1.3 In Achaea

In which the Fates try to make atonement.

The giants’ bodies lay crumpled on the ground.

Klotho was bending to twist off the head of Agrios, her large shoulders tensing with the effort to tear the immense bones and muscles. She wrenched each giant’s head apart from its shoulders with a grunt, like a human twisting the head off a hen. Lakhesis handed her a knife from the ground to cut the last reluctant tendons. Klotho wrapped the heads in the rags of the giants’ pitiful clothing to carry back to Zeus.

Atropos felt as if she had awoken into nightmare. What had they done? She was stunned by the noise and the stench. Raw-necked birds and huge eagles were landing everywhere she looked, plunging into their feast. She stumbled over the jagged black rocks, following Klotho, to reach the pinnacle where Zeus now stood triumphant.

Klotho presented the heads, but the golden glow of Zeus’s compelling light had left her. She was tight-lipped, and angry. While he surveyed the pallid faces of the dead giants, Zeus looked thoughtful. He prodded the heads on the ground with his thunderbolt. The stench of burnt flesh rose up to their faces, and then he wafted it away.

A messenger came to recite the names of the dead gods from his forces.

Zeus frowned.

‘Did you kill these?’ He motioned to the messenger to recite the list again.

Atropos listened to the names. ‘Yes. All those. How else would they be dead, Zeus, if I had not ended their lives at the appointed time?’

They had only been small gods. They had been weak powers who had barely had the chance to grow into their strength as hillside deities or waterfall spirits. Zeus’s expression shifted. Atropos realised that he regretted the waste as briefly as he might have mourned the loss of a servant.