“More!” he shouted at the horde outside. “Come on! Come and die!”
One hard kick toppled the swaying bulk of the dead monster across the breach, creating a barricade over which the attacking creatures had to scramble. The archers on the wall above took a terrible toll as feathered shafts pinned legionnaires to the fallen Cyclops and to one another.
Before, his victory had been cheered. Now there was no time. A pair of Cyclopes moved up to the breach and began tossing aside undead legionnaires from the growing pile, clearing the way for more monsters, while wraiths floated overhead, their ghastly blades carving nearby archers into bloody chunks of meat.
Kratos again made a grim assessment of the odds. He did not know how Athena hoped he might save her city, but he was reasonably sure she did not intend he should give his life over one small gap more than a mile from the city proper.
He sheathed the Blades of Chaos and stared at his hands. Power welled up within as he unleashed his anger, and Kratos felt himself become the conduit for godlike power once more. The Rage of Poseidon was with him still.
Pushing through the struggling fighters, he climbed atop the dead Cyclops and looked at the hundreds and thousands of Ares’s killers readying themselves to pour through the ever-widening hole in the wall. Kratos held out his hands, as if to push them all away. He staggered as the power built within him. Lifting his hands, elbows locked, he closed his eyes and concentrated on what he wanted most.
Annihilating energy erupted around him, plowing a fifty-foot furrow deeper than a moat in front of him. Kratos spread his hands outward, and the furrow became a crater. He directed the Rage of Poseidon downward, outward, then downward a final time before he sank to his knees in exhaustion from the effort.
The corpse of the Cyclops was gone, burned so thoroughly there was not even smoke-as were the other Cyclopes, all the nearby wraiths, several hundred undead legionnaires, some few yards of the Long Walls and a number of the Athenian archers.
Between him and the remainder of Ares’s army gaped a pit a hundred feet deep and almost as wide. To reach the gap now, the horde outside faced a long descent and a perilous scramble up a steep slope slippery with ash, fully exposed to archers above.
The monsters seemed undeterred; they were already sliding down the far rim of the pit. Even if they had to fill the entire crater with their own bodies, soon these misbegotten creatures would flood through the wall in their thousands upon thousands. Nothing could stop them.
Kratos drew the Blades of Chaos and settled into himself, grimly waiting at the breach.
This was going to be a long fight.
SEVEN
UNDEAD LEGIONNAIRES TRAMPED ALONG a game trail in the still forest, weapons clanging against their sides with every step. Some carried scythes and others swung spiked clubs as they made their way to support the rear echelons of the force attacking the breach in the Long Wall. The leader slowed and then raised a bony limb to halt his patrol.
Bushes rustled. The legionnaires turned toward the sound and drew weapons, but from behind them a large gray wolf leaped, snarling at the leader as it knocked the legionnaire to the ground. Strong jaws closed on a bony neck and crushed it, ripping away the undead head. As the wolf turned to do the same to the next, its savage growls called the rest of the pack to come loping out of the forest in their ambush. The creatures from Hades tried to defend themselves, but these wolves fought with a cunning and ferocity that would astonish any huntsman. Some of the skeletal beings could only jerk and twitch as their legs were gnawed off. Others threw knives and axes and even swords at the wolves, but the sleek gray killers slipped aside, then returned to match their jaws against the bony talons of the disarmed undead. Shortly, “disarmed” was no longer a figure of speech.
Quiet descended on the forest once again as the wolf pack melted away, prowling their territory in search of new victims, and two goddesses materialized at the scene of the slaughter.
Athena said, “Your creatures fight well.”
Artemis squinted skyward, measuring the soar of eagles and the slow wheel of vultures. “The birds speak to me of new incursions,” she said. “Our brother is slow to learn.”
“So let us offer further lessons without delay,” Athena said. “Though all the wolves in the world would not be enough to destroy his army, we can at least keep him from your groves.”
The huntress favored her with a piercing stare. “We?”
Before Athena could respond, Artemis vanished. Athena sighed and with a brief gesture followed her to a large glade filling with Ares’s soldiers. The monsters milled about in considerable disarray. The creatures who held the place of officers bellowed and screeched, trying to organize them into something resembling battle order. As they began their march across the glade, Artemis pointed to the tree line not fifty feet from their flank.
“There.”
An enormous bull elk broke from the underbrush, lowered its antlers, and charged square into the ranks of the skeletal archers. Its rack speared four of them, and a toss of its head sent fragments of undead flying. The elk bellowed and turned to attack again, but the remaining archers now had arrows to their strings. A dozen bows thrummed as one, and the flaming arrows detonated deep within the chest of the mighty beast. It staggered, fell to its knees, and died.
Before it could even hit the ground, wolf packs broke from cover on all sides, striking deep into the archers’ formation as they struggled to draw new shafts. Fangs ripped rotting flesh, and jaws crushed exposed bones. But a monstrous crashing and splintering of trees heralded the arrival of a new threat.
“Cyclopes-too many of them,” Athena said, a cautionary hand upon her sister’s arm. “They are dangerous even to my Kratos. Your wolves cannot stand against them.”
“They don’t have to.”
Some ten of the great Cyclopes came forward, their mighty war clubs shattering whole trees. The largest of them took the lead, thundering toward the wolves-but before it had crossed even half the distance, it stiffened, its eye rolled up, and it pitched suddenly onto its face.
“Fur and antler are far from my subjects’ deadliest weapons,” Artemis said with dark satisfaction. “Vipers can bring down even the Cyclopes.”
“So I see.”
As the other great brutes hesitated, unsure of their path now that their leader lay dead, the sky filled with an eagle’s angry screech. Dropping like arrows from the heavens, the great golden raptors plunged toward Cyclopean eyes, slashing with extended talons. A few tosses of the beak ripped away gobbets of bloody flesh from the surrounding faces; then the birds took wing again.
“Now we drive them,” Artemis said. She pointed to the spot in the forest where a trio of huge bears lumbered forth. As the wolves kept away the legionnaires and other undead, the bears attacked the remaining Cyclopes with gore-caked claws.
Ares’s army began to dissolve as fear seized the creatures. Packs of wolves, charging bucks, the bears and eagles and snakes all combined to herd the monsters toward the Long Walls.
“Artemis, my sister,” said Athena, “you are as good as your word. My Athenians should now be able to-”
“Shhh.” Artemis tensed. With a gesture she summoned her bow; another gesture produced a golden shaft, nocked and ready to draw. “Hide.”
Athena frowned. “Hide from what?”
Within an instant, the heavens were ripped asunder and Ares stepped through, so huge the flames of his hair might set the clouds afire.
Athena reflected that her sister’s instincts were as accurate as her arrows and decided to take Artemis’s advice. A graceful swipe of her hand drew mist around her… and when the mist evaporated, she was nowhere to be seen.