Abdera's long since gone, sixty miles of water away. Just as well, so far as Wells is concerned. That place gave him the creeps even after the thing with the horses was over. It's been a long damn boat ride, one that he doesn't much want to experience again ( Read more... )

It's not that he's afraid of them, exactly. Wells knows that even this far from the full moon, being shot by ordinary arrows isn't going to take him down for long. But when you've just threatened an entire village by proxy and run some unknown distance through the forests that cover the foothills of the mountains that ring Thessaly all around, ( Read more... )

For the past few weeks there’ve been tracks in the leafmould hereabouts that speak of some of the biggest deer Wells has ever seen. He’s hung up the ‘gone hunting’ sign on the smithy early today as a result, and gone looking for the beast. Bruce came along with him, of course. Bruce always comes along. The quarry in the Thessalian hills is better ( Read more... )

Five months in, counting from the day he met Athena on the road to Delphi, and Wells is starting to look for animals he can bring down bare-handed without killing them ( Read more... )

Unless Wells very much misses his guess, he and Bruce aren’t much more than a few hours away from Delphi. Even taking into account how twisty the damn road is, they’re still good. Not much farther now, he murmurs to the wolf. Bruce just snorts. He’s been complaining about the smell of humans and the passage of other travelers on the road for days ( Read more... )

Bruce the wolf is waiting for Wells when he finally puts Lykaion's house behind him. Wells eyes the wolf suspiciously, but says nothing. He has some trouble believing any god could bring himself to appear as such a lousy hunter. They've got egoes to think of, even in beast shape- anyway, it doesn't matter. If Bruce is some god in disguise it's no ( Read more... )

The king's court is not the sort of place Wells would have imagined. One expects a certain level of civility in a king, or at least of terrible majesty if one is dealing with a certain sort of man, but this place is different. This is... this is rough-cut stone, and barely-hewed roof timbers, and great lazy-stepping boarhounds lazing about wherever ( Read more... )

Bruce, it turns out, is not an especially good hunter as wolves go. The natural wariness that keeps wild things alive is overdeveloped in him. He'll jump a mile at the least hint of something that might be a danger, and that sort of thing disrupts even the best of hunts. After his third attempt at running something down goes wrong Wells rolls his ( Read more... )

( "Far be it from me to give orders to a man of your standing," Phoroneus had said, his eyes never meeting Wells', "but-" )This is the second day on the road, if you can call the narrow track through the forested wilderness a road. Supposedly it gets better as it approaches the King's palace, but this is Arcadia. There's no cities here. There's ( Read more... )

The moon was a little past full when Wells got here- two days, maybe three. Hard to tell for sure, freshly arrived. It took some getting used to, like jet lag. But now it’s coming on close to the moon being full again, and he can feel it without needing to count on the calendar any more. There’s less than three days left. That’s gonna make things ( Read more... )