Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

But Chase had no intention of simply pulling it loose, keeping a wary eye on the weapons all around him. He described the statue to Nina. “So, what do I do?”

“There are different versions of the story,” she told him, “but the most common one is that Hercules persuaded Hippolyta to give him the girdle of her own free will. Basically, he told her why he needed it, and she agreed to let him have it-either to avoid a fight that would end badly for both sides, or because she fell in love with him. Again, there are different versions.” She thought for a moment. “Did you say the statue was in a dominant stance?”

“Yeah, hands on hips. Kind of like the way you stand when I’m watching the telly and you want me to move furniture.”

“Cute. But is there anything on the floor around her feet, or on the feet themselves?”

Chase turned the light downwards, and saw that her guess was correct. “Looks like part of the feet move, like they’re trigger stones or something.” He cast a nervous look up at the spears and arrows. “Wait, what if they fire everything?”

“I don’t think they will. The story is about submission; to get what he needed, Hercules had to grovel to Hippolyta. I think that’s what has to be done here.”

“You mean…”

“Get down on your knees, Eddie,” said Sophia over the radio with unconcealed amusement. Outside the doorway, Komosa stifled a laugh. “You finally take your rightful place in front of a woman. Wait a second, though-I have to see this.”

“Glad you’re having fun,” Chase grumbled as she skipped up the tunnel to peer around the entrance. He kneeled down, realizing there was a third trigger set into the floor beneath his knees-simply standing on the statue’s feet wouldn’t work.

He leaned forward, bending into an embarrassingly submissive position in order to place both hands on the stone feet. “All right,” he sighed as he pushed down, “let’s get this over with.”

“I really think you should call her ‘Mistress,’” Sophia called from the door, but he ignored her, instead looking up as a soft clink of metal sounded above his head. The belt had moved slightly. He rose and gingerly touched it, more than half expecting a fusillade of spears to impale him…

They didn’t. But in the quiet of the chamber, his ears picked up a faint but distinct creak, like a bowstring tensing. He looked around. A thin line of dust slowly drifted down from one of the nearby spearheads, shaken loose by a very slight vibration.

The trap was still primed.

Chase warily took in the dozens of other sharpened points also aimed at him, belatedly realizing that his mouth had gone dry. He swallowed, then turned his attention back to the belt, carefully placing the fingertips of both hands against it.

No sounds, no missiles flying to impale him. He applied more pressure, slowly pulling the metal band towards him. Metal scraped against stone. There were protrusions on the back of the belt, catching the statue-

Creak .

Chase froze. The sound had come from his left. Not even breathing, he eased his grip on the belt and cautiously turned his head. More dust wafted down from the head of an arrow pointing straight at his face.

He leaned back out of its path, then set his jaw. He’d done everything he was supposed to do-if the trap was going to fire, there didn’t seem to be any way he could prevent it. One eye on the arrow, he took hold of the belt again, and pulled.

The curved metal band slid free. The weapons surrounding him remained still. Chase blew out a relieved breath and stood.

He had already noticed a recess in the closed door on the far side of the circular chamber, and was not surprised to find that it matched the shape of the belt. Slots accepted pegs on the back of the ancient bronze piece, and he heard a lock clunk as he pushed it into place. Another, harder push, and the door swung open to reveal a black tunnel beyond.

Komosa came into the room, Sophia behind him. “Only one more task to accomplish, Eddie,” she said. “Get to it.”

“And then what happens?” Chase wanted to know. “You going to kill us as soon as we get into the Tomb?”

Sophia didn’t reply, but there was something in her smile that gave Chase pause. At that moment, he knew that she wasn’t simply going to kill Nina and him. She had something else in mind. He doubted he would like it. Whatever it was, Komosa seemed to be in on it, sharing a similar look of expectant sadism.

He left the circular room for the new tunnel just as Nina entered from the other side. She took in the surrounding statues, but Corvus urged her along when she stopped for a closer look.

Nina stood her ground, the rest of Corvus’s men bunching up behind them. “The least you can do is let me look at them. This is an incredible archaeological find.”

“I am not interested in the past,” Corvus said sniffily. “Only the future. Go on,” he told his men. They shuffled around the statue of Hippolyta.

Nina’s voice filled with sarcastic contempt. “Don’t you know that those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to-”

Thwack!

They both jumped at a sudden blur of movement, which was followed by an anguished gurgle as one of the men slumped to his knees. He had accidentally brushed a spear as he passed it, and the trap had fired, shooting the weapon deep into his rib cage-and an arrow from across the room into his chest. With a final dying gasp, he flopped forward, driving the arrow even farther into his body.

Nina looked away from the body, at Corvus. “Case in point. Eddie learned not to do that five minutes ago.”

The other men nervously turned to Corvus, one of them bending to retrieve the dead man’s equipment and gun. “Leave him,” Corvus ordered. “We’ll collect him on the way out.” Now taking much greater care to stay well clear of the poised weapons, the group moved on.

Chase led the way, waiting at each junction for Nina’s instructions as she transcribed the hidden letters on the fly. What dangers lay down the paths not taken he had no idea, but he stopped thinking about them as the tunnel reached the entrance to another chamber.

The last trial of Hercules. Cerberus, the guardian of the Underworld.

This trap appeared similar in design to the mares of Diomedes, but in this case there was only a single statue waiting to advance, a juggernaut filling the entire width of the passage. That wasn’t what caught Chase’s attention, though, nor was it the pair of huge paws that he suspected would pound up and down to crush anyone who got too close.

It was the heads-plural. Cerberus looked like a particularly savage Rottweiler, but its broad shoulders supported no fewer than three snarling heads, each over two feet across. Unlike those of the mares of Diomedes, the jaws seemed sculpted to remain fully open.

“Bloody hell, it’s Fluffy,” Chase said into the headset. “So what’s the trick to dealing with giant three-headed dogs?”

“Hercules had to wrestle Cerberus,” Nina told him. “His task was to bring the dog out of the Underworld, which he did basically by putting a headlock on the middle head and dragging it out with him.”

“I think this mutt’s a bit big to drag anywhere, and Hagrid’s never around when you need him. So, I’m going to have to give it a bit of Hulk Hogan, am I?” If the paws did indeed move up and down, they seemed far too massive to do so at the same speed as the legs of the horses that had killed Bertillon. If he could jump onto one of them, he should then be able to grab the central head when it lifted him up…”Okay, then. Walkies.”

He entered the passage, advancing step-by-step and bracing himself for the moment when a footfall would bring the statue to “life”…