Sam hurried over to where he lay, ready to finish him off if need be, but Hermes was dying. One look told her that. She'd got him in the torso and neck. Blood was bubbling from his mouth and pulsing out through the crater-like gouges in his chest in time to his wheezing breaths.
He tried to teleport away but couldn't. He phased out, phased in again, phased out, in, alternating between here and elsewhere. At first the exchanges were so rapid he was almost strobing, but gradually they slowed, weakened, becoming the fizzling, arrhythmic flicker of a lightbulb that was just about to fuse. Then they ceased altogether, leaving Hermes fixed solidly where he was. He rolled his head. He squinted up at Sam. Something seemed to shift in his eyes, like a cloud clearing.
'Ginger tits…' he croaked, and it was followed by a phlegmy choking rattle that was just about recognisable as laughter. 'Fuck.' Now he was talking as Darren Pugh. Himself again, at the last. 'I remember you.'
'Good,' said Sam.
'I told. About Bleaney.'
'I know.'
'I'm…'
There was one more word, a couple of short slurred syllables, and Sam couldn't identify it. It might have been sorry. It might equally have been something nonsensical like sausage. But it made no difference. Pugh's act of betrayal was in the past.
And so was Pugh.
77. SWIMMING-POOL JELLYFISH
'Dang,' said Hyperion, over Hermes's body. 'I get what you were saying now, about Pugh. They made a new Hermes out of him. Recycled his sorry ass.'
'Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy,' said Theia, and hawked up a gob of spittle and let it drop from her lips onto the corpse's blank-staring face.
'Not immortal,' said Sam. 'Just wanting us to think they are. Now, Cronus and Rhea. Where are they and what are they up to?'
Her visor display informed her that both the other Titans were not far from each other, a little under a kilometre to the east.
'Rhea?' she said over the comms.
'Tethys! I'm with Field Marshal Armstrong-Hall and a few of his men, and we are at what seems to be some kind of swimming pool.'
'Any Olympians there?'
'Not as far as I can tell. There are a lot of bodies, though, and what's left of a monster. Judging by the scaly hide, the fins, and the number of heads — six that I can count — Scylla. You should see the shell casings. It took a lot to kill this creature. Anyway, we're going to complete our sweep of the area, then move on. What's your situation?'
'Three Olympians down.'
' Fantastique! '
'Also one Titan.'
'Ah.'
'Iapetus.'
'I'm sorry about that. I had no great love for him, but still.'
'Likewise,' said Sam. 'To give him his due, he went out in style.'
'Hero?'
'I'd say.'
'A Christmas gift in a plain paper package. He'll be — One moment. What's that? Field Marshal, do you see — '
Sudden gunfire. Shouting. Panic.
'Rhea?' Sam said. 'Rhea!'
She looked at Hyperion and Theia. 'We have to — '
'You don't even need to say it,' said Hyperion. 'Let's roll.'
'Theia?'
Sam was expecting hesitation, a wince of reluctance at the very least. What she got was a surprisingly affirmative 'Yeah!' followed by: 'She saved my hide from the Hydra. I save hers, then we're quits, that abomination and me, and I don't owe her nothing any more.'
As rationales went, it was hardly altruistic. But it would do.
The three Titans raced towards the swimming pool, passing among soldiers who were scouring the stronghold for enemies and having trouble finding any. If Sam counted right, there were five Olympians left: Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Dionysus and Demeter. Six if you included Argus. Whether they were scattered throughout the stronghold or concentrated in one spot, not everyone in the invading force was going to be able to engage with one of them. It was simple arithmetic. So some of the soldiers, finding themselves enemy-less, were doing what soldiers at a loose end tended to do, namely vandalising and ransacking. Temples were being shot up and defaced with mortar shells. The Olympians' living quarters were being looted, the larger furnishings smashed or burnt, smaller items pocketed as souvenirs. This destructiveness was a good sign. It spoke of the possibility of victory, a prevailing mood of optimism. If the invaders were laying waste to the place, rather than being repulsed and routed, it implied that theirs was the side with the upper hand.
On arriving at the swimming pool, Sam had cause to revise this opinion.
Here, Poseidon presided, and he was using the water from the pool — nearly a million gallons of it — as a weapon of mass destruction. At his command the water had arisen in a single bulbous globule that sprouted tentacles in every direction like some leviathanic jellyfish. The tentacles latched onto the heads of the attacking soldiers, lifting them off the ground and covering their faces with a blister of liquid. The soldiers drowned while suspended in midair, their legs kicking, their hands clawing uselessly at the transparent wet masks that were killing them.
To guard against bullets Poseidon had erected a shimmering dome of water around himself. It was some ten metres in diameter, its wall three or four metres thick. Any projectile that entered the dome was slowed to a standstill and then began sinking lazily to the turquoise tiles of the floor.
Sam spotted Field Marshal Armstrong-Hall frantically grappling one of the water tentacles, which was wound round him like a boa constrictor. Rhea was helping him fight it off, chopping through it with her fist every time its tip got within probing distance of his head. The end of the tentacle would disintegrate into a shower of droplets, but would then re-form instantly, extruding itself forwards to renew its relentless snaky progress towards his face.
Parts of the sea-beast Scylla lay scattered around the rim of the pool, along with heaps of sodden corpses. Within his impregnable dome Poseidon looked overtaxed but grimly elated. It was a strain controlling so much water so intricately, but to defend the stronghold, to slaughter wholesale these mortals who had dared lay siege to the Olympians' home, was worth any amount of effort.
'Ideas?' Hyperion asked Sam, surveying the scene. ''Cause me, I'm all out. Nothing's getting through that dome Poseidon's got around him, and he's got plenty of water to play with, and even if he runs out, he'll just set to turning people's blood to sludge or exploding it out through their ears. The motherfucker's holding all the cards and he knows it.'
'You said nothing's getting through the dome,' Sam said.
'Yep. I think nothing can. Not even a coilgun round.'
'But not no one.'
'Huh?' Then Hyperion grasped what she was getting at. 'Oh, you are one crazy, psycho-ass bitch, and I mean that as a compliment.'
'Direct frontal assault,' Sam said. 'But it has to be all of us doing it, to give us the best possible chance of success. The more of us try, the likelier it is one of us will get through. Base? These suits are watertight, right?'
