by Kevin Hearne
“Not bad at all,” Granuaile said.
“Here, let’s face him,” the huntress said.
They turned toward me, side by side, so that I could compare. Same height and build, same skin tone, though Granuaile had a few more freckles. The hair looked identical now. Up close you could tell that Flidais’s clothes were made of a different material, but from even a mild distance away it would simply be a black silhouette. Likewise, the minor differences in facial features could be easily distinguished up close, but from a distance in a combat situation, anyone would have trouble telling them apart.
“That’ll work,” I said. “How shall we proceed?”
“We will appear from the flanks one at a time and throw a knife before going invisible again. We will alternate until we run out of knives—we only have five total, correct?”
Granuaile nodded. She had three, to Flidais’s two.
“Then you should go first,” Flidais said. “To them it will appear that the same person is teleporting around them. Quite the distraction. Someone should be able to take advantage of that.” She arched an eyebrow at me and I nodded.
“If it turns out to be possible, target Diana,” I said. “She’s probably a bit more invested in this than Artemis is, and anything we can do to slow her down would be good.”
With all of us agreed, we separated to lie in wait. I continued deeper into the woods on the same path, Flidais took off to my left, and Granuaile melted into the trees with Oberon to my right. Once I’d traveled another fifty yards or so and turned around to face my trail, the directions were switched, with Granuaile waiting somewhere off to my left and Flidais to the right.
I drew Fragarach from its sheath and stood so that I had a good view through the trees. The first gray fingers of dawn were reaching through the canopy.
I cast camouflage as a helicopter chopped the air above the Home Park, probably very near where we had paused after the explosion. These days, British security would be prone to suspect any attack on Windsor Castle as a terrorist strike, and not even in their wildest theories would they suspect that someone was simply trying to slam a door in my face. The two men that Granuaile and I had rendered unconscious by Frogmore House would become a part of the investigation now, and satellite feeds from that area would be scoured. One frame we’d be there and then the next we’d disappear. That would make them start searching in an ever-widening circle, and eventually they’d get here—maybe would even spot Artemis and Diana as they were inbound. That would complicate matters. Our duel required privacy.
I shuddered merely thinking the word. This wouldn’t be a duel. There wouldn’t be any rules or codes. They would simply come at me knowing that the worst I could do to them was deliver some brief pain and annoyance.
How to placate an implacable foe? The Morrigan’s advice came back to me: Gaia loves us more than she loves the Olympians. The solution, I realized to my chagrin, was to take hostages—figuratively as well as literally. I am not a fan of taking hostages, since it’s an act of desperation and so rarely works, and when I kicked Bacchus through a portal it was more to save my life than anything else. But now I could see how the Olympians would view it as a hostage situation. Right now my leverage was tenuous: On the one hand they said they wanted Bacchus back, but on the other a couple of them were doing everything they could to snuff me. The leverage could change—they knew that if they took Oberon or Granuaile I’d give them anything. There might, however, be a way to increase my leverage—or to at least make them talk, which was the entire problem, from my point of view. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it had a better chance of working than expecting the Olympians to be reasonable without significant encouragement. It made me wonder why the Morrigan, or the rest of the Tuatha Dé Danann, or anyone else who’d ever had occasion to fight the Olympians, hadn’t thought of compelling them to talk. Perhaps in some cases it was simply not an option for them, but more likely it never occurred to them that there was any way of winning other than through force of arms.
Communicating with Albion through my tattoos, I introduced the elemental to the concept of storage units, in case my plan turned out to work.
Chapter 23
I should be confident of what’s to come, but somehow that confidence has fled. With Atticus here and Flidais too, and the theoretical aid of Herne—I’m not sure if he’s coming back—we ought to be a bit more evenly matched. But nothing went the way I expected it to the last time we tried to ambush the Olympians. I am strategically ill equipped to deal with them. Unless I land a powerful blow to the head with Scáthmhaide, I don’t have a way of taking them out. My knives will only annoy them, and they are so very annoyed with us as it is.
Atticus claims that I fight better when I’m angry, and if that’s true, I’m sure he’s right about the effect but not the cause. When I fight, I am occupied not only with the exertion but with the manner in which I win—a distinction that Atticus believes pointless. In battle there is no moral high ground, he says, only high ground that puts either you or your enemy at a disadvantage, depending on who occupies it. I privately disagree. People can lose—or die—with dignity. If I could give them that, I would. But I admit that I cease to care if my own dignity is wounded first. With anger comes a remarkable clarity of purpose, a stillness from which many paths to victory lie in front of me. Some paths are much less dignified than others, and the distance to travel much shorter. I need only choose one and take the first step. But I do not have that clarity of purpose yet with the Olympians, for I think they have some just cause to be incensed with us. Though messing with the dryads on Olympus was ultimately a successful stratagem—it gave us the time to complete my binding to the earth—I always knew we would have to pay a price for it.
Perhaps my insecurity stems from the knowledge that for the majority of this journey I have been watched and judged from afar by beings who, if my current run of luck holds true, may prove to be my adversaries someday. Or it could come from the fact that Oberon and I nearly lost our lives the last time—in almost no time at all.
My experience thus far has shown that battles in martial-arts and action movies always last longer than the real thing—especially when there are gods involved in the real thing. When you’re watching in the theater with your salted popcorn and high-fructose corn syrup, the battles linger and slow-motion sequences pay exquisite attention to killing blows and masks of rage, a celebration of violent death intended for people like me who (until recently) customarily do nothing more violent than buy butchered meat at the grocery store. Once the movie hero and villain finally have their showdown, they discover that they’re evenly matched and there is time for a long, beautiful silhouette sequence in front of a dawning sun as the soundtrack composer mashes down some organ keys and a boys’ choir sings whole notes until they drop dead from hypoxia. What makes such shots exceedingly silly is the weeks or months of preparation it takes the actors to rehearse the battle so that they don’t accidentally kill each other. If they wanted to truly go at it, they wouldn’t need to rehearse. Like all true battles on the individual level, it would be ugly and anguished and over before the cinematographer could focus. I have learned that our emotions and adrenal glands won’t have it any other way.
I heard the goddesses approach before I saw them, and that saved me from further worry. I had to clear my mind for combat as best I could. The rolling tumble of hooves announced their arrival at the edge of the clearing, where Flidais had left her chariot.
Lie down, Oberon, and their shots should sail high. Don’t attack unless they draw near.
You’re probably right.
I saw
flashes of movement and heard a hushed conversation, and then the huntresses left their chariots and proceeded on foot into the forest, bows ready. Artemis took point, studying the undergrowth ahead and watching the trail for booby traps, while Diana trailed behind, looking up and around for the expected ambush.
When Artemis reached the point where we’d split up, she said as much to Diana. Diana told her to keep moving ahead, so Artemis did. I let her pass, and when Diana drew even with me, I threw a knife at her head and shed my invisibility. The knife dropped in flight and sank into the side of her ribs, because her right arm had been raised to fire her bow, exposing her side. “Ha!” I shouted, then flipped the invisibility back on and hit the ground as an arrow from Artemis sailed overhead.
Flidais popped into view and threw from the other side, as Diana spun to face where I’d been. She’d just grasped the hilt of my blade to yank it out when Flidais’s knife thunked somewhere in her back, missing the quiver. Another “Ha!” echoed in the forest, and Artemis whiffed with her second arrow as Flidais disappeared.
That was my cue. Rising to my feet, I dropped my invisibility and tossed another blade into Diana’s chest. I blinked out and pitched forward to the ground, but Artemis didn’t take a shot this time. She was distracted, perhaps, by something near her—most likely Atticus sneaking up from behind.
Diana sank to her knees, and Flidais’s second knife overshot her. I rose, reappeared, and threw my last knife into the belly. She looked to be in genuine pain, but none of the wounds were fatal. She’d be up and fighting in no time once she pulled those free. We had to finish her before that, and I took three steps before something punched me below the ribs and knocked me back off my feet.
As I fell, I saw a black-feathered shaft sprouting from my abdomen. In my haste to lay out Diana, I hadn’t gone invisible or dropped to the ground. Atticus hadn’t distracted Artemis after all; instead, she had shot me. My real-life fight had been even shorter than I had feared.
Chapter 24
I was sneaking up on Artemis and had perhaps fifteen more yards to go when Oberon shouted in my mind:
I yelled “No!” and tumbled forward as Artemis whirled around and loosed an arrow overhead. Realizing that I had already drawn too close to her for archery, she drew a hunting knife and threw her bow in my direction as I came up out of my somersault. The bow did no harm as it bounced off me, but it did reveal my position. Artemis shifted her feet and presented her right side, blade forward, as her left hand snaked down her thigh and drew another knife from a sheath there. She lunged forward, wickedly fast, and managed to gash me across the chest, right underneath my collarbone. She’d probably been going for my throat but had misjudged due to my camouflage. I backed up and set myself. Though I wanted nothing so much as to help Granuaile, there would be no rushing past Artemis.
I told Oberon, Stay with her. I’ll come as soon as I can.
Artemis taunted me, realizing that she had scored a hit. “You are not so skilled at this as the Morrigan.”
“Neither are you,” I retorted. “You only defeated her because she allowed it.” That must have struck a nerve—it was, perhaps, a doubt she’d already harbored about that duel—because she snarled and charged in. Her left arm was raised and her dagger pointed backward, blade held flat against her wrist and forearm like impromptu armor, while her right was cocked back, ready to strike. I took a risk in the interest of ending it quickly—any sort of protracted fight would not work in my favor—knowing that she would wound me but hoping that it wouldn’t be instantly debilitating or fatal. I swept Fragarach clockwise toward her raised and extended left arm and followed it with my body, shuffling right and planting my right foot so that I could also pivot clockwise. My sword took off her hand at the wrist and I kept Fragarach moving, whipping it down and around as I spun so that it would catch her as she passed me by. It did catch her, right across the quads of her left leg, but it didn’t cut through bone because my strength was gone, leeched away, since she’d caught me too. The knife in her right hand, a bit tardy, still sheared off a slab of my left lat as she thrust at me while I was spinning. I sprayed blood and she sprayed ichor and we both had a good howl over what we had lost. The difference was that she went down, thanks to that hack at her leg, and I remained standing.
It occurred to me that the Morrigan had almost certainly not used camouflage during her battle—how else would the huntresses have been able to target her right side so specifically? Artemis couldn’t see through mine very well, if at all, so that meant she wasn’t getting any help from Minerva or Athena. That supported my theory that the Morrigan had fought to lose. I’d bet money with the Einherjar that after she had said what she wanted to say to me, she had simply stopped fighting and allowed herself to be cut down.
Artemis rolled away to create some space between us and I let her, because I wanted to check on the noise behind me, where Diana was cursing loudly in Latin. She had risen from the ground and removed all the throwing knives, only to be skewered by an arrow from Flidais. As she reached up to tear it loose, another hit her high and toppled her backward. A shimmering effervescence in the air hinted that perhaps Herne and his hunters were manifesting to provide their promised help, though they were taking their own sweet time at it. Daytime is a notoriously rough stretch for ghosts to do their thing, however, so the fact that he could manifest at all now spoke volumes about his power.
A brief glance was all I could afford. Artemis had regained her feet when I turned around, and considering how fast the Olympians healed, I bet her leg would be just fine in another sixty seconds. My back wouldn’t heal anywhere near that fast, but neither would she grow another left hand. Her stump had already stopped leaking; I hadn’t, though I was working on it. I stalked toward her, not even attempting to be quiet, and she set herself. She looked to be favoring her left leg, but the tiniest of quirks at the edge of her lips gave away that she was faking. She was already just fine, and the surface cut was for show. She’d shifted the grip on her right-hand knife so that the blade pointed down, and if she crossed with her fist the blade would trail behind, slashing as it went. She was presenting her weak left side, willing to give that up and take more damage there so long as she could counter with her undamaged right. Well, fuck that, I wasn’t going to bite.
I came in hard and dropped at the last second, sliding under her haymaker and sweeping her legs out from under her. It was the kind of dirty slide tackle that would get you a red card in football. The momentum from her swing tumbled her across my hips, her right arm stretched out to break her fall, and my right arm, swinging Fragarach down, chopped hers off above the elbow. I thought that would end it, because what would she do, stump me to death? Nope. She rolled over, down my legs, effectively trapping them, and then scissored her right one to kick me in the face and break my nose. My head spun like I’d drunk way too much tequila, and my vision swam with spots as my skull hit the ground. I think I may have blacked out for a few seconds, because, the next thing I knew, Herne was shouting at me, not only fully manifested but also fully annoyed.
“Oi, you dizzy bastard, wherever you are! What d’you want me to do with her?”
Head pounding and spots still obscuring my sight, I raised my head to see Herne and one of his hunters struggling to keep Artemis immobile. They were both trying to keep her legs wrapped up and were having some difficulty. I dispelled my camouflage before speaking.
“Chop those off,” I said, indicating her legs, “but not the head.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
I rose shakily to my feet and lurched my way toward the spot where Granuaile had fallen. My healing process had stopped the bleeding, but my back and head hurt, until I remembered that I could control that. I shut off the pain as unhinged curses in Greek and Latin followed me, interspersed with wet, chunky sounds as the ghosts methodically removed the limbs from Artemis—and from Diana too. Another of Herne’s huntsmen and th
e pack of hounds had subdued Diana, while Flidais looked on with approval.
Oberon, is she alive? Are you okay?
Relief shuddered through me and I paused to collect myself. I had been so worried that she’d been killed outright, as Tahirah had so long ago. Thank you for staying with her. Ask her to drop your camouflage and her invisibility so I can help. It’s safe now. I resumed walking and tried to shake off the clouds in my head.
Where are you? Bark, please.
Oberon barked and appeared at the same time off to my left. He was standing watch over Granuaile, who had an arrow in her, just underneath her ribs and slightly left of center. Blood welled around the shaft and she clutched it, tears streaming down her cheeks and her breathing labored as I arrived.
“It hurts so much, Atticus,” she gasped, the last syllable hitching in her throat. “I didn’t think it would hurt this much.”
I lay Fragarach on the ground as I crashed to my knees next to her. Oberon made room. “You have to find your nerves and block them,” I said. “Remember the binding? Block the pain signals. You shut off the electricity down there and then you can get to work.”
She winced. “Gah, I can’t believe I forgot that!”
“Shock makes you forget a lot of things. I didn’t remember it until recently myself.”
“You’re hurt?”
“I’ll heal. And so will you.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. I can do this.”
“Absolutely.”
She took a few more quick, shallow breaths, closed her eyes, then spoke the binding I had taught her. She sighed in relief when it worked, then smiled weakly at me through watery eyes. “Ohh. That’s so much better. Thanks.”