Son of Zeus

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 the 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.

‘Stop!’

The woman looked back at him, as if waking from a dream. Then a look of alarm gripped her features. She shook her head at him and turned away, dragging her daughter with her.

‘Wait. I have something for you.’

He put his hand into the leather pouch at his hip and pulled out half a loaf of bread. As the child saw it, she remembered her hunger and her expression became pained. She tugged at her mother’s hand to prevent her walking away, and with the other reached out for the bread. The woman relented, a look of helpless concern in her eyes. Heracles broke the bread in two as he approached and offered a piece to the child. She slipped her fingers from her mother’s grip and snatched it from him.

‘Eat, child,’ he encouraged her, trying to smile.

The girl bit into the food, eating quickly and noisily. He placed his hand on her head, remembering the feel of his own children’s hair and sensing the longing for them in his heart.

‘This is for you,’ he added, handing the remainder to the mother. ‘You look like you haven’t eaten in a week.’

The woman shook her head and glanced nervously over her shoulder at the men, who had resumed their loud conversations.

‘Leave us alone,’ she hissed. ‘We don’t need your help or want it. For all our sakes, just go.’

‘But why?’ the girl protested. ‘He’s kind, like Father was.’

‘Where is your father?’ Heracles asked, giving her the other piece of bread.

‘He’s dead,’ the woman answered. ‘They murdered him. And they’ll do the same to you if you don’t go at once.’

‘Bandits,’ he sneered, feeling a pulse of anger. ‘What did they do to your husband?’

‘We were pilgrims. They surrounded us on our return from the oracle, and when he tried to resist they killed him. And now they’re taking us to sell as slaves.’

‘What’s going on?’

One of the men had stopped and was glaring at them. A few of the others turned at the sound of his voice. The woman stared up at Heracles, her eyes wide with fear now.

‘For her sake,’ she said, pulling her daughter to herself, ‘please go. Please go.’

‘I said what’s going on?’ the man shouted, his face flushed with anger now.

Heracles looked at him, then down at the woman and her daughter. He could still do as she was begging him to; he could walk away and leave them to their fate. The woman might get a beating, but they would not want to damage her looks too much – not if they wanted a good price for her. And her daughter might do well for herself, if she was sold to a decent household. Besides, it was not for him to interfere in whatever plans the gods had for them. His business was with the oracle, and if he left now he could still get there before nightfall.

But there were those who had other uses for children of her age, he thought. And what if the gods had planned for him to save the girl? As for the oracle, his questions could wait.

He looked down at the woman and her daughter.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said.

‘Leave them alone,’ the man shouted, drawing his sword and striding towards them. ‘You’re slowing us down.’

The woman grabbed one of Heracles’s massive hands and kissed it, before pushing her daughter towards him.

‘Then help us,’ she pleaded. ‘In Hera’s name, take Myrine and run. I don’t care what they do to me, just save my child.’

The bandit seized the woman’s hair and dragged her back, throwing her to the ground.

‘Give the little one to me,’ he said, reaching for the child.

Heracles pulled her behind him.

‘I’ll buy them both.’

‘You couldn’t afford them,’ called the stocky man with the broken nose, leaning against the cart.

Heracles reached into his pouch and pulled out two flat oblongs of metal.

‘A silver ingot each. That’s more than any slave is worth.’

A murmur spread among the watching bandits. The woman rose to her feet and moved to one side, beckoning her daughter to join her. The man put away his sword and took the ingots from Heracles’s hand. He examined them closely, trying to bend them with his fingers.

‘They’re real,’ he called back.

‘Then there’s more where they came from,’ said the flat-nosed man. ‘Give us the rest, friend, and we’ll let you live.’

Heracles signalled to the woman.

‘Take Myrine over to the tree and cover her eyes,’ he said. ‘Cover your own too.’

The nearest bandit stuffed the ingots into his pouch and made a grab for his sword. Before he could wrap his fingers around the hilt, Heracles took him by the shoulders and butted him hard in the face. The man’s nose split open, pouring blood over his mouth and chin, and he went limp. His comrades gave a shout of rage and drew their weapons, four of them rushing forward to attack. Heracles lifted his unconscious victim easily over his head and hurled him at the oncoming brigands.

Three were knocked onto their backs in a sprawl of arms and legs, but the fourth ran on, wielding a double-bladed axe. With a rage-filled cry, he brought it down at Heracles’s chest. Heracles caught the haft with his out-thrust hand and ripped it from the man’s grip. Tossing it aside, he drew back his fist and slammed it into his attacker’s jaw with enough force to fell an ox. There was a crack of bone and the man was thrown backwards, spitting blood and teeth. He landed in a heap some way from the road and remained still.

The other three scrambled from beneath the unconscious body of Heracles’s first victim and ran back to their comrades. Having witnessed the strength of their opponent, the rest of the group were less keen to rush him. Instead, at the command of the scar-faced man, they drew their weapons and spread out in a semi-circle.

Heracles looked at the ring of gleaming bronze and thought of the dark tragedy that had so recently thrown his life into chaos. All he needed to do was walk forward and the misery would be over. He had tried once already, only for Iolaus to save him. But Iolaus was not with him now.

Then he heard the child sobbing with fear at the shouts of the men closing around them, and the hushed words of her mother as she tried to calm her. However deep his own grief and despair, did he have the right to give up his life if it meant them being sold into slavery? His friend King Thespius had told him to go to the oracle and ask what penance the gods demanded of him for his crime. Perhaps this was his penance – to save them.

But strength alone would not be enough to defeat a band of thieves and murderers, each of them armed while he carried nothing. The woman and child were huddled together beneath the olive tree he had sat under earlier. Striding towards them, he seized hold of a large branch and wrenched it off with a grunt. He stripped away the foliage and tested the weight of the club he had made.

‘Come on, then,’ said the man with the broken nose, stepping forward with his sword in his hand. ‘I’ve felled bigger men than you.’

‘And I’ve killed smaller men than you,’ Heracles replied.

He swung the club. The man raised his sword, but the force of the blow smashed through his arm with a snap of bone and swept him from his legs. He was thrown across the road and landed against the back of the cart, slumping to the ground with barely a grunt.

At a signal from the scar-faced man, several of the others rushed forward. One – quicker than the rest – came at Heracles from his right, but was flattened by a backward swing of his club. Two more fell as he brought it back again, crushing the upper arm and ribs of the first and driving him sidelong into the second so that both were sent tumbling across the dirt track into the grass verge.

A fourth attacker lunged with the point of his sword. Heracles twisted aside at the last moment, the edge of the blade slashing open his tunic and grazing the surface of the hard muscles beneath. The sting of the wound produced a furious reaction in him. Taking hold of the man’s wrist, he twisted it hard. There was a crack and the bandit shrieked with pain, letting his weapon fall to the ground. Resisting the temptation to pull the man’s head under his arm and snap his neck, Heracles picked him up by his arms and – with a half-turn, as if he were throwing a discus – he hurled him onto the verge at the side of the road. He landed with a thud and a groan, and after a weak effort to pull himself away, collapsed and lay still.

A sudden blow to Heracles’s shoulder sent a hot stab of pain shooting down through his chest. He staggered backwards, clutching at the arrow buried in the muscle. With an angry shout, he wrenched it free and sent it spinning into the trees. Scanning the semi-circle of brigands, he picked out a figure standing in the back of the wagon. The drunkard had woken from his stupor and now stood with an empty bow in his hand, his right hand still hovering by his ear where it had released the arrow. With a victorious hoot, he reached down to the leather quiver gripped between his knees and pulled out a second dart.

Before he could fit it, Heracles drew back his club and launched it at the archer. It thumped into his chest, lifting him from his feet and sending him sprawling into the Aethiope driver. They tumbled down between the backs of the oxen and hit the ground. Startled, the slow beasts shambled forward, crushing the two men beneath the heavy wheels of the cart. They screamed briefly and were silent.

Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, Heracles snatched up a discarded sword and leaped into the midst of the bandits. One brought the edge of his weapon down at his neck. Heracles met the blow, bronze scraping against bronze, and threw his attacker back. Turning, he parried the thrust of a second man, knocking his weapon aside with ease before driving his left fist into the bandit’s face. He fell unconscious, blood pumping from his shattered nose. Having seen ten of their comrades killed or battered into unconsciousness by the lone giant, the confidence of the remaining few drained away. Heracles rebalanced the sword in his hand and stepped towards them, but they threw down their weapons and ran.

Suddenly, the woman screamed a warning behind him. Heracles turned on his