worried Kratos. Even when they missed him, those clubs knocked huge holes in the walls. The already-fragile structures shuddered with every blow. On the rooftops above the courtyard, skeletal archers clattered into place, beginning a rain of flaming arrows to cut off any hope of retreat.
One brief glance over his shoulder was enough to escalate his sense of peril: Now coming up to support the Cyclopes were six Minotaurs, spreading to fill all gaps.
They came for him. All at once.
Pinned between the archers and the combination force of Minotaurs and Cyclopes, he saw no way out.
But he wasn’t ready to die. Not yet.
“Come on, then!” he roared. “Come and die!”
Kratos blocked an ax blow from one Minotaur and lunged, catching a Cyclops behind the hamstring. A slash hobbled the monster, but as he limped back, the other two crowded close to join the battle.
Kratos slipped out from under another earthshaking club blow from a Cyclops and began a steady parry. The Minotaurs had ditched their axes in favor of long spears, with which they could strike at him without getting in the way of the Cyclopes; one slip would leave him as full of holes as a cheese grater. They coordinated their attacks like a well-trained, experienced unit.
He was only one mortal against myriad creatures dragged from Hades, but it was he who attacked. “Out of my way or die where you stand!” he thundered, and then undertook to make his boast into a simple statement of fact.
Kratos slipped between the Cyclopes and struck a mighty double-bladed blow into the chest of the nearest Minotaur. New strength and power flowed up the chains into his body as the blades drank the man-bull’s life. He whirled to hamstring another Cyclops, but the enormous monster was faster than it looked. The one-eyed creature swept its vast club into a rising parry and cleared the blades from between them, then dropped its club and wrapped its arms around Kratos’s chest. The Cyclops squeezed until the Spartan’s ribs began to crack and clouds of blackness washed through Kratos’s vision.
The Cyclops roared its triumph-until its lone eye focused on the Spartan’s face.
Kratos was smiling.
The blades came down at the joining of the Cyclops’s neck and shoulders, carving a gore-splashing V downward until they met at the creature’s monstrous heart. Kratos released the blades to seize the Cyclops’s head-which still blinked its eye in astonishment-and then hurled it, along with much of the creature’s spine, into the path of the jabbing spears of the Minotaurs.
As the rest of the Cyclops’s body shuddered and collapsed, Kratos kicked off it into a small gap between the corpse and the stone wall.
His victory was short-lived. His battle with the Cyclops, quick as it had been, had allowed the Minotaurs to surround him. Kratos spun in a full circle and saw a dozen of the bullheaded monsters advancing. Even the Blades of Chaos would not slay so many. If he engaged one or two, that many more would attack from behind. He crouched behind the Cyclops’s massive body, using it as a battlement, while he reached back over his shoulder-and his hand filled with twisting serpents. The Minotaurs rushed him from every direction. He swung the deathly head of Medusa out before him.
Emerald energy crackled out from the Gorgon’s dead eyes, and each foe it touched instantly stiffened into cold gray limestone. One Minotaur, caught in mid-thrust, toppled sideways, knocking another to the street-where it shattered like a dropped clay pot.
Kratos sprang to action. Ten seconds was all he had.
The blades flashed out, and where they struck, the statues shattered. Kratos leaped up to the shoulders of the one remaining Cyclops and kicked himself up and out again, toppling the frozen creature, whose weight crushed its hamstrung brother and the last two Minotaurs.
And as Medusa’s fell power abated, chunks and shards of petrified monster turned back into meat and bone and blood, a sprawl of carnage that filled the street.
“Lady Aphrodite,” Kratos murmured, “I should never have doubted.”
A whisper, hardly more than a zephyr in the tumult, came beguilingly to his ear: “Perhaps someday I’ll let you apologize. Personally.”
He released Medusa’s head back over his shoulder, sheathed the blades, and ran as though all the forces of Hades snapped at his heels.
Which they did.
Dodging, he went uphill, although he found no easy path toward the Parthenon. It seemed that all the mountain burned. The acres atop the Acropolis flamed with the fury of a new sun.
“Helios…” Kratos wondered aloud. “Have you joined my enemies?”
Athena had enlisted the aid of powerful allies, but Ares might have Olympian aid as well. The political intrigues of Mount Olympus were mysterious and deadly for any mortals caught up in them. He wasn’t too concerned. He had sworn ten years ago that whatever dared to stand between him and his vengeance would be destroyed, whether it be man, beast, or god.
Anyone who wanted to live had better stay out of his way.
He started up a narrow street that looked promising, but then mist swirled out of nowhere in front of him. He swatted at it with his right-hand blade, but the mist formed a thicker cloud just beyond his reach. Kratos settled the blades into a fighting grip. Whatever new threat this might prove to be, he would destroy it as he had all others. When the mist flowed and took the shape of a thin column, he swung as hard as he could.
The blade passed through the mist, leaving not so much as a swirl to mark its passage.
He was debating whether he should use the Rage of Poseidon or if Medusa’s Gaze might give this mist enough form for him to strike. Before he had decided, the mist solidified into a tall, beautiful woman wearing little more than thin streamers of cloud for a skirt and a top wrapped around her bodice but once. The material was as transparent as the mist, but even as he watched, she became more substantial.
Some sort of succubus? A Siren? It didn’t matter-she looked solid enough now. He slashed into the woman with a strike that would cut a mortal in half.
She did not appear to notice. “Do not fear, Kratos. I am the Oracle of Athens, here to help you defeat Ares. Revealed in my divinations are secrets unknown even to the gods. Find my temple to the east and I will show you how to murder a god.”
“Oracle! Wait!” Kratos dropped the blades and stared through the once again empty space. He looked up the hill toward where the Oracle had pointed. A misty gesture, vagrant air currents-how could he know?
The path narrowed quickly, but he kept climbing. When he reached a spot halfway up, he looked back over Athens and shook his head in dismay. The fighting was nearly over. Ares roared with evil mirth, bellowing flame like a volcano, as his army flowed like the sea through the streets of Athens.
“God of War,” Kratos said through his teeth, “I have not forgotten you. For what you did that night, this city will be your grave!”
An earthquake shook the city center. Kratos had to stop and widen his stance in order to keep his feet. Smoke from the burning buildings cleared for a moment to give him a direct view of Ares himself.
The huge god stepped over the Long Wall and strode up the causeway, stepping on Athenians too slow to escape his advance. The war god roared, shaking the heavens and the earth. He reached down, caught a soldier, and flicked him away as he might an annoying bug. The screams were thin and high and then died along with the man when he crashed into the roof of a temple devoted to Zeus. Then Ares began stamping on any who caught his eye, his fury palpable.
Ares rampaged through the city, crushing buildings and kicking away people in the square. The city was entirely at the mercy of the God of War, and mercy was in short supply. Ares had no more mercy than he did compassion or self-restraint. It was a bad night to be Athenian.
Kratos was a Spartan. Was there ever a good night to be Athenian?
He turned his back on Ares and followed the roadway upward onto the Acropolis. Another earthquake took him off his feet, forcing him to roll clear as a stone wall collapsed beside him. Kratos climbed back to his feet to look into the city.
Ares had drawn a sword the size of ten warships and raised it high above his head. The God of War brought it crashing down again with such force that houses for blocks around crumbled as the shock wave spread throughout the city. Ares delivered another blow, but this time Kratos was braced for it. He turned back to his path
