Chapter 62

Percy's Point of View

We were saved from Clarisse's angry complaints at how we had 'completely got in the way a messed up her mission' by Beckendorf steering her away.

"Come on Clarisse. We need to get the wounded back to the Big House, and let Tantalus know what's happened." Beckendorf told her. He looked pained as he uttered Tantalus' name and we winced. Tantalus. I knew that name from somewhere... now where had I heard that name from...

"Tantalus? Like... feeding his son to the gods, sent to the fields of punishment, Tantalus?" Annabeth asked, shocked. "Shouldn't you be talking to Chiron? And where's Argus? He's head of security!"

Beckendorf shook his head, his eyes weary and his expression downhearted. Looking around, everyone was exhausted. And no, I don't mean 'I've-just-fought-two-fire-breathing-metallic-bulls' tired, I mean that bone weary, energy sapping, days without proper rest tired. Clearly Camp was in a much worse state than we had first anticipated.

'Chiron really has been fired hasn't he?' Harry sighed.

We turned to look back at Thalia's tree, the tall pine at the top of the hill that we had sped past in the rush to save Clarisse and her patrol. Its needles were a sickly yellow and a huge pile of dead needles littered its base. Halfway up the trunk was a deep puncture mark oozing green sap. Our vision blurred for a moment, and we saw Thalia, her normally pale face flushed as if she was running a fever. We could see the puncture wound on her leg, red and festering and flinched at the sight, horrified beyond words at her sickly image.

'We'll save her.' I swore. I couldn't tell you who I was persuading more – Harry or myself – but I promised all the same. Thalia was special to Annabeth and Luna. We'd never met the girl, but Annabeth and Luna were friends with her and – as the age old saying goes – a friend of a friend is our friend also.

Annabeth and Luna gave us a strange look. "You look at Thalia's pine tree like you see an actual person, not just a tree."

Luna's voice was as dreamy as ever, but the interest in her voice was genuine, standing sharply out in her tone, like nothing else we'd ever heard from her.

"Well, it is her tree isn't it? Surely it can't be alive if she isn't. It stands to reason she's in there somewhere." We replied evasively, turning away from Thalia's tree to follow the others down towards the Big House. The usual activities were going on - the arena was full of the Hermes and Demeter Cabins, practicing swordsmanship. The Hephaestus cabin were in the forges, and Apollo's cabin were at the archery range. All so normal. And yet... not. The same aching tiredness in Clarisse's border patrol was evident everywhere we looked. It was almost as if they knew it was only so long until some terrible unstoppable monster passed the borders and their lives would be ruined. But until then, they had to carry on. The life was missing from their actions. It was... odd.

Looking more closely, however, the danger was clear. Satyrs and counsellors were stock-piling weapons, the Dryads were clutching bows and arrows as they looked warily around them. The basketball and volleyball courts weren't in use. There was no one in the lake swimming or kayaking. Everyone was training or otherwise preparing for the worst scenario: war.

When we reached the Big House we found Chiron in his room, we heard his awful 1960s lounge music echoing down the hallway as we approached. Knocking once, we pushed the door open to reveal our old teacher packing his saddlebags. Annabeth ran up and hugged him.

"You aren't really leaving are you? We'd heard you'd been... replaced but you don't have to go, do you?"

Chiron offered her a warm smile, tinged slightly with sadness. "Hello, child. And Harry and Percy! You've grown so much this past year!"

I swallowed. Hard. "Is it true you're... you were..."

"Fired?" Dark humour glinted in Chiron's eyes. "Someone had to take the blame, and Zeus was understandably upset from the memento he had made in his daughter's name being poisoned. It could hardly have been blamed on Mr D."

Annabeth looked horrified. "But you couldn't possibly have poisoned Thalia!"

"And your belief in me is astounding." Chiron smiled. "But you know full well why I'm falling under suspicion, especially after last summer's events."

I was, as ever, confused. What did the lightning bolt being stolen have to do with Thalia's tree being stolen? Harry, the all knowledgeable one, rolled our eyes at me. 'Our dreams of the evil thing... Poseidon and Zeus mentioned 'father' when we asked them of it. Their father... Kronos. Who is also Chiron's father, according to some myths. Zeus would argue he has sided with his father.'

'Oh.'

We didn't know what to say, so I just moved to hug Chiron as well. We'd grown close to our camp instructor last summer. He was much more like an old friend than camp instructor. I felt a lump in our throat at the idea of him leaving. Chiron was essential to everyday life at camp. We needed him here.

We stayed around until Chiron was fully packed, and escorted him to the border. Or, at least, we tried to. Mr D chose that exact moment to call everyone in for lunch. The new camp direct - the smug son-of-a-Cerberus – sat next to Mr D, smirking at all of us.

We sacrificed to Poseidon, praying – in the name of this poor guy's son Pelops (our dad's old lover, if rumours were to believed) – for help to survive this summer. Other than the usual wisp of sea breeze, we received no reply. Disappointed, I sat on our little table on our own. I pushed grapes round our plate, not really feeling like eating. Harry clearly felt the same, because he didn't badger me to eat for once.

As lunch was drawing to a close, Tantalus - who had been chasing a burger round his plate the entire time - addressed us all.

"Chariot racing has been a long standing tradition at Camp Half-Blood. It was abolished several years ago for what I consider to be rather trivial reasons. Therefore, as I'm sure you'll be delighted to know - I am reintroducing it. You have a week to form a team and construct your chariots. Next Saturday morning we will hold the race!"

Low-level chatter sprung up immediately as the various cabins began discussing designs and splitting up. We stared gloomily at our plate. You'd think, being sons of Poseidon and all, that Harry and I would have some idea about chariots. Horses - I can deal with them. But the actual chariot? There aren't any books in our library on constructing one of them!

Tantalus announced the prizes and forfeits for the winners and losers. I ignored him.

'A 'trivial reason'?' Harry scoffed. 'If that's what this guy calls health and safety I'd love to see him fill in all the paperwork this summer.'

A movement in the corner of our eye caught our attention. Luna and Annabeth were sitting across from us, smiling. Before they even opened their mouth we could guess what they were going to ask.

"Do you want to team up with us?"

I sniggered as Harry paused, pretending to think about it for a minute. "Do we want to team up with two of the brightest girls at camp to create a chariot... Hm. You know what? I don't think that could possibly be a good idea!"

Luna giggled. "A yes then?"

We nodded. "You draw up the plans, we'll help with the physical labour and recruit the horses?"

Our plan made, we set to work. The next week was full of border patrols, camp activities and building the chariot. On top of that, Annabeth, Luna and we were put on cabin inspection duties. There was... a certain knack to it.

It's no secret that the Ares' cabin implant mines in their floor. Where they implant them, however, is another matter entirely. After almost losing a foot the first couple of days, however, we soon got to know where they were pretty well.

Cabin 11, Hermes' Cabin was also interesting to assess for how tidy it was, as almost every single square inch of the floor was taken up by either beds or roll mats. The typical reaction was just to give it near enough full marks, as long as the walls were clean, and nothing was hanging from the ceiling.

The cabin for Aphrodite's children was like walking into a perfume shop. I can tell you now, they seriously don't air their cabin out enough. Normally it was so tidy it was next to impossible to pick up even a speck of dust, but it appeared that the stress had even reached the paradise of the Aphrodite campers. Their clothes were bundled in a corner, waiting to be washed, and blood stains were clear on a few of them. The normally ordered makeup table was a mess from quickly discarding products as the girls (and some of the boys) had quickly skip through their morning beauty routine.

Annabeth and Luna's cabin had designs and spare paper in neat stacks on almost any available surface. It wasn't untidy per say, just quite full. In contrast, our favourite tinkerer's cabin was full of discarded bolts and gadgets that had escaped and rolled under beds or desks. Leo tried to explain that they had actually tidied, but we were rather sceptical.

The Zeus, Hera and Artemis cabins were ignored. Demeter's, Dionysus' and Apollo's cabins were just your average teenager's bedroom really. And our cabin... well. It's wasn't bad. But we had enough space in our expanded truck to be able to just chuck everything in there.

It was one of these mornings, inspecting the Cabins, that we managed to approach Leo about joining our team for the Chariot race. Between duties, we hadn't had time to catch up with him properly so Leo, deciding to tag onto our inspections for that morning, interrogated every little detail of our design from Annabeth and Luna in order to start to spin together his own improvements.

It was hardly surprising to find our chariot practically complete, with various gadgets lying on the floor around it, waiting to be fitted, with a snoozing Leo lying next to the next morning. How he avoided the Harpies we'll never know, but even Harry and I with our inexperience with technology could admit that it looked really high tech.

Finally, the day of the race dawned. Leo, Annabeth and Luna and we were up at the crack of dawn, getting everything ready. One last test run of the chariot, ensuring the horses were ready - fed, watered and mentally prepared for what lay ahead - before finally heading to the pavilion for breakfast.

As it turned out, it was remarkably lucky that we were up so early, because the border patrol hadn't yet made it out of their cabins when there was another attack. All we could see at the beginning was a small(ish) figure running from a gang of gigantic men. With a closer inspection we made out the smaller figure to be Tyson – what was he doing here? – and the larger gang throwing cannon-balls at him.

"Laestrygonians!"

Annabeth's surprise didn't last longer than a moment or so. She quickly grabbed their knife from its sheath at the back of their belt and rushed to the top of the hill. They might not have liked Tyson, being a monster and all, but they could hardly argue he wasn't a nice monster.

After a moment of dumb shock, I followed our friends' lead, charging up the hill towards Thalia's tree.

'Is it me, or does it seem like every battle ends up near Thalia? I swear she's a bigger monster magnet then we are, and she's half-dead!' I huffed to Harry. Possibly slightly insensitive wording about Annabeth and Luna's best friend, but it was true. Maybe being the sky-god's daughter had something to do with it. Who knows?

'More to the point.' Harry scowled, clearly unimpressed by where my ADHD had lead my thoughts this time. 'Laestrywhat? What are these things? Please tell me they're just the "cut and poof - glitter dust" type of monsters.'

As Harry prayed, I got slicing. Luckily, the Laestrywhoigons were - as Harry so elegantly put it - "cut and poof - glitter dust" type of monsters. Admittedly dodging the fiery cannon balls made my job a little bit harder, but Tyson was doing an excellent job at returning the hot-balls-from-hell (as I decided to dub them), and Leo was helping immensely by turning up their heat so even the heat-hardened Laestrygonibies were forced to drop them. Within about ten minutes, we were standing on gold dusted pine needles.

Tyson beamed at us. "Percy! Harry! Mummy sent me to help!"

Annabeth and Luna, and Leo exchanged looks, as if wondering how on earth this over-large baby was supposed to help - or wondering what he was supposed to help us with. Either way, we just grinned back. Cyclops he may be, but bad guy he was not. Tyson was about as evil as a cuddly bear. The worst he had done was accidentally try to hug us to death (fortunately he understood our gasped out "We can't breathe" and let us go).

"Tyson!"

Hugging was painful, but the hurt look on Tyson's face the last (and only) time we had attempted to get out of a hug from him made us swear to never again. We invited him over what was left of the camp borders, and invited him to breakfast. The rest of the campers (who were awake at this point, and most of whom had watched the end of our little battle) watched with slight interest and hostility as we lead a Cyclops to the pavilion.

"Percy and Harry Potter." Mr D groaned when he saw us. "Why is it always you two? No - don't interrupt me, I don't want excuses! Sit down. You, monster. Come stand here."

We shot Tyson an apologetic look as we sat down at the Poseidon table, and watched as our friend reluctantly moved to stand by the disapproving looking Camp Director. Before anybody else could speak, however, and sea-green glow lit up the pavilion, standing out starkly in the watery dawn light.

A spinning sea-green trident hung in the air above Tyson's head. The boy battered at it, his eyes wide with innocent curiosity. I stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then a wide grin split across our face. We had another brother. A cute, baby-ish brother, but a brother all the same.

Mr D sighed. "Well, Potter. Looks like it's your problem after all."

We narrowed our eyes as he shoved Tyson towards us, laughing with Tantalus when he stumbled.

"He has a name. Tyson Jackson. Show more respect to our brother!"

Mr D stood up, his eyes glowing in a way that seemed to reek of madness. His long curly hair moved in an invisible wind. "Are you challenging me, boy?"

We shook our head, but didn't break eye contact. "No. Just politely reminding you who our father is."

Mr D and we glared at each other for a moment. Finally Mr D glanced away. We got the message anyway. He might not be dealing with us here and now, but we'd get our reckoning sooner or later.

Harry hit me mentally. 'Idiot! Do you want him to hate us?'

'I won't stand him bullying Tyson. Who cares what everyone assumes about Cyclopes? He's our brother. What is the point of family if we don't stand up for each other?'

Harry conceded, and led Tyson back to our table. Tyson sniffled slightly.

"Sorry. I don't want to cause any difficulty for you."

Harry glanced up at him, surprised. We hadn't though he had any need to apologise. He wasn't asking for such discrimination, was he? Harry smiled, and gently touched his shoulder. "Ignore them. If they're so blind that they can't see what a nice guy you really are, then their opinion is irrelevant anyway."

Tyson sniffed for one final time, and then smiled back. We chatted lightly about homework and our weeks before breakfast finished. The heavy weight of watching eyes laid on our shoulders, and we shivered. You'd think, after two years of being watched for being the brother of the Boy-Who-Lived, we would be used to it, but it turned out that it still wasn't enough time to acclimatize.

Annabeth and Luna, and Leo pulled us away to tether the pegasi for our chariot, with an excited Tyson tagging along.

"Pony!" He giggled, pointing at the first pegasus he saw. The majestic creature reared back, scared of him. Monster! Bad!

"No!" I shook our head, patting the pegasus, Blaze. "Tyson is our friend. He's not threat."

Blaze wasn't to be calmed however, not while Tyson was here. Noticing the problem, Leo quickly reminded Annabeth and Luna how to use the various weapons and gadgets he had equipped us with before leading Tyson away to newly built hippodrome (a.k.a. a ploughed track in a grassy field with wooden seating built around it) to get a good seat for the race.

Together with Annabeth (Luna just watched, uninterested by the violent sport), Harry and I ran through the last minute checks. It was as we led the way towards the hippodrome that we noticed a loud noise coming from the woods. A flock of what looked like pigeons were perched in the trees, kicking up a fuss. Only... we couldn't put our finger on it, but cooing didn't quite describe the sound coming from them.

Putting our fears aside for the time being, I took over completely as Harry retreated. The last thing we wanted was a split-second miscommunication leading to us crashing the chariot, so Harry and I decided to let me take this race.

When all the teams had assembled - approximately one per cabin, give or take - Tantalus stood up to address us.

"I assume you all know the rules - two horses per chariot, a driver and fighter per chariot. Weapons allowed. Twice round the quarter mile track to win... Dirty tricks are to be expected. Just try not to kill anyone, yes? Then I'd have to punish you most harshly. No s'mores at the campfire for a week!"

Automatically everyone in the hippodrome glared at the new camp director.

'No s'mores for a week. Is this guy real?' I gritted our teeth, our knuckles whitening around the reigns, which were already wrapped around our body. Harry sent a wave of calming presence over me.

'Cool it. You're going to need a cool head if we're going to survive this.'

I growled, but nodded. 'Got it.'

"Chariots to their mark! Ready? Go!" Tantalus shouted importantly, idle mindedly chasing a bunch of grapes around the platter in front of him.

The sound of pounding hooves thundered loudly in the early morning air. The Hephaestus Chariot - a marvellous iron and bronze vehicle driven by automaton metal horses - took the lead first, with the blood-red Ares chariot on its heels, its skeleton horses unbothered by the noise and destruction going on around it, as the fighters all began to attack each other.

A flash of green light sped through the air towards us from the Hephaestus cabin. I blinked and flinched, seeing a flash of sickly green spell light behind our eyelids. A bag of green flames landed next to us. I breathed a sigh of relieve. Just Greek Fire.

Annabeth, using my sword, Riptide, lifted and flung the bag behind us, moments before it exploded. Beckendorf bared his teeth at us in a tight smile.

"Sorry. But a race is a race."

"Fair's fair." I replied, grinning as Annabeth flung a pair of bronze chain and balls at his wheels so that the heavy weights and long chain wrapped around one of the chariot's wheels and axle locking it in place just as he turned a corner. The chariot was flung aside by its own momentum. Annabeth poked me to reassure she saw both Hephaestus campers safe.

A quick glance behind us saw Travis and Connor from Hermes cabin ram into the golden Apollo chariot, flipping it over. They laughed for the few moments before they got caught up in the crash, taking them down as well.

We were rounding the post for the first time when the flock of pigeons in the trees took to their air, making a horrible racket. They circles above the hippodrome, screeching something awful. Then, they dive bombed, attacking the spectators and charioteers alike, scratching and pecking at any flesh exposed. As a general rule, we charioteers were better off in our armour, but the spectators - most of whom didn't even have weapons - we're dealing well at all.

"Stymphalian birds!" Annabeth yelled at us over the noise. "If we don't stop them, they'll peck everyone to the bones."

"Nice." I grimaced. "But how to get rid of them?"

"Herakles used brass bells, creating the most horrible noise possible."

Harry had an epiphany at that, 'Chiron's collection!'

Annabeth appeared to have had the same idea. We spun our chariot around.

"To the Big House!"

Vaguely I remember hearing Clarisse (whose skeleton horses were completely unaffected by the birds) yelling at us to "stand and fight, cowards!" But we ignored her for now. If this didn't work, we were dead, without even a body for burial rites.

Luckily Chiron's boom box was still on his bedside table, where he'd left it. Grabbing one of the most repulsive CDs I could immediately find while Annabeth grabbed the boom box, we sprinted back to the chariot and got the horses galloping back to the track, where we could see the flames from the chariots a way away.

We pulled up to the finish line, and Annabeth readied the boom box. Perhaps a bit belatedly we prayed that the batteries weren't dead, but it turned out our fears were for nothing as the sound of Chiron's favourite - the All-Time Greatest Hits of Dean Martin - started up and the sounds of violins and moaning Italian filled the air.

The birds went nuts, flying around in circles and constantly bashing into each other in their hurry to escape. As they rose, Apollo's archers took aim, quickly knocking out the birds with their amazing talent of shooting five or six arrows at once. Minutes later the ground was littered with bronze-beaked pigeons.

The mess was bad. Everyone sported wounds of some kind. Most of the chariots were damaged beyond repair.

"Bravo!" Tantalus beamed.

We watched in amazement however, as the new Camp Director progressed to declare Clarisse the winner before turning on us with an ugly smile.

"And now to deal with the troublemakers who dared to disrupt this race..."