With a shout, the rotund man rushed at Julianna. Silently, she sidestepped and whipped him in the face with the bridle. He cried out and reached toward his eyes. She swung it again, slapping his hands away, and then she backpedaled.
Furious, the man kept after her.
On the ladder, Ixchel called to him. Then he glanced at Oliver with regret, and started to hurry down the ladder.
“Hey. Wait! Stop!” Oliver shouted, but the thin, graying stablehand had already dropped out of sight.
“Shit,” he snarled.
Only one thing to do.
“Jules!” he called.
She spared a quick glance over her shoulder. As she did, Oliver dropped the pitchfork. It landed half a dozen feet away from her and Julianna raced for it, snatching it up and turning it on her pursuer.
Oliver went over the side. He dangled for just a second, glancing down to make sure he wouldn’t break a leg, then dropped. The impact jarred him, and he went down hard on his ass. He scrambled to his feet and turned, almost at the same moment that Ixchel reached the bottom of the ladder.
But the stablehand barely looked at him. He started toward his friend, hands in front of him, and an argument began between them. Ixchel, incredibly, seemed to be telling the other man to back off. Both men grew more and more insistent.
“What the hell’s going on?” Julianna asked, glancing back at Oliver.
The fat man lunged at her. In that moment of distraction, he grabbed hold of the pitchfork and tugged it from her hands. Then he started toward them both. Oliver grabbed Julianna by the hand.
“Get ready to run,” he told her.
“What? Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Too late. Just get ready to run. I’ll distract him.”
Only when Oliver saw Ixchel did he realize he’d momentarily lost track of the other man. The stablehand stepped up behind his friend and swung a shovel. The man staggered and went down on his knees, eyes rolling up in his head.
He fell on his face, nearly impaling himself on the pitchfork. A trickle of blood ran down his temple.
Ixchel, regret and worry on his face, knelt at his friend’s side and felt for a pulse. When he stood, he seemed satisfied.
Quickly he ran to the stable doors, cracked them open to glance outside, then closed and barred them. Oliver and Julianna could only watch in amazement, still shocked at what he had done. Then Ixchel turned to look at them.
“Bascombe,” the man said.
Oliver nodded slowly, curiously.
Ixchel smiled. He gestured to Oliver and said a few words in his own language. Then he shook his head in frustration because he knew they didn’t understand.
“You,” he said, finding the word. “Legend-Born.”
CHAPTER 10
T he gods came out of Perinthia at dawn, just as they had promised.
Kitsune had been sitting on a rock beside the Truce Road, thinking back to the last time she had been here, sneaking into the city with Oliver and Frost after their mad flight on horseback from Bromfield Village with the Myth Hunters in pursuit. Those had been anxious days, but they had been sweet as well. Their intentions had been pure, their understanding of one another uncomplicated.
It had all gone wrong since. Kitsune wished that she could go back. But there was only forward, now, to war-and to whatever life held for her on the other side.
Boredom had forced Coyote to shed his human form and to chase voles across the rough landscape on the outskirts of the city in the hour just before dawn. But as the horizon had begun to lighten and the city of Perinthia began to awaken, the coyote had come and laid down at Kitsune’s feet, gaze locked on the archway that led into the city. The arch connected two watchtowers. Dark figures appeared from time to time atop those towers, but Coyote’s attention was on the arch itself. On the road.
For her part, Kitsune tried her best not to look at the arch, superstitious that if she stared in that direction, the gods might never come. But when Coyote made a soft growl in his throat and rose from his haunches, then transformed fluidly from animal to man, standing almost at attention despite his usual slouch, she knew that they would not march alone.
The war goddess, Bellona, came first through the arch, one hand upon the pommel of her sword, chin high with salvaged dignity. Only steps behind her came a god all in black. The ebon armored chest plate he wore gleamed in the dawn’s light, as did the helm upon his head. His eyes were hidden in shadow, but Kitsune could see the thin line of his mouth and she shuddered. Never had she seen a being so grim.
“Ares,” Coyote muttered.
Kitsune shot him a look.
“It must be,” he whispered.
The fox-woman agreed. The god of war had come. How could he have resisted?
Salacia and Hesperos followed, but Kitsune’s lingering gaze was broken by a blur that swept past Hesperos and Salacia, darted around Ares and Bellona, and raced toward her with such speed that she barely had time to raise her hands in self-defense before he came to a stop in front of her. His narrow face and thin limbs trembled as though with terrible age, and there were lines upon his face. Yet despite the wisps of white hair, she knew this could only be Mercury.
His eyes were alight with youth and power, with speed.
Then he vanished in a blur, racing off along the Truce Road toward the south-toward Bromfield and the Atlantic Bridge and toward war.
“Where the hell’s he going?” Coyote said.
“To scout ahead,” Bellona replied.
Kitsune turned. The golden gleam of the morning sun made the gods seem almost like figments of her imagination. But the rust on Bellona’s chest plate and the dents in her helm were not illusions.
Ares walked past Kitsune and Coyote without a word, not even pausing to be introduced.
Another god came along behind Hesperos and Salacia, a fair-haired male in a pale blue robe who floated several inches above the ground, a small wind swirling up a dust devil underfoot.
“Thank you for coming,” Kitsune said.
“Where are the others?” Coyote asked.
“Most of the old gods are tired,” Bellona said, glaring at Coyote. “But there are those of us who refuse to be forgotten.”
Kitsune shot Coyote a hard look.
“And we’re very grateful,” she told Bellona.
Placated, the war goddess gestured around her. “Mercury and Ares have gone on ahead. Salacia and Hesperos you know.” She put a hand on Kitsune’s shoulder. “Notus, this is Kitsune of the Borderkind and her cousin, the trickster Coyote,” Bellona said, and nodded toward the floating god. “And this is Notus, the south wind.”
Kitsune bowed her head. “We are honored to have you with us.”
A gentle wind caressed her face, perhaps whispered something in her ear, and then was gone. Notus smiled at her, then continued along the road.
Kitsune glanced at Coyote, but saw that her cousin was not watching Notus, nor was he gazing at either of the beautiful goddesses who had joined them. His eyes were locked upon the watchtowers at the city’s edge and at the archway between them.
Head bowed, a giant lumbered through the arch, the road buckling beneath the heels of his leather boots. With his shaggy beard and dusty clothes, he looked like one of the carnivorous giants who lived along the Sorrowful River, eating wayward children and crushing their parents underfoot.
Frantic, she glanced around for cover. Not all of the Myth Hunters, it seemed, had gone to war.
But Bellona laughed softly and both Hesperos and Salacia turned to smile lovingly at the giant.
“Have no fear,” the war goddess said.
“It is only Cronus,” Hesperos added.
Kitsune shook her head in confusion. “Cronus?”
Salacia stepped up beside her, looking almost sickly in the morning sun despite her beauty. Her green-hued skin had an almost Atlantean caste, but the dawn light gave her a kind of jaundiced, cadaverous appearance.