Heracles ran through the forest, glancing left and right for any indication of a second entrance to the lion’s den. Then he heard another scream, this time prolonged and taut with unendurable anguish. He clenched his fists, wanting to shout out his fury, but as the shriek trailed away – he hoped the child had fainted – he realized that the sound had not come from the gulley behind him, but from the trees ahead.
The second entrance, he thought, and ran on. Then he saw it – a large boulder overshadowing a dell in which several thick bushes were growing. Reaching the lip of the hollow, he peered down into the gloom and saw a deeper blackness through the interlaced branches of the shrubs. The stench of death emanating from the hole was overpowering, but he needed to be certain this was the other exit from the monster’s lair. Leaving his club on the grass, he scrambled down the slope to the mouth of the tunnel. Suddenly, the loose earth gave way beneath his heels and he tumbled forward. Throwing out a hand, he grabbed one of the bushes. The momentum of his fall pulled it loose, dragging it down with him. Then, as the near vertical tunnel opened up beneath his feet, the roots held and he was left hanging over a pit of total darkness. He glanced down into the shadows, listening to the echoes of the falling earth and rocks as they bounced off the sides of the tunnel.
Fearing the noise would draw the monster – and half expecting to see its green eyes light up in the blackness – he looked up at the hole above and reached for the root with his free hand. It gave a downward jerk as he seized hold of it, releasing a shower of dirt into his face. Knowing it would not hold much longer, he shook the dust from his eyes and looked around him. Just beyond the reach of his arm, a large stone protruded from the wall of the tunnel, where he could see giant claw marks in the hardened earth. At the same moment, he heard a low growl from the passage below.
He reached out his leg and kicked himself away from the wall of the tunnel. As he swung back in, the root snapped. He leaped for the side, his fingers seizing hold of the stone. It held his weight, and he shot his other hand up to grope for a second hold. Finding one, he pulled himself up into the mouth of the hole. Then he heard the roar of the monster below, and the sound of its claws scrambling up the sides of the tunnel.
He seized the roots of another shrub and hauled himself into the dell, pulling his legs up behind him just as a giant paw emerged from the shadows, clawing at the grass beside him. He leaped to his feet and ran to the lip of the hollow. Seeing a large moss-covered rock nearby, he uprooted it and lifted it above his head, his muscles straining as he threw it down into the hollow. The lion gave a bellow of pain and disappeared.
He looked around for other rocks, but there were none big enough to block up the exit from the tunnel. Then he noticed the tall slab of stone that overshadowed the hollow. It was twice his height and as broad as it was tall. He ran to the other side of the rock and leaned his shoulder against it. Digging a heel into the earth behind him, he pushed with all his strength.
The stone did not move. It had been set in the soil long ago and refused to be shifted by a mere man. But Heracles was no mere man. He was the son of Zeus! Hearing the roar of the lion as it clawed its way back up to the mouth of the tunnel, and thinking of Molorchus’s daughter alone in the dark, he summoned the immense strength given to him by the father of the gods and, with gritted teeth, pitted himself once more against the pillar of stone.
It began to give, its deeply set roots shifting beneath the assault. And as the hard-packed earth below cracked and crumbled, so the rock above began to lean forward, until the soil could no longer hold its weight. Heracles felt the movement and leaped back, just as the slab tottered and fell into the dell. A cloud of dust billowed up from its edges, filling the humid air and forcing him to shield his eyes with his forearm. He heard a muffled roar from beneath the rock, but it was a cry of frustrated rage rather than pain.
Springing to his feet, he picked up his club and dashed headlong through the trees, back to the gulley. He waited at the top of the bank, expecting the lion to rush out from the mouth of the cave. But it did not come. It knew that if he hoped to save the child, he would have to enter its lair to rescue her. As if to remind him of the fact, a scream resonated out from the throat of the tunnel, followed by another and another, each more hysterical than the last. Heracles felt his sense of desperation turning into anger. Molorchus had said his daughter was only ten years old, and he doubted a girl so young could endure such horror for much longer. Not without losing her mind forever. His only consolation was that the monster would not kill her until he had taken the bait in full and entered its den to face it in battle. But it wanted him to come rushing in, unprepared, thinking foremost of saving the girl, not of killing the lion.
But to do so would be to throw away his own life, and the child’s with it. He had to be calm and think, subduing his anger until it was an asset, not a hindrance. And so he began to gather wood and kindling for a fire. When it was ready, he took a piece of flint from his leather bag and struck it against his knife over a nest of dry grass and leaves. Eventually, one of the sparks caught in the tinder and he soon had a fire blazing. The forest remained eerily quiet around him as he worked, and he kept glancing over his shoulder at the mouth of the tunnel, half expecting to see the lion in the shadows. Thankfully, the screams had stopped, though he knew that if he did not work quickly they would soon start again.
Breaking off a young branch from one of the smaller trees, he split the end with his knife and began to pack the notch with thin strips of bark, winding them round as tightly as he could to make a torch. He held this against the fire until it caught, then retrieved his club and slid down the bank to the mouth of the cave. Pushing aside the brambles, he entered the tunnel with the torch held above his head.
The flame was bright, revealing a passage that stretched away into the darkness before him. Its walls were curved and ribbed, as if delved by a giant worm, and the low ceiling was broken by the roots of the trees above, which seemed to writhe like grasping fingers in the flickering light. The air was cool and still, carrying no sound but the hiss of the torch. But it was foul with the stench of putrefaction, and he had to resist the temptation to hold his cloak over his nose and mouth.
He walked forward, listening intently for the sound of movement ahead and watching for the glint of green eyes in the shadows. The floor began to descend at a steady angle, taking him deeper under the earth until – when he glanced back over his shoulder – not a glimmer of light could be seen from the mouth of the cave. The walls began to narrow and the ceiling – now too far below ground to be penetrated by the roots of the trees above – became lower, so that at points he had to crouch and hold the torch out in front of him.
His unease grew. He hated confined spaces, not being able to stand to his full height or reach out with his arms without feeling walls or ceilings close around him. It was too much like being in a tomb. Then he thought of the untrained farmers who had come before him, packed into that narrow space, unmanned by fear but driven on by the need to save their daughters and sisters. And so he, too, would go on – for the girl’s sake, and for his own. He gritted his teeth against the sense of panic growing within him, and peered into the gloom ahead.
At what point had the lion attacked the others, he wondered? He tightened his fist about the torch and advanced. And as he pushed on into the pitch blackness, the flames struggling against the shadows, so the walls began to expand outward. The ceiling, too, slowly lifted to the point where he could stand again. He felt his resolve return, and despite the stench growing ever stronger in his nostrils, he pressed on towards the monster’s lair.
Then he saw something glinting in the darkness ahead. He thrust the torch before him and raised the club behind his head. But it was not the gleam of a malevolent eye, or the reflection from bared teeth. It was long and metallic with a dull sheen. He advanced slowly, the glow of the flames picking out more objects scattered across the smooth clay: broken spears, a woodsman’s axe, a few daggers and the sword he had first seen in the torchlight. There were bones too. Lots of them: brown with dried blood, rather than white, as the skeleton by the mouth of the cave had been. Some were half covered with strips of skin or the torn fragments of clothing, but the flesh had all been devoured. Most by the monster that had slain them, he guessed, and the remainder by the rats and other lowly scavengers that had found their way into the tunnel.
He counted four torsos at least, the ribcages standing proud and useless without hearts and lungs to protect. Two had the skulls still attached – one of them crushed and broken – while two more lay among the human debris that littered that part of the tunnel. The farmers – for that was who he guessed they were – must have been ripped to pieces. The bones of dismembered legs and arms lay discarded about the floor. And the hard-packed earth of the walls was stained darker in many places by the blood of the victims, whose deaths must have been terrible. Of the three other men, there was no sign. Dragged deeper into the lair for food, he assumed.
He understood now the intelligence of the creature he was hunting. It had not attacked the farmers in the narrowest part of the tunnel, where its own movements might have been restricted. Rather, it had waited for them to pass through the bottleneck, so that when it attacked them they would not easily have been able to flee back up the tunnel. Picking his way carefully through the carnage, he paused to pick up a discarded bag. There were three unused torches inside, the heads wrapped in fat-soaked linen and tied about with hemp. Throwing the bag over his shoulder, he moved on.
Before long, he sensed he was approaching an open space. The walls on either side of him fell away and a current of fresher air made the glow of the torch expand. He waved it this way and that, searching the cavern for signs of the lion. The monster was not there, though. Instead, he discovered the walls had only receded a little and that he had reached nothing more than a widening in the tunnel. As he moved forward, he saw a fork in the passage. He walked a little way along the left-hand branch, feeling the ground rise beneath his feet and guessing it led up to the other exit from the lair. He raised his torch a little, disturbing a colony of bats hanging from the ceiling. They flew squeaking at the light, fanning the flames as they passed and forcing him to duck. He listened to the soft sound of their leathery wings disappear up the tunnel he had come by, and then silence returned.
Or it seemed to have. For after a while he became aware of another sound – faint, like spasmodic breathing, coming from the other branch of the tunnel. Returning, he listened carefully and realized it was the sound of crying – distant still, yet unmistakable. The sobbing was pathetic and helpless, and it appalled him to think of the suffering behind it.
Knowing he had wasted too much time already – and yet conscious of the fact the lion could have been waiting at the end of the other passage, leaving him endangered from behind as well as in front – he opened his stride and almost ran up the tunnel. Suddenly, he no longer cared where the lion was lurking. He was sick of prowling through the shadows, his senses enlarging every sound while his uneasy thoughts gave way to paranoia and threatened to unman him. The time had come to face the monster and kill it. Or be killed.
The floor of the tunnel flattened out briefly, then began to climb again. The reek of decay that had filled his nostrils for too long became stronger and the sound of the sobbing louder and more frantic, until he could not stand to listen to the child’s distress any longer.
‘I’m coming!’ he shouted.
The sound of his voice was startlingly loud in the empty tunnel. He retreated against one of the walls and gripped his club, ready for the attack that must now come. But when the harsh echoes of his voice had fallen away, the sound of sobbing had gone with it and all that was left was silence. Cautiously, he peeled himself from the wall and carried on up the tunnel.
‘I’m coming,’ he called out again. ‘You’re safe now.’
He wanted to give the child hope, but his words sounded empty and desperate. He could sense the danger now ahead of him. The air was thinning and he knew that soon he would step out into the monster’s lair, where it was anticipating his arrival. He remembered the mutilated remains of the farmers, and wondered what savagery he was about to encounter.
Then the walls and ceiling disappeared and he stepped into a large, open cavern. The torchlight failed to push the darkness back by more than a few paces, and the only sound was the echoing drip of water. He moved forward, horribly aware of the space opening up all around him – space that exposed him to sudden attack from any side. He turned full circle, the torch held high above his head and his club extended before him like a sword.
Then he trod on something. His foot slid, unbalancing him, and he heard something snap beneath his sandal. He looked down to see the white slats of a bared ribcage, grinning at him through the torn fragments of a woollen tunic. He had stepped into the cavity where the stomach had once been, breaking one of the rib bones. And yet the corpse had not been scavenged clean of its flesh like the remains he had found in the tunnel. The lower organs had been torn out and their rotting remains spread over the floor beside the body, while the bloody and putrid remains of the lungs and heart were slowly oozing down over his toes.
He jerked his foot away, his lips drawn back in disgust. Raising his eyes a little higher, he saw the decaying remains of the upper torso: shoulders, an outflung arm still clutching at a leather shield, and a distorted face locked to one side with four deep gash marks running through the cheek and neck. The soldier’s helmet was still pressed tightly down on his head, though all that remained of the cheek guard was the flap of a leather hinge. Heracles stepped back and circled the torch around himself. Here, at last, was the source of the stench that had assaulted his nostrils since before he had entered the gulley. The bodies of the three missing farmers – and the soldiers and huntsmen who had been sent to track the lion before them – were spread across the cave floor. Scattered among them were the remains of the hostages the monster had taken. Like the men in the tunnel, all had been slain and dismembered; but unlike the others, their flesh had not been eaten, but left to decay. And as he stared in revulsion, he saw that every part seemed to crawl with living things, the lowest order of creatures feeding on the decay. He turned and vomited.
The lion sprang at him from out of the circle of darkness. Its forelegs were splayed before it, the razor-sharp claws curving out from its front paws like sickles. Spittle trailed out from its gaping jaws, the double rows of teeth like ranked spear points. Heracles dived to one side, twisting as he flew and lashing out with the heavy club. The lion passed over him like a shadow, and yet there was substance to its phantom form. His club connected with something hard, a blow that would have caved in a man’s chest and sent his soul gibbering down to Hades. The lion curled up in midair, roaring with pain as it crashed to the floor.
Heracles fell heavily into a pile of bones and putrefying flesh. He pushed himself to his feet, just as the lion scrambled back onto all fours. Kicking out body parts behind it, it came bounding towards him. Again it leaped at him, deafening him with its roar as it lashed out at his face with its left paw. He fell backwards, his instincts taking over as each moment seemed to stretch out and almost stop. He could see the lion’s claws arcing through the darkness towards him and smell the dreadful stench of its breath as the torch fell from his fingers. In the same instant, he pulled his head back just enough for the massive paw to waft the air a finger’s breadth from his face. The movement threw him off balance. His heel slipped and he sensed the ground coming up to meet him.
He hit it hard. Pushing back against the pain, he rolled over and snatched up the torch from the fetid mess on the cave floor. The lion had already turned and was launching a fresh attack. Jumping up, he ran to meet it as it dashed towards him, its jaws snapping with rage. It threw itself forward, filling the shadowy air with a deeper blackness as it soared towards him. Heracles swung his club up to meet it, putting all his strength into the blow. The weapon splintered and broke as it connected with the monster’s flesh. The lion gave a howl of pain and twisted aside, crashing into Heracles. They fell together, their bodies momentarily interlocked as he took hold of the lion’s black mane and tried to slip his arm around its neck. But it scuttled back to its feet and leaped away, its back leg catching him a powerful blow to the face.
For a moment, his vision swam with tiny sparks of light. He felt the blackness of the cave press down on him, as if he were sinking through the mess of bones and flesh into the earth below. The pain and tension in his body began to ease and he felt his mind relaxing. Then he remembered the lion and the terrible peril that he was in, and suddenly he was jolted back into consciousness. The energy returned to his muscles and he forced himself up onto his hands and knees.
His eyes swept the cavern through the hanging locks of his hair. The torch blazed up from the floor a short distance away, and by its orange glow he was able to catch the faintest impression of the cavern roof above him, and a hint of the distant walls on either side. And then he saw the lion, standing at the far edge of the circle of light. Its eyes flashed green in the shadows, filled with an intense hatred, and yet reluctant to attack. It had learned that its latest enemy was not like the others who had come before – that this man had extraordinary strength, and the skill to use it.
Knowing the creature was observing him for signs of injury or weakness, Heracles pushed himself to his feet and scanned the floor around him for a weapon. He saw the broken halves of his club, awed that the lion could take such a blow and live. Then he spotted the dull gleam of a double-headed axe and stooped to pick it up. The lion’s lip curled back over its teeth, then it opened its jaws and filled the cave with a defiant roar, before slipping invisibly back into the darkness. But before it disappeared, Heracles saw that it limped, unable to take its weight on its left forepaw.
He stepped carefully across the mess of bone and gore and picked up the stuttering torch. Opening the bag he had found in the tunnel, he took out each of the three torches in turn, lit them, and tossed them across the cave floor to form a triangle of light, with his own at the centre. The hissing flames punched holes in the blackness to reveal the size of the creature’s lair. Their light flickered back from arching walls of wet rock and ceilings hung with stalactites that glistened with hanging droplets of water, which would occasionally fall and with each splash send a small echo around the vast chamber. In one corner of the cave he could see the surface of a small pool, and in another a pile of boulders reached up to the ceiling, where untold years before part of the roof must have caved in.
But there was no sign of the lion, and for a dread moment he wondered whether it had escaped back down the tunnel, taking his chances of completing his first labour with it. And yet his instincts told him the monster was still there, lurking in the deepest shadows and biding its time while it calculated a new way to attack. Heracles looked down at the axe in his hand, touching his thumb to the edge of the blade. It had been sharpened recently, but there were no signs that it had been used in anger. The monster must have torn the previous owner’s throat out before he had had the chance to wield it.
‘Who’s there?’
The fight with the lion had driven the girl from his mind. He turned towards the sound of her voice, which had come from a corner of the cave. But he could not see her in the shadows.
‘Please, is anybody there? Please!’
Her words were choked with tears and her voice trembled with fear, but still he could not see her.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m here. I’ve come to save you.’
‘But the lion,’ she began, her words seeming to come from beneath the fall of rocks. ‘I heard its roar. I thought… I was afraid it had…’
‘The monster has gone, for now. Where are you? I can’t see you.’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen light for days, though I can see the glow of a torch above me now.’
‘Above you?’
He peered into the shadows, then back over his shoulder. The lion was nowhere to be seen, so he picked his way between the human remains to where the girl’s voice was coming from. A puddle of deeper blackness appeared in the ground ahead of him. Holding his torch out, he saw the mouth of a pit, with sheer sides that sank down through the floor of the cave. He moved to the edge of the opening and peered into the gloom. The torchlight gleamed from the damp stone walls, but failed to reach the bottom of the pit. And yet he thought he saw something small and pale – a face perhaps, peering back up at him from the shadows.
‘Thaleia? Are you down there? Can you see me?’
‘Yes, I see you. A giant you seem to me, but how do you know my name?’
‘Your father sent me.’
‘Father’s here?’ she exclaimed, her sudden excitement just as suddenly quenched by fear. ‘Oh no, he can’t be here. Not with the lion…’
‘Your father is waiting for you at the farm. I came here alone.’
‘Alone?’ she said. ‘But how can you hope to defeat the lion on your own? My mother tried to fight it, but it killed her with a single blow. If you try to take me it’ll kill you too.’
‘It has already tried once and failed. Doubtless it’s already pondering its next attack, but I’ll face that when it comes. For now, you must put your trust in me and pray to every god you know to help me defeat the monster.’
‘I will trust you, my lord – what choice do I have? But whatever you intend to do, do it quickly. I know the monster better than you do, and I fear it. Right now, its eyes are on you, waiting for the moment to attack. Please hurry.’
‘Can you climb out?’
‘I’ve tried, but the walls are too steep.’
‘Then I’ll throw you some rope.’
He cast another glance about himself, but the only movement was from the flickering shadows cast by the light of the torches. Opening his bag, he took out the coil of rope and knelt by a nearby boulder. Feeding out a length, he tied it securely about the rock then returned to the edge of the pit. He glanced down and saw the pale oval of Thaleia’s face looking back at him from the shadows. What sort of girl was she, he wondered? The horrors she had witnessed would have turned the minds of most men, and yet somehow she – a mere child – had endured them. And despite her tears and obvious fear, she still had wits enough to try and follow him out of that nightmarish cave.
‘Catch this,’ he said. ‘Tie it around your waist and I’ll pull you up.’
The rope hissed down into the darkness and he saw the white smudge of Thaleia’s hand reaching up for it.
‘It’s not long enough. I can’t reach it.’
A movement caught his eye. He looked at the shadows thrown by the torchlight, but there was no black figure crouching in the darkness, no glimmer of green eyes staring back at him. Reaching down, he tugged on the rope. The rock to which it was tied did not budge.
‘Stay there,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I’m coming down for you.’
‘Wait,’ Thaleia replied. He heard the sound of stone being dragged over stone and guessed she was moving a rock to stand on. ‘I’ve got it. But it won’t reach my waist.’
‘Then loop it around your wrist a couple of times. I’ll pull you up.’
The rope went tense with her weight. At the same moment, he felt his hackles rise. He dropped the torch and reached for the axe, staring out into the shadows. Still nothing. Tucking the axe into his belt, he spat on his palms and took hold of the rope.
‘Are you ready?’
‘Yes. Hurry, please. The monster’s there with you, I can feel it.’
He scanned the shadows again, then pulled on the rope. One arm’s length, then a second, and a third. As he drew in the fourth, he heard a low growl behind and above him. Looping the rope around his left wrist, he snatched the axe from his belt and turned. The lion was halfway up the pile of fallen rocks, its hide absorbing the light of the torches so that it was almost invisible in the darkness. But its green eyes gleamed with vengeful malice. Somehow, one silent and meticulously placed paw after another, it had crept around the edges of the cave and onto the sloping mound of boulders. Drawing itself back onto its hind legs, it sprang, its right forepaw extended as before, its left tucked into its chest. Its black mane streamed out behind it, and its open jaws bristled with rows of sharp teeth.
Heracles swung the axe. The curved blade sank into the thick fur of the lion’s left shoulder, a blow strong enough to have severed the limb of any other animal and carried through into the chest. But the axe sprang back from the impenetrable hide, the force of the recoil snapping the neck of its wooden shaft and sending the head spinning off into the shadows.
The lion roared with pain and plunged to its right. The claws that had been reaching for Heracles’s throat missed their target and sliced a fourfold gash across his left arm. The pain shot through his body, searing the ends of his nerves like fire as the blow sent him tumbling down into the pit. He heard a scream from below as Thaleia fell to the floor. Then the rope around his wrist caught on the lip of rock above, arresting his descent with an abrupt jolt and causing him to cry out in agony as his shoulder was nearly torn from its joint.
He hung halfway down the wall of the pit, his body bouncing against the rock and scuffing the skin raw, adding to the cacophony of other hurts that racked his senses. He closed his eyes and felt his grip on consciousness relaxing. Then he saw his mother’s face emerging from the darkness, as clearly as if she were there in the pit beside him. Her mouth was moving and, quietly at first, he heard her speaking words he remembered from his childhood. Words that had changed everything he believed about himself.
‘You have something special, Heracles, something that the other children don’t have. You are a son of Zeus. Do you know what that means?’
His eyes blinked open onto blackness. His mother’s face was gone, but her words remained. What did it mean, to be a son of Zeus? What did it mean, when all he felt was agony, exhaustion and despair? Was it even possible for a son of Zeus to feel such things? Or had she lied? Was he nothing more than the son of Amphitryon, just like Iphicles, the brother he despised so much?
No, he protested. He was more than that. He had to be.
Gritting his teeth, he tried to clear his mind of the pain.
‘Thaleia, are you all right?’
The sound of his voice provoked a sob of helpless fear.
‘My leg hurts.’
‘Can you move it?’
He heard a sharp intake of breath, followed by a gasp of pain.
‘A little. I don’t think it’s broken.’
‘Good. Pull yourself to one side if you can, away from the middle of the floor. I don’t want to fall on you if the rope snaps.’
He glanced up. The edge of the pit was outlined by the light from the torches, and as he looked he saw the shadow of the monster pass across it. He could hear its heavy breathing and the uneven padding of its paws as it limped around the periphery of the pit, ready to finish off the man who had dared enter its lair. Sooner or later, though, it would tire of waiting for him to show himself. It would slip down the side of the shaft – he could see the white claw marks on the rock where it had climbed up and down to terrorize the child below – and finish him off in the narrow confines of the pit. And he had to be ready for it when it came.
He reached out with his foot and felt along the wall. To his relief there was a small ledge further along to his left, wide enough to fit a man. Taking the rope in his right hand, he swung towards it and reached out with the fingers of his left. The movement sent new barbs of pain shooting down his arm from where the monster’s claws had torn through the skin and muscle. Fighting the agony of the wound, he seized hold of a jutting rock and pulled himself onto the ledge.
He placed his foot over the rope to free his hands and slipped the bow from his back. Clenching his teeth against the thrill of pain, he fitted an arrow and drew it back to his cheek.
‘Come on, damn you!’ he snarled, his voice taut with the hunger for battle.
A long, deep growl rolled out from the darkness above.
‘I’m still here!’ he called again, hoping the lion would take the bait. ‘What are you waiting for? Come and finish me off.’
The monster’s head and mane appeared at the rim of the pit, silhouetted by the glow from the torches. As its green eyes seized on Heracles, its lips drew back in a hate-filled grimace and trails of drool dripped from its fangs. It saw the bow and the grimace became a sneer, knowing the arrow aimed at its chest could not pierce its pelt; knowing that its prey was trapped at last, and that with one final leap it would pull him down into the pit and tear him to pieces. It placed its forepaws over the stone lip and drew in its hind legs, ready to pounce. Then Heracles raised his aim slightly and released the string.
The arrow plunged into the lion’s eye, extinguishing the green light as it drove itself deep into the flesh, piercing the only weak point in its otherwise invulnerable hide. The monster threw itself backwards, twisting and howling with pain. Casting his bow into the pit, Heracles grabbed the rope and heaved himself upwards. As he neared the top of the shaft, the creature let out a terrifying roar that shook the cave and released streams of dust and small stones from the roof. Knowing it had seen him and was preparing to spring, Heracles seized the rock shelf above and hauled himself up.
The lion launched itself at him from the opposite side of the pit, its immense body blotting out the glow from the torches. Heracles rolled onto his back and grabbed hold of its great claws as the weight of the monster fell on him, flattening him against the cave floor and crushing the breath from his lungs. The stench of its fetid breath and gore-matted hide turned his stomach as he tried to push it away, but its size and strength overwhelmed him. It opened its jaws wide and lunged at his face.
He pulled aside and the lion’s snout crashed into the rock where a moment before his head had been. He felt its rough fur pressed against his ear and cheek, the saliva from its jowls wet against his beard, and the hot blast of its breath as it pulled itself back for a second lunge. Then he felt it. As he stared death in the face, he felt the something special his mother had spoken of: the quality that had made his father king of the gods – the refusal to acknowledge the supremacy of another, whether it be Hera, Eurystheus or the lion.
He thrust up with his arms, pushing the monster far enough away that its teeth snapped closed a finger’s breadth from his face, spraying him with spittle. The anger surged through his limbs, renewing his supernatural strength. He threw the lion on its side, rolling on top of it and pinning its chest with one knee, while scrambling for a hold with his other foot.
It fought back ferociously, filling the cavern with its roar. The power in its body was almost irresistible, but Heracles summoned his reserve of strength and thrust down against it with gritted teeth. Releasing its left forepaw – which had been weakened by the earlier blow from his club – he seized hold of the arrow protruding from the monster’s eye and tried to drive it further into the wound. The beast gave a howl of pain and twisted its head sideways, snapping the brittle shaft. Tossing it aside, Heracles drew back his fist and punched the hideous head as hard as it could.
It was like hitting rock. He cried out, and in the same instant the lion swung its forepaw at him, catching his shoulder with two of its claws and leaving a deep rent in the flesh. Heracles reeled back, his senses almost succumbing to the pain. The lion fell on him again, aiming a second swipe at his face. He seized its paw and tried desperately to force it back. Again, the monster thrust out its jaws, aiming this time for his chest and neck. He pushed back with all the might he could muster and turned his head away as the double rows of teeth closed with a deafening snap. A stab of pain and a hot dampness on the side of his jaw and neck told him the lion had bitten off a piece of his ear.
He turned to face the monster, fixing its remaining eye with his fierce gaze. Had his enemy been a man, by now he would have seen an ebbing of confidence and the beginnings of fear in his expression – the realization that victory would not be easy and defeat was still possible. But all he could see in that single green orb was a fanatical desire to tear him to pieces, at whatever cost to itself, and a total absence of any thought it might not do so.
So be it, he thought, and jerked his knee up into its exposed stomach. As the new wave of pain exploded through the lion’s body, he pushed it onto its right side. But as he tried to clamber on top, driving his knee deeper into its stomach, he saw his mistake. They were closer to the edge of the pit than he had thought.
The monster fell first. Knowing it was too late to release his grip on its forepaws, he fell with it, rolling over the edge and plunging into shadow. Deprived of his vision in the utter darkness of the pit, he was unsure as he clung on to his enemy whether they had turned as they plummeted downward; whether he would hit the floor first, breaking his back before being crushed by the weight of the lion. Briefly, he wondered whether Thaleia had obeyed his order to move to the side of the pit. Then they hit the bottom and everything went black.
When consciousness returned to him, he opened his eyes to complete darkness. He was aware of a low sobbing and the stinging pain of his wounds. Then his nostrils filled with the nauseous reek of the lion, and he felt its warm, soft bulk beneath him. Instinctively, he pushed himself upwards, afraid that it would use his momentary confusion to sink its teeth into his face or gouge his flesh with its claws. But it did not move.
The fall has killed it, he thought. The lion had hit the floor first, taking the full impact of the fall. Then it moved. A sudden expansion of its chest was followed by a low growl. It turned its head to face him, the glint of its remaining eye the only light in that utter blackness. Heracles snatched Molorchus’s dagger from his belt and plunged it into the lion’s soft underbelly. But the blade failed to puncture the skin and broke. An instant later, the lion’s forepaw smashed into the side of his head, throwing him across the floor of the pit to crash into the rock wall.
Had its claws not been sheathed, the blow would have torn through his neck and severed his head. Instead, he was able to fight back the pain and pick himself up. It was then he noticed Thaleia’s frightened eyes gleaming at him from beneath an overhang of rock behind the monster. Suddenly he remembered the promises he had shouted to her in the cavern, telling her that she was safe now. Then he recalled the screams he had first heard emanating from the mouth of the tunnel, and thought of the awful torture the lion had inflicted on the innocent child. He would not allow that to happen again. With a bellow of rage, he launched himself at the beast.
It regained its feet with a twist of its body, and drawing its claws threw itself to meet him. But Heracles was quicker. He punched his left shoulder into the lion’s chest, ignoring the pain from his wound as he wrapped his arms about its body and drove it backwards. Now was the time for the strength his father had gifted him with to show itself. He felt the monster’s claws tearing at the air behind him, but his hold on it was so close they were unable to find flesh. Then they smashed into the wall of the pit. He felt the lion’s ribs snap as the air was driven from its lungs. Taking advantage of its momentary weakness, he seized it by its shoulders and – feeling a sudden, furious rush of strength – hurled it against the far wall of the pit, away from the terrified child.
The lion crashed into the rock with a grunt and fell to the floor. It attempted to push itself back to its feet, but Heracles leaped onto it and hooked an arm around its neck. He pulled back as hard as he could, crying out with the exertion. The monster roared defiance and threw itself upwards, trying to shake off his hold. Its strength was incredible, but Heracles hung on, gripping its flanks with his knees and forcing it back down to the floor. Despite the burning anguish of his wounds and the aching tiredness in his muscles, he battled against the pain, knowing that if he did not defeat the monster now then he would not find the strength again. The lion knew it too. It filled the pit with its roars and bucked against him with all its might, desperate to throw him off and yet betrayed by its damaged forepaw.
Eventually, after what seemed an interminable time in that all-consuming blackness, he sensed his foe’s strength waning. Its roars reduced to mere grunts, and the kicking of its hind legs was now nothing more than the flailing of an animal close to death. For a moment Heracles pitied it, admiring the strength and courage of his opponent and almost regretting that it had to die. Then he looked at the girl lying beneath the overhang of rock opposite him. Her face was barely visible, a ghostly blur in the blackness, but he could sense the fear in her that was bordering on insanity. He thought of the nightmare she had endured. He remembered the dismembered corpses on the cave floor above that had once been men and women. He thought of the deserted farmhouses on the plains of Nemea. And he knew that each atrocity had been planned with cruel deliberation, by a creature of unspeakable evil.
His burning fury sent a final surge of strength into his arms. He pulled back harder on the lion’s neck until, with a last rattle of its breath, he felt its body stiffen and then go limp.