Odysseus roused his men from their bedrolls at dawn, and found Huro.
“Where is Elpenor?” Odysseus asked the Trojan man, “Have you seen him?”
“No sir,” Huro said, “When I retired for the evening he was still standing watch over you. When I awoke this morning, he was gone.”
Circe interrupted their hushed conversation, “Perhaps he decided to take his chances in the jungle last night,” she said. “I hope nothing bad has befallen the man,” Circe smiled like a cold blooded reptile.
Odysseus considered throttling the woman for information about his missing man, but they were still woefully outnumbered by the villagers. If he started a fight, his remaining men were unlikely to escape with their lives.
“If Elpenor had been attacked the strife would have woken us last night. If he is lost, it is only because he abandoned his post,” Odysseus said grimly.
“That’s going to be your justification for abandoning him, then?” Deucalion asked.
“If it must be, Duke. Now, quickly, we march. Huro, come with us if you wish to leave this island.”
Huro had already recovered the simple garments that Circe had demanded he abandon and followed Odysseus.
“Huro?” Circe feigned surprise, “Why would you choose a lifetime of slavery at the hands of the man who slaughtered your people?”
“I would prefer it to a lifetime of slavery at your hands,” Huro said.
“But here, you wouldn’t know that you are a slave,” Circe said honestly.
“That is why I go,” Huro said.
The party trudged through the jungle. The damp coolness of early morning quickly began to give way to the oppressive humidity of the tropical island, the canopy retaining the fetid moldering stench of decaying plants and animals. It did nothing to alieve the hangover Odysseus’s men were nursing after the bad mushrooms they’d consumed the night before.
“Huro,” Odysseus said as they hiked, “Did Circe say anything to you about Orion?”
“Wasn’t Orion the hunter that Artemis had a thing for?” Calais asked.
“I assume that Circe named her beast after the man in the story,” Odysseus said.
“I think Orion was turned into a beast, wasn’t he?” Zetes asked.
“No, Zeets, he was shot in the back,” Meleagar corrected him.
“Well that’s not the version I heard…” Deucalion began to argue.
“Stop,” Odysseus said, “I’m not talking about folk tales. I’m talking about a creature that may have already killed several of our comrades.”
“She spoke of him a fair bit,” Huro said, “Especially after I suggested that I should return to the ship. She claimed that he is very strong, very ferocious, and carries many weapons that are gifts from the gods.”
“Such as?” Odysseus keyed in on ‘weapons’ as a legitimate tactical concern.
“He possesses the helmet of invisibility, which Hades once gifted to Perseus, as well as Hades’ bident. The lightning bolts that Hephaestus and the cyclopes forged for Zeus are also his to command.”
“He throws lightning and can become invisible,” Meleagar shook his head, “If there were any truth to this tall tale we’d be dead already.”
“Stop!” Calais said in a raised voice, then whispered, “Listen.”
The insects were still droning, but the jungle’s furred and feathered residents had fallen completely silent. Eerily loud amidst the lull in the sound, a long guttural clicking rattled through the air around them.
“It’s Circe’s hunter…” Zetes whispered.
“You see him?” Deucalion asked.
“How would he see something that’s invisible?” Calais said.
“How would he see something that doesn’t exist?” Meleagar scoffed.
Odysseus ignored his men’s prattle and scanned the foliage around them. It was hard to imagine the creature could really be invisible, but Achaean and Troan stories abounded with such accounts. As Odysseus imagined what it might be like to fight an invisible enemy, he realized that such an enemy would not be able to conceal its impact on the environment around it. The air was still, so Odysseus searched hard for any foliage that moved as if it were brushed by some passing creature. He saw nothing in the brush and thickets around them, but then Odysseus noticed a branch swaying dramatically, its wood creaking loudly in the still air, and he studied the tree with intense scrutiny.
“Mel,” Odysseus whispered, “eyes up, seventy five degrees to my left. Large branch on a tall tree.”
Meleagar drew his bow and sighted it towards the branch, “I don’t see anything, sir.”
“Fire a single shot – aim about two feet out from the trunk, and about two feet above the branch.”
Meleagar aimed carefully and fired. The arrow whistled towards the designated area, and the branch bounced an instant before the projectile whiffed past the tree.
“I didn’t hit the branch,” Meleagar said, “Why did it move?”
“Because there’s something on the branch that moved when you shot at it,” Odysseus said.
Zetes pulled out his bow and took aim, “Should we flush it out?”
“Do you think you can hit an invisible monster in a tree at fifty yards?” Odysseus asked.
“Not on the first shot,” Zetes said.
“Then conserve your ammo until you have a real target.”
Odysseus pulled his shield off of his back and raised it. Like Duke and Cal he’d been using his spear as a walking stick, but now he lifted it over his shoulder, where it would be less likely to become entangled in the undergrowth if he had to move quickly. He began slowly advancing towards the branch. Zetes and Meleagar kept their weapons trained on the branch, while Calais and Deucalion fanned out, moving parallel to Odysseus with their own weapons at the ready. Huro picked up a heavy branch and raised it nervously.
Sweat trickled down the back of Odysseus’s neck. Stories of heroes like Heracles and Bellerophon had taught him that fighting a monster would not be like fighting a man or a beast. The creature might breathe fire or regrow limbs – there was no way to know what to expect, and nothing to prepare you for it.
The branch moved again, and the archers fired, but they were too late. They redrew their bows and tried to follow the rustling of branches and the scraping of bark as the invisible creature moved through the trees. There was a faint blur, like an apparition that became more visible as the creature moved.
“I think I see it!” Meleagar said.
“Then shoot it!” Odysseus ordered.
Meleagar fired. The creature shouted angrily, and the arrow bent off its trajectory and clattered to the ground. There was more bouncing in the branches and then stillness.
“Is it gone?” Deucalion whispered.
“Maybe Mel scared it off,” Calais suggested hopefully.
Zetes shook his head, “Mel missed.”
“I hit it, I’m sure of it. I must have at least glanced the creature…” Meleagar moved cautiously forward, past Odysseus, and retrieved his arrow from the ground. “I knew I hit it! Bright red blood!”
“It’s red blooded?” Deucalion asked, “Like us?”
“What did you expect,” Calais said, “Green blood?”
“From a creature sent by the gods? I at least expected it to glow.”
Meleagar examined his arrow with pride, as three red dots appeared on his chest.
“Mel…” Odysseus pointed at the mark.
“The sacred triangle!” Deucalion said, “Meleagar, you’ve been marked by the gods!”
Meleagar looked down and started trying to brush it off, but became confused when the three red dots simply crossed the back of his hand like a sunbeam.
“It must be Apollo!” Zetes said, “Showing favor for your marksmanship!”
Meleagar smiled nervously as the three red dots moved upward. Odysseus heard a high pitched whine coming from somewhere, and then as the red dots reached Meleagar’s face, there was a loud crack, like the snapping of a giant whip, and a ball of blue lightning struck Meleagar straight between the eyes, cleaving his head like a ripe melon.
The men cried out in fear and confusion, as they spun around to face the origin of the blue death. Two glowing yellow eyes flashed at them from the branches, and they heard it speak with Meleagar’s voice, “I hit it, I’m sure of it.”
It triggered a sharp memory of the final day of the Trojan War – Odysseus and his men had been concealed in their wooden horse, packed into tight and uncomfortable quarters. None of the Trojans had suspected the idol was a means of infiltration, until Menelaus’s estranged wife, Helen, had come to investigate. She mimicked voices of people the men loved with such authenticity that one of their number, Antiklos, actually tried to break concealment, forcing Odysseus to kill the man. Odysseus remembered the strained breathing of the other men, the mix of sympathetic and contemptuous looks, as he choked the life out of Antiklos. It was a fleeting memory, but so dominating that he lost his concentration for a moment.
“It mocks us!” Zetes shouted. The man fired his bow towards the creature and ran towards it, firing repeatedly as it retreated through the branches.
“Stop!” Odysseus cried, “Stay with the group! Damn it!” Odysseus chased after him, followed by the other men. They ran far enough through the jungle to lose their breath, finally catching up to Zetes when he stopped and turned around.
“I lost it!” Zetes said, “I had it, and I lost it!”
There was a loud whumpf of something dropping out of the trees behind Zetes. He reflexively turned to face the noise, and cried out when something struck him. Two blades – like the tip of Hades’ bident – skewered Zetes, punching clean through the front and back of his leather cuirass. Blood poured down both sides, spattering into a red puddle between his legs. They heard the eerie guttural clicking noise again as Zetes fell to the ground. Odysseus and his men threw their spears and rushed forward, drawing their swords. All three spears missed their mark, and when they reached Zetes’s body, the creature was gone.
“What now?” Calais said nervously.
“Same plan as before. We get back to the ship,” Odysseus picked up Zetes’ bow and his depleted quiver, strapped them to his back, but abandoned his spear, which had broken on a rock.
“What about Zetes?” Deucalion said, “Meleagar has been… defaced, but Zeets’ body might still be given last rites.”
“I will carry him,” Huro said, dropping his stick. The young man pulled Zetes’ corpse across his shoulders, drenching himself in the older man’s blood. There was no way Huro would be able to keep up with them hauling the literal dead weight of the slain archer, but Odysseus decided to let him figure that out for himself.
Odysseus scooped up Meleagar’s arrows as they pressed on. As king of Ithaca, he’d been expected to fight with a true warrior’s weapon when leading his men to battle on the plains of Troy. He’d left his bow at home and fought with spear and shield, shoulder-to-shoulder with his men, while Achilles and the other Achaean leaders zipped about the battlefield in their chariots. Odysseus had always been better with a bow, though, and he no longer cared about decorum. All that mattered was surviving to get home to Penelope.
Before long, Huro was panting from exhaustion, and groaning under the weight.
“Deucalion,” Odysseus said, “Why don’t you carry Zetes’ body for a while; give the poor boy a break. He can carry your weapons.”
Deucalion looked about nervously, “Maybe we can come back for Zeets’ body?” Deucalion was brave, but there was only so much risk he could accept in protecting a dead body.
“I think that’s a good plan,” Odysseus tried not to sound patronizing. They propped Zetes’ body against a tree and resumed their trek towards the beach. They were finally starting to make good time again when they heard the creature’s distinctive growl.
“It’s back,” Calais said, raising his spear. The three men fell together, back to back, with Huro in the middle.
“Someone could give me a weapon…?” the slave said.
Odysseus passed the man his shield, and drew the bow he’d taken from Zetes.
“Just the shield?” Huro asked.
“We’re going to do this like Ajax and Teucer,” Odysseus said, “You advance with the shield, and I fire around you the second I see movement.” The men began moving again, watching their surroundings carefully.
“I think I see…” Calais didn’t get to finish the statement. There was a deep pop and Calais was knocked to the ground, landing on his shield as a metal net engulfed him. The stakes at the corners pinning the net to the ground as some mechanism caused the net to constrict. Calais cried out in pain and fear, and tried to push out against the tightening net with his spear, which had been pulled tight across his chest. Odysseus and Deucalion drew their swords and began hacking at the net, but to no avail. Deucalion started trying to release one of the stakes, using his spear as a pry bar, while Odysseus stuck his sword between the metal strands and tried to saw through them. The metal strands sliced through Calais’s fingers, and he lost his grip on the spear. The net tightened suddenly, breaking Odysseus’s sword, snapping off the head of Deucalion’s spear, and cutting through Calais’s skull. Within a few seconds, Calais was dead, the shrinking net slowly rendering his corpse into a mass of gelatinous, bone laden cubes.
The three remaining men looked at each other in horror. A shot to the head or a blade to the heart was an unfortunate way to go, but not too different from anything they’d seen on the plains of Troy. This was different. Achilles had brutally mutilated and desecrated Hector’s body in revenge for the death of his beloved Patroclus after ritually sacrificing a dozen Trojan slaves, but in terms of gruesomeness, the mass of steaming meat, bone, and spilled bowel laying on the ground in front of them now was worse than anything they’d ever seen.
Huro pulled at Odysseus’s arm, “We should run!”
“I think that’s a good plan,” the eerie voice in the jungle mimicked the sarcasm of Odysseus’s earlier words.
Deucalion reached his breaking point and began screaming manically into the jungle, “You took Tiphys’s spine because you don’t have one of your own! You sneak around and then run away when you get caught! Well I’m not running – I’m standing right here, waiting for you! Come out here and fight me like a man!”
There was a sudden rustling in the bushes as something near Deucalion fled frantically from him. Deucalion cried and gave chase, Odysseus following at a distance with an arrow knocked. Deucalion stopped, stared at the ground in confusion, and then stabbed his spear at something on the ground. He raised the tip to show Odysseus a metal insect, dotted with lights that flickered as gears inside it sputtered and ground against each other futilely.
“I don’t get it,” Deucalion said, “What is it?”
“A diversion!” Odysseus shouted as he searched the trees behind them. He heard the whine that had preceded the lightning ball that had killed Meleagar, and looked back at Deucalion to see the same three dots marking his chest. “DUKE! RAISE YOUR SHIELD!” Odysseus cried.
Deucalion hefted the wood and leather barrier just as the whip-snap sound announced the attack. The sparkling ball of blue light struck the center of Deucalion’s shield, destroying it and knocking him backwards into a tree. Odysseus fired in the direction the shot had come from while Huro helped Deucalion to his feet.
“Did you hit it?” Deucalion asked.
“No, but I think I’ve got its location narrowed down. It projects those red dots like a sunbeam before it shoots. At the right angle, it traces a glowing red line back to it. Next time it targets one of us, I’ll have it.”
They heard the whine again.
“I don’t see the red dots!” Deucalion shouted.
Odysseus focused on where he thought their attacker should be, but didn’t see the faint red lines he’d mentioned.
“There!” Huro shouted, pointing at a nearby tree.
Odysseus thought Huro meant he’d seen the creature in the tree and whirled around to fire at it. What Huro was pointing at, though, were the three red dots, painted on the bark of a dead tree. In a fraction of a second the trunk exploded in a shower of burning wood, forcing them to shield their eyes. The upper half of the tree capsized and plummeted, snapping the vines that had held it up. It landed squarely on Deucalion while he was still recovering his vision.
Huro and Odysseus both rushed to help the man. The trunk had landed solidly on his chest, apparently restricting his breathing. Deucalion screamed when they lifted it away; the stump of a broken branch had landed point down on him, skewering his crushed ribcage just to the right of his heart. He bled out in a matter of seconds.
Huro reached for Deucalion’s sword, but Odysseus stopped him, “It wants me. It wants a fight. Run. Unarmed, run away from it.”
“And leave you to face it alone?”
“I’m your captain; your life is my responsibility. I couldn’t save the others, but I can still save you. Go!”
Huro took off running to the shore, and Odysseus ran back towards Circe’s village, forcing their hunter to pick between two prizes, and betting that an armed man running towards the village the creature had been sent to protect would take priority.
Odysseus had expected the creature to shoot him in the back or cut him off, but instead the creature followed him at a close distance, taunting him. “Couldn’t save the others. Run away.” It took occasional pot shots at him with more balls of lightning, but they were clearly intended to harass him and herd him rather than kill him. The creature steered him away from the village but then back towards it, driving him towards a large structure he hadn’t toured the night before. He ran into the round ruin and skidded to a stop at the edge of a dark stone-lined pit. He turned around and raised his bow, but the flash of two yellow eyes right in front of him was the only warning he got before a blurring foot hammered his chest and sent him backwards into the pit. He landed in the mud and groaned in pain. He looked over and saw Elpenor’s broken body next to him, his dead eyes staring vacantly at him. Odysseus heard the guttural clicking noise again, but it sounded different this time; closer, more real.
Odysseus started to get to his feet, but transitioned the movement to a rolling dodge when a massive creature charged out of the darkness at him. It issued a deafening roar, like the bellow of a lion challenging a rival. Odysseus scrambled to the edge of the pit, searching for his bow, and backed up against a metal grate. Another roar sounded behind him, and Odysseus narrowly missed a set of claws thrust through the grate. The pit was ringed with cage doors, a dozen of them, housing a menagerie of formidable predators, and at the center was a massive being, over seven feet tall – nearly half again Odysseus’s own height. Odysseus braced himself for a hopelessly one-sided fight, but the creature growled in frustration, thrashed some chains that kept it tethered near the center of the pit. It sat down on a broken column, shaded by the top edge of the pit, and sulked.
Odysseus studied it. It was huge, had reddish brown reptilian skin, with lighter yellow-green patches across its chest and abdomen. Its head was capped by a spiked crest, from which trailed tendrils that looked like lizard tails. Its face was unlike anything Odysseus had ever seen, but he realized that the long teeth surrounding its mouth were the tusks Circe had alluded to.
“The divine predator…” Odysseus realized, “But… if you’re down here, then…” He looked back up over the edge of the pit and saw a blur of motion as his hunter stood up and removed its helmet, the foggy distortion of the light flickering away in blue sparkles to reveal Circe.
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