Chapter 08

Ω

KRATOS CLIMBED ATOP a pile of dead bodies to look over the repair work being completed on the wall. The engineers had placed sturdy cross members against the wall, then had driven posts deep into the ground to hold them in place. It was crude but provided a barrier to keep Ares’s minions from flooding into the roadway. As long as he didn’t have to worry about those skeletal archers coming up behind him, Kratos could safely head for the city again. Without a word to the defenders nearby, Kratos sprang down the roadway and ran for the city.

Night fell upon Athens. The vast columns of smoke now swirled and spun, lit only by the fires below, and through the haze Kratos would occasionally glimpse Ares himself, large as a mountain, towering over the Acropolis. It was from the god’s own hand that the Greek fire flew, great flaming gobbets that he cast at random around the city.

The roadway began to fill with refugees, civilians clutching whatever was most precious to them, fleeing the city while they still could to allow the soldiers the best chance to fortify and defend it. Every few hundred yards, the crowds became thick enough to impede his progress—but the impediment was momentary, because Kratos simply cut his way through with the Blades of Chaos. Bloody refugee body parts flew to either side of the Spartan as he ran, and any Athenians who witnessed such a slaughter wisely pressed out of Kratos’s way.

Kratos spared not an instant’s thought for these unfortunates. He wasn’t here to save the civilians—and the Blades of Chaos could drink innocent lives as easily as those of opponents. The surge in his strength from each murder let him run ever faster, until he might have been wearing the winged sandals of Hermes himself.

The heavy black smoke took on a more noxious odor as he neared the ruined gate of the city. The memory of burning corpses could never be erased from his brain. After so many battles, digging graves had been impossible; there were always more dead than there were shovels and men to use them. Kratos had ordered the bodies stacked and set ablaze. The funeral pyre for one had become the pyre of hundreds, and so it was for many years.

The gates of the city lay in shattered ruin. Some few civilians picked their way through the rubble, but more Arean fire rained down upon them; their screams were brief, and soon they became extensions of the pyre. Only the guardhouse remained intact, though it seemed abandoned. As Kratos passed, however, a voice cried from the shadowed window, “You there! Halt!”

The voice was thin and wheezy, and when Kratos turned to look, he found one bent and wizened man, barely strong enough to stand upright in his armor. “State your … State … Uh, what are you doing here?”

“I seek Athena’s oracle, old man.”

The ancient guardsman peered at him myopically. “The Oracle? What for?”

“Where is she?” Kratos asked with as much patience as he could muster.

“She’s got a room in the Parthenon, on the east side of the Acropolis, but …” The old man shook his head woefully. “That area’s on fire. Whole place is on fire. Oracle might be dead. No one has seen her since the fighting began. Once she told me my own future, d’you know that? Now, this was a long time ago. I had to sacrifice—”

Kratos successfully stifled a sudden urge to lop off the old fool’s head. He growled, “How do I get to the Acropolis?”

“Well … you can’t go through here.”

“What?”

“I got my orders from the commander of the watch, just before the gate was knocked down by one of them fireballs. Nobody enters through this gate, what’s left of it, that is.” The old man held a dagger in one quivering hand. “Besides, what d’you want to go in there for? The place is lousy with undead, there’s Cyclopes and worse—and I even seen a Minotaur too!”

Kratos shook his head, thinking of the fight down at the Long Wall. More wasted effort. Ares’s army was already inside the city.

He left the old man babbling to himself and sprinted into dark streets illuminated only by distant unchecked fires.

RUNNING THROUGH THE DARKENING CITY, Kratos cursed himself for a fool, even as the Blades of Chaos sang their crimson song through countless bodies of Ares’s minions. Undead legionnaires flew to pieces so quickly that none broke Kratos’s stride. Skeletal archers fired flaming shafts as he passed, but none even grazed him. He nimbly sidestepped raging Cyclopes and dissipated ghostly wraiths with hardly more than a gesture.

And all for nothing. Just as the slaughter he had meted out at the Long Wall’s breach had been for nothing.

Ares’s army had attacked the wall in the first place not to gain access to the city but because that was where the soldiers were. Ares’s legions lived only to kill. If Athenian soldiers had made a stand down at Piraeus, that’s where those abominations would have attacked. They never needed to cross the walls at all. As Kratos ran, more foes sprang from the earth itself, as though some impossible netherworld had opened the gates of reality to spew its spawn onto Athenian streets.

Kratos cursed himself for fighting them as if they were human.

He no longer paused to slay them. Why bother? Athens and its people could not be protected by the destruction of Ares’s army—the god’s army could not be destroyed. Like dragon’s teeth, each beast Kratos might slay could be recreated on any spot, at any instant. Killing them did nothing but feed power to the blades—power that he didn’t need. To Hades with fighting. He would seek the Oracle, learn her secret, and then be on his way.

As he should have done from the beginning.

From around a corner ahead, he heard snorts and growls and the voices of men shrieking like little children. Soon two Athenian soldiers came in view, running full tilt, their weapons and shields forgotten. They screamed to Kratos that he must run, they’re right behind us! A heartbeat later, Kratos discovered what they were fleeing: a towering creature with the head and hooves of a great bull and the body of a man.

The Minotaur—the Cretan monster supposedly slain by Theseus. Kratos snorted. Why should he be surprised to find the creature alive?

Theseus had been Athenian.

The Minotaur wielded an enormous labris—the double-faced ax of Crete, its blade alone the size of a man and twice as heavy. The great beast raised the labris high overhead and, with a mighty heave, hurled it spinning through the thickening gloom.

One of the soldiers, looking fearfully over his shoulder, saw the blade coming and ducked aside. The other never looked back. The first he learned of the flying ax was when it lopped his head off in one clean slice and whirled on without even slowing. It sang through the air, spinning straight at Kratos’s face.

Kratos judged the distance and the spin, then took one step forward so that the haft of the swirling ax, instead of the gore-smeared blade, smacked his palm. It struck with enough force to kill an ordinary man. Kratos didn’t even blink.

“Run!” the remaining soldier screamed as he sprinted past. “You have to run!”

“Spartans,” Kratos replied with scalding contempt, “run toward the enemy.”

The Minotaur gave a snort, lowered his wide-spreading horns, and charged.

Kratos hefted the labris. “You’ll be wanting this back,” he said, and hurled it at the charging monster, who pulled up short, snarling, and attempted to duplicate Kratos’s feat. The Minotaur discovered this was trickier than it had looked.

The Minotaur misjudged the ax’s spin by half a step: The blade sheared through its hand, through its nose and on through its brainpan, before whirling on to vanish in the smoky gloom.

The half-headless corpse stood swaying. Kratos lifted the severed head of the Athenian soldier and hurled it like a rock. The head struck the monster’s chest and knocked the great beast flat.

Kratos sneered down at the dead soldier. As he passed the corpse of the Minotaur, he shook his head and snorted with contempt.

Theseus. Some hero. Only Athenians would make a hero of a man for slaying such a paltry little beast. Good thing Kratos wasn’t here to save the people; he couldn’t stand to look at them.

Before he reached the corner, however, he discovered that he had made a mistake. It had not been the Minotaur; it had been only a Minotaur. The truth of this was revealed to him by the appearance of three more of the towering man–bulls, thundering toward him with axes raised.

Kratos grimly drew the Blades of Chaos without slackening his pace. Another senseless delay. He’d make better time off the streets.

The three Minotaurs spread out to bar his path, but a headlong sprint faster than the gallop of a racing horse gave Kratos the momentum he needed. A dozen strides short of the monsters,

Kratos hurled one Blade of Chaos high, where it whipped over the lip of the nearest balcony. The chain snapped tight and yanked him into the air, over the heads of the astonished Minotaurs. He flipped the other blade at a higher balcony and in this fashion swung himself all the way up to the rooftops.

From here, he could clearly see the Parthenon and beyond it the sky-spanning figure of the God of War, who still hurled handfuls of fiery slag into the city below.

Even that momentary pause was enough for Ares’s minions to locate him again. Flocks of harpies swooped toward his rooftop, wraiths floated through nearby walls, and the building trembled as Minotaurs and Cyclopes scaled its walls.

“Ares!” Kratos roared his challenge, brandishing the undying fire of the Blades of Chaos.

The mountain of war god swiveled eyes like bloody full moons in his direction. Behind his beard of flames, Ares’s lip curled in a cruel smile as he raised a burning hand high enough to scorch the clouds. He hurled a ball of fire larger than the entire building on which Kratos stood. As the blazing missile seemed to expand with alarming speed, Kratos had an instant to wonder if perhaps overweening pride had made him hasty in attracting the war god’s attention.

He gave a mighty leap out from among the crowd of his enemies, reached a wall of a taller building nearby, and kicked off again, hurtling high over a broad plaza. He struck a great broken pillar and clung to it for an instant, glancing back at the rooftop from whence he’d come. What he saw gave him pause.

The whole building was a mass of flame; harpies screeched, Cyclopes howled, and Minotaurs bellowed as they burned. Then it was his turn to cry out as a gobbet of the gelatinous fire ran the length of his back. His grip slackened, and he slipped down and then tumbled to the street in agony. Twisting from side to side, trying to roll as if mere flames devoured his flesh, did no good.

More flame roared toward him, and the plaza below filled with monsters. With supreme effort, teeth clenched against the never-ending burning on his back, Kratos hurled himself onward. Toward the Parthenon. Toward the Temple of Athena. Pain could never slow the Ghost of Sparta. He stumbled on, toward the Oracle—and the secret of killing a god.

KRATOS RAN WHEN HE COULD, the pain abating somewhat in his back, and killed when he had to; he stumbled through the streets, over the rooftops, and even waded the labyrinthine sewers connecting endless catacombs. Although the sewage burned worse than he thought he could endure without dying, by the time Kratos emerged, Ares’s touch on his back had diminished. The skin felt taut-crisp. But he could still move, still fight when he had to. Finally, after what felt like days, he reached the broad avenue leading up the Acropolis to the Parthenon—and there he faced a new challenge.

The roadway was patrolled by Centaurs. Wild and untamable, these gigantic man–horse monstrosities had a reputation for fierceness in battle that Kratos already knew was well founded. He had faced these creatures before and always found them formidable opponents.

But they never lived long. None who faced the Ghost of Sparta ever did.

KRATOS CLIMBED ATOP a pile of dead bodies to look over the repair work being completed on the wall. The engineers had placed sturdy cross members against the wall, then had driven posts deep into the ground to hold them in place. It was crude but provided a barrier to keep Ares’s minions from flooding into the roadway. As long as he didn’t have to worry about those skeletal archers coming up behind him, Kratos could safely head for the city again. Without a word to the defenders nearby, Kratos sprang down the roadway and ran for the city.

Night fell upon Athens. The vast columns of smoke now swirled and spun, lit only by the fires below, and through the haze Kratos would occasionally glimpse Ares himself, large as a mountain, towering over the Acropolis. It was from the god’s own hand that the Greek fire flew, great flaming gobbets that he cast at random around the city.

The roadway began to fill with refugees, civilians clutching whatever was most precious to them, fleeing the city while they still could to allow the soldiers the best chance to fortify and defend it. Every few hundred yards, the crowds became thick enough to impede his progress—but the impediment was momentary, because Kratos simply cut his way through with the Blades of Chaos. Bloody refugee body parts flew to either side of the Spartan as he ran, and any Athenians who witnessed such a slaughter wisely pressed out of Kratos’s way.

Kratos spared not an instant’s thought for these unfortunates. He wasn’t here to save the civilians—and the Blades of Chaos could drink innocent lives as easily as those of opponents. The surge in his strength from each murder let him run ever faster, until he might have been wearing the winged sandals of Hermes himself.

The heavy black smoke took on a more noxious odor as he neared the ruined gate of the city. The memory of burning corpses could never be erased from his brain. After so many battles, digging graves had been impossible; there were always more dead than there were shovels and men to use them. Kratos had ordered the bodies stacked and set ablaze. The funeral pyre for one had become the pyre of hundreds, and so it was for many years.

The gates of the city lay in shattered ruin. Some few civilians picked their way through the rubble, but more Arean fire rained down upon them; their screams were brief, and soon they became extensions of the pyre. Only the guardhouse remained intact, though it seemed abandoned. As Kratos passed, however, a voice cried from the shadowed window, “You there! Halt!”

The voice was thin and wheezy, and when Kratos turned to look, he found one bent and wizened man, barely strong enough to stand upright in his armor. “State your … State … Uh, what are you doing here?”

“I seek Athena’s oracle, old man.”

The ancient guardsman peered at him myopically. “The Oracle? What for?”

“Where is she?” Kratos asked with as much patience as he could muster.

“She’s got a room in the Parthenon, on the east side of the Acropolis, but …” The old man shook his head woefully. “That area’s on fire. Whole place is on fire. Oracle might be dead. No one has seen her since the fighting began. Once she told me my own future, d’you know that? Now, this was a long time ago. I had to sacrifice—”

Kratos successfully stifled a sudden urge to lop off the old fool’s head. He growled, “How do I get to the Acropolis?”

“Well … you can’t go through here.”

“What?”

“I got my orders from the commander of the watch, just before the gate was knocked down by one of them fireballs. Nobody enters through this gate, what’s left of it, that is.” The old man held a dagger in one quivering hand. “Besides, what d’you want to go in there for? The place is lousy with undead, there’s Cyclopes and worse—and I even seen a Minotaur too!”

Kratos shook his head, thinking of the fight down at the Long Wall. More wasted effort. Ares’s army was already inside the city.

He left the old man babbling to himself and sprinted into dark streets illuminated only by distant unchecked fires.

RUNNING THROUGH THE DARKENING CITY, Kratos cursed himself for a fool, even as the Blades of Chaos sang their crimson song through countless bodies of Ares’s minions. Undead legionnaires flew to pieces so quickly that none broke Kratos’s stride. Skeletal archers fired flaming shafts as he passed, but none even grazed him. He nimbly sidestepped raging Cyclopes and dissipated ghostly wraiths with hardly more than a gesture.

And all for nothing. Just as the slaughter he had meted out at the Long Wall’s breach had been for nothing.

Ares’s army had attacked the wall in the first place not to gain access to the city but because that was where the soldiers were. Ares’s legions lived only to kill. If Athenian soldiers had made a stand down at Piraeus, that’s where those abominations would have attacked. They never needed to cross the walls at all. As Kratos ran, more foes sprang from the earth itself, as though some impossible netherworld had opened the gates of reality to spew its spawn onto Athenian streets.

Kratos cursed himself for fighting them as if they were human.

He no longer paused to slay them. Why bother? Athens and its people could not be protected by the destruction of Ares’s army—the god’s army could not be destroyed. Like dragon’s teeth, each beast Kratos might slay could be recreated on any spot, at any instant. Killing them did nothing but feed power to the blades—power that he didn’t need. To Hades with fighting. He would seek the Oracle, learn her secret, and then be on his way.

As he should have done from the beginning.

From around a corner ahead, he heard snorts and growls and the voices of men shrieking like little children. Soon two Athenian soldiers came in view, running full tilt, their weapons and shields forgotten. They screamed to Kratos that he must run, they’re right behind us! A heartbeat later, Kratos discovered what they were fleeing: a towering creature with the head and hooves of a great bull and the body of a man.

The Minotaur—the Cretan monster supposedly slain by Theseus. Kratos snorted. Why should he be surprised to find the creature alive?

Theseus had been Athenian.

The Minotaur wielded an enormous labris—the double-faced ax of Crete, its blade alone the size of a man and twice as heavy. The great beast raised the labris high overhead and, with a mighty heave, hurled it spinning through the thickening gloom.

One of the soldiers, looking fearfully over his shoulder, saw the blade coming and ducked aside. The other never looked back. The first he learned of the flying ax was when it lopped his head off in one clean slice and whirled on without even slowing. It sang through the air, spinning straight at Kratos’s face.

Kratos judged the distance and the spin, then took one step forward so that the haft of the swirling ax, instead of the gore-smeared blade, smacked his palm. It struck with enough force to kill an ordinary man. Kratos didn’t even blink.

“Run!” the remaining soldier screamed as he sprinted past. “You have to run!”

“Spartans,” Kratos replied with scalding contempt, “run toward the enemy.”

The Minotaur gave a snort, lowered his wide-spreading horns, and charged.

Kratos hefted the labris. “You’ll be wanting this back,” he said, and hurled it at the charging monster, who pulled up short, snarling, and attempted to duplicate Kratos’s feat. The Minotaur discovered this was trickier than it had looked.

The Minotaur misjudged the ax’s spin by half a step: The blade sheared through its hand, through its nose and on through its brainpan, before whirling on to vanish in the smoky gloom.

The half-headless corpse stood swaying. Kratos lifted the severed head of the Athenian soldier and hurled it like a rock. The head struck the monster’s chest and knocked the great beast flat.

Kratos sneered down at the dead soldier. As he passed the corpse of the Minotaur, he shook his head and snorted with contempt.

Theseus. Some hero. Only Athenians would make a hero of a man for slaying such a paltry little beast. Good thing Kratos wasn’t here to save the people; he couldn’t stand to look at them.

Before he reached the corner, however, he discovered that he had made a mistake. It had not been the Minotaur; it had been only a Minotaur. The truth of this was revealed to him by the appearance of three more of the towering man–bulls, thundering toward him with axes raised.

Kratos grimly drew the Blades of Chaos without slackening his pace. Another senseless delay. He’d make better time off the streets.

The three Minotaurs spread out to bar his path, but a headlong sprint faster than the gallop of a racing horse gave Kratos the momentum he needed. A dozen strides short of the monsters,

Kratos hurled one Blade of Chaos high, where it whipped over the lip of the nearest balcony. The chain snapped tight and yanked him into the air, over the heads of the astonished Minotaurs. He flipped the other blade at a higher balcony and in this fashion swung himself all the way up to the rooftops.

From here, he could clearly see the Parthenon and beyond it the sky-spanning figure of the God of War, who still hurled handfuls of fiery slag into the city below.

Even that momentary pause was enough for Ares’s minions to locate him again. Flocks of harpies swooped toward his rooftop, wraiths floated through nearby walls, and the building trembled as Minotaurs and Cyclopes scaled its walls.

“Ares!” Kratos roared his challenge, brandishing the undying fire of the Blades of Chaos.

The mountain of war god swiveled eyes like bloody full moons in his direction. Behind his beard of flames, Ares’s lip curled in a cruel smile as he raised a burning hand high enough to scorch the clouds. He hurled a ball of fire larger than the entire building on which Kratos stood. As the blazing missile seemed to expand with alarming speed, Kratos had an instant to wonder if perhaps overweening pride had made him hasty in attracting the war god’s attention.

He gave a mighty leap out from among the crowd of his enemies, reached a wall of a taller building nearby, and kicked off again, hurtling high over a broad plaza. He struck a great broken pillar and clung to it for an instant, glancing back at the rooftop from whence he’d come. What he saw gave him pause.

The whole building was a mass of flame; harpies screeched, Cyclopes howled, and Minotaurs bellowed as they burned. Then it was his turn to cry out as a gobbet of the gelatinous fire ran the length of his back. His grip slackened, and he slipped down and then tumbled to the street in agony. Twisting from side to side, trying to roll as if mere flames devoured his flesh, did no good.

More flame roared toward him, and the plaza below filled with monsters. With supreme effort, teeth clenched against the never-ending burning on his back, Kratos hurled himself onward. Toward the Parthenon. Toward the Temple of Athena. Pain could never slow the Ghost of Sparta. He stumbled on, toward the Oracle—and the secret of killing a god.

KRATOS RAN WHEN HE COULD, the pain abating somewhat in his back, and killed when he had to; he stumbled through the streets, over the rooftops, and even waded the labyrinthine sewers connecting endless catacombs. Although the sewage burned worse than he thought he could endure without dying, by the time Kratos emerged, Ares’s touch on his back had diminished. The skin felt taut-crisp. But he could still move, still fight when he had to. Finally, after what felt like days, he reached the broad avenue leading up the Acropolis to the Parthenon—and there he faced a new challenge.

The roadway was patrolled by Centaurs. Wild and untamable, these gigantic man–horse monstrosities had a reputation for fierceness in battle that Kratos already knew was well founded. He had faced these creatures before and always found them formidable opponents.

But they never lived long. None who faced the Ghost of Sparta ever did.

The one nearest spotted him through the smoke. Bellowing its war cry, it reared and spun to face him, then without hesitation it charged.

Kratos widened his stance and waited.

Hooves pounding, the Centaur raced directly for him. Kratos realized he could not outrun the creature, not with the skin on his back cracking and giving new torment with every movement. He judged the distance and then dodged at the last possible instant. Like all four-legged animals, shifting to the side during attack was impossible, once committed. Kratos let the man–horse race past. Unlike other four-legged animals, however, the Centaur possessed the ability to swing its upper body about.

And this one did. Spear stabbing, it almost impaled Kratos. Only a quick parry with his blade prevented a vicious stab wound to Kratos’s side.

The man–horse tried to dig in its hind hooves to stop so it could rear and twist about, but Centaurs could not turn to face the opposite direction of attack quickly. Kratos used this to his advantage. He attacked while the Centaur’s weight pinned its rear hooves to the ground. If it had tried to kick him like a mule, Kratos’s attack would have failed.

He arched up over the man–horse’s back, Blades of Chaos swinging in wide circles of death. Either of the swords would have killed the Centaur. His right blade burrowed deep into the neck, while his left raked along the man–horse’s side and streamed sundered guts out onto the city square.

Kratos lost his balance, slipped in the Centaur’s blood, and fell heavily atop the corpse. For long minutes he could only lie in the puddle. He forced himself to his feet and stretched after recovering a bit of his usual power, though his movement was restricted by the skin taut as a drum’s head on his back. He surveyed the area. It was as he feared: Ares had infiltrated many of his army into the city. Two more Centaurs galloped to attack him.

One Centaur held a huge spear tucked like a lance under its corded arm; the other swung an iron weight at the end of a long chain. As they bore down on him, Kratos dropped low. The chain and ball swung harmlessly over his head, but the spear stung his forearm—only the chain embedded in flesh and bonded to bone saved him from losing the hand. But even the powerful impact of the slash did not slow his counterstrike. If he had been whole, if his muscles and powerful back had responded as they should, his aim would have been perfect. Instead, he missed and the Centaur flashed past, unscathed by his blades. Kneeling like a penitent, he whipped the Blades of Chaos out to his sides, backhanded, and sheared through the nearside front leg of each Centaur. The beasts fell forward and skidded along, leaving bloody smears on the pavement. Kratos stood and, with one more flick of the blades, slashed their heads from their bodies.

He shook the gore from his blades as he looked about for new enemies—new victims—but found only flames and carnage. Fires sprouted like unholy weeds, devouring the city.

He started back up the road to the Parthenon, each step stronger than the one before. The Blades of Chaos, in taking life, nourished him and allowed regeneration. Stiffness remained in his back as a reminder of the foolhardiness of taunting a god. Kratos used his blades at times as walking sticks to help him up the increasingly steep road. The soldier had said Athena’s oracle was in a temple near the majestic structure, which now stood blackened with soot and lit by the burning city below.

Kratos heard a rising-whistle sound he knew too well. In an eyeblink, he had thrown himself into a headlong dive that cleared a low wall one instant before another of the god’s fireballs splashed liquid flame throughout the neighborhood. A wave of fire broke over him, and he ran deeper into the courtyard, seeking cover under the tiled eaves. One touch of such anguish was all he could endure. He found a half-full fountain choked with weeds. He leaped into it and rolled in the damply rotting muck. The stagnant water smelled of dead fish, but it smothered the last of the burning gel that had clung to his skin.

“By the gods,” he said, gritting his teeth as a final wave of pain passed through him. Then he stood and knew he could fight on. For honor, for Athena—and because it was all he knew.

Returning to the paved street revealed only new obstacles. Fireball after fireball blasted all the roadways leading to the summit, making of them rivers of flame. As if he had divined Kratos’s destination, Ares closed every path.

Kratos cursed and threw himself once more into a sprint. He moved to circle the Acropolis—there must be some gap in the war god’s ring of fire.

His new energy took him into a quieter section of Athens, one that so far had escaped the worst of the destruction. People peered fearfully from windows as he passed, but no one lay dead in the street, though this was merely temporary; on the far side of the neighborhood, he met an undead patrol.

The skeletal horrors stalked the roadways, swinging scythes that looked as though they could slice through the columns of the Parthenon itself. And these particular creatures, Kratos noted, wore armor—armor that was blackened with soot but showed no other evidence of fire. Armor that could protect the undead from Ares’s fires was exactly what he needed.

He fell in behind the well-armored skeletons and increased his speed, closing quickly. Some unholy instinct must have warned the creatures of his swift approach. They spun about, the long, wickedly sharp blades of their death scythes angled to taste Spartan blood. He blocked the swing of the nearest with his left blade. Sparks and flame exploded like the green pine in a campfire. He swung around to the creature’s flank, keeping it—and its armor—between him and its companions.

Legionnaires crowded around him, hacking again and again; Kratos was too busy blocking to counter—especially because he didn’t want to damage their armor, which was after all the only reason they were worth fighting.

The clash of weapons sent showers of flame in all directions. The house at Kratos’s back caught fire. He ignored this; he saw an opening for attack. In one motion he released the Blades of Chaos and leaped forward to seize the haft of the nearest undead’s scythe. Flames from the burning house began to blister his exposed, tortured back.

He needed that armor.

Instead of wresting the weapon from the creature’s grasp, Kratos used his leverage to swing the undead bodily into the attacks from the others. Death scythes bit deeply through the creature’s torso, and in the instant their weapons were hung up by their comrade’s body, Kratos reached back and drew the Blades of Chaos once more. One lethal flourish, and undead heads fell like catapult stones. The bodies continued to jerk and wave their weapons convulsively, but the loss of their heads left them blind: easy prey.

Kratos dissected them with brisk efficiency, hacking off the arms and legs, leaving only the torsos. These undead, though, were no Spartans—it would take at least three of their corselets to make one sized for Kratos’s massive chest. Kicking away severed parts, he picked out the least-damaged corselet, unfastened it, and then strapped it across his back; another, only slightly more ripped, he belted over his front. The coverage was imperfect, but then, he wasn’t going to use it to defend himself against Ares’s monstrous legions, only against the killing heat of the war god’s fire.

A shrug of his shoulders settled the armor in the best fit he could achieve, but before he could once more search for a way to the summit, he saw another undead enter a house.

He’d fastened the armor barely in time when two more legionnaires attacked—and these held out magic shields. Kratos let out a cry of rage as he retaliated. The Blades of Chaos bounced off the shield of the lead undead and caused Kratos to stagger back. This instant of unbalance provided the opening for both legionnaires. Holding their gold-glowing shields high, they charged.

Kratos fought for his life. More than providing protection from his Blades of Chaos, those shields drained his strength. Every blow he landed sapped his power. Kratos retreated until his back pressed into a ragged stone wall. The two legionnaires parted slightly to come at him from different angles. With a loud scream of rage, Kratos launched himself directly forward, between the shields. Somersaulting, he came to his feet and reversed positions. He now had the undead backed against the wall.

He still faced swords wielded from behind shields impervious—detrimental!—to his own magic blades. Kratos dropped his Blades of Chaos and allowed them to snake behind his back as he dived low. The undead he targeted lowered the magic-blazing shield, but Kratos had anticipated this and twisted at the last possible instant. The shield exploded with eye-dazzling fury as it crashed into the ground. Kratos strained, his fingers wrapping around the undead’s ankle.

Against the wall, the legionnaire could not retreat. Kratos squeezed as hard as he could and crushed the undead’s leg. It stabbed at him with its spear. Kratos ignored the pain as the spear tip penetrated his arm, but the point did not sink deeply. The chains from the Blades of Chaos protected him from real damage.

Kratos grunted, lifted, and upended the undead before its companion could rush him from behind. A stomp to the head ended the threat from the fallen legionnaire. Kratos ducked as the other thrust at him. The spear dug into the stone wall, giving Kratos yet another opportunity. Getting past the enervating magic shield was impossible, so he caught the one dropped by his first foe. He spun it like a discus into the legionnaire struggling to pull its spear from the wall.

The magical edge severed the undead’s legs and brought it crashing down to join its companion. Kratos’s fist repeatedly smashed into the back of its head until it was reduced to dust.

Kratos kicked the magic shields aside. He started to continue on his way when screams from inside a building drew him to peer through the open door. A man and woman clung to each other as an undead legionnaire drew twin knives and clacked them together, as though savoring their terror.

Using the pommel of his sword, Kratos rapped sharply on the door frame. The undead glanced over its shoulder, then back at the man and woman. When it turned its face once more toward the Ghost of Sparta, it discovered only the edges of the Blades of Chaos in the final instant before being cut in two from collarbone to crotch.

Kratos stepped back and let the pieces fall. The legs kicked at him feebly. He ignored them.

“We are truly blessed by the gods!” said the man. “You have saved us!”

“You’re not saved. I have only delayed your death a moment or two.” Kratos turned to go. “Your energy would be better spent in running away.”

“We were paying tribute to Aphrodite,” the woman offered, showing him a small carved wood box in her palms. It was filled with vials of fragrant oils.

“You should be on the walls defending your city.”

“There is always time for tribute,” she said, looking at her man, who was obviously an artisan and not a soldier.

“Maybe for you,” he growled, and strode away toward the street.

Before his sandal could touch the paving stones, Athens vanished before his eyes. The world shimmered about him, and he felt as if he might be soaring into the sky.

Brightness blossomed into blinding empyreal glory … and out from that Olympian splendor appeared a woman of such full-bodied perfection that the sight of her hit him harder than any foe ever had.

Kratos had to clear his throat twice before he could speak. “Lady Aphrodite.”

“Greetings, Spartan. I wish to bestow upon you my thanks for the rescue of my disciples.”

“Goddess,” Kratos managed to choke out, bowing his head, “it is an honor to serve you.” He coughed and cleared his throat again. “However you might desire.”

“Kratos.” Aphrodite spoke his name as softly as a lover’s caress. “Zora and Lora have spoken of your talents.”

“Zora and Lora?” Kratos blinked. “The twins—they speak to you?”

“Not as often as they should,” the Goddess of Love purred. “But then, every parent has a similar complaint, I suppose.”

“You’re their mother?” This explained so many different things at once about the twins that Kratos found himself with no idea what to say next.

One slender finger from that slim hand traced the curve of his lips to silence any comment. “Athena asked me to contribute a gift of my own, to aid you in your quest.”

“The only gift I need is freedom to complete my task.”

Her laugh was like the chime of silver bells. “What you need, Spartan, is to be grateful for whatever a god chooses to bestow.” She caressed his cheek gently. The fingers turned cold as they stroked. “You will perform a task for me as well.”

“I am already engaged—”

“You will slay the Queen of the Gorgons.”

Kratos frowned. “But why her? Why now?”

“You are so adorable,” the goddess purred, “that I won’t have you eviscerated for daring to question me—this time. You must kill Medusa and bring me her head. The gift I will bestow on you is the power of the Gorgons: to turn men to stone!”

The goddess gestured and, with a wave, wiped away tranquil Olympus.

KRATOS TRIED TO SPEAK but had no breath, tried to see but had no light. He tried to move and did not know if the wild, whirling chaos he experienced was all around him or inside his head. Or both.

He crouched in a cold, dark place and heard the soft hissing of snakes.

He stood. The sooner he satisfied Aphrodite’s thirst for Gorgon blood, the sooner he could return to Athens and find the Oracle.

The gloom around him hid the slithering serpents. He took a few blind steps to one side, sloshing through ankle-deep water. His hand found a slimy rock wall. Pressing his ear against the wall, he waited through many slow, measured breaths in an attempt to detect any vibrations. Nothing.

He sighed. What had he expected? That Aphrodite would just point and make Medusa appear in front of him?

As his eyes adjusted to the murkiness, he began to make out his surroundings. The goddess had transported him to the juncture of three low-roofed tunnels hewn from living rock. No light shone down any of the tunnels; the light by which he now saw was the product of faintly luminescent moss clinging to crevices in the rock.

The tunnel straight ahead proved to be a dead end. Kratos shoved hard against the wall blocking his progress. His anger mounted. More wasted time.

The Oracle was in danger of death or worse if Ares captured her. Kratos didn’t care if the Oracle lived or died, so long as he learned her secret.

Kratos recalled campfire discussions among his officers before battle; some impious types had been speculating that the gods needed human worship the way a tree needs the sun. Could a god exist without worshippers? The way things were going in Athens, Kratos guessed he just might find out.

Would Athena’s power decline? Would she simply disappear? Zeus might prohibit one god from killing another, but Ares might have found a way to sneak around the ban.

In the past, Ares had always chosen brute force over subtlety, but perhaps he had learned his lesson. While the siege of Athens had the trappings of Ares’s old rage, he might have a different strategy in mind. Kill Athenians and Athena lost followers. Kill enough and her worshippers might abandon her for other gods—and who better to worship than the God of War, who had defeated their goddess?

Shows of strength in this uncertain world brought people to Ares’s temples. Kratos had, once upon a time, been the author of many of those shows and had himself been the earthly symbol of Ares’s might. Kratos’s officers had believed that a god without worshippers simply faded away like mist in the morning sun. If such a fate befell Athena, Kratos’s only chance for vengeance upon his former master would evaporate with her.

And the nightmares would continue unabated, rending sanity.

A few more blows upon the wall proved that it would withstand even his prodigious strength. Kratos turned and retraced his path. The water ahead began to ripple ominously before he reached the juncture where Aphrodite had deposited him. Kratos had to bend almost double to slide the Blades of Chaos off his back and bring them down in front of him. Barely in time.

Up from the dark waters struck a serpent whose head was larger than Kratos’s fist. Its fangs flashed as it struck. The venom dripping from their needle tips smoked in the gloom and caused the water where it fell to boil. Kratos blocked the strike with one blade while he struck back with the other. The snake’s head and a span of its neck flipped through the air. Its body thrashed wildly as it died, but the head continued to snap at him, its black eyes glaring with malice. Kratos pressed both blade tips into the head and waited for the viciousness to fade and die. Eventually, it did.

He looked up in time to see more ripples approaching: snakes swimming just under the murky surface, too many for him to avoid. One caught him, its fangs driving hard into his greaves, chewing as though it thought to drive its fangs through the heavy bronze. Kratos didn’t wait to find out if it was right. The pommel of a blade crushed a fragile skull. The fangs and jawbone remained clamped on his greave. The water ahead boiled as more snakes swarmed toward him, too many to count. Kratos slashed repeatedly down into the water in front of him, a blinding flourish that turned the blades into a shield of death. He drove grimly forward until he reached the juncture again. The water churned crimson with the snakes’ blood. And then the water calmed.

The dripping of moisture off the walls was all he could hear.

Kratos looked into the water and saw movement, but not of snakes. He lifted his foot and brought it down, thinking to crush any creature just below the surface. He felt his foot slide into the outline of a boot cut into the stone. Curious, he scooted his other sandaled foot about and found a corresponding indentation. For a moment he stood with both feet in the underwater impressions. As he started to step forward, he felt a tiny vibration that built and passed upward until it shook the chains embedded in his wrists.

Kratos saw the phosphorescent moss writhing on the walls. He lifted one foot from its indentation and the moss stopped glowing. Replacing his foot caused the moss to glow once more.

Curious, he reached out to touch the moss. Like a snake, it writhed sinuously away from his fingers. He growled deep in his throat. It was the only sound save the slow drip of moisture.

Stabbing out with his finger, he forced the animated moss to go around his digit. It spun about, encircling the spot on the stone wall where he pressed, as if the moss showed him an exit from an otherwise featureless tunnel. Leaning slightly, he applied pressure. Nothing happened.

He stepped from the outlines under his feet, and the moss ceased glowing. Kratos stomped to the end of the tunnel and found only another blank wall. Extensive investigation proved to him that there was no exit from the subterranean tunnels—none that he could find. He reached for both of the Blades of Chaos, then stopped.

“Two hands. There might be something in using two hands.” He returned to the indentations, slipped his feet into them, and moved his finger around on the right wall until the moss once more circled one specific spot. He pressed. Nothing.

Reaching to the other wall and repeating the movement produced another curlicue of green-glowing moss. This time, he moved his finger about and found a spot much higher on that wall before the moss stopped writhing and presented him with a specific spot.

Kratos pressed outward, fingers probing each of the marked spots.

“Mighty Zeus,” he whispered. His eyes went wide when a portion of the ceiling began to descend. Rather than jump back to defend himself, he stood his ground until the trapdoor had opened and lowered, giving him a ladder leading upward. Moving his fingers from the spots and stepping quickly, he reached the ladder just as it began to retreat aloft. Hanging on, he let the closing trapdoor carry him upward into a room whose floor was a foot above a sluggishly flowing stream. A channel of tightly placed stones held the stream in place. He shook himself dry. The snake with its fangs buried in his greaves came free when he scraped down his shin armor with the edge of his blade. He had not even realized it still clung to him with such tenacity.

These poisonous water snakes were nothing compared with the prey he sought. Not only must he face a monster who would turn him to stone if he so much as glanced at her face, he had to find one Gorgon in particular. Queen Medusa ruled her sisters, but unless she wore a crown or carried a scepter, Kratos had no simple way of picking her out from the rest.

Sandals scraped against stone as someone approached along the dry tunnel ahead. He raised the blades, but some primitive instinct warned him not to fight. Wit, for once, might bring victory, just as he had discovered the secret way into this lair. Kratos backed off and tucked himself from ankle to neck into a shallow stony niche lined with empty shelves. Other such niches pocked the chamber’s walls, but most of those had shelves stocked with objects. It seemed a fair guess that whoever came would fetch the items in storage and thus not even bother to look at a niche they knew to be empty.

And if he was wrong, he still had the blades. They would find this particular cabinet fully stocked with swift and bloody death.

Two men entered. One, a crookback, led the other, an old man who wore a filthy rag tied across his eyes. They began selecting items from nooks and crannies. The crookback laded the blind man with two boxes for every one of his own.

“My back is breaking from the load,” the crookback complained. “Carry another for me, will you?”

“I can hardly stand, Jurr, but go and pile it on. We daren’t make two trips. We cannot be late or Queen Medusa will punish us both.”

“Again,” Jurr said. “Once a day is more than I can bear. My back festers from the beatings she gives me.” He stacked several more heavy boxes onto the other’s considerable load while keeping only a pair of light ones for himself.

Kratos watched as they left, the blind man crushed by his load while the crookback showed a sprightlier stride. Kratos cared nothing for this. Clearly there were two sorts of people in this underground maze: those who did all the work, and those who could see. Being one of the latter made Kratos disinclined to disrupt the arrangement.

The only sound Kratos made when he followed was the faint squish of water squeezing from his sandals. As he went, he scratched trail markers in the luminescent moss. If he succeeded, he might have to find his own way out of here. Maybe Aphrodite would just snatch him back to Athens, but maybe he was required to return to where she had deposited him originally. He had never lost by preparing against betrayal.

Especially by gods.

“BRING MY MEAL, you disgusting vermin!”

This was a new voice, coming from a chamber ahead, where a lamp held back the gloom. Kratos stopped and pressed himself into the shadows outside the archway. Though the voice had been low and rough, like rocks being shaken in a brass jug, he caught some hint of inflection that told him the speaker might be female.

If he was right, a careless glance would doom him to an eternity as a stone statue, taunted by Gorgons in this twilight perdition.

The sighted man, Jurr, replied, “At once, Lady Medusa. I have brought the supplies.”

“You?” the blind man began. “I brought the—”

“Shh.”

“Shut your vile human mouths and get to work! My sisters and I grow hungrier by the moment. And angrier.” Her voice took on a dangerous edge. “It puts me in the mood for punishment.”

“Ohhh,” the blind man whined under his breath. “Oh, Zeus strike me dead before she touches me once more!”

“At least you can’t see, you lucky bastard,” Jurr snarled back just as softly. “Those mirrors, those accursed mirrors in her bedroom! Every way she turns, she can see her hideous self.”

Clanking of pots and the sounds of a fire being stoked lured Kratos into a quick look. He flicked a glance swifter than a blink, but he took in the entire kitchen. The blind man decanted some kind of jugged meat into a bathtub-size cauldron, while Jurr built the cooking fire beneath it. It looked as if the Queen of the Gorgons favored spring lamb….

No, those weren’t lambs, Kratos realized, as a cold knot formed in his belly.

They were human infants.

Kratos balled his fists, wanting to strike out at such horrific fare. Children. Human children like his own daughter, his dear daughter, who—

He stepped out but forced himself back into hiding until the proper moment. His rage mounted at the cannibalistic meal, feeding his need to destroy the Gorgons. Taking Medusa’s head had been decreed by Aphrodite—he would take grim pleasure in it, command from a goddess or not!

Shortly, the blind man loaded a huge trencher full of steaming baby stew and shuffled off toward a darkened archway across the small kitchen. Jurr watched him go, then cat-footed over to the vast kettle, snatched a ladle, and dipped a scoop, holding it up to his nose to capture the aroma. “That old blind bastard is finally learning to cook,” Jurr muttered, bringing the ladle to his lips. But before he could taste the baby stew, an enormous hand seized the back of his neck and yanked him into the air.

He dropped the ladle into the tureen and tried to yell, but the hand around his neck crushed his voice down to a squeak. He struggled, kicking his legs and clawing at the hand, but the ash-white skin seemed harder than bronze. He found himself, a moment later, turned so that he was face-to-face with the Ghost of Sparta.

His eyes went wider and rounder, and a strangled croak worked its way up between Kratos’s fingers.

“Medusa,” Kratos whispered. “Where? Just point. Point and I’ll let you go.”

Through frantic waving of his hands, Jurr managed to indicate that the bedchamber of the Queen of the Gorgons was the first door to the right along the darkened hall. Kratos nodded.

One quick squeeze crushed Jurr’s voice box, so that he couldn’t scream and so that Kratos wouldn’t have to listen to any pathetic begging. Kratos lifted this baby chef above the bath-size cauldron of boiling stew and then, true to his word, let him go.

Kratos knew that he was most in danger in the first instant of entering the Gorgon queen’s chamber. If he mistook the real Medusa for one of the reflections and found himself looking upon her face, he wouldn’t get a second chance.

Fortune favors the bold, he thought, and charged.

With a pantherish leap, Kratos sprang through the opposite archway, reaching the door to Medusa’s chamber only an instant behind the blind man. The blind man balanced the trencher unsteadily on one hand while he opened the door with the other. Hearing Kratos behind him, the blind man half turned. “Jurr—” was all he had time to say before Kratos snatched the trencher and, with a mighty kick, sent the blind man flying into the middle of the chamber beyond.

Kratos took care to look only at the ceiling. Jurr had not lied—he had not even come close to telling the full story. Mirrors paneled the walls. Even more mirrors stretched from side to side along the ceiling. The mirrors there showed the blind man plowing straight into the hideous monster. Before either of them had a chance to react, the snakes that were Medusa’s hair instantly unbraided themselves and struck at the blind man as one, latching on to his entire body and chewing on him as the water snake had chewed on Kratos’s greave. The snakes writhed as the blind man went into convulsions and they clamped him to Medusa’s face. Gut churning at the reflected sight, Kratos decided he didn’t need the rest of his plan.

Three quick steps sent him past the dying man and the Gorgon, who shrieked in rage as she tried to claw the hapless slave from her face. Just as she finally succeeded in pushing him away, her head lifted and, in the mirrored wall, she saw her death standing at her back. Kratos sprang into the air, striking downward with both feet and driving the monster face-first to the chamber floor. At the same instant, the Blades of Chaos flashed in a converging slash that sheared through both collarbones and the back of her upper ribs.

Kratos released the blades and reached down into the wound with both hands. Driving his fingers into the slimy mess of Gorgon tissue, he caught hold of her spine and with one mighty wrench ripped her head from her body. Her head snakes struck at his arm, but weakly; their venom had been expended on the blind man.

He paused for a moment, regarding the reflection of her deadly gaze in the mirror: those fearsome eyes, the tusklike fangs, hair of living snakes.

KRATOS ARCHED HIS BACK as the feeling of sudden upward movement seized him once more. From the dim, moss-lit subterranean chambers he was transported to a place of dazzling, brilliant white.

“You have done well, my Spartan.”

I’m not your Spartan, he thought, but he said only, “Lady Aphrodite?”

He used his free hand to shade his eyes against the glare and then could barely make out the diaphanous house silks that clung invitingly to the goddess’s body. She took the severed head from his hands, holding it by its now-dead hair snakes.

“Lady Aphrodite, are you finished with me?”

“Oh, yes—one last thing now that I have made certain you have completed your mission for me. Here,” she said, holding out Medusa’s severed head, its face carefully turned away. “Take it by the snakes. That’s right. Careful you don’t look into its eyes yourself. Now, sling it back over your shoulder as if you were putting away one of those impressively large swords you wear on your back.”

Kratos did so and felt the snakes evaporate from his grasp. “What happened? Where did it go?”

“It will be there when you want it. Just reach back for it, and it will be in your hand, turned the right way and ready to petrify.”

“How does that work?”

“It’s magic. One more thing you should know: Being dead diminishes Medusa’s power.”

“People won’t turn to stone?”

“Oh, they will. They just won’t stay that way for very long.”

Kratos stared directly at Aphrodite, waiting for the full explanation.

“Ten seconds from a full blast from the eyes. And whatever you do, don’t lose it.” Aphrodite spread her hands and regarded him closely. “Athena wants it when you’re done. She has some use for it. Something about a shield … maybe a cloak? Well, no matter. You have destroyed the Queen of the Gorgons, and now her power is yours!”

In an instant she towered above him like a mountain, as though her hair might brush the moon, and her voice rang like a great bronze bell. “Freeze and destroy them all with Medusa’s Gaze!” the goddess thundered. “Go with the gods, Kratos. Go forth in the name of Olympus!”

Before he could draw breath to reply, he was in Athens once more. Ares still towered above the Acropolis, casting house-size gobbets of Greek fire on every side.

When Kratos recovered his bearings, he found himself once more in the quieter neighborhood from which the goddess had taken him. He was still on the far side of the Acropolis from Athena’s temple—and from her oracle.

He put his head down and ran. Ran like the lion in pursuit of a lamb, swift as a falcon, tireless as the wind. He had to run. So much time had been wasted, and for what? A power he didn’t need. A power that had nothing to do with finding the Oracle, nor with defeating the God of War. If Aphrodite had really wanted to help him, she would have set him down at the door of Athena’s temple and put the Oracle in his lap.

Gods and their games. He was sick of all of them. Once he killed Ares, he would be done with them and their insane demands.

And the nightmares would be banished from his sleep, from his every waking instant. Forever.

The one nearest spotted him through the smoke. Bellowing its war cry, it reared and spun to face him, then without hesitation it charged.

Kratos widened his stance and waited.

Hooves pounding, the Centaur raced directly for him. Kratos realized he could not outrun the creature, not with the skin on his back cracking and giving new torment with every movement. He judged the distance and then dodged at the last possible instant. Like all four-legged animals, shifting to the side during attack was impossible, once committed. Kratos let the man–horse race past. Unlike other four-legged animals, however, the Centaur possessed the ability to swing its upper body about.

And this one did. Spear stabbing, it almost impaled Kratos. Only a quick parry with his blade prevented a vicious stab wound to Kratos’s side.

The man–horse tried to dig in its hind hooves to stop so it could rear and twist about, but Centaurs could not turn to face the opposite direction of attack quickly. Kratos used this to his advantage. He attacked while the Centaur’s weight pinned its rear hooves to the ground. If it had tried to kick him like a mule, Kratos’s attack would have failed.

He arched up over the man–horse’s back, Blades of Chaos swinging in wide circles of death. Either of the swords would have killed the Centaur. His right blade burrowed deep into the neck, while his left raked along the man–horse’s side and streamed sundered guts out onto the city square.

Kratos lost his balance, slipped in the Centaur’s blood, and fell heavily atop the corpse. For long minutes he could only lie in the puddle. He forced himself to his feet and stretched after recovering a bit of his usual power, though his movement was restricted by the skin taut as a drum’s head on his back. He surveyed the area. It was as he feared: Ares had infiltrated many of his army into the city. Two more Centaurs galloped to attack him.

One Centaur held a huge spear tucked like a lance under its corded arm; the other swung an iron weight at the end of a long chain. As they bore down on him, Kratos dropped low. The chain and ball swung harmlessly over his head, but the spear stung his forearm—only the chain embedded in flesh and bonded to bone saved him from losing the hand. But even the powerful impact of the slash did not slow his counterstrike. If he had been whole, if his muscles and powerful back had responded as they should, his aim would have been perfect. Instead, he missed and the Centaur flashed past, unscathed by his blades. Kneeling like a penitent, he whipped the Blades of Chaos out to his sides, backhanded, and sheared through the nearside front leg of each Centaur. The beasts fell forward and skidded along, leaving bloody smears on the pavement. Kratos stood and, with one more flick of the blades, slashed their heads from their bodies.

He shook the gore from his blades as he looked about for new enemies—new victims—but found only flames and carnage. Fires sprouted like unholy weeds, devouring the city.

He started back up the road to the Parthenon, each step stronger than the one before. The Blades of Chaos, in taking life, nourished him and allowed regeneration. Stiffness remained in his back as a reminder of the foolhardiness of taunting a god. Kratos used his blades at times as walking sticks to help him up the increasingly steep road. The soldier had said Athena’s oracle was in a temple near the majestic structure, which now stood blackened with soot and lit by the burning city below.

Kratos heard a rising-whistle sound he knew too well. In an eyeblink, he had thrown himself into a headlong dive that cleared a low wall one instant before another of the god’s fireballs splashed liquid flame throughout the neighborhood. A wave of fire broke over him, and he ran deeper into the courtyard, seeking cover under the tiled eaves. One touch of such anguish was all he could endure. He found a half-full fountain choked with weeds. He leaped into it and rolled in the damply rotting muck. The stagnant water smelled of dead fish, but it smothered the last of the burning gel that had clung to his skin.

“By the gods,” he said, gritting his teeth as a final wave of pain passed through him. Then he stood and knew he could fight on. For honor, for Athena—and because it was all he knew.

Returning to the paved street revealed only new obstacles. Fireball after fireball blasted all the roadways leading to the summit, making of them rivers of flame. As if he had divined Kratos’s destination, Ares closed every path.

Kratos cursed and threw himself once more into a sprint. He moved to circle the Acropolis—there must be some gap in the war god’s ring of fire.

His new energy took him into a quieter section of Athens, one that so far had escaped the worst of the destruction. People peered fearfully from windows as he passed, but no one lay dead in the street, though this was merely temporary; on the far side of the neighborhood, he met an undead patrol.

The skeletal horrors stalked the roadways, swinging scythes that looked as though they could slice through the columns of the Parthenon itself. And these particular creatures, Kratos noted, wore armor—armor that was blackened with soot but showed no other evidence of fire. Armor that could protect the undead from Ares’s fires was exactly what he needed.

He fell in behind the well-armored skeletons and increased his speed, closing quickly. Some unholy instinct must have warned the creatures of his swift approach. They spun about, the long, wickedly sharp blades of their death scythes angled to taste Spartan blood. He blocked the swing of the nearest with his left blade. Sparks and flame exploded like the green pine in a campfire. He swung around to the creature’s flank, keeping it—and its armor—between him and its companions.

Legionnaires crowded around him, hacking again and again; Kratos was too busy blocking to counter—especially because he didn’t want to damage their armor, which was after all the only reason they were worth fighting.

The clash of weapons sent showers of flame in all directions. The house at Kratos’s back caught fire. He ignored this; he saw an opening for attack. In one motion he released the Blades of Chaos and leaped forward to seize the haft of the nearest undead’s scythe. Flames from the burning house began to blister his exposed, tortured back.

He needed that armor.

Instead of wresting the weapon from the creature’s grasp, Kratos used his leverage to swing the undead bodily into the attacks from the others. Death scythes bit deeply through the creature’s torso, and in the instant their weapons were hung up by their comrade’s body, Kratos reached back and drew the Blades of Chaos once more. One lethal flourish, and undead heads fell like catapult stones. The bodies continued to jerk and wave their weapons convulsively, but the loss of their heads left them blind: easy prey.

Kratos dissected them with brisk efficiency, hacking off the arms and legs, leaving only the torsos. These undead, though, were no Spartans—it would take at least three of their corselets to make one sized for Kratos’s massive chest. Kicking away severed parts, he picked out the least-damaged corselet, unfastened it, and then strapped it across his back; another, only slightly more ripped, he belted over his front. The coverage was imperfect, but then, he wasn’t going to use it to defend himself against Ares’s monstrous legions, only against the killing heat of the war god’s fire.

A shrug of his shoulders settled the armor in the best fit he could achieve, but before he could once more search for a way to the summit, he saw another undead enter a house.

He’d fastened the armor barely in time when two more legionnaires attacked—and these held out magic shields. Kratos let out a cry of rage as he retaliated. The Blades of Chaos bounced off the shield of the lead undead and caused Kratos to stagger back. This instant of unbalance provided the opening for both legionnaires. Holding their gold-glowing shields high, they charged.

Kratos fought for his life. More than providing protection from his Blades of Chaos, those shields drained his strength. Every blow he landed sapped his power. Kratos retreated until his back pressed into a ragged stone wall. The two legionnaires parted slightly to come at him from different angles. With a loud scream of rage, Kratos launched himself directly forward, between the shields. Somersaulting, he came to his feet and reversed positions. He now had the undead backed against the wall.

He still faced swords wielded from behind shields impervious—detrimental!—to his own magic blades. Kratos dropped his Blades of Chaos and allowed them to snake behind his back as he dived low. The undead he targeted lowered the magic-blazing shield, but Kratos had anticipated this and twisted at the last possible instant. The shield exploded with eye-dazzling fury as it crashed into the ground. Kratos strained, his fingers wrapping around the undead’s ankle.

Against the wall, the legionnaire could not retreat. Kratos squeezed as hard as he could and crushed the undead’s leg. It stabbed at him with its spear. Kratos ignored the pain as the spear tip penetrated his arm, but the point did not sink deeply. The chains from the Blades of Chaos protected him from real damage.

Kratos grunted, lifted, and upended the undead before its companion could rush him from behind. A stomp to the head ended the threat from the fallen legionnaire. Kratos ducked as the other thrust at him. The spear dug into the stone wall, giving Kratos yet another opportunity. Getting past the enervating magic shield was impossible, so he caught the one dropped by his first foe. He spun it like a discus into the legionnaire struggling to pull its spear from the wall.

The magical edge severed the undead’s legs and brought it crashing down to join its companion. Kratos’s fist repeatedly smashed into the back of its head until it was reduced to dust.

Kratos kicked the magic shields aside. He started to continue on his way when screams from inside a building drew him to peer through the open door. A man and woman clung to each other as an undead legionnaire drew twin knives and clacked them together, as though savoring their terror.

Using the pommel of his sword, Kratos rapped sharply on the door frame. The undead glanced over its shoulder, then back at the man and woman. When it turned its face once more toward the Ghost of Sparta, it discovered only the edges of the Blades of Chaos in the final instant before being cut in two from collarbone to crotch.

Kratos stepped back and let the pieces fall. The legs kicked at him feebly. He ignored them.

“We are truly blessed by the gods!” said the man. “You have saved us!”

“You’re not saved. I have only delayed your death a moment or two.” Kratos turned to go. “Your energy would be better spent in running away.”

“We were paying tribute to Aphrodite,” the woman offered, showing him a small carved wood box in her palms. It was filled with vials of fragrant oils.

“You should be on the walls defending your city.”

“There is always time for tribute,” she said, looking at her man, who was obviously an artisan and not a soldier.

“Maybe for you,” he growled, and strode away toward the street.

Before his sandal could touch the paving stones, Athens vanished before his eyes. The world shimmered about him, and he felt as if he might be soaring into the sky.

Brightness blossomed into blinding empyreal glory … and out from that Olympian splendor appeared a woman of such full-bodied perfection that the sight of her hit him harder than any foe ever had.

Kratos had to clear his throat twice before he could speak. “Lady Aphrodite.”

“Greetings, Spartan. I wish to bestow upon you my thanks for the rescue of my disciples.”

“Goddess,” Kratos managed to choke out, bowing his head, “it is an honor to serve you.” He coughed and cleared his throat again. “However you might desire.”

“Kratos.” Aphrodite spoke his name as softly as a lover’s caress. “Zora and Lora have spoken of your talents.”

“Zora and Lora?” Kratos blinked. “The twins—they speak to you?”

“Not as often as they should,” the Goddess of Love purred. “But then, every parent has a similar complaint, I suppose.”

“You’re their mother?” This explained so many different things at once about the twins that Kratos found himself with no idea what to say next.

One slender finger from that slim hand traced the curve of his lips to silence any comment. “Athena asked me to contribute a gift of my own, to aid you in your quest.”

“The only gift I need is freedom to complete my task.”

Her laugh was like the chime of silver bells. “What you need, Spartan, is to be grateful for whatever a god chooses to bestow.” She caressed his cheek gently. The fingers turned cold as they stroked. “You will perform a task for me as well.”

“I am already engaged—”

“You will slay the Queen of the Gorgons.”

Kratos frowned. “But why her? Why now?”

“You are so adorable,” the goddess purred, “that I won’t have you eviscerated for daring to question me—this time. You must kill Medusa and bring me her head. The gift I will bestow on you is the power of the Gorgons: to turn men to stone!”

The goddess gestured and, with a wave, wiped away tranquil Olympus.

KRATOS TRIED TO SPEAK but had no breath, tried to see but had no light. He tried to move and did not know if the wild, whirling chaos he experienced was all around him or inside his head. Or both.

He crouched in a cold, dark place and heard the soft hissing of snakes.

He stood. The sooner he satisfied Aphrodite’s thirst for Gorgon blood, the sooner he could return to Athens and find the Oracle.

The gloom around him hid the slithering serpents. He took a few blind steps to one side, sloshing through ankle-deep water. His hand found a slimy rock wall. Pressing his ear against the wall, he waited through many slow, measured breaths in an attempt to detect any vibrations. Nothing.

He sighed. What had he expected? That Aphrodite would just point and make Medusa appear in front of him?

As his eyes adjusted to the murkiness, he began to make out his surroundings. The goddess had transported him to the juncture of three low-roofed tunnels hewn from living rock. No light shone down any of the tunnels; the light by which he now saw was the product of faintly luminescent moss clinging to crevices in the rock.

The tunnel straight ahead proved to be a dead end. Kratos shoved hard against the wall blocking his progress. His anger mounted. More wasted time.

The Oracle was in danger of death or worse if Ares captured her. Kratos didn’t care if the Oracle lived or died, so long as he learned her secret.

Kratos recalled campfire discussions among his officers before battle; some impious types had been speculating that the gods needed human worship the way a tree needs the sun. Could a god exist without worshippers? The way things were going in Athens, Kratos guessed he just might find out.

Would Athena’s power decline? Would she simply disappear? Zeus might prohibit one god from killing another, but Ares might have found a way to sneak around the ban.

In the past, Ares had always chosen brute force over subtlety, but perhaps he had learned his lesson. While the siege of Athens had the trappings of Ares’s old rage, he might have a different strategy in mind. Kill Athenians and Athena lost followers. Kill enough and her worshippers might abandon her for other gods—and who better to worship than the God of War, who had defeated their goddess?

Shows of strength in this uncertain world brought people to Ares’s temples. Kratos had, once upon a time, been the author of many of those shows and had himself been the earthly symbol of Ares’s might. Kratos’s officers had believed that a god without worshippers simply faded away like mist in the morning sun. If such a fate befell Athena, Kratos’s only chance for vengeance upon his former master would evaporate with her.

And the nightmares would continue unabated, rending sanity.

A few more blows upon the wall proved that it would withstand even his prodigious strength. Kratos turned and retraced his path. The water ahead began to ripple ominously before he reached the juncture where Aphrodite had deposited him. Kratos had to bend almost double to slide the Blades of Chaos off his back and bring them down in front of him. Barely in time.

Up from the dark waters struck a serpent whose head was larger than Kratos’s fist. Its fangs flashed as it struck. The venom dripping from their needle tips smoked in the gloom and caused the water where it fell to boil. Kratos blocked the strike with one blade while he struck back with the other. The snake’s head and a span of its neck flipped through the air. Its body thrashed wildly as it died, but the head continued to snap at him, its black eyes glaring with malice. Kratos pressed both blade tips into the head and waited for the viciousness to fade and die. Eventually, it did.

He looked up in time to see more ripples approaching: snakes swimming just under the murky surface, too many for him to avoid. One caught him, its fangs driving hard into his greaves, chewing as though it thought to drive its fangs through the heavy bronze. Kratos didn’t wait to find out if it was right. The pommel of a blade crushed a fragile skull. The fangs and jawbone remained clamped on his greave. The water ahead boiled as more snakes swarmed toward him, too many to count. Kratos slashed repeatedly down into the water in front of him, a blinding flourish that turned the blades into a shield of death. He drove grimly forward until he reached the juncture again. The water churned crimson with the snakes’ blood. And then the water calmed.

The dripping of moisture off the walls was all he could hear.

Kratos looked into the water and saw movement, but not of snakes. He lifted his foot and brought it down, thinking to crush any creature just below the surface. He felt his foot slide into the outline of a boot cut into the stone. Curious, he scooted his other sandaled foot about and found a corresponding indentation. For a moment he stood with both feet in the underwater impressions. As he started to step forward, he felt a tiny vibration that built and passed upward until it shook the chains embedded in his wrists.

Kratos saw the phosphorescent moss writhing on the walls. He lifted one foot from its indentation and the moss stopped glowing. Replacing his foot caused the moss to glow once more.

Curious, he reached out to touch the moss. Like a snake, it writhed sinuously away from his fingers. He growled deep in his throat. It was the only sound save the slow drip of moisture.

Stabbing out with his finger, he forced the animated moss to go around his digit. It spun about, encircling the spot on the stone wall where he pressed, as if the moss showed him an exit from an otherwise featureless tunnel. Leaning slightly, he applied pressure. Nothing happened.

He stepped from the outlines under his feet, and the moss ceased glowing. Kratos stomped to the end of the tunnel and found only another blank wall. Extensive investigation proved to him that there was no exit from the subterranean tunnels—none that he could find. He reached for both of the Blades of Chaos, then stopped.

“Two hands. There might be something in using two hands.” He returned to the indentations, slipped his feet into them, and moved his finger around on the right wall until the moss once more circled one specific spot. He pressed. Nothing.

Reaching to the other wall and repeating the movement produced another curlicue of green-glowing moss. This time, he moved his finger about and found a spot much higher on that wall before the moss stopped writhing and presented him with a specific spot.

Kratos pressed outward, fingers probing each of the marked spots.

“Mighty Zeus,” he whispered. His eyes went wide when a portion of the ceiling began to descend. Rather than jump back to defend himself, he stood his ground until the trapdoor had opened and lowered, giving him a ladder leading upward. Moving his fingers from the spots and stepping quickly, he reached the ladder just as it began to retreat aloft. Hanging on, he let the closing trapdoor carry him upward into a room whose floor was a foot above a sluggishly flowing stream. A channel of tightly placed stones held the stream in place. He shook himself dry. The snake with its fangs buried in his greaves came free when he scraped down his shin armor with the edge of his blade. He had not even realized it still clung to him with such tenacity.

These poisonous water snakes were nothing compared with the prey he sought. Not only must he face a monster who would turn him to stone if he so much as glanced at her face, he had to find one Gorgon in particular. Queen Medusa ruled her sisters, but unless she wore a crown or carried a scepter, Kratos had no simple way of picking her out from the rest.

Sandals scraped against stone as someone approached along the dry tunnel ahead. He raised the blades, but some primitive instinct warned him not to fight. Wit, for once, might bring victory, just as he had discovered the secret way into this lair. Kratos backed off and tucked himself from ankle to neck into a shallow stony niche lined with empty shelves. Other such niches pocked the chamber’s walls, but most of those had shelves stocked with objects. It seemed a fair guess that whoever came would fetch the items in storage and thus not even bother to look at a niche they knew to be empty.

And if he was wrong, he still had the blades. They would find this particular cabinet fully stocked with swift and bloody death.

Two men entered. One, a crookback, led the other, an old man who wore a filthy rag tied across his eyes. They began selecting items from nooks and crannies. The crookback laded the blind man with two boxes for every one of his own.

“My back is breaking from the load,” the crookback complained. “Carry another for me, will you?”

“I can hardly stand, Jurr, but go and pile it on. We daren’t make two trips. We cannot be late or Queen Medusa will punish us both.”

“Again,” Jurr said. “Once a day is more than I can bear. My back festers from the beatings she gives me.” He stacked several more heavy boxes onto the other’s considerable load while keeping only a pair of light ones for himself.

Kratos watched as they left, the blind man crushed by his load while the crookback showed a sprightlier stride. Kratos cared nothing for this. Clearly there were two sorts of people in this underground maze: those who did all the work, and those who could see. Being one of the latter made Kratos disinclined to disrupt the arrangement.

The only sound Kratos made when he followed was the faint squish of water squeezing from his sandals. As he went, he scratched trail markers in the luminescent moss. If he succeeded, he might have to find his own way out of here. Maybe Aphrodite would just snatch him back to Athens, but maybe he was required to return to where she had deposited him originally. He had never lost by preparing against betrayal.

Especially by gods.

“BRING MY MEAL, you disgusting vermin!”

This was a new voice, coming from a chamber ahead, where a lamp held back the gloom. Kratos stopped and pressed himself into the shadows outside the archway. Though the voice had been low and rough, like rocks being shaken in a brass jug, he caught some hint of inflection that told him the speaker might be female.

If he was right, a careless glance would doom him to an eternity as a stone statue, taunted by Gorgons in this twilight perdition.

The sighted man, Jurr, replied, “At once, Lady Medusa. I have brought the supplies.”

“You?” the blind man began. “I brought the—”

“Shh.”

“Shut your vile human mouths and get to work! My sisters and I grow hungrier by the moment. And angrier.” Her voice took on a dangerous edge. “It puts me in the mood for punishment.”

“Ohhh,” the blind man whined under his breath. “Oh, Zeus strike me dead before she touches me once more!”

“At least you can’t see, you lucky bastard,” Jurr snarled back just as softly. “Those mirrors, those accursed mirrors in her bedroom! Every way she turns, she can see her hideous self.”

Clanking of pots and the sounds of a fire being stoked lured Kratos into a quick look. He flicked a glance swifter than a blink, but he took in the entire kitchen. The blind man decanted some kind of jugged meat into a bathtub-size cauldron, while Jurr built the cooking fire beneath it. It looked as if the Queen of the Gorgons favored spring lamb….

No, those weren’t lambs, Kratos realized, as a cold knot formed in his belly.

They were human infants.

Kratos balled his fists, wanting to strike out at such horrific fare. Children. Human children like his own daughter, his dear daughter, who—

He stepped out but forced himself back into hiding until the proper moment. His rage mounted at the cannibalistic meal, feeding his need to destroy the Gorgons. Taking Medusa’s head had been decreed by Aphrodite—he would take grim pleasure in it, command from a goddess or not!

Shortly, the blind man loaded a huge trencher full of steaming baby stew and shuffled off toward a darkened archway across the small kitchen. Jurr watched him go, then cat-footed over to the vast kettle, snatched a ladle, and dipped a scoop, holding it up to his nose to capture the aroma. “That old blind bastard is finally learning to cook,” Jurr muttered, bringing the ladle to his lips. But before he could taste the baby stew, an enormous hand seized the back of his neck and yanked him into the air.

He dropped the ladle into the tureen and tried to yell, but the hand around his neck crushed his voice down to a squeak. He struggled, kicking his legs and clawing at the hand, but the ash-white skin seemed harder than bronze. He found himself, a moment later, turned so that he was face-to-face with the Ghost of Sparta.

His eyes went wider and rounder, and a strangled croak worked its way up between Kratos’s fingers.

“Medusa,” Kratos whispered. “Where? Just point. Point and I’ll let you go.”

Through frantic waving of his hands, Jurr managed to indicate that the bedchamber of the Queen of the Gorgons was the first door to the right along the darkened hall. Kratos nodded.

One quick squeeze crushed Jurr’s voice box, so that he couldn’t scream and so that Kratos wouldn’t have to listen to any pathetic begging. Kratos lifted this baby chef above the bath-size cauldron of boiling stew and then, true to his word, let him go.

Kratos knew that he was most in danger in the first instant of entering the Gorgon queen’s chamber. If he mistook the real Medusa for one of the reflections and found himself looking upon her face, he wouldn’t get a second chance.

Fortune favors the bold, he thought, and charged.

With a pantherish leap, Kratos sprang through the opposite archway, reaching the door to Medusa’s chamber only an instant behind the blind man. The blind man balanced the trencher unsteadily on one hand while he opened the door with the other. Hearing Kratos behind him, the blind man half turned. “Jurr—” was all he had time to say before Kratos snatched the trencher and, with a mighty kick, sent the blind man flying into the middle of the chamber beyond.

Kratos took care to look only at the ceiling. Jurr had not lied—he had not even come close to telling the full story. Mirrors paneled the walls. Even more mirrors stretched from side to side along the ceiling. The mirrors there showed the blind man plowing straight into the hideous monster. Before either of them had a chance to react, the snakes that were Medusa’s hair instantly unbraided themselves and struck at the blind man as one, latching on to his entire body and chewing on him as the water snake had chewed on Kratos’s greave. The snakes writhed as the blind man went into convulsions and they clamped him to Medusa’s face. Gut churning at the reflected sight, Kratos decided he didn’t need the rest of his plan.

Three quick steps sent him past the dying man and the Gorgon, who shrieked in rage as she tried to claw the hapless slave from her face. Just as she finally succeeded in pushing him away, her head lifted and, in the mirrored wall, she saw her death standing at her back. Kratos sprang into the air, striking downward with both feet and driving the monster face-first to the chamber floor. At the same instant, the Blades of Chaos flashed in a converging slash that sheared through both collarbones and the back of her upper ribs.

Kratos released the blades and reached down into the wound with both hands. Driving his fingers into the slimy mess of Gorgon tissue, he caught hold of her spine and with one mighty wrench ripped her head from her body. Her head snakes struck at his arm, but weakly; their venom had been expended on the blind man.

He paused for a moment, regarding the reflection of her deadly gaze in the mirror: those fearsome eyes, the tusklike fangs, hair of living snakes.

KRATOS ARCHED HIS BACK as the feeling of sudden upward movement seized him once more. From the dim, moss-lit subterranean chambers he was transported to a place of dazzling, brilliant white.

“You have done well, my Spartan.”

I’m not your Spartan, he thought, but he said only, “Lady Aphrodite?”

He used his free hand to shade his eyes against the glare and then could barely make out the diaphanous house silks that clung invitingly to the goddess’s body. She took the severed head from his hands, holding it by its now-dead hair snakes.

“Lady Aphrodite, are you finished with me?”

“Oh, yes—one last thing now that I have made certain you have completed your mission for me. Here,” she said, holding out Medusa’s severed head, its face carefully turned away. “Take it by the snakes. That’s right. Careful you don’t look into its eyes yourself. Now, sling it back over your shoulder as if you were putting away one of those impressively large swords you wear on your back.”

Kratos did so and felt the snakes evaporate from his grasp. “What happened? Where did it go?”

“It will be there when you want it. Just reach back for it, and it will be in your hand, turned the right way and ready to petrify.”

“How does that work?”

“It’s magic. One more thing you should know: Being dead diminishes Medusa’s power.”

“People won’t turn to stone?”

“Oh, they will. They just won’t stay that way for very long.”

Kratos stared directly at Aphrodite, waiting for the full explanation.

“Ten seconds from a full blast from the eyes. And whatever you do, don’t lose it.” Aphrodite spread her hands and regarded him closely. “Athena wants it when you’re done. She has some use for it. Something about a shield … maybe a cloak? Well, no matter. You have destroyed the Queen of the Gorgons, and now her power is yours!”

In an instant she towered above him like a mountain, as though her hair might brush the moon, and her voice rang like a great bronze bell. “Freeze and destroy them all with Medusa’s Gaze!” the goddess thundered. “Go with the gods, Kratos. Go forth in the name of Olympus!”

Before he could draw breath to reply, he was in Athens once more. Ares still towered above the Acropolis, casting house-size gobbets of Greek fire on every side.

When Kratos recovered his bearings, he found himself once more in the quieter neighborhood from which the goddess had taken him. He was still on the far side of the Acropolis from Athena’s temple—and from her oracle.

He put his head down and ran. Ran like the lion in pursuit of a lamb, swift as a falcon, tireless as the wind. He had to run. So much time had been wasted, and for what? A power he didn’t need. A power that had nothing to do with finding the Oracle, nor with defeating the God of War. If Aphrodite had really wanted to help him, she would have set him down at the door of Athena’s temple and put the Oracle in his lap.

Gods and their games. He was sick of all of them. Once he killed Ares, he would be done with them and their insane demands.

And the nightmares would be banished from his sleep, from his every waking instant. Forever.