Hero for Hire by C. B. Pratt Page A

delicious gifts, young, fresh and sweet. While my belly was full, he told me all the wonders that awaited me. So I agreed.”
    “How’s that working out for you?”
    The forked tongue flickered again as if to be rid of a foul taste. “You eat very delicious things, cream sauce and pomegranate jewels and those wonderful, wonderful stuffed grape leaves. But for the rest -- ugh! How can you stand it? You all smell so bad, and those tiny, cramped bodies, always too hot or cold....”
    With a sudden slashing leap, it curved around me so that I had to jump quickly to continue to face the giant head. It was studying me with even greater intensity than hunger. “Eurytos offered me that ugly body, the body of a friend of his. He had nothing better on hand. But you...you, Monkey, can never be cramped in that body.”
    “I’m not as big as I look.”
    “Big enough.” It struck again, throwing another loop. I jumped high, pulling in my legs to clear the coil. As I came down, I slashed, but the sword merely bounced off the overlapping scales along the outside.
    If I hadn’t much cared for the idea of being eaten, I liked being replaced inside my own body by that creature even less. Where would the collection of ideas, prejudices, and memories known to me as ‘Eno’ go? I had no interest in finding out. Metaphysics is not my arena.
    We were both breathing hard now, ready for battle. But it couldn’t spit for fear of wrecking my body and I couldn’t cut because it wouldn’t do any good anyway.
    “I don’t need sleep,” it said. “I have eaten well. I will run you to exhaustion then take the shell to Eurytos. He will re-animate your body and it will be mine.”
    “I’m not that kind of a fellow,” I said but I knew what it said was true. It could kill me that way.
    “Already your muscles are burning,” it said, weaving  that great head back and forth, fixing me with those half-human, half-slitted eye each as big as my face. “Your heart is thundering like the cattle of Geryon across the plains. And your thirst is a torment which cannot be slaked but which grows greater with each breath.”
    I laughed. “Save it,” I said. “I dined very well with much to drink and my only failing right now is a need to relieve myself. Which I will do as soon as your head lies beside your body.”
    Of course, this was just boasting. The sweat beaded along my hairline had already begun to gather and run down to my jaw. My tongue felt swollen and tended to stick to the roof of my mouth. I’m stronger than most, capable of great endurance, but I am mortal.
    The snake knew it and gave another hissing chuckle. “You are a poor liar. You’ll do better once I have mastered your form.”
    Apollo seemed to have parked his chariot close overhead for the heat of full noon poured down upon us. Time seemed to slow like resin dripping down a tree trunk. Even the buzzing of the cicadas had died. There was only the hot gold of the wheat-field, the weight of the day, and the pitiless glitter of my enemy’s eyes willing me to fall, to fail, to surrender. No friendly spirit of tree or waterfall appeared to save my skin as it had before the fight in the temple. Neither of us dared move now for the first strike would mean victory or defeat.
    Infinitely distant, infinitely lonely, almost beyond the gift of hearing, the harpy’s keening shriek tore the sky.
    And the snake flinched!
    “Damn that beast!” it snarled, which, to my mind, was the pot calling the kettle hard names. “As soon as that idiot boy Temas is dead, I’m doing to hunt that thing down and choke it.”
    “A pity you won’t have the chance.”
    It eased itself a little, side to side, never blinking or looking away. “Why doesn’t it bother you?”
    “Does it bother you?”
    “Of course it does. Beastly sound. We can hardly sleep at night in the camp. It seems to infest the air over there.”
    That was good information but it didn’t gladden my heart. The bride-money seemed