Proteus stepped forward uncertainly. His face was twisted with grief and horror. When our eyes met, he grimaced and stared at his feet.
“So it has come to this,” said Diomedes.
I drew my sword.
CHAPTER 17
THE BATTLE OF LAKE COCYTUS
PROTEUS STEPPED between us, muttered something about Ares and glorious death, and then slunk out of our way. Diomedes and I began to circle one another.
“I never figured it would end like this,” I said.
“Funny. I always kind of figured it would.”
“Always?” I said. “We’ve known one another a long time.”
“We have,” he said.
“You remember the day we met?” I said.
“Of course.”
“How old were you, Diomedes? I was eighteen, so that would have made you . . . let’s see . . .”
“Ten.” I saw him relax a little and drop his shield a hand width or two, exposing his shoulder. Was he doing it on purpose? Did he know that I was trying to distract him?
“That’s right. Ten. You had come to Ithaca with your father. There was a whole contingent from Argos. Tydeus had come to negotiate an alliance.”
“I remember.”
“We played castles on the beach. Spent days digging moats and building ramparts.”
“Ours was better,” he said.
“It was,” I conceded, “but do you remember what I did?” His shield looked a little loose—or was he letting it shake?
“You filled your moat with manure.”
“And no one wanted to charge our castle. We would have won by default.”
“Would have,” said Diomedes, smiling grimly.
“But you charged straight through it. I could hardly believe my eyes—or my nose. You waded through all that muck, climbed our rampart, and walked straight to the top of our castle mound. No one dared stop you. No one wanted to touch you.”
“No one,” he said, still smiling. His shield dropped another span. This was my chance.
I laughed and casually raised my shield. “You were covered head to toe in filth.”
The smile faded from Diomedes’ face. “And you’ve kept me covered in filth ever since.” He raised his shield, and I knew I’d missed a real opportunity.
I lost my smile as well, narrowed my eyes at him. “You are a traitor,” I said.
He laughed and spat. “The moment I step out of your shadow, you call it treachery.”
“The moment you leave me to join the enemy, I call it treachery.”
“Hades was never my enemy. Never yours either. He’s a god. And he has given me a kingdom.”
“Really? I don’t see it.”
“You see an army, don’t you?” He glanced over his shoulder, and I saw my chance. But I couldn’t move fast enough. He ducked under my blade and retreated a step, then made a quick jab around my shield. It fell short.
“You won’t play me this time, Odysseus. Today I write my own destiny.” His frown twisted back into a dour grin. “You couldn’t distract me with stories from our youth. You couldn’t enrage me with a challenge. What will it be next? Shall we talk about women? Maybe I’ll be so distracted, I’ll drop my shield altogether.”
I sighed. “No more talk, old friend. Just the fight itself.”
I decided the best approach was to make a sudden feint to the left and then spin right with a low sword. I shifted my weight accordingly.
“You’re about to fake me to the left,” said Diomedes. His eyes were like cold little stones. “Then when I move to block, you’ll come up under from the right.”
I nodded. “So you’ll ignore the feint, come straight at me with your shield, and try to knock me off balance.”
He nodded.
I took a step to the left. “You’re holding your sword close to the hilt, though, which means you’ve changed your mind. You’ll come around my weak side.”
“And you are holding your shield too high, which means you’re trying to trick me into a low advance.”
I grimaced and lowered my shield.
As expected, Diomedes came in hard, knocked me back on my rear foot, and drove my shield down. My left shoulder was exposed. He saw his chance and took it. I twisted to avoid the full force of the blow, but he made a solid hit. My left arm fell limp at my side. I could see bone. The shield fell at my feet.
It was an ugly trick, I admit, and it is a trick I could pull only once. I knew that Diomedes wouldn’t be able to resist that exposed shoulder, and I knew that when he reached forward to make the hit, his breastplate would lift just slightly off his left hip. So it did. I lunged under and up, caught him right where the midriff packs the liver—and felt the blade slide in deep.
Diomedes gave a little grunt and stepped back. He dropped his arms and fell to his knees. He looked at me wide-eyed, as though he had a question he couldn’t quite ask. There was an audible gasp from both armies, and Proteus cried out. Diomedes dropped his sword and shield to the ice. I pulled the blade from his side, and a rush of blood followed it. Then someone on the left flank cheered. And the cheer spread. The swordsmen struck their shields, and the Centaurs brayed; the Greeks cried “Io!”, and it occurred to me that I had just earned the army of Limbo its freedom. But for me, there was only grief, because I’d bought their freedom with the blood of a friend. I dropped my sword and caught him as he slumped forward, the pain in my arm all but forgotten. Diomedes coughed blood onto the ice.
The cheering stopped.
“Forgive me,” I cried, stripping his breastplate from his chest.
He managed to loosen his helmet, and it fell to the ice as well. Diomedes opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t have the breath.
“Help! Chiron!” I cried. The Centaur galloped forward. While he examined the wound, I cradled Diomedes’ head in my good arm. Another Centaur bound my shoulder.
“You won!” shouted Proteus. He almost sounded pleased.
I glared at him. “Why would you care?”
Proteus looked at his feet. “Now you can leave.”
“Not yet, he can’t,” said Hades, smiling. “We agreed that this fight was to the death.”
Chiron glared at him. “He’ll be dead soon enough. Let us go.”
“Absolutely not,” replied Hades. “Finish him, Odysseus, or I take back my pledge.”
I looked down at Diomedes. With enormous effort, he reached for my sword and lifted it, trembling, until the edge rested against his neck.
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
Diomedes closed his eyes. “Do it,” he whispered. “Free your family.”
“Diomedes,” I said, “look at me.”
He opened his eyes.
“You are my family.”
I watched tears run down his cheeks, leaving bright trails in the black paint.
“I won’t do it,” I said.
A long silence hung in the air.
“Then we must have our battle,” said Hades.
“Lord,” said Proteus, “he will die soon enough.”
“We will have a battle,” said Hades.
“But Lord—”
Hades cut him off with a glance. “You would gainsay your Lord and King?”
“With all due respect, my Lord—”
“Enough. You are not worthy of my gifts. I banish you from my presence.”
Proteus looked bewildered. “But—”
Hades turned all three faces to his army. “Destroy them.” The order was delivered so quickly and with such indifference, there was not at first any reaction from his soldiers. Even the winged devils seemed uncertain. “Move, you devils! Turn these beggars to pulp!”
Their front ranks advanced.
I rolled Diomedes onto my shield and dragged him behind our lines, shouting orders. “Back to your positions! Hold the line! Centaurs, choose your targets!”
Diomedes looked so pale, I was afraid to move him again. There was a deep pool of blood in my shield. “Odysseus,”
he said, just barely lifting his head. I could hardly hear him.
“My friend.” I hardly managed to choke it out.
“Behind him,” he said.
“Who?” I asked. “Behind who?”
“Where his back”—he coughed a spray of blood—“where his back meets the ice.”
Then he fainted, and try as I might, I could not revive him.
When I looked up, I was surprised to see Proteus standing beside me.
“You. I should kill you.”
Proteus looked lost. “I had not planned it this way,” he said. “You were not supposed to fight. This was not what I wanted.” He stood, wringing his hands. “This was not supposed to happen.”
I looked past Proteus at the advancing army. Their black armor rang in unison. Here on the flank, our swordsmen braced themselves to face the Minotaur. Further down the line, rows of Greek spearmen locked their shields. A shower of arrows arched overhead, and winged devils dropped from the sky. The enemy charged. Our Greeks lowered a wall of spears.
“This is not right,” muttered Proteus.
Then . . . a clash of iron on iron, the brittle scrape of pikes and swords, the screams of wounded men—roaring like a wave amid the wreck and crash of arms. I turned to Proteus. “If you have any honor left, you will watch over my friend.”
He nodded.
I pulled the red arrow from my belt and pushed to the edge of our ranks, just out of Hades’ reach. The battle wouldn’t last long. Already the Greek lines were faltering. Their locked shields looked frail against the oncoming flood. Ajax and Charon stood their ground but were cut off from our ranks. They stood back-to-back, with the enemy in a reluctant circle around them. With every swing, Charon sent soldiers flying into the air like spray off a wave. A growing mound of writhing bodies marked the reach of Ajax’ spear. Even Charon and Ajax would not hold out long against such numbers.
I watched Hades closely, but he never seemed distracted by the battle. He didn’t even seem particularly interested, unless some warrior strayed within the circle of his reach. Then like an angler hooking fish from a stream, he would pluck the unlucky soul—friend or foe, it didn’t seem to matter—between two fingers and lift him up over his head. Without regarding his catch, he would drop him into his mouth.
The circle around Hades grew wider as the nearest warriors became aware of the danger, and I was beginning to despair of ever finding my chance when a black-clad soldier stepped past me into the circle. A red tau was inscribed on his shield, and his helmet bore a five-pointed star. “Diomedes?” I whispered.
“Men of Limbo, follow me!” he shouted, and lifting his shield over his head, he ran straight at Hades. “Diomedes?” I whispered again.
One brief glance from the yellow eyes under that helmet told me who it was. “Now!” shouted Proteus.
Hades must have been as surprised as I, for Proteus ran all the way up to him before the Lord of the Underworld crushed him with his fist. A wave of swordsmen, inspired by his courage, charged forward, but Hades flicked them aside.
“Proteus?” said Hades to the twitching, broken body on the ice. “Goodness me. You do have a spine after all.” He scooped the bloody mess into one claw and examined it. “And still alive! But of course. You’re no stranger to broken bones. Ah well,” he said with a smile, “at least you have found your place. A traitor to both sides twice over. If you don’t belong here with me, no one does.”
“He’s a shifter, right?” said Telemachos. “Why doesn’t he shift?”
“He needs water,” I said.
Then Hades tossed Proteus into his mouth—armor and all.
“That’s as much distraction as I’m likely to get,” I said to Telemachos. “Here, take my shield. I’m going in.”
Telemachos nodded once. I leapt into the circle.
CHAPTER 18
LAST HOPE
I DIDN’T MAKE IT very far. Hades spotted me at once and lashed out with his claw—a blow that sent me tumbling across the ice and knocked the arrow from my hands. The pain in my shoulder was overwhelming. The air swarmed with tiny points of light. My ears hummed so loudly, I could hear nothing of the battle. There was no hope now. I bowed my head, whispered my death prayer, and waited for the end to come.
I waited.
It could not have been more than a few seconds, but lying there on the ice with my ears ringing and the world spinning, it seemed like a lifetime. I lay there waiting for death—but death never came. Instead of the crushing weight of Hades’ claw, I felt hands lifting me up.
“Father!” It was Telemachos. Argos stood panting by his side.
I nodded dumbly.
“The arrow. Where is it?”
I pointed. He rushed over, picked it up, ran on.
“I . . . I don’t understand . . . ,” I said to Argos. “I should be dead by now.”
I looked up at Hades. His face—or faces, rather—were a deep purple, and all six eyes protruded like poached eggs. He was raking at his throat with his claws, and as I looked on, his neck swelled out, then suddenly shrank again. Hades gagged, coughed, heaved; then his neck bulged out in front, and a little hole appeared just below his jaw. Dark gray blood welled up out of the wound and ran down his fur.
My gaze dropped to the ice where Telemachos was sprinting toward Hades, arrow in hand. Diomedes’ last words returned to me, and all of a sudden, I realized what my friend had been trying to say with his last breath.
“Son!” I shouted. Telemachos skidded to a stop and turned to face me. “His back! Stab him in the back! Where it touches the ice!”
Hades looked straight at me and knit his brows. Then he noticed Telemachos, and his eyes widened in horror. He raised his claw to strike at him, but as he did, the little hole in his neck tore open, and a horn—two horns—emerged, followed by the broad face of a great black ox. The ox bellowed, its horns retracted into its skull, its snout shrank into its face, and the ox became a lion. Two claws emerged and ripped the hole wider, and the lion roared.
I heard a voice beside me. “That is why they say you should never swallow a shapeshifter,” said Chiron.
“Yes. No. Who says that?” I stammered, still too rattled to make sense of what was happening.
Chiron scratched his beard. “No one, I guess. But they should. Now get up before Hades sees us chatting.”
“But Telemachos—”
“The boy can take care of himself,” he said; then he grabbed me by my bad shoulder and flung me over his back. It was a hard, fast ride back to our lines, but through the numbing pain I could see our phalanx tremble and break.
Chiron cantered to a stop, huffing and snorting. “If that son of yours doesn’t find his mark soon, all our efforts will have been in vain.”
I looked over my shoulder at Hades, who seemed to have regained his composure, though his neck was streaming blood.
Chiron followed my gaze. “That shapeshifter just saved your life—and your son’s too.”
I nodded. “Where did he go?”
The Centaur shook his head. “No time to wonder.”
Nessos galloped up and saluted Chiron. “The Centaurs have exhausted their arrows. The Harpies are in flight. What now?”
A cry went up on our left flank. With the Harpies in retreat, our spearmen were vulnerable to attacks from above. I watched as man after man dropped his shield and ran. The Greeks, seeing their flank exposed, wheeled in disarray, leaving the swordsmen surrounded.
“The day is lost,” groaned Nessos. Argos whimpered.
“We can still buy Telemachos some time,” I said. “What do you say? One last ride?”
Nessos frowned.
“What’s the matter, old horse? You want to live forever?”
He nodded. “Yes, actually.”
“Too late.”
He grinned. “Mount up.”
I climbed onto the Centaur’s back and drew my sword. “Come now, Argos, let’s go hunting.”
“Sons of Centauros, on me!” cried Ne
ssos. He snatched a spear from the ice, reared, and broke into a headlong gallop. Centaurs running from the battle swung round to join us. Others cast aside their bows and plucked weapons from the hands of the fallen. Soon, the thunder of hooves was everywhere.
Exhilarated, I raised my sword, and for the last time, shouted the battle cry of my fathers. “Io! Io! Io!”
And then.
Suddenly.
An ear-splitting scream. A clamor so sudden and sharp and unbearably loud that I dropped my sword and clapped both hands over my ears. It might have been a trumpet blast or a lightning bolt or the screech of a thousand Furies. The ice groaned and quaked. Nessos skidded to a halt, and I tumbled from his back, moaning. All around me, warriors dropped their weapons and covered their heads with their arms. Beside me, Argos howled. And then just as suddenly, the noise ceased. A hush fell over the battlefield. Warriors locked in combat searched for the source of that terrible cry.
All faces turned toward Hades. Eyes shut, head flung back in agony, he raked his back with his long nails. “It stings!” he screeched. “It burns! It is killing me!”
“Telemachos,” I whispered. “My son.”
And even at that moment all the hosts of Hell trembled, doubt clutched their hearts, their hands shook, and their limbs were loosed. The power that drove them on and filled them with hate and fury wavered; its will was removed from them. And now, looking into the eyes of their enemies, they saw a deadly light and were afraid.
The winged devils were the first to flee. Faces turned skyward as the Harpies, crying victory, chased the howling fiends into the distant clouds. Our swordsmen raised their blades and turned on their pursuers. The Minotaur panicked and charged into his own ranks. “Io!” shouted Nessos, and everywhere, the soldiers of Limbo took up the cry.
CHAPTER 19
THE AFTERMATH
OUR FORCES WERE too battered and exhausted to pursue the enemy, but in any case, we had lost our will to fight. Hades, for his part, seemed not even to notice that his army had abandoned him. His whole attention was focused on the arrow in his back. He twisted and clawed and rent his flesh to ribbons.
Then something happened that seems to me now more terrible than all the grief in Hell: Hades wept. The tears ran out of his six red eyes and froze into tiny jewels as they hit the ice. His chest heaved and his shoulders shook. And it was almost as if I had seen that Thing weeping all along for its inevitable defeat. He had tried to use me as a weapon, and now I had broken in his hands. He wept on and on until at last, with something between a whimper and a growl, he pulled his faces from his hands and spoke. “What now?” he said. “Am I alone at last? Who will remove this thorn from my side?”
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