The Trials of Hercules: Book One of The Osteria Chronicles Read online

  THE TRIALS OF HERCULES

  BOOK ONE

  OF

  THE OSTERIA CHRONICLES

  TAMMIE PAINTER

  Copyright 2014 Tammie Painter

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-1310094972 (ebook)

  This book is also available in print

  ISBN: 978-1500168384 (print)

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  About The Osteria Chronicles

  Glossary

  The Trials of Hercules (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 , 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, Epilogue)

  The Labors of Hercules in Greek Mythology

  About the Author

  Copyright

  THE OSTERIA CHRONICLES

  Hundreds of years ago, North America experienced The Disaster. In what was once the Northwest, the survivors built a new world, Osteria, which was then divided into twelve city-states.

  To this world came the gods formerly worshipped by the Ancient Greeks. The gods have not changed—they are still powerful, petty, and consumed with rivalries and jealousy.

  And as before, the gods do not play fairly with those they despise.

  GLOSSARY

  Agora: The central marketplace of a city.

  Drachar: The primary unit of currency used in Osteria. One hundred denaris equal one drachar.

  Herene: A woman who serves Hera. Her chastity ensures the safety of the polis. Any Herene who does not adhere to her vows faces a death sentence.

  Kingdom: A political division within Osteria. A kingdom maintains itself independent of the gods and goddesses of Olympus. Examples of kingdoms include Minoa and Amazonia.

  Polis (plural = poli): A political division within the land of Osteria. Ruled as a state from a powerful city, each polis has one of the Olympian gods (The Twelve) as its patron. Within the polis are smaller regions or districts ruled by governors who answer to the polis’s ruling government. There are twelve poli.

  Scapegoat: A tradition in some poli where one person accepts all the sins of the polis. He leaves the polis for a period of one year taking the polis’s sins with him. After the year, he may return.

  Solon: The title of the ruler of Portaceae. The position is inherited and given only to men. His wife is the Solonia

  The Twelve: The twelve gods of Olympus. Each god oversees the proper rule of one of Osteria’s twelve poli. They do not play a role in any of the kingdoms of Osteria.

  Vigile: Osteria’s police and fire-fighting team. The vigiles also make up the defensive forces when a polis is at war.

  Back to Table of Contents

  THE TRIALS OF HERCULES

  1

  HERC

  The distant howl of the siren yanks me into consciousness. The vigile’s siren. If the resonant wail is within earshot, the situation is nearby and it’s my duty to respond. As a member of the vigiles, as the force’s commander, I’m never off duty.

  I jerk up from where I lay. The quick motion sends my head swimming. I drop my hands to my side to steady myself. I expect to sink into the plush give of my bed’s feather mattress. Instead, cold tile greets my hands. My head swims again trying to understand. Trying to remember.

  I grasp at the fog of a memory as I stare at my hand against the kitchen floor. My still spinning head can’t comprehend the color.

  The tiles are beige, aren’t they?

  It was what Meg had wanted when we’d been assigned vigile housing. I hadn’t minded the standard-issue gray, but Meg insisted the sandstone tiles would lighten up the dark interior of the home the polis issued us when we married.

  What frames my hand is not beige, although the pale color can be glimpsed in harsh streaks. Around my hand, even on my hand, swirls the maroon red of blood that is just starting to coagulate.

  Whose blood?

  The hand-cranked siren’s rhythmic wooing grows louder. From fourteen years of service as a vigile, I know whoever is working the crank already has knots forming in his shoulder.

  My blood?

  I pat myself down. No injuries except an ache when I flex my hands. A familiar ache like the one I get on fall days from spending hours chopping wood in preparation for winter. The ache from gripping an axe handle for too long.

  The pain triggers something and an image bobs to the surface of my mind: My hands clenching, squeezing something small. Cassie’s doll? No, the memory is solid and the doll is made of cloth from one of Meg’s old dresses.

  The approaching siren again pulls me back into focus. It has to be a response call to whatever has happened. My eyes dart over the room as I force aside the ever-growing scream of “Whose blood?” that threatens to devour my reason.

  Then I see it.

  A shape that reminds me of peeking in on Cassie while she sleeps. Few things warmed my heart more than seeing my children in their small beds with their arms tossed back in the confident lull of childhood sleep.

  But on the floor. Why is she sleeping on the floor?

  I watch a moment. My baby girl’s chest refuses to move with the rhythmic undulations of breathing. An icy hand digs into my gut.

  Unable to stand, I scramble over on hands and knees. I clutch Cassie to me. Her head flops to the side. Her neck broken. I scream. The sound rings wildly in my ears but I can’t stop. She’s only a baby, not even a year old. She can’t be dead, not after Meg gave up her life to bring this child into the world. The gods cannot be that cruel.

  Despite the ragdoll looseness of her body, I turn my head and place my ear on my daughter’s chest hoping to hear a heartbeat. I hear nothing but the siren.

  Before I can curse the gods, my eyes lock on the floor.

  Two swaths of maroon stripe their way from the kitchen into the pantry. Something has been dragged across the room. A set of footprints smears the wispy swaths. The person who made them wore the treaded leather-soled sandals of a vigile who needs to cover unpaved terrain.

  No, no, don’t let it be. Not the twins.

  Still clutching Cassie to my chest, unwilling to let her be alone, I stagger into the pantry.

  Don’t let it be. Don’t let it be.

  The siren wails closer.

  Oh, dear gods.

  Forgetting caution on the blood-slicked floor, I dash to the bodies, slip in the mess, and come down hard on my knees next to them, next to the bloodied dagger discarded by whoever did this. Sergio and Sophia, my tow-headed twins, lie face down. Blood stains their linen white hair and seeps out from slashes in the fabric of their tunics. Their position disturbs me more than the blood, more than the wounds. A head lying face down should naturally turn to the side, unable to balance on nose and chin. My twins’ faces rest flat on the floor.

  I gently lower Cassie to a tattered rug, brushing a lock of silky hair off her face.

  The siren’s screech is now on my street. They will catch the person who did this. And then I will see that person sent to Hades.

  I slide my hand under Sofia’s thin chest. As I cradle the back of her head in my other hand, I turn her gently to look at me. The sight churns my stomach bringing acidic bile into my mouth. Sofia’s darling face, now a tangle of blood and bone, has been beaten until crushed flat. I ease her down as a ripping sensation tears through my chest.

  Heat flares through my eyes and, before I can blink them back, tears spill onto my twins’ ruined bodies. I stroke their backs as if lulling them to sleep.

  The siren stops outside. Men shout and I wonder who’s out there. Who made the call? Which neighbor ran to the end of the
street to trip the call box?

  Did they see who did this? Did they see who destroyed my life?

  I stand, ready to help my fellow vigiles.

  “Hercules Dion.” The shout singes into my nerves and halts me. This isn’t the shout of someone calling out to see if all is well with a friend. It’s a command. “Come out willingly or we will use force.”

  They think it’s me.

  I try to push away the idea as ridiculous, but the truth I ignored earlier whooshes over me like an autumn gale.

  As part of the day’s duty, I had planned to head into Forested Park at the western edge of Portaceae City. I had put on my treaded sandals for the task.

  A feeling of being sucked to the depths of Portaceae’s deepest well overwhelms me. With a shaking hand and a prayer to The Twelve, I reach to my calf. My legs give out and I collapse to the floor. The dagger I and every human vigile wears is not in its holster.

  No, no, it’s impossible.

  Even on their worst days of sibling rivalries and tantrums, I had never raised a hand to my children. To think of doing this, causing all this blood, reeks of an impossible nightmare. The hand gripping my gut squeezes tighter sending a fresh burst of bile that burns my throat.

  I push myself up, fighting the urge to grab my children to me, to hold them and protect them like I had failed to do what must have been only moments ago. On shaky legs that threaten to give out with every step, I take the few strides from the pantry, through the kitchen, across the living room, and to the front door. All the while I keep my eyes straight. I can’t look at the blood.

  I didn’t do this.

  Opening the door brings me face to face with at least twenty vigiles, men and centaurs arranged into double-row formation. The front row of men crouches low as the back row of centaurs remains standing. At their center is a flame-haired young man, his face etched in pain and pity. Every vigile except him has an arrow aimed at my chest. I thrust my hands above my head, then notice they’ve brought the cart—the walled-in, portable pen that provides a prisoner less space than a coat closet. I can’t remember the last time we had to use it, when the last blood crime was committed.

  A hunched old woman dressed in a faded floral wrap of thin wool runs up to the vigile in charge. His height and flaming shock of red hair make my cousin hard to miss.

  “That’s him,” she squawks, jutting her finger at me as if they don’t know who she means. “Screaming, I heard screaming and there he was with that poor little girl’s neck in his hands.”

  “I didn’t do this,” I say to myself. I have no memory of what she says I did. I wouldn’t do such a thing. Not to my children, not to my babies. But here is Elena, my friend and neighbor for the past five years accusing me of just that.

  “I sent Orpheus straight to the call box. It was too late though. That monster bashed his children—” She gasps for breath unable to finish the sentence. “I saw it. I saw it.” She breaks down as a lanky man with bowed legs wraps his long arms around her.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Iolalus says. He speaks gently, but with authority. “We’ll see to it from here. Now, please step back.”

  She shoots a curse-filled look at me as her son, Orpheus, guides her back from the scene.

  “Cousin, will you come with us?” Iolalus asks.

  I hold Iolalus’s gaze, give a nod, and then walk slowly to him. Two other vigiles come from behind, stretching high to grab my hands so they can bind my wrists into cuffs. Knowing they can’t reach them, I lower my hands and ease them behind my back. Under the watch of a band of archers I’ve personally trained, I make each movement slow and steady. With practiced speed, the two vigiles lock my wrists into hard leather bands joined by a short piece of steel chain. The men step away as four centaurs form a wall around me.

  More neighbors appear from their homes, gaping their mouths and pointing at the spectacle.

  “I didn’t do this,” I say still holding Iolalus’s gaze as he steps in closer to me. I look to the cart. Icy sweat beads on my brow and my knees give a betraying tremble. “Please don’t put me in there.”

  Iolalus looks me over. I know I’m being evaluated by my keen younger cousin. He knows people; it’s one of the rare skills he has over me. Even if Iolalus could never win a wrestling match against me—although he has come close on occasion—he can guess a man’s intentions simply by looking at him. I’ve often wondered if my cousin doesn’t have a touch of oracle blood in his veins.

  Iolalus nods. “The cuffs have to stay though until we get to the arena and it’ll be Eury’s decision if you’re kept in the cart during or after your trial. As much as I’d like to, I can’t override the Solon. Come, we have to go.”

  He guides me with a gentle touch on the arm.

  Already the bells are ringing. The announcement of a public event in the arena. Not a game this time. Not a wedding. Today the people of Portaceae will be distracted from the mundane reality of their lives by a trial.

  As the vigiles march me to the arena in the heart of Portaceae City, a procession gathers behind us. The mile-long journey passes like a dream as I continue to mutter, “I didn’t do this,” as if saying it often enough can make it true.

  Once to the arena, I follow Iolalus through the building’s rear entrance where he unlocks my cuffs and tucks them into the belt of his tunic without comment of why he’s going against protocol. We emerge from the darkness of the structure’s underbelly and step out to the center of the arena’s sand and dirt floor.

  During the last Osterian Games I won the laurel after wrestling and defeating eleven opponents in this dusty mix. The victory gave Portaceae a short-lived renewal of her former glory. Back then—standing in the center of the floor of Osteria’s largest arena, gazing up at the towering columns that provided support for stands that held thousands of people—I was filled with pride for my polis.

  As a prisoner, the arena takes on a different countenance. The columns loom over me like giants on the attack, the walls of the arena floor hem me in, and the murmuring beehive buzz of the crowd delivers an eerie shiver down my spine. It’s a far cry from the jests and jeers that typically accompany a trial and a world away from the cheers I’d earned three years ago.

  I didn’t do this, my mind screams. I don’t remember doing this. I didn’t do this.

  With Iolalus by my side, I stand, not shifting, not fidgeting, but holding myself straight and tall as I’ve been trained to do since my sixteenth year.

  The summer sun moves slowly over the arena. It doesn’t set, but instead lingers at the edge of the arena as if the gods don’t dare take their eyes off me. Finally, the trumpets blare to announce the arrival of the Solon. I square my shoulders as my elder cousin, the leader of Portaceae, steps onto the dais that perches above the arena floor.

  “Finally,” Iolalus says. “Gods be with you, cousin.”

  “Hera protect Portaceae,” I say.

  “Not for the past thirty years she hasn’t.” He claps me on the shoulder. “Good luck, Herc.”

  He steps back as I wait to be judged.

  2

  EURY

  The bells. Gods, why do they have to be so loud? I wouldn’t give up being Solon for a night with Hera herself, but I cannot bear those damned bells. After all, I rule Portaceae. I should have the say when I’m needed at the arena, rather than being summoned with this obnoxious pealing as if I’m a common kitchen servant being called to lay out the evening meal. But duty calls, or rings in my case. I grin at my wit as I pull the sheets up over my head to block out the late afternoon light. Surely, the people can wait another few minutes.

  “Excellency,” Baruch announces from behind the closed bed chamber door. His smooth voice jerks me from my dozing slumber. “Hera awaits.”

  I wriggle the sheets up further over my head. First the bells and now Hera. Can a man not rest peacefully in his own bed?

  Before dragging myself to begin the day’s tasks, I lean over to kiss Adneta between her ample breasts.
She moans and reaches for me. Unfortunately, with Portaceae’s patron goddess in the house I must ignore the surge in my groin. Unlike the people of the city, Hera will not abide waiting, nor will it benefit me to leave her twiddling her thumbs. It suits her vanity when mortals come running to her whenever she demands it. An inconvenient annoyance when you’re the one doing the running, but play to her vanity and Hera can be as easily duped as any naïve shopper trying to haggle for a bargain in the agora.

  I fling the covers back causing Adneta to yelp despite the warmth of the sun seeping into our bed chamber. She shoots me a harsh glare, but then quickly mollifies the look into a flirty pout.

  “Bring me something back,” she says. I blow her a kiss before entering my dressing chamber, but my wife entirely misses the gesture as she slips back under the sheets

  In the room adjoining the bed chamber, Baruch busies himself with laying out my clothes. I watch his long, elegant hands as they delicately sweep a piece of lint from the garments. Going solely on the beauty of his fingers, one would never think he is a servant. My stocky digits, even with their manicured nails, look no more regal than those of a field worker. I tuck my hands behind my back. I ignore the voice of my mother in my head telling me I’m foolish to compare myself to a mere servant. Once the clothing meets Baruch’s approval, I squirm into my tunic and he dresses me in the formal attire of a public gathering. As he arranges the folds of the black silk toga until they flow like water over my frame, the scent of mint floats from his lips. I fish my tongue around my mouth wondering about the state of my own breath.