Warrior Rising (Goddess Summoning 6)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Kat was trying to figure out what “enough” meant when they caught up with Patroklos and Jacky, and deciding okay, fine. She was a professional. She would just ask him. When Jacky turned to her and with a relieved expression said, “Good. There you are. Tell him that we can’t go swimmin’ with them because we have nothin’ to wear in the water.”

Kat looked at Patroklos, who was smiling at Jacky adoringly. “She’s right. This silk stuff”—she picked up a fold of her outer dress and swirled so that it flowed gracefully around her—“is pretty, but not good for the water.”

“Then you should both do what we’re going to do. Shouldn’t they, cousin?” Patroklos said, with a mischievous glance at Achilles.

The corner of Achilles’ lips lifted. “They should, indeed. It would save the lovely fabric of their robes.”

“Shall we?” Patroklos asked.

“Yes, cousin,” Achilles said.

And while Kat and Jacky watched, the two warriors stripped off every bit of their clothes and leaped, shouting, into the turquoise waves.

“Holy shit,” Kat said.

“God. My god.” Jacky fanned herself vigorously. “I owe you an apology, Kat. Even if there has been a mix-up about my skin color there is no damn way we’re in hell. We have gone straight to heaven.”

“Have you ever in your life seen such a beautiful body?” Kat asked dreamily, staring at Achilles and wishing desperately that he would swim back to shallower water. And then stand up.

“Kat, tell the truth. Patroklos looks like Spike, doesn’t he?”

Kat wrenched her eyes from ogling Achilles long enough to roll them at Jacky. “You are such a dork. And your Buffy infatuation is truly pathetic.”

“He does look like Spike! Check out that lean yet muscley physique and that silver-blond hair. All he needs is a change in hair-style and a long black leather coat. Sweet weeping baby Jesus he has a six-pack to beat all six-packs. I’m going to have to shtup him. I think it’s only right. How can I let all of that deliciousness go to waste?”

“He’s not Spike, fool. Patroklos is a nice guy. Spike was the Big Bad.”

Jacky gave her a look that telegraphed you’re a moron. “Spike from Buffy season seven, Kat. Please try to stay with me here.”

“Sorry, did you say something?” Kat’s eyes followed Achilles’ every muscular, naked movement.

“Kat, is Patroklos’ penis pink?” Jacky asked, shielding her eyes with her hand to get a better look as she squinted against the sun reflecting off the waves.

“Jacky, do not even try to pretend like you haven’t had sex with a white guy before.”

“Just Bradley and just those few times. Remember how unsuitable I decided he was, what with his weird addiction to chocolate-covered maraschino cherries? He used to bite the bottom off those wretchedly cheap candies and suck the grossness out. Vile—totally vile.” Jacky shivered dramatically. “Anyway I didn’t notice any overly pinkness with him.”

“Well, Patroklos is a very white guy. Hey, think about it like this. His pink penis matches your blond va-jay-jay.”

“Oh, lord, I need to sit down. Being white is exhausting.”

Jacky was looking around for a log of driftwood when Patroklos ran out of the sea to grab her hand. “Swim with me, my beauty.”

Kat tried to keep her eyes to herself, which was damn difficult with Patroklos standing there dripping wet, smooth skinned and totally nekked. While Jacky babbled about not having a thing to wear, Kat moved her gaze seaward (versus downward). Achilles was walking slowly toward her. The water was still just a little over his waist, with waves lapping to his wide chest, so she was able to watch every bit of him emerge. He is like an ancient god, golden and powerful and seductively imperfect. He made her body feel flushed and ultrasensitive, and her mind kept flashing back to the night before like an erotic projector flipping on inside her head. Just as she was wondering how she could drop her clothes and wrap herself around him without the berserker showing up and ruining everything, Achilles’ posture changed. He left the water, walking swiftly to his discarded clothes.

“A runner from the Greek camp comes,” he said to Patroklos, who instantly stopped the kidding tug-of-war he was playing with Jacky and pulled his clothes on, too.

Kat squinted back down the beach and, sure enough, a man carrying a long, thin spear and a shield and wearing the same kind of scarlet cloak she’d seen Odysseus wearing was running toward them. He arrived minutes later, winded but obviously being sure to show Achilles careful respect by saluting him and bowing his head slightly.

“My lord, Odysseus, has sent me.” The warrior began speaking before he’d completely caught his breath.

“Is Odysseus well?” Achilles asked.

“Yes, but not all of the Ithacans have been so lucky. Today’s battle was hard fought.” The warrior’s voice was not condemning and his voice held no hostility, but beside her she could feel the tension that radiated from Achilles. “Odysseus sends me to ask if the healer, Melia, would be allowed to tend them.”

“Is Kalchas too busy sniffing around Agamemnon to bother to tend the wounded?” Achilles said in a cold, flat voice.

“Kalchas!” Jacky practically shrieked. “You mean that filthy old fool who tried to be sure Patroklos’s arm rotted off?”

“Yes, my beauty, that would be Kalchas,” Patroklos said, draping an arm around her shoulders.

“Well, then, let’s go.” Jacky extracted herself from Patroklos’s arm and made a shooing motion at the messenger.

The messenger looked from Jacky to Patroklos to Achilles. Jacky looked from the messenger to Patroklos to Achilles to Kat, and then back to Patroklos. Kat braced herself for trouble.

Jacky put her hands on her narrow hips, an action which was totally Jacky-like when she was pissed, and Kat thought how weird it was that just the way she was holding herself made her look like her body was more lush. But before she could tie into Patroklos or Achilles, Kat stepped forward.

“She should help Odysseus’s men. You know we’ve been sent here by Athena, and Athena is Odysseus’s patron goddess. She’d want Melia to tend his wounded men.”

“It does make sense,” Patroklos said.

“I do not like her going alone.” Achilles looked pointedly at me. “And you do not like blood, so you will not be going with her.”

“My beauty will not be going alone,” Patroklos said, putting his arm back around her. “She has me. I will escort her.”

Jacky gave him a look that was one part long suffering, one part amusement and one part appreciation. “And will you be sure the men do what I tell them to do, even if it means they have to boil and wash things?”

“I will do that for you, if you perform a favor for me later.” Patroklos’s infectious smile was more than a little naughty.

“I might be interested in that, if it doesn’t involve anything that will tear out those stitches.”

Achilles gave the runner an almost imperceptible nod, and then, with Patroklos laughing and whispering to Jacky, the three of them began moving off down the beach in the direction of the Greek camp.

“Ithacan! Leave your spear,” Achilles said abruptly. The runner paused, looking nervously back at the scarred warrior. Achilles’ lips twitched up slightly. “I have a taste for sea bass.” The warrior, with obvious reluctance, handed Achilles his spear. “Cousin, be sure this is replaced with one of ours.” Patroklos smiled and nodded, and then he and Jacky hurried after the retreating warrior. “Did the man really believe I was going to spear him with his own weapon for nothing more than asking to borrow a healer?” Achilles muttered, more to himself than to Kat.

“Sure looked like it.”

“And here you are, alone with such a fearsome warrior. Some people would call you mad.” His turquoise eyes studied her.

“And how often have you speared one of Odysseus’s men?”

“Never.”

“Well, then it sounds like I’m the sane one and the men like Odysseus’s messenger are the ones who need a reality check.”

“No.” His deep voice had gone flat and cold. “They are right to fear me. You should not ever forget that there is a monster waiting to possess me, body and soul.”

Kat met his gaze. “I’ll remember, but I prefer to focus on the man, not the monster.”

She saw surprise flash through his eyes. “Have you always been so contrary?”

“Definitely.”

He snorted a half laugh. Then, still studying her carefully, he said, “I’m going to spear some sea bass. You may come with me or return to camp. The decision is yours.”

“I like sea bass. A lot, actually. I’ll come with you.”

He gave a short nod and they started walking side by side down the beach, away from the disengaged camps of the Greeks and the Myrmidons. He didn’t offer Kat his arm, but he did walk slowly. They were so near the lapping water that Kat took off her slippers so that she could dig her toes into the wet sand. She did touch him then, using his arm to balance as she had the night before. He felt warm and strong under her hand, and she thought how weird it was that his presence could be so reassuring when the truth was there was a dangerous warrior and a monster lurking not far under his skin. She didn’t look up at him, but she could feel his eyes on her, just as she could feel them on her as she walked closer to the waves, holding her robes up so that the warm water could play around her feet.

“Do you miss your home?”

His question surprised her into answering with complete honesty. “Yes, I do. I’m homesick for normal things.”

“Such as?”

Kat realized she’d answered herself into a corner and thought quickly, discarding answers like the Internet and hot running water. When she finally answered, it was, again, with an honesty that surprised her. “I miss my freedom. I’m used to being able to do what I want to do and not worry about asking permission. I like being responsible for myself.”

Achilles snorted. “I heard old Priam was too lenient with his children.”

“My father is not too lenient!” Kat said automatically, thinking about her dad back in Oklahoma who raised her to have a backbone and to value herself, but who didn’t tolerate any crap from her, especially when she had been an obnoxious teenager.

“Then explain to me why he would allow Paris to abduct the king of Sparta’s wife.”

Shit! Helen’s husband was the king of Sparta? As in the Spartansthat spawned the kick ass three hundred? Kat dug into the wet sand with her toe and wished, for the zillionth time, she’d paid more attention to mythology in college. Finally she shrugged and said what she figured was probably close to the truth based on the vague information she did have (that he was a middle child and that he’d stolen someone’s wife). “Paris has always made stupid decisions the rest of us get stuck cleaning up.” Before he could ask any more difficult-to-answer questions Kat asked one of her own. “So did it bother you today not to join the battle?”

Instead of answering her, Achilles pointed to a half circle of coral that was just a few feet off the shoreline. “Bass like to rest in the shady spot there.” This time he didn’t strip but waded, thick-soled leather shoes and all, out to the coral. He climbed up on a benchlike ledge and crouched so that he could look down into the water.

Kat sighed and picked up a smooth, round seashell, trying to think of something she could ask him he might actually answer.

“It did not bother me not to join the battle today.”

She glanced up from the shell to him.

“It does bother me that my absence might have caused the death of even one Greek.”

“But it’s wrong to have you and your men keep fighting for someone who treats you like Agamemnon does.”

“Is it more wrong than to cause men’s deaths?”

Kat wanted to tell him that his absence would cause the war to end sooner, and that would save lives, but Kat knew she couldn’t. He was on the side of the Greeks. No matter how badly Agamemnon had used him and then pissed him off, he still couldn’t want to hear that his people would be defeated. So instead she said the only thing she could: “I don’t know.”

In the silence that followed, Achilles suddenly moved with blurring swiftness and hurled the spear into the sea beneath him. When he pulled it up it had neatly impaled a large, writhing bass. He pulled it off the spear and tossed it up on the beach entirely too close to Kat’s feet and she skittered several steps away from the flopping thing.

“You said you liked sea bass.”

“I do. Cleaned and cooked. By someone else.”

Achilles crouched back on the coral outcropping and returned to staring down into the clear water. “Then I’ll have to have one of the maidservants who like to whisper escape schemes to you take care of the preparation.”

Kat realized she shouldn’t be surprised that he knew what was being whispered about in his own camp. “And were you told my answer to those escape schemes?”

He looked up from the water to her. “What was your answer?”

“I said no.”

“Why? Because you fear what I would do to you if I caught you trying to escape?”

Kat made sure her voice sounded as haughty as a princess. “No. Because a goddess sent me here. I’ll leave when she tells me to.”

“So you wish to leave me already?” His voice was neutral, verging on uncaring, but Kat recognized the loneliness in his eyes—she’d seen it the night before.

“No. I don’t want to leave you.” As she said the words she knew they were true. She didn’t want to leave him—not yet. Not until she had helped him to control the berserker and change his fate.

He didn’t comment. He simply turned his attention back to the water. In no time there were two more huge fish added to the flopping pile on the beach. When he speared a fourth, he waded back to her and rammed the point of the spear through all four fish. Then, while Achilles carried them over his shoulder like a bizarre knapsack, they headed back to camp.

They walked awhile in silence, which, at least to Kat, didn’t feel uncomfortable. But as they got closer to camp, and thereby closer to Achilles’ tent and the inevitability of them spending another night together, her pile of unanswered questions became too heavy.

“I saw you fight off the berserker when you were drilling with your men today,” she said.

He glanced at her and then looked away. “There really wasn’t any danger of the berserker overtaking me. I was simply surprised, that and the pain from the sword scratch were enough to make the men leery of me. But neither the pain nor the surprise was great enough to cause the monster to possess me.”

“It didn’t seem like Patroklos was very leery of you.”

Achilles smiled one of his rare full smiles. “My foolish cousin believes I would never harm him and he often acts much too rashly.”

“But you wouldn’t hurt him,” Kat said.

“I wouldn’t. He is the closest thing I have to a brother or a son, and I would give my life to protect his. The berserker has no such loyalties.”

Kat thought about that and wondered just how true that statement was. Odysseus had said that the berserker had been possessing Achilles since he was about sixteen. The berserker was a being of anger and hatred and passion and killing. But did that mean he had no ability to develop a relationship with anyone in Achilles’ life?

“Where did the berserker come from before he cursed your life?”

“Zeus,” Achilles said. “He sent the berserker when I made my choice. First he offered a long, happy life filled with the love of a fine woman and the respect of my family and friends. I would die of old age and my fame would mean naught but to my family.”

“That sounds like an amazing future. Many people would give almost anything to know that their lives would be fulfilled by love and family,” Kat said.

“I took the second choice. I chose a short, but glorious life of constant battle. I will die on the battlefield before the great walls of Troy shortly after the death of your noble brother, Hector. My life will be bereft of love. No children will carry the burden of my blood in their veins. But even without those things, my name will be remembered in all parts of the civilized world for thousands of years to come.”

Kat didn’t say anything. What could she say? You made a crappy, immature decision. She didn’t need to say anything like that. It was already more than obvious that the mature Achilles—the man he’d grown into—knew deep in his soul that the childlike version of him had made a serious mistake.

“Which one would you have chosen, Princess?”