Age of Heroes Page 3

  Anthony knew of another ex-soldier who had not been good at taking orders – a war hero who had, indeed, argued with his general and refused to fight for several days; one of the things that had earned the war hero enduring fame. He even inspired a saying: ‘to sulk in your tent’.

  Achilles.

  Funny. Anthony hadn’t thought about Achilles in years. Their paths seldom crossed. He wasn’t even sure where Achilles was these days, what alias he was going by, or what he was busying himself with. Fighting, probably. That was the occupation Achilles loved best. When he wasn’t having a big schoolgirl strop about not getting his due spoils of war, of course.

  They hadn’t ever really been friends, he and Achilles. As young men they had, after all, been on opposite sides of the biggest fight going, although they themselves had clashed only once on the battlefield, and that a skirmish more than anything, brief and inconclusive, with more name-calling than swordplay. Since then they had avoided each other more by chance than design, and on the rare occasions they did bump into each other they engaged in wary, bluff banter, never quite able to forget that at one time there had been lethal enmity between them, but equally well aware that life had moved on. It bonded you, whether you liked it or not: the act of desperately trying to kill another person who was desperately trying to kill you. It was as intimate, in its way, as sex.

  Young caught Anthony eyeing him sidelong.

  “I’m not gay, you know,” the Englishman said.

  “Neither am I.”

  “It’s just, the way you’re looking at me...”

  “You remind me of someone, that’s all,” Anthony said. “Someone from the dim and distant past.”

  “Oh. Okay. Thought I should clear it up, though, the gay thing. I didn’t suggest we go hiking so that I could seduce you, or vice versa.”

  “In this cold? Are you mad?”

  Young laughed. “Too damn right. My dick’s so shrivelled up right now, I doubt I could even find it.”

  “That the excuse you trot out for the girls, is it?”

  “Shut it, you wanker.”

  Definitely a soldier.

  Another kilometre, deeper into the forest. Trees rattled their bare branches, and now and then a bird flapped away, a mammal skittered. Young checked their position on his iPhone twice more. Anthony still thought it amazing that he lived in an age when you carried a device in your pocket that told you exactly where you were to within a few metres – among the many other feats it could perform. He remembered a time when sailors navigated by the sun, the stars, landmarks and luck. How could anyone say life had not improved? How could anyone deny that progress was a steady ascent – with, admittedly, the occasional plateau and stumble? Roy Young, with his mayfly lifespan, was simply unable to see how humankind strove constantly to better itself. He was too mired in the now. Give him a few hundred years, time to view the big picture, and he would get it.

  The two men came to a clearing. On one side, a slight rise, a three-metre-high bank. On the other, a trickling stream, ice-rimmed, worming its way through a depression in the landscape.

  “Coffee?” Young produced a thermos flask.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” said Anthony.

  “Fair warning: I’ve laced it with whisky.”

  “A sensible precaution.”

  They sat on rocks and drank from plastic cups. The coffee steamed. Their breath steamed.

  Anthony felt good. Yesterday’s lapse into self-pity embarrassed him. All he’d needed to lift his spirits was some company. Not being alone reminded you why you existed.

  “And now,” said Young, rising, “to answer the call of nature. Coffee does that for me.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Good luck?”

  “Finding your dick.”

  “I’ll do my best. Anthony?”

  “Yeah?”

  Young seemed on the brink of saying something. Something heartfelt.

  But then that wouldn’t be very British, would it?

  “Doesn’t matter. You’re a good sort, that’s all.”

  “Thanks. So are you.”

  Young padded off to find some privacy.

  Anthony sat still and listened to his surroundings. The rattle of the stream. The sough of the breeze. The subtle crackle of fallen snow.

  Even an immortal should pause and appreciate moments of tranquillity like this.

  Especially an immortal.

  The bullet hit him a split second before he heard the crack of gunfire.

  Suddenly he was flat on his back, shoulder numb, gaze fixed on the overcast sky.

  Shot.

  Somebody had shot him.

  Some dumbass son of a bitch had shot him.

  Pain roared, like a bellows-stoked fire. At the same time a whole volley of bullets came his way. They ricocheted off the rock he had been perched on, which was now shielding him. They kicked up whiffs of snow by his head and feet.

  Anthony rolled up tight, making the most of the shelter he had. His shoulder was a mass of flaring agony. There was an in-out wound, the exit point fringed with synthetic fibres from the puffer jacket’s stuffing, like a miniature white crown. Now blood, leaking from both holes.

  Survivable. He had had worse. In fact, for Anthony, as for all his kind, there was no injury that was not survivable. They healed at the same rate mortals did, but they always healed. Always.

  Still the bullets whipped and whizzed towards him. At least three shooters, he estimated. They were situated on the far side of the stream. They had been lying there, concealed, waiting.

  Waiting for him?

  Or perhaps for Roy Young. Yes, that was more likely. Anthony Peregrine didn’t have any enemies that he knew of. None that weren’t so long dead that their bones were topsoil. Whereas Young, a former soldier – maybe there was some unfinished business there, some ghost from the past.

  Or maybe Argentinians, locals out for payback for the Falklands War. That stood to reason. They had tailed the Englishman all the way from Ushuaia, having singled him out for retribution. Never mind that Young was barely even born when conflict broke out in 1982. To these rifle-toting firebrands, his nationality was enough to make him a legitimate target.

  Too bad that they had mistaken Anthony for him.

  Too bad for them, that was.

  Because Anthony Peregrine did not care for being shot. He was not going to take an insult like that lying down.

  Literally.

  He sprang to his feet, forbidding his shoulder from hurting. It would not hamper him. He refused.

  And he ran.

  Not away from the gunfire; towards it.

  He ran faster than any mortal could. He ran with god-given speed and agility, jinking, zigzagging, left, right, left, right. To his assailants he would be a blur – moving too swiftly for them to train their sights on him.

  They fired nonetheless, but not one of their shots came close.

  Anthony hurdled the stream in a single bound, a four-metre leap. He had already noted the position of the nearest gunman: lurking in a stand of evergreens. He dived straight through the foliage, headlong, colliding with the would-be assassin. Together, the two of them rolled and tumbled. A rifle went flying. The gunman let out a grunt of distress. Anthony ended up on top, straddling him. He raised a fist.

  The gunman was dressed in fatigues with snow disruption pattern camouflage. He wore goggles and a flak vest, matching colours, white and dark green. He had a holstered sidearm and grenades clipped to a bandolier.

  It was all standard military-issue tactical gear, apart from his helmet. That had been modified, sporting a solid crest across the crown from front to back.

  Anthony had never seen a contemporary soldier’s helmet in such a design before. Nor had he seen a patch of the kind that was sewn onto the man’s sleeves: a circle, inset with what looked like the letter M.

  He was momentarily taken aback. Things did not compute. This was no Argentinian civilian, no chancer with a hunting rifle and
a grudge. This was something else altogether. Something more serious. More dangerous.

  Anthony’s puzzlement cost him. He took a bullet square in the chest. The impact sent him flying.

  He struggled onto all fours. A lung had been perforated. Blood bubbled at the back of his throat. Every breath was a wet wheeze. He could feel nothing between his collarbone and the base of his sternum, just a sense of absence.

  But he was a warrior. A Myrmidon, no less.

  The man he had knocked flat was scurrying away on hands and knees. Two more men, dressed identically to him, were stalking towards Anthony. Both carried rifles. Anthony couldn’t identify make or model – he was no expert in modern weaponry – but these were quality guns, that much he could tell. Nothing so vulgar as an AK-47. Sophisticated, lightweight, top-of-the-range. The men clearly knew how to use them. They were also exchanging positions, one advancing, the other covering. No amateurs, these.

  Another pair were zeroing in on him. They had descended from the bank on the other side of the clearing.

  Now a third pair, looming from behind.

  Anthony stood. Shakily, but he stood.

  “Do you know who I am?” he declared in his native tongue, Luwian. “I am Aeneas. Son of Anchises and Aphrodite. Survivor of the sack of Troy. Founder of the city of Rome. A champion. Second only to Hector in the esteem of the Hellenes. I have withstood the hatred of Hera. I have done the bidding of Zeus himself. You gentlemen, whoever you are, have just fucked with the wrong person.” His voice thrummed with self-belief and righteous anger. “I am a demigod, and I am about to make each and every one of you suffer for your impudence.”

  In response, the six men trained their rifles on him, centre of body mass.

  A seventh man appeared.

  Roy Young.

  He sauntered towards Anthony, managing to look respectful and contrite.

  “Anthony,” he said, “I told you you’re a good sort, and I meant it. Another time, another place, we’d have been friends, I reckon. But this isn’t that time or place.”

  Anthony was lost for words. “You... You...”

  “Take him down, guys.”

  Six rifles blurted simultaneously.

  Anthony knew only multiple impacts. Multiple sources of pain.

  Young stood over him. Anthony’s shattered chest heaved. He felt like a jigsaw inside, a mass of jumbled, unjoined pieces. He stared up.

  “You’re wasting your time,” he gasped. “This won’t kill me. Can’t.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Young held out a hand sideways. Someone passed him a hand weapon. A spear. No, a trident. No, only two prongs: a bident.

  It was bronze. Just metal.

  Yet it seethed. Anthony could sense the power radiating off it, like heat from magma. Rumbling, subterranean power.

  Young raised the bident aloft.

  “But this can,” he said. And he rammed it into Anthony’s heart.

  TWO

  Greenwich Village, Manhattan

  THEO’S AGENT HAD chosen a hot new restaurant in the Village for their lunch meeting: Seoul Food, a Korean barbecue place that had got a rave review on the Huffington Post and was now taking bookings up to Christmas. How Cynthia had managed to secure them a table, Theo didn’t know, but she had. She could work small miracles like that. She had contacts, knew people.

  “You’ve something exciting to tell me,” he said after they had ordered. Around them diners chattered, all self-congratulatory smiles, while in the centre of the room an open grill sizzled and flared.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I always get the nice-restaurant treatment when it’s good news. When it’s bad, we go for street-cart hotdogs.”

  “Am I that transparent to you?” Cynthia said.

  “After fifteen years, I’d say so.”

  “Fifteen? Has it been that long?”

  “Almost. Fourteen and change.”

  “And you don’t look a day older than when I first took you on.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” Theo said, deflecting the comment. He knew she had intended it as a compliment, nothing more, but it was a little too on-the-nose; if she had begun to notice, he would have to be ending their relationship soon, before she seriously started to wonder why he never aged – and that would be a shame, both professionally and personally. Cynthia Klein was a good literary agent. She was also a good human being.

  “But it’s true,” Cynthia said. “Most authors stay perennially young only in their publicity stills. With you, it happens in real life. How do you do it?”

  “Clean living. Regular exercise. Botox.”

  “Ha-ha. I like what you’ve done with your hair, by the way. Makes you look... distinguished.”

  He had gone for a more sophisticated cut than previously, and switched his styling gel for a brand that gave a drier, less glossy look. Small alterations in his appearance like this were intended to give the impression that he was maturing. It was a trick he had developed back in the 1930s, when photography became commonplace and created a permanent record of how you looked, something people could turn to if they wanted to make then-and-now comparisons. Photos, unlike memory, were objective. They were evidence.

  “Maybe I’m hoping to be taken more seriously as a writer,” he said.

  Cynthia flapped a heavily bangled forearm. “Forget that BS. Literary respectability? Hah! If you’re making it big time in genre, who needs reviews in the New Yorker? Believe me, those guys churning out the Great American Novel every five years, they’d kill for your sales figures.”

  Food arrived: great rectangular slabs of marinated sirloin and cubic chunks of boneless rib, along with a selection of banchan, little vegetable side dishes. As Theo and Cynthia tucked in, his phone rang. He checked the screen and thumbed Reject. It probably wasn’t important. Voicemail would do.

  “Glad to know I take priority over whoever that was,” Cynthia said.

  “Always, Cynth. So, don’t keep me in suspense. How did it go with Simon & Schuster?”

  “Congratulations, Mr Stannard. You are now in possession of a brand spanking new two-book deal.”

  She raised her glass of mineral water, and Theo clinked it with his diet soda. Cynthia was a recovering alcoholic, ten years sober, and out of deference to her Theo only ever ordered soft drinks in her presence.

  “Advance?”

  “Mid-six-figures per book is the offer, but I’m going to hold out for an extra hundred K for each. They want to keep you, and they know Random House are sniffing around. That’s mainland only. We retain overseas rights, of course.”

  “Of course. And they don’t mind that only one of the books is a Jake Killian novel?”

  “Jake’s the moneymaker, no question, but S&S like the synopsis for The Golden Thread very much, and they’re willing to take a gamble. The idea of an Ancient Greek murder mystery tickles them. They think it could turn into a series – a second string to your bow. Something maybe to fall back on, if the Jake Killians ever start losing traction, which they won’t. I’ve got to ask, though. We know you’re a god among contemporary crime writers...”

  “Well, not quite.”

  “Ah, modesty. I used to know what that was. Good thing you have me to blow your trumpet for you.” She had a dirty laugh. “That came out wrong.”

  “It’s easier someone else blowing your trumpet than blowing it yourself.”

  Now her laugh was positively filthy. “The issue I’m trying to address here is, you’ve not done historical fiction before. Between us, are you sure you’re up to it?”

  “Pretty sure,” Theo said. “I can do the research. And like I always say when giving pro tips, if you can’t find a suitable fact, just make one up. Nobody –”

  His phone rang again. He checked. Same caller. As before, he rejected.

  “I’m not normally this popular,” he said.

  “Did I see that name right?” Cynthia had glimpsed the caller ID. “Chase Chance?”

  “Yup
.”

  “As in the Chase Chance? The Monster Hunter fella? From TV?”

  “Yup.”

  “I didn’t know you knew him.”

  “I do.”

  “How long?”

  Almost my entire life, and that’s longer than you think. “A while.”

  “Good friends?”

  “Guess you could say so.”

  Cynthia leaned a little closer, dropping her voice. “Does he have representation? I mean, he must do. He’s had at least three tie-in titles published. What I’m asking is, is he happy with his agency? Maybe he’d like to step things up, take it to the next level.”

  That was Cynthia. Forever hustling.

  “Lucky I’m used to you, Cynth,” Theo said. “Otherwise I might take offence, you working me to get another client.”

  “Girl’s gotta make her targets.”

  His phone beeped. Now a text. From Chase Chance.

  “Shit. Look, I’ll turn it off.”

  “Is that him again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, see what he has to say. He obviously needs to talk with you.”

  “Okay.”

  Theo pulled up the text.

  Call me. Urgent.

  He frowned.

  “What’s he after?” Cynthia said.

  “Don’t know. Mind if I deal with it?”

  She waved assent. “Just don’t forget to ask him about his agent. You know he can’t do better than me.”

  Theo exited the restaurant, and the humid Manhattan heat hit him like a wall, stifling after Seoul Food’s air-conditioned interior. The street outside was busy as only Greenwich Village at midday in the summer could be – nose-to-tail taxis, swerving bike messengers, sidewalks crammed with hipsters, wage slaves and tourists. He punched up Chase’s name from his contacts list and pressed Call.

  “Yeah, Theo, you get my voicemails?”

  “Didn’t listen to them. Thought you could give it to me straight, whatever it is. Where are you?”