AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I— What?
My hand clasped my throat, shock briefly immobilizing me.
“Speak,” Ariston urged, closing the gap between us and resting a hand on my shoulder, giving me a small shake.
“Speak,” I repeated slowly. The burning agony in my throat never came. The word was raspy and uncertain, but it was audible to me, to Ariston, to the soldiers around us who were staring at me in amazement. “Speak.I can speak.”
One of the soldiers next to me fell to his knees, reaching his hands up to the sky and praying fervently in ancient Greek. For once, I was tempted to join him.
Except we had a battle to win, and the gods could have prevented all of this already if they wanted to, so I wasn’t about to start relying on them now.
“Go around them!” I shouted to Theras, motioning with my hand what I wanted him to do—a combination of gestures and sign language—since his English and my Ancient Greek were both limited. “We’ll launch an all-out charge, take a few men and circle them in. I’ll send more to support you when they’re distracted.”
While the flat plain we were fighting on didn’t make for easy sneaking, we were fighting amongst some kind of ruins. If Theras was able to hide soldiers among the crumbling structures of whatever this place was, we might stand a chance.
I was filled with a hunger to fight that I’d never experienced before, not to this extent. I shoved my sword into the sky and roared a battle cry that echoed all around me, the Spartoi banging the hilts of their weapons on their shields, creating a clattering din that had the agathos army shrinking back in alarm.
We moved as one, a wave of bronze and scarlet fury heading toward them, but the earth rumbled in protest, disintegrating before our very eyes.
“Stop!” I yelled, Ariston relaying the charge in their native tongue. One of the Spartoi slid forward, his brothers yanking him back from the ditch Gaia was creating in real time around her army, securing them safely on the other side of a river of dirt where their projectiles gave them an advantage. The circular patch of earth they were standing on rumbled before rising up, creating a plateau that made them even less accessible.
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered. “Shields up! Move back, out of range!”
The rocks were already raining down on us, landing with ringing thumps against our shields. I dragged the men on my left and right towards me, urging them to overlap their shields with mine. I dropped into a crouch, knowing the second row would get the hint to bend and interlock their shields over us. The third row would remain standing tall with the bottom of their shields covering the second row. The protective, tortoise-like formation was instinctive—it covered all of us so long as we worked together, and that came naturally. Theras began calling the steps, the others falling into a chant with them so that we moved backward in time as one armored shell getting out of range.
How the hell were we supposed to take on an army when the very earth itself was bending and shifting to their needs? It was impossible. We needed divine assistance of our own, but I wasn’t exactly in the right headspace to stop and make offerings to fickle deities, begging for help.
Divine assholes. No, if they weren’t going to come to our aid in our obvious time of need, I wasn’t going to use my newly recovered voice to bow and scrape for their attention.
Gaia may have given her army the defensive advantage, but she’d also constrained them to one small location—for now, at least. I could work with that.
“Have someone start a fire,” I instructed Ariston, thinking of the pile of javelins we’d made with branches found along the way, whittled into shape. “They have vegetation on their little island. Let’s see if we can set it ablaze.”
Chapter 22
Wasthatfire? Somehow, fire was flying through the air, hurtling toward Gaia’s army. And they were definitely her army, because I’d seen the ground rise beneath them for myself, a ditch forming the moment the Spartoi had charged against them.
T didn’t stop me as I took another run at climbing the fence to get a better view. Perhaps he thought, once the battle picked up intensity as it had, that there was no risk of me wanting to go down there. It had only made me more determined. I mumbled a steady litany of prayers to warrior gods under my breath, begging for assistance, but there had to be more I could do.
I balanced carefully on the top of the chain link fence, ignoring T’s quiet huff behind me. The building itself was a modern design, with enormous steel beams arranged vertically around the whole thing in some kind of architectural effect. Climbing down the fence slowly, I stood in the small gap between the top of the row of beams with the fence at my back, peering down at the intimidating drop. There must have been some kind of underground parking lot, and I inched to my right, away from the downward-sloping concrete driveway, so if I jumped, I would at least land on softer dirt.
IfI landed.
It hadn’t escaped my notice that T was no longer lounging comfortably in front of the interior door but up on his serpent legs, slithering back and forth across the rooftop, his eyes never leaving my back. The chances of me jumping, surviving, and running the mile or so to the battlefield were slim.
I’d been willing to jump in the pit, though, hadn’t I? There’d been so much at stake that I hadn’t let physical fear enter the equation. There was plenty at stake now, and I just had to channel that same energy.
I wasn’t going to give up. Icouldn’tgive up. I was so close to Wild I could almost feel his solid muscles beneath my fingertips, see those intense dark red eyes staring down at me, looking impassive to others but filled with an affection that only those who knew him well could discern.
He needed me, and I needed him, and I was going to make it happen. But it wouldn’t be through brute strength—which I had none of anyway, even if I hadn’t been taking on a giant winged beast.
I was the Prophêtis. I was going to talk my way out of this somehow.
Maybe it wasn’t a god of war I needed. Perhaps logic was the way out of this.
“Sophia,” I said quietly under my breath. “I could really use your wisdom right now.”
I had hoped to hear a soft voice in my ear, but to my surprise, a figure stepped out of thin air on the ledge next to me, and I nearly fell off the building, grasping clumsily at the fence to steady myself.
