The Iron Druid Chronicles 6-Book Bundle
Page 169
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 the 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.”
“Sure. Now we can melt these out of you.”
“No. I already looked. The head and shaft are synthetic composites. We can’t unbind them.”
“Fuck.”
“No, this is good. It’s good, Atticus.”
“What?”
“I needed this. I needed to get hit hard and learn how to heal from it.”
“But you can’t heal with that thing stuck inside you.”
“We’ll get it out. Go deal with the Olympians.”
“They’re down already.”
“There will be more very soon, and you know it. Hermes and Mercury at the very least.”
“But—”
“Atticus. Seriously. I’ve got this.” She reached across with her right hand, clutched my shirt, and gently pulled me down to her lips. She kissed me and then said, her eyes mere inches from mine, “I’m stable inside and comfortably numb. I’m not leaking stomach acid or anything, and I have the internal bleeding stopped. All I need is for you to get me the hell out of here. You have a plan for that, right? Tell me you have a plan.”
“I have a plan,” I said, and remembered that it was true.
She smiled, new tears sheeting down from the corners of her eyes toward the tops of her ears, and I went all melty. “I knew you did,” she said. “I’ll do better next time. Now go.”
I rose from her lips but froze before getting to my feet, seeing the arrow again and the sodden bloody circle on her black clothing. I couldn’t leave her there. Some very old instincts told me that was impossible.
Granuaile heard and laughed once before she realized that was probably not a good idea with an arrow in her diaphragm. “Atticus, go. I’ll be invisible and safe enough for a while. Don’t worry about me.”
I ducked back down and kissed her again. “All right, I’ll go. But only because you would kick my ass if I stayed.”
“Take Oberon with you. He doesn’t want to stay here.”
Is that true?
She wants to deal with this alone. That’s okay. Speaking aloud, I said, “All right, let’s do this.” Oberon trotted next to me, tail wagging, and I gave him some love.
Thanks to Herne and his boys, Artemis and Diana had been turned into copies of the Black Knight, resting faceup on the forest floor with no arms and no legs. Their limbs were nearby but not close enough to heal, and I could see that, beyond the initial squirt of ichor, the Olympians’ remarkable regenerative processes had stopped the bleeding and they made very tidy torsos. The Morrigan’s prescience about Herne’s ability to help us was well warranted; I doubted I would have fared so well had he not been there, even with Flidais around. Artemis most likely would have locked her legs around my neck while I was unconscious and snapped it. I thanked Herne for his assistance, and he nodded but said nothing. He and Flidais helped me haul the pieces of Artemis over to where Diana lay and spread them out so that they were only a few feet apart.
I stood between the two bodies and the goddesses glowered up at me. I didn’t mock them or rub my victory in their faces. I kept my expression dispassionate as I set my plan in motion. //Druid ready for storage// I sent to Albion. //Ten pieces / My position / Leave large pieces for last//
The earth’s magic cannot be used to harm animals of a certain biological complexity. I can use it all I want to give myself an advantage in battle—speed and strength and camouflage and so on—but I can’t use it directly against an enemy or a critter that wants to eat me. It’s an immutable law and tattooed directly into my skin. But the immortal nature of the Olympians, I realized earlier, provided me with an interesting loophole. They couldn’t truly be harmed in any permanent sense by the earth; even when decapitated, their heads retained consciousness without oxygen, so I—or, rather, Albion—could do some things to them we’d never be able to do to any other creature.
Underneath the arms and legs of the huntresses, the forest floor began to bubble and shift. Gooey globs of what geologists call London Clay rose up and encased their limbs in a dark-brown slurry with little fossils sprinkled throughout. This was then coated with a layer of chalk and topped with gravel, which Albion bound together and then smoothed into solid rock.
“What is this?” Diana asked, swiveling her head from side to side, watching the process unfold.
“Your fate,” I said. “You will be interred in the earth until you agree to cease hunting me and my friends. No earthquake from Poseidon or Neptune will cough you out of the ground. You will remain in darkness, unheard and undying, until I decide to release you. You’d better hope I don’t perish in the meantime.”
The clay began to ooze over their torsos, and, once they felt it, their expressions lost much of their vinegar.
“I will cease hunting you and your friends,” Artemis said.
My eyebrows shot up at the quick capitulation. “You have my thanks. Diana?”
Her defiance returned. She tried to spit at me and missed. “I will never stop seeking your head,” she snarled.
I sucked in air past my teeth. “Wow, never is a very long time. Artemis, thank you very much for offering, but I hope you will forgive me if I don’t quite believe you yet. I will be more inclined to do so a bit later, perhaps. You and I will speak again soon.”
The clay had moved past their shoulders now and was creeping up the columns of their necks. Diana continued to glare at me while Artemis rolled her eyes down for a nervous look. “I am in earnest, Druid. I will swear it.”
“Again, I thank you, but you lack credibility at the moment.” And there was no way I was letting either of them loose right after they’d shot Granuaile and tried to kill me too. “We’ve defeated you three times now,” I reminded them. “Once in the Netherlands, once in the English Channel, and now here. It didn’t have to be this way. You might wish to consider while you’re underground if all this was worth it for the god of drunken assholes and five dryads who were perfectly healthy when last I saw them. Save for the past few days of self-defense, I have never assaulted you directly and have strived to amend my trespasses. Can you say the same?”
//Finish now// I sent to Albion, and the clay flowed to envelop the heads of the two huntresses, who screamed curses at me until the gunk cut them off. Once they sank out of sight—mute hunks of rock, safe from any attempt to retrieve them—I looked up in response to a small flutter of wings above. Hugin and Munin stared down at me from the branch of an elm.
“Yeah, I thought you’d show up now. Tell the Einherjar who bet against us to pound sand, Odin. We survived.” The ravens squawked but said nothing intelligible.
Laughter bubbled up from the throat of Flidais. “That was amusing, Atticus. And well done. How fares Granuaile?” I wondered why she had not shown any more concern before now.
“She’s wounded but stable until we finish here.”
“Are we not finished?”
“Not quite. Will you follow me to the edge of the clearing? You too, Herne?”
“Certainly,” Flidais replied, and Herne said aye.
“We mislike riding in the sun,” he said, “but will endure for the sake of our guests.”
The sun had a proper start on the morning now, and the cloud of debris from Windsor Castle was clearly visible once we reached the edge of the pasture. Helicopters were still circling around the Home Park but had yet to stray this far.
“Shouldn’t be much longer,” I said. “If Odin was watching that all unfold, then I’m sure the Olympians had some eyes on us as well.”
The ankle-winged boys didn’t keep us waiting. Less than a minute later, they zipped in from the south and hovered at twelve feet to deliver their decree from on high.