The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,56
dinner menu.
I felt strangely calm. I was convinced we’d made our best case. I had appealed to their altruism. Rachel had appealed to their fear of a giant reptile eating the future. Who could say which argument was stronger?
Screech-Bling studied me and my New York Mets hat. “What would you have me do, Lester-Apollo?”
He used Lester the same way he used screeches or clicks before other names, almost like a title—as if showing me respect.
“Could you dig under the emperor’s tower undetected?” I asked. “Allowing my friends to disable the vats of Greek fire?”
He nodded curtly. “It could be done.”
“Then I would ask you to take Will and Nico—”
Rachel coughed.
“And Rachel,” I added, hoping I was not sentencing my favorite priestess to die in a pith helmet. “Meanwhile, Meg and I must go to the emperor’s front door so we can surrender.”
The trogs shifted uneasily. Either they did not like what I said, or the skink soup had started to reach their intestines.
Grr-Fred glared at me from under his police hat. “I still do not trust you. Why would you surrender to Nero?”
“I see you, O Grr-Fred,” Nico said, “Mighty of Hats, Corporate Security Chief! You are right to be wary, but Apollo’s surrender is a distraction, a trick. He will keep the emperor’s eyes away from us while we tunnel. If we can fool the emperor into letting down his guard…”
His voice trailed off. He looked at the ceiling as if he’d heard something far above.
A heartbeat later, the trogs stirred. They shot to their feet, overturning soup bowls and breadbaskets. Many grabbed obsidian knives and spears.
Screech-Bling snarled at Nico. “Tauri silvestres approach! What have you done, son of Hades?”
Nico looked dumbfounded. “Nothing! W-we fought a herd on the surface. But we shadow-traveled away. There’s no chance they could’ve—”
“Foolish crust-dwellers!” howled Grr-Fred. “Tauri silvestres can track their prey anywhere! You have brought our enemies to our headquarters. Creak-Morris, take charge of the tunnel-lings! Get them to safety!”
Creak-Morris began gathering up the children. Other adults started pulling down tents, collecting their best rocks, hats, and other supplies.
“It is well for you we are the fastest runners in existence,” snarled Click-Wrong, his chef’s hat quivering with rage. “You have endangered us all!” He hefted his empty soup cauldron, jumped onto the roadway, and vanished in a skink-scented whoosh.
“What of the crust-dwellers?” Grr-Fred asked his CEO. “Do we kill them or leave them for the bulls?”
Screech-Bling glowered at me. “Grr-Fred, take Lester-Apollo and Meg-Girl to the Tower of Nero. If they wish to surrender, we will not stop them. As for these other three, I will—”
The platform shook, the ceiling cracked, and cows rained down on the encampment.
THE NEXT FIVE MINUTES WEREN’T JUST chaotic. They were what Chaos is like when Chaos wants to let her hair down and go nuts. And believe me, you never want to see a primordial goddess go nuts.
Tauri silvestres dropped from cracks in the ceiling—crashing into tents, flattening troglodytes, scattering hats and soup bowls and pots of mushrooms. Almost immediately, I lost track of Will, Rachel, and Nico in the pandemonium. I could only hope Screech-Bling and his lieutenants had whisked them to safety.
A bull landed in a heap right in front of me, separating me from Meg and Grr-Fred. As the beast scrambled to gain its footing (hoofing?), I parkoured over it, desperate not to lose my young master.
I spotted her—now ten feet away, Grr-Fred rapidly dragging her toward the river for reasons unknown. The close quarters and obstacles on the platform seemed to hamper the trogs’ natural running skills, but Grr-Fred was still moving at a fast clip. If Meg hadn’t kept tripping as they wove through the destruction, I would’ve stood no chance of catching up.
I leaped over a second bull. (Hey, if the cow could jump over the moon, I didn’t see why the sun couldn’t jump over two cows.) Another barreled blindly past me, lowing in panic as it tried to shake a bull-hide tent off its horns. To be fair, I would’ve panicked too if I’d had the skin of one of my own kind wrapped around my head.
I’d almost reached Meg when I spotted a crisis unfolding across the platform. The little trog with the propeller beanie, my server during dinner, had gotten separated from the other children. Oblivious to danger, he was now stumbling after his ball of crystal as it rolled across the platform, straight into the path of a charging bull.