God of War

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  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.

  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 be
low, 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.

  He leaped for the other side, sprinting to outrace the sizzling flame, but before he could reach the safety of the rocky outcropping, he felt the structure shift under his weight, shudder—then collapse. Kratos scrambled up the burning planks as though they were a ladder, barely reaching the rocky path before the bridge came apart and tumbled into the chasm.

  Kratos stared back across the rocky gap for one brief moment. At least the bridgekeeper should be smiling up from Hades. No monster would cross that chasm unless it could fly. He turned and moved on.

  The steep path became stairs that led straight to the top of the mountain. At the summit towered a vast many-tiered structure, three or four times the size of the Parthenon below and ten times its height, all of elegantly constructed marble leafed in the purest gold.

  As he climbed the stairs, sounds of battle came from above. He straightened and drew his blades. Slow passage through the air caused the Blades of Chaos to hiss and trail sparks. Kratos took the steps into the temple swiftly and silently, moving as stealthily as he could until he found the source of the clank of sword on sword.

  A large devotional area in the center of the temple was spattered with fresh blood. Two soldiers staggered from behind the statue of Athena that towered over the far side of the chamber, trying desperately to hold off the attacks of five or six undead heavy infantry.

  Kratos nodded to himself. Of course—as soon as the God of War had located the temple, his foul Hades spawn had begun to appear. Even here, within the holiest sanctum of the goddess.

  He cat-footed across the open area and cut the legs of four undead from under them before the creatures knew he was there. A few quick slices settled the others. One soldier was down, bleeding out the last of his life on the goddess’s pristine floor. The other Athenian cast one grim nod of thanks toward Kratos, then let out a war cry and charged back behind Athena’s statue.

  His head rolled out an instant later.

  Kratos—reluctantly—admitted to himself that maybe not all Athenians were cowards.

  The monster that had just sent the valiant soldier to Hades rounded the statue and came at him. Another undead legionnaire, but this one towered taller than a Minotaur, was clad in impenetrable armor, and both its arms terminated in death scythes instead of hands.

  The banefires within its empty eye sockets fixed on Kratos as if issuing a silent challenge to combat. The hideous monster attacked with a speed that caught Kratos by surprise.

  Barely turning aside the wickedly sharp blade, Kratos gave ground and got to the center of the temple where he could fight unhindered. The legionnaire rushed him and lost a leg. As it fell past, Kratos delivered a second cut that took off both the legionnaire’s hands. The death scythes clattered across the floor. Kratos looked at the struggling monster, then swung his sword a final time. The head rolled after the scythes.

  For all its fierce aspect, the legionnaire had proven to be no great opponent.

  “Aid me!” came a new shout from behind the statue. “To my side, if you love Athena!”

  A third Athenian soldier fought a pair of legionnaires by himself, fighting on though weakened from a dozen cuts, some deep and at least one likely mortal.

  Kratos added his strong arm to the fight. Brave Athenians were rare enough that he felt he should contribute to this one’s survival. He pressed the legionnaires back and saw why the Athenian soldiers had been engaged behind the statue: There a hidden door had been broken to shards, opening a narrow corridor that led, Kratos surmised, to the Oracle’s quarters.

  These legionnaires were no more challenge than had been their larger brother. Kratos wove a curtain of death about them, pressing in for the kill—and the world exploded around him.

  A fireball burst on the temple roof and burned through, laying it open to the sky above. A great gobbet of the Greek fire fell fully upon the Athenian and killed him instantly. The undead this brave spirit had dueled also returned to Hades in a flash of eye-searing combustion. Even the legionnaire Kratos fought perished, as a fist-sized glob of fire splashed upon his helm and burned down until nothing remained above the bony shoulders but a puddle of molten bronze.

  The armor Kratos had looted from his victims also blazed with dozens of droplets of fire. A quick flourish of the Blades o
f Chaos sliced away his improvised bindings, and the armor dropped to the floor, where it was swiftly consumed.

  Kratos never even looked back.

  He stepped over the Athenian’s smoldering corpse and entered the narrow corridor.

  “I am Kratos of Sparta,” he called. “The goddess commands me to speak with her oracle.”

  The ghostly woman who had come to him in Athens now appeared in the flesh, and her beauty stole away his voice. The translucent strips of green silk she wore as a skirt beguiled, moving to hide and then reveal her legs and thighs and hips. Wrapped around her bodice, the diaphanous cloth clung with static fierceness to every delicate curve.

  “You came,” the Oracle breathed. Her voice soothed and aroused simultaneously. “I had begun to doubt you ever would.”

  “The temple is not safe,” he said. “Ares’s dark spawn hunt within.”

  The Oracle closed her eyes, then her heavy breasts lifted and fell with a deep, melancholy sigh. “My other defenders have perished. May their souls find nothing but joy as they join their beloveds upon the Elysian Fields.”

  The Spartan thought this unlikely but held his tongue.

  “Only you remain, Kratos.” Her eyes, like pools of moonlight, opened and fixed upon Kratos, and for a moment the Spartan could not remember even the battle around him. “You are all I have left.”

  He shook himself back to the present. “And I am all you need. Hurry.”

  He looked around the small room where the Oracle lived: only a bed and a few personal items. She led an unsophisticated, innocent existence, free of vanity or guile.

  But the chamber itself was a tactical nightmare. If Ares’s minions came upon them in this room, the low ceiling and closed-in walls would hinder the use of the Blades of Chaos, and to unleash any of the gods’ powerful magic in such an area might well be suicidal. Worse, the corridor leading to the temple was the only exit from the room. Sufficient force at the entry would catch them like flies in a bottle.