Despite the brilliance of what Percy just did, he was still a complete idiot for his next idea. "One on one," he challenged Luke. "What are you afraid of?"
Luke curled his lip. The soldiers who were about to kill them hesitated, waiting for his order.
Before he could say anything, Agrius, the bear-man, burst onto the deck leading a flying horse. It was a pure-black pegasus, with wings like a giant raven. The pegasus mare bucked and whinnied.
"Sir!" Agrius called, dodging a pegasus hoof. "Your steed is ready!"
Luke kept his eyes on Percy. "I told you last summer, Percy," he said. "You can't bait me into a fight."
"And you keep avoiding one," he retorted. "Scared your warriors will see you get whipped?"
As idiotic as it was, Luke was trapped. If he backed down then he'd look weak, and if he fought Percy, he'd waste time chasing after Clarisse and buy her time to get to camp.
"I'll kill you quickly," he decided and raised his weapon. Luke whistled to one of his men, who threw him a round leather-and-bronze shield. He grinned wickedly.
"Luke," Annabeth said, "at least give him a shield."
"Sorry, Annabeth," he said. "You bring your own equipment to this party."
Everyone knew that Percy was at a disadvantage. The shield was a problem. Fighting two-handed with just a sword gives you more power, but fighting one-handed with a shield gives you better defence and versatility.
Luke lunged and almost killed Percy on the first try. His sword went under his arm, slashing through his shirt and grazing his ribs. Percy jumped back, then counter-attacked with Riptide, but Luke slammed his blade away with his shield. "My, Percy," Luke chided. "You're out of practice."
"We have to do something," Cressida murmured. "We have to help him."
"But how?" Annabeth returned, her neck still being held by the bear twin who was too engrossed in the battle to listen to them.
"Goddess of wisdom's daughter, any bright ideas?" she asked, but Annabeth was still silent.
Percy attacked and sliced off the edge of Luke's shield, but that didn't even phase him. He dropped to a crouch and jabbed at Percy's legs and he collapsed. He looked pretty badly hurt.
Luke hacked downwards and Percy rolled behind a deckchair. He tried to stand, but his leg wouldn't take the weight.
"Perrrrrcy!" Grover bleated.
Percy rolled as Luke's sword slashed the deckchair in half, metal pipes and all. Percy crawled towards the swimming pool and he looked on the verge of blacking out. He wasn't going to make it. Luke knew it, too. He advanced slowly, smiling. The edge of his sword was tinged with red. "One thing I want you to watch before you die, Percy." He looked at the bear-man Oreius, who was still holding Annabeth and Grover by the necks. "You can eat your dinner now, Oreius. Bon appétit."
"He-he! He-he!" The bear-man lifted my friends and bared his teeth.
That's when all Hades broke loose.
A red-feathered arrow sprouted from Oreius's mouth. With a surprised look on his hairy face, he crumpled to the deck.
"Brother!" Agrius wailed. He let the pegasus's reins go slack just long enough for the black steed to kick him in the head and fly away free over Miami Bay.
For a split second, Luke's guards were too stunned to do anything except watch the bear twins' bodies dissolve into smoke. Then there was a wild chorus of war cries and hooves thundering against metal. A dozen centaurs charged out of the main stairwell.
"Ponies!" Tyson cried with delight.
Chiron was among the crowd, but his relatives were almost nothing like him. There were centaurs with black Arabian stallion bodies, others with gold palomino coats, and others with orange-and-white spots like paint horses. Some wore brightly coloured T-shirts with Day-Glo letters that said PARTY PONIES: SOUTH FLORIDA CHAPTER. Some were armed with bows, some with baseball bats, some with paintball guns. One had his face painted like a Comanche warrior and was waving a large orange Styrofoam hand making a big Number I. Another was bare-chested and painted entirely green. A third had googly-eye glasses with the eyeballs bouncing around on Slinky coils, and one of those baseball caps with soda-can-and-straw attachments on either side. They exploded onto the deck with such ferocity and colour that for a moment even Luke was stunned.
As Luke was raising his sword to rally his troops, a centaur shot a custom-made arrow with a leather boxing glove on the end. It smacked Luke in the face and sent him crashing into the swimming pool. His warriors scattered.
"Come get some!" yelled one of the party ponies. They let loose with their paintball guns. A wave of blue and yellow exploded against Luke's warriors, blinding them and splattering them from head to toe. They tried to run, only to slip and fall. Chiron galloped towards Annabeth and Grover, neatly plucked them off the deck and deposited them on his back, but Cressida had already joined the fray.
Her thyrsus was easy to spot as it glinted in the sun and she went ploughing through Luke's forces, stopping every once in a while to place her hands on them as she whispered something and then they began fighting with her.
"Attack, you fools!" Luke ordered his troops as he crawled out of the pool. Somewhere down below deck, a large alarm bell thrummed.
Any second now they'd be swamped by Luke's reinforcements.
Already, his warriors were getting over their surprise, coming at the centaurs with swords and spears drawn. Tyson slapped half a dozen of them aside, knocking them over the guardrail into Miami Bay. But more warriors were coming up the stairs.
"Withdraw, brethren!" Chiron said as Cressida finally reached Percy, knocking down the demigod that was about to strike him. Her arms were covered in scratches and her lip was split and slightly swollen as if she'd taken a punch to the face.
"You alright, Fish Face?" she asked as she dropped down to look at his legs.
"Been better," he groaned.
"You won't get away with this, horse man!" Luke shouted. He raised his sword, but got smacked in the face with another boxing glove arrow, and sat down hard in a deckchair.
A palomino centaur hoisted Percy onto his back while a black stallion grabbed Cressida.
"Dude, get your big friend!" the palomino said.
"Tyson!" Cressida shouted, her voice projected across the deck of the ship.
"Come on!" Percy called.
Tyson dropped the two warriors he was about to tie into a knot and jogged after them. He jumped on the back of the black stallion.
"Dude!" the centaur groaned almost buckling under Tyson's weight. "Do the words "low-carb diet" mean anything to you?"
"Hugs," Tyson smiled as he wrapped his arms around Cressida, careful of her wounds and she laughed as they began heading for the dock.
Luke's warriors were organizing themselves into a phalanx. But by the time they were ready to advance, the centaurs had galloped to the edge of the deck and fearlessly jumped the guardrail, as if it were a steeplechase and not ten storeys above the ground. Tyson squeezed her a bit too tight as she gripped the shoulders of the centaur, plummeting towards docks that the centaurs hit with hardly a jolt.
And the five quest mates joined in the centaurs' whoops and taunts as they raced into the streets of downtown Miami.