The truck roared forward and banged against their bumper again. The car jolted, swung far into the left lane, nearly colliding with a car coming the other direction.
Nim clutched the steering wheel, pulling them back into their lane, and hit the gas, trying to outpace the truck. “What do I do?” she gasped, voice trembling. In the rearview mirror, Alia could see the terror on her face, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“Slow down,” commanded Diana.
“He’s right on my butt!” Nim yelled.
“Listen to Diana. He won’t try to kill us,” Jason said, his fists clenched, knuckles like white stars. “Slow down. They don’t want the Warbringer dead.”
“Do it, Nim,” said Alia, though everything in her screamed to run as far and as fast from the monster behind them as they could. She made herself squeeze Nim’s shoulder. “Do it.”
Nim huffed a low sob, flexed her fingers, and took her foot off the gas. The car slowed.
Again the truck’s horn blared, and Alia covered her ears. Over it all, she heard the roar of the engine, the thunder of hooves. The truck had moved into the opposite lane and was pulling alongside them.
“He’s going to run us into the cliff!” cried Theo.
“We need to stop,” said Jason.
“I can’t!” sobbed Nim. “There are cars behind us.”
Innocent drivers. What did they see? A little Fiat packed with tourists, slowing and speeding up, driving erratically? A truck trying to pass? Or something worse? If Nim stopped the car, the other drivers might have time to slow and stop safely, or those people might go careening off the cliff into the gorge.
The sound of the chariot seemed to shake the little car, the pounding of hooves was the detonation of mortars, the clatter of its wheels the earsplitting percussion of gunfire.
Theo laughed, and Alia saw Phobos beside Diana. He kicked at Jason’s seat in ferocious glee as Diana put her arm out to restrain him. The Fiat shot forward.
“Nim, slow down!” Alia cried.
But Nim’s only answer was a ragged cackle, her star-strewn hair a glittering tangle, as Eris shoved her foot down on the gas, racing the chariot.
Deimos grinned and cracked his whip, a long black coil that gleamed like a slick-skinned adder in his hand. The chariot roared ahead—one car length, two—and cut into their lane. It screeched to a halt, and Alia saw the truck’s trailer slide around so it was blocking the road. They were going to crash.
She opened her mouth to scream. Jason grabbed the steering wheel and yanked it hard right. The Fiat jounced off the highway and onto a side road, its back wheels squealing against the blacktop as it skidded into a spin and careened off the pavement into the brush, branches crackling against the windshield. Alia realized Diana had braced her body around hers, then heard a loud bang.
One of their tires had blown. The car slowed and finally rattled to a halt.
The air went still, the silence strangely loud in Alia’s ears, until one by one the sounds of the ordinary world seemed to return: insects, the chirp of birds, the rhythm of her own frantic breathing.
Jason had his arms straight out, hands flat against the dashboard, nostrils flaring as he inhaled, exhaled, eyes closed. Theo leaned his head against the back of Jason’s seat, muttering, “Shit, shit, shit.”
Diana’s face was pale, her blue eyes wide. She pushed the braids back from Alia’s face. “Are you all right?”
Alia managed to nod.
Nim shoved open the driver’s-side door, stumbled two weaving steps, crumpled to her knees, and threw up.
Alia batted at the door handle. She couldn’t quite make her fingers work. Diana leaned forward and released the lock. Alia slid out after Nim, her legs rubbery. For a moment the world tilted and she thought she might faint. Then she was next to Nim, holding her tight as they both shook.
She heard the car doors open and made herself take a proper look around. They were in a shallow gully pocked with olive trees. It had been sheer luck that they hadn’t slammed into one of them and wrecked the car completely.
“So they weren’t trying to kill us, huh?” said Theo, leaning against the side of the Fiat.
“They stopped the truck there for a reason,” Diana said. She dug into the car’s trunk and brought the water jug over to Nim, crouching down to offer it to her. “Drink,” she said gently.
Jason paced in tight circles. His eyes were a little wild. “They wanted to slow us down. They knew the side road was here. They drove us off the highway on purpose.”
“The chariot,” Alia said, voice dazed. “I saw a chariot when we took off from the Great Lawn. I think it was one of them. I think he was helping us get away, driving the soldiers back, keeping me alive.”
Nim took a sip of water, rinsed her mouth, spat in the dirt, then took another gulp and wiped the moisture from her lips. “Is there a spare?”
“Nim—” said Alia. There was no way Nim was ready to get back on the road.
“Is there a spare?” Nim repeated, her gaze fierce.
“Yeah,” said Theo, looking in the trunk. “There is.”
“Then get to it,” she said, waving at Diana and Jason. “One of you human jacks should be able to get the tire changed fast enough.”
Diana rested her hand on Nim’s shoulder. “Nim, are you sure you can do this? You’ve already proven your strength.”
Nim shook her head. “Alia and I have spent half our lives being bullied. If those asshats think they can scare us into not fighting back, they’re in for an education.”
Nim held up her right pinky and Alia locked her own finger into it. Alia raised her left hand, and after a moment of confusion, Diana hooked her pinky with Alia’s, then offered her other pinky to Nim.
“Are you guys forming a coven?” called Theo, the spare slung over his bony shoulder.
“Bubble, bubble,” said Nim with a determined grin.
Alia squeezed her pinkies and felt Nim and Diana squeeze back.
They answered together, “Make some trouble.”
Instead of returning to the pass, they took the back roads. Whether it was the scare with Deimos and his kin or the fact that they had only three proper tires, Diana wasn’t sorry Nim had tempered her exuberant driving style, and they progressed at a more reasonable pace. The Fiat had been badly banged up, its back bumper dented and its cheerful tangerine paint scratched along both sides, but its engine still hummed and it soldiered on. It seemed as if the Fiat and Nim were kindred spirits, tiny and indefatigable.
Human courage was different from Amazon bravery. She saw that now. For all the suspicion and derision she’d heard from her mother and her sisters about the mortal world, Diana couldn’t help but admire the people with whom she traveled. Their lives were violent, precarious, fragile, but they fought for them anyway, and held to the hope that their brief stay on this earth might count for something. That faith was worth preserving.
The road they took away from the gorge was gentler, leading down into the vast green valley watered by the Eurotas River and bordered by the peaks of the Parnon Mountains beyond. It felt like a modern road, its wide lanes and mild curves leading them back to signs of civilization. The passing scenery made a strange dissonance, boxy houses with television aerials on their roofs and shiny cars in their driveways nudged right up against tumbling stone ruins or the crenellated walls of some ancient monastery.
It was neither city nor country, but eventually they passed through a small town, the patios of the little hotels on its main square pocked with fat palms. Clouds of orange trees hung over whitewashed walls, and the air was sweet with the smell of their fruit.
Then they were moving on, speeding through flat groves of olive trees bordered by metal fences, past a church capped in terracotta tiles and built of stone that glowed gold like the terraces of Themyscira, until the road was dappled by the shade of plane trees and quivering fronds of fern. The countryside became suburbs, and those gave way to a modern town, wide boulevards bracketed by apartment buildings, offices, open-air cafés set with plastic umbrellas, metal streetlamps marching steadily toward the town center.