The Last Olympian

ahead.
    “Percy!” Annabeth yelled. “You’ve already routed them. Pull back! We’re overextended!”
    Some part of me knew she was right, but I was doing so well. I wanted to destroy every last monster.
    Then I saw the crowd at the base of the bridge. The retreating monsters were running straight toward their reinforcements. It was small group, maybe thirty or forty demigods in battle armor, mounted on skeletal horses. One of them held a purple banner with the black scythe design.
    The lead horseman trotted forward. He took off his helm, and I recognized Kronos himself, his eyes like molten gold.
    Annabeth and the Apollo campers faltered. The monsters we’d been pursuing reached the Titan’s line and were absorbed into the new force. Kronos gazed in our direction. He was a quarter mile away, but I swear I could see him smile.
    “Now,” I said, “we pull back.”
    The Titan lord’s men drew their swords and charged. The hooves of their skeletal horses thundered against the pavement. Our archers shot a volley, bringing down several of the enemy, but they just kept riding.
    “Retreat!” I told my friends. “I’ll hold them!”
    In a matter of seconds they were on me.
    Michael and his archers tried to retreat, but Annabeth stayed right beside me, fighting with her knife and mirrored shield as we slowly backed up the bridge.
    Kronos’s cavalry swirled around us, slashing and yelling insults. The Titan himself advanced leisurely, like he had all the time in the world. Being the lord of time, I guess he did.
    I tried to wound his men, not kill. That slowed me down, but these weren’t monsters. They were demigods who’d fallen under Kronos’s spell. I couldn’t see faces under their battle helmets, but some of them had probably been my friends. I slashed the legs off their horses and made the skeletal mounts disintegrate. After the first few demigods took a spill, the rest figured out they’d better dismount and fight me on foot.
    Annabeth and I stayed shoulder to shoulder, facing opposite directions. A dark shape passed over me, and I dared to glance up. Blackjack and Porkpie were swooping in, kicking our enemies in the helmets and flying away like very large kamikaze pigeons.
    We’d almost made it to the middle of the bridge when something strange happened. I felt a chill down my spine— like that old saying about someone walking on your grave. Behind me, Annabeth cried out in pain.
    “Annabeth!” I turned in time to see her fall, clutching her arm. A demigod with a bloody knife stood over her.
    In a flash I understood what had happened. He’d been trying to stab me. Judging from the position of his blade, he would’ve taken me—maybe by sheer luck—in the small of my back, my only weak point.
    Annabeth had intercepted the knife with her own body.
    But why? She didn’t know about my weak spot. No one did.
    I locked eyes with the enemy demigod. He wore an eye patch under his war helm: Ethan Nakamura, the son of Nemesis. Somehow he’d survived the explosion on the Princess Andromeda . I slammed him in the face with my sword hilt so hard I dented his helm.
    “Get back!” I slashed the air in a wide arc, driving the rest of the demigods away from Annabeth. “No one touches her!”
    “Interesting,” Kronos said.
    He towered above me on his skeletal horse, his scythe in one hand. He studied the scene with narrowed eyes as if he could sense that I’d just come close to death, the way a wolf can smell fear.
    “Bravely fought, Percy Jackson,” he said. “But it’s time to surrender . . . or the girl dies.”
    “Percy, don’t,” Annabeth groaned. Her shirt was soaked with blood. I had to get her out of here.
    “Blackjack!” I yelled.
    As fast as light, the pegasus swooped down and clamped his teeth on the straps of Annabeth’s armor. They soared away over the river before the enemy could even react.
    Kronos snarled. “Some day soon, I am going to make pegasus soup. But in the meantime . . .” He dismounted, his scythe glistening in the dawn light. “I’ll settle for another dead demigod.”
    I met his first strike with Riptide. The impact shook the entire bridge, but I held my ground. Kronos’s smile wavered.
    With a yell, I kicked his legs out from under him. His scythe skittered across the pavement. I stabbed downward, but he rolled aside and regained his footing. His scythe flew back to his hands.
    “So . . .” He studied me, looking mildly annoyed. “You had the courage to