Right. A little bit of smoke and fire and it was asses-and-elbows time. The catapults weren’t much to write home about. Bent-over limbs with small pottery vessels for missiles. But they didn’t have to deliver the mixture of rosin, alcohol, green grass and fire very far.
As the first one arced into a column of smoky fire, McKenna saw something that made his blood run cold.
Arachne. She’d been on the top of the balloon doing some last-minute sewing when the raid had begun. She was now lying sprawled in the middle of the grass in front of the balloon. Just then, she sat up groggily, much to Mac’s relief. At a flat-out sprint he ran towards her.
One of Zeus’ thunderbolts exploded at his heels. He still had a good eighty yards to go. Thirty to Arachne, fifty to the shelter of the stream. He wasn’t going to make it.
“HEY, YOU! YOU WITH THE UGLY BEARD!” Henri Lenoir stepped out of the bushes twenty-five yards down from where McKenna had begun his run.
McKenna didn’t pause to watch. He just snatched up Arachne, and kept running. He heard the thunderbolt, though.
“Ya! Missed. Cowardly pig!” yelled Henri. “Come over here and fight like a man, if it is that you dare!”
* * *
They dove over the lip. McKenna couldn’t resist peering back to see if the old Frog had managed to get away. If they both did, he, Jim McKenna, was going to have to eat some crow. The Frenchman had done this simply to save their lives.
But Henri had not bolted. Apparently, the sick Frenchman had decided he had no chance of evading Zeus anyway. So he just stood there, rigid as any statue, his arms folded on his chest and a sneer on his face as the livid Zeus stalked down on him. Even from here Mac could see a black, five-sided pyramid on the pendant that hung among the god’s tangle of dark-golden chest hair. Henri twitched his mustachios arrogantly.
Then the Frenchman sniffed and languidly waved his nose. “You have a bouquet of the most terrible. Why is it that you stink so? Have your bowels turned to water at the thought of a real fight?”
McKenna scrambled to his feet. “I’ve got to help the crazy bastard . . . ”
Just then Henri answered Zeus’ incoherent bellow of rage with a splendid Gallic gesture which transcended all language barriers.
Zeus was so angry with this mere mortal that the lightning bolt missed. Barely. Three yards behind Henri, the earth leapt and exploded. Zeus drew back his arm to fling his great spear instead.
But Henri had disappeared. All that remained was one, once-beautiful, Italian leather shoe.
Mac wished like hell he could have given the guy his bottle of wine, too.
“We must go!” Arachne tugged him by the shoulder. “Quickly!”
“Yeah. But what a guy! What a guy!”
She nodded. “We can hide under those roots.”
A willow tree had been somewhat undercut. The roots formed a roof overhead with a few inches’ clearance between them and the water. From this bank they would be nearly invisible. The water was cold and clear. Nice for drinking. Lousy to hide in.
* * *
Only, by the sounds of it, the anger of the gods wasn’t confined to this bank. Being discovered was clearly going to be terminal. Slowly terminal.
“We’ll have to hide in the bottom of the pool,” whispered Arachne.
Mac looked doubtful. “How long can you stay down?”
“My spider body needs little air,” she said quietly. “But come. I will arrange it so that you can breathe. Trust me.”
He did. They went under. The bank they were sheltering under was deep. McKenna followed the wall, pulling himself down by the roots. The whole thing curved inwards away from the light. There, in a dim nest of roots, Arachne had already spread a net of web. She was brushing bubbles off the hairs on her back and legs into it. She pushed him towards it.
She obviously had delusions about how much air a human needed.
It looked like the last woman to come down here had the same delusions. Only this woman looked like she’d been happy about it. She was smiling, even if she was very obviously drowned. Well, wide-eyed naked women with their mouths open, fifteen feet down in the willow roots are dead. Sharing the water with a drowned body was suddenly too much for Mac. He grabbed for the roots.
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