FOR A HEARTBEAT, HAZEL WAS just as stunned as the karpoi.
Then Frank and Percy burst into the open and began to
massacre every source of fibre they could find. Frank shot
an arrow through Barley, who crumbled into seeds. Percy
slashed Riptide through Sorghum and charged towards
Millet and Oats. Hazel jumped down and joined the fight.
Within minutes, the karpoi had been reduced to piles of
seeds and various breakfast cereals. Wheat started to reform,
but Percy pulled a lighter from his pack and sparked
a flame.
‘Try it,’ he warned, ‘and I’ll set this whole field on fire.
Stay dead. Stay away from us, or the grass gets it!’
Frank winced like the flame terrified him. Hazel didn’t
understand why, but she shouted at the grain piles
anyway: ‘He’ll do it! He’s crazy!’
The remnants of the karpoi scattered in the wind. Frank
climbed the rock and watched them go.
Percy extinguished his lighter and grinned at Hazel.
‘Thanks for yelling. We wouldn’t have found you otherwise.
How’d you hold them off so long?’
She pointed to the rock. ‘A big pile of schist.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Guys,’ Frank called from the top of the rock. ‘You need
to see this.’
Percy and Hazel climbed up to join him. As soon as
Hazel saw what he was looking at, she inhaled sharply.
‘Percy, no light! Put away your sword!’
‘Schist!’ He touched the sword tip, and Riptide shrank
back into a pen.
Down below them, an army was on the move.
The field dropped into a shallow ravine, where a country
road wound north and south. On the opposite side of the
road, grassy hills stretched to the horizon, empty of
civilization except for one darkened convenience store at
the top of the nearest rise.
The whole ravine was full of monsters – column after
column marching south, so many and so close that Hazel
was amazed they hadn’t heard her shouting.
She, Frank and Percy crouched against the rock. They
watched in disbelief as several dozen large, hairy
humanoids passed by, dressed in tattered bits of armour
and animal fur. The creatures had six arms each, three
sprouting on either side, so they looked like cavemen
evolved from insects.
‘Gegenes,’ Hazel whispered. ‘The Earthborn.’
‘You’ve fought them before?’ Percy asked.
She shook her head. ‘Just heard about them in monster
class at camp.’ She’d never liked monster class – reading
Pliny the Elder and those other musty authors who
described legendary monsters from the edges of the
Roman Empire. Hazel believed in monsters, but some of
the descriptions were so wild she had thought they must
be just ridiculous rumours.
Only now, a whole army of those rumours was marching
by.
‘The Earthborn fought the Argonauts,’ she murmured.
‘And those things behind them –’
‘Centaurs,’ Percy said. ‘But … that’s not right. Centaurs
are good guys.’
Frank made a choking sound. ‘That’s not what we were
taught at camp. Centaurs are crazy, always getting drunk
and killing heroes.’
Hazel watched as the horse-men cantered past. They
were human from the waist up, palomino from the waist
down. They were dressed in barbarian armour of hide and
bronze, armed with spears and slings. At first, Hazel
thought they were wearing Viking helmets. Then she
realized they had actual horns jutting from their shaggy
hair.
‘Are they supposed to have bull’s horns?’ she asked.
‘Maybe they’re a special breed,’ Frank said. ‘Let’s not
ask them, okay?’
Percy gazed further down the road and his face went
slack. ‘My gods … Cyclopes.’
Sure enough, lumbering after the centaurs was a
battalion of one-eyed ogres, both male and female, each
about ten feet tall, wearing armour cobbled out of junkyard
metal. Six of the monsters were yoked like oxen, pulling a
two-storey-tall siege tower fitted with a giant scorpion
ballista.
Percy pressed the sides of his head. ‘Cyclopes.
Centaurs. This is wrong. All wrong.’
The monster army was enough to make anyone
despair, but Hazel realized that something else was going
on with Percy. He looked pale and sickly in the moonlight,
as if his memories were trying to come back, scrambling
his mind in the process.
She glanced at Frank. ‘We need to get him back to the
boat. The sea will make him feel better.’
‘No argument,’ Frank said. ‘There are too many of them.
The camp … we have to warn the camp.’
‘They know,’ Percy groaned. ‘Reyna knows.’
A lump formed in Hazel’s throat. There was no way the
legion could fight so many. If they were only a few hundred
miles north of Camp Jupiter, their quest was already
doomed. They could never make it to Alaska and back in
time.
‘Come on,’ she urged. ‘Let’s …’
Then she saw the giant.
When he appeared over the ridge, Hazel couldn’t quite
believe her eyes. He was taller than the siege tower –
thirty feet, at least – with scaly reptilian legs like a
Komodo dragon from the waist down and green-blue
armour from the waist up. His breastplate was shaped like
rows of hungry monstrous faces, their mouths open as if
demanding food. His face was human, but his hair was
wild and green, like a mop of seaweed. As he turned his
head from side to side, snakes dropped from his
dreadlocks. Viper dandruff – gross.
He was armed with a massive trident and a weighted
net. Just the sight of those weapons made Hazel’s
stomach clench. She’d faced that type of fighter in
gladiator training many times. It was the trickiest,
sneakiest, most evil combat style she knew. This giant
was a supersize retiarius.
‘Who is he?’ Frank’s voice quivered. ‘That’s not –’
‘Not Alcyoneus,’ Hazel said weakly. ‘One of his
Brothers, I think. The one Terminus mentioned. The grain
spirit mentioned him, too. That’s Polybotes.’
She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she could feel the
giant’s aura of power even from here. She remembered
that feeling from the Heart of the Earth as she had raised
Alcyoneus – as if she were standing near a powerful
magnet, and all the iron in her blood was being drawn
towards it. This giant was another child of Gaia – a
creature of the earth so malevolent and powerful that he
radiated his own gravitational field.
Hazel knew they should leave. Their hiding place on
top of the rock would be in plain sight to a creature that tall
if he chose to look in their direction. But she sensed
something important was about to happen. She and her
friends crept a little further down the schist and kept
watching.
As the giant got close, a Cyclops woman broke ranks
and ran back to speak with him. She was enormous, fat
and horribly ugly, wearing a chain-mail dress like a
muumuu – but next to the giant she looked like a child.
She pointed to the closed-up convenience store on top
of the nearest hill and muttered something about food.
The giant snapped back an answer, as if he was annoyed.
The female Cyclops barked an order to her kindred, and
three of them followed her up the hill.
When they were halfway to the store, a searing light
turned night into day. Hazel was blinded. Below her, the
enemy army dissolved into chaos, monsters screaming in
pain and outrage. Hazel squinted. She felt like she’d just
stepped out of a dark theatre into a sunny afternoon.
‘Too pretty!’ the Cyclopes shrieked. ‘Burns our eye!’
The store on the hill was encased in a rainbow, closer
and brighter than any Hazel had ever seen. The light was
anchored at the store, shooting up into the heavens,
bathing the countryside in a weird kaleidoscopic glow.
The lady Cyclops hefted her club and charged at the
store. As she hit the rainbow, her whole body began to
steam. She wailed in agony and dropped her club,
retreating with multi-coloured blisters all over her arms
and face.
‘Horrible goddess!’ she bellowed at the store. ‘Give us
snacks!’
The other monsters went crazy, charging the
convenience store, then running away as the rainbow light
burned them. Some threw rocks, spears, swords and even
pieces of their armour, all of which burned up in flames of
pretty colours.
Finally the giant leader seemed to realize that his
troops were throwing away perfectly good equipment.
‘Stop!’ he roared.
With some difficulty, he managed to shout and push
and pummel his troops into submission. When they’d
quieted down, he approached the rainbow-shielded store
himself and stalked around the borders of the light.
‘Goddess!’ he shouted. ‘Come out and surrender!’
No answer from the store. The rainbow continued to
shimmer.
The giant raised his trident and net. ‘I am Polybotes!
Kneel before me so I may destroy you quickly.’
Apparently, no one in the store was impressed. A tiny
dark object came sailing out of the window and landed at
the giant’s feet. Polybotes yelled, ‘Grenade!’
He covered his face. His troops hit the ground.
When the thing did not explode, Polybotes bent down
cautiously and picked it up.
He roared in outrage. ‘A chocolate muffin? You dare
insult me with a chocolate muffin?’ He threw the cake back
at the shop, and it vaporized in the light.
The monsters got to their feet. Several muttered
hungrily, ‘Chocolate muffin? Where chocolate muffins?’
‘Let’s attack,’ said the lady Cyclops. ‘I am hungry. My
boys want snacks!’
‘No!’ Polybotes said. ‘We’re already late. Alcyoneus
wants us at the camp in four days’ time. You Cyclopes
move inexcusably slowly. We have no time for minor
goddesses!’
He aimed that last comment at the store, but got no
response.
The lady Cyclops growled. ‘The camp, yes. Vengeance!
The orange and purple ones destroyed my home. Now
Ma Gasket will destroy theirs! Do you hear me, Leo?
Jason? Piper? I come to annihilate you!’
The other Cyclopes bellowed in approval. The rest of
the monsters joined in.
Hazel’s whole body tingled. She glanced at her friends.
‘Jason,’ she whispered. ‘She fought Jason. He might still
be alive.’
Frank nodded. ‘Do those other names mean anything
to you?’
Hazel shook her head. She didn’t know any Leo or
Piper at camp. Percy still looked sickly and dazed. If the
names meant anything to him, he didn’t show it.
Hazel pondered what the Cyclops had said: Orange
and purple ones. Purple – obviously the colour of Camp
Jupiter. But orange … Percy had shown up in a tattered
orange shirt. That couldn’t be a coincidence.
Below them, the army began to march south again, but
the giant Polybotes stood to one side, frowning and
sniffing the air.
‘Sea god,’ he muttered. To Hazel’s horror, he turned in
their direction. ‘I smell sea god.’
Percy was shaking. Hazel put her hand on his shoulder
and tried to press him flat against the rock.
The lady Cyclops Ma Gasket snarled. ‘Of course you
smell sea god! The sea is right over there!’
‘More than that,’ Polybotes insisted. ‘I was born to
destroy Neptune. I can sense …’ He frowned, turning his
head and shaking out a few more snakes.
‘Do we march or sniff the air?’ Ma Gasket scolded. ‘I
don’t get muffins, you don’t get sea god!’
Polybotes growled. ‘Very well. March! March!’ He took
one last look at the rainbow-encased store, then raked his
fingers through his hair. He brought out three snakes that
seemed larger than the rest, with white markings around
their necks. ‘A gift, goddess! My name, Polybotes, means
“Many-to-Feed”! Here are some hungry mouths for you.
See if your store gets many customers with these sentries
outside.’
He laughed wickedly and threw the snakes into the tall
grass on the hillside.
Then he marched south, his massive Komodo legs
shaking the earth. Gradually, the last column of monsters
passed over the hills and disappeared into the night.
Once they were gone, the blinding rainbow shut off like
a spotlight.
Hazel, Frank and Percy were left alone in the dark,
staring across the road at a closed-up convenience store.
‘That was different,’ Frank muttered.
Percy shuddered violently. Hazel knew he needed help,
or rest, or something. Seeing that army seemed to have
triggered some kind of memory, leaving him shellshocked.
They should get him back to the boat.
On the other hand, a huge stretch of grassland lay
between them and the beach. Hazel got the feeling the
karpoi wouldn’t stay away forever. She didn’t like the idea
of the three of them making their way back to the boat in
the middle of the night. And she couldn’t shake the
dreadful feeling that if she hadn’t summoned that schist
she’d be a captive of the giant right now.
‘Let’s go to the store,’ she said. ‘If there’s a goddess
inside, maybe she can help us.’
‘Except a bunch of snake things are guarding the hill
now,’ Frank said. ‘And that burning rainbow might come
back.’
They both looked at Percy, who was shaking like he had
hypothermia.
‘We’ve got to try,’ Hazel said.
Frank nodded grimly. ‘Well … any goddess who throws
a muffin at a giant can’t be all bad. Let’s go.’
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