Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One (11 page)

A young poet, once, made reckless by moonlight, composed a song and was foolish enough to sing it:

“Gobi, Mordo, Kell …

Bowman, Banger, Butcher,

Serve the tyrant well …

And though we go there first,

we'll wait for them in hell …”

He vanished very soon afterward and was never seen again. And although people remembered the song and sometimes whispered it to themselves, no one dared sing it aloud. Indeed, it wasn't heard again for many years—not until a young hero named Hercules landed on a Libyan beach and started doing what he had sworn to do.

5

Hera's Grudge

Hercules' second task had been to kill the hundred-headed Hydra—each of whose heads held fifty teeth, and whose bite was so poisonous that a single scratch from any one of those five thousand teeth would kill a hippo in the wink of an eye.

After Hercules had slain the Hydra, he dipped an arrow into its envenomed blood so that he might have one ultimate weapon. Then, afterward, he found that he was unable to make himself use that arrow no matter how great his peril. For he was afraid that if he did use it, its poison would enter the flowing waters, and be carried by the wind, and seep into the earth, poisoning crops and cattle—and people. He felt that he would rather lose his own life than do such a thing.

Nevertheless, he kept the poisoned arrow. And its very possession was to cause him endless woe—which began when he faced Anteus.

It happened this way:

Of all the females in the universe, human and divine, Hera, Queen of the Gods, was considered the most fortunate. Her wealth was as boundless as her extravagance. Her power was limited only by the will of her husband, Zeus, and not always then. And her majestic beauty was renewable by means of a magic spring in which no one else was permitted to bathe.

Nevertheless, for all her wealth and power and beauty, Hera was not happy.

Having made a habit of indulging every whim, she could be thrown into a tantrum by the slightest disappointment. And because she considered now that she was suffering a series of major disappointments, her fury was shaking heaven and earth, and beginning to ruffle even the icy composure of the gods.

“I simply can't bear it,” she snarled to herself. “That scurvy little lout, Hercules, has managed to defeat every monster I've thrown against him. It's beyond belief how he has been able to do this. But he has … he has.… He simply refuses to be vanquished, the mangy cur. And if I don't destroy him soon, I'll suffocate with rage. I'm finding it hard to breathe right now. The trouble with me is that I'm simply too kindly by nature to pursue a feud the way I should. What I need is some truly murderous counsel.”

Whereupon, she sent for her friend, Hecate, Queen of the Harpies, and the world's foremost expert on various forms of vendetta and mayhem.

Upon receiving Hera's message, the young hag who was Hecate spread her great wings and flew from her underworld aerie up to the top of Mount Olympus, where dwelt the high gods. She found Hera in the orchard. Sunlight sifted through a lacework of branches, and the two towering females met in a play of checkered light and amid the mingled fragrance of crushed grass and ripening fruit.

“Esteemed mistress! Patroness!” cried Hecate. “Beloved friend. How can I serve you?”

“Good Hecate, teach me to kill.”

“Pardon, my lady, but I should have supposed this to be the subject on which you would need no instruction.”

“Perhaps I have had some success in the past at eliminating those obnoxious to me,” said Hera. “But I seem to be losing my touch. Do you think I'm mellowing with age?”

“No, my queen, I do not. You seem to me as youthful, as energetic, as divinely vicious as ever. Perhaps even more so.”

“You are too kind,” murmured Hera. “The fact is that my worst enemy, the mortal I hate more than any other, more than any creature on earth, in the sea, or in your own smoky realm, continues to live and thrive despite my best efforts. I speak of Hercules, son of Zeus, by that cooing bitch, Alcmene, Lady of the Light Footsteps. Zeus has spawned swarms of children, as you know, and only two of them by me—and I hate and loathe and despise every one of them, of course. But worst of all, by far, do I abhor Hercules. For his mother was the most beautiful of my husband's paramours, and he is the strongest of Zeus's ill-gotten sons. Consequently, I decided to get him killed in the most painful way possible, and proceeded to involve him with monster after monster—all to no avail. He has overcome the Nemean Lion, the hundred-headed Hydra, and the three-bodied Geryon, fearsome creatures all, each of whom had devoured several generations of heroes. Now I'm at my wits' end and need your help, if you have any to give me.”

“What we must do,” said Hecate, “is find Hercules' weak point.”

“Don't you think I've tried?” cried Hera. “I've confronted him with three of the most dreadful monsters ever hatched. While they were looking for his weak point, he slew them all.”

“Allow me to differ, gracious lady. His adventure with the Hydra did reveal a weakness in him, perhaps a fatal one.”

“I'm listening.…”

“It's not in the usual physical sense that he's vulnerable,” said Hecate. “But he's cursed with a loving heart and an overheated imagination. He can be successfully attacked through those he cares for.”

“Be specific.”

“Hercules is a special hero to children. They dote on tales of his battles, follow him in hordes … and he is very fond of them.”

“So?”

“So … this gives me an idea. As you know, he has never shot that arrow he dipped in Hydra blood. He's afraid the poison might spread. Well, we use this fear. We visit his sleep with a dream. We show him one of these children, a little boy, wanting to touch a weapon of the hero he adores. The boy rummages through Hercules' quiver and scratches his finger on an arrow—the poison arrow! The boy froths at the mouth, stiffens, dies. Hercules, knotted in this horrid nightmare, will view it not as a simple sleep vapor but as a prophetic vision, a solemn warning from on high. And once we hook him on this illusion, we'll know how to play him like a fish. We'll extract from him a penitential vow to go unarmed into his next adventure. And then we shall pit him, naked and weaponless, against a monster who has so far proved invincible, and whom I count as the most destructive force on earth.”

“Who is this champion?”

“His name is Anteus, youngest son of Mother Earth and the Primal Snake, and the most fearsome of all that dreadful litter. He's a giant, presently king of Libya, and our current favorite down below. For the past few years, he has sent us more corpses than all other monsters combined.”

“What makes him so invincible?” asked Hera.

“His size. His bloodlust. The fact that he has surrounded himself with a band of giants almost as fearsome as he is, and whom only he can control.”

“I don't know …” murmured Hera. “When I think of Geryon and the Hydra and what Hercules did to them, I can't seem to put much confidence in ordinary giants.”

“Anteus is no ordinary giant,” said Hecate. “He is larger than the largest Titan, and of more than Titanic strength. He can kick over a fortified castle like an anthill and crush its defenders underfoot. Besides all this, he has a secret power. He is the favorite son of Mother Earth, and she has endowed him with a unique virtue. If ever thrown to earth, Anteus draws new strength from his mother. And no matter how grievously injured he has been, will arise whole, healed, unblemished, with strength restored. Doesn't he sound a little better to you, my lady?”

“Well, my dear,” said Hera. “You are certainly eloquent on his behalf. Let's just hope for the best. Shall we start concocting that poison-arrow dream?”

6

Landfall in Libya

Thus it was that when Hercules crossed the Middle Sea to challenge Anteus, he carried no weapons. He did wear his lion skin—that hide he had taken from the Nemean Lion and which made a marvelous lightweight flexible armor—for it could turn any blade. As a helmet he wore the lion's skull. But horrified by his dream, keeping his own vow, he had left bow and arrows, spear, sword, and club behind.

He was rafting across the narrow arm of sea that divided the Iberian Peninsula from the northwestern spur of Africa ruled by Anteus. He had chosen a raft instead of a sailing vessel because this was the season when strong winds blew out of the south, and in those days sailboats could not tack; they could only run before the wind.

He had made his raft very simply, by lashing fallen trees together. Another tree trunk, which he had trimmed of branches, was his oar. The raft was unsinkable, but huge and clumsy—so heavy that twenty oarsmen would have been unable to manage it. But Hercules, using his single tree-trunk oar, made it skim over the water like a canoe.

Day and night he rowed. It was heavy work, moving the raft against headwinds, but he rowed without rest. Always before, he had gone joyously into battle, but this time for some reason he felt gloomy about the coming ordeal … and wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. He was, however, to meet Anteus sooner than he wished.

Anteus enjoyed fishing, but the ordinary ways were far too tame for him. His idea of good sport was to wade out hip-deep—which meant about twenty feet of water—and there to hunt the man-eating sharks and giant octopi that lurked offshore. Before this, however, he would have provided himself with live bait, and his method of bait gathering was another of the royal techniques that terrified the Libyans.

He would appear in the courtyard at the morning lineup where prisoners were being thrown into the stewpot. Roaring, “You … you … you …,” he would select six of them—eight if they were small—and, while they were still thanking him for their reprieve, would snatch them up in his huge paws and, two by two, knock their heads together. He did it gently, just enough to put them out; then he would stuff them in a sack and stride off toward the sea.

On this particular morning, the bait was more vigorous than usual. Some of the men in the sack came to and began to thrash about before Anteus reached the water. He raised his fist to smash at the restless bulge, but then thought: “The livelier they are the more they'll splash in the water. The more they splash the sooner they'll draw the sharks.…” So he simply shifted the sack on his shoulder and strode on.

He crossed the narrow beach and waded into the surf. The sea was rougher than usual. The south wind was behind him, blowing against the incoming tide, driving the breakers back on each other. Anteus frowned. Turbulent water meant that swimmers would be harder for the sharks to see. He would have to wait patiently in the water, or speed things up by spilling some blood. And Anteus had little patience.

When he was out far enough, he reached into the sack and pulled out one of the men, who screamed and struggled but was as helpless as a frog in the hands of a cruel boy. Anteus pinched his ear between thumb and forefinger and simply tore it off. He held the shrieking man upside down so that he could bleed into the water. Then, when the blood was spreading nicely, he tossed the man into the sea, and watched him as he began to swim frantically toward shore. Too late! A triangular black fin was cutting through the water toward him.

Anteus heard him utter a louder shriek, then disappear. But the giant made no move to catch this shark, for now there would be more blood upon the waters, attracting other sharks. Sure enough, he saw several fins slicing the tide toward the bloody foam. He ripped open the sack and spilled the other bait-men into the water, and grinned as he watched the fins coming closer.

For all Hercules' unique strength, rowing the heavy raft against the wind had almost drained him of energy, and he was very happy to be making landfall at last. But his happiness vanished as he heard whimpering and thin screams, and saw that the breakers were wearing manes of bloody spume.

Looking ahead, he saw an even worse sight. The biggest manlike creature he had ever met was standing waist-deep in water, scooping up sharks. He watched in disbelief. The giant, holding a great fish by the tail, snapped it in the air with such force that it became a blur. Hercules heard a loud cracking sound and realized that it was the shark's back snapping. The giant whirled and flung the dead fish toward shore. It sailed through the air and landed on the beach.

When the giant turned and saw Hercules, he dipped into the water and pulled out another shark and an enormous octopus. In the same motion, he threw them at Hercules.

There were some Titans and a few monsters and a giant or two who were stronger than Hercules, but none of them had reflexes so finely honed; none of them, in other words, could move as fast.

Now, when Anteus hurled shark and octopus at him, he swept the tree trunk that was his oar out of the water and swung it, smashing its base against the very center of the octopus's circular body, which was its head. It fell to the raft, stunned, and Hercules fell on top of it. The flung shark sailed over his head and landed in the water on the other side of the raft, and immediately breached, lunging toward Hercules.

But he had snatched the stunned octopus from the deck of the raft and was using it as a shield, so that when the shark struck, its jaws closed on the great squid. Moving with magical celerity, Hercules began to knot the eight rubbery arms around the raging fish. Before Anteus had time to understand what was happening, Hercules tethered shark and octopus to each other and hurled them back at the giant … who lifted one huge paw and batted the fishy mass into the water.

“Greetings, stranger,” he bellowed. “I see you're a man of meat, as we say here in Libya. And I offer you fine sport if you wish to come ashore and do a bit of real fighting.”

“I accept your gracious invitation,” called Hercules. “I do wish to come ashore. Your name is Anteus, is it not?”