powers.”
“Perhaps it is for the best,” Athena said.
“Best for whom, dear daughter, best for whom?” Zeus turned his attention back to the scrying pool and the vast destruction Ares delivered to the city and people of Athens. The Skyfather leaned still farther forward. “We’re just getting to the good part.”
Athena caught her breath as Ares appeared on the battlefield and began to crush Athenians under his sandal. Zeus gestured, and the view dissolved to a vision of Kratos sprinting up the long roadway toward the top of the Acropolis, just as a mortal woman failed to save her infant from a harpy-and another harpy snatched up the woman and savaged her with its talons.
“That woman is one of your worshippers!” Athena pointed at the bleeding woman. “Do you see?”
Zeus frowned. “Indeed. In fact, she’s a priestess-that little building of hers is an inn, consecrated to me in my Zeus Philoxenos role.”
“He thinks to destroy my worshippers,” she said. “Are you certain this priestess of yours was an accident? Perhaps he has aspirations for a higher throne.”
“Please, dear child.” Zeus thrust out his finger and touched the woman just as the harpy ripped out her spine. The ruler of the gods sighed and drew back his finger, now dotted with a single drop of water from the viewing pool. He turned and flicked the water droplet high into the air. It caught a ray of sunlight, turned into a rainbow, then vanished.
“There,” he said, looking satisfied. “She will be well judged by Aeacus at the gates of the underworld.”
“Why do you intercede in this way for a simple mortal worshipper, when you won’t allow me to intercede for my thousands?”
Zeus’s eyes flashed. “Because I can.”
He held her gaze until she had to look away. Then he became once more caught up by the vision reflected in the pool. “Look-there, do you see him? He’s killed the harpy, but now a whole company has him cornered! Perfect!”
“It is?”
“Tell me, how many monsters has Kratos destroyed today?”
Athena frowned. “Almost four hundred. Why?”
“Only four hundred?” Zeus looked exasperated. “What is his problem? He will never reach your oracle this way.”
She had faith in Kratos’s prowess. She would have even more if Zeus did not actively oppose him.
ELEVEN
MONSTERS CAME AT HIM from all directions.
A Minotaur let out a loud roar and charged ahead of its brothers, swinging a ball and chain over its head. Behind it trotted eleven more and six lumbering Cyclopes-and behind them, half a hundred undead heavy infantry.
A quick slash of the Blades of Chaos severed the chain of the Minotaur’s weapon, sending the weight at the end flying. Kratos cast a quick glance in the direction the weight had flown, hoping it might take out another of Ares’s army-it caught the nearest Cyclops full in the eye.
Then the Minotaur was upon him, but Kratos had judged his range to a nicety. He spun the blades in an intersecting flourish. One slashed through the Minotaur’s throat, while the other carved out the creature’s liver. The monster’s legs buckled, and it pitched forward onto its face in a last flurry of legs and horns and the spew of blood. Kratos drove both blades down into its skull and, with a wrench of his mighty shoulders, shattered the creature’s skull and painted its comrades with its brains.
Cyclopes pressed in upon him, ponderous clubs upraised. Kratos dove forward and rolled between the bowed legs of the one who’d been blinded by the flying chain weight. Clubs thundered to the ground on all sides, making the very earth tremble. One landed on the blind Cyclops’s left foot, crushing its bones with a spray of blood. The wounded monster howled and lifted its foot, holding it with one hand, while its other hand remained clapped to its bleeding eye. The creature hopped about, howling in agony, and Kratos-never slow to press an advantage-kept rolling and diving around the creature’s leg, drawing more club blows that only made the Cyclops’s howl ramp up in volume. Finally the monster lashed out with its free hand and somehow seized one of the others’ clubs, then began to lay about itself with prodigious energy, actually managing to land a number of powerful whacks on its companions.
Kratos gauged his distance and attacked. One thrust went upward into the creature’s heart. The razored edge of his other blade cut just behind the Cyclops’s knee-and caused it to topple onto Kratos. As quick as he was, Kratos found himself unable to get out from under the massive body that struck him and pinned him to the ground.
All around he heard Ares’s creatures going wild. Helpless under the quivering, dying mass of the Cyclops, he fought to escape. Then he fought for breath. The Cyclops crushed the wind from his lungs. Try as he might, he could not breathe.
Kratos heaved, but the beast’s bulk was like sand on the beach. It flowed and filled in any space around him. His lungs began to burn. Venting a huge roar, he tried to shove the Cyclops off him-and failed.
Rage engulfed Kratos as surely as the Cyclopean flesh. He bit down on the hairy belly smothering him and twisted, ripping away the flesh and opening the stomach cavity. A torrent of fluids doubly threatened to suffocate him; the air in his lungs was being used up fast. He bit again, rending intestines and stomach and moving upward like some vile maggot in the Cyclops’s guts. He spat and strained, arching his back. His head and shoulders entered the creature’s body cavity. Head spinning as the world went black, he heaved again and banged against a mighty rib. Turning to the side, he made one last mighty snap. His teeth closed on sinewy muscle before he sank back, almost dead.
He sputtered and gasped as fetid air reached his nostrils. He spat out the gore in his mouth and gasped in huge drafts. The sky showed through the hole his teeth had ripped in the Cyclops.
Kratos shifted from side to side, got his shoulders around, and finally freed one arm that had been pinned under the Cyclops’s bulk. Once he reached up and grabbed the rib, he was able to pull-hard. Half the creature’s body ripped free. Coated with gore and digestive fluids, Kratos struggled upward and finally tumbled from the Cyclops’s side to lie panting on the ground.
IT WAS TOO MUCH to expect that he would not be noticed by Ares’s marauding horde. He got to his feet and faced a half dozen Minotaurs. Still weak and shaking from his excursion through the Cyclops’s gut, knowing his physical prowess was inadequate for this fight, Kratos reached back over his shoulder with his left hand. In desperation, he again found the serpent hair of Medusa’s head materializing in his grasp. He brought the Gorgon’s head whipping forward, its eyes ablaze with emerald fire. The Minotaurs averted their eyes.
Kratos sprang straight up to kick the nearest Minotaur behind the ear, which knocked its head forward with such force that one of its horns gored the monster next to him. Kratos left them to sort that out for themselves. He landed in a roll that brought him to a crouch by another’s ankle. He grabbed the beast’s hoof with both hands and yanked it from its feet. If he had been able to recover his full strength, he could have broken its legs. Instead, the Minotaur slammed to earth with a painful-sounding thump-but a little bit of pain was a great deal less than Kratos had intended.
He stood and dragged the Minotaur with him, getting it in a headlock. Putting his entire body into the move, Kratos twisted so hard he broke the creature’s neck. The other Minotaurs began to regroup, sure now that Kratos could not use his magic against them successfully. They looked sideways at him, ready to avert their heads if he produced Medusa’s head once more. For Kratos, that was magic better forgotten in favor of the sword.
He reached for the Blades of Chaos as the Minotaurs backed away.
“Cowards,” he snarled. Then he realized the battle was joined by undead infantry with javelins.
Needle-pointed steel rained around him. His only escape lay within the building and the trapdoor that the unfortunate woman had been shouting about.
Dripping blood, he backed into the archway of the inn the woman had indicated. To retreat burned him like
