“Hephaestus!” Hermes shouted from the far corner. “You said you would forge us a new shield!” Poor, hurt Hermes. Sometimes he sounded as innocently disappointed as a child.
“Does it look like I’m in any condition to forge a new shield?” Hephaestus asked, and held up his gnarled hands. “With this damn death?”
He looked at Henry meaningfully.
“The only shield by my hand that will ever exist,” Hephaestus said, glancing upward, “is that one.”
Achilles followed the god’s gaze. When he saw the shield, greed and joy transformed his features. He ran to the wall and jumped, latched on to a ladder, and climbed to the first-level railing. He kept going that way, leaping from rail to rail, until he reached the third floor. But the distance between the third and fourth levels was too great, and the surface of the joining wall was carefully smooth. Achilles slapped his hands against it in vain.
Henry looked up at the shield, and at the door on the fourth floor near the crisscrossing system of steel girders.
“It’s not yours anymore, Achilles,” he shouted, and ran back the way they’d come, into the maze of hallways and rooms.
*
Hermes watched Henry go, still frozen. Andie called after him, but he yelled for her to stay with Hermes, which wasn’t a bad suggestion. Hermes had no desire to be left the only fly in a room full of spiders.
“Wait! What are you doing? Where are you going?” Andie shouted, but Hermes suspected that she knew. Her shouts were reactionary. Henry was going to find his way back up to the fourth floor for the shield, to beat Achilles to it and claim it for his own. It would be one brief, shining moment of sticking it in Achilles’ face.
But that’s all it would be. One shield wasn’t going to save them.
“How could you do this?” Hermes asked Hephaestus. “We met as friends. We’ve always met as friends.”
“And we are. But none of that matters in the face of the Moirae.” Hephaestus sat motionless in his chair, but as the Moirae drew close to him on their jerking legs, he had to stiffen to keep from recoiling. Atropos reached out and touched his hand. Hermes saw the joints stretch and pop back into place. He saw the wonder in Hephaestus’ eyes as he flexed his rejuvenated fist without struggle or pain.
Hermes glared at the Moirae, at Lachesis, and it almost seemed that she looked back. Even as her head lolled on her wrinkled, sunken neck, it almost seemed that she winked.
Above them, Achilles still fought the wall, trying in vain to climb it or tear it down. His impotent rage drowned out almost everything else.
(ON YOUR KNEES, MESSENGER.)
Atropos thundered between his ears, and Hermes’ knees hit the marble with a sharp crack. He hadn’t even felt his muscles give way.
“Get out of my head,” he whispered, and heard Andie’s footsteps as she ran to his side.
“Leave him alone!”
He wanted to drag her down, clamp his hand over her mouth, and provide what cover he could. He waited with held breath for her to hit the ground, too, or worse, to explode in a mist of pink. Instead, she smarted off, as insubordinate as ever.
“Can’t get into my head, can you!” she taunted. “And with your guardian hanging orangutan-style from the walls, maybe I’ll just shove a spear through your faces.” She ran to one of the standing lamps and yanked it from its socket. If any one of the Moirae got a hit in, even one who wasn’t much more than an emptying bag, they would take her head clean from her shoulders. Hermes couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
Under pressure, these mortals rose up. They became something more.
*