Relief shuddered through me and I paused to collect myself. I had been so worried that she’d been killed outright, as Tahirah had so long ago. Thank you for staying with her. Ask her to drop your camouflage and her invisibility so I can help. It’s safe now. I resumed walking and tried to shake off the clouds in my head.
<All right. Hey, there you are!> he said as I drew closer.
Where are you? Bark, please.
Oberon barked and appeared at the same time off to my left. He was standing watch over Granuaile, who had an arrow in her, just underneath her ribs and slightly left of center. Blood welled around the shaft and she clutched it, tears streaming down her cheeks and her breathing labored as I arrived.
“It hurts so much, Atticus,” she gasped, the last syllable hitching in her throat. “I didn’t think it would hurt this much.”
I lay Fragarach on the ground as I crashed to my knees next to her. Oberon made room. “You have to find your nerves and block them,” I said. “Remember the binding? Block the pain signals. You shut off the electricity down there and then you can get to work.”
She winced. “Gah, I can’t believe I forgot that!”
“Shock makes you forget a lot of things. I didn’t remember it until recently myself.”
“You’re hurt?”
“I’ll heal. And so will you.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. I can do this.”
“Absolutely.”
She took a few more quick, shallow breaths, closed her eyes, then spoke the binding I had taught her. She sighed in relief when it worked, then smiled weakly at me through watery eyes. “Ohh. That’s so much better. Thanks.”
“Sure. Now we can melt these out of you.”
“No. I already looked. The head and shaft are synthetic composites. We can’t unbind them.”
“Fuck.”
“No, this is good. It’s good, Atticus.”
“What?”
“I needed this. I needed to get hit hard and learn how to heal from it.”
“But you can’t heal with that thing stuck inside you.”
“We’ll get it out. Go deal with the Olympians.”
“They’re down already.”
“There will be more very soon, and you know it. Hermes and Mercury at the very least.”
“But—”
“Atticus. Seriously. I’ve got this.” She reached across with her right hand, clutched my shirt, and gently pulled me down to her lips. She kissed me and then said, her eyes mere inches from mine, “I’m stable inside and comfortably numb. I’m not leaking stomach acid or anything, and I have the internal bleeding stopped. All I need is for you to get me the hell out of here. You have a plan for that, right? Tell me you have a plan.”
“I have a plan,” I said, and remembered that it was true.
She smiled, new tears sheeting down from the corners of her eyes toward the tops of her ears, and I went all melty. “I knew you did,” she said. “I’ll do better next time. Now go.”
I rose from her lips but froze before getting to my feet, seeing the arrow again and the sodden bloody circle on her black clothing. I couldn’t leave her there. Some very old instincts told me that was impossible.
<You look like you just drank some bad beer, Atticus.>
Granuaile heard and laughed once before she realized that was probably not a good idea with an arrow in her diaphragm. “Atticus, go. I’ll be invisible and safe enough for a while. Don’t worry about me.”
I ducked back down and kissed her again. “All right, I’ll go. But only because you would kick my ass if I stayed.”
“Take Oberon with you. He doesn’t want to stay here.”
Is that true?
<Actually, she’s the one who wants me to go. She told me so.>
She wants to deal with this alone. That’s okay. Speaking aloud, I said, “All right, let’s do this.” Oberon trotted next to me, tail wagging, and I gave him some love.
Thanks to Herne and his boys, Artemis and Diana had been turned into copies of the Black Knight, resting faceup on the forest floor with no arms and no legs. Their limbs were nearby but not close enough to heal, and I could see that, beyond the initial squirt of ichor, the Olympians’ remarkable regenerative processes had stopped the bleeding and they made very tidy torsos. The Morrigan’s prescience about Herne’s ability to help us was well warranted; I doubted I would have fared so well had he not been there, even with Flidais around. Artemis most likely would have locked her legs around my neck while I was unconscious and snapped it. I thanked Herne for his assistance, and he nodded but said nothing. He and Flidais helped me haul the pieces of Artemis over to where Diana lay and spread them out so that they were only a few feet apart.
I stood between the two bodies and the goddesses glowered up at me. I didn’t mock them or rub my victory in their faces. I kept my expression dispassionate as I set my plan in motion. //Druid ready for storage// I sent to Albion. //Ten pieces / My position / Leave large pieces for last//
The earth’s magic cannot be used to harm animals of a certain biological complexity. I can use it all I want to give myself an advantage in battle—speed and strength and camouflage and so on—but I can’t use it directly against an enemy or a critter that wants to eat me. It’s an immutable law and tattooed directly into my skin. But the immortal nature of the Olympians, I realized earlier, provided me with an interesting loophole. They couldn’t truly be harmed in any permanent sense by the earth; even when decapitated, their heads retained consciousness without oxygen, so I—or, rather, Albion—could do some things to them we’d never be able to do to any other creature.
Underneath the arms and legs of the huntresses, the forest floor began to bubble and shift. Gooey globs of what geologists call London Clay rose up and encased their limbs in a dark-brown slurry with little fossils sprinkled throughout. This was then coated with a layer of chalk and topped with gravel, which Albion bound together and then smoothed into solid rock.
“What is this?” Diana asked, swiveling her head from side to side, watching the process unfold.
“Your fate,” I said. “You will be interred in the earth until you agree to cease hunting me and my friends. No earthquake from Poseidon or Neptune will cough you out of the ground. You will remain in darkness, unheard and undying, until I decide to release you. You’d better hope I don’t perish in the meantime.”
The clay began to ooze over their torsos, and, once they felt it, their expressions lost much of their vinegar.
“I will cease hunting you and your friends,” Artemis said.
My eyebrows shot up at the quick capitulation. “You have my thanks. Diana?”
Her defiance returned. She tried to spit at me and missed. “I will never stop seeking your head,” she snarled.
I sucked in air past my teeth. “Wow, never is a very long time. Artemis, thank you very much for offering, but I hope you will forgive me if I don’t quite believe you yet. I will be more inclined to do so a bit later, perhaps. You and I will speak again soon.”
The clay had moved past their shoulders now and was creeping up the columns of their necks. Diana continued to glare at me while Artemis rolled her eyes down for a nervous look. “I am in earnest, Druid. I will swear it.”
“Again, I thank you, but you lack credibility at the moment.” And there was no way I was letting either of them loose right after they’d shot Granuaile and tried to kill me too. “We’ve defeated you three times now,” I reminded them. “Once in the Netherlands, once in the English Channel, and now here. It didn’t have to be this way. You might wish to consider while you’re underground if all this was worth it for the god of drunken assholes and five dryads who were perfectly healthy when last I saw them. Save for the past few days of self-defense, I have never assaulted you directly and have strived to amend my trespasses. Can you say the same?”