take off that lion mask first; you’ll scare my cattle.”

Now, the helmet had slipped a bit, and Hercules couldn’t quite see out the eyeholes. He adjusted the helmet and looked at the man again—and gasped in amazement. For the fat face had huge ballooning cheeks and seven chins, but no nose at all.

“May I ask you two questions, sir?” said Hercules.

“Make ’em short.”

“Why do you keep your place so filthy?”

The man hopped up and down in glee, waving his beef bone and laughing a phlegmy laugh. “Harr, harr, harr. Stink ’em out, Here! Stink ’em out and grab off their farms, pile up the acres, and get rich! Next question.”

“Were you born without a nose, or did someone cut it off?”

“Neither one. Cut it off myself.”

“Why?”

“That makes three questions. But all right. I cut it off so I couldn’t smell what I was doing. Very useful, having no nose. You can do all sorts of dirty profitable things. That’s what I tell any ambitious young person, ‘Cut off your nose!’ Told it to my own son, but he wouldn’t listen, the little fool—just ran away.”

As he spoke, he led Hercules through the gate into the barnyard. The man kept talking, but Hercules wasn’t listening; he was busy looking. And what he saw sickened him. Piles of manure towered higher than the barn roof. The animals packed into the yard were so crusted with filth you couldn’t tell whether they were cows or bulls. And the flies! Great swarms of fat bluebottle flies covering every surface, clustering so thickly you couldn’t pick out a single fly, just one huge hideous glinting blue gob.

“I’ll never be able to clean this place,” said Hercules to himself. “Not in a year, let alone one day. But if I fail in even one task, I can’t work off my curse, and the vision that Hera sent me will come true. Never! I won’t let that happen, no matter what. I’ll go back right now and fight the River-god and get myself drowned—and cheat my fate that way.”

He pushed Augeas aside, rushed out the gate, and raced away over the field. He heard the man shouting after him, but paid him no heed. He ran as hard as he could because he wanted to get away from the stench as soon as possible; he could feel it now coming through the packing of wild garlic. But as he ran, he found himself thinking about how he would fight the River-god.

“What did she say he changes into? First a giant snapping turtle, then a horned fish, and if his enemy is still alive, he makes the river flood up, drowning everything. Hmmmm. That gives me the beginning of an idea. Yes … just the beginning, though. Well, I think better when I’m fighting. Maybe before I finish tussling with that watery demon, I’ll have a whole idea.”

He found Dienera hiding behind the same tree. “You’re back early,” she whispered.

“Listen, princess,” he said. “I’ve never kissed any woman except my mother, but I want to kiss you now. Nothing serious—just to make the River-god jealous.”

“Is that the only reason you want to kiss me?”

“It’s to make him come out of the river, you see. So I can get at him.”

She sighed. He bent down and kissed her cheek.

When the River-god had appeared before, he had risen as a column of mist which had thickened into the shape of a giant snapping turtle. Hercules expected him to do the same thing now but was amazed to see a huge plate spinning out of the water. It landed near him, and he saw that it was the turtle, looking like a double disk of armor plate because it had pulled in arms and legs to leap out of the river. It stuck out a leathery lizard head and scuttled toward him on leather legs. Turtles are supposed to be slow; this one was fast as a tiger. It rushed toward him and snapped at his leg, which he just managed to pull away in time. He danced around, dodging its furious rushes. The great jaws were snapping with enough force to bite through flesh and muscle and thick bone, to shear his leg off at the hip.

The turtle had moved so swiftly that Hercules had no time to draw a weapon, nor to don his lion-skin armor. He ran into the forest hoping the turtle would have trouble following him, but it slithered swiftly over the fallen brush and was after him in a flash. Without breaking stride, he grasped a young oak and pulled it out of the ground with a mighty yank. Whirling, he lifted the uprooted tree as high as he could and smashed it down at the turtle. The tree struck square, shattering the shell. The naked turtle turned and scuttled toward the river. Hercules raced after, hoping to catch it and finish it off before it could enter the water. The turtle was too fast; it slid into the river and disappeared.

And immediately reappeared—not as a turtle, but as a huge fish, twenty feet long, whose head narrowed into a long sharp bony prong. This was the River-god’s second change: the horned fish.

The fish was more terrible than the turtle. It flung itself out of the water and came flying through the air, aiming its horn straight at Hercules’ throat. He swung his arm, batting it aside, but the horn ripped a bloody furrow in his arm. He ran; the fish followed, slithering on its belly like a snake … swiftly … swiftly. Hercules ran as fast as he could to where his things lay scattered. He stooped as he ran, scooping up a lion-hide gauntlet, and whirled just as the fish leaped at him again. But this time he grasped the fish’s horn with the hand that wore the gauntlet made of the hide that nothing could pierce. He held the threshing fish at arm’s length by its knife-edge horn and whipped it up and down, faster and faster, finally snapping his wrist and breaking the horn off clean. He stabbed the fish with its own horn. It flopped to the water, leaving a trail of blood.

He heard Dienera’s voice: “Run, Hercules, run! He’ll flood his banks and drown you!”

“Aha, that’s it,” shouted Hercules. “Now I know what I was trying to think of. He fights first as a turtle, then as a fish, and now he will flood his banks trying to drown me. He will pursue me over the fields, washing everything away as he goes. Well, chase away, flood! Catch me if you can!”

Laughing, shouting, Hercules swept up Dienera in his arms and fled the river bank just as the water boiled up in a mighty crest, gushed over its banks, and hurled itself over the fields, breaking down trees as it went, sweeping up fallen logs, and tossing them about like twigs, raging across the country in a foaming avalanche of water.

He raced ahead of the flood, heading straight back the way he had come, toward the stables of Augeas. The brown frothing water, laced with trees, was almost at his heels. But he kept ahead of it, running very swiftly although he bore Dienera in his arms. Now he saw the barn roof looming in the middle distance, and the piles of dung, and the clotted shape of the cattle.