A stone struck the ridge below Zeus and took the path away.
For a moment he could see through the place where he had meant to set his foot. Then the broken rock vanished into the valley, and its thunder climbed back through the dust. Across that valley, the Titans still held Othrys.
Zeus raised his hand. Lightning whitened the mountain opposite. In that brief light he saw the enemy standing among their shattered heights. When darkness returned, they were still there.
Ten years.
He made his way back over the crest of Olympus. Hera waited above the broken path, her cloak grey with dust. Behind her, Poseidon was hauling himself up the rock. The others were coming. Zeus counted them before he looked again towards Othrys.
“Tomorrow?” Hera asked.
It was the question they had brought back from every battle. He had always had an answer for it.
Below them, the last stones settled.
Beneath the Roots
Once, their father had swallowed them.
Hestia first, then Demeter and Hera, then Hades and Poseidon: each child taken from Rhea before it could grow strong enough to threaten him. Earth and Heaven had foretold that a son would overthrow Cronus. He had meant to keep that son inside him.
Zeus had never known that darkness. His mother had hidden him on Crete and given Cronus a stone bundled in a newborn’s wrappings. The stone had gone down. Zeus had grown.
Later, with Earth’s counsel, he had forced his father to yield what he had swallowed. The stone had come first. Then his brothers and sisters had returned to the light, deathless and alive. He had freed the Cyclopes too, and their gift had burned in his hand: thunder, lightning, the weapon that made the mountains answer him.
He had thought they could win.
Now, on Olympus, he lowered that hand to the ground. Fine grit trembled beneath his palm. Far below the battlefields, something moved with a slower weight.
“My children are still underneath you,” said Earth.
Zeus stayed where he was. His siblings drew close enough to hear.
He knew of those children. Three brothers, older than his father’s reign: Cottus, Briareus and Gyes. Their own father, Heaven, had bound them below the earth, frightened by their strength. Each had a hundred arms and fifty heads. Ages had passed over the place where they lay.
“They are bound,” Zeus said.
“Bring them into the light.”
Beyond the ridge, Othrys stood black against the sky. Another ten years might leave it standing there. Another hundred.
“With them,” Earth said, “you will win.”
Zeus lifted his palm. He looked at Hera, then at the others.
“We go down.”
They left the wind behind them.
The way led under the stones of the mountains, under the damp places where water gathered, under the reach of roots. Zeus went ahead, with the pale flicker of lightning in his hand. Sometimes its light found a wall beside his face. Sometimes it reached nothing at all.
Behind him came the scrape of feet, then silence as they stopped and listened. Even here the war could be heard, a dull knocking through the world above.
At last his light touched a chain.
He followed it with his eyes. It crossed the darkness, passed around a wrist larger than his own body, and disappeared among other chains. Beyond them lay a hand. Another hand rested beneath it, and another. Faces emerged where Zeus had thought there was only rock: closed mouths, lowered brows, eyes turning towards the small brightness he carried.
One of the hands moved. The sound of its fetter ran away into the dark.
Zeus stepped nearer.
“Cottus. Briareus. Gyes.”
His voice returned to him from several directions.
“We have come to bring you out.”
He set himself to the bonds. Beside him his brothers and sisters worked, their shapes appearing and disappearing as the lightning stirred. One fastening gave way. A great arm slipped free and lay motionless. They went on to the next.
There were so many.
As the chains loosened, the brothers began to move. Hands braced against stone. Heads lifted. The cavern filled with the slow sound of bodies that had not stood upright for an age.
Zeus backed towards the way out. The light in his hand climbed over the freed figures and could not reach their full height.
“Come.”
The ground shook beneath their first steps.
The Answer of Cottus
At the mouth of the earth, Cottus stopped.
Daylight lay across the stone before him. He put a hand into it, then turned the hand over. Zeus stood a little way beyond and waited while the enormous fingers opened.
Behind Cottus, Briareus and Gyes crowded towards the brightness. At last all three came out beneath the sky.
They had strength enough to rise, but the long confinement clung to them. They settled on the mountainside, and their many arms rested heavily upon the ground. Zeus brought nectar and ambrosia. His siblings carried more, passing the food among those vast hands.
For a while there was only eating, and the wind moving freely around them.
Then Gyes lifted his head. Several of his hands closed upon the rock beside him. Stone broke beneath his fingers. Briareus straightened, and the shadow of his body stretched far down the slope.
Cottus looked towards Othrys.
Zeus put down the vessel he had carried.
“Our father still holds that mountain,” he said. “We have fought him and the Titans for ten years. We cannot finish it.”
Cottus turned towards him. All around Zeus, hands that could have covered him lay open on the stone.
“We brought you out of the dark,” Zeus said. “Now I ask you to stand with us.”
Cottus drew one hand across the place where a fetter had rested. The mark remained. He looked from it to Zeus.
“We thought we would never leave it.”
The wind pulled at Zeus’s cloak. He waited.
“You came,” Cottus said. “We will come with you.”
Behind Zeus his siblings broke into a shout. Briareus rose. Gyes rose beside him. Cottus planted his hands upon the mountainside and lifted himself to his feet, and Zeus had to step back to see the sky.
The Open Sky
The Titans saw them coming.
Across Othrys their ranks gathered and closed. They had held through ten years of thunder. Now they stood against the three immense shapes advancing beside the children of Cronus.
Cottus bent and took up a rock. Other hands reached past it for others. Briareus and Gyes did the same, until the stones they held seemed a second broken mountainside raised above the first.
Zeus moved forward with his brothers and sisters.
The first missiles crossed the space between the armies.
Rock struck rock. The sea beyond the mountains rang with the blows, and the ground lurched beneath Zeus. He caught himself and went on. Above him the many hands were moving; ahead, the Titans answered. The air filled with hurtling stone.
A crash came from behind him. Olympus shook to its foundations.
He looked back just long enough to see its ridges moving through the dust. Then another impact drove the breath from the air, and he turned again towards the enemy.
They had not broken.
Zeus opened his hand.
The lightning gathered there, fierce enough to take the colour from the rocks around him. He had carried it through year after year of battle. Now he let its whole strength loose.
The bolt crossed the valley. Another followed before its thunder had ended. Then another.
Fire ran over the earth. Trees flared along the slopes; beyond them, vapour rose from the sea. The light struck the Titans full in the face. Zeus saw them turn away from it, arms raised against a brightness that passed between their fingers.
He hurled again.
Heat rolled back over him. The sky rang as though it were falling upon the ground. For an instant he could distinguish neither mountain nor sea, only the white track of the weapon and the dark figures caught before it.
Beside him, Cottus stepped forward.
Zeus heard the rock beneath those feet give way. He saw the hundreds of arms draw back, each bearing its weight. Briareus and Gyes stood with their brother. Above the glare, their stones darkened the sky.
Three hundred rocks came down upon the Titans.
The mountain disappeared.
The noise went on after Zeus could see nothing. He stood with his arm outstretched, waiting for the shapes on Othrys to rise through the dust again.
This time they did not rise.
Cottus was already moving into the broken ground. His brothers followed. Through the settling cloud Zeus saw hands reaching, closing, binding. The Titans struggled beneath them, still mighty, still deathless. Their strength could no longer lift the weight that had fallen upon them.
Zeus lowered his arm.
Where the enemy had stood for ten years, the Hundred-Handed were fastening chains.
The Bronze Gates
They took the defeated Titans below the earth.
Down beyond the places where roots could reach, beyond the deep foundations of the sea, lay Tartarus. There was no dawn there. The gloom pressed against the captives as they were brought into it, and the sound of their bonds followed them into the gulf.
Cronus went among them. His children remained outside.
Zeus watched until the darkness hid his father. Then he turned to Poseidon.
The bronze gates stood ready. Poseidon fixed them across the entrance, set them firm, and drew them shut. For a moment the last narrow opening showed nothing but blackness. Then bronze met bronze.
Cottus took his place before the gates. Briareus and Gyes stood with him, their hands free, guarding those who could no longer come out.
Zeus laid his palm against the rock.
One last tremor passed through it. He waited there until it stopped.