“Medusa is hardly a threat.” Aphrodite waved a dismissive hand. “She’s just a vicious old hag.”
“Not a hag but a Gorgon,” Athena corrected. “She may be intending to destroy all who would devote themselves to your… pleasurable ways.”
“You are still angry at her,” Aphrodite said teasingly. “Still haven’t forgiven her for her rendezvous with Poseidon in your temple over by Carthage?”
“My uncle’s trysts are of no concern to me.”
“Concern? No. But surprise, yes.” Aphrodite gave Athena a decidedly naughty smirk. “Oh, if you only knew how many times-and places-he and I have-”
“Medusa is the issue,” Athena said, with a slicing gesture, as though her hand might be a sword that could sever that line of conversation. “She may be a terrible danger to your worshippers.”
“Why would she bother? She and her sisters are limited in their release.”
“Limited to the blind, yes. Otherwise, they would turn their lovers into stone with a careless glance. But anger builds over the centuries. It has reached the point of consuming Medusa as she makes you the focus of her ire.”
“I will speak with her. We can-”
“Wait, Aphrodite. There is more. She would harm you. Her rage is that great. You have lost many followers recently.” Once more Athena made a calculated guess. In Athens she had lost hundreds of worshippers in only a day. War always caused upheaval and death. Aphrodite would be similarly encumbered with her followers’ deaths, even if they came at Ares’s bidding rather than Medusa’s.
“She cannot. Zeus would punish her severely if she tried.”
“You would be in no position to enjoy her penalty if you were forever consigned to the underworld.”
Aphrodite paced as she thought. Athena paid her little attention, being engrossed in her own image within image stretching to infinity in the mirrors. Aphrodite with a lover would be exciting. Athena had taken no lover, but the sight of herself alone was enough to suggest what gratification might be gained in a room such as this.
“I cannot kill Medusa, nor can you. Zeus forbids such squabbles.”
Athena almost laughed. Aphrodite called the offer to kill another god a mere “squabble.”
“That is so, but nothing says a mortal cannot kill a Gorgon.”
“It’s never been done.”
“That does not mean it cannot be done, using the right instrument of destruction.”
Aphrodite shook her head and said, “No, no, this isn’t right. To be the force behind Medusa’s death is wrong. We can work out our differences, whatever she might think them to be.”
“Medusa is jealous of your beauty,” Athena said. “She yearns for a lover-any lover-as skillful as one you might accept into your bed for one night only.” Athena lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “She thinks you have stolen Hermes from her.”
Aphrodite laughed harshly.
“Hermes sleeps where he pleases.” A small smile flicked on her face. “He is always welcome in these chambers, but I cannot imagine him bedding Medusa, even blindfolded.”
“Beauty inspires Hermes. Ugliness certainly offends him. Medusa blames you for his natural inclinations.”
“How can she demand that he go against his nature?” Aphrodite said. “That would introduce evil into the world, where there should be only love.”
“Such is her jealousy, such is her wickedness.” Athena saw that Aphrodite stood a little straighter as resolve hardened the goddess’s heart.
“I cannot bear the thought of Hermes being in danger from a Gorgon.”
“And I cannot endure for a moment longer the knowledge that Medusa plots against you, dear Aphrodite. Let me tell you what we can do…”
Athena left Aphrodite soon after, sure that Kratos’s character would be tempered even more and his skills sharpened to perfection before the final battle with Ares-if he could reach the Oracle and discover the method to kill a god.
EIGHT
KRATOS CLIMBED ATOP a pile of dead bodies to look over the repair work being completed on the wall. The engineers had placed sturdy cross members against the wall, then had driven posts deep into the ground to hold them in place. It was crude but provided a barrier to keep Ares’s minions from flooding into the roadway. As long as he didn’t have to worry about those skeletal archers coming up behind him, Kratos could safely head for the city again. Without a word to the defenders nearby, Kratos sprang down the roadway and ran for the city.
Night fell upon Athens. The vast columns of smoke now swirled and spun, lit only by the fires below, and through the haze Kratos would occasionally glimpse Ares himself, large as a mountain, towering over the Acropolis. It was from the god’s own hand that the Greek fire flew, great flaming gobbets that he cast at random around the city.
The roadway began to fill with refugees, civilians clutching whatever was most precious to them, fleeing the city while they still could to allow the soldiers the best chance to fortify and defend it. Every few hundred yards, the crowds became thick enough to impede his progress-but the impediment was momentary, because Kratos simply cut his way through with the Blades of Chaos. Bloody refugee body parts flew to either side of the Spartan as he ran, and any Athenians who witnessed such a slaughter wisely pressed out of Kratos’s way.
Kratos spared not an instant’s thought for these unfortunates. He wasn’t here to save the civilians-and the Blades of Chaos could drink innocent lives as easily as those of opponents. The surge in his strength from each murder let him run ever faster, until he might have been wearing the winged sandals of Hermes himself.
The heavy black smoke took on a more noxious odor as he neared the ruined gate of the city. The memory of burning corpses could never be erased from his brain. After so many battles, digging graves had been impossible; there were always more dead than there were shovels and men to use them. Kratos had ordered the bodies stacked and set ablaze. The funeral pyre for one had become the pyre of hundreds, and so it was for many years.
The gates of the city lay in shattered ruin. Some few civilians picked their way through the rubble, but more Arean fire rained down upon them; their screams were brief, and soon they became extensions of the pyre. Only the guardhouse remained intact, though it seemed abandoned. As Kratos passed, however, a voice cried from the shadowed window, “You there! Halt!”
The voice was thin and wheezy, and when Kratos turned to look, he found one bent and wizened man, barely strong enough to stand upright in his armor. “State your… State… Uh, what are you doing here?”
“I seek Athena’s oracle, old man.”
The ancient guardsman peered at him myopically. “The Oracle? What for?”
“Where is she?” Kratos asked with as much patience as he could muster.
“She’s got a room in the Parthenon, on the east side of the Acropolis, but…” The old man shook his head woefully. “That area’s on fire. Whole place is on fire. Oracle might be dead. No one has seen her since the fighting began. Once she told me my own future, d’you know that? Now, this was a long time ago. I had to sacrifice-”
Kratos successfully stifled a sudden urge to lop off the old fool’s head. He growled, “How do I get to the Acropolis?”
“Well… you can’t go through here.”
“What?”
“I got my orders from the commander of the watch, just before the gate was knocked down by one of them fireballs. Nobody enters through this gate, what’s left of it, that is.” The old man held a dagger in one quivering hand. “Besides, what d’you want to go in there for? The place is lousy with undead, there’s Cyclopes and worse-and I even seen a Minotaur too!”
Kratos shook his head, thinking of the fight down at the Long Wall. More wasted effort. Ares’s army was already inside the city.
He left the old man babbling to himself and sprinted into dark streets illuminated only by distant unchecked fires.