Death's Touch | Jason Grace

Seven

For a heartbeat, Cary and Hazel were just as stunned as the karpoi. Then Frank and Percy burst into the open and began to massacre every source of fiber they could find. Frank shot an arrow through Barley, who crumbled into seeds. Percy slashed Riptide through Sorghum and charged toward Millet and Oats. Cary and 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 re-form, 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. Cary didn't understand why, but Hazel 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 and Cary. "Thanks for yelling. We wouldn't have found you otherwise. How'd you hold them off so long?"

Cary 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 Cary saw what he was looking at, she inhaled sharply. "Percy, no light! Sheath 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, Cary was amazed they hadn't heard their shouting.

She, Hazel, Frank, and Percy crouched against the rock. They watched in disbelief as several dozen large, hairy humanoids passed by, dressed in tattered bits of armor 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."

"I have. In the war. They were the first ones I killed," Cary said in a low voice.

"The Earthborn fought the Argonauts," Hazel 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."

Cary watched as the horse-men cantered past. They were human from the waist up, palomino from the waist down. They were dressed in barbarian armor of hide and bronze, armed with spears and slings. At first, she 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?" Cary wondered.

"Maybe they're a special breed," Frank said. "Let's not ask them, okay?"

Percy gazed farther 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 armor cobbled out of junkyard metal. Six of the monsters were yoked like oxen, pulling a two-story-tall siege tower fitted with a giant scorpion ballista.