The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)

The manager squealed – a sound not unlike the Erymanthian Boar made that time I shot him in the hindquarters. ‘I knew it! I’m such a fan. My name is Macro. Welcome to my store!’

He glanced at his two employees. ‘Bring out the red carpet so we can roll Apollo up in it, will you? But first let’s make the satyrs’ deaths quick and painless. This is such an honour!’

The employees raised their labelling guns, ready to mark us down as clearance items.

‘Wait!’ I cried.

The employees hesitated. Up close, I could see how much they looked alike: the same greasy mops of dark hair, the same glazed eyes, the same rigid postures. They might have been twins, or – a horrible thought seeped into my brain – products of the same assembly line.

‘I, um, er …’ I said, poetic to the last. ‘What if I’m not really Apollo?’

Macro’s grin lost some of its wattage. ‘Well, then, I’d have to kill you for disappointing me.’

‘Okay, I’m Apollo,’ I said. ‘But you can’t just kill your customers. That’s no way to run an army-surplus store!’

Behind me, Grover wrestled with Coach Hedge, who was desperately trying to claw open a family fun pack of grenades while cursing the tamper-proof packaging.

Macro clasped his meaty hands. ‘I know it’s terribly rude. I do apologize, Lord Apollo.’

‘So … you won’t kill us?’

‘Well, as I said, I won’t kill you. The emperor has plans for you. He needs you alive!’

‘Plans,’ I said.

I hated plans. They reminded me of annoying things like Zeus’s once-a-century goal-setting meetings, or dangerously complicated attacks. Or Athena.

‘B-but my friends,’ I stammered. ‘You can’t kill the satyrs. A god of my stature can’t be rolled up in a red carpet without my retinue!’

Macro regarded the satyrs, who were still fighting over the plastic-wrapped grenades.

‘Hmm,’ said the manager. ‘I’m sorry, Lord Apollo, but, you see, this may be my only chance to get back into the emperor’s good graces. I’m fairly sure he won’t want the satyrs.’

‘You mean … you’re out of the emperor’s good graces?’

Macro heaved a sigh. He began rolling up his sleeves as if he expected some hard, dreary satyr-murdering ahead. ‘I’m afraid so. I certainly didn’t ask to be exiled to Palm Springs! Alas, the princeps is very particular about his security forces. My troops malfunctioned one too many times, and he shipped us out here. He replaced us with that horrible assortment of strixes and mercenaries and Big Ears. Can you believe it?’

I could neither believe it nor understand it. Big ears?

I examined the two employees, still frozen in place, label guns ready, eyes unfocused, faces expressionless.

‘Your employees are automatons,’ I realized. ‘These are the emperor’s former troops?’

‘Alas, yes,’ Macro said. ‘They are fully capable, though. Once I deliver you, the emperor will surely see that and forgive me.’

His sleeves were above his elbows now, revealing old white scars, as if his forearms had been clawed by a desperate victim many years ago …

I remembered my dream of the imperial palace, the praetor kneeling before his new emperor.

Too late, I remembered the name of that praetor. ‘Naevius Sutorius Macro.’

Macro beamed at his robotic employees. ‘I can’t believe Apollo remembers me. This is such an honour!’

His robotic employees remained unimpressed.

‘You killed Emperor Tiberius,’ I said. ‘Smothered him with a pillow.’

Macro looked abashed. ‘Well, he was ninety percent dead already. I simply helped matters along.’

‘And you did it for –’ an ice-cold burrito of dread sank into my stomach – ‘the next emperor. Neos Helios. It is him.’

Macro nodded eagerly. ‘That’s right! The one, the only Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus!’

He spread his arms as if waiting for applause.

The satyrs stopped fighting. Hedge continued chewing on the grenade pack, though even his satyr teeth were having trouble with the thick plastic.

Grover backed away, putting the trolley between himself and the store employees. ‘G-Gaius who?’ He glanced at me. ‘Apollo, what does that mean?’

I gulped. ‘It means we run. Now!’





8


We blow up some things

You thought all the things blew up?

No, we found more things





Most satyrs excel at running away.

Gleeson Hedge, however, was not most satyrs. He grabbed a barrel brush from his cart, yelled, ‘DIE!’ and charged the three-hundred-pound manager.

Even the automatons were too surprised to react, which probably saved Hedge’s life. I grabbed the satyr’s collar and dragged him backwards as the employees’ first shots went wild, a barrage of bright orange discount stickers flying over our heads.

I pulled Hedge down the aisle as he launched a fierce kick, overturning his shopping trolley at our enemies’ feet. Another discount sticker grazed my arm with the force of an angry Titaness’s slap.

‘Careful!’ Macro yelled at his men. ‘I need Apollo in one piece, not half-off!’

Gleeson clawed at the shelves, grabbed a demo-model Macro’s Self-Lighting Molotov Cocktail? (BUY ONE, GET TWO FREE!) and tossed it at the store employees with the battle cry ‘Eat surplus!’

Macro shrieked as the Molotov cocktail landed amid Hedge’s scattered ammo boxes and, true to its advertising, burst into flames.

‘Up and over!’ Hedge tackled me around the waist. He slung me over his shoulder like a sack of footballs and scaled the shelves in an epic display of goat-climbing, leaping into the next aisle as crates of ammunition exploded behind us.

We landed in a pile of rolled-up sleeping bags.

‘Keep moving!’ Hedge yelled, as if the thought might not have occurred to me.

I scrambled after him, my ears ringing. From the aisle we’d just left, I heard bangs and screams as if Macro were running across a hot pan strewn with popcorn kernels.

I saw no sign of Grover.

When we reached the end of the aisle, a store clerk rounded the corner, his label gun raised.

‘Hi-YA!’ Hedge executed a roundhouse kick on him.

This was a notoriously difficult move. Even Ares sometimes fell and broke his tailbone when practising it in his dojo (witness the ‘Ares so lame’ video that went viral on Mount Olympus last year, and which I absolutely was not responsible for uploading).

To my surprise, Coach Hedge executed it perfectly. His hoof connected with the clerk’s face, knocking the automaton’s head clean off. The body dropped to its knees and fell forward, wires sparking in its neck.

‘Wow.’ Gleeson examined his hoof. ‘I guess that Iron Goat conditioning wax really works!’

The clerk’s decapitated body gave me flashbacks to the Indianapolis blemmyae, who lost their fake heads with great regularity, but I had no time to dwell on the terrible past when I had such a terrible present to deal with.

Behind us, Macro called, ‘Oh, what have you done now?’

The manager stood at the far end of the lane, his clothes smeared with soot, his yellow vest peppered with so many holes it looked like a smoking piece of Swiss cheese. Yet somehow – just my luck – he appeared unharmed. The second store assistant stood behind him, apparently unconcerned that his robotic head was on fire.

‘Apollo,’ Macro chided, ‘there’s no point in fighting my automatons. This is a military-surplus store. I have fifty more just like these in storage.’

I glanced at Hedge. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘Yeah.’ Hedge grabbed a croquet mallet from a nearby rack. ‘Fifty may be too many even for me.’

We skirted the camping tents, then zigzagged through Hockey Heaven, trying to make our way back to the store entrance. A few aisles away, Macro was shouting orders: ‘Get them! I’m not going to be forced to commit suicide again!’

‘Again?’ Hedge muttered, ducking under the arm of a hockey mannequin.

‘He worked for the emperor.’ I panted, trying to keep up. ‘Old friends. But – wheeze – emperor didn’t trust him. Ordered his arrest – wheeze – execution.’

We stopped at the end of the aisle. Gleeson peeked around the corner for signs of hostiles.