Timothy Boggs - Hercules Legendary Joureneys 03 (11 page)

Struggling to maintain control, she veered too close to a tree and the bandit thumped against the bole, yelped in pain, thumped against the next one, yelped, and continued in a succession of veering, thumping, and yelping until they were out of sight.

"Sid," Chicus said, his voice nearly squeaking in fear as he exchanged wide-eyed glances with the third man. "Sid, we—"

"Shut up," Sid snapped, squinting in the direction his man had gone.

"But—"

"I said—"

He didn't finish.

He couldn't.

Hercules stood directly in front of him, one hand on his club wrist, the other gathering a fistful of shirt.

Hercules smiled.

Sid winced.

This time Hercules checked over his shoulder, saw the other two stumbling toward him, and aimed as he lifted, turned, and tossed, following up on the throw by running after Sid in hopes of liberating one of those clubs. By the time Sid reached the ground, however, Chicus and the other man were gone, stepping nimbly to one side to allow their leader an unceremonious landing on the very large exposed roots of a very large tree.

You guys are fast, Hercules thought, and jumped back from a swinging club, jumped back again, and would have been forced to dodge a third time had it not been for Agatra's return.

She hovered over them, sending the third man into a frenzy of club swinging and eerily silent dodging, while Chicus darted out of the way and pulled Sid to his feet.

"Enough," Sid snarled.

Hercules agreed.

He strode toward them, staring, not flinching when Chicus raised his weapon, not blinking when Sid growled, howled in frustration and rage, and charged.

Hercules took the club's blow on his right arm, grabbed Sid's shoulder with his left hand and flipped him onto his back, then stepped over and caught Chicus' club on its way down.

For a moment they froze as Chicus strained to free his weapon, but he soon realized the futility of it, and smiled wanly before letting go and spinning around to run.

Hercules tapped him on the head. "With the club.

Chicus hunched his shoulders, staggered one more step, and collapsed.

But not before Sid, in a move born of the desperation of a man who just couldn't catch a break, wrapped his arms around Hercules' leg and tried to pull him down.

"Oh, please," Hercules said.

Sid growled, squirmed, and managed to coil himself around the other leg.

"Hercules?"

He looked around until he saw Peyra, sitting up and frowning.

"Are you all right?" she asked, puzzled.

He looked down while Sid tried to bite through his boots. "Sure."

"I thought I heard Agatra. Where is...?"

Hercules had completely forgotten about the remaining bandit. As best he could, with Sid snarling and gnawing on his boot, he turned, grinned, and pointed. "There."

Agatra had somehow wrenched the club from Sid's last man, and now hovered above him, doing her best to beat him senseless. The problem seemed to be one of coordination and skill—she was not used to using both wings and arms simultaneously, and her swings were vicious but wildly off the mark, each one sending her into a spin that, at one point, had her flying upside down.

The bandit was too terrified to notice the advantage he'd been given; he raced from one tree to another, arms wrapped over his head, moaning entreaties to the gods for protection.

"Will you hold still?" she yelled.

The bandit, who may have been terrified but wasn't stupid, didn't. He didn't stop praying either.

She grunted and swung. Missed. Spun. Grunted and swung. And began to wobble a little.

Hercules realized she was making herself dizzy.

He also realized that Peyra had drawn up her legs and cupped her hands around her knees. Bemused, she watched the Harpy, then watched Sid, then watched the Harpy again. Hercules had a feeling this whole affair somehow didn't quite live up to the battle stories she had listened to around the village campfire.

It was about this time that Agatra's bandit finally understood that luck was on his side for a change.

When Agatra swung, and missed, and hung upside down cursing, he took off into the woods. Not long after that, Hercules decided it was time to do something about Sid; he looked down, and grunted when he saw that his legs were unencumbered—the bandit leader was gone, and so was Chicus.

The evening was silent.

Not even the sound of running footsteps.

"You know," Peyra said with a shake of her head, "I simply had no idea."

Nightfall was complete.

After making sure Peyra would be able to handle a woozy Agatra and get her back to the cave, Hercules strode angrily toward Phyphe, a switch in one hand whipping every shrub and bole he passed.

The switch didn't last very long.

Neither did the anger; it soon passed into disgust.

He had been a fool, and he was not only disgusted at himself, he felt like a complete idiot for being so blind. The attack on Peyra had obviously been a trap set to lure him in. Not to kill him, but to stall him.

Had Sid and his three cronies really wanted him to die, they would have used swords, or worse. They may have been hard men, but they weren't the kind who would bludgeon a man to death.

Something was up in town, he knew it, and he suspected he was far too late to stop it.

It was, he figured, another robbery.

Viciously he kicked a rock in his way, sending it whistling through the night until it buried itself in the bole of a black-bark oak.

"Jerk," he muttered. "Fool."

When he reached the road and headed for town, he calmed down enough to understand that it wasn't just tonight that bothered him. It was everything.

From the very beginning he hadn't taken Salmoneus' problems all that seriously. Salmoneus was part of the problem, of course, simply by being Salmoneus, but that was no excuse.

He should have known there was something else going on, something besides the minor disasters that had beset the Traveling Theater of Fun. After all, hints and clues had been throwing themselves in his way ever since he'd first arrived, and all he had done was trample them without thinking.

That wasn't like him.

It wasn't like him to slough off being drugged; it wasn't like him not to pursue the odd tremors he'd felt in the middle of the night; it wasn't like him to ignore what had happened in the arena today.

Nothing he had done was like him at all.

It was almost as if Circe or one of the Sirens had cast one of their enchantments, blinding him to the truth without him realizing it.

Making him complacent.

It was ...

He stopped, blinked, and whacked his forehead with the heel of one hand.

It was like ... magic.

A full minute passed before he began to smile.

Well, he thought, I guess it's time I did something about it.

And since strangling Salmoneus for getting him into this was out of the question, he would start with the reason he had been lured into tonight's trap.

The reason, and the person behind it.

Phyphe had no actual protective wall. Because of its circular construction, the sides and backs of its outer buildings served the same purpose. As a result, there were four primary entrances to the town itself, each flanked by thick, ten-foot-high poles; atop the poles were torches that burned from dusk to dawn.

Salmoneus stood just outside the north entrance, staring glumly at his flickering shadow. He knew that out there in the dark were a scattering of trees and the fields that supplied Phyphe with its crops and cattle. A simple life. A life that had no room for a man of real vision.

He sighed.

He scratched his beard.

He took a few steps up the road and squinted, trying to force a vision out of the dim shapes the torchlight created. What he wanted was a sign that Vaudalville was really going to work. That he had really hit the Big Vision this time.

What he got was a headache.

He also got the distinct impression that the earth was about to move.

He turned slowly, holding his breath as he licked his lips nervously.

He could see farther down the street than he could up the road, because several businesses along the way had lanterns burning above their doorways. The street was empty, not even the shadow of a scroung-ing mongrel or prowling cat.

A glance up at the torches; they burned steadily, without a breeze to twist them.

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. He was tired, that's all. It took a lot of work to pull something like Vaudalville together time after time. A lot of work to keep his performers from tearing each other's throats out when they thought he was favoring one over another. A lot
of
work searching for the one act, the one person, the one performing genius that would make his fortune.

At first he had believed that person was Dragar. Although the man acted like a bumbling fool most of the time, once he was in front of an audience he was transformed. But you could only pull so many ribbons from a kid's ear, so many fireballs from the palm of a hand, before people became bored and wanted to see more.

Now that Merta woman, she had promise. If only he could figure out what she lacked. She wasn't gor-geous, not like Aulma, although she was attractive enough; she wasn't flashy, not like Delilah, but she seemed to have presence. It's just that she wasn't ... quite ... right.

Hercules, of course, could easily be that Big Act, but it wouldn't happen. He didn't have show business in his blood, not like Salmoneus. That wasn't a bad thing; it just wasn't going to make his fortune.

He sighed aloud and decided he might as well get on to bed. He had another busy day tomorrow, and needed all the rest he could get.

But he didn't move.

The feeling hadn't left.

Again he looked around and saw nothing; again he checked the sky and saw nothing.

Now he wished Hercules was with him. Demigods had a way of sensing things, and Hercules was better than most. Even if he didn't appreciate the genius behind the concept of the Red Power Beast.

Demigods may be demigods, but they didn't always have vision.

His own, latest vision was that if he took one step, then whatever was about to happen would happen.

So all he had to do was stand here for a while, and it, whatever
it
was, would get tired of waiting and go away.

Demigods didn't think that way.

So, as slowly as he could without giving himself cramps, he settled cross-legged in the middle of the road, arranged the hem of his robe demurely around his shins, and waited.

Virgil stumbled out of the darkened house, stumbled down the street toward the inn where he was staying, and nearly fell when his right leg decided it didn't really want to work anymore.

He was exhausted.

He had had no idea being Salmoneus' road manager entailed so much work besides managing. Every other muscle ached, and the muscles that didn't ache felt as if they had turned to water.

He was young and reasonably healthy, but at this rate, keeping Olivia Stellas out of the arena was going to turn him into an old man before the end of the week.

If it didn't kill him first.

He turned a corner blindly, and collided with someone, who cursed and shoved him hard into a wall before hurrying away.

"Hey," he said, "watch where you're going." He rubbed the back of his head gingerly. "Drunk."

Before he could take another step, however, someone else ran into him. As he fell back he reached out to grab the man, caught only a piece of sleeve, and was slammed into the wall again.

This time the "Hey" was rather feeble, since the back of his skull hit the stone harder. In fact, the force of the collision finished doing to his legs what Olivia had started—they stopped functioning completely, and he slid dazed to the ground.

"Vaudalville," he said grumpily to the empty street, "sucks."

But he didn't try to get up.

On top of everything else, he had the clear impression that any movement on his part would cause something worse than a couple of collisions with a couple of drunks. So he sat there, humming quietly, waiting for the stars that danced in front of him to go away.

Flovi didn't know what to say, and so he said nothing.

Merta didn't know what to say, and so she blathered and babbled and felt a fierce blush set fire to her cheeks.

They had worked most of the evening outside the stable, Flovi with his flute, she with her considerable knowledge of songs both local and from parts of the world Flovi had never even heard of. They knew from the first note that they complemented each other well; yet they also sensed there was something not quite right with what they did.