Another man fired. The grenade shot between the stamping legs of the horses and into the exit tunnel behind them, detonating with a bang followed by the crunch of falling rocks.

“Stop!” Corvus shouted. “You’ll block the tunnel!” Bertillon and Komosa looked back at him in disbelief. “Use bullets, not grenades! Destroy the legs!”

The three men with rifles exchanged glances, then did as they were ordered and switched their attack. Bullets blazed from the weapons, chipping and cratering the statues and spraying debris in all directions. The sharp metal hoof was blown from one of the pounding legs, but the jagged spear of stone that remained appeared just as lethal.

Komosa took out a large pistol as the others backed towards the entrance. “What are their weak spots?” he demanded over the radio. “How do we stop them?”

Sophia drew her own gun and pressed it against Nina’s head. “Well? Answer him! How did Hercules kill them?”

“He didn’t kill them-” Nina began, before being interrupted by a scream from the chamber.

A bullet had ricocheted off the statues and hit Bertillon in his right thigh, dropping him bloodily to the floor. One of the other men went to drag him away, but jumped back as shrapnel from the third man’s shots scythed past his face. By the time he recovered, the horses had reached the fallen man-

Bertillon screamed again, his agonized howl cut off within moments as the stamping feet trampled over him and tore him to pieces, the statues turning red with splattered blood. Nina looked away in horror, and even Chase was repulsed. Lumps of shredded flesh were flung into the air to slap down before the remaining three men.

Sophia aimed her gun at Chase. “How did he stop them?” she yelled at Nina. “In the other version of the legend? Tell me or Eddie dies!”

Nina gave Chase a despairing look, then acquiesced. “He killed Diomedes and fed him to his own horses. Once they’d been fed, they calmed down and Hercules was able to take them!”

Sophia turned to the entrance, where Komosa and the two other men had their backs to the portcullis-the horses were only fifteen feet away and still coming. “Joe! It’s the mouths-you have to feed them with something!”

“Like what?” Komosa demanded.

“There’s plenty of meat in there!”

Komosa was puzzled, then realized what she meant. With a disgusted look, he picked up Bertillon’s left forearm, the hand flopping as he lifted it.

The mouths of the horses kept chomping, sharp teeth glistening in the light. Every time they opened, they revealed a hole beyond, a channel curving down inside each statue.

Komosa pulled back his arm to make a throw, hesitating to get the timing right-then flung the severed limb into the mouth of the nearest horse.

It caught on the teeth, hanging for a moment as the mouth snapped shut-then dropped out of sight into the hole as the jaw opened again. Komosa and the others backed against the wall. The horses kept advancing… then slowed, the thundering gallop of their legs falling to a canter before stopping, barely four feet from the portcullis. Something rattled overhead. One of Corvus’s men tried to lift the gate, and this time found that it moved.

Sophia whirled on Nina and punched her hard in the face, knocking her to the floor. Enraged, Chase stepped forward, but found guns thrust against his chest. “If you hold anything back again,” Sophia snarled down at Nina, “I won’t just kill Eddie. I’ll cut him apart, piece by piece, and make you watch every second of it. Am I clear?”

Nina spat out blood. “Crystal,” she groaned.

“Good. Now get up. There are three more trials.” Sophia paused thoughtfully, then looked across at Chase. A malevolent smile grew on her face. “Uncuff him,” she ordered one of the men.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” asked Corvus.

Sophia’s smile widened. “He’s going to need his hands free.”

Nina stood, a hand pressed against her cut lip. “What are you doing?”

“I’m giving you an incentive to work as quickly and accurately as possible,” Sophia told her. “Because Eddie’s going to be leading the way. If you make a mistake… he dies.”

Which way?” Chase said into his headset. The winding tunnel had reached another junction. “Left or right?”

“Left,” said Nina through the earpiece after a moment.

“You sure?”

“Will you stop asking me that? Yes, I’m sure.”

“Just checking.” He took a step down the left passage, then looked back. Komosa watched him from about twenty feet behind, a silver Browning longslide pistol with a laser sight in one hand. Past him, Chase could see the flashlight beams of the rest of the party.

Komosa waved the gun for him to keep moving. Chase shot him a foul look, then continued down the next passage.

It didn’t take long before his light picked out something new. “Okay, looks like another trial,” he reported. “What’s next on the list?”

Another pause from Nina. “The apples of the Hesperides.”

Chase rolled his eyes. “What, I’m going to be attacked by giant apples?”

“There’s only one way to find out, Eddie,” Sophia cut in mockingly. “In you go.”

He glanced back to see the smiling Komosa pointing the gun at him. Huffing, Chase entered the chamber.

Unlike the long rooms that had housed the previous trials, this one was square. The floor was laid out in a grid of light and dark tiles like a chessboard, each tile around five feet to a side. The grid itself measured nine squares by nine, a light tile in each corner. Four stone columns carved to resemble trees, a squat metal cage at the top of each, rose to chest height on the light tiles halfway between the center of the grid and the corners. At the far side of the room beyond the chessboard was a figure whom even Chase, with his limited knowledge of mythology, recognized as Atlas, holding the heavens on his shoulders. In this case, the heavens were represented by a large globe of copper or bronze. A pair of rails curved down from behind the statue’s shoulders to the floor.

“Eddie, what do you see?” Nina asked.

Chase described the scene. “I don’t see any apples, though. How does the story go?”

“Atlas guarded the garden of the Hesperides. Hercules wasn’t able to reach the apples himself, so he offered to take the weight of the heavens for a while so Atlas could get them for him. Once Atlas got the apples, he decided to deliver them himself for a reward, but Hercules tricked him into taking back the heavens by saying that he wanted to adjust his cloak to get more comfortable, so if Atlas could just hold them for a moment…”

“So Atlas was thick as shit, then.” Chase scanned the room again. “The globe looks like it moves, so… ah, I get it. I’m supposed to shove the globe off his shoulders so Atlas gets the apples somehow, then I have to roll it back up the rails onto his shoulders again to get out.”

“I doubt that the statue’s going to come to life and collect the apples for you,” Sophia said. “There must be more to it.”

“I’m still working on the text,” Nina told him. “It’s like the description of the Augean stables-it’s a puzzle, a test of wits rather than fighting skills, so it’s more involved than the others. I just need time to transcribe and translate it.”

“Time is in short supply, Dr. Wilde,” said Corvus impatiently. “Chase, go to one of the columns, see if the apples are inside it.”

“I’d rather wait,” Chase said testily. He looked back at the entrance, seeing Komosa signaling with the Browning for him to go on. “But I guess that’s not an option, is it? Oh well, let’s grab some Golden Delicious.”

He moved towards the first column on the left side of the room, stepping onto a dark tile-

“Eddie, stay still!” Nina shrieked through the headset, but too late.