RUNNING THROUGH THE DARKENING CITY, Kratos cursed himself for a fool, even as the Blades of Chaos sang their crimson song through countless bodies of Ares’s minions. Undead legionnaires flew to pieces so quickly that none broke Kratos’s stride. Skeletal archers fired flaming shafts as he passed, but none even grazed him. He nimbly sidestepped raging Cyclopes and dissipated ghostly wraiths with hardly more than a gesture.
And all for nothing. Just as the slaughter he had meted out at the Long Wall’s breach had been for nothing.
Ares’s army had attacked the wall in the first place not to gain access to the city but because that was where the soldiers were. Ares’s legions lived only to kill. If Athenian soldiers had made a stand down at Piraeus, that’s where those abominations would have attacked. They never needed to cross the walls at all. As Kratos ran, more foes sprang from the earth itself, as though some impossible netherworld had opened the gates of reality to spew its spawn onto Athenian streets.
Kratos cursed himself for fighting them as if they were human.
He no longer paused to slay them. Why bother? Athens and its people could not be protected by the destruction of Ares’s army-the god’s army could not be destroyed. Like dragon’s teeth, each beast Kratos might slay could be recreated on any spot, at any instant. Killing them did nothing but feed power to the blades-power that he didn’t need. To Hades with fighting. He would seek the Oracle, learn her secret, and then be on his way.
As he should have done from the beginning.
From around a corner ahead, he heard snorts and growls and the voices of men shrieking like little children. Soon two Athenian soldiers came in view, running full tilt, their weapons and shields forgotten. They screamed to Kratos that he must run, they’re right behind us! A heartbeat later, Kratos discovered what they were fleeing: a towering creature with the head and hooves of a great bull and the body of a man.
The Minotaur-the Cretan monster supposedly slain by Theseus. Kratos snorted. Why should he be surprised to find the creature alive?
Theseus had been Athenian.
The Minotaur wielded an enormous labris-the double-faced ax of Crete, its blade alone the size of a man and twice as heavy. The great beast raised the labris high overhead and, with a mighty heave, hurled it spinning through the thickening gloom.
One of the soldiers, looking fearfully over his shoulder, saw the blade coming and ducked aside. The other never looked back. The first he learned of the flying ax was when it lopped his head off in one clean slice and whirled on without even slowing. It sang through the air, spinning straight at Kratos’s face.
Kratos judged the distance and the spin, then took one step forward so that the haft of the swirling ax, instead of the gore-smeared blade, smacked his palm. It struck with enough force to kill an ordinary man. Kratos didn’t even blink.
“Run!” the remaining soldier screamed as he sprinted past. “ You have to run! ”
“Spartans,” Kratos replied with scalding contempt, “run toward the enemy.”
The Minotaur gave a snort, lowered his wide-spreading horns, and charged.
Kratos hefted the labris. “You’ll be wanting this back,” he said, and hurled it at the charging monster, who pulled up short, snarling, and attempted to duplicate Kratos’s feat. The Minotaur discovered this was trickier than it had looked.
The Minotaur misjudged the ax’s spin by half a step: The blade sheared through its hand, through its nose and on through its brainpan, before whirling on to vanish in the smoky gloom.
The half-headless corpse stood swaying. Kratos lifted the severed head of the Athenian soldier and hurled it like a rock. The head struck the monster’s chest and knocked the great beast flat.
Kratos sneered down at the dead soldier. As he passed the corpse of the Minotaur, he shook his head and snorted with contempt.
Theseus. Some hero. Only Athenians would make a hero of a man for slaying such a paltry little beast. Good thing Kratos wasn’t here to save the people; he couldn’t stand to look at them.
Before he reached the corner, however, he discovered that he had made a mistake. It had not been the Minotaur; it had been only a Minotaur. The truth of this was revealed to him by the appearance of three more of the towering man-bulls, thundering toward him with axes raised.
Kratos grimly drew the Blades of Chaos without slackening his pace. Another senseless delay. He’d make better time off the streets.
The three Minotaurs spread out to bar his path, but a headlong sprint faster than the gallop of a racing horse gave Kratos the momentum he needed. A dozen strides short of the monsters,
Kratos hurled one Blade of Chaos high, where it whipped over the lip of the nearest balcony. The chain snapped tight and yanked him into the air, over the heads of the astonished Minotaurs. He flipped the other blade at a higher balcony and in this fashion swung himself all the way up to the rooftops.
From here, he could clearly see the Parthenon and beyond it the sky-spanning figure of the God of War, who still hurled handfuls of fiery slag into the city below.
Even that momentary pause was enough for Ares’s minions to locate him again. Flocks of harpies swooped toward his rooftop, wraiths floated through nearby walls, and the building trembled as Minotaurs and Cyclopes scaled its walls.
“Ares!” Kratos roared his challenge, brandishing the undying fire of the Blades of Chaos.
The mountain of war god swiveled eyes like bloody full moons in his direction. Behind his beard of flames, Ares’s lip curled in a cruel smile as he raised a burning hand high enough to scorch the clouds. He hurled a ball of fire larger than the entire building on which Kratos stood. As the blazing missile seemed to expand with alarming speed, Kratos had an instant to wonder if perhaps overweening pride had made him hasty in attracting the war god’s attention.
He gave a mighty leap out from among the crowd of his enemies, reached a wall of a taller building nearby, and kicked off again, hurtling high over a broad plaza. He struck a great broken pillar and clung to it for an instant, glancing back at the rooftop from whence he’d come. What he saw gave him pause.
The whole building was a mass of flame; harpies screeched, Cyclopes howled, and Minotaurs bellowed as they burned. Then it was his turn to cry out as a gobbet of the gelatinous fire ran the length of his back. His grip slackened, and he slipped down and then tumbled to the street in agony. Twisting from side to side, trying to roll as if mere flames devoured his flesh, did no good.
More flame roared toward him, and the plaza below filled with monsters. With supreme effort, teeth clenched against the never-ending burning on his back, Kratos hurled himself onward. Toward the Parthenon. Toward the Temple of Athena. Pain could never slow the Ghost of Sparta. He stumbled on, toward the Oracle-and the secret of killing a god.
KRATOS RAN WHEN HE COULD, the pain abating somewhat in his back, and killed when he had to; he stumbled through the streets, over the rooftops, and even waded the labyrinthine sewers connecting endless catacombs. Although the sewage burned worse than he thought he could endure without dying, by the time Kratos emerged, Ares’s touch on his back had diminished. The skin felt taut-crisp. But he could still move, still fight when he had to. Finally, after what felt like days, he reached the broad avenue leading up the Acropolis to the Parthenon-and there he faced a new challenge.
The roadway was patrolled by Centaurs. Wild and untamable, these gigantic man-horse monstrosities had a reputation for fierceness in battle that Kratos already knew was well founded. He had faced these creatures before and always found them formidable opponents.
But they never lived long. None who faced the Ghost of Sparta ever did.
The one nearest spotted him through the smoke. Bellowing its war cry, it reared and spun to face him, then without hesitation it charged.