Twice Loved by the War God

8 - Gods and Kings

We had to extinguish the fires, first. While the villagers had been spellbound under the mysterious Eris's influence, the blaze had spread through nearly half the huts and crude wooden buildings with nothing to slow its progress, and many of them were burnt to cinders already with only smoldering embers and smoking soot left behind. I could hear women weeping and fathers calling for lost sons and daughters, and more than once, I saw small children sitting by the ruins of their homes with their arms around their knees, shivering despite the choking heat that yet pervaded the entire village.

There were those injured in the fighting, too, but somehow, despite numerous serious injuries, no one had died, not even from the flames. I wondered if perhaps in hypnotizing all the villagers into a violent frenzy in the town center, the sinister Eris had inadvertently saved these people from death by fire, at least: no doubt if they had been mentally present, some would have rushed back into crumbling houses, like the man Ares saved when we first arrived. It turned out that the man's legs were crippled, and without help, he had had to crawl out of bed and try to drag himself out of his burning house without the aid of his wife and grown son, who had disappeared.

He hadn't been trying to save himself, though, he explained in a voice so hoarse that I could barely understand him. He hadn't even noticed the fire. Like his wife and son, he had simply been trying to join in the bloody fray, to answer the call to violence and inexplicable, chaotic wrath.

That was all he managed to say before falling into fitful sleep, still asking to see his family.

I pulled away from his bedside and pushed my hair back from my forehead with a sigh. Several strands pulled away between my sooty fingers, and it was then that I realized something: my hair that had turned white following the encounter with Charybdis was black once more. It must have happened while I was asleep for so long, but now wasn't the time to dwell on it. I had to help tend to the wounded while trying to find out what had happened, exactly.

"Who are you?" a voice behind me asked, and I turned around to see a plump woman wiping her hands off her blackened apron.

"My name is Astra. Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Not much more than you have already. You have our gratitude, but if you don't mind me asking, what's the reason you're traveling with...?" She looked over her shoulder at the doorway, and I knew even without hearing the rest of her question what she was asking. Ares was nowhere in sight, but he didn't have to be inside this small hut-turned-temporary-infirmary for his presence to pervade every inch of it.

Indeed, he seemed to take up the entire small village. After the initial panic of the people who had all realized at once who he was, hours later, they were now too terrified to make any direct mention of him even as he lifted fallen rafters in each hand to help search for missing loved ones or valued possessions.

Except for this woman. She was the first to ask me about him at all.

"He's...He..." I hesitated. I didn't know what to call him. A friend? A lover? I would have blushed at the latter thought, but I knew it to be true still even though I had been insensate in sleep for months. The way he looked at me, the way he touched me - I knew things were still as they were before.

"Yes?" the woman pressed. "Are you his consort, or just a companion?"

"Consort?"

"Well, now that everyone knows Zeus is missing, I'm sure it follows that we would call his son the king now...But even so, I never thought something like this would happen. To think that a killing god would be raising up, instead."

It took me a moment to understand what she was saying, and then comprehension struck me like a bolt of lightning out of the blue. "You think Ares is the new king," I said, stunned. "That he's replaced his father."

"Well, who else? We all saw the storm atop the mountain peak when they fought last autumn. No one saw it coming, but it makes sense in hindsight...though from the look on your face, you seem to think differently."

Think differently? They had it wrong. But the fact that she and apparently everyone else believed the wrong thing didn't bother me so much as the implication that no one knew the truth. A god-king had fallen and I had taken his place, a monumental, cataclysmic thing that had shaken the entire mountain, but all of that remained a mystery to the people. And this was a village near the very foot of the Mount, too. Was it really possible that they knew nothing?

"My name is Astra," I repeated. "I'll be taking care of you from now on the best I can."

"That's very nice, sweetheart. But...as someone with two daughters around your age, you should, hm, settle down and swim in safer waters." She glanced back at the doorway again as if Ares might hear her words and sneak up on her. "Gods' business is nothing to play around with. I understand the glamor, but I wonder if you truly understand who you have attached yourself to..."

She hadn't understood what I was saying, but then again, my words had been too vague and cryptic. I licked my lips and tried again, feeling a growing urge to convey the truth and make her see. "Gods' business is my responsibility," I said softly. "And Ares is one of my constant companions. There's no one else I'd rather have at my side."

"That's very romantic, but as I said, gods are -"

"I'm a god."

Silence fell, broken only by the quiet snoring of one of the treated men sleeping on a cot. The woman stared at me with a thoroughly confused expression while I held still, as if she might understand more quickly if I stayed exactly in place.

"A god," she repeated, the words slow and careful. "Then, my apologies, and I beg you not to take offense at anything I said."

She was being cautious, knowing that it was better to be safe than sorry, but I could hear the skepticism in her words nonetheless. "Of course not. Tell me your name."

"Dorcia," she said automatically, and I watched as she started a little at how quickly she had answered. She blinked at me several more times while I stared back. I hadn't expected that. Or had I? I didn't know. It had been as much instinct to ask her name as it had been an attempt at politeness.

"Dorcia," I said. "I'm of the new gods. Things have changed. They've changed a lot. Ares helped free the world from Zeus, but he didn't usurp him to take the throne."

She was now even more confused than before, and I held back a tired sigh. I wasn't very good at explaining these things, I supposed, but I had to blame it at least partly on how unbelievable it was that the mortals had no clue. The world had turned on its head, and they had no idea - they knew nothing about the harrowing journey I had taken from the township to the Mount before Zeus's presence, then to Circe's island in the middle of the ocean, then to the labyrinth realm inside Charybdis, then Hephaestus's volcano domain after that.

That was our world, I thought. Mankind had their own, and they could see only inward. How could I possibly convey everything that I had experienced in the few short weeks before the Ascension? And I had only just woken up several hours ago; I knew nothing of what had happened afterward except the precious little information I had learned from Aphrodite since then.

So I shouldn't be surprised, I thought with a wry smile. Just as the mortals, the humans, had had to try to piece together the truth of what had happened from scant clues, I was just as clueless about the condition of the world because of my extended absence. Well, I would fix that, starting now.

"What damage Zeus did, I hope to reverse," I said. "And where he failed, I hope I succeed. I'm Astra of the new gods, the First. I'm very late, but I'll work hard and try to make up for it."

She shook her head, but in confusion rather than denial. "I don't understand."

My mouth turned up in a smile. "I know. But maybe soon, if I work hard enough, you'll understand. I hope so."

Dorcia seemed about to say something else, perhaps a question, when suddenly we heard the sharp slap-slap of running footsteps just outside. We turned to face the doorway just in time to see a young man burst in and collapse against the frame with a loud wheeze. His mouth opened and closed several times as he tried to speak, until at last he cleared his throat with a hacking cough then tried again.

"Dimitris," he panted. "It was Dimitris!"

I had no idea who that was or what he was talking about, but the woman beside me seemed to understand in an instant. "Where is he?" she demanded.

"Just outside the village. He was trying to run away with it -"

"Who caught him!"

The man shivered, and I saw a dark look of terror flash in his eyes. "Ares," he whispered. "The war god has him."

I stepped forward, and his eyes darted from Dorcia to me. "What is it that he has?" I asked, keeping my voice calm and steady. He looked as if he were about to explode, and even that small motion made him jerk in alarm. But his answer was immediate, the words flying out of his mouth before he had even righted himself with another hand on the door frame.

"The sky stone," he said. "Cursed." There was a surprised look on his face, and he dropped his chin to look down at himself as if confused by his own readiness to answer. But I didn't have time to entertain his confusion.

"Where is he now, and Ares?" I asked. "Which direction?"

He pointed with an uncertain, trembling finger.

"Take me there."