Part IX - The Best Laid Plans Get A Helping Hand
This was wrong. All wrong.
Joxer squinted his eyes and tilted his head, but nothing improved. It just looked� wrong.
He'd spent the past few days ignoring the thing, but there was something about that table that struck him as very, very un-right. If he fixed it, at least he'd be able to concentrate on something else without looking back there every three seconds. OK, then, let's fix it.
Carefully, he picked up the wooden soldier miniatures one at a time, making sure not to mess them up. It wasn't the whole table he had a problem with, just that one area. The massive tabletop was an etched map of Greece. A vast army of tiny dolls were grouped in little bunches, attack formations and defense clusters, in an outskirted area, near the border.
Whatever this battle was for, it was making Ares see red in spades. Since he'd left Joxer in charge of the Hall of War, he'd been back a few times to scowl at the table, making minor adjustments here and there before poofing out again. The mortal temple-sitter recognized part of the area as Polyphystos, where Ares and Discord were currently working, or trying to work if the War God's general demeanor was any indicator. So this had to be the battle plans for the area.
Ares had to know that this part was wrong, Joxer reasoned as he removed the carved soldiers from the spot on the map indicating the forest outside of a nearby little farming community that, according to the markings, was full of War's worshippers. At the very least, it had his protection, which accounted for the platoon he'd positioned there. But that would draw the fighting close to the village and that couldn't be a good idea. Joxer scanned the etched graph and set the red-tinged men further away, shaping their group into a wedge that would direct the battle to the barren patch to the west. He even tipped down a few of the fake trees behind them to indicate a barricade between the fight and the town. Villagers saved.
"There." Joxer nodded, dusting his hands together. "Now it's OK." He surveyed it again, cocking his head and pursing his lips. "Although� now that the battle's heading that way, maybe these guys can join them." Joxer collected a contingent of red army men down by the seashore that would be diverting the green troops, whose they were he didn't know, from heading for Athens. Joxer wondered if Athena appreciated that gesture. Probably not, he snorted to himself. The day before, the Goddess of War, Wisdom and Weaving (and Whining Wenches as far as he was concerned) had dropped by to bitch at Ares for one thing or another. Being born, I'd guess. Since he'd had the nerve to be working and not sitting around, waiting for her to come complaining, she'd unloaded on Joxer, calling him a pitiful mortal and a lackey and the worst kinds of insults he didn't think virgin goddesses knew. She'd yelled at him for not being Ares and for Ares not respecting her and she'd stomped off like a spoiled fourteen year old girl, still bewailing the lack of her brother for abusing and the nerve he had to leave a� a camp-follower there while he was gone.
Joxer looked down at one of the little soldiers in his hands unhappily. OK, that one had hurt. He would have protested or argued or something, but he decided against it. It was one of those names you called someone that even if it wasn't true, it stung and shamed them just the same. It wasn't the worst name he'd ever been saddled with, but�
His father had been a warlord and when he was younger, Joxer and his brothers would tag along to battles to see the old man in action. For the most part, the camp-followers were older women who had men or sons in battle and so dedicated their services to the local army. They did laundry, sewed up wounds, made food� and generally made things easier on the soldiers. To listen to Jonus, they were inviolate, untouchable by the war. To attack them would be the worst of all dishonorable actions. And the same went for the other side's female contingent.
