The Battle of the Labyrinth

know that?”
    Grover huffed indignantly. “Believe me, if you had hooves, you’d know about cattle guards. They’re annoying!”
    I turned to Annabeth. “Didn’t Hera say something about a ranch? We need to check it out. Nico might be up there.”
    She hesitated. “All right. But how do we get out?”
    Tyson solved that problem by hitting the cattle guard with both hands. It popped off and went flying out of sight. We heard a CLANG! and a startled Moo! Tyson blushed.
    “Sorry, cow!” he called.
    Then he gave us a boost out of the tunnel.
    We were on a ranch, all right. Rolling hills stretched to the horizon, dotted with oak trees and cactuses and boulders. A barbed wire fence ran from the gate in either direction. Cherry-colored cows roamed around, grazing on clumps of grass.
    “Red cattle,” Annabeth said. “The cattle of the sun.”
    “What?” I asked.
    “They’re sacred to Apollo.”
    “Holy cows?”
    “Exactly. But what are they doing—”
    “Wait,” Grover said. “Listen.”
    At first everything seemed quiet . . . but then I heard it: the distant baying of dogs. The sound got louder. Then the underbrush rustled, and two dogs broke through. Except it wasn’t two dogs. It was one dog with two heads. It looked like a greyhound, long and snaky and sleek brown, but its neck V’d into two heads, both of them snapping and snarling and generally not very glad to see us.
    “Bad Janus dog!” Tyson cried.
    “Arf!” Grover told it, and raised a hand in greeting.
    The two-headed dog bared its teeth. I guess it wasn’t impressed that Grover could speak animal. Then its master lumbered out of the woods, and I realized the dog was the least of our problems.
    He was a huge guy with stark white hair, a straw cowboy hat, and a braided white beard—kind of like Father Time, if Father Time went redneck and got totally jacked. He was wearing jeans, a DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS T-shirt, and a denim jacket with the sleeves ripped off so you could see his muscles. On his right bicep was a crossed-swords tattoo. He held a wooden club about the size of a nuclear warhead, with six-inch spikes bristling at the business end.
    “Heel, Orthus,” he told the dog.
    The dog growled at us once more, just to make his feelings clear, then circled back to his master’s feet. The man looked us up and down, keeping his club ready.
    “What’ve we got here?” he asked. “Cattle rustlers?”
    “Just travelers,” Annabeth said. “We’re on a quest.”
    The man’s eye twitched. “Half-bloods, eh?”
    I started to say, “How did you know—”
    Annabeth put her hand on my arm. “I’m Annabeth, daughter of Athena. This is Percy, son of Poseidon. Grover the satyr. Tyson the—”
    “Cyclops,” the man finished. “Yes, I can see that.” He glowered at me. “And I know half-bloods because I am one, sonny. I’m Eurytion, the cowherd for this here ranch. Son of Ares. You came through the Labyrinth like the other one, I reckon.”
    “The other one?” I asked. “You mean Nico di Angelo?”
    “We get a load of visitors from the Labyrinth,” Eurytion said darkly. “Not many ever leave.”
    “Wow,” I said. “I feel welcome.”
    The cowherd glanced behind him like someone was watching. Then he lowered his voice. “I’m only going to say this once, demigods. Get back in the maze now. Before it’s too late.”
    “We’re not leaving,” Annabeth insisted. “Not until we see this other demigod. Please.”
    Eurytion grunted. “Then you leave me no choice, missy. I’ve got to take you to see the boss.”
    I didn’t feel like we were hostages or anything. Eurytion walked alongside us with his club across his shoulder. Orthus the two-headed dog growled a lot and sniffed at Grover’s legs and shot into the bushes once in a while to chase animals, but Eurytion kept him more or less under control.
    We walked down a dirt path that seemed to go on forever. It must’ve been close to a hundred degrees, which was a shock after San Francisco. Heat shimmered off the ground. Insects buzzed in the trees. Before we’d gone very far, I was sweating like crazy. Flies swarmed us. Every so often we’d see a pen full of red cows or even stranger animals. Once we passed a corral where the fence was coated in asbestos. Inside, a herd of fire-breathing horses milled around. The hay in their feeding trough was on fire. The ground smoked around their feet, but the horses seemed tame enough. One big stallion looked at me and