The red-headed corporal nodded determinedly. “I’ll ask her.”
Lamont, coming up behind them, put a hand on Mac’s shoulder. “One thing I’d like to know is how come you like spiders so much?”
McKenna smiled. “They’re useful critters. Like bees, Lamont. Bees don’t hassle you, do they?”
Lamont looked at McKenna and shook his head. “I’ll tell you straight. I’m not crazy about either spiders or bees. Spiders make cobwebs and bite you, and bees sting you.”
“My Ma would give you what-for, Lamont Jackson. Spiders eat bugs. Bees make honey. And neither bees nor spiders will ever attack you on purpose.”
“I don’t think we’re going to agree about this,” said Lamont, looking at the army of spiders accompanying them.
* * *
Olives, sun-dried, black and wrinkled; pastries bulging with delicacies; five different cheeses; cyclamen-pink wine, with a bouquet of honey and old roses, and the strength of a lion; barley bannocks crusty and slightly flavored by wood ash; chopped cucumber and yogurt; pomegranates; skewers of cumin-scented lamb; roasted kid with garlic and lavender. And eight-legged allies . . . was all they could bring back from their expedition. True, those were a lot of allies.
Everybody liked the food. And it was entirely due to McKenna getting on well with spiders. Opinion was divided as to what the quality of the allies was—depending on how much you liked spiders.
As far as Lamont, Cruz, Medea, Throttler and Bes were concerned, that was not at all. Jerry and the dragons were ambivalent; Liz, Henri (when he could muster breath) and Mac enthusiastic.
And Pan, when he arrived from Lesbos a few hours later, was downright miserable and depressed about everything, never mind allies.
“Orpheus is dead.” Pan burst into tears.
38
The parting of ways.
“They hit us in the morning while we were yet at our rest. We were woken by the terrible rumble of the bronze-tired chariots of the gods of Olympus and the thunder of the hooves of their great horses. War was joined, and we were all unprepared. Apollo, Athena and Ares scythed through our camp. Our heroes fell like corn before the reapers, before their cruel stabbing spears and arrows with heads of wrought iron. But Orpheus took up his lyre and played. The magic of his music would have stilled the wolves of battle—as he soothed even the terrible sirens. But then Apollo cast his bright spear. It struck Orpheus between the shoulder blades and pierced him through.”
Pan burst into tears again. Gradually the story emerged. The army at Lesbos, small, and still arguing about what course to take against Olympus, was no more. And with the death of Orpheus, Pan had no more heart for the fight.
Cruz took a deep breath. “Well. We’ll have to raise another army. One that understands ‘sentries.’ ”
“I don’t think that’s worth doing,” said Jerry with a sigh. “We’re not going to beat the Olympian gods at a straight slugging match.”
“So what do you want to do now, Doc?” demanded McKenna hotly. “Give up? Run away?”
The sneering undertone made Liz snap. “Mac, you better hope for bloody cold weather so that your head can contract and the two brain cells in there can make contact with each other. What Jerry is saying is that a dumb-ox-brute-force solution isn’t going to work. We’ve got to out-think the bastards.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite like that . . . ” said Jerry, pacifically.
Liz snorted. “No, you’re too polite, except when you’ve eaten lotus-cookies.”
Jerry winced, acknowledging a hit. “But in a nutshell, that’s right. We’ve got to either out-think or out-modern them. Look . . . ”
“So all we need now are a couple of Blackhawks,” said Mac, sarcastically. “Brilliant, Doc. Brilliant—Sir. Only we’ve lost most of our gear and the only things that work are primitive stuff.”
Lamont stood up. “That’s enough, Mac. Liz, settle down. There’s no point in fighting each other. Let’s think of things and ways they didn’t have in ancient Greece. Mac, you came up with that brandy. That was a winner and it didn’t take stuff we haven’t got.”
“He’s right,” said Cruz.
Jerry nodded. “In a way, Mac’s right too. We’re still going to have to do some fighting. But mano-a-mano against an Olympian we’re going to lose. So I think we need to look at two things. Allies. And something Olympus won’t have heard of. Or, at least, something they think they’ve got the monopoly on.”