to live through this and we won’t
, I said,
but I want them to feel ambushed. When it’s over, I want them to shudder and realize that we would have owned them if they were mortal
.
We didn’t have long to wait. Two golden chariots pulled by teams of stags glided over the heather as the sun crested the horizon in the east. Once they saw the bodies of their hounds, the goddesses reined the stags in and leapt out, each with a bow in hand and an arrow nocked and ready to go.
It was my first real good look at them. They’d been quite a distance away back in Romania, and the Morrigan had blocked my view before I had time to study them.
Based on my experience with Hermes and Mercury, I was pretty sure that Artemis was the paler of the two. Neither was dressed in bedsheets or the flowing skimpy dresses one sees so often in fantasy art—and they weren’t rocking the hooded-elf look either. Lean and wiry, dark hair queued and gathered in golden circlets, Artemis wore a sleeveless, pale green tunic gathered at the waist with a broad belt. She had black pants tucked into some of those calf-high boots that looked like moccasins—but none of it was leather. All polyester and other synthetic materials. And the circlets in her hair weren’t gold—they were plastic. I knew because I tried to create a binding between them and the earth, which would effectively pull her to the ground by her hair, but it didn’t work. Same thing with her belt buckle, and her bow and arrows were man-made composites too. I had no doubt that the knife strapped to her thigh was a composite as well.
Artemis was a sharp and stringy sort, jaw like a hatchet blade and muscles in her forearms rippling like piano wires. She didn’t head straight for the pile of hound corpses but circled to her right, where Oberon and I were hiding. She approached in a crouching step, eyes flicking around for signs of us. Diana circled the other way in a similar gait.
The Roman goddess was a bit softer around the edgesthan her Greek counterpart, and she had made a bit more effort to find clothing that echoed her ancient origins. She was wearing one of those armor skirts centurions used to wear, except hers was made of black pleather or some other unholy creation of fabric science. She had some black greaves on over her sandals too. Like Mercury, her skin was bronzed and seemed to glow as if she’d been waxed and polished in a detail shop. She was hot, to a degree that was rather unfair.
They took very different approaches to their famous virginity: Artemis’s complete lack of attention to her personal appearance meant she couldn’t care less what men thought of her, while Diana appreciated the tease of looking desirable yet untouchable. I used to admire them both when they were simply myths, for they represented two of the world’s earliest memos to men that women could get along quite well without them and enjoy a full measure of happiness besides, thank you very much. It was more difficult to admire them now that they were hunting me, however.
Artemis looked as if she might wind up stepping on us at one point, and that would have been dangerous when she had a bow ready to fire, but she changed her path to draw nearer to the hounds. I saw that in a few moments she’d be presenting her back to us.
Get to your feet silently once she passes us and jump on her back
, I said to Oberon.
I should have stopped him right there because he jinxed it. But he rose to his feet silently, as did I, gathered himself, and sprang at her back when she was no more than two yards away. And though I had granted Oberon extraordinary speed, Artemis was still faster. Sensing the attack somehow, she dropped her bow and arrow, raised her left arm, leaned to her right, and caught Oberon in a choke hold.
He tried to wrestle loose, but Artemis held fast and drew her knife. She held it up to his neck and said in English, “Be still. I can’t see you properly, so be sure you don’t cut your own throat.” That prevented me from sweeping her legs, as I’d planned. The situation had changed. I began to sidestep to the left, still behind her but away from her knife hand. If she wanted to take it away from his throat and throw it in my direction, she’d have to do it across her body. But she was counting on her partner to keep me at bay, and I was all too aware
Kostenlos Online Lesen 
