by Eric Flint
Two minutes into Lamont's explanation, Bes was growling ferociously. Three minutes later, after Lamont started in on telemarketers, the dwarf god was shaking his fists at the heavens and bellowing with fury.
* * *
Henri was looking old. His moustache and pointed little beard were as neat as ever, but his face was slightly gray instead of its normal florid hue. He'd barely nibbled on some pastries and that was all that he'd eaten. In eight days he'd lost weight, and gained years. And most alarming of all he seemed too exhausted to needle McKenna. Mac found himself tiptoeing around the man, on his visits to the sickroom at the farm. But the Frenchman's mind was still strong. He was curious. Two of the men from the farm had helped him, largely carried him, up to the meadow.
"How are you doing, Henri?" asked McKenna, more solicitously than he would have ever thought possible.
"I am afraid that I am not so well." Henri sighed, and summoned a grimace of a smile. "I always wished to die in France, with an empty bottle of Chateau Lafitte in my hand. Ideally, of course, with an angry husband in hot pursuit also. But I would settle for the empty bottle."
He sighed again. "Not likely now, I fear. But if I die . . . well, I have spent the last few days writing down as much as I can remember of our gallant band's adventures. I have them here." He patted his breast pocket. "Maybe they will read of our deeds, at least."
Mac was rather taken aback by the Frenchman's morbid assessment of his health. "Well, you're on your feet, anyway. Look, maybe we'll all get back alive."
Henri smiled weakly. "You Americans are incurable optimists. It is very irritating." He sighed again. "How is the balloon going, Mac?"
McKenna was just pointing to the half-inflated trial balloon when he caught sight of the chariots in the sun.
"Quick, into the bushes!" McKenna shoved the Frenchman into the cover of the evergreens.
40
The rage of Olympus.
The gods must have gotten wind of what was happening here in Lydia. The concept of a preemptive strike was obviously not a new one.
After what had happened on Lesbos, those who opposed Olympus had been forewarned. "Scatter and take cover!" yelled Mac.
He and Cruz had talked this over with Jerry before the rest had left. The baseline answer was that the immortal ancient Greek gods could be hurt, but not killed—by mortals anyway. So—make time. Let everyone get away, scatter and regroup.
The chariots of the gods were two-wheeled affairs, looking like they came out of a low-budget remake of Ben Hur. They had all the aerodynamics of bricks. Their godly riders clung to the slow and bucketing vehicles. In the lead was unmistakably Zeus, deep-browed, his noble head surrounded by windswept dark ringlets. His robes of majesty streamed in the wind. In one hand he clutched a thunderbolt—in the other the chariot and reins. His noble expression reminded Mac of a kid heading for the dentist. The next chariot had two occupants, both female. One of them wore a suitably hammered breastplate . . .
Must be that bitch Athena, he thought. The goddess riding beside her, judging from her expression, was having a bad hair day. Maybe that was Hera. The chariot behind had some guy in armor and another god, stark naked, admiring his reflection in his sword blade . . . Ares and Apollo.
* * *
The first of the "time-makers" was about to get a test run. The meadow was a long, narrow one, with the rocky ridge on one side and a small, tree-fringed stream on the other. To land their huge and heavy chariots, the gods would be obliged to come in down the length of the meadow. Which, as the half-inflated balloon was at one end, meant coming in from the south. The first of the chariots skimmed in to a bouncy landing, to Mac's dismay. The second touched down just a bit further back. Its progress was more pleasing to McKenna, if a lot less pleasing to the horses and charioteer.
The trench had been well hidden with a layer of sods on top of thick strands of cobweb. The horses, galloping like fury, simply kicked aside the sods and made the far bank, hooves scrabbling. Mac was glad of that. He was quite fond of horses. The chariot didn't make the ditch. It went down into the angled stakes. The next chariot tried to avoid the ditch. The horses did better on the cornering than the chariot. They dragged it off, on its side, sans occupants. Then the lead chariot hit defense two. A rope at neck height. A spider-silk rope half an inch in diameter. Only Mac had miscalculated on Zeus' height. The rope hit the mighty arm holding the chariot rail.
Then he realized just how strong Zeus the thunderer really was. The rope was tied to two medium-sized oak trees—that were just ripped out by their roots. The entire rail and the front half of the chariot split off in a shriek of tearing bronze. The once peaceful glade was full of the screaming of horses and the fury of gods.
Right. A little bit of smoke and fire and it was asses-and-elbows time. The catapults weren't much to write home about. Bent-over limbs with small pottery vessels for missiles. But they didn't have to deliver the mixture of rosin, alcohol, green grass and fire very far.
As the first one arced into a column of smoky fire, McKenna saw something that made his blood run cold.
Arachne. She'd been on the top of the balloon doing some last-minute sewing when the raid had begun. She was now lying sprawled in the middle of the grass in front of the balloon. Just then, she sat up groggily, much to Mac's relief. At a flat-out sprint he ran towards her.
One of Zeus' thunderbolts exploded at his heels. He still had a good eighty yards to go. Thirty to Arachne, fifty to the shelter of the stream. He wasn't going to make it.
"HEY, YOU! YOU WITH THE UGLY BEARD!" Henri Lenoir stepped out of the bushes twenty-five yards down from where McKenna had begun his run.
McKenna didn't pause to watch. He just snatched up Arachne, and kept running. He heard the thunderbolt, though.
"Ya! Missed. Cowardly pig!" yelled Henri. "Come over here and fight like a man, if it is that you dare!"
* * *
They dove over the lip. McKenna couldn't resist peering back to see if the old Frog had managed to get away. If they both did, he, Jim McKenna, was going to have to eat some crow. The Frenchman had done this simply to save their lives.
But Henri had not bolted. Apparently, the sick Frenchman had decided he had no chance of evading Zeus anyway. So he just stood there, rigid as any statue, his arms folded on his chest and a sneer on his face as the livid Zeus stalked down on him. Even from here Mac could see a black, five-sided pyramid on the pendant that hung among the god's tangle of dark-golden chest hair. Henri twitched his mustachios arrogantly.
Then the Frenchman sniffed and languidly waved his nose. "You have a bouquet of the most terrible. Why is it that you stink so? Have your bowels turned to water at the thought of a real fight?"
McKenna scrambled to his feet. "I've got to help the crazy bastard . . . "
Just then Henri answered Zeus' incoherent bellow of rage with a splendid Gallic gesture which transcended all language barriers.
Zeus was so angry with this mere mortal that the lightning bolt missed. Barely. Three yards behind Henri, the earth leapt and exploded. Zeus drew back his arm to fling his great spear instead.
But Henri had disappeared. All that remained was one, once-beautiful, Italian leather shoe.
Mac wished like hell he could have given the guy his bottle of wine, too.
"We must go!" Arachne tugged him by the shoulder. "Quickly!"
"Yeah. But what a guy! What a guy!"
She nodded. "We can hide under those roots."
A willow tree had been somewhat undercut. The roots formed a roof overhead with a few inches' clearance between them and the water. From this bank they would be nearly invisible. The water was cold and clear. Nice for drinking. Lousy to hide in.
* * *
Only, by the sounds of it, the anger of the gods wasn't confined to this bank. Being discovered was clearly going to be terminal. Slowly terminal.
"We'll have to hide in the bottom of the pool," whispered Arachne.
Mac looked doubtful. "
How long can you stay down?"
"My spider body needs little air," she said quietly. "But come. I will arrange it so that you can breathe. Trust me."
He did. They went under. The bank they were sheltering under was deep. McKenna followed the wall, pulling himself down by the roots. The whole thing curved inwards away from the light. There, in a dim nest of roots, Arachne had already spread a net of web. She was brushing bubbles off the hairs on her back and legs into it. She pushed him towards it.
She obviously had delusions about how much air a human needed.
It looked like the last woman to come down here had the same delusions. Only this woman looked like she'd been happy about it. She was smiling, even if she was very obviously drowned. Well, wide-eyed naked women with their mouths open, fifteen feet down in the willow roots are dead. Sharing the water with a drowned body was suddenly too much for Mac. He grabbed for the roots.
And she grabbed him.
41
Getting fleeced.
The two-dragon craft crossed the corner of the Black Sea and began to drift towards the snow-topped mountains.
They set down in the stony mountainside, above the tree line. Before them towered a sequence of mountains whose tops seemed to almost prick the sky. They'd set down because the unpredictable gusts and eddies of wind in the high valley had nearly splattered them on the rocks below.
Jerry shivered. It was bitterly cold up here, on a high spur looking down on a cascading river far below. In the shade, icicles still clung.
Liz, as was often the case, seemed able to ignore physical discomfort by thinking about biology. As they undid the net and pole arrangement, she asked: "If dragons are reptiles, then how come they live in the mountains?"
"Caufse it'fs easier to launch," said Smitar.
"Launch for lunch," agreed Bitar . . . "And what'fs for lunch?"
"They're pretty warm," said Lamont, battling with numb fingers to untie a knot. "I think that warm-blooded dinosaur theory is right on the money, myself."
Liz looked at him open-mouthed. "Where do you get all this stuff from, Lamont?"
The mechanic grinned. "Somebody at the Institute leaves their copies of Nature in the john."
Jerry chuckled. "Great mysteries of the world finally solved. Now we finally know who the hell steals my copy!"
* * *
They met the locals about three miles up the trail. The local bandits, anyway. They'd had a profitable session. A herd of fat-tailed sheep and several ponyloads of fleeces. And about half a dozen stumbling, miserable and terrified captives. Two women and several young boys.
Both parties took the other by surprise. "Brands!" yelled the bandit leader, a villainous-looking fellow wearing a greasy sheepskin coat and a helmet with rams' horns on it. Rams'-horn helmets were obviously quite the fashion around here, but his was the biggest.
Several of the bandits were carrying spears with bundles on the ends. In a trice, these were flaming bundles. This was dragon country and plainly the locals knew how to keep methane-farting dragons at bay. Several of the other bandits had already drawn bows.
"Get behind the dragons!" yelled Cruz. An arrow splintered against Smitar's scales.
They were in trouble. The bandits couldn't shoot them—yet—unless they tried with drop shots, but as soon as they had their sheep out of the way, they could use the flaming brands to drive off the dragons. And they outnumbered the snatchees by five to one.
Jerry's mind raced frantically, trying to think if there was some spell he'd obtained from Pan which could deal with the problem. Unfortunately, the goat-god's magical powers tended to be highly specialized. True, Jerry could give the bandits instantaneous sexual arousal . . . but somehow he felt that that might just be worse for Liz and Medea.
Rams'-horn helmet bellowed out another order. And into Jerry's mind an idea came.
* * *
"I've got to hand it to you, Jerry," said an awed Lamont. "It's not every day that you see a bunch of thugs taken out by rampaging, sex-mad sheep."
One minute a group of thirty grinning and very evil-looking bandits had been pushing their way through the sheep. The next moment a strange, hungry and wild-eyed look had come into those sheepish eyes. Perhaps seven of the thugs had not been wearing rams'-horn-bedecked helmets.
There must have been at least three hundred desperately unsatiated sheep in that herd.
Maaadness had overtaken them. It had also overtaken most of the bandits. Jerry could still see one man. He had made the safety of the cliff. He hadn't made it very far up, unfortunately for him. He was clinging to a ledge about eight feet off the ground, just above the bleating pack. Two of the shepherd boys were amusing themselves by pelting him with dung.
Several of the other bandits had gotten lucky and had managed to run over the cliff, before the sheep reached them.
The bandit chief had fared the worst. The patriarch ram of the flock didn't like competition from upstart humans with big horns.
Jerry shuddered. What the sharp hooves hadn't managed, the two once-captive women had done. Jerry looked at the spear he'd acquired from Arachne. The bronze edge was bloody. He shuddered again.
Well, one of the bandits without a rams'-horn helmet had chosen Jerry as a soft target, rather than Bes. Just because you're a murderous bandit doesn't mean you have to be stupid.
Jerry had simply reacted. Right now he couldn't say exactly how it had happened, but someway or another he'd skewered the man.
Cruz put a hand on his shoulder. "I see you're one of the guys that don't freeze up."
Jerry looked at the blood. For once it was his turn to be mystified. "Huh?"
The sergeant gave a half smile. "In contacts most men just don't react. They freeze up. We put a lot of time and effort into training that outa guys. It looks like you're one of the few that don't need training. It was him or you, Doc."
Jerry still found the blood . . . bloody.
* * *
The two women who had been captives looked fearfully at the newcomers, and cowered nervously against each other. "We're not going to hurt you. We promise. You're free," said Jerry soothingly.
They clung to each other.
"What is wrong with you?" snapped Medea. "You've just been rescued. Be grateful."
"They're going to rape us," said the younger woman, who was barely more than a girl. She looked terrified and on the verge of tears.
Medea laughed slightly. "I promise you they will not," she said in a gentle voice. "The men are all foreigners from a place called America. They have weird customs, but I think it's a nice change myself."
"What are you going to do with us, then?" asked the older woman, plucking up her courage. She was not more than thirty, but already her face was lined from hard living and hard work.
"Nothing," said Jerry. "You're free to go. The boys can gather the sheep. I suppose that's all your stuff. Collect it and go home."
The two women goggled at him. The younger woman shook her head. "This America place. It must be very, very strange. You kill them and we get the loot? It is not usually done that way, here."
"Sorry. But that's the way we do things. Now, can we get past the ponies? We've got a Titan to free."
The smallest shepherd boy tugged at the older woman's sleeve. "Why is that man so dark, Mama? When all the others are white and blue?"
It was an accurate enough observation. "It's my natural color, son," answered Lamont. "And the blue on the rest of them is just because they're cold."
The woman smiled and clapped. "Aha! Cold! Timotar. You and the other boys collect the clothes from the bodies of Cholkar's band. Come on. Jump to it."
* * *
Jerry looked at the heavy sheepskin jacket the boy was handing him. He'd live through the blood on it. The shepherd boy had done his best to wipe it away. And Jerry'd become a lot less squeamish since coming to the Krim Ur-universes. But the black line of migrants pouring out of it . . .
Whether freezing to death wasn't better
than being parasitized to death was a moot point, at least while the two, brightly dressed, Colchian tribeswomen had such a nice fire going. Looking at Liz he saw a similar expression on her face. Her eyes narrowed as they always did when she was thinking.
"I say, Jerry. Those wild animal spells—do you think the size of the animals matters?"
Lamont looked at the line of hungry lice. He shuddered. "Believe me, Jerry. Those critters look really wild to me. We'd probably be better off with tigers. At least they'd just eat you alive and not eat you alive and give you diseases as well."
"Then let us try some game-driving spells . . . "
* * *
The jacket, overtrousers, scarf, fur hat and even the boots fit reasonably well; the leg wrappings that did duty as socks were now at least vermin-free, if not clean. The warmth seeping into his bones from being insulated from the wind outside was delightful. And so was the hot, spicy soup.
The Colchian tribeswomen had long since passed from fear into a state of bemused amazement. Lice were things you lived with . . . A life without them was unimaginable. Looting, rape, murder and servitude were facts of life. People who captured a pack train of stolen fleeces and a herd of sheep, and then told you to help yourself, were a totally unheard of experience. The women and their children weren't at all sure about what they were seeing here.
The older woman asked in a carefully artless voice. "And just whereabouts is this `America'?"
Cruz gestured vaguely. "It's quite a long way to the west."
Half an hour later they set off up the mountain, warmly dressed and certain they were heading in the right direction. That much the Colchian hill people could tell them. The Titan was up there. Up where no man ever went, but the snow lay eternal.
An errant snatch of wind brought voices up the mountain.
"And where will we go now, Mama?"
"First back to your Uncle Sebatia, Timmi. Then we are going west."
Cruz halted. Looked guilty and all set to turn back downhill. "I didn't mean it like that . . . "