Stone Blind(24)

The huge creature was swinging his club, shifting his weight from foot to foot, looking for an Olympian to attack. But he could not seem to move in any direction: he was either distracted by the carnage of his brothers or blinded by the lightning that exploded around him. And knowing he was hers and only hers, Athene moved across the battlefield so quickly that even the other gods did not see her coming. This one last giant could not fall to any other hand. She hurled her spear as she ran, all concern for keeping it pristine suddenly gone. Her aim was true and its elegant point pierced his throat: he staggered back under its momentum. He grabbed at the site of the pain but there was nothing he could do now. The force of her throw saw the spear penetrate right through his neck and as he collapsed, it came to rest upright in the hot earth onto which he fell. Athene was beside him a moment later. The deafening clashes of metal and blazing bolts of light faded and finally, in this moment, she felt as though she and the dying giant were the only two people in Phlegra. Dark blood was gushing from his throat and bubbling out red between his lips. Athene found herself appalled by the ugliness and yet she could not stop looking. This was what she was made for, she reminded herself. This was what it meant to fight a war. But that didn’t explain the conflicting urges which raged behind her calm face: to look away from the death she had caused, to lean in and lick the warm blood from his lips. She watched as his eyes lost first their anger and then their fear. His mouth moved as though he wanted to tell her something and she bent down to try and make out the words. But all she heard was the last breath leaving his lungs, the last red globule pop, leaving a thin veil of blood in a perfect circle on his upper lip.

She looked up at the battle around her and saw it was now all over. She didn’t know if it had taken a long time or no time at all. But as she watched, the mortal loosed his arrows into every giant but this one, her one, as the prophecy had demanded. Every giant must sustain an injury from the man if the gods were to win the day. Athene watched him busying himself around the place, and wondered how he had shot Enceladus, crushed beneath her enormous rock. Perhaps a snake scale or two had stuck out somewhere. She knew the man would soon be here, despoiling this kill. And she felt a rush of protective anger. Her giant was dead by her hands, and hers alone. She required no help from god or mortal, no matter what the oracle had claimed. She would not see the body damaged. Instead, she drew a sharp knife from her belt. Zeus had always said the giants had hide like leather. And she had always wanted a breastplate just like her father had.

She skinned the giant herself, like a cobbler preparing the skin of a heifer. In this way, she would keep her kill beside her for ever, wear him next to her breast. His raw body lay on the ground, unrevived by Gaia, who was scarcely able to comprehend the scale of her loss. Every one of her children cut down in a single battle.

It was just as Athene had always known: mothers did nothing to protect their offspring. His mother had not kept him safe, in spite of all her foolish promises. She had failed him. But Athene had not.





Dana?


The day Polydectes arrived was the same as any other until the thud of many feet brought Dana? out of the house. Perseus and Dictys were not yet back from the sea, but they would be soon – she glanced up reflexively – if Zeus willed it. She could see a group of men approaching the village from higher ground: they came not from the sea but from inland. She could hear the clank of metal but she was not yet afraid. They weren’t wearing helmets, so they weren’t planning to fight. They had short swords for self-defence, she concluded, as her father’s men would have carried when they travelled any distance. She felt a sudden surge of panic that her father might have discovered she and her son had survived his attempt to kill them both. She tried to breathe evenly and make the fear subside. She could see the sky, Perseus was safe, Zeus would not let her father kill him. And then as the men drew nearer, she saw their tunics were not the same kind as the ones she had seen men wear when she was growing up.

The women who lived in nearby houses also came outside to see what all the noise was about. The fishermen never made this cacophony: this was the sound of city-dwellers invading space that was not their own. They looked at the approaching men with suspicion but not hostility. The men stopped at the nearest house and asked a question. A jerk of the head was their only reply. So they kept walking, ever closer. Dana? found herself looking down at the sea, like she had done when Perseus was new to fishing. Where were the men? Were they returning home soon?

By the time the party approached her house, she could just see the little boats coming in to the shore. The men stopped and parted, like the guards had done when her father welcomed visitors to his palace. This was why they seemed so familiar, she realized, why they made her think of her former life. They were bodyguards to this man at their centre. Now they had stepped aside she could see him: greying hair, lines around his mouth betraying a lifetime of disapproval. He was a short man, broad-bodied with weak legs, and though she had never seen him before, there was something familiar about his expression.

‘So you’re his wife?’ the man said, moving his eyes up and down her body as though he were trying to guess her worth.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’m no one’s wife. Who are you, sir?’

There was a bristling among the men as though they wanted to mock her ignorance but were unsure whether laughter would be punished.

‘Does Dictys live elsewhere?’ the man asked. His voice was slightly shrill and she wondered whether he always sounded so querulous.