Heracles ran a hand through his thick mahogany hair and continued pacing. Then he turned abruptly and strode toward his stallion.
“Heracles.” Dolos rose to his feet.
“We leave now.” The hero strapped his lion hide to his saddle so the head was covered. “You want to get there quickly? Then we’d better get a fucking move on.” He swung himself onto the steed, his powerful limbs tight with tension.
Atalanta and Telamon shared a weighted look before shoving down the last of their victuals and securing their saddles.
“Fine,” said Dolos with the resignation of a parent placating a stubborn child. “We’ll go now, but the horses must walk, or we’ll knacker them before we reach Iolcos.”
Heracles’s expression darkened but he said nothing.
In silence they mounted the horses and continued at a slower pace along the road.
“Where are we?” Danae asked Hylas as the trees began to thin and she glimpsed golden fields of barley in the distance.
“Just outside the city of Thebes.”
Once, on one of Philemon’s visits to Alea, he had brought a map. It was the one occasion she’d been happy to stay in the hut while he fawned over her sister. He’d spread the scroll across their table and pointed out the route he and his father sailed to Athens, and the surrounding cities of Eleusis, Eretria and Thebes. She’d gazed in wonder at the land sketched out on the parchment and pictured herself journeying between the lines of ink. From what she could remember, Thebes was north of Athens. Her aching bones were vindicated, they’d already come a long way.
“I grew up not far from here, on the other side of those hills.” Hylas pointed beyond the barley fields. His face softened as he gazed in the direction of home.
“How did you come to travel with Heracles?”
She’d wondered this when she’d been sitting listening to them in the kapeleion. Dolos was a healer, which would be invaluable given the hero’s line of work, and Telamon and Atalanta looked like seasoned fighters, but she couldn’t imagine Hylas tussling a many-headed hydra or brawling with a bloodthirsty giant.
“Not much to tell. Heracles and the others stopped at my uncle’s farm on their way to capture a giant boar that was terrorizing Erymanthia. Heracles asked if I wanted to come with them and here I am.”
She thought of the hostility she’d received before being allowed to join their group and sensed there was more to the story, but her desire to find out more about Heracles outweighed her curiosity.
“Why was he so keen to take another route?”
“That’s just Heracles. He can be impatient sometimes.”
After another hour of riding, the forests on either side of the road became dense again. With no views of the surrounding countryside to distract her, the ache in Danae’s thighs became so uncomfortable, she had to shift every few moments. Rearranging herself, she accidentally kicked the bag she’d attached to the saddle. Worried about losing the prophecy stone, she leaned over to make sure it was secure.
As she straightened up, an object whistled past her head. A heartbeat later, pain spiked through her ear and something warm trickled down her neck.
She barely had time to register what had happened before Heracles twisted in his saddle and spun a dagger into the branches of a tree on the opposite side of the path. There was a wet thud, a moan, then a man tumbled from the branches, the blade wedged in his throat.
Danae stared at the body, her breathing shallow. She’d half expected to see the blue cloak of an Athenian guard, but the man bleeding out in front of her was dressed in a humble tunic with a dark strip of cloth wound around his face.
She didn’t have long to recover from the shock. Men surged from between the trees on either side, all dressed similarly with their faces obscured, clutching an eclectic assortment of weapons.
Telamon unsheathed his sword and Atalanta drew her bow, an arrow poised at her cheek in the space of a heartbeat. They worked in harmony, Telamon slashing and stabbing the nearest attackers, while Atalanta picked off the ones lurking in the foliage. The ground around their horses soon turned red.
Danae scrabbled around for her knife, while Hylas pulled their horse away from a man wielding a sickle.
Heracles threw his reins to Dolos and slipped from the saddle. Unarmed, he moved amongst their attackers, crushing their weapons as though they were blades of grass. Danae gaped as he grabbed a sword in his fist, the metal crumpling under his grip, while he punched the man who held it. With a sickening crack, the man sank to the ground, his head lolling from a broken neck. The others faltered, staring at Heracles in slack-jawed horror.
Hesitating was a mistake.
The hero darted forward with the speed of someone half his size. There was a pop as he wrenched a man’s arm from its socket, while at the same time shattering another’s pelvis with a kick. While Danae clung to Hylas, uselessly waving her knife, Heracles felled a dozen men in moments. Two dropped their weapons and turned to run, but the hero grabbed each of their heads and smashed them together, showering the path in fragments of skull and brains.
Suddenly, the sky seemed to slide forward as Danae was pulled off the horse. An attacker had a fistful of her cloak and was dragging her along the path. Winded, she tried to swing her blade in front of her, but the man grabbed her arm, forcing her knife down toward her chest.
Then Hylas was soaring through the air above them. He must have leaped from the saddle, drawing his dagger at the same time. He landed on his feet, his blade sinking into the back of Danae’s attacker. Blood dribbled from the man’s mouth and he toppled over, dead before he hit the path.
She propped herself onto her elbows. Bodies littered the ground around her. After what Heracles had done, most of them barely looked human.
