The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan Page A

Beckendorf and two other Hephaestus guys, a few from the Ares cabin (though it still seemed strange that Clarisse wasn’t around), the Stoll brothers and Nico from Hermes cabin, and a few Aphrodite kids. It was weird that the Aphrodite cabin wanted to play. Usually they sat on the sidelines, chatted, and checked their reflections in the river and stuff, but when they heard we were fighting the Hunters, they were raring to go.
    â€œI’ll show them ‘love is worthless,’” Silena Beauregard grumbled as she strapped on her armor. “I’ll pulverize them!”
    That left Thalia and me.
    â€œI’ll take the offense,” Thalia volunteered. “You take defense.”
    â€œOh.” I hesitated, because I’d been about to say the exact same thing, only reversed. “Don’t you think with your shield and all, you’d be better defense?”
    Thalia already had Aegis on her arm, and even our own teammates were giving her a wide berth, trying not to cower before the bronze head of Medusa.
    â€œWell, I was thinking it would make better offense,” Thalia said. “Besides, you’ve had more practice at defense.”
    I wasn’t sure if she was teasing me. I’d had some pretty bad experiences with defense on capture the flag. My first year, Annabeth had put me out as a kind of bait, and I’d almost been gored to death with spears and killed by a hellhound.
    â€œYeah, no problem,” I lied.
    â€œCool.” Thalia turned to help some of the Aphrodite kids, who were having trouble suiting up their armor without breaking their nails. Nico di Angelo ran up to me with a big grin on his face.
    â€œPercy, this is awesome!” His blue-feathered bronze helmet was falling in his eyes, and his breastplate was about six sizes too big. I wondered if there was any way I’d looked that ridiculous when I’d first arrived. Unfortunately, I probably had.
    Nico lifted his sword with effort. “Do we get to kill the other team?”
    â€œWell . . . no.”
    â€œBut the Hunters are immortal, right?”
    â€œThat’s only if they don’t fall in battle. Besides—”
    â€œIt would be awesome if we just, like, resurrected as soon as we were killed, so we could keep fighting, and—”
    â€œNico, this is serious. Real swords. These can hurt.”
    He stared at me, a little disappointed, and I realized that I’d just sounded like my mother. Whoa. Not a good sign.
    I patted Nico on the shoulder. “Hey, it’s cool. Just follow the team. Stay out of Zoë’s way. We’ll have a blast.”
    Chiron’s hoof thundered on the pavilion floor.
    â€œHeroes!” he called. “You know the rules! The creek is the boundary line. Blue team—Camp Half-Blood—shall take the west woods. Hunters of Artemis—red team—shall take the east woods. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. No intentional maiming, please! All magic items are allowed. To your positions!”
    â€œSweet,” Nico whispered next to me. “What kind of magic items? Do I get one?”
    I was about to break it to him that he didn’t, when Thalia said, “Blue team! Follow me!”
    They cheered and followed. I had to run to catch up, and tripped over somebody’s shield, so I didn’t look much like a co-captain. More like an idiot.
    We set our flag at the top of Zeus’s Fist. It’s this cluster of boulders in the middle of the west woods that, if you look at it just the right way, looks like a huge fist sticking out of the ground. If you look at it from any other side, it looks like a pile of enormous deer droppings, but Chiron wouldn’t let us call the place the Poop Pile, especially after it had been named for Zeus, who doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.
    Anyway, it was a good place to set the flag. The top boulder was twenty feet tall and really hard to climb, so the flag was