“So?” Trix asked.

“So, he wouldn’t have done that if they didn’t have a way to win. Every round, he agrees the rules of the game with the other pantheon member that rules the game. How long the timer is, what resources he can send here, all of that.”

“And?” Yoshi said.

“He wouldn’t send us here if there was no solution. Every time we’ve gone into battle, there’ve been resources available to us. Weapons, armor … if we’re smart enough to find them.”

“Unless he doesn’t want us to win,” Scott said. “Maybe he wants us to lose, so he can wipe Earth out and start again. Just like he did with Mars before it.”

Cade scratched his fledgling beard. “He could do that anytime he wanted. Leave us with nothing. Instead, he left us with this fort, and the Romans. Those two things on their own are not enough though. So there must be something else.”

“Well, what did he give the Romans?” Amber asked. “There’s Fort Caroline. Maybe that had the tools they needed.”

Cade nodded slowly. “Fort Caroline may just have been a base for them. But … why such a small fort? Why not Jomsborg? There were thousands of Romans at the beginning. Maybe Abaddon knew that most of the army would be blown away, but he couldn’t be sure they would attack immediately.”

It was like his mind was scratching around the edges of a grand realization, but it just wouldn’t come.

“They had cannons,” Cade said slowly. “But they were rusty, with no gunpowder. There was a moat … but that doesn’t seem important. Wood, yes, but that’s not exactly a game changer.”

He buried his head in his hands. “Think, Cade,” he whispered to himself.

“What if there is more?” Quintus asked.

The boy had been his usual silent self, his eyes darting from one speaker to the next, reading their lips, listening keenly to their words. As usual, they were speaking louder when in his presence.

“More?” Cade asked.

“Yes. We received Jomsborg, and the Romans, and Fort Caroline. What if I know about one other thing?”

Cade’s eyes widened. “They told you about somewhere else?”

Quintus shook his head, then flashed him a smile. “There is … good … in my silent ears,” he said slowly. “I can see a man’s lips move and know what they speak.”

Cade’s eyes widened. “What did they say?”

Quintus bit his lip thoughtfully. “They spoke of another place. One where they took shelter when the rains came. A place that was not Fort Caroline. They said Jomsborg is much better than the other home the gods offered them.”

Cade leaned closer. “Did they say where it was? Or anything else?”

Quintus shook his head. “They spoke of the smell there. It smelled of death, so they said. A cruel joke from the gods.”

Scott threw up his hands. “Oh great. Let’s go wandering around an alien land, seeking out the place that smells like death, so we can see if it’s a clue to how to break into a place thousands of trained soldiers couldn’t.”