Chapter Twenty-Six
The words have exactly the effect I was expecting. His eyebrows shoot up; he stares at me.
“Here? In Athens?” He frowns. “You must have dreamed it, Psyche.”
“No—it was outside the vigil house. She was there, with Nikos. And it’s true, Eros—he really is Poseidon’s son.” Saying the words out loud makes my heart beat faster. “She came to warn me. She told me…she said Poseidon is on the cusp of recovering his own blade. His nymphs have found it, under the sea. There is an army of them, ready to carry it home to him.” I don’t tell Eros the part about it being my mother’s blade. I don’t like to think about that part, and besides, it might not even be true.
Eros still looks astounded by my words, but he doesn’t dismiss them. The mention of the blade seems to have brought out something else in him, and now he stares into the darkness behind me, frowning.
“They are allies, then. Deimos and Poseidon. It is as I feared.”
I shake my head. “I do not think they are working together.”
“What else could it be?” Eros grimaces. “I can guess what bargain was struck. No doubt Poseidon has agreed to hand us over, you and me, if he wins Athens. And Deimos…Deimos has surely agreed to help Poseidon take the throne.”
These are grim thoughts indeed. Could they be true? Dimitra seemed so sure…but what stock should I place in that? A god has made assurances to her. So what? Gods make false assurances to mortals all the time.
“But what about the blade?” I say. “Poseidon will surely not stop at Athens. If you’re right, he means to take all of Olympus—and before that, most of the mortal kingdoms, too, no doubt.”
I see the shadows move in Eros’s eyes.
“Then we must fight him on two fronts. We must keep him from taking power here in Athens—and we must recover Zeus’s blade.”
I shake my head. “But you haven’t even found your brother. Let alone figured out a way to get the blade back from him.”
“But I will,” Eros says grimly. “You may rely upon it.”
I look out at the fog-covered bay, imagining the fleet of ships that wait on the other side of it, ready to pounce.
“Will you tell the others?” I say. Eros is silent a while, then shakes his head.
“What good would it do? It cannot alter our strategy. And I fear…” he hesitates. “What your sister is, who her allies are…it does not reflect well on you, Psyche. My father and Athena mistrust you already. Better not give them further reason.”
“My sister is not a killer,” I look at him. “She was protecting her child.”
Eros raises an eyebrow.
“She was protecting her child, yes. But she slew a god with barely a thought, Psyche, and I don’t doubt she’d do it again.”
Perhaps they shouldn’t, but the words almost make me proud.
“Come,” Eros says, and by the way he’s looking at me, I wonder if he senses what just passed through my head. “Take a seat by the fire. It’s cold, but dawn will not be long, now.”
*
A scream wakes me. I blink my eyes open in a rush, remembering where I am. The fire has gone out, and the air is thick still, but lighter beyond the mist. It is morning.
Another scream comes, and then another. They are so clear, so piercing in the fog. I stumble to my feet; my hair whips around my face, and I tug it back to see better. The fire is cold ash now, and the gods stand at the cliff face, their backs to me, robes billowing.
I hurry to Eros’s side, but when he sees me beside him he pulls me back, away from the cliff’s edge.
“Not so close.”
“What’s happening?” I say, my voice croaky and thin. He gives me a grim look.
“Poseidon’s fleet traveled through the night. They are upon us now. The mist is not affecting them as it affects the Athenians. They’re firing from their boats.”
I hear the whir of arrows slicing through the air, and somewhere below us, on the rock face, I hear the death-cry of another of our men. I thought Athena had done well to prepare her troops in the night, ranging them across the city’s defenses. But now it seems she has done little more than make targets of them. They can’t defend themselves when they are blind and their enemies are not: though they let fly their arrows and crank the ballista as fast as they can, they are shooting into the dark. I stare at the seething cloud beneath us, its tendrils moving like smoke. Beneath the death cries and the rallying-cries it seems to me I hear the dull sound of arrows hitting flesh. And yet I still can’t see the invading ships. It’s as though an army of ghosts has descended upon the bay; as though it is the mist itself that lets fly arrow after arrow.
“Fire, men! Keep at it!” Distantly, through the mist, I hear the yells of an enemy commander. He has an islander’s accent, sharp with authority. Even from here his voice sounds hungry, greedy for blood.
“What will you do?” I look from Eros to the others, particularly Athena in her silver breastplate. It is her men dying on these rocks.
“Can’t she grant them sight in the mist?”
“This is not her mist,” Eros says, his voice hard.
“Then she must tell them to stand down, or they will be slaughtered.” In the background, Poseidon’s general calls again, and at his command, more arrows fly. Eros pushes me behind him, though the rain of arrows falls short of the clifftop.
“Athena!” Ares calls. “Have the men stand down. Let them take to the sea. At closer range they will not suffer such a disadvantage.”
But Athena shakes her head. There is a new, determined light in her eyes. She’s thought of something else. When she turns back to the sea her eyes are closed, but her mouth is bared wide as though to howl into the wind. I don’t understand what it means until a voice swells up from the fog. It sounds like the general’s voice, the one I heard before, with the islander’s accent. But looking at Athena, her face raised to the sky, her chest shuddering, I don’t believe it’s his voice at all.
“Aim to our left, men! Athenian boats are to our left!”
But there are no Athenian boats in the water.
It seems to me the whir of arrows on the cliffs below, and the death-cries, too, ebb away. The men are obeying the general’s voice, and firing in the direction of Athena’s command. They cannot know that instead of firing on Athenians, they’re firing on their own comrades. And then I hear another voice, seemingly also from the Cycladic fleet, but from the opposite flank. It carries the same authority as the first.
“To your right, men! Fire to your right!”
The death-cries in the air are not from our men now. They’re coming from the sea. The men under attack are firing back, not knowing that they fire on their own forces. Whatever they can see through the fog, it is not enough to save them from Athena’s deception. I stare out at the misted-over waters, feeling the horror of it all, hearing the phantom voices urging men to their death. And then it seems the wind thickens like an inhale, and a voice cuts through the fog. A deep rumbling, more sensation than words, vibrating through stone and air.
Stop, fools! Hold your fire! And the fog begins to lift.
As it does, I see the tally of the dead among Athena’s men: bodies on the cliffs and overlooks, ruined bodies that have fallen to their deaths on the rocks below. But Poseidon’s troops have suffered as badly, if not worse. Boats drift in the bay, rudderless, helpless. Red stains are spreading in the waves.
We do not have to wait long to feel the sea-god’s anger. It seems to curdle around us like a damp vapor. A roar rips through the sea. Far below, the waters begin roiling.
Out in the far distance, a wave begins to swell. My blood chills at the sight of it. I have seen its like once before. It was the sea-god’s hand who moved it then, and I am sure it is his hand that moves it now. I watch, the breath cold in my lungs, as it lifts up a line of boats out on the horizon, cradling them like some monstrous hand. The boats that Athena convinced to fire on each other, whose survivors float in a sea of death and chaos now: they were only the first wave. The rest of Poseidon’s fleet is still out there. But a second advance is coming, and it seems this time, Poseidon means to deliver them right to the beaches of Athens. The wave is hurtling toward us, sheer as a wall, frothing with power, high enough to block out the dawn. And on its crest ride a whole new fleet of war-ships. The wind bites harder against my face and chills my heart, and I brace myself as the great wave crashes down. The sound, the thrashing spray, hits me like a wall, knocking me backward as the boats plummet from their cradle in the sky.
Breathless, I hear an awful sound from below: a violent screeching, like wood splintering and rending, but vast, as though it’s coming from all across the bay. I climb to my feet, and take in the devastation below. The boats have landed on a jagged reef of rocks, a great range of them like a forest of stone needles. Moments ago they were nowhere to be seen. On the contrary, the bay looked shallow and unbroken, an easy landing to make. But now they are unmissable, vicious as teeth, rearing up out of the green water. Some boats are broken clean in two; others are speared on the crags, taking on water, already foundering. There are shouts of horror and cries of the wounded.
Athena sees me staring.
“It is a treacherous bay to land in,” she shrugs. “My people know how to navigate it, but the unwary make mistakes.”
But rocks like those could not be overlooked, I am sure of that. Somehow she hid them, and glazed the water’s surface to make it seem shallower than it was. It was a trap for Poseidon. She baited him, too: had he not been so angry, thrusting the boats onto the bay’s edge with such speed and force, they might have survived.
Down below, many of the men have jumped from their boats, left with no choice but to try and swim to shore. Others are trying to dislodge their craft from the rocks, pushing mightily with their oars, to no avail. Either way, they make easy pickings for the Athenian soldiers now. From their positions on the cliffs they fire arrows and projectiles, and this time, they have a clear shot. I watch the shimmering figures fall, the glint of armor toppling into waves.
*
I had not thought any navy could launch their boats so fast, but Athena’s soldiers are men of the sea indeed: once Poseidon’s forces are in retreat they are in pursuit, one shining trireme after another cutting through the waves. They’re narrow boats, fast and nimble, easier to maneuver than the bigger crafts of Poseidon’s fleet. I watch them give chase, gaining on the rest of the ships that still wait on the horizon. The Athenians, I’m told, have mastered the art of battery-ramming. They can sink a boat in less than a minute. No other navy is as deft, as fast, as adept in pinpointing the vulnerable spots of the enemy ship. But still, the boats look very small, dwarfed in size by Poseidon’s fleet. And we do not know how many more wait on the horizon. Athena turns, her face drawn tight.
“Stay with your men,” she says. “Mine have need of me.”
Then two great, silvery wings unfold from her back, and in moments she is airborne, gliding above the waves.