Kratos kicked free of the Centaur he rode, but before he could draw the Blades of Chaos to dispatch it, the creature raced away, leaving behind only a high-pitched keening of stark fear.
Kratos realized, as much as he appreciated the stark power of Zeus’s gift, he had to press on to find the Oracle. He lost track of how many monsters he had destroyed; when finally no more came to assault him, the roadway was paved with corpses three deep in all directions. He didn’t bother to count. Despite Zeus’s assurance, he felt time pressing down upon him. Kratos ran up the incline of the roadway, falling into an easy lope. As he ran, his mind cast forth, considering different courses of action, but most of all his mind always returned to the Oracle and her mysterious secret of how a mortal might murder a god.
He was so lost in thought that, as he rounded a turn in the path, he ran smack into an undead legionnaire. They collided, Kratos rebounded, and the armored skeleton warrior crashed to the ground. The clatter of its bones against its sword and shield when it fell echoed through the Acropolis. Kratos recovered more swiftly than the skeleton warrior, drew the Blades of Chaos, and scissored off the undead’s skull.
Kratos laughed. None stood against the Ghost of Sparta. And when he saw a dozen legionnaires coming down the path to investigate the noise, he laughed even more. These undead legionnaires were well armored and impressively weaponed. Hollow, disturbingly evil eye sockets glared like embers in a darkened room, through bronze helmets decorated with black feathers. They carried bucklers studded with brass nails. A few swung scythes, but most were armed with swords, and they marched in a tight, disciplined formation, with more pressing in at their backs.
And a single thunderbolt blew them all to pieces.
The ravening blast radiated outward, zigzagging on its way like lightning from Mount Olympus itself. The leading trio of legionnaires exploded. As did the next rank and the next and the next.
Kratos gingerly stepped over the smoldering bones and burned parts blasted from the legionnaires’ bodies. Beside the path lay a bronze helmet, the black feathers smoking, as was the skull strapped inside. Melted swords and sundered helmets lay scattered along the path.
Kratos stared in wonder at the white scar on his palm. Then he hurriedly turned the palm away. Should he accidentally trigger a thunderbolt while he stared at his own hand, his death might be both swift and humiliating.
Once more he fell into the distance-devouring lope that was his habitual pace up the increasingly steep path. In places, pilgrims had painstakingly carved steps from the rock for the weaker supplicants. As if in a dream, he no longer climbed the Acropolis of Athens toward the Parthenon but instead some winding mountain path thousands of feet in the air. It became more difficult to breathe, and his legs-those tireless legs that tramped fifty miles in a day-began to ache from exertion.
He came to a bridge spanning a deep gorge ahead of him. Along the bridge marched fifty or more Athenians, all bearing large wicker offering baskets and going to Athena’s temple. He understood now how the Oracle’s temple had withstood the assaults of the God of War-it wasn’t in the Parthenon at all but was at the summit of some magically concealed path, which could be seen and trodden only by the faithful!
As he hurried toward the bridge, a shrill whistling filled the air. He looked up and saw a fireball descending from the heavens, and it occurred to him that even if he could not see the path or the temple, Ares could apparently still see him.
The Spartan dove and rolled aside. The clinging, burning fire never touched him this time-but it splashed across the bridge. Dozens of supplicants screamed. Some leaped from the bridge to plummet hundreds of feet to the rocks below, blazing like small suns as they tumbled downward. Those on the bridge struck directly by the Greek fire were now encased in charcoal shrouds that had once been their skin. He heard soul-curdling screams from them. Hideously burned, trapped in their sooty sheaths, each second of life was an eternity of agony.
But someone took pity on them-Athena, or perhaps Zeus himself-for with a grinding, squealing shriek of bronze on stone, the bridge dropped, and the burning Athenians were granted death upon the rocks far below.
Kratos rushed around a final turn in the path and stared across the chasm. From his glimpse before, he thought Ares’s fireballs had destroyed the bridge; instead, more than half the bridge survived-but it was tilting upward into the air, away from Kratos, cranked by an enormous winch on the far side of the chasm. A short, powerful man struggled with the handle to lock it in place.
“Stop!” Kratos shouted. “Lower the bridge! I must reach the temple!”
“Go away!” the bridgekeeper shouted back. “The monsters prowl everywhere. Whole companies mount the path behind you. If you love the goddess, you’ll help me destroy the bridge!”
“I serve Athena! She has tasked me with finding her oracle! Lower the bridge!” Kratos took a step forward, to the very brink of the chasm.
“Even if I do, a third of it has been destroyed! How will you cross the gap? If you can fly, what do you need the bridge for?”
“Lower the bridge,” Kratos growled. “I won’t ask again.”
“I will die for the goddess!”
“Fine.” Kratos reached back over his right shoulder, filling his hand with solid lightning.
The bridgekeeper squinted across the chasm. “Hey, now-hey,” he said uncertainly. “What’s that in your hand?”
“See for yourself.”
The thunderbolt shot from his hand and blasted to flinders the platform where the man stood. The bridgekeeper’s scream echoed through the gorge even after his broken body splattered across the rocks below.
Argument with the bridgekeeper at an end, Kratos was still left the problem of crossing the chasm. Kratos scowled at the winch. He could certainly use a tame harpy right about now. Or even an owl. If Athena really wanted him to reach her oracle, she could at least share a couple of her sacred birds.
Neither friendly harpies nor Olympian owls made any sudden appearance. Kratos reached back for another thunderbolt.
He let fly at the winch, blasting it to scrap. The huge chains shrieked as the drawbridge swung down. The crash as it fell back into place finally erased the echoes of the bridgekeeper’s death.
Kratos paused to judge the remaining gap. Twenty-five or thirty feet, no more, but a misjudgment of distance spelled his death on the rocks below.
He took a couple of steps for momentum and hurled himself into the air. As he sailed toward the wreckage at the near end of the bridge, another whistle from the sky rose to a scream. He caught the end of the bridge, fingers clutching at splinters of wood and stone, and swung himself into a rising backflip that carried him to the somewhat more solid structure a bit farther in. He looked up toward the rising scream and saw another ball of Greek fire hurtling from the sky, directly at him. Even if he survived the fire, it would certainly destroy the bridge; Kratos had no desire to follow the bridgekeeper down and add his body to the gory pile below.
Acting rather than consciously deciding, he loosed another thunderbolt from his hand, slicing the night to meet the fireball. The detonation splattered the fireball in all directions. Kratos spun to avert his face as bits of the tarry fire rained down on him. The last things he needed on his face were more scars. Some caught on the flooring of the bridge and sizzled to life upon the new fuel of the bridge’s span.