But Hazel couldn’t forget that Jason had been Hera’s first move in the war against the giants. The Queen of Olympus had dropped Jason into Camp Half-Blood, which had started this entire chain of events to stop Gaea. Why Jason first? Something told Hazel he was the linchpin. Jason would be the final play, too.
To storm or fire the world must fall. That’s what the prophecy said. As much as Hazel feared fire, she feared storms more. Jason Grace could cause some pretty huge storms.
She glanced up and saw the rim of the cliff only a few yards above her.
She reached the top, breathless and sweaty. A long sloping valley marched inland, dotted with scraggly olive trees and limestone boulders. There were no signs of civilization.
Hazel’s legs trembled from the climb. Gale seemed anxious to explore. The weasel barked and farted and scampered into the nearest bushes. Far below, the Argo II looked like a toy boat in the channel. Hazel didn’t understand how anyone could shoot an arrow accurately from this high up, accounting for the wind and the glare of the sun off the water. At the mouth of the inlet, the massive shape of the turtle’s shell glinted like a burnished coin.
Jason joined her at the top, looking no worse for the climb.
He started to say, “Where—”
“Here!” said a voice.
Hazel flinched. Only ten feet away, a man had appeared, a bow and quiver over his shoulder and two old-fashioned flintlock dueling pistols in his hands. He wore high leather boots, leather breeches, and a pirate-style shirt. His curly black hair looked like a little kid’s do and his sparkly green eyes were friendly enough, but a red bandana covered the lower half of his face.
“Welcome!” the bandit cried, pointing his guns at them. “Your money or your life!”
Hazel was certain that he hadn’t been there a second ago. He’d simply materialized, as if he’d stepped out from behind an invisible curtain.
“Who are you?” Hazel asked.
The bandit laughed. “Sciron, of course!”
“Chiron?” Jason asked. “Like the centaur?”
The bandit rolled his eyes. “Sky-ron, my friend. Son of Poseidon! Thief extraordinaire! All-around awesome guy! But that’s not important. I’m not seeing any valuables!” he cried, as if this were excellent news. “I guess that means you want to die?”
“Wait,” Hazel said. “We’ve got valuables. But if we give them up, how can we be sure you’ll let us go?”
“Oh, they always ask that,” Sciron said. “I promise you, on the River Styx, that as soon as you surrender what I want, I will not shoot you. I will send you right back down that cliff. ”
Hazel gave Jason a wary look. River Styx or no, the way Sciron phrased his promise didn’t reassure her.
“What if we fought you?” Jason asked. “You can’t attack us and hold our ship hostage at the same—”
BANG! BANG!
It happened so fast, Hazel’s brain needed a moment to catch up.
Smoke curled from the side of Jason’s head. Just above his left ear, a groove cut through his hair like a racing stripe. One of Sciron’s flintlocks was still pointed at his face. The other flintlock was pointed down, over the side of the cliff, as if Sciron’s second shot had been fired at the Argo II.
Hazel choked from delayed shock. “What did you do?”
“Oh, don’t worry!” Sciron laughed. “If you could see that far—which you can’t—you’d see a hole in the deck between the shoes of the big young man, the one with the bow. ”
“Frank!”
Sciron shrugged. “If you say so. That was just a demonstration. I’m afraid it could have been much more serious. ”
He spun his flintlocks. The hammers reset, and Hazel had a feeling the guns had just magically reloaded.
Sciron waggled his eyebrows at Jason. “So! To answer your question—yes, I can attack you and hold your ship hostage at the same time. Celestial bronze ammunition. Quite deadly to demigods. You two would die first—bang, bang. Then I could take my time picking off your friends on that ship. Target practice is so much more fun with live targets running around screaming!”
Jason touched the new furrow that the bullet had plowed through his hair. For once, he didn’t look very confident.
Hazel’s ankles wobbled. Frank was the best shot she knew with a bow, but this bandit Sciron was inhumanly good.
“You’re a son of Poseidon?” she managed. “I would’ve thought Apollo, the way you shoot. ”
The smile lines deepened around his eyes. “Why, thank you! It’s just from practice, though. The giant turtle—that’s due to my parentage. You can’t go around taming giant turtles without being a son of Poseidon! I could overwhelm your ship with a tidal wave, of course, but it’s terribly difficult work. Not nearly as fun as ambushing and shooting people. ”
Hazel tried to collect her thoughts, stall for time, but it was difficult while staring down the smoking barrels of those flintlocks. “Uh…what’s the bandana for?”
“So no one recognizes me!” Sciron said.
“But you introduced yourself,” Jason said. “You’re Sciron. ”
The bandit’s eyes widened. “How did you— Oh. Yes, I suppose I did. ” He lowered one flintlock and scratched the side of his head with the other. “Terribly sloppy of me. Sorry. I’m afraid I’m a little rusty. Back from the dead, and all that. Let me try again. ”
He leveled his pistols. “Stand and deliver! I am an anonymous bandit, and you do not need to know my name!”
An anonymous bandit. Something clicked in Hazel’s memory. “Theseus. He killed you once. ”
Sciron’s shoulders slumped. “Now, why did you have to mention him? We were getting along so well!”
Jason frowned. “Hazel, you know this guy’s story?”
She nodded, though the details were murky. “Theseus met him on the road to Athens. Sciron would kill his victims by, um…”