Now – many months after Perseus’s first day fishing – as she swept the sand from her floor, she still found herself looking out at the water, keeping one eye on his boat until it was too small to see. But her fear had subsided, and she watched from habit as much as anxiety. Her boy went to sea, unafraid. His mother was unafraid too, until the day the men arrived.
Athene
No one remembered who started the war, but it was definitely one of the giants. Athene had heard it was Porphyrion, trying to rape Hera. But someone else said it had been Eurymedon. And then there was the other claim, that the attack on Hera happened during the war, so couldn’t have caused it. In that case, the war had been started by Alcyoneus pilfering cattle that belonged to Helios, the sun god. Looking at Helios’s perpetually smug expression, Athene thought, you wouldn’t imagine he had it in him to go to war over anything. And who cared about cows enough to start a war? She stroked the wing feathers of her owl jealously.
Whoever was to blame, one of the children of Gaia – whom the gods all knew to be boastful and arrogant – had behaved in such a way that even their mother could not save them, though she tried. The giants were determined to offend Zeus, Athene thought. Hurling rocks at Olympus was one thing, but setting oak trees aflame and sending those heavenwards was a mistake. Zeus was fond of oak trees.
The Olympian gods would descend to Phlegra for a battle Athene relished. The giants were a serious threat: huge, aggressive and with the immense power of their mother on their side. Everyone knew that giants were impervious to attacks from the gods, and could not be killed. But the gods consulted an oracle and found there was an exception they could exploit. If a mortal fought alongside the gods, the giants were vulnerable after all. So the only thing the gods needed was a mortal willing to fight giants: one who was loyal or foolish, or ideally both.
Hera suggested one of Zeus’s sons before any of the others had time to open their mouths. Zeus looked a little put out （Hera had been trying to kill this one since he was a baby, which not everyone considered a fair fight）。 But they did need someone and he couldn’t protect them all. He sent Athene to ask him herself.
She shimmered into view among the tall pine trees that grew outside the man’s palace, but even if you had been looking straight at them, you wouldn’t have seen her appear. She wasn’t there and then she was, and it seemed as though she always had been. She found him training in his courtyard, his skin painted with oil and coated with red dust to protect against the sun. She paused for a moment to admire his biceps as he raised himself up and down.
‘Zeus needs you,’ she said. The man collapsed to the ground, and Athene tried not to snigger.
‘Are you . . .?’ The man grabbed at his throat as though someone were choking him.
Athene frowned, trying to make out the words. ‘Am I . . .? A goddess? Yes, Athene. Good to meet you. Could you come and help us fight the giants?’
The man nodded vigorously, but still couldn’t speak.
‘You’ll probably die,’ Athene said. It was best to be honest, she felt. ‘But we need a mortal and we chose you, so it will be a very noble death.’
The man’s expression lost some of its enthusiasm.
‘And quick!’ she added. ‘If you get trodden on by a giant or a god – which wouldn’t be intentional on our part, incidentally, but in the heat of battle one of us might step in the wrong place and there you’d be . . . Well, would have been. Anyway, it would be painless. Probably very painful just before it was painless, but not for long.’
The man looked her up and down in confusion.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m actually quite a lot bigger than I look to you. But I didn’t want to scare you so I decided I would appear to you mortal-sized. I can change my appearance at will, you see. We all can. I wonder how Zeus appeared to your mother. Well, we probably don’t have time to get into that, do we? Because there’s a war we need your help with and it can’t start until you and I get there.’
‘Where?’ the man asked. Athene almost squealed with delight.
‘Listen to that!’ she said. ‘You can talk. I thought perhaps you were mute for some reason. But you can talk quite well if it’s just one word at a time. Well done. We fight the giants at Phlegra. I’ll take you. Are you ready? I suppose you are, aren’t you? It’s not like you can really prepare yourself for fighting giants. If you’ve got any weapons you might want to gather those up, I suppose. Hurry, though.’
The man ran to a large wooden chest in the corner of his courtyard and grabbed a spear and a sword, a bow and arrows. He held them with practised confidence, and Athene thought perhaps Hera hadn’t been wrong when she suggested they use this one.
‘Wonderful,’ she said. ‘Come on. If you do die, I’ll put in a word for you to get a constellation. Promise.’
Gaia
While Athene was recruiting the mortal, Gaia was plotting against the gods. She too had heard about the oracle, about the decisive role that would be played in the upcoming conflict by some human. She scoffed at the very idea she might fear such a man, given that he and all his fellow mortals depended on her for their lives and homes. But she decided her offspring might need help, just to be on the safe side. She knew that somewhere in her green expanse was the herb she needed. She just couldn’t quite remember where. Was it in the mountains? Did it grow under the trees? Near the sea? Among the crops? If only she could think. Gods weren’t used to doing things in a hurry. She needed a little time to look around for it: she could almost smell it – a tangy scent that made her think it must grow deep in the forest among the spores and the fallen pine cones. But did it flower? What colour was it? She began her search, aware that her children’s lives depended on her.
But she had barely begun before she was plunged into darkness. She looked up, blinking: had Helios travelled across the sky more quickly today? Not a sign of the sun. She looked the other way: then where was Selene? There were plants that only flowered by the light of her moon. Was that what she was looking for? But there was no moon so she could not find it. Angered, she turned again to look for Eos. If Helios was absent and Selene was missing, it must be almost dawn. Her pink streaks must be just about to light up the sky. Which would give Gaia enough time to find this precious plant. But the sky didn’t lighten, and it did not turn red. Gaia had little idea of the passage of time – even less so than the other gods, perhaps – but she knew the sky had been black for too long. And she knew what had happened.
Zeus had moved against her. She cursed his name. The sun, the moon and the dawn were all hiding. By the time it was light enough to see, he would have stolen the plant for himself. She wept fat, flooding tears. Her children were about to go into battle unaided against all the Olympian gods. And now they could not even rely on her protection.
Gigantomachy
It was the mortal who made the first strike. He and Athene had arrived on the Phlegra peninsula; she was only just getting a sense of where the battle would be fought. She was standing on a broad high plain, a dark curve of trees falling away to her left and a steep drop of scrub down the hillside to her right. Far ahead of her was a gentle slope but she could not see it, because between her and its distant trees, the giants had made their battle line. These children of Gaia were vast, as big as the Olympians, near enough. And ranged out across the plain they would intimidate anyone except the gods they had come to fight. Huge torsos, strong arms, bulging thighs. But then – Athene looked again, she had heard them called snake-footed by her father but she hadn’t realized what this would look like – each thigh became a scaly, muscular coil. The giants had the heads and bodies of men but they slithered along the ground. Athene was both appalled and compelled by their monstrosity. This was the war she had been born to fight, this and every one that came after it. She could feel the thrill rising within. The giants drew their strength from the earth, from their mother: she knew that. And yet she felt as though she was doing the same. The fertile soil beneath her feet was full of power, full of life. And all of it was for her. She lifted her head; the sun glinted off her helmet. She turned, looking for the owl who was always perched on her shoulder, or on a branch nearby. She did not want him to be scared by what was to come. But then she remembered, she had left her owl on Olympus, murmuring to him that he should stay there out of harm’s way. The thought of him being injured made her almost dizzy with rage. If one of those snake-giants even thought about her owl she would—