Read Timothy Boggs - Hercules Legendary Joureneys 02 for Free Online

black cloth tail and spun the man off his feet, released the tail, and sent him tumbling down the slope into the high grass below.
    "Get..." The leader glanced around, looked at Hercules, and threw up his hands in despair just before he took off down the road. The others soon followed, although not nearly as fast.
    When the last of the bandits vanished around the far bend, Iolaus said, "Wow," with a breathless grin.
    "Now that's a way to break up a day."
    "Not very good, were they?" Hercules said, realizing as he examined himself that he hadn't even broken a sweat.
    "Oh, no, they were great," Iolaus assured him, posing with hands on his hips. "We were just better, that's all."
    Hercules nodded. "Yeah. Sure."
    He started up the road, shaking his head. Iolaus was wrong, of course; the bandits hadn't been great at all. To call them mediocre would have been kind. Pathetic, in truth, was more like it. He hoped they didn't intend to make their living as thieves; with skills such as theirs, they would undoubtedly starve before the week was out. Or kill each other off by mistake.
    Several hours later they made camp beside a shallow creek. Iolaus hunted their supper and cooked it over a low fire. Stars pricked the night sky. A faint splash disturbed the water.
    "I'd like to know something," Iolaus said as they bedded down for the night.
    "What?"
    "Why do they always come one or two at a time?"
    Hercules frowned.

    "I mean, there were ten of them, Herc. Ten! If they had all come at us at once, we would have had a harder time of it."
    It was a point. It seemed that in most battles they found themselves in, the enemy tended to hold back its best advantage.
    "Maybe the next time we fight outnumbered, we should point it out to our opponents,' Hercules suggested as his eyes closed.
    "What, and get ourselves killed? Are you nuts?"
    Hercules laughed silently.
    A minute later Iolaus wondered if maybe they shouldn't sleep in shifts.
    Hercules grunted.
    "They may come back, you know. They might try to take us under cover of night. It would give them courage, not having to face me. Us."
    Hercules grunted.
    "I mean, they were pretty awful, when you think about it, but that doesn't mean they won't get lucky if we can't see them to fight them."
    Hercules rolled onto his side and draped an arm over his ear.
    It didn't work.
    "If we're asleep, they could capture us without much trouble. Or kill us."
    Hercules grunted, louder.
    "Tell you what—maybe I'll just sit up for a while. I'll wake you when I get tired."
    Hercules began to count to himself, betting he wouldn't reach fifty.
    When he reached twenty he heard the distinct sputter of Iolaus snoring.
    "Good night, friend," he whispered. "Sleep well."
    Emerald green and thick, a plain of low grass flowed to the horizon without a tree, without a flower.
    Nothing moved.
    The sky was too blue to look at, without a cloud or bird to mar its surface.
    Nothing moved.
    Slowly Hercules looked to his right, turning in a complete circle, fingers twitching uneasily at his sides.
    Nothing moved.
    Without the sun for guidance, he was lost.
    He took a step anyway, and his high woven boots made no sound in the grass, and the guards that protected his arms from wrist to elbow reflected no light.
    Nothing moved.
    No sense of time, no sense of distance. Neither the plain nor the sky changed as he walked, checking from side to side, checking behind him, checking above.
    Knowing he was being watched, and growing angry because he could not find the watcher.
    And nothing moved until he felt a faint rumbling beneath his soles, a rumbling that threw him off stride and forced him to stop.
    The sky darkened.
    The grass began to sway.
    Ahead of him the ground began to shift, to swell, to rise into a mound from which the grass fell like stones.
    The rumbling intensified, a stampede of invisible creatures much larger than cattle.
    The mound split open.
    The sky darkened further.
    A shadow rose slowly from the mound, thick and wide