Noman reached under his tunic and took a heavy pistol from where he had hidden it under his broad belt in the back.

The witch stopped pacing and stared. “You can’t possibly think that thing can hurt me.”

“I didn’t bring it to hurt you,” said Noman.

She flicked her violet gaze to the frozen younger Odysseus. “Are you mad? Do you know what mischief that would do on the quantum level of things? You’re courting kaos by even contemplating such a thing. It would destroy a cycle that has been going on in a thousand strands for a thousand…”

“Going on for too long,” said Noman. He fired six times, each explosion seemingly louder than the last. The six heavy bullets tore into the naked Odysseus, tearing his rib cage apart, pulping his heart, striking him in the middle of the forehead.

The younger man’s body jerked to the impacts and slid to the floor, leaving red streaks on the silk cushions and a growing pool of blood on the marble tiles.

“Decide,” said Noman.

83

I don’t know if I teleported here via my own, medallion-less ability, or just came along with Hephaestus because I was touching his sleeve when he QT’d. It doesn’t matter. I’m here.

Here is Odysseus’ home. A dog barks madly at us as Hephaestus, Achilles, and I pop into existence, but one glance from bloody-helmeted Achilles sends the mutt whining back out to the courtyard with its tail between its legs.

We’re in an anteroom looking into the great dining hall of Odysseus’ home on the isle of Ithaca. Some sort of forcefield hums over the house and courtyard. There are no impudent suitors lounging in the long room at the long table, no Penelope dithering, no impotent young Telemachus plotting, no servants hustling to and fro dispensing the absent Odysseus’ food and wine to indolent ne’er-do-wells. But the room looks as if the Slaughter of the Suitors has already taken place—chairs are overturned, a huge tapestry has been ripped off the wall and now lies thrown over table and floor, soaking up spilled wine, and even Odysseus’ greatest bow—the one that only he alone could pull, according to legend, a bow so wonderful and rare that he decided not to take it to Troy with him—now lies on the stone floor, amidst a clutter of Odysseus’ famous barbed and poisoned hunting arrows.

Zeus whirls. The giant wears the same soft garments he had been wearing on the Throne of Olympos, but he is not so gigantic now. Yet even shrunken to fit this space, he is still twice as tall as Achilles.

Beckoning us to stand back, the fleet-footed mankiller raises his shield, readies his sword, and steps into the dining hall.

“My son,” booms the God of Thunder, “spare me your childlike anger. Would you commit deicide, tyrannicide, and patricide in one terrible stroke?”

Achilles advances until he is across the span of the broad table from Zeus. “Fight, old man.”

Zeus continues smiling, apparently not the least bit alarmed. “Think, fleet-footed Achilles. Use your brain for once rather than your muscles or your dick. Would you have that useless cripple sit on the golden throne of Olympos?” He nods toward where Hephaestus stands silent in the doorway next to me.

Achilles does not turn his head.

“Just think for once,” repeats Zeus, his deep voice causing crockery to vibrate in the nearby kitchen. “Join with me, Achilles, my son. Become one with the penetrating presence that is Zeus, Father of All Gods. Thus joined, father and son, immortal and immortal, two mighty spirits, mingling, shall make a third, mightier than either alone—triune together, Father and Son and holy will, we shall reign over heaven and Troy and send the Titans back down to their pit forever.”

“Fight,” said Achilles. “You old pigfucker.”

Zeus’s broad face turns several shades of red. “Detested prodigy! Even thus, deprived of my control of all elements, I trample thee!”

Zeus grabs the long table by its edge and flips it into the air. Fifty feet of heavy wood planks and posts flies tumbling through the air toward Achilles’ head. The human ducks low and the table smashes into the wall behind him, destroying a fresco and sending splinters flying everywhere.

Achilles takes two steps closer.

Zeus opens his arms, opens his hands to show his palms. “Would you kill me as I am, oh man? Unarmed? Or shall we grapple barehanded like heroes in the arena until one fails to rise and the other takes the prize?”

Achilles hesitates only a second. Then he pulls off his golden helmet and sets it aside. He removes the circular shield from his forearm, lays the sword in its cusp, adds his bronze chest armor and greaves, and kicks all that to our doorway. Now he is clad only in his shirt, short skirt, sandals, and broad leather belt.

Eight feet from Zeus, Achilles opens his arms in a wrestler’s opening stance and crouches.

Zeus smiles then and—in a motion almost too fast for me to perceive—crouches and comes up with Odysseus’ bow and a poisoned black-feathered arrow.

Get away! I have time mentally to shout at Achilles but the blond and muscled hero does not budge.

Zeus goes to full pull, easily bending the bow that no one on Earth except Odysseus was supposed to be able to bend, aims the broad-bladed poison arrow right at Achilles’ heart eight feet away, and lets fly.

The arrow misses.

It cannot miss—not at that distance—the shaft appears straight and true, the black feathers full—but it misses by a full foot or more and buries itself deep in the smashed table angled against the wall. I can almost feel the terrible venom, rumored to be originally gathered from the most deadly of serpents by Hercules, as it drains into the wood of the table.

Zeus stares. Achilles does not move.

Zeus crouches with lightning speed, comes up with another arrow, steps closer, notches, pulls, releases.

It misses. From five feet away, the poisoned arrow misses.

Achilles does not stir. He stares hate into the now-panicked gaze of the Father of All Gods.

Zeus crouches again, sets the arrow to the cord with careful precision, goes to full pull again, his mighty muscles now sheened in sweat, visibly straining, the powerful bow almost humming with its coiled power. The King of the Gods steps forward until the point of the arrow is not much more than a foot away from Achilles’ broad chest.

Zeus fires.

The arrow misses.

This is not possible, but I see the arrow embed itself in the wall behind Achilles. It has not passed through Achilles, nor curved around, but somehow—impossibly—absolutely—it has missed.

Achilles leaps then, slapping the bow aside and seizing the twice-tall god by the throat.

Zeus staggers around the room trying to remove Achilles’ powerful hands from around his neck, pounding Achilles with a god-fist half as wide as Achilles’ broad back. The fleet-footed mankiller hangs on as Zeus thrashes, smashing timbers, the table, the doorway arch, the wall itself. It looks like a man with a child hanging from him, but Achilles hangs on.

Then the much larger god gets his own powerful fingers under Achilles’ much smaller fingers and peels back first the mortal’s left hand, then his right. Now Zeus crashes against, bangs onto, and smashes into things with a deadly purpose, holding Achilles’ forearms in his own massive hands, the mortal man dangling as Zeus head-butts Achilles—the sound echoing like two great boulders colliding—then rams his god-chest against mortal ribs, finally crashing both of them against the unyielding wall and into the doorway opposite us, arching Achilles’ back against the unyielding stone of the doorframe.

Five seconds of this and he will snap Achilles’ back like a bow made out of cheap balsa.

Achilles does not wait five seconds. Or three.

Somehow the fleet-footed mankiller has got his right hand free for an instant as Zeus bends him backward, backward, spine grinding against vertical stone.