Markanos bulls past me, sword in hand, and as he dashes forward, Treseano leaps from the altar, flinging his bag out. From it tumbles a writhing black creature. It looks almost like an oversize leech, black and glossy, large as a ship’s cat. It wriggles toward Markanos at the same moment that Treseano roars a battle cry.
Okeanos has dropped his grip on me and my vision is seared by the glory of the gods. Too many of them are moving too quickly. It sends bursts of pain through my skull, shattering my perception into short little snatches.
I don’t dare let that glory pin me in place, I shuffle backward blindly, feeling for one of the uprights to dodge behind. I am unarmed and very, very mortal.
There’s a roar just in front of me as Markanos’s two blind companions—Rethgar and Rothgar—tear into Treseano’s host.
“For glory!” they shout as they burst into the ranks of the sewn-mouthed priests.
“No!” Markanos exclaims, but he is too late.
These are mortals.
They scream and die like mortals, butchered on both sides by a sudden fury of sharp blades and gasping intensity. They fight for their gods. And neither side dares cower when their devotion is so high.
It has always been so that priests or monks or even heroes will give their lives for the glory of the gods, flingingthemselves into certain death for the promise of an unrivaled afterlife, but I have never seen it done with such flagrant abandon before. It is as if they came here to die and must race one another to do it.
On the mortal plane the gods are forbidden from directly murdering mortals or ruling them as a king would and so they have always fought and acted through our monarchs and armies. But this is not the mortal plane, and I did not expect that the gods would spend their mortal followers so cheaply.
Something hot hits my legs and I look down. A spray of blood streaks across my skirt. I try to shake it off, as if that is what is important right now, but my brain is not working properly. It is not offering me the right kind of options.
I force my eyes to look up and my legs to stumble backward.
A single one of Markanos’s guards drops beneath a heap of Glorian’s followers right in front of me. They’ve fallen on him like gulls upon a rotting fish. His screams grow fainter and then cut off.
I should run. I cannot make my legs so much as twitch.
With a sudden howl, the head of one of Ordanus’s harpists goes spiraling through the air in an arc over the mass of gathered bodies. It seems heavier than I would have guessed.
Ordanus shouts angrily, and a wave of sound bursts across the mortals, bursts across me, and I’m clutching at my ringing ears, all sound ripped away.
The world around me is a grunting, ripping tangle offighting limbs and terrible carnage. Feet squeak on marble as they slip in blood.
I don’t know when I stopped breathing, but the world is spinning and my vision is narrowing. I’m afraid that if I turn, my back will be exposed, but if I don’t run… My heels strike the wall behind me and I’m trapped. There’s no way to flee with a wall at my back.
A hand reaches toward me from the crowd and one of Treseano’s sewn-mouthed ghouls bursts from the tumult toward me. I just have time to suck in a breath for a scream when someone curses fierce and furious beside me.
One of the gods strides through the masses, scattering mortals like fish scatter before a dolphin. His shadow falls over me, and I flinch back before I realize it is Okeanos stepping between me and the fight. He flicks a hand and a wave rises from the sea, swells over the edge of the pale island, and sweeps the sewn-mouthed villain over the other side.
Okeanos strides into the mess, hindered by his limp, but not stopped. He grabs Ordanus by the hair and drags him up from the ground as he plants his spear into one mortal warrior—one of Treseano’s, I think. His waves rush again over the masses, flattening some to their knees and sending some over the side like they swept aside the sewn-mouthed priest. Before Okeanos, the last mortals fall, or still, twitching in fear and death.
“Enough.” The sea god’s words are calm, quiet. Treseano strides forward, but Okeanos points his spear at him in warning, roaring, “I told you. Enough. Have you not beensated on sufficient blood this night? Restrain yourself, or watch me cut your throat with your own sword.”
Treseano stops.
So do the rest, frozen in place, wary as they watch these two gods stare at each other. My eyes flick to Aurelius and I frown. He is untouched, leaning against one upright as if he is merely a spectator like me.
“The declaration has been made,” Okeanos says grimly. His wound is worse. Blood pours down his leg. “We’ve all heard it. You will have your god war and you will have your revolt against heaven. But we are all of us here until morning. Or have you forgotten that our godhood and the powers just renewed are dependent on keeping vigil here this night? Will you spend every hour fighting to the death, or shall we call a truce until we return to our holdings below?”
“I have not forgotten,” Glorian says airily. I hadn’t even noticed her there, but she’s close to Okeanos. She has not a speck of blood on her. Shocking, considering her entire entourage lies in shreds before her slippered feet.
“Then you know,” Okeanos says, and his voice is the thunder of the breakers upon the rocks. His voice is the angry sea. “If you leave before the proper time, you will lose your godhood.”
She looks away but she does not speak again.
None of them do. They simply look one to another as if to divine each one’s intent.
Okeanos turns now to Treseano, barely leashed fury in his voice. “This is impulsively done. You will think better of it come the dawn.”
