by Rick Riordan
‘The earth will swallow you,’ Hedge said in the voice of Gaia. ‘Just as it swallowed them.’
VIII
Reyna
‘There are too many of them.’ Reyna wondered bitterly how many times she’d said that in her demigod career.
She should have a badge made and wear it around to save time. When she died, the words would probably be written on her tombstone: There were too many of them.
Her greyhounds stood on either side of her, growling at the earthen shells. Reyna counted at least twenty, closing in from every direction.
Coach Hedge continued to speak in a very womanly voice: ‘The dead always outnumber the living. These spirits have waited centuries, unable to express their anger. Now I have given them bodies of earth.’
One earthen ghost stepped forward. It moved slowly, but its footfall was so heavy it cracked the ancient tiles.
‘Nico?’ Reyna called.
‘I can’t control them,’ he said, frantically untangling his harness. ‘Something about the rock shells, I guess. I need a couple of seconds to concentrate on making the shadow-jump. Otherwise I might teleport us into another volcano.’
Reyna cursed under her breath. There was no way she could fight off so many by herself while Nico prepared their escape, especially with Coach Hedge out of commission. ‘Use the sceptre,’ she said. ‘Get me some zombies.’
‘It will not help,’ Coach Hedge intoned. ‘Stand aside, Praetor. Let the ghosts of Pompeii destroy this Greek statue. A true Roman would not resist.’
The earthen ghosts shuffled forward. Through their mouth holes, they made hollow whistling noises, like someone blowing across empty soda bottles. One stepped on the coach’s dagger-tennis-racket trap and smashed it to pieces.
From his belt, Nico pulled the sceptre of Diocletian. ‘Reyna, if I summon more dead Romans … who’s to say they won’t join this mob?’
‘I say. I am a praetor. Get me some legionnaires, and I’ll control them.’
‘You shall perish,’ said the coach. ‘You shall never –’
Reyna smacked him on the head with the pommel of her knife. The satyr crumpled.
‘Sorry, Coach,’ she muttered. ‘That was getting tiresome. Nico – zombies! Then concentrate on getting us out of here.’
Nico raised his sceptre and the ground trembled.
The earthen ghosts chose that moment to charge. Aurum leaped at the nearest one and literally bit the creature’s head off with his metal fangs. The rock shell toppled backwards and shattered.
Argentum was not so lucky. He sprang at another ghost, which swung its heavy arm and bashed the greyhound in his face. Argentum went flying. He staggered to his feet. His head was twisted forty-five degrees to the right. One of his ruby eyes was missing.
Anger hammered in Reyna’s chest like a hot spike. She’d already lost her pegasus. She was not going to lose her dogs, too. She slashed her knife through the ghost’s chest, then drew her gladius. Strictly speaking, fighting with two blades wasn’t very Roman, but Reyna had spent time with pirates. She’d picked up more than a few tricks.
The earthen shells crumbled easily, but they hit like sledgehammers. Reyna didn’t understand how, but she knew she couldn’t afford to take even one blow. Unlike Argentum, she wouldn’t survive getting her head knocked sideways.
‘Nico!’ She ducked between two earthen ghosts, allowing them to smash each other’s heads in. ‘Any time now!’
The ground split open down the centre of the courtyard. Dozens of skeletal soldiers clawed their way to the surface. Their shields looked like giant corroded pennies. Their blades were more rust than metal. But Reyna had never been so relieved to see reinforcements.
‘Legion!’ she shouted. ‘Ad aciem!’
The zombies responded, pushing through the earthen ghosts to form a battle line. Some fell, crushed by stone fists. Others managed to close ranks and raise their shields.
Behind her, Nico cursed.
Reyna risked a backwards glance. The sceptre of Diocletian was smoking in Nico’s hands.
‘It’s fighting me!’ he yelled. ‘I don’t think it likes summoning Romans to fight other Romans!’
Reyna knew that Ancient Romans had spent at least half their time fighting each other, but she decided not to bring that up. ‘Just secure Coach Hedge. Get ready to shadow-travel! I’ll buy you some –’
Nico yelped. The sceptre of Diocletian exploded into pieces. Nico didn’t look hurt, but he stared at Reyna in shock. ‘I – I don’t know what happened. You’ve got a few minutes, tops, before your zombies disappear.’
‘Legion!’ Reyna shouted. ‘Orbem formate! Gladium signe!’
The zombies circled the Athena Parthenos, their swords ready for close-quarters fighting. Argentum dragged the unconscious Coach Hedge over to Nico, who was furiously strapping himself into the harness. Aurum stood guard, lunging at any earth ghosts who broke through the line.
Reyna fought shoulder to shoulder with the dead legionnaires, sending her strength into their ranks. She knew it wouldn’t be enough. The earthen ghosts fell easily, but more kept rising from the ground in swirls of ash. Each time their stone fists connected, another zombie went down.
Meanwhile, the Athena Parthenos towered over the battle – regal, haughty and unconcerned.
A little help would be nice, Reyna thought. Maybe a destructo-ray? Or some good old-fashioned smiting.
The statue did nothing except radiate hatred, which seemed directed equally at Reyna and the attacking ghosts.
You want to lug me to Long Island? the statue seemed to say. Good luck with that, Roman scum.
Reyna’s destiny: to die defending a passive-aggressive goddess.
She kept fighting, extending more of her will into the undead troops. In return, they bombarded her with their despair and resentment.
You fight for nothing, the zombie legionnaires whispered in her mind. The empire is gone.
‘For Rome!’ Reyna cried hoarsely. She slashed her gladius through one earthen ghost and stabbed her dagger in another’s chest. ‘Twelfth Legion Fulminata!’
All around her, zombies fell. Some were crushed in battle. Others disintegrated on their own as the residual power of Diocletian’s sceptre finally failed.
The earthen ghosts closed in – a sea of misshapen faces with hollow eyes.
‘Reyna, now!’ Nico yelled. ‘We’re leaving!’
She glanced back. Nico had harnessed himself to the Athena Parthenos. He held the unconscious Gleeson Hedge in his arms like a damsel in distress. Aurum and Argentum had disappeared – perhaps too badly damaged to continue fighting.
Reyna stumbled.
A rock fist gave her a glancing blow to the ribcage, and her side erupted in pain. Her head swam. She tried to breathe, but it was like inhaling knives.
‘Reyna!’ Nico shouted again.
The Athena Parthenos flickered, about to disappear.
An earthen ghost swung at Reyna’s head. She managed to dodge, but the pain in her ribs almost made her black out.
Give up, said the voices in her head. The legacy of Rome is dead and buried, just like Pompeii.
‘No,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Not while I’m still alive.’
Nico stretched out his hand as he slipped into the shadows. With the last of her strength, Reyna leaped towards him.
IX
Leo
Leo didn’t want to come out of the wall.
He had three more braces to attach, and nobody else was skinny enough to fit in the crawl space. (One of the many advantages of being scrawny.)
Wedged between the layers of the hull with the plumbing and wiring, Leo could be alone with his thoughts. When he got frustrated, which happened about every five seconds, he could hit stuff with his mallet and the other crew members would figure he was working, not throwing a tantrum.
One problem with his sanctuary: he only fitted up to his waist. His butt and legs were still on view to the general public, which made it ha
rd for him to hide.
‘Leo!’ Piper’s voice came from somewhere behind him. ‘We need you.’
The Celestial bronze O-ring slipped out of Leo’s pliers and slid into the depths of the crawl space.
Leo sighed. ‘Talk to the pants, Piper! ’Cause the hands are busy!’
‘I am not talking to the pants. Meeting in the mess hall. We’re almost at Olympia.’
‘Yeah, fine. I’ll be there in a sec.’
‘What are you doing, anyway? You’ve been poking around inside the hull for days.’
Leo swept his flashlight across the Celestial bronze plates and pistons he’d been installing slowly but surely. ‘Routine maintenance.’
Silence. Piper was a little too good at knowing when he was lying. ‘Leo –’
‘Hey, while you’re out there, do me a favour. I got this itch right below my –’
‘Fine, I’m leaving!’
Leo allowed himself a couple more minutes to fasten the brace. His work wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. But he was making progress.
Of course, he’d laid the groundwork for his secret project when he first built the Argo II, but he hadn’t told anyone about it. He had barely been honest with himself about what he was doing.
Nothing lasts forever, his dad once told him. Not even the best machines.
Yeah, okay, maybe that was true. But Hephaestus had also said, Everything can be reused. Leo intended to test that theory.
It was a dangerous risk. If he failed, it would crush him. Not just emotionally. It would physically crush him.
The thought made him claustrophobic.
He wriggled out of the crawl space and went back into his cabin.
Well … technically it was his cabin, but he didn’t sleep there. The mattress was littered with wires, nails and the guts of several disassembled bronze machines. His three massive rolling tool cabinets – Chico, Harpo and Groucho – took up most of the room. Dozens of power tools hung on the walls. The worktable was piled with photocopied blueprints from On Spheres, the forgotten Archimedes text Leo had liberated from an underground workshop in Rome.
Even if he wanted to sleep in his cabin, it would’ve been too cramped and dangerous. He preferred to bed down in the engine room, where the constant hum of machinery helped him fall asleep. Besides, ever since his time on the island of Ogygia, he had become fond of camping out. A bedroll on the floor was all he needed.
His cabin was only for storage … and for working on his most difficult projects.
He pulled his keys from his tool belt. He didn’t really have time, but he unlocked Groucho’s middle drawer and stared at the two precious objects inside: a bronze astrolabe he’d picked up in Bologna, and a fist-sized chunk of crystal from Ogygia. Leo hadn’t figured out how to put the two things together yet, and it was driving him crazy.
He’d been hoping to get some answers when they visited Ithaca. After all, it was the home of Odysseus, the dude who had constructed the astrolabe. But, judging from what Jason had said, those ruins hadn’t held any answers for him – just a bunch of ill-tempered ghouls and ghosts.
Anyway, Odysseus never got the astrolabe to work. He hadn’t had a crystal to use as a homing beacon. Leo did. He would have to succeed where the cleverest demigod of all time had failed.
Just Leo’s luck. A super-hot immortal girl was waiting for him on Ogygia, but he couldn’t figure out how to wire a stupid chunk of rock into the three-thousand-year-old navigation device. Some problems even duct tape couldn’t solve.
Leo closed the drawer and locked it.
His eyes drifted to the bulletin board above his worktable, where two pictures hung side by side. The first was the old crayon drawing he’d made when he was seven years old – a diagram of a flying ship he’d seen in his dreams. The second was a charcoal sketch Hazel had recently made for him.
Hazel Levesque … that girl was something. As soon as Leo rejoined the crew in Malta, she’d known right away that Leo was hurting inside. The first chance she got, after all that mess in the House of Hades, she’d marched into Leo’s cabin and said, ‘Spill.’
Hazel was a good listener. Leo told her the whole story. Later that evening, Hazel came back with her sketch pad and her charcoal pencils. ‘Describe her,’ she insisted. ‘Every detail.’
It felt a little weird helping Hazel make a portrait of Calypso – as if he were talking to a police artist: Yes, officer, that’s the girl who stole my heart! Sounded like a freaking country song.
But describing Calypso had been easy. Leo couldn’t close his eyes without seeing her.
Now her likeness gazed back at him from the bulletin board – her almond-shaped eyes, her pouty lips, her long straight hair swept over one shoulder of her sleeveless dress. He could almost smell her cinnamon fragrance. Her knitted brow and the downward turn of her mouth seemed to say, Leo Valdez, you are so full of it.
Dang, he loved that woman!
Leo had pinned her portrait next to the drawing of the Argo II to remind himself that sometimes visions do come true. As a little kid, he’d dreamed about a flying ship. Eventually he built it. Now he would build a way to get back to Calypso.
The hum of the ship’s engines changed to a lower pitch. Over the cabin loudspeaker, Festus’s voice creaked and squeaked.
‘Yeah, thanks, buddy,’ Leo said. ‘On my way.’
The ship was descending, which meant Leo’s projects would have to wait.
‘Sit tight, Sunshine,’ he told Calypso’s picture. ‘I’ll get back to you, just like I promised.’
Leo could imagine her response: I am not waiting for you, Leo Valdez. I am not in love with you. And I certainly don’t believe your foolish promises!
The thought made him smile. He slipped his keys back into his tool belt and headed for the mess hall.
The other six demigods were eating breakfast.
Once upon a time, Leo would have worried about all of them being together belowdecks with nobody at the helm, but ever since Piper had permanently woken up Festus with her charmspeak – a feat Leo still did not understand – the dragon figurehead had been more than capable of running the Argo II by himself. Festus could navigate, check the radar, make a blueberry smoothie and spew white-hot jets of fire at invaders – simultaneously – without even blowing a circuit.
Besides, they had Buford the Wonder Table as backup.
After Coach Hedge left on his shadow-travel expedition, Leo had decided that his three-legged table could do just as good a job as their ‘adult chaperone’. He had laminated Buford’s tabletop with a magic scroll that projected a pint-sized holographic simulation of Coach Hedge. Mini-Hedge would stomp around on Buford’s top, randomly saying things like ‘CUT THAT OUT!’ ‘I’M GONNA KILL YOU!’ and the ever-popular ‘PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!’
Today, Buford was manning the helm. If Festus’s flames didn’t scare away the monsters, Buford’s holographic Hedge definitely would.
Leo stood in the doorway of the mess hall, taking in the scene around the dining table. It wasn’t often he got to see all his friends together.
Percy was eating a huge stack of blue pancakes (what was his deal with blue food?) while Annabeth chided him for pouring on too much syrup.
‘You’re drowning them!’ she complained.
‘Hey, I’m a Poseidon kid,’ he said. ‘I can’t drown. And neither can my pancakes.’
To their left, Frank and Hazel used their cereal bowls to flatten out a map of Greece. They looked over it, their heads close together. Every once in a while Frank’s hand would cover Hazel’s, just sweet and natural like they were an old married couple, and Hazel didn’t even look flustered, which was real progress for a girl from the 1940s. Until recently, if somebody said gosh darn, she would nearly faint.
At the head of the table, Jason sat uncomfortably with his T-shirt rolled up to his ribcage as Nurse Piper changed his bandages.
‘Hold still,’ she said. ‘I know it hurts.’
‘It’s just cold,�
� he said.
Leo could hear the pain in his voice. That stupid gladius blade had pierced him all the way through. The entrance wound on his back was an ugly shade of purple and it steamed. Probably not a good sign.
Piper tried to stay positive, but privately she had told Leo how worried she was. Ambrosia, nectar and mortal medicine could only help so much. A deep cut from Celestial bronze or Imperial gold could literally dissolve a demigod’s essence from the inside out. Jason might get better. He claimed he felt better. But Piper wasn’t so sure.
Too bad Jason wasn’t a metal automaton. At least then Leo would have some idea of how to help his best friend. But with humans … Leo felt helpless. They broke way too easily.
He loved his friends. He’d do anything for them. But as he looked at the six of them – three couples, all focused on each other – he thought about the warning from Nemesis, the revenge goddess: You will not find a place among your brethren. You will always be the seventh wheel.
He was starting to think Nemesis was right. Assuming Leo lived long enough, assuming his crazy secret plan worked, his destiny was with somebody else, on an island that no man ever found twice.
But for now the best he could do was to follow his old rule: Keep moving. Don’t get bogged down. Don’t think about the bad stuff. Smile and joke even when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you don’t feel like it.
‘What’s up, guys?’ He strolled into the mess hall. ‘Aw, yes to brownies!’
He grabbed the last one – from a special sea-salt recipe they’d picked up from Aphros the fish centaur at the bottom of the Atlantic.
The intercom crackled. Buford’s Mini-Hedge yelled over the speakers, ‘PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!’
Everyone jumped. Hazel ended up five feet away from Frank. Percy spilled syrup in his orange juice. Jason awkwardly wriggled back into his T-shirt, and Frank turned into a bulldog.
Piper glared at Leo. ‘I thought you were getting rid of that stupid hologram.’
‘Hey, Buford’s just saying good morning. He loves his hologram! Besides, we all miss the coach. And Frank makes a cute bulldog.’
Frank morphed back into a burly, grumpy Chinese Canadian dude. ‘Just sit down, Leo. We’ve got stuff to talk about.’