He was almost running when someone called his name.
“Kratos.”
He thought that Ares had found the tunnel and had come for him in person. Swords held in a shaky grip, he turned the tips toward a tiny glowing spot in the darkness.
“Show yourself. We can have it out here and now.” His muscles quivered from fatigue, but if he finally faced his ultimate enemy, he would die like a Spartan.
The sudden burst of light forced him to throw up an arm to shield his eyes. Squinting, he saw a massively muscled man step forward out of a shimmer in the air like a sun dog in the brilliant blue of a summer sky. The gray-shot curls of storm clouds that served him for hair and beard would have instantly told Kratos who this was, even if Kratos hadn’t leaped off a statue of him only moments before.
“My Lord Zeus!” Kratos bowed. “I am surprised. I had thought you might be Ares.”
“That particular son of mine is still on the other side of Athens, enjoying his rampage,” Zeus said.
Kratos couldn’t tell from Zeus’s tone whether the Skyfather approved or disapproved of Ares’s onslaught. He decided not to ask. “How may I serve the King of the Gods?”
“Kratos, you grow stronger as your journey continues. But if you are to succeed in your quest, you will need my aid.”
“What is your will, Lord Zeus?”
“I bring you the power of the greatest of all the gods, the Father of Olympus. I give you the power of Zeus!” The King of Olympus reached out and said, “Give me your hands, son.”
Kratos let the Blades of Chaos slip back into their sheaths. The brilliance pouring into the tunnel at once warmed him and threatened to burn the flesh off his bones. Kratos lifted his arms to the ruler of the gods.
“Take my weapon, Kratos,” cried Zeus. “Take my power and destroy your enemies!”
The tunnel roof opened and revealed bright blue sky dotted with clouds. A lightning bolt seared down a jagged path and exploded against Kratos’s outstretched hands. He recoiled-it felt as if he’d plunged his hands into a cauldron of molten iron.
He pulled back his hands and stared in astonishment at his unburned skin-astonishment arising mostly from the burned-meat smoke that rose from them. Now seared into the palm of his right hand was a tiny jagged white scar that blazed with the light of the sun.
“Your thunderbolt?” He looked up, but the portal where the god had emerged had already closed. Above there was no longer blue sky and billowing white clouds. All he saw was dirt with roots growing down through it. He had not left the escape tunnel.
But the scar on his right palm proved almost too brilliant for him to examine.
Kratos reached back over his right shoulder, as though drawing back his arm to throw a javelin. He grunted in surprise when a solid bolt of lightning manifested in his hand. He hurled it forward, and it lanced along the tunnel quicker than he’d thought. The detonation caused the far end of the tunnel to begin collapsing, opening a sliver of night sky above the Acropolis. Kratos set out toward it, but again he heard a voice-with his ears or with his mind, he could not say.
“Go back and fight!”
Kratos stopped, still weak from his earlier conflict. “But the Oracle-”
“Destroy another three hundred monsters and she’ll be there when you arrive.”
Kratos was sick of sneaking around underground, feeling like a mewling babe and almost too weak to stand. Once more he reached back, and again when he threw his hand forward, a blast of lightning flashed the length of the tunnel. This one destroyed the timbers that supported the hearth slab, and the whole thing dropped and shattered, scattering the tunnel’s floor with burning embers.
He nodded to himself. Using the thunderbolt buoyed his spirits-and erased some of the weakness in his muscles. Being so near a godlike power rejuvenated him. Time to go back and see exactly how well this thunderbolt worked against a real enemy.
TWELVE
SLAUGHTERING THE MINIONS OF ARES outside the inn proved to be more fun than Kratos had anticipated. When Zeus gave him the power of the thunderbolt, apparently he’d also refilled that general magical reservoir; Poseidon’s Rage crackled more deadly than ever before, and Medusa’s Gaze turned monsters to stone by the dozen, and Zeus’s Thunderbolt shattered a mob of petrified monsters in a very satisfactory fashion.
Best of all, the flood of potent magic through his palm when he used the thunderbolt healed his wounds. Stretching and turning failed to cause the slightest discomfort on his back, where the touch of Ares’s fire had so sorely injured him. After a few throws of the thunderbolt, Ares’s minions had fled, giving Kratos a chance to bathe in a fountain and clean some of the Cyclops’s gore from his body.
When he’d finished his ablutions, he felt certain he could take on and triumph over the worst that Ares had to offer.
He found a particular sequence to be most effective: He’d leap into the midst of a crowd of monsters and call on Poseidon’s Rage, then whip out the Gorgon’s head and turn them all to stone, because they would be too stunned from Poseidon’s Rage to avert their eyes. Then he would hurtle into the midst of another squad of the undead legionnaires, fire a thunderbolt back at where he’d come from, and, while the petrified monsters were raining down in pieces, he would once again fire Poseidon’s Rage against the fresh meat around him.
He became adept enough with Medusa’s Gaze to petrify swooping harpies as they passed, turning them into the equivalent of sharp-edged catapult stones that could mow down a half dozen undead at one blow. And he found that the bronze armor of the undead legionnaires had an interesting property when struck with Zeus’s Thunderbolt: If other similarly clad undead were near enough, the thunderbolt would arc from monster to monster, popping them off in a pleasingly swift succession like chestnuts tossed into a bonfire.
Kratos stood appreciating his handiwork when the clack of hooves against the cobblestones alerted him to approaching Centaurs. He turned, thinking he would face only one. A herd of the half-horse, half-man creatures trotted into the plaza and quickly arrayed themselves against him.
Somehow, one had managed to come up behind when his attention was diverted by the main herd. Powerful hands lifted him off the ground and held him high. He saw the sky and struggled to draw a weapon-any weapon. In a flash, Kratos realized he was unable to fight like this. He kicked his feet up high and rolled backward, breaking the Centaur’s grip.
The man-horse cried out in rage as Kratos landed on the creature’s rump, legs dangling down on either side of the equine body.
“You are the one Lord Ares seeks!” The Centaur swung half about and tried to land a fist on the side of Kratos’s head. The Spartan ducked easily, shrugged his shoulders, and brought forth a loop of the chain fused to the bone of his forearms. He didn’t draw the Blades of Chaos-he snapped the chain holding the pommel to his flesh about in an iron garrote.
Kratos rocked back, strangling the Centaur. The creature tried in vain to pry loose the chain wrapped about its throat. It went to its haunches and reared, hoping to throw off Kratos. The Ghost of Sparta clung to the chain as if it were a bridle and reins rather than a strangling weapon.
He scooted forward, came closer to the man part of the monster, and kicked hard so his heels drove into the Centaur’s belly. As the creature galloped forward, Kratos guided it to the spot among the others in the herd that he desired most.
At the last possible instant, he released the chain and raised his right hand. The star brand burned furiously, then released Zeus’s Thunderbolt. Kratos aimed not at the Centaurs’ bodies but at the ground where they stood. Suddenly molten ground beneath their hooves caused them to rear and crash into one another. Not satisfied, Kratos loosed another thunderbolt, this time directed at their horseshoes. As with the bronze armor worn by the undead legionnaires, the metallic horseshoes sparked and blazed, burning upward until not a Centaur in the herd commanded a full four legs. Several had lost all four legs up to the fetlocks; none was able to fight.