Chapter 15

15. WE CAPTURE A FLAG

The next few days I settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don’t

count the fact that I was getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs, and a centaur.

Each morning I took Ancient Greek from Annabeth, and we talked about the

gods and goddesses in the present tense, which was kind of weird. I discovered

Annabeth was right about my dyslexia: Ancient Greek wasn’t that hard for me to

read. At least, no harder than English.

After a couple of mornings, I could stumble through a few lines of Homer

without too much headache.

The rest of the day, I’d rotate through outdoor activities, looking for something

I was good at.

Chiron tried to teach me archery, but we found out pretty quick I wasn’t any

good with a bow and arrow. He didn’t complain, even when he had to desnag a stray

arrow out of his tail.

Foot racing? No good either. The wood-nymph instructors left me in the dust.

They told me not to worry about it. They’d had centuries of practice running away

from lovesick gods. But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree.

And wrestling? Forget it. Every time I got on the mat, Clarisse would

pulverize me.

“There’s more where that came from, punk,” she’d mumble in my ear.

The only thing I really excelled at was canoeing, and that wasn’t the kind of

heroic skill people expected to see from the kid who had beaten the Minotaur.

I knew the senior campers and counselors were watching me, trying to decide

who my dad was, but they weren’t having an easy time of it. I wasn’t as strong as the

Ares kids, or as good at archery as the Apollo kids. I didn’t have Hephaestus’s skill

with metalwork or—gods forbid—

Dionysus’s way with vine plants. Luke told me I might be a child of Hermes, a

kind of jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But I got the feeling he was just trying to

make me feel better. He really didn’t know what to make of me either.

Despite all that, I liked camp. I got used to the morning fog over the beach, the

smell of hot strawberry fields in the afternoon, even the weird noises of monsters in

the woods at night. I would eat dinner with cabin eleven, scrape part of my meal into

the fire, and try to feel some connection to my real dad. Nothing came. Just that

warm feeling I’d always had, like the memory of his smile. I tried not to think too

much about my mom, but I kept wondering: if gods and monsters were real, if all this

magical stuff was possible, surely there was some way to save her, to bring her

back....

I started to understand Luke’s bitterness and how he seemed to resent his

father, Hermes. So okay, maybe gods had important things to do. But couldn’t they

call once in a while, or thunder, or something? Dionysus could make Diet Coke

appear out of thin air. Why couldn’t my dad, who-ever he was, make a phone

appear?

Thursday afternoon, three days after I’d arrived at Camp Half-Blood, I had my

first sword-fighting lesson. Everybody from cabin eleven gathered in the big circular

arena, where Luke would be our instructor.

We started with basic stabbing and slashing, using some straw-stuffed

dummies in Greek armor. I guess I did okay. At least, I understood what I was

supposed to do and my reflexes were good.

The problem was, I couldn’t find a blade that felt right in my hands. Either

they were too heavy, or too light, or too long. Luke tried his best to fix me up, but he

agreed that none of the practice blades seemed to work for me.

We moved on to dueling in pairs. Luke announced he would be my partner,

since this was my first time.

“Good luck,” one of the campers told me. “Luke’s the best swordsman in the

last three hundred years.”

“Maybe he’ll go easy on me,” I said.

The camper snorted.

Luke showed me thrusts and parries and shield blocks the hard way. With

every swipe, I got a little more battered and bruised. “Keep your guard up, Percy,”

he’d say, then whap me in the ribs with the flat of his blade. “No, not that far up!”

Whap! “Lunge!” Whap! “Now, back!” Whap!

By the time he called a break, I was soaked in sweat. Everybody swarmed the

drinks cooler.

Luke poured ice water on his head, which looked like such a good idea, I did

the same.

Instantly, I felt better. Strength surged back into my arms. The sword didn’t

feel so awkward.

“Okay, everybody circle up!” Luke ordered. “If Percy doesn’t mind, I want to

give you a little demo.”

Great, I thought. Let’s all watch Percy get pounded.

The Hermes guys gathered around. They were suppressing smiles. I figured

they’d been in my shoes before and couldn’t wait to see how Luke used me for a

punching bag. He told everybody he was going to demonstrate a disarming

technique: how to twist the enemy’s blade with the flat of your own sword so that he

had no choice but to drop his weapon.

“This is difficult,” he stressed. “I’ve had it used against me. No laughing at

Percy, now. Most swordsmen have to work years to master this technique.”

He demonstrated the move on me in slow motion. Sure enough, the sword

clattered out of my hand.

“Now in real time,” he said, after I’d retrieved my weapon. “We keep sparring

until one of us pulls it off. Ready, Percy?”

I nodded, and Luke came after me. Somehow, I kept him from getting a shot at

the hilt of my sword. My senses opened up. I saw his attacks coming. I countered. I

stepped forward and tried a ****** of my own. Luke deflected it easily, but I saw a

change in his face. His eyes narrowed, and he started to press me with more force.

The sword grew heavy in my hand. The balance wasn’t right. I knew it was

only a matter of seconds before Luke took me down, so I figured, What the heck?

I tried the disarming maneuver.

My blade hit the base of Luke’s and I twisted, putting my whole weight into a

downward ******.

Clang.

Luke’s sword rattled against the stones. The tip of my blade was an inch from

his undefended chest.

The other campers were silent.

I lowered my sword. “Um, sorry.”

For a moment, Luke was too stunned to speak.

“Sorry?” His scarred face broke into a grin. “By the gods, Percy, why are you

sorry? Show me that again!”

I didn’t want to. The short burst of manic energy had completely abandoned

me. But Luke insisted.

This time, there was no contest. The moment our swords connected, Luke hit

my hilt and sent my weapon skidding across the floor.

After a long pause, somebody in the audience said, “Beginner’s luck?”

Luke wiped the sweat off his brow. He appraised at me with an entirely new

interest.

“Maybe,” he said. “But I wonder what Percy could do with a balanced sword...

.”

Friday afternoon, I was sitting with Grover at the lake, resting from a near-

death experience on the climbing wall. Grover had scampered to the top like a

mountain goat, but the lava had almost gotten me. My shirt had smoking holes in it.

The hairs had been singed off my forearms.

We sat on the pier, watching the naiads do underwater basket-weaving, until I

got up the nerve to ask Grover how his conversation had gone with Mr. D.

His face turned a sickly shade of yellow.

“Fine,” he said. “Just great.”

“So your career’s still on track?”

He glanced at me nervously. “Chiron t-told you I want a searcher’s license?”

“Well... no.” I had no idea what a searcher’s license was, but it didn’t seem

like the right time to ask. “He just said you had big plans, you know ... and that you

needed credit for completing a keeper’s assignment. So did you get it?”

Grover looked down at the naiads. “Mr. D suspended judgment. He said I

hadn’t failed or succeeded with you yet, so our fates were still tied together. If you

got a quest and I went along to protect you, and we both came back alive, then

maybe he’d consider the job complete.”

My spirits lifted. “Well, that’s not so bad, right?”

“Blaa-ha-ha! He might as well have transferred me to stable-cleaning duty.

The chances of you getting a quest... and even if you did, why would you want me

along?”

“Of course I’d want you along!”

Grover stared glumly into the water. “Basket-weaving ... Must be nice to have

a useful skill.”

I tried to reassure him that he had lots of talents, but that just made him look

more miserable.

We talked about canoeing and swordplay for a while, then debated the pros

and cons of the different gods. Finally, I asked him about the four empty cabins.

“Number eight, the silver one, belongs to Artemis,” he said. “She vowed to be

a maiden forever. So of course, no kids. The cabin is, you know, honorary. If she

didn’t have one, she’d be mad.”

“Yeah, okay. But the other three, the ones at the end. Are those the Big

Three?”

Grover tensed. We were getting close to a touchy subject. “No. One of them,

number two, is Hera’s,” he said. “That’s another honorary thing. She’s the goddess

of marriage, so of course she wouldn’t go around having affairs with mortals. That’s

her husband’s job. When we say the Big Three, we mean the three powerful brothers,

the sons of Kronos.”

“Zeus, Poseidon, Hades.”

“Right. You know. After the great battle with the Titans, they took over the

world from their dad and drew lots to decide who got what.”

“Zeus got the sky,” I remembered. “Poseidon the sea, Hades the Underworld.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But Hades doesn’t have a cabin here.”

“No. He doesn’t have a throne on Olympus, either. He sort of does his own

thing down in the Underworld. If he did have a cabin here ...” Grover shuddered.

“Well, it wouldn’t be pleasant.

Let’s leave it at that.”

“But Zeus and Poseidon—they both had, like, a bazillion kids in the myths.

Why are their cabins empty?”

Grover shifted his hooves uncomfortably. “About sixty years ago, after World

War II, the Big Three agreed they wouldn’t sire any more heroes. Their children

were just too powerful. They were affecting the course of human events too much,

causing too much carnage. World War II, you know, that was basically a fight

between the sons of Zeus and Poseidon on one side, and the sons of Hades on the

other. The winning side, Zeus and Poseidon, made Hades swear an oath with them:

no more affairs with mortal women. They all swore on the River Styx.”

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