“And you,” Hippos began, looking at me, “you can continue?”
“Would you consider seeking shelter until the storm passes?”
“I would not.”
“Then lead on, ambassador,” I said.
Ambassador was my new name for Hippos. It seemed to annoy him, which worked fine for me. I started calling him that as soon as we got aboard the 727 from Athens, which happened to be a private jet owned by the Greek government. It turns out Hippos is the deputy ambassador to the United States. That was how they managed to get someone whose wrists were lashed together with twine into the country without having to answer awkward questions at customs. I was tempted to write my congressman about the lax post-9/11 security, but I’m not really a U.S. citizen and thus don’t have a congressman.
With Hippos again leading the way, his GPS device apparently frozen to his right hand, I fell in line with Ariadne and continued the slow march. Neither Dyanos nor Staphus seemed concerned enough about this to say anything.
“Still worried you’re about to die?” she asked, without looking. “Cassandra could have been wrong.”
“Oracles aren’t wrong, they’re just misinterpreted,” I said. “What did she tell you, anyhow? You seemed to have gotten a much more detailed prophecy than I did.”
“It was longer than yours, certainly,” she agreed. “Detailed? Not really. But I’m working with two prophecies. There wasn’t much overlap between them, and I have a lifetime of experience interpreting the subtleties of prophetic statements.”
I considered pointing out that I’ve had two or three lifetimes’ worth of experience doing the same, but that would have just led us back around to the fact that I was expecting to die, which I didn’t feel like talking about anymore.
I changed the subject. “Here’s something I’m not clear on. What does your ex think this nymph is going to do for him?”
“Defend the natural world in a way he can’t,” she offered.
“What happens if it doesn’t feel like doing that?”
“He seems to be under the impression that he is you, and that you can control a nymph.” She looked at me directly, which is difficult with a hood. “Can you?”
I laughed. “Of course I can’t. I’ve never seen one. I don’t even know if they exist.”
She stared at me.
“What?” I asked.
“It is very hard to tell when you’re joking.” She marched ahead before I had an opportunity to figure out what that meant.
* * *
The storm only got worse. I have been in plenty of hairy situations in my life, weather-wise, and truthfully this didn’t come all that close to any of the nastier ones, but that didn’t mean it had no ambition in that direction. Twice we strayed from the trail and didn’t realize it for several minutes and were forced to follow our own steps back.
As I was in the middle of the pack, it was possible for me to see both Dyanos in front and Staphus in back, but I seriously doubted whether Staphus could see Dyanos or vice versa. And when the wind really picked up, I couldn’t see anyone.
Despite this, I got the sense that we weren’t entirely alone. Every now and then, I’d catch a whiff of campfire smoke, but nobody was going to be getting a fire up in these conditions so it had to be an old one. Wind direction indicated the source was to our left.
I was pretty sure I could track it.
I wasn’t thinking about escaping, per se. The problem with conditions this severe, is that it’s really difficult to survive in them alone with no provisions—the satyrs had all of the supplies—so while I was heading to what I thought was probably my own death, death by exposure was much more definitive. But if whoever was out there had a link to the outside world, that could prove useful. I didn’t know if I had the resources to stop the impending ceremony, but I knew someone who might.
So as we progressed, I allowed myself to drop behind Ariadne just a bit, enough to stretch the line in which we were traveling even thinner. Checking Staphus’s progress behind me, I identified a large tree stump on the side of the path and then counted the number of seconds it took before he passed by the same tree stump. It was a ten-count. Then I waited until we reached a rise, a point where the trees offered less protection from the winds.
A quick leap off the path, and onto a downward slope, and in a second or two I was in the trees. Even though I fell over twice—a combination of numb feet and an uneven surface—I still managed to reach a dense copse before I even finished my ten-count, and then I ducked down and waited.
Incidentally, this was not the same thing as vanishing into the woods near Mount Parnitha. I was good, but I couldn’t make footprints disappear and once they noticed I was missing they’d be able to double back and find my trail. If I were a satyr, I could resolve this by climbing a tree and jumping from limb to limb, but that wasn’t happening.
Once I was certain nobody was tracking me, I sniffed the air to see if I could pick up on the campfire again. This would have been easier if I had a werewolf’s nose, or a satyr’s, or really anything but a frozen human nose. Still, after a few shifts in the wind I picked it up; it was downhill from where I stood, in a small ravine.
I stumbled down the hill until I reached the bottom of the ravine, then leaned up against the nearest tree and tried to quiet my breathing as I listened again for a sign of someone following me. I didn’t hear anything. However, my ears were covered by a fur-lined hood, it was windy, and satyrs can still move pretty fast, so there was no telling how long I had.
And then I did hear something. It wasn’t coming from the top of the hill, though; the noise was a few yards further along the ravine.
“Someone here?” I called out.
I pushed ahead toward the noise. As I got closer, I realized I was listening to a radio. Classic Rock, it sounded like, or whatever passes for it now.
It didn’t make any sense. Who would leave behind a radio?
I crested a small rise and saw . . . well, it wasn’t pleasant. It appeared somebody in the woods was a very messy eater, and the meal had been two, or possibly three, human beings. I could see the remains of a tent, a toppled Hibachi, a sleeping bag that would be of no use to anybody any longer, and various and random people parts covering everything.
Whenever coming across a scene like this, there is one important rule to keep in mind—find out if whoever or whatever did it is still there. So I crouched down exactly where I was and watched for signs of movement while my thoughts raced through the land animals with which I was familiar that would be capable of such a thing. A bear seemed obvious, but most self-respecting bears were sleeping this time of year. A lion or a tiger perhaps, but the last time I checked there weren’t any in North America outside of the zoos. It actually looked like the work of a dragon, but I hadn’t seen one since the fifteenth century and I didn’t think anyone else had either. That left only one animal—man. But it’d have to be one huge man.
Although it was possible a demon had done it. They were big enough, strong enough, and vicious enough to cause this kind of damage. But it didn’t feel right for a demon. Usually the violence they commit is of the brute force variety. These people had been sliced up like someone had been trying out a large Ginsu knife on them. It could also have been a vampire with very poor impulse control or a profound hatred of Classic Rock, but the attack had happened within the past hour and it was daytime. Granted, the sun was blocked by clouds, but I didn’t know of any vampire who would take a chance like that.
I knew how recent the attack was because of two things. One, it had been snowing all day but the blood was mostly on top of the snow rather than covered by it. Two, the bodies were steaming.
There was no sign of the attacker. I got up and walked into the center of the small clearing and checked out the massacre up close.
It had been three people, two men and a woman. I determined this by counting heads. My guess was they had left the path to get away from the wind—the ravine offered a lot of
protection—started a fire and planned to wait it out. The fire didn’t last long, but the rest of the plan was solid, except for the part where they were torn into pieces.
Up close, it looked more and more like somebody had used a knife of some sort. Or a sword, actually, given the amount of damage I was looking at.
Had there been a fourth member of the party? Someone who likes going out into the woods with a katana, maybe? But I saw no tracks leading to or away from the bodies—they were all within ten feet of one another—other than mine. There were these odd spots in the snow where grass poked out, but those hardly qualified as tracks.
Something else caught my attention. It was their expressions. All of them had died with their eyes open, which is unusual enough but more so in this case because each of them bore a look of surprise. I could understand if the first victim was surprised, but the other two would surely have had time to register a different emotion before their heads were separated from the rest of their bodies. How do you surprise three people that completely? And permanently?
“A nymph,” I muttered, remembering what Ariadne had said. A terrible idea began to take shape. I tried to ignore it.
I eventually found the radio, which had moved from E.L.O. to a portion of the Bachman-Turner Overdrive oeuvre. It was hitched to the back of one of the men’s backpacks. I turned it off and then riffled through the rest of the bag, which was fortunately intact.
Settled at the bottom, under a set of spare clothes, I found a satellite phone.
It took me a minute to dig the card out of my pants—underneath the snow pants— quietly thankful both that I hadn’t changed out of the jeans and that Hippos had never ordered anybody to go through my pockets.
I dialed Mike Lycos’s number.
And that’s exactly where my luck ended.
“Hi, you’ve reached special agent Mike Lycos. Please leave a message and a contact number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Beep.
“Mike, it’s Adam. I’m in the North Cascades. Get to Azure Lake as soon as you can and you’ll find Gordon Alecto and Ariadne Papos. Bring lots of very big guns. I’m going to . . .” And then something hit me hard, knocking me several feet away and onto my ass, and spinning the phone off into a snowdrift.
I looked up and found Staphus staring down at me furiously.
“You monster, what did you do to these people?”
SILENUS:
I EVEN SPOKE WITH A GOD OF THE WOODS.
KING LAIOS:
AND WHAT DID YOU LEARN?
SILENUS:
ALAS, I SAID I SPOKE. I DID NOT SAY THE GOD SPOKE BACK.
From The Tragedy of Silenus. Text corrected and translated by Ariadne
“I found them like this,” I started to say, but he sprang at me before I could elaborate. I took a hard punch in the chin, and then he had me by the coat.
“How could you?” he demanded, hoisting me up in the air and preparing to fling me several yards into Zeus only knew what. He didn’t seem to want to calm down long enough to figure out I couldn’t have done this to three people with my bare hands, and I wasn’t going to last long if I stayed in his reach. So when he bent his arms to push me off, I swung both of my fists as hard as I could into the sides of his head and boxed his ears.
He shoved me away—not nearly as violently as he’d wanted—and grabbed his head.
“You need to calm down and think, Staphus,” I suggested, scurrying to my feet and looking about frantically for something I could use as a makeshift weapon. “I didn’t do any of this.”
He roared incoherently and ran hard at me, so hard that when I dropped to the ground, he passed directly overhead. My hands found a tent stake half-buried in the snow.
Staphus skidded to a stop and turned completely around faster than I thought anyone could in heavy powder. He came at me again. I yanked up the stake. But just before he reached me, he was tackled from the side. Dyanos had arrived, and was thinking much more clearly. The two satyrs disappeared into a snow bank.
“Don’t move!” I heard Hippos bark. Looking around, I saw he had just reached the edge of the clearing. Ariadne was still climbing down behind him.
The two satyrs burst free of the snow bank, Dyanos restraining Staphus.
“Look at what he has done to these poor people!” Staphus shouted.
“Use your head, brother,” Dyanos said. “He has no blood on him. Nor weapon. Something else did this.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him,” I pointed out.
Ariadne reached the clearing, and screamed.
“What happened here, imposter?” Hippos asked, walking slowly to where I was standing and assessing the damage as he went.
I should note that upon learning of my reluctance to voluntarily attend the ceremonies, Hippos had taken to calling me imposter again. He seemed to have reached the conclusion that the real Philopaigmos would have been happy to attend, and therefore I am not he. I couldn’t tell if he was serious about it or not, but it got annoying. “Something big and scary went on a frenzy here. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He looked around at the carnage. “Nor have I,” he admitted. “Did you witness it?”
“No. But whatever did this can’t be far. Track it if you want. I plan to go in the opposite direction of wherever it’s headed.”
Hippos crouched down and examined one of the victims. “There is no scent,” he said.
“Maybe the snow is screwing that up,” I offered.
“Perhaps,” he mused. “I can understand Staphus’s reaction. He would have picked up only your odor and that of the dead. It should have been the correct conclusion.”
“You think I’m capable of this?” I asked. “I mean, this fast?”
“No. If you were, you would have done it to us long ago.”
Staphus, finally calm, walked over to me and held out his hand. “I am sorry, I should not have attacked you in that manner.”
I ignored his hand. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Thank you for understanding,” he said.
“Don’t thank me.” I held up the tent spike. “Thank Dyanos. He saved your life.”
“What did this to these people?” Ariadne asked, trying to maintain her cool. She wasn’t coming any closer than the edge of the campground, and I strongly suspected that while we were talking she had been vomiting behind a tree somewhere.
Hippos addressed her question. “A wild animal,” he asserted. “Nothing we will not be able to cope with should we encounter it.”
“Don’t be . . .” I started to say. Hippos cut me off.
“Silence, impostor.” He shot me a look, but the look didn’t say shut up. It said we both know something else did this, but let’s not talk about it, okay?
He continued, still talking to me, “We must move on. You will swear to me that you will not run off again, and I will allow you to walk with us. Or I can have you bound and dragged the rest of the way. Is that fully understood?”
“Sure,” I said. And I meant it. If we came across the thing that had slaughtered the campers I’d much rather be with three satyrs than alone.
“Good. Staphus! Give him an ice pack for his chin before the swelling gets worse.” He gave me an appraising look. “We will talk more later on this,” he said, meaning the stew of dead people around us. I didn’t get a chance to reply before he walked away, heading down the ravine and holding up his GPS.
“Are we going back to the trail?” Ariadne shouted after him.
“No need,” he said. “The impostor has led us to a much better path. This valley is more direct, and out of the wind.”
Ariadne fell into step behind him, and Staphus, after dropping a chemical icepack in my hand (ironic given the weather, but useful as I was starting to swell) followed her. Dyanos came up beside me.
“You will be dropping that spike here, will you not?” he asked.
“Of course.” I flung it into the snow, not far from whe
re the satellite phone had disappeared.
“Very good,” he said, nudging me forward.
As I stepped past the last spatter of blood in the snow, the words of the oracle rang out in my head. Red on white.
* * *
It was getting dark.
We had left the Seattle airport around mid-morning. I gathered that under optimal conditions we’d have reached the campground at Azure Lake by nightfall, but the storm had screwed that plan to hell.
“Hippos!” Ariadne called. The winds had died down, so there were no longer whiteout conditions to combat. She could see, as I had, that our guide had picked up the pace. It was difficult for humans to keep up with him.
He stopped, reluctantly, and glanced down at his GPS. “If we hurry, we can still reach the camp before morning,” he said.
“No,” she said “The sun is setting and it’s getting too cold. We have to stop.”
“We have a schedule to keep.”
“Then radio the hierophant and tell him we will keep it tomorrow,” she said.
I did a double take.
Ariadne sighed. “Hippos. Please. We have been hiking all day. I need rest.”
He stared at her, possibly considering whether she was light enough to carry the rest of the way. “All right. We’ll make camp here.”
I pulled Ariadne aside. “ ‘Radio the hierophant?’ ”
“We had to find out where the ceremony was being held,” she explained. “This was the only way.”
“We’re expected.”
“Yes.”
“All of us?” I asked.
She couldn’t look me in the eye. “We told Gordon we’re coming to reconcile the schism. You’re part of the reconciliation.”
I looked around and wondered how far I would get if I started running. Probably not far. “So in addition to the whole raising-a-god thing, I’m being handed over to a crazy man who thinks he’s me and has a small army with him. That’s fantastic. What if he decides to have me shot before the ceremony even begins?”
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