The Blood of Olympus(114)

‘Gah!’ Percy yelped.

Annabeth clamped her hand over his mouth.

Which looked strange, because suddenly each of them had turned into a hulking, six-armed Earthborn.

‘Hazel’s Mist.’ Piper’s voice sounded deep and gravelly. She looked down and realized that she, too, now had a lovely Neanderthal body – belly hair, loincloth, stubby legs and oversized feet. If she concentrated, she could see her normal arms, but when she moved them they rippled like mirages, separating into three different sets of muscular Earthborn arms.

Percy grimaced, which looked even worse on his newly uglified face. ‘Wow, Annabeth … I’m really glad I kissed you before you changed.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ she said. ‘We should get going. I’ll move clockwise around the perimeter. Piper, you move counterclockwise. Percy, you scout the middle –’

‘Wait,’ Percy said. ‘We’re walking right into the whole blood-spilling sacrifice trap we’ve been warned about, and you want to split up even more?’

‘We’ll cover more ground that way,’ Annabeth said. ‘We have to hurry. That chanting …’

Piper hadn’t noticed it until then, but now she heard it: an ominous drone in the distance, like a hundred forklifts idling. She looked at the ground and noticed bits of gravel trembling, skittering southeast, as if pulled towards the Parthenon.

‘Right,’ Piper said. ‘We’ll meet up at the giant’s throne.’

At first it was easy.

Monsters were everywhere – hundreds of ogres, Earthborn and Cyclopes milling through the ruins – but most of them were gathered at the Parthenon, watching the ceremony in progress. Piper strolled along the cliffs of the Acropolis unchallenged.

Near the first onager, three Earthborn were sunning themselves on the rocks. Piper walked right up to them and smiled. ‘Hello.’

Before they could make a sound, she cut them down with her sword. All three melted into slag heaps. She slashed the onager’s spring cord to disable the weapon, then kept moving.

She was committed now. She had to do as much damage as possible before the sabotage was discovered.

She skirted a patrol of Cyclopes. The second onager was surrounded by an encampment of tattooed Laistrygonian ogres, but Piper managed to get to the machine without raising suspicion. She dropped a vial of Greek fire in the sling. With luck, as soon as they tried to load the catapult, it would explode in their faces.

She kept moving. Gryphons roosted on the colonnade of an old temple. A group of empousai had retreated into a shadowy archway and appeared to be slumbering, their fiery hair flickering dimly, their brass legs glinting. Hopefully the sunlight would make them sluggish if they had to fight.

Whenever she could, Piper slew isolated monsters. She walked past larger groups. Meanwhile the crowd at the Parthenon grew larger. The chanting got louder. Piper couldn’t see what was happening inside the ruins – just the heads of twenty or thirty giants standing in a circle, mumbling and swaying, maybe doing the evil monster version of ‘Kumbayah’.

She disabled a third siege weapon by sawing through the torsion ropes, which should give the Argo II a clear approach from the north.

She hoped Frank was watching her progress. She wondered how long it would take for the ship to arrive.

Suddenly, the chanting stopped. A BOOM echoed across the hillside. In the Parthenon, the giants roared in triumph. All around Piper, monsters surged towards the sound of celebration.

That couldn’t be good. Piper blended into a crowd of sour-smelling Earthborn. She bounded up the main steps of the temple, then climbed a section of metal scaffolding so she could see above the heads of the ogres and Cyclopes.

The scene in the ruins almost made her cry aloud.

Before Porphyrion’s throne, dozens of giants stood in a loose ring, hollering and shaking their weapons as two of their number paraded around the circle, showing off their prizes. The princess Periboia held Annabeth by the neck like a feral cat. The giant Enceladus had Percy wrapped in his massive fist.

Annabeth and Percy both struggled helplessly. Their captors displayed them to the cheering horde of monsters, then turned to face King Porphyrion, who sat in his makeshift throne, his white eyes gleaming with malice.

‘Right on time!’ the giant king bellowed. ‘The blood of Olympus to raise the Earth Mother!’





XLIII


Piper


PIPER WATCHED IN HORROR as the giant king rose to his full height – almost as tall as the temple columns. His face looked just as Piper remembered – green as bile, with a twisted sneer, his seaweed-coloured hair braided with swords and axes taken from dead demigods.

He loomed over the captives, watching them wriggle. ‘They arrived just as you foresaw, Enceladus! Well done!’