feet in the air. It became more difficult to breathe, and his legs-those tireless legs that tramped fifty miles in a day-began to ache from exertion.
He came to a bridge spanning a deep gorge ahead of him. Along the bridge marched fifty or more Athenians, all bearing large wicker offering baskets and going to Athena’s temple. He understood now how the Oracle’s temple had withstood the assaults of the God of War-it wasn’t in the Parthenon at all but was at the summit of some magically concealed path, which could be seen and trodden only by the faithful!
As he hurried toward the bridge, a shrill whistling filled the air. He looked up and saw a fireball descending from the heavens, and it occurred to him that even if he could not see the path or the temple, Ares could apparently still see him.
The Spartan dove and rolled aside. The clinging, burning fire never touched him this time-but it splashed across the bridge. Dozens of supplicants screamed. Some leaped from the bridge to plummet hundreds of feet to the rocks below, blazing like small suns as they tumbled downward. Those on the bridge struck directly by the Greek fire were now encased in charcoal shrouds that had once been their skin. He heard soul-curdling screams from them. Hideously burned, trapped in their sooty sheaths, each second of life was an eternity of agony.
But someone took pity on them-Athena, or perhaps Zeus himself-for with a grinding, squealing shriek of bronze on stone, the bridge dropped, and the burning Athenians were granted death upon the rocks far below.
Kratos rushed around a final turn in the path and stared across the chasm. From his glimpse before, he thought Ares’s fireballs had destroyed the bridge; instead, more than half the bridge survived-but it was tilting upward into the air, away from Kratos, cranked by an enormous winch on the far side of the chasm. A short, powerful man struggled with the handle to lock it in place.
“Stop!” Kratos shouted. “Lower the bridge! I must reach the temple!”
“Go away!” the bridgekeeper shouted back. “The monsters prowl everywhere. Whole companies mount the path behind you. If you love the goddess, you’ll help me destroy the bridge!”
“I serve Athena! She has tasked me with finding her oracle! Lower the bridge!” Kratos took a step forward, to the very brink of the chasm.
“Even if I do, a third of it has been destroyed! How will you cross the gap? If you can fly, what do you need the bridge for?”
“Lower the bridge,” Kratos growled. “I won’t ask again.”
“I will die for the goddess!”
“Fine.” Kratos reached back over his right shoulder, filling his hand with solid lightning.
The bridgekeeper squinted across the chasm. “Hey, now-hey,” he said uncertainly. “What’s that in your hand?”
“See for yourself.”
The thunderbolt shot from his hand and blasted to flinders the platform where the man stood. The bridgekeeper’s scream echoed through the gorge even after his broken body splattered across the rocks below.
Argument with the bridgekeeper at an end, Kratos was still left the problem of crossing the chasm. Kratos scowled at the winch. He could certainly use a tame harpy right about now. Or even an owl. If Athena really wanted him to reach her oracle, she could at least share a couple of her sacred birds.
Neither friendly harpies nor Olympian owls made any sudden appearance. Kratos reached back for another thunderbolt.
He let fly at the winch, blasting it to scrap. The huge chains shrieked as the drawbridge swung down. The crash as it fell back into place finally erased the echoes of the bridgekeeper’s death.
Kratos paused to judge the remaining gap. Twenty-five or thirty feet, no more, but a misjudgment of distance spelled his death on the rocks below.
He took a couple of steps for momentum and hurled himself into the air. As he sailed toward the wreckage at the near end of the bridge, another whistle from the sky rose to a scream. He caught the end of the bridge, fingers clutching at splinters of wood and stone, and swung himself into a rising backflip that carried him to the somewhat more solid structure a bit farther in. He looked up toward the rising scream and saw another ball of Greek fire hurtling from the sky, directly at him. Even if he survived the fire, it would certainly destroy the bridge; Kratos had no desire to follow the bridgekeeper down and add his body to the gory pile below.
Acting rather than consciously deciding, he loosed another thunderbolt from his hand, slicing the night to meet the fireball. The detonation splattered the fireball in all directions. Kratos spun to avert his face as bits of the tarry fire rained down on him. The last things he needed on his face were more scars. Some caught on the flooring of the bridge and sizzled to life upon the new fuel of the bridge’s span.
He leaped for the other side, sprinting to outrace the sizzling flame, but before he could reach the safety of the rocky outcropping, he felt the structure shift under his weight, shudder-then collapse. Kratos scrambled up the burning planks as though they were a ladder, barely reaching the rocky path before the bridge came apart and tumbled into the chasm.
Kratos stared back across the rocky gap for one brief moment. At least the bridgekeeper should be smiling up from Hades. No monster would cross that chasm unless it could fly. He turned and moved on.
The steep path became stairs that led straight to the top of the mountain. At the summit towered a vast many-tiered structure, three or four times the size of the Parthenon below and ten times its height, all of elegantly constructed marble leafed in the purest gold.
As he climbed the stairs, sounds of battle came from above. He straightened and drew his blades. Slow passage through the air caused the Blades of Chaos to hiss and trail sparks. Kratos took the steps into the temple swiftly and silently, moving as stealthily as he could until he found the source of the clank of sword on sword.
A large devotional area in the center of the temple was spattered with fresh blood. Two soldiers staggered from behind the statue of Athena that towered over the far side of the chamber, trying desperately to hold off the attacks of five or six undead heavy infantry.
Kratos nodded to himself. Of course-as soon as the God of War had located the temple, his foul Hades spawn had begun to appear. Even here, within the holiest sanctum of the goddess.
He cat-footed across the open area and cut the legs of four undead from under them before the creatures knew he was there. A few quick slices settled the others. One soldier was down, bleeding out the last of his life on the goddess’s pristine floor. The other Athenian cast one grim nod of thanks toward Kratos, then let out a war cry and charged back behind Athena’s statue.
His head rolled out an instant later.
Kratos-reluctantly-admitted to himself that maybe not all Athenians were cowards.
The monster that had just sent the valiant soldier to Hades rounded the statue and came at him. Another undead legionnaire, but this one towered taller than a Minotaur, was clad in impenetrable armor, and both its arms terminated in death scythes instead of hands.
The banefires within its empty eye sockets fixed on Kratos as if issuing a silent challenge to combat. The hideous monster attacked with a speed that caught Kratos by surprise.
Barely turning aside the wickedly sharp blade, Kratos gave ground and got to the center of the temple where he could fight unhindered. The legionnaire rushed him and lost a leg. As it fell past, Kratos delivered a second cut that took off both the legionnaire’s hands. The death scythes clattered across the floor. Kratos looked at the struggling monster, then swung his sword a final time. The head rolled after the scythes.
For all its fierce aspect, the legionnaire had proven to be no great opponent.
“Aid me!” came a new shout from behind the statue. “To my side, if you love Athena!”
A third Athenian soldier fought a pair of legionnaires by himself, fighting on though weakened from a dozen cuts, some deep and at least one likely mortal.
Kratos added his strong arm to the fight. Brave Athenians were rare enough that he felt he should contribute to this one’s survival. He pressed the legionnaires back and saw why the Athenian soldiers had been engaged behind the statue: There a hidden door had been broken to shards, opening a narrow corridor that led, Kratos surmised, to the Oracle’s quarters.
These legionnaires were no more challenge than had been their larger brother. Kratos wove a curtain of death about them, pressing in for the kill-and the world exploded around him.
A fireball burst on the temple roof and burned through, laying it open to the sky above. A great gobbet of the Greek fire fell fully upon the Athenian and killed him instantly. The undead this brave spirit had dueled also returned
