Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six)

great numbers, the language was transitioning to Middle Irish anyway.”
    “What about the Romans?”
    “They never conquered Ireland. They called it Hibernia and left it alone for the most part.”
    “Got it.”
    We found the heads with little trouble and confirmed that the immortals were still very much alive. They didn’t have breath to speak, lacking any physical connection with their lungs, so they did their best to glare meaningfully at us. We each tucked our grisly goddess head into the crook of a left arm and resumed running south. Soon we would swerve west again to head for Calais. The elemental promised to keep us on a rural route as much as possible to avoid being seen.
    I apologized first to Oberon for excluding him from the forthcoming conversation, explaining that it was intended to taunt the goddesses and not to cut him out.
    
    Me too, buddy
.
    Switching to Old Irish, I said to Granuaile, “The main reason I know this isn’t the end of things is because the Morrigan said we wouldn’t be safe until we reach Windsor Forest. That’s still a good run ahead of us.”
    “Why do you think the rest of the Olympians haven’t gotten involved?”
    “I’m sure it has something to do with pride. The huntresses want to claim our kills as their own, though they’d never be able to touch us if we were able to shift planes. And when it comes to the rest of the Olympians, Odin said they’re under orders to keep out of it from other deities—though I don’t know which ones. So I’m certain the Olympians are watching the hunt, but they’re also acutely aware that others are watching it too. Odin isn’t the only one keeping track, you can be sure.”
    “Oh. They’re tracking
me
, you mean.”
    “Yes. You are not so anonymous as you once were. But my point was that this is now an inter-pantheon power play. We removed Bacchus from the board, so now they’ve killed the Morrigan and penciled in a hash mark under the column that says
badass
. If they can’t finish us off, though, with everyone watching, then that makes the Morrigan’s death a fluke—or what it truly was, which was suicide.”
    “Suicide?”
    “Yes. The Chooser of the Slain chose herself.”
    “But why?”
    I wasn’t ready to discuss that with her yet. Primarily, of course, the Morrigan had felt all the weight of an eternal prison sentence; she could never change who she was, because of the constraints of belief. But the question of why she wanted to change would lead to a discussion of our strange relationship. The revelation that the Morrigan had loved me dumped a load of guilt ferrets on the back of my neck, and I hadn’t managed to shake them free. I doubted it would be a comfortable topic of conversation. We’d have to talk of it soon, but now wasn’t the best time.
    “Let’s talk about her later, if you don’t mind,” I said.
    “Okay, as long as we don’t forget.”
    “I won’t.”
    “You were saying about the Olympians?”
    “They’re going to be anxious to keep this confined to the huntresses as much as possible. The more effort they have to expend in taking us out, the smaller their victory over the Morrigan and the more ridiculous they appear. I mean, entirely apart from the fact that they were forbidden to interfere, they would diminish themselves in the eyes of every other pantheon if they have to exert their full might to be rid of us. That’s probably why they can’t see past our camouflage; this time, Minerva is staying out of it.”
    “But they’ve already involved quite a few of them. Neptune started that earthquake back in Romania, and then you have Pan and Faunus spreading pandemonium to keep us from shifting. And the forge gods made them new chariots, right?”
    “Exactly. It’s bad enough as it is. But if snuffing us was all that mattered to them, consequences be damned, they could have done it by now. Say that Ares, Mars, Athena, and Minerva dropped down here right now in front of us, and both of the Apollos. Would we stand a realistic chance of taking them out if they were fully prepared?”
    “Eek! No. I guess not.”
    “You guess right. They’re all weakened compared to their glory days, but they are still powerful beings and more than a match for us if we can’t surprise them. That means our deaths aren’t paramount yet;
how
we die is still more important, so there’s definitely politics at work here.”
    We spent some time