Tom Holt (25 page)

'I thought he'd already done that.'

'Yes,' said Venezuela. 'I mean no. Look, he was on our side, right? Then he defects to them. Now Jupiter's got him to come back to us. Quite the human tennis ball, in fact.'

'Quite.'

'Apparently; Venezuela went on, 'Jupiter fixed it by getting at Derry through his mother. Anyway, that's what Bliss told me a moment ago; but you know Bliss, dead ignorant. And so what that means is that the enemy's come out into the open but without a Hero. In dead shtuck, in other words. And so it's ail hands to the pump time, to see if we can nail him before he gets back to his place of safety. Fun, isn't it?'

Indigestion breathed in deeply and sighed. Venezuela wasn't the sort of person one would choose to talk to when one has a poorly head, but he had caught the gist of it. 'Hang on, though,' he said. 'If we're supposed to be going after Gel. .

'
Shh!
'

'All right, after You Know Who, why did Hel say we were all being sent to afflict Prometh...'

'Shhhh!
'

'... Whatsit?' said Indigestion. 'Surely we should all...' Venezuela grinned. 'And who do you think the Great Smartass will go running to once he's realised his pet Hero's ditched him?'

'Oh,' said Indigestion, 'I see.'

'Particularly,' Venezuela added, 'when he hears that his old buddy and fellow traitor is being beset by maladies and Spectral Warriors and so forth. Be round there like a shot, don't you worry, and then we'll have him. Smart thinking, no?'

Indigestion nodded -- slowly this time -- and pulled a wry face. 'Oh well,' he said. 'I suppose it had to happen. Look, do you know where I can get hold of at least four large coaches? We should have been on the road about fifteen minutes ago.'

'Coaches are a bit tricky,' Venezuela replied, 'but if a winged chariot or so'd be any use to you...'

'Fine.'

'You could try OFT,' Venezuela said. 'Oh marvellous, the call-box is free. You got change for a twenty?'

Indigestion finally tracked Old Father Time down in the bar drinking Guinness, and talked him into a loan of his old but reliable Vulcan V12 Camaro. It would be rather a tight squeeze getting all the Maladies on it, he reckoned, but it was worth a try; and in the circumstances, if the worst came to the worst, it probably wouldn't be the end of the world if they left Tennis Elbow behind.

Once he'd found the vehicle; put the horses in the shafts, put the harness on the horses, checked the tyre pressures and wound back the in-flight movie it was nearly half-past ten. Fortunately, Old Father Time's chariot can cope with that sort of problem, and by a quarter to eleven Indigestion was coming in to land on the peak of one of the Caucasus mountains. Not that he was the first to arrive; not by a long way.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was raining.

'Aren't you going to take a coat?' said Mrs. Derry.

'No,' Jason replied, thinking of something else.

'Don't be silly, Jason,' Mrs. Derry said. 'Here, I'll get you one.' She disappeared and returned with one of Mr. Derry's anoraks. 'And you aren't going out in
those
shoes.'

Through the window, Jason could see George in the golf cart, looking at his watch. Was today the Serpent-Haired Gorgon of Sphacteria or the Hundred-Headed Hell-Dragon? Not that it mattered terribly much. Once you've slain one, you've slain them all. 'Look,' he said, 'I might be a bit late tonight, don't...'

'You aren't leaving this house till you change those shoes.'

Jason winced. 'Mum,' he said.

'This instant.'

There was a brief silence, charged with strong emotion. Then Jason let out a plangent sigh, leaned the Sword of Glycerion in its canvas case against the door-frame and sprinted up the stairs. When he came back he was wearing a different pair of shoes.

'Right,' he said. 'Now, if you don't mind...' He picked up the sword-case and reached for the door-handle.

'Hanky?'

'Yes,' Jason growled.

'Show me.'

'You what?

'Show me that you've got a clean hanky.'

Jason turned slowly round and gave his mother a look that would have turned the Gorgon to stone and had the Hell-Dragon running in search of the nearest battered dragons' hostel. On his mother it had absolutely no effect.

'Hanky,' she said.

'I'm going beheading monsters,' Jason said, 'I don't think I'm actually going to need...'

'Hanky.'

My mother, Jason said to himself, a woman of iron will and limited vocabulary. 'Look,' he said, 'I'm late already, so...'

This time, Mrs. Derry didn't even say Hanky; she just looked it. That was somehow infinitely worse.

'All right,' Jason snapped. 'All right' He hurried back up the stairs again. A moment later, his voice floated down over the bannisters.

'Mum...'

'Yes, dear?'

'Where are my handkerchiefs, Mum?'

'In the airing cupboard, dear, second shelf down at the back, where they usually are.'

'Oh. Right.'

'And don't run up and down stairs like that, Jason. It's not good for them.'

'Yes, Mum.'

Having proffered a spotless handkerchief for inspection and picked up the Sword, Jason lunged for the doorhandle and rotated it. Even if it turned out that Jupiter had lined up the entire race of Titans for him today, he felt things could only get easier from now on.

'Jason.'

He froze. 'Yes, Mum?'

'Don't forget Sharon's coming over today.'

'Mum...'

So make sure you're back by quarter to six at the latest, because you'll need to have a bath and wash your hair.'

'Mum...'

'Have a nice day, dear. Go carefully, now.'

'Yes, Mum.' And so saying, the Seed of Jove crawled out of the door and slumped across to the golf cart.

'Morning, boss.'

'What?' Jason hurled the sword-case onto the back seat and sat down.

'I said Morning.'

'Be that as it may,' Jason replied. 'What's the old git want me to do today?'

'Shh!' George was cringing. 'Keep your voice down, boss.'

Jason shook his head. 'If I want to call the Old Git an old git,' he said loudly, so that a passing milkman nearly dropped a crate of gold-top, 'then I shall call the Old Git an old git, and if the Old Git doesn't like it, then the Old Git knows what he can do. All right?'

George nodded. Since he was hunkered down almost under his seat, all Jason could see was the top of his head, but from its movements he could extrapolate a nod.

'Fine,' said Jason. 'So what has the...'

'Nemean lion,' George whispered quickly, 'followed by Storm-giants, then half an hour for lunch, followed by wrestling with Time and ending up with stealing the Golden Pear of Truth from the Temple of the Nine Winds which is guarded by...'

'I know,' Jason said. 'Right, let's get on with it. And if I faint from boredom halfway through, don't forget to wake me.'

George put the cart in gear. 'Right you are, boss. Oh, and boss...'

'Yes?'

''Scuse me saying this, but it's good to see you back to normal, boss, after you went over all funny. I said to myself...'

'George.'

'Yes, boss?'

'Drive the cart.'

George shrugged and released the brake. 'Still,' he added, 'Glad to see you've put all that defecting crap behind you, boss. I could have told you no good would come of it.'

'George...'

'The lads were saying,' George went on, and Jason wondered why saying someone's name quietly didn't seem to work when
he
did it, 'he won't be able to keep it up, they said. Not once his mum's sorted him out. Right old battleaxe...'

'George!'

'Boss?'

'For crying out loud, George,' Jason hissed, glancing over his shoulder at the front door of the house, 'keep your voice down!'

The eagle banked sharply and dived, slicing through the cold air like a worried knife. Behind her, ten winged chariots full of Spectral Warriors pulled up, wobbled in thin air, and changed tack. A flash of lightning narrowly missed the eagle's wingtip.

Nothing left for it, the eagle realised, but to climb. Try and outmanoeuvre them. G-forces, gravitational pull, power-to-weight ratios, Sopwith Camels, all that sort of stuff. It wasn't exactly her forte, but there it was. As the careers officer at theological college had told her, it is extremely ill-advised to overspecialise too early. She rose as sharply as she could, nearly pulling her own wings off in doing so, and soared.

'After her!' shouted the Captain of Spectral Warriors.

'But...' said his charioteer.

'No buts,' snapped the Captain. 'Follow her!'

'OK, boss,' said the charioteer.

Not long afterwards, ten empty winged chariots drifted away towards the ground, their crews having all fallen out when they tried to follow an eagle who was looping the loop. For a moment the eagle slowed down, exhausted, and rested on the crest of a strong thermal. Then she saw another ten winged chariots emerge from behind a bank of cloud, and jinked just in time to avoid a burst of lightning bolts.

Grimly, she started to climb; but the chariots didn't try following her this time. Instead they split up and spread out, rising in slow circles around her. Obviously, she decided, these were the teeth of one smart dragon. Wisdom teeth.

She reset her wings and dived, sending rabbits on the far-distant surface scurrying for cover in all directions. When it looked as if she was certain to hit the deck with extreme force, she pulled up as hard as she could -- was that a bone in her left wing breaking, or just a few tendons? -- and skimmed parallel to the ground. When she cocked her head over her shoulder, she could see that the chariots were following. Good. In a manner of speaking, of course; really good would have been if they had stopped following her and gone away, but this would have to do for the time being.

As well as making good starters for a dinner party, the eagle recalled, larks are good teachers. She slowed down slightly and zagged about, exaggerating the slight malfunction in her left wing. The chariots were gaining on her. They were coming up very fast now, the charioteers lashing the winged horses up to maximum effort. In fact, they were going so fast now that in less than twenty seconds they would have overtaken their quarry easily, if only they hadn't flown into a railway bridge first.

The eagle spread her aching wings and glided for a moment before looking round and seeing one winged chariot come out from under the railway bridge. With a squawk of furious despair the eagle flapped her pinions and rose up into the air; and the chariot, manned by fifteen Spectral Warriors, all minus their helmets, followed.

It didn't take long for the eagle to come to the conclusion that this bunch, unlike the others, had rather more intelligence than the average ex-molar. They declined to crash into the branches of trees when she led the way, and when she pitched on a low branch and sat tight, they hovered overhead for a while and then set the entire forest alight with thunderbolts, making it imperative for the eagle to leave. She had managed that, purely by dint of hiding between two large, slow-moving crows, and had been quietly sneaking off back the way she had just come when they'd spotted her and resumed their pursuit. Nothing flashy, you see, nothing clever; just plain, textbook stuff.

Her wings hurt like hell and her head was dizzy from too much climbing and swooping.

Meanwhile, the chariot was closing in; showing, it was true, a certain amount of circumspection, but nevertheless shortening the distance between them to an alarming extent. She'd tried looping a loop again, but they hadn't followed. They'd just waited till she came back straight and level again and resumed where they'd left off. When she'd hitched a ride in the undercarriage of a passing helicopter they had simply flown alongside throwing lightning-bolts, until the helicopter pilot had bailed out and his craft had gone spiralling away out of control. There really wasn't a lot left she could do, except maybe try smiling at them; and that probably wouldn't work, either.

'No,' said the Gorgon, 'not with a G, with a Jason frowned. 'You what?' he said.

'My name's
Gordon,
not
Gorgon,'
said the serpent-haired monster through the letter-box. 'You must have got the wrong address. Gorgon with a G lives -- oh, a long way from here. Over the other side of those mountains over there, I think'

'I don't believe you; Jason said.

'Don't you?' The flap of the letter-box quivered slightly. 'Why ever not?'

Jason looked around at the large number of extremely lifelike stone statues that lined the drive of the house. Statues of postmen. Statues of milkmen. Statues of Jehovah's Witnesses. 'I just don't, that's all,' he said. 'Now are you coming out, or do I have to kick the door down?'