None of the war god’s fireballs had yet touched this particular neighborhood, but the area had not escaped the attentions of Ares’s legions. There were bands of roving monsters of all descriptions: combinations of Minotaurs and Centaurs for cavalry, Cyclopes for heavy infantry, skeleton archers, legionnaires, harpies, wraiths… and what was that?
The creatures looked like hideous women with a single long snake’s tail instead of legs. Writhing serpents crowned their heads, and crackling green beams of power poured out from heir eyes…
It seemed that the death of their queen had brought the rest of the Gorgons into the fight.
But… all of Greece knew there had been only three Gorgons: Stheno, Euryale, and of course the recently deceased Medusa. Yet Kratos saw a dozen of the repulsive creatures, and he had no doubt that others were spreading through the city at that very instant. Killing them would feed his anger and give him momentary distraction from the ever-present nightmare fluttering at the edge of his mind, but that would be only a waste of time that he and the Oracle could not spare. A permanent solution to his visions awaited. He hunted for a clear path to Athena’s oracle.
Kratos ducked into an alley and scrambled up a rain barrel, from which he could swing himself onto a balcony and clamber up another story or two to the roof.
Athens burned.
Save only the neighborhood around him, the entire city was in flames. Now and then he caught sight of the Long Walls through the smoke. The flash of firelight off brandished weapons told him that soldiers still wasted their lives in a futile attempt to hold a wall that no longer defended the city. Everybody had to die somewhere; if defending their useless wall gave them the illusion of dying for a noble cause, who was he to gainsay their futile heroism? Men had died under his slashing blades for less.
Kratos progressed slowly across the rooftop, scouting for a path to follow uphill. He moved with caution, to avoid attracting the attention of the harpies that swooped hither and thither through the smoke. The old man at the gates had said the Oracle’s chamber was on the east side of the Parthenon. Across the face of the Acropolis, he could pick out faint brown tendrils that might be footpaths, but the billowing smoke clouded them and hid other avenues entirely.
When he moved to the edge of the roof to get a better view, an arrow sang past his ear. Kratos fell flat and let more arrows sail over him. He chanced a quick look over the edge of the roof and located a handful of undead archers who’d taken a nearby balcony for their vantage point. Kratos saw a man venture into the street, only to take an arrow through the belly, and when the arrow detonated, the blast of flame splattered the man’s guts across the front of his own house. The archers held fire only when they could find no further targets.
Kratos ducked when a new ball of Greek fire exploded a quarter mile away, roughly where he thought the road leading to the summit of the Acropolis might turn upward. A grim picture painted itself within his mind.
Athena’s worshippers would naturally run for the Parthenon when they found their city under attack by the God of War. Ares had sown fire across the whole city, sparing only this quarter, through which ran the road up the Acropolis-which would naturally draw those worshippers like flies to turds. Then the god had his monsters patrolling the streets, preventing further movement.
Kratos understood: The God of War was deliberately funneling the most pious and devoted of Athena’s flock into one small area of the city-making it look as if this was the safest area, as well as the only route to the temple of their goddess. Instead of fleeing into the countryside, where tracking them down and slaughtering them would be a daunting task even for Ares’s minions, they were packing themselves into the illusory safety of this single neighborhood.
Concentrating where they could most easily be destroyed. All at once. No fuss. No mess. No chasing people through the forest or rooting them out of mountain caves. The citizens of Athens had made of themselves nothing more than cattle rushing to the slaughterhouse floor. It was brutal, and he knew it would be very effective.
He’d done this sort of thing himself.
Kratos grabbed his temples to keep his head from exploding as an image burned hotter than the sun through his brain.
No! It couldn’t be… The dead, those he had slaughtered in Athena’s temple… Guilty! He had killed Gasping, Kratos forced the horrible vision away. It seized him more powerfully each time, but giving in to the horror wasn’t going to make reaching the Parthenon any easier. He could conquer his own nightmares-for a short while-but it seemed the monsters were gathering on the streets below to block his path. And he knew those undead archers hadn’t forgotten he was up here. He had to move. Fast.
On the other hand, he saw no reason to surrender the high ground.
Three strides for momentum took him to the lip of the roof, and a mighty leap sent him hurtling over the street to the opposite roof. The skeleton archers below were so startled, none of them got off a shot. As he sprinted along, he heard the commanding bellow of a Minotaur, and he knew he’d been seen by the forces below.
His next jump drew a scatter of fire arrows, though none came close-and he could see undead legionnaires mounted on the backs of Centaurs racing parallel to his path on the streets below. Another rooftop and another leap, and harpies began to swoop and dive at him. He dodged and ducked across roof after roof without slowing, using the blades as grapnels to swing himself over gaps too wide to bridge, and whirling them about his head as he ran to keep the harpies at bay.
He sprinted from roof to roof, running faster than the harpies could pursue-but the shouts and bellows of the monsters below came even faster. Not even Kratos could outrun the speed of sound. More of Ares’s creatures streamed toward him, and he leaped from the last house of the neighborhood and dived once again into the fires and smoke of the rest of the city.
One Minotaur had the bright idea of calling for all Cyclopes, Centaurs, and other Minotaurs to forget about trying to catch the racing Spartan; instead, they should batter the walls of the burning buildings, weakening every structure in Kratos’s path.
Battling the strangling smoke and roasting flames, Kratos jumped to a rooftop which collapsed under his weight. A frantic scrabble at the structure beneath the splintered roof tiles and a swift overhead whip of a Blade of Chaos, which embedded it in a more-solid rooftop ahead, gained him enough purchase to keep aloft. A quick glance below at the countless enemies of all descriptions crowding there told him in no uncertain terms the outcome of an unlucky fall.
Grimly, he ran on, knowing that each rooftop would prove more fragile than the last-and even if he could stay up there all the way to the foot of the Acropolis, he would then have to descend to the streets and either deal with his pursuers or be slaughtered along with all these useless Athenians.
Better a nameless death being swallowed by the Hydra in the Grave of Ships than having his corpse burned in the same fires as those of his people’s most bitter enemy.
Along the base of the sheer cliffs below the Acropolis, Kratos raced parallel to the rock, making for the roadway. These buildings were sturdier, as they had the support of the rock wall at their back, and keeping close to the cliff face as he rounded the curve let him gain ground on his pursuers.
There! A gap in the greasy smoke showed him the broad flagstones of the roadway just ahead. With redoubled energy, Kratos hurled himself toward it-but only three houses short of the open ground he craved, roof tiles crumbled and the fire-weakened walls of the building collapsed around him. Worse, his charred, blistered back betrayed him. His usual strength had faded, and twisting about sent knives of pain into his shoulders, which prevented him from saving himself from the fall.