The tremors faded away. “There is truth in this,” Poseidon admitted. “But how best to do so?”
“Show all the gods how even a mere mortal can best Ares’s plans and defeat his will,” Athena said with studied casualness.
“Yes, that is so,” Poseidon said. “But what mortal? Hercules? Isn’t he busy somewhere in Crete? Peirithous is in Hades, Theseus is old, and Perseus-who knows what he’s been up to? I don’t think he’s reliable.”
“There is another,” Athena said, forcing herself to show no hint of emotion. “Has my lord uncle heard of one particular mortal, called by men the Ghost of Sparta? His name is Kratos.”
Great Poseidon bent toward her, interested. “The Fist of Ares?”
“Fist of Ares no more-now the Ghost of Sparta serves me. Did you not attend the Challenge of War Gods?”
He nodded slowly, remembering. “Yes, yes, of course. It had slipped my mind-the fate of land-borne armies means little to the sea.”
“Kratos had forsworn his service to Ares even before I won him and the rest of the armies of humanity in the challenge.”
“Oh, yes, I remember, now that you mention it-something to do with that little village temple of yours that Kratos sacked, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, Uncle. And for Kratos, a horror beyond imagining. It haunts him to this day.”
“So this Kratos is the mortal you have in mind?”
“Your perception is justly legendary, my lord uncle. Ares hates Kratos with a passion even the gods can barely comprehend, and only a distant dream of vengeance upon the God of Slaughter keeps Kratos fighting on. There could be no greater shame for Ares than to be thwarted by Kratos.”
“How can any mere mortal hope to overpower the legions of Ares?”
“As the Fates would have it,” Athena said, a bit of a twinkle brightening the gray of her eyes, “I have an idea…”
THREE
FOR HOURS, KRATOS FOUGHT through the Grave of Ships.
The Blades of Chaos flamed in constant motion, rising and falling, whipping to the extreme lengths of their unbreakable chains, slicing through the rotting flesh and brittle yellowed bone of undead legionnaires, shattering the scales of Hydra heads, puncturing eyeballs, severing tongues and ripping at throats. They slashed and hacked, stabbed and pierced, and through it all they burned with an unnatural flame, as though the hellish fires of the Hadean forge sprang from their edges to burn away the lives of all they touched.
Kratos burned with the same fire. Each slice of any creature’s life that the Blades carved away flowed back up the chains to where they were fused with the bones of his wrists. The stolen lives charged his body and flooded his mind with inexhaustible fury. If he was not killing, it was only because he was sprinting toward more victims. He never stopped.
He never even slowed down.
The blades could not be broken; they could not be nicked or dulled. Even the black blood and putrefying flesh that should have clotted and crusted the blades and their chains simply vanished, consumed by unnatural fire. Kratos raced from ship to ship, balancing across floating beams above seas churning with the feeding frenzy of sharks below, who fought for scraps of his victims. The ships blurred together into an endless nightmare maze of decks and masts, of sails and cargo nets, and always there was the unending stream of mindless undead attacking with the same maniacal bloodlust, more harpies to swoop and dive and rake him with their shit-smeared talons.
He no longer knew if he was moving toward the merchantman he had followed into this watery hell or winding farther away. He didn’t care. He didn’t think about it or about anything at all. He threw himself into his work with the joyous abandon of a bacchant and lost himself in the purity of unchecked slaughter.
He killed. He was content.
He fought on until his path was once again blocked by another uprearing head of the Hydra. Each he faced was larger than the one before. When this great beast cracked its jaw wide to roar, Kratos might have been thrust into a tunnel with dark saliva-damp sides. All he could see was the huge mouth, gaping twice as wide as his body, and the yellowed razor-sharp teeth in front of him. He reached over his shoulders and gripped the handles of the Blades of Chaos.
The Hydra surged forward with a sinuous ripple of its seemingly endless neck. Kratos feinted, swung past the snapping teeth, and whipped the chains securing the Blades of Chaos around its thick neck. Muscles bulging with exertion, he tightened his grip, twisting the links ever tighter, strangling the creature with his chains. The monster roared in fury and whip-cracked its neck to shake him loose. The chains skidded, and the beast’s scales scraped his arms into a bloody swamp.
Kratos kicked hard, twisted, and spun around, using his chains like a climber’s belt to force his way back up the neck. But his next move came at just the wrong instant. As the monster spasmed again, the force of his own kick flipped Kratos away to swing free by the chains-and the Hydra snapped him from the air as a toad might snare an unwary fly.
The Hydra’s jaws clamped down, teeth like swords chopping into Kratos’s forearms. A different hero would have had both hands severed, but the chains fused to his bones could not be broken save by the God of War himself. Clenching its jaw tighter only chipped the monster’s teeth-but the Hydra showed no signs of letting go.
As he struggled, Kratos realized this monster might send him into Lord Hades’s embrace. Straining, he tried to pull his arms free of the Hydra’s crushing jaws, then stopped and looked frantically below into the maelstrom of the sea. Sharks snapped at one another-and at Kratos’s feet. The sharp pain of his greaves being bitten through by a huge shark forced him to fight on two fronts.
Deciding which was the more immediate threat caused a knot to form in his belly. Death beckoned from blood-crazed sharks and the Hydra.
Unable to free his arms, he lifted his legs away from the voracious sharks and tried to find leverage. Pain radiated the length of his arms, from where the Hydra’s jaws clamped down with bone-cracking force all the way up to his shoulders. Grunting with effort, he yanked-and only drove the Hydra’s teeth deeper into his forearms.
When the Hydra began to toss its head around, shaking Kratos like a rat caught in a hunting dog’s jaws, Kratos saw his opportunity. A kick from Kratos could rock a warship away from its dock. He doubled up, bringing his knees under his pinioned arms. When his greaves and sandals began to tear at the Hydra’s face, the creature could only growl in pain and rage.
Kratos kicked harder, faster. Desperation drove him now. His arms turned cold, numb, bloodless. Both feet worked as if he were pummeling the beast with his fists. A chance kick caught the Hydra’s eye, causing the creature’s growl to become a roar of pain that released Kratos’s arms and sent him flipping upward, high into the air. As Kratos reached the top of his arc, the Hydra strained toward him, opening wide its maw to catch him like a casually tossed sweetmeat.
In a single instant, Kratos both feared and exulted.
As he fell, he returned the Blades of Chaos in one smooth motion to rest upon his back. He coiled himself into a tight ball and allowed the creature’s mouth to slam shut around him-but before it could swallow, he planted his feet against the Hydra’s lower jaw, braced his back against the slimy ridges of the vast hard palate above, and shoved.
The creature’s jaw began to open. Kratos strained like Hercules lifting the sky from the shoulders of Atlas. The Hydra strove with all its monstrous power to bite down again, but when the Ghost of Sparta stood braced, no power on earth could crush him.
Once he had forced his legs to full extension, Kratos wedged his hands in above his shoulders and continued to force open the Hydra’s mouth by strength of his mighty arms alone. A crack like the breaking of a main spar came from the hinge of the monster’s jaw, but Kratos did not relent and could not be denied. Fear was gone, replaced with cold triumph. With one great surge, he blasted his arms up straight above his head, and now the sound was not so much a crack as a crushing, grinding roar and a wet, leathery r-r-rip as the Hydra’s jaw shattered and its cheeks tore asunder.