The Age of Zeus

60. SCREAMERS

A shallow valley, a long spoon-scoop in the island's surface, became the battlefield. At the northern end of it there was the broken black ruin of a croft, where the Titans embedded themselves, hunkering among the jagged runs of wall and tuning their suits' camouflage to appropriately dark hues. The Olympians approached from the other end, striding in a confident phalanx. Artemis with her silver spear shouldered, her twin brother Apollo with an arrow nocked, their half-brother Ares swinging his battleaxe — these three formed the front rank. Zeus came next. Hermes and Hades hung back, the rearguard. Clouds were darkening the firmament. Drumbeats of thunder sounded.

Sam was sure of only one thing: she might be about to die but she would not sell her life cheaply. Oddly, hearteningly, the fear was not as great as she'd thought it would be. What she felt was relief more than anything. This looked like being the final showdown, the culmination of all the guerrilla attacks, the climax of the war's gradual escalation. In a way it seemed the most honest method of settling the thing. Titan versus Olympian, out in the open, in broad daylight. No more skulking around, no more hit-and-run sneakiness. Today Titanomachy II would be resolved one way or the other. In terms of raw power the Titans were outmatched, there was no question about that, but then again, so far the battlesuits hadn't been pushed to their absolute limits, nor had every weapon at the Titans' disposal been used in the field yet.

"We see you!" Ares boomed across the length of the valley. "Lurking there. Come on out. Show yourselves like proper warriors. I ache for combat. I yearn to bathe in the blood of my enemies."

"And I yearn to stick this shotgun up your arse," Iapetus muttered.

Ares beat a fist against his breastplate, making the copper ring like a gong. "How impatiently have I awaited this moment," he went on. "Since first you began your challenge to our supremacy, I have wished for nothing else. Come out and face me, you snivelling weaklings, and learn what war really means."

"Titans," said Sam. "Shock and disorientation to start with. We go out and hit them hard, screamers and rumblers on. Theia, Hyperion, Rhea, you're with me. The rest of you stay down, cover us at the flanks. Enfilading fire to keep the Olympians hemmed in. Got that? Good. On my mark. Three, two, one… Now! "

The four Titans sprang from hiding, simultaneously tapping their wristpads to activate inbuilt sonic assault arrays. High-frequency squeals shrilled like invisible drills from shoulder-mounted directional speakers, while deep bursts of infrasound pulsed outward, reverberating below the threshold of audibility, felt rather than heard, like an earthquake in the bones. The battlesuits afforded some insulation against the effects of this aural battery, but still it was like being at the heart of a squall, the world shrieking and thrumming and unsteady. Sam plunged across the grass towards the Olympians feeling as though she might stumble at any step. It didn't help that there were tussocks and rabbit holes everywhere, threatening to trip her. She forged on, and she could hear someone howling like a banshee, as loud as if not louder than her suit's screamer, and she thought it might be her.

The Olympians staggered and reeled. Apollo kept trying to loose off an arrow but his golden bow shook in his hands and he was unable to draw the string. Artemis had her hands clamped over her ears, as did Ares, while Zeus attempted to summon lightning but could not marshal his thoughts to do so, and Hades was on his knees, retching. Then bullets began to rake the hillsides to the left and right, and the Olympians instinctively closed together, a sense of survival penetrating the pain and nausea brought on by the decibel hell the Titans had unleashed.

Screamers and rumblers, however, could not be deployed for long. The infrasound bursts, in particular, were indiscriminate, affecting the suit wearers more slowly but just as surely as they did the suit wearers' opponents. The moment Sam felt her stomach start to churn, she knew it was time to shut the noise down. At least she and the other three were now within decent range of the Olympians. She went down on one knee, bringing up her recoilless submachine gun.

Plenty of targets to choose from, but with barely a second thought she singled out the twins, Apollo and Artemis, and then narrowed it down to Artemis.

The hunting goddess, or genetically-enhanced simulacrum thereof, was recovering her wits, raising her spear, getting ready to strike. A stutter of rounds from Sam came stitching across the grass towards her. Quick as anything, like some jungle-wary predator, Artemis vaulted aside, launching her spear at the same time. The throw, for all that it was made while taking evasive action, was astonishingly accurate. Sam just managed to hurl herself flat as the spear hissed over her and impaled itself into the ground directly behind.

Then Artemis was sprinting towards her, covering the distance in a few lithe, pantherish leaps. So fast. Too fast. She snatched up the spear and brandished it above her head. Her eyes flared, her teeth flashed, the sinews in her arm flexed, and Sam rolled over, hoping to get onto her back in time to fire but knowing, even as she did so, that she wasn't fast enough.

The spear came down, aimed at her waist, in between sections of the suit. Sam felt a sudden terrible pressure in her stomach, a discomfort that expanded all at once into sharp, rooting agony. Her trigger finger spasmed, but the shots sprayed wild. Artemis grinned fiercely and, left hand joining right on the spear, brought all her weight and might to bear. Sam heard a low, helpless moan coming out of her throat, and she could feel — feel — the spearpoint skewering through her abdominal tissue, worming down towards her innards, splitting, bursting things as it went. Her hand involuntarily slackened, the gun slipping from her grasp.

"There, that should hold you," Artemis said. "Now where's — ?"

Then thudding footfalls, a roar, and a huge black blur came barrelling into Artemis. Sam wailed as the spear was wrenched sideways out of her flesh. She saw, blurred as though through a veil, two figures moving close by, grappling, locked in combat. One was Artemis, the other she identified as the Minotaur, who had come to her rescue. She heard his grunts and snorts as he beleaguered Artemis with blows. Artemis, in return, kicked and wrestled with the monster, her face a leer of disgust. Her spear was still in her hand, its tip dripping with Sam's blood, but the Minotaur was pressing in hard, keeping the Olympian at too close a range for the weapon to be useable.

Elsewhere on the battlefield Sam could see Rhea dodging to and fro at full TITAN suit speed while Zeus strafed her with lightning bolts, missing but keeping her off-balance and preventing her from getting near enough to hit him with her flamethrower. Hyperion and Thea, meanwhile, were trying to pin down Apollo, who answered their gunfire with a volley of arrows, which he plucked from his quiver one after another and sent on their way with inhuman swiftness and precision. As Sam watched, an arrow struck Theia in the elbow, piercing the vulnerable, unshielded join between upper arm and forearm. It went clean through, fully half of its shaft emerging from the other side. Theia groaned, staggered, but then, all credit to her, kept up the assault on Apollo, firing her coilgun one-handed while her arrow-transfixed arm hung useless at her side.

Dreamily, bobbing on waves of pain, Sam swivelled her head and looked towards the croft, where Ares was now taking the fight to the three Titans emplaced there. His battleaxe rose and fell, rose and fell, gouging chunks out of the tumbledown walls as he rousted Cronus, Iapetus and Crius from hiding. Sam could not help but marvel at the Olympian's relentlessness and tenacity. His copper armour bore the marks of shotgun rounds, he was bleeding in several places, yet none of it seemed to bother him or hinder him. Like some living siege engine he hammered away at the Titans' meagre, makeshift fortification, driving them out into the open by whittling it to pieces.

And waiting for the three Titans as they retreated was Hades and Hermes, who had teleported into position on the other side of the croft, upslope. Cronus, Iapetus and Crius backpedalled blindly towards where the two Olympians stood. They were firing at Ares as they went, concentrating solely on him, so that they didn't perceive the danger from another quarter until they were almost on top of it. Sam tried to warn them over the comms, but could manage only a whispery, unintelligible croak.

Hades flourished his bare hands out of the sleeves of his cloak as the three Titans blundered within reach. Hermes darted behind the nearest of the three, Crius, and tore off the Titan's helmet. Then Hades leaned in and — casually, almost — brushed fingertips over Cruis's face. Hermes returned to Hades's side before Crius had even started sagging to the ground. Then in an eyeblink, with a kind of spiral twisting of the air, both Olympians were gone. Cronus and Iapetus scarcely had time to register what had happened. They watched their comrade keel over face first onto the grass, and over the comms Sam heard Iapetus curse: "Fuck no. No. Fred. The poor bastard."

Then another twisting of the air, as though space itself were being unwound, and there stood Hermes and Hades again, back for more.

This time, however, Iapetus was too quick off the mark. As Hermes reached for his helmet, the Titan squirmed sideways. Then, with a gloating "Hah!" Iapetus squeezed off a shot at the other Olympian. The round hit Hades in the gut and sent him flying backwards. In the time it took Iapetus to pump and reload, however, Hades vanished. Hermes grabbed him and teleported out of there, and Iapetus blasted nothing but the innocent soil of Bleaney.

Sam returned her attention to the nearest conflict, the struggle between Artemis and the Minotaur. Artemis was a hellion, clawing and spitting like a cornered cat as she fought. The Minotaur's superior strength and brute force counted for nothing against the naked ferocity of the Olympian — not least when a well-aimed knee jab from Artemis caught him square between the legs. The Minotaur let out a moan that would have cracked iron and staggered away from Artemis, clutching his large, prominent and all too unprotectable genitals. He doubled over, almost weeping, and Sam could tell what was coming next and knew she must somehow prevent it. Only she would be able to. Her submachine gun lay on the grass just inches away, and all she had to do was turn over onto her side, but she couldn't turn over onto her side, she just couldn't, this simplest of manoeuvres was beyond her, physically impossible, but she had to, because Artemis was lofting her spear, set to run the Minotaur through with it, and the monster was still helpless with pain, no idea what was about to happen, past realising, and Sam had just a split second in which to act, and so she turned over, even though it felt like muscles were tearing and her stomach was splitting open, she turned over, and her fumbling hand found the gun, but then she seemed to have nothing useful inside her gauntlet, nothing that could bend or grab, a bunch of bananas in place of fingers, so that her hand flopped onto the gun but couldn't pick it up, and Artemis levelled her spear and with cool, cruel deftness lanced it into the monster.

Such was her strength that it went in through his chest and out through his back as easily as if she had been piercing putty. The Minotaur cried out, loud, then louder still as Artemis yanked the spear out and smartly rammed it home again. This time she got him in the midsection, and as the spear was withdrawn it tugged out a blue-grey tangle of intestines with it. Then the Olympian plunged the sleek silver weapon into the Minotaur's chest once more, hard enough that ribs could be heard splintering.

"How they turned you against us, beast, I don't know," she said. "But all living creatures are fair game to Artemis the Untamed. Man, animal, or both, you're mine to hunt and kill."

The Minotaur met her look of haughty triumph with a contemptuous crimson stare. Blood and drool bubbled around his lips. Then, lowering his horns and planting both feet firmly, he thrust himself toward her. The haft of the spear sank further into him, while the point protruded further out behind. Artemis was too startled to let go of the weapon. She'd thought the Minotaur done for, finished, still standing only because her spear was holding him up. Too late did she understand that the monster, though fatally wounded, had resolved not to die alone or unavenged. Now, pushing himself along the spear, he got to within arm's length of her. His massive black hands seized her by the head, took a firm grip, and clenched. Artemis's scream was high-pitched and unearthly, like steam whistling from a kettle, but, ghastly as this was, it wasn't nearly as ghastly as the sound of her skull being crushed — a ripple of firecracker pops that ended in an abrupt, eruptive squish. Wet pink spongy stuff spewed out over the Minotaur's fingers. Artemis's body twitched, then went limp. The Minotaur dropped her and a moment later himself fell, toppling forwards onto her supine form. Briefly he shuddered, then lay still, with the spear poking up vertically from his back like some hideous, gore-soaked flagpole.

Elsewhere, lightning continued to flicker and explode. Gunfire ripped through the air. There was the heavy kerrump of a grenade going off, followed by the patter of clods of earth raining down. Just by her ear, and yet as though from miles away, Sam heard Hyperion calling anxiously for her, for Tethys. In the midst of all the melee he couldn't see that she was lying not so far off from him, beside the fallen Minotaur and the remains of Artemis, whose head was like a trodden-on pumpkin. She wanted to speak up, tell Hyperion where she was, but a strange and wonderful numbness had set in. Icy fire burned in her belly, licking along her veins, suffusing her with soothing coldness, and with every heartbeat she seemed to grow calmer, more detached, remoter from herself. The ground was like water, something you could float on, and nothing mattered. Life, she saw, was such a small thing. All its strains and efforts were immaterial. It felt good to be able to rest at last. Perhaps that was all she had ever needed, just some rest. A good, long sleep.

Her eyes were on the point of closing when a face hove into view above her, peering down.

Hermes, with his shiny winged helmet, like a cross between a dove and a hubcap.

Sam smiled, then frowned.

Why did Hermes have someone else's features?

Why did he look a lot like — no, exactly like — that twelfth Titan candidate, what was his name, the one who dropped out right at the start? Darren Pugh, that was it. Why was Hermes a dead ringer for him?

She couldn't work it out.

Then Hermes reached down with one arm, and said, in Darren Pugh's voice, "Time to go," and clasped her wrist, and next thing Sam knew she was being turned inside out, flipped like a pillowcase, then flipped again, and/

/not Bleaney/

/enclosed, quiet/

/ceiling, not sky/

/where?

Here?

Her?

Er…