Athens was in flames.
SIX
KRATOS STOOD in the tall tower that commanded the walls above Piraeus. From here he could see the great Long Walls that connected the port to the city of Athens, more than three miles inland. Though, as a Spartan, he considered Athenians to be weak, cowardly, and generally worthless, this day he had to give them a certain grudging respect. With only citizen soldiers to hold them, these twinned great walls still stood mostly intact. An impressive achievement, that, even against a conventional army.
Against Ares’s hordes of harpies, undead legionnaires, Cyclopes, and who knew what other monstrosities scraped from the underside of Hades, the Athenians’ ability to so far hold the walls was astonishing-something Kratos would not have believed if he had not seen it with his own eyes.
“It is said that the God of War, Ares himself, takes the field against us,” said the exhausted, hollow-eyed captain of the tower guard. “Ghost of Sparta, is it so?”
Kratos ignored him. The last thing he needed was to give these pathetic part-time soldiers an excuse to run away. His mind was on something else that he would not have believed unless he had seen it with his own eyes; he turned to cast his gaze seaward, in hopes of catching a last glimpse of the sails of his onetime ship vanishing over the horizon.
Coeus and many of the others had proven their worth to him. Having them beside him, for only a brief instant, would not change the outcome of this battle, but it would afford the ship’s new captain and crew the chance to die nobly in battle. Sailing off as they did only postponed their deaths.
Unless Ares was stopped at the walls of Athens.
And as Kratos had slipped away from the ship in the dark predawn hours, the statue of Athena at the prow spoke to him once more-to remind him that the death of Ares would earn him forgiveness for his crimes. As if he needed reminding. Athena also spoke to him of her oracle in Athens; the Oracle would tell him how to defeat the God of War.
He brought his attention once more to the battle for Athens. Ares’s legions were arrayed mainly against the city itself-and not uniformly either. For some reason Kratos could not fathom, the creatures seemed to avoid the groves and grottoes that dotted the countryside around the city. Kratos shook his head, uncomprehending-putting those groves to the torch would have made more sense-but the God of War had never been known for his keen tactical mind.
Unlike Athena, who was legendary for the subtlety of her battle plans, Ares preferred to simply drive his armies forward in great waves, a rising tide of death, until they finally smashed through his enemies’ defenses and slaughtered every living creature in their path.
Kratos knew this too well. For many years, he had been the one pushing the armies onward in great bloody battering rams of human flesh. For many years, he had laughed like a blood-drunk monster as his men put whole nations to the torch. And he would have been doing it still, were it not for that one little village… that one humble shrine to Athena… and those who sheltered within it.
Kratos shook himself free of the memories. Like quicksand, the madness that lurked always beneath the surface of his mind threatened to suck him down and drown him in an unrelenting nightmare.
His assessment of the tactical situation was unsentimental. Only a trickle of carts still crept up the wide road between the Long Walls. From what he’d seen in Piraeus, most of the draft animals had been already slaughtered for meat. No ships entered the harbor with fresh supplies; out past the breakwater, dozens of burning hulks sent the smoke of dead sailors toward the skies and formed a persuasive warning against daring the waters within. From the red-lit pall of smoke roiling upward from the city, Kratos guessed that Ares’s creatures had found a way to hurl Greek fire over the walls-or, perhaps, simply had their harpies carry the smoldering pots and cast them to the ground from above.
Once Ares’s legions breached the Long Walls, any hope of reinforcement or resupply would be lost-and, worse, those legions would have a wide paved road upon which to march against the weakest point in the defenses of the city in the hills above.
His army would march quickly and slaughter all as it went. Athens would fall, without doubt. To Kratos’s practiced eye, it looked as if the city might not stand until morning.
“Athena has not abandoned us.” The captain sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. “The gray-eyed goddess will break these armies-she would never allow her city to fall!”
“Hold fast to whatever courage you have,” Kratos said darkly. “Athena has heard your prayer.”
“She-” The captain sounded breathless with sudden hope. “What help? When will her aid arrive?”
“Today this Spartan is your Athena-sent ally,” Kratos said, and vaulted through the tower’s window, landing cat-footed on the wall below. Another leap took him to the road.
He fell into the ground-devouring stride he had used in the field so many times to move his soldiers into position. The Long Walls cast a cool shadow across the road. From atop them, archers fired endless volleys of arrows. Kratos had no need to see their targets; he heard them. Growls, snorts, animal noises-screeches and roars that could come from no human throat.
Kratos ran on. He saw no reason to waste time fighting for these walls, when any fool could see they’d not stand another day.
An Athenian archer, falling from one wall, crashed to the roadway a few yards ahead of Kratos. The man had a great spear sticking all the way through him, and his face had been ripped away by harpy claws, but as he hit the roadway with crushing force, he still held his bow high, protecting his weapon with the last of his strength. Kratos approved of this-the man was nearly as disciplined as a Spartan. Well, a very young Spartan. One not yet fully trained. Nonetheless, Kratos went to him, knelt, and heard the gurgle of the Athenian’s last words.
“Take my bow. Defend the city!” was all the archer grated out before his spirit left to meet Charon on the bank of the Styx.
Kratos pried the bow loose from the corpse’s clutches and dislodged the quiver with a dozen arrows still in it. While he preferred the Blades of Chaos or his own bare fists, Kratos was a master of all weapons. He tested the draw on the bow and let the string twang without sending an arrow on its way. The archer had been a strong man, and this weapon might prove useful.
As though summoned by his thought, shrill cries of panic came from the civilians who drove the carts ahead. Panic became agony as a whole section of the wall bowed inward, raining loose stones and falling archers. In an instant, a dozen feet of the wall had collapsed.
Without conscious thought, Kratos nocked an arrow and let it fly. His shaft flew straight to the undead legionnaire forcing its way through the breach in the wall. The arrow pinned the legionnaire’s head to the part of the wall still standing. Two more undead legionnaires outfitted in bronze armor forced their way past, only to meet the same fate with an arrow apiece. The arrows didn’t destroy the creatures, but pinning them to the wall like a rabbit on a spit held them in place so that even Athenians could dismember them.
“Flee,” he growled at the screaming civilians. “You’re in my way.”
Without hesitation Kratos stepped into the breach, firing as he went. Six more arrows flew straight and true, pinning legionnaires to one another, but the undead behind them simply clawed them to pieces and kept coming. Three more arrows dispatched another five or six of them. As two more crowded through, brandishing swords, he reached for another arrow, only to find the quiver empty.
He cast the bow aside; without arrows, it was as useless as a eunuch.
The two rotting monstrosities crowding in upon him did not deserve the honor of destruction by the Blades of Chaos. Kratos simply stepped forward to meet them and drove his fists into and through their putrefying chests. His hands closed around their spines, and he shook them as though shaking filth from his hands, ripping their backbones free. As these two legionnaires collapsed, Kratos whipped their spines like flails, dispatching their fellows one after another. The archers to either side of the breach joined in, raining shaft after shaft into the monsters below.