Storming Paradise

  Storming Paradise

  Rik Hoskin

  Based on the Universal TV television series created by Christian Williams

  Executive producers Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  The Legend

  This is the story of a time long ago, a time of myth and legend, when the ancient gods were petty and cruel, and they plagued mankind with suffering. Only one man dared to challenge their power: Hercules.

  Hercules possessed a strength the world had never seen, a strength surpassed only by the power of his heart. He journeyed the Earth, battling the minions of his wicked stepmother, Hera, the all-powerful Queen of the Gods. But, wherever there was evil, wherever an innocent would suffer, there would be Hercules.

  Prologue

  The music could be heard a mile away, the laughter even further still, almost as far as the next village across the tranquil water, carrying through the still night air.

  It came from a single street, one that had been dedicated to this nighttime party, a party that it seemed everyone wanted to attend. The street itself was located in the center of the village, in sight of the old well, and it was awash with people. The young and the old attended, from babes in arms to old women doubled over their sticks, all of them talking and laughing, never more alive than they had been that night, under the crescent moon in the indigo sky.

  Music played, sometimes three or four tunes going at once, each vying to be heard over the hubbub of conversation and clinking goblets, the sound of youngsters falling in love for the first time and oldsters renewing those same feelings with passion they had almost forgotten. The music was made up of the vigorous strumming of lyres, the whistle of flute pipes and the thumping beat of tympanum hand drums, all of it accompanied by the cheery sound of voices raised in song, where the notes didn’t matter as much as the words, the more raucous the better. Bunting had been strung from building to building, crisscrossing the street with its multicolored ribbons and pendants, each wavering in the cool night breeze as if dancing to that music. People danced, alone and in couples, some in great lines where aunts and uncles were dragged in to join the fun, spilling their wine as they tried to keep up.

  And surely the wine flowed, rich ruby red poured from skins and flagons that seemed bottomless, in a display of consumption that would have humbled even Dionysus himself. Pretty women with long, flowing hair and dresses that left their long legs on show, their tanned arms bare, or men wearing less than the women, effortlessly showing their sculpted musculature, came around again and again to top up goblets, ensuring that everyone was having a good time. The women sang too, in voices sweet as the wine, their shimmering movements almost hypnotic, encouraging even the most reluctant attendee to step up and dance, to join them in songs about the great feats of Zeus and his brethren, and older words about the Titans whom the gods had overthrown.

  The locals imbibed wine and other fare as if starved. There was bread and grapes and cheeses aged to perfection, all of it available in abundance, as if promising that the party would never end.

  And all the while the music played and the voices rose, louder and louder under the cloudless night sky, while the owls hooted and the mice scampered, and all the nocturnal creatures lived their secret lives, hidden from the light.

  In the morning, the sun rose on the village as it always did. But the village was empty, abandoned. And the street where the party had been was gone, disappeared without trace, as if it had never been.

  Chapter 1

  The white orb of the sun stared down on the cliff-top path with the studied disinterest of a bureaucrat, turning the path uncomfortably hot—as if its shifting surface of loose dirt and its narrowness was not enough to make passage difficult. Two men walked that path, as markedly different in their bearing as any two men who had ever walked the Earth. The taller of the two led the way, taking seemingly effortless strides up the narrow path as it became steeper, while behind him his shorter companion huffed and puffed with the effort before finally calling out that they should take a rest.

  “Couldn’t we have found an easier path, Hercules?” the man said as he took a seat on one of several large rocks that rested along the inside edge of the path. His forehead glistened with sweat beneath the blond curls of his hair, curls that had become tussled into a messy tangle where he had repeatedly mopped his brow. His loose-fitting clothing included dark breeches, scuffed leather boots, and a sleeveless wine red vest, which was open at the chest, its design featuring a patchwork of square, tan-colored highlights. Despite his current discomfort, the man’s tone seemed to be both joking and whining all at once, and he tempered his words with a friendly smile. “Well?”

  A few paces ahead, his companion, the one whom he had addressed as Hercules, turned and smiled, gazing all around with eyes that seemed to bask in every detail of the unforgiving landscape. “You worry too much, Iolaus,” he said. He had long, brown hair that brushed across the tops of his shoulders, and wore a yellow, open-necked shirt and brown breeches that did little to disguise his bulging muscles. “This is the straightest path, as the crow flies.”

  “Yeah, well I ain’t no crow,” his companion, Iolaus, said, shaking his head as he uncapped his water skin and prepared to take a swig of its contents. Iolaus was disappointed, though not especially surprised, to find the water skin had a sum total of three droplets of water left in it, and that these had been warmed to tepidity by the beating sun. “And I’m out of water.”

  “Here, have mine,” Hercules said, unstrapping his own water skin from its tie at his belt and handing it to his companion.

  They had traveled far, these two, from the largest cities to the humblest of hovels in the Greek Empire, and far beyond that, into exotic lands full of strange customs and stranger gods. But wherever they had gone, they had found that the gods remained cruel and self-absorbed, while most ordinary people had an inherent nobility to be admired and cherished. Iolaus was just a man, a jack-of-all-trades turned adventurer who had been caught up in the whirlwind of his companion’s life and never looked back. Hercules, however, was something else—both man and god, his mother was an ordinary woman while his father was mighty Zeus, patriarch of the gods of Mount Olympus. Hercules had little time for gods, however, and had inherited none of their pettiness and cruelty. He sought instead a simple life of adventure and excitement, a life rich in experience, fulfilling his restless curiosity for a moment until it was piqued anew. Hercules had had run-ins with most of the gods, been victim to their tricks and subject to their whims, and yet he retained his cheery demeanor and strove to make the world a better place through his acts of kindness.

  Iolaus eyed Hercules as he took the proffered water skin. “You never sweat, you know that?”

  Hercules dismissed the comment with a shrug. “Of course I do. Just not all the time.”

&n
bsp; “It’s unbearably hot out here,” Iolaus said once he had taken a drink of water. “Even Hades himself would be complaining if he’d been forced to walk up this gods-forsaken track. And look at you—you’re not even warm.”

  Hercules leaned down and grabbed Iolaus by the back of his shirt. “Come on, my sweaty little friend. Let’s go find us some shade and a flagon of ale. Won’t be far now.”

  Iolaus went to hand the water skin back to Hercules but the taller man shook his head. “You keep it. You need it more than I do today.”

  As far as Iolaus was concerned, the path only got worse. It became steeper and narrower and suddenly he and Hercules found themselves walking beside a towering wall on one side and a sheer drop on the other. It was a path that only a mountain goat would try to navigate, one who Iolaus suggested was both sure-footed and particularly foolhardy.

  “People use this path all the time,” Hercules reassured him. “Besides, look at that view. You don’t get to see that from the cart-friendly roads.”

  Iolaus had to begrudgingly admit that his cheery companion was right. The sandy-colored path dropped to a sheer cliff that fell away into the ocean, a glistening, sun-dappled stretch of clear blue water. As they marched on, the sun painted a golden streak across the waves as it began its slow descent towards the horizon.

  Before long, up ahead of them, Hercules spied a settlement through a gap in the ridges of the cliffs. It was a village made up of a few dozen buildings that had been clad in white to deflect the heat. A harbor ran along its length to one side, where a sprinkling of fishing boats could be seen bobbing upon the waves.

  “There you go,” Hercules said, turning his fabled smile on his exhausted companion. “Life. Food, drink—enough, no doubt, to fill even my father’s table.”

  Iolaus rolled his eyes. “No doubt. Although, how we’re going to pay for it—”

  Hercules held up a hand to silence his companion. It was an old complaint—the two rarely had money, and when they did it seemed to flow from them faster than the River Styx flows to the Underworld. But Hercules never worried, for there were a thousand things a man of his strength and demeanor could do to earn a little money, enough, at least, for food and lodgings.

  The cliff path turned a sharp, hairpin corner, where a tangle of roots clung desperately to the edge as if for dear life. As Hercules and Iolaus navigated the corner, they were met by a man stepping out from the shadows of a cave in the wall up ahead. The man was in his thirties with cropped, dark hair. He was well dressed in a tapered cloak—in fact, rather overdressed for the locale. Despite his fine clothing, he had the musculature of a barroom brawler and the scarred face and flattened nose to match. He had affected a scratchy looking beard on his chin that did little to hide the scars there. Another scar traced up across his cheek to the bottom of his left eye, evidence of a knife blow that had narrowly missed taking said eye out. The man appeared to have been waiting for them and he grinned as he locked eyes on Hercules and his companion, casually blocking their way along the narrow path.

  “Hello, gentlemen,” the man said with a leering smile. “Good to see you both on this fine, fine afternoon. Lucky you came upon me.”

  Hercules stuck out his hand to shake the man’s. “Good to see you too, sir,” he said, “I think. Why is it lucky, exactly?”

  The bearded man did not take the proffered hand. Rather, he stepped close to Hercules and spoke in a low voice. “This here is a toll road,” he said. “Very dangerous, or it was. But you fellas are lucky. Danger’s passed now, meaning you can pass too. For a little contribution to the fund, of course.”

  Hercules’ brow furrowed as he heard this. “My friend and I are strangers to these parts, and I admit we came ill-prepared to pay for a toll,” he explained. “We came seeking work—”

  “And fortune!” Iolaus chipped in. “Don’t forget that part.”

  “—so you see,” Hercules continued, “we don’t have any money to pay the toll.”

  The stranger looked Hercules and Iolaus up and down for a few seconds, assessing their story and mentally calculating the value of their possessions. Their possessions were very few—a couple of water bottles, and a money pouch that looked as empty as the taller one had suggested.

  “Tell you what,” the man said, reaching for something in the pocket of his breeches. “I’ll do you a favor. You give me those boots you wear and we’ll write off the debt, nothing more to pay. Deal?”

  If Hercules’ brow had been furrowed before, it was nothing on the Herculean level of furrowing that crossed it now. “You . . . want my . . . boots?” he queried.

  “That’s right,” the man replied, producing a dagger with a three-inch blade from his pocket, whip-fast. Three inches may not be very long for a blade, but it’s long enough when you’re on the receiving end of its sharp edge.

  Hercules stared at the blade in a combination of surprise and amusement. “Are you . . . threatening us?” he asked.

  “Wise guy, huh?” the bearded man replied. “Yes, I’m flaming well threatening you. You and the dwarf here—”

  “Hey!” Iolaus voiced in objection.

  “—hand over your boots or you’re both going over the cliff. Get me?”

  It seemed almost effortless the way that Hercules did what he did next. He stepped forward, bringing his left arm up as he did so, and grabbed the knife’s blade between forefinger and thumb, plucking it from the man’s hand in an instant.

  “Oi! That’s my knife!” the man complained.

  Hercules threw the knife casually over the side of the cliff, and he and his would-be robber stood at the cliff’s edge, watching as the silvery blade plummeted down the seventy foot drop until it had all but disappeared from view. A moment later, a tiny splash marred the surface of the clear blue water for an instant, the final evidence of the knife’s fall.

  As the ripples ebbed away from that disappearing blade, Hercules looked back into the face of the would-be robber. “You were saying something about a toll?”

  The man fixed Hercules with a fierce look that was more than a little bit smug. “You think I’m going to just let you pass now, is that it?” he asked. “Now you owe me a knife. And I won’t just be taking your boots, neither. Strip off, I’m taking your clothes.” He switched his gaze to Iolaus. “You too, short-pants.”

  “Hey, I’m perfectly average! I just look short next to him,” Iolaus complained, pointing at Hercules.

  Hercules crossed his arms over his chest and looked down on the bearded man. “I can see how this gig of yours probably seems like a good idea,” he said, “but, trust me, it isn’t. You’re letting us pass. And, what’s more, we’ll be coming back along this path sometime soon, at which point you and your little racket had best be disappeared.”

  “Are you threatening me?” the man asked, taken aback. “You?!”

  Hercules shrugged. “Think of me as a life coach who’s offering some free advice. You can take that advice in payment for your toll, if you like. Now, if you’ll excuse me—” and he began to brush past the man who had attempted to rob him and Iolaus.

  The man grabbed Hercules, shoving one hand in his chest while the other reached for Hercules’ wrist and tried to turn him around. Tried—and failed. Hercules stood his ground, much to the surprise of the would-be robber who suddenly found his sandaled feet scrabbling for purchase on the loose earth of the cliff top path. Suddenly he was at the edge of the path, clinging to Hercules for dear life with the ocean behind and beneath him.

  Hercules leaned close to the man’s face and smiled. “I wouldn’t do that,” he warned.

  The man sneered, brows furrowing. “Oh, you just made a big mistake, tough guy,” he said.

  Hercules was still glaring at the robber when he heard Iolaus speak up—and there was something that sounded like fear in his friend’s tone. “Um . . . Hercules? Buddy . . . ? You may want to . . . um
. . . ?”

  Iolaus didn’t need to say anything more. At that moment, the thing that he had spotted emerged from the cave and into the sunlight, even as Hercules turned to see it. At first glance, Hercules thought it was a big cat—a lion maybe—but while its legs and body were that of a lion, its head stood proudly atop a narrow neck, two eyes glaring regally from above the pointed beak that formed its mouth. A chain had been secured around its neck like a leash, and behind this were two majestic wings, spreading out from its body as if to warn Hercules away.

  “A griffin—?!” Hercules uttered in abject surprise.

  Clutching Hercules’ wrist, the robber began to laugh. “Say hello to my little friend!” he jeered.

  Chapter 2

  The griffin was over nine feet long and stood three-and-a-half feet high to its shoulder, the proud, bird-like head atop that adding another foot and a half.

  Hercules kept his eyes fixed on the creature as it charged from the cave. “You have a pet griffin?” he asked.

  That was all he had time to ask. The next instant, the griffin was scrambling towards Hercules and the robber along the path outside the cave, padded feet drumming against the dirt as it charged them, chain links clanking as its leash stretched taut behind it. Hercules grabbed the robber one-handed by his shirt and yanked him away from the cliff’s edge, throwing him towards Iolaus. “Get back!” he ordered.

  “You don’t need to tell me twice, buddy,” Iolaus confirmed as the griffin leapt at Hercules.

  A moment later, both griffin and Hercules went crashing back along the path, rolling through the dirt as a screeching roar emerged from the monster’s throat. The roar was accompanied by something else, too—the stench of a carnivorous diet.

  Landing hard, Hercules found himself flat on his back beneath the griffin. He reared back farther as the monstrous face darted towards him, the cruel length of its sharp beak parting as it snapped at his face. Hercules swept one arm up, striking the griffin in the side of its head. It rocked in place, its attack deflected by just a few inches so that that scissoring blade-like beak barely missed Hercules’ face.