Kratos looked over the edge of the platform and felt no victory. The hammer-swinging giant had been a worthy opponent but nothing more. It had been only an impediment to finding Pandora’s Box. Kratos looked across the narrow catwalk and then began to walk on it. The walk was hardly wider than his sandals, and the drop to the floor where the monster’s body lay had to be a hundred feet, but he never faltered. Confident strides took him to an island in the middle of the room, where a lever had been locked into place. Studying the area, Kratos saw that his only hope for getting to another entryway in the chamber wall some fifty feet under him was to reach a cable strung from one side to the other. A jump might allow him to grab the cable as he fell, but if his hands slipped or he misjudged his trajectory off this isle of safety, his fate would be sealed. There was nothing below the cable for him to seize if he missed it.
Another path suggested itself to him. He followed the mechanism controlled by the lever and saw how it dropped a huge weight to the floor below. That descent would unwind a chain and give him a safer way down to the cable, although it would be at the far end of that stretched line, requiring him to work his way hand over hand to the portal. He never hesitated. He took off the securing line on the lever and yanked hard, setting the massive gears and pulleys into motion. The huge weight lowered from above.
As the weight passed, Kratos jumped and grabbed the chain holding it. For a moment he swayed, because his added mass disturbed the mechanism as it unwound the chain and lowered the iron block. But he found himself ready when the weight flashed past the cable. He gathered his legs under him and made a powerful leap, hands outstretched. Success! He gripped the heavy cable and caused only a slight sagging from his added weight.
Kratos began working hand over hand toward the far side of the chamber. He kept his goal in sight to avoid looking downward at the gears clacking and clashing underneath. A slip and he would be ground up and sent to Hades in tiny pieces. Working swiftly, he’d reached the midpoint along the cable when he felt it sag more than it had only seconds before. Like some arboreal creature in its element, he reversed his direction and looked behind along the length of cable he had already traversed.
One hand left the cable as he reached for the Blades of Chaos. Following him along the aerial pathway were two grasping, chittering monsters with saliva-dripping fangs and an ability to swing and move that he could never match. Kratos considered severing the cable, which would send the far half crashing into the distant wall while the half he clung to would swing forward so he could climb to the portal when he hit the wall.
Such was not to be. The monsters swarmed forward, climbing over each other in their haste to kill him. Taloned fingers swiped at him, forcing him to recoil. Bringing up his feet to kick out held them at bay for only an instant. As he swung back down, they came at him. His grip on the cable firm, he dared to swing his blade. It struck at an awkward angle and did little damage to the first creature-long, deep scratches appeared on his sword arm as talons raked him. Worse than the pain that threatened to cause him to abandon the use of his sword was the second creature’s attack, swarming over the first along the cable.
It went not for his sword arm but for the hand holding the cable. It snapped savage fangs and caught a finger, almost severing the digit from his hand. Kratos roared in anger and let the bloodlust he had known for ten full years rise to take control. He caught the second creature between his thighs, twisted, and pulled it away from its hold on the cable. He swung away and simply released his vise grip, sending the creature plunging to the distant floor. But it never struck. Its body was tossed high on a spinning gearwheel, then caught and minced in the ponderous mechanism that seemed to have no purpose other than to grind out death.
The creature’s companion made the fatal mistake of watching the death below. With one hand on the cable, Kratos released his hold on his blade and grabbed. His fingers closed around an exposed neck. Tendons stood out on his forearms as he squeezed the life from the creature, but he did not stop when all movement ceased. His blood from the deep scratches ran down his hand and onto the flesh of the dead monster, tainting it. Only when Kratos was satisfied that he had marked the creature forever in Hades with his blood did he send it tumbling after the other to be dismembered in the gears below.
Kratos swung back and gripped the cable, only to have his fingers slip and almost cause him to crash to his death. The blood from the cuts and scratches had turned his fingers slippery. His strength remained, but the cable might as well have been oiled for all the traction he now had on it. His right hand came free, leaving him dangling precariously. Even as he wiped off his hand, he knew this would not work; more blood oozed from his wounds to again slicken it.
Kratos doubled up and swung his heels over the top of the cable, locking them to give more support. He had no way of stanching the blood leaking out of his bone-white flesh, but keeping his ankles locked above the cable prevented him from following his enemies to the floor beneath. Dangling upside down, he pulled himself along the cable as quickly as he could, finally reaching the end of the line. A quick twist allowed him to clutch an outcropping under the portal.
He wiped his hands, one at a time, to clean them of blood, and then pulled himself up to the ledge. Standing, he faced a short corridor. Stride long, Kratos went to see if he had finally reached Pandora’s Box. In only a few minutes he realized that he hadn’t.
EIGHTEEN
“I KNOW THAT SWORD,” Zeus murmured as he looked into the scrying pool. “That blade is one of the most powerful weapons in all creation. How did you trick Artemis into giving it to Kratos?”
“Trick her, Father? I?” Athena shook her head. “She and Ares have reached a kind of truce-but she has seen his vicious rampage of insanity firsthand. She did not relinquish the sword lightly. I believe that she wishes to show her support by helping Kratos through the temple.”
“I’ve seen my son’s bloodlust as well,” Zeus muttered darkly. “He has burned most of Athens to the ground. Only a few buildings remain around the main square, and only the temples atop the Acropolis stand. Even your Parthenon has been blackened with soot from the fires and is falling into disrepair.”
“Most of your shrines are gone. He kills your worshippers just as he singles out mine for his brutal murders.”
“War is always messy,” Zeus said. “Ares has again refused to attend me and explain why he attacks my followers so aggressively, though. It is one thing to burn Athens to the ground, another to flaunt it in such a fashion that it offends me. Unless,” Zeus said, turning thoughtful, “his passion for war has turned into a cancer burning away at his brain.”
“He wants it for his own.” With her usual focus and determination, Athena steered the conversation back onto her course. “And Kratos, Father? Will he receive your favor?”
Zeus was uncharacteristically slow in responding. He did not look at her directly but studied her reflection in the scrying pool. “I am curious, beloved daughter. I have watched you go to considerable lengths to support and protect your pet Spartan.”
“He is the last hope of Athens.”
“Really? And yet, when you intercede with me-with the other gods as well-you never seek help for your worshippers. Or your city, only your priests. You say that Kratos is their hope-as you seem to be his-but wouldn’t your powers of persuasion and manipulation be better spent entreating direct aid? Hephaestus, for example, might have extinguished all those fires with a single wave of his hand. Apollo might have healed your wounded. I myself-”
“Yes, Father, I know. You have the right of it. As always, you see more deeply than any other.”
Athena took a deep breath and decided-in this extremity-that her cause would now, finally, be best served by the straight truth. “My Lord Father, Ares’s true target is not me, nor is it my city.”
Zeus looked at her, his thoughts veiled behind an expressionless face.
“Father, his target is your throne!”
“So your goal all along-the final truth of your endgame-has been solely to protect me?”
“Forgive my presumption,” Athena said. “I only feared that you might allow your well-known fondness for your children to cloud your judgment of Ares.”
“Or, perhaps, that my well-known fondness for my children might also cloud my judgment of you.” Zeus still showed no emotion, but Athena had heard just a hint of concern at the way Ares destroyed the shrines to Zeus throughout Athens. “You seeks only to save me from myself? Because I have forgotten the lessons of my own
