God of War Page 26

  “I don’t care! Let go!”

  The man screamed as Kratos hauled himself higher and drove his hand like a spear deeply into the man’s side; he hooked his fingers over the man’s hipbone and kept on climbing.

  His next handhold was at the man’s shoulder, then his other shoulder, and finally Kratos could grasp the same prominence that the other clung to. It was then a simple matter for Kratos to clamber up onto the vertebra. He turned back to the man he had used as a ladder.

  It was the captain of the merchant ship from the Grave of Ships.

  The captain recognized Kratos in the same instant. A look of pure horror twisted his face. “Oh, no. Not you again!”

  Kratos stepped close to the edge and kicked the captain’s hands off the bone.

  The captain had a penetrating voice, and Kratos heard him screaming curses as his shade cartwheeled downward to vanish in the blood mist above the Styx.

  Kratos turned and scanned the skeletal landscape. He began to climb.

  Scaling vertebra after vertebra, he toiled upward for an unknown span of time. The light here never changed, and Kratos never tired. He kept climbing.

  When he reached the ribs, miles above where he had begun, he discovered a new feature of this peculiar realm: Undead. Skeletons. Legionnaires. But these were no naked shades; they were armored, armed with all manner of weapons, and thirsty for blood, as they had been in the world above.

  They spread out to intercept his passage. As they moved into position, Kratos saw that they were not alone. Two Minotaurs bearing battle axes and a massive Centaur brandishing a sword as long as Kratos was tall stood with them. The Centaur looked familiar.

  “I know you, Spartan!” the Centaur growled. “You sent me here only days ago, on a street in Athens.”

  “And it’s so with all of you, isn’t it? I killed you all.”

  The Centaur grinned hugely, opening his arms as if in welcome. “And all of us are here to return the favor!”

  Kratos looked farther up and discovered he could chart his path by noting where creatures waited for him. Every bone that led upward was crowded with enemies who had died at his hands. He began to climb the bone up to the first group. The Centaur bellowed, whirling his enormous sword around his head.

  HOURS-DAYS, MONTHS, DECADES -Kratos spent in battle. Still he never tired, and the light never changed, and he never ran out of enemies. He climbed and then he fought. He jumped, then found himself facing a column of immense height-studded with counterrotating segments of viciously sharp blades.

  Kratos stepped back and tried to see the top of the column. It vanished into the blood-red mists above. The swish swish of the rotating blades cut through the air but could not drown out the cries of men and women falling to Lord Hades’s embrace far below. Kratos had come a considerable distance to reach this point, and there was more to go if he wanted to kill a god.

  Taking a deep breath, Kratos watched the blades whirling about and judged the “safe” rings-but he knew they could never be considered islands of refuge. The rings did not spin at uniform rates. Some above went faster, while those on either side rotated more slowly. Once he started the climb, there would be no turning back, no rest, not an instant of hesitation.

  Two quick steps and a jump took him above the first ring of curved blades. Kratos almost found his escape from Lord Hades’s grip at an end as the blade under his left foot cut off part of his sandal. He jerked upward and almost foolishly looked down.

  No rest. No stopping.

  The blades above came fast at eye level. Scrambling, finding purchase against the ever-moving rings, a toehold and a hard push upward barely allowed him to escape decapitation. He slowed, then shot upward, fingers finding the right gripping points to avoid the next ring of blades and the next and the next. Then he saw that the ring above rotated against the others and forced him to retreat. Kratos dropped down, but surged up when a break came in the deadly ring.

  He found a rhythm to the climb, a certain logic to the seemingly random whirl of death around him. But a screech from behind warned him of a harpy coming at his back. Not daring to take his attention from the segmented tower of blades, he kept climbing.

  Blood spattered his back and ran in thick rivers to drip down to the spot where he had begun the climb. The harpy had incautiously attacked him and ignored a set of blades coming from the opposite direction; it paid the price. A quick glance showed the headless body tumbling away in one direction. He never saw the head. He was too occupied with preventing such a fate from befalling him.

  Twice, the flashing blades almost lopped off vital pieces of anatomy. One wound was minor, but a steady gush of blood came from a deep cut to his ribs just as he saw the top of the deadly column. Sanctuary in sight spurred him on, and wind whistling from the blades chilled his body as sweat evaporated from his exertions.

  Close to the pinnacle, with only one ring of blades to pass, Kratos surged upward, let a sharp edge graze his leg, and then tumbled flat onto the top of the column. He immediately found himself faced with a tall legionnaire armored in flames. Kratos somersaulted, came to his feet, and brought the Blades of Chaos into his hands. The climb had set his pulse racing, and every sense was heightened. The legionnaire had no chance against his quick cuts and sudden leap high into the air. He hurtled downward, the blades preceding him. The legionnaire exploded in a ball of fire as the tip of one blade drove down hard onto the back of the undead’s skull.

  Kratos stood, staring at the pile of ash that marked the legionnaire’s final resting place. He kicked the ash over the edge, sending it floating eventually to drift on the river Styx.

  Looking around, he saw nowhere to go from the apex of the column. Kratos looked back down through the blur of spinning blades. If he had to retreat and find another way, he would. As he stepped to the edge to begin his descent, a new sound filled the air, drowning out the cries of those unfortunates falling to the underworld. He jumped back in time to avoid being crushed by a heavy block.

  A grim smile curled Kratos’s lips. Tied to the block was a rope that vanished upward. He might have to deal with harpies, but the spinning blades of the column beneath his feet were a danger past. Gathering his strength, he bent his legs and exploded upward, grasping the rope as far above as possible. Hand over hand, he continued his escape as he went through dozens-or thousands-of weapons looted from the corpses of his enemies. Though a shade, he could be hurt by these enemies, he discovered, but victory healed his wounds.

  The underworld behind him vanished as he clambered higher, finally seeing a ceiling above. Kratos wondered at what appeared to be roots dangling from the bottom. As he got closer, he saw that they were roots-roots of living plants from the world above. The living world above!

  Kratos climbed faster and followed the rope into a hole that blocked all senses. His shoulders brushed dirt, and then the hole narrowed even more-but the rope still stretched taut above him. Ascending more slowly, he felt himself being crushed and smothered, and he knew the smell in his nostrils and the taste in his mouth.

  Dirt. Clay.

  Earth.

  He spat out a mouthful of grit and sealed his lips. With an effort greater than he’d ever before believed he could summon, Kratos forced his hands and then his arms to move. He pressed his limbs outward, using his great strength to pack the smothering earth away from him, opening a little room to work. He began to move his legs as well, struggling to bend his knees or widen his stance. His heart hammered, and his lungs burned for air…

  He told himself repeatedly, Shades don’t need to breathe.

  Without pausing to marvel at this miracle or to ponder the question of its source, Kratos clawed his way upward, snarling and gasping and forcing his weakening limbs to move, to climb, to rip apart the dirt above him and break through to light and air. Just when his pounding heart seemed to be choking him to death, his hand broke through.

  Fresh air gusted into his face. His fatigue vanished. Furiously, he attacked the im
prisoning earth until he could see a night shrouded by clouds glowing blood-red with the light of fires below.

  “Athens,” he croaked. “I’m in Athens…”

  He pulled himself up to the mouth of the hole he had dug and discovered there were still six more feet to go.

  He stood in an open grave.

  TWENTY-NINE

  IN THE OPEN GRAVE, Kratos’s skin prickled as though he had felt a sudden chill. He turned and looked up, and, yes, he was where he thought he was: the grave that had been dug beside the Temple of Athena.

  Kratos vaulted from the grave and looked out over the burning city. In the distance he saw the immense shape of Ares striding through the city, stomping buildings at random.

  “Ah, Kratos, right on time. I finished digging only a moment ago.”

  The unexpected voice startled Kratos into a whirl. He crouched, ready to fight for his newly regained life, but there was no danger here. Behind him stood only the old gravedigger.

  Now, though, the gravedigger did not look so old or nearly so decrepit, and his voice had none of his formerly senile quaver. Intelligence burned brightly in his once-murky eyes.

  “Who are you?”

  “An interesting question, but one we don’t have time to answer, my boy. You must hurry. Athens needs you.”

  “But… but…” Kratos gestured in helpless bafflement at the empty grave. “But how did you know… how could you know I would-”

  “Athena isn’t the only god keeping watch on you, Spartan. You have gone far to prove your worth, but your final task lies ahead of you.”

  Kratos turned as a thunderous roar erupted from the direction of Athens. Ares towered above, meting out destruction and laughing in triumph. Kratos felt his rage building. Without turning to the gravedigger, he asked, “Who are you?”

  Kratos spoke to empty air. The gravedigger had disappeared like smoke in the wind. There came an answering whisper, a zephyr blowing in his ear. “Complete your task, Kratos… and the gods will forgive your sins…”

  The Spartan shook his head grimly. “How can I do this without Pandora’s Box?” For all the weapons he still carried, Kratos knew that they would hardly even muss Ares’s flame-laced hair.

  He gazed across the burning ruin of Athens to where the God of War stood shouting his triumph to the heavens. Kratos steeled himself as he remembered an old maxim: Spartans fight with the weapons they have, not the weapons they want.

  The hour of decision had finally come. Time to kill.

  Time to die.

  Kratos started walking. A strangled, gasping moan came to Kratos’s ear as he headed for the chasm he had only barely crossed as the lone bridge was destroyed. It came from within the Temple of Athena. It sounded like a woman moaning in agony, gasping for a last few breaths.

  Hearing this, Kratos found himself glad that at least his wife and daughter had not suffered. He had given them swift, almost painless deaths. Cleaner than the woman inside. Probably the Oracle, he thought, and then he stopped.

  If it was the Oracle, he had one last question for her.

  He trotted up the front steps of the temple. The whole floor was splotched with dried blood. He went to the immense statue of Athena and stood before it, gazing up into the blank marble eyes.

  “No box. Only the weapons I had before,” he said, spinning the Blades of Chaos around. “Any advice?”

  The marble face of the statue remained stubbornly blank. Kratos turned away and went behind the altar, to the corridor that led to the Oracle’s quarters. A dozen long strides took him to the empty room. Nothing in there but a few dead leaves.

  Back in the temple, he looked around for the source of the soft moans. He turned slowly, listening hard. Above. Somewhere above.

  The temple roof had been blasted to pieces. A quick sprint and he leaped onto the altar, springing again up the side of Athena’s statue to the head, and then a prodigious leap propelled him to the edge of the sundered roof. He barely made it; his left hand latched on to a shard of a rafter and he hung there, dangling.

  Again the visions captured his mind. His wife and daughter in his arms, cruelly slaughtered on the village temple’s floor. The curse of the Oracle that remade him into the Ghost of Sparta. The swirl of his family’s ashes clinging to his skin, forever staining both his flesh and his soul.

  Kratos grunted and pulled himself up to the roof.

  Sprawled a few steps away lay Athena’s oracle, her contorted position warning that her back had been broken. Many times in battle, Kratos had seen warriors in similar positions. It took hours, sometimes days, for them to die.

  He knelt beside the Oracle. She had seemed diminutive before. Now she was frail and old beyond her years. Her eyes flickered open when she felt his fingers on her cheek, and she squinted against the glare of the flames devouring distant Athens.

  “You have returned,” she said in a whisper. “You won the box-and lost it. My visions… I saw.”

  “Then you know what happened to me.”

  She closed her eyes. Her skin had gone waxy, transparent as parchment, revealing the tangle of veins just under the surface. Kratos pressed his fingers harder into her cheek. She stirred.

  “Tell me what you foresee,” he said. “Tell me how I kill the God of War.”

  The Oracle’s lips twitched. Kratos bent closer to hear.

  “The box…” The Oracle twitched spastically. She shook her head. “Why are you chosen by Athena? You are a terrible man. A monster…”

  “A monster to kill a monster.”

  There came no reply; he spoke to a dead woman.

  He stood and stared at her body, hardly more than a child’s in size, no matter the powers she had possessed in life. Now her shade was consigned to Lord Hades’s embrace.

  He looked down upon the city, and then into the chasm. How would he get down from here?

  He noticed that one building on fire near the base of the cliff was moving, as though it somehow walked through the city-but then the fire turned a face toward the sky, and Kratos realized what he had thought was a building was in fact the blaze of Ares’s hair, seen from above. The god seemed to be contemplating the view.

  In the blink of an eye, Ares was wiped from existence. Again, Kratos felt a chilly prickle spread over his skin. That had been too much like the phantasmal Ares in the Arena of Remembrance. If the real Ares was as invulnerable as the imitation…

  He didn’t let himself think about it.

  Then the voice that haunted Kratos’s every nightmare roared from right behind him.

  “Zeus! Do you see what your son can do?”

  Kratos whirled-and let his heart start beating again. Ares had no idea the Spartan was there. He’d only willed himself to the mountaintop because it held the most sacred Temple of Athena.

  Ares boasted at the sky.

  “ You cast your favor on Athena, but her city lies in ruins before me!”

  The echoes of that gargantuan voice brought down more masonry around the temple.

  The god raised his fist, threatening the sky. “ And now even Pandora’s Box is mine. Would you have me use it against Olympus itself? ”

  Kratos, from his vantage point atop the temple roof, saw that the god was telling the truth. Though the massive box was dwarfed by the fist from which it dangled, there was no mistaking the eerie golden glow of its jewels. Pandora’s Box twisted at the end of a long, slender chain, as though it were a locket, an amulet for the god to wear for luck.

  Ares went on with his ranting, but Kratos no longer heard him. All his attention was now focused on that slender chain linking the box to the god’s fist. He looked from that chain to the white scar on his palm, then back to the chain.

  “Do not strike at the god, you say?” He showed his teeth to the night like a rabid wolf. “Fair enough.”

  He said softly, “Ares.”

  Hearing his name, the god turned to look back over his shoulder. He sniffed the air, as if to catch a pleasing savor.

&n
bsp; “Kratos. Returned from the underworld.” Ares did not sound surprised; he seemed pleased. He lifted his face to the skies again and threw wide his arms. “ Is this the best you can do, Father? You send a broken mortal to defeat me, the God of War?”

  Kratos didn’t feel broken.

  He raised his right hand, felt the power of Zeus’s thunderbolt surging within him as he took one step forward, and unleashed war upon a god.

  THIRTY

  “WHO IS THE GRAVE DIGGER?”

  Zeus appeared to be taken aback by Athena’s sudden question. “Why, he… digs graves.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “But it is. Just not the answer you’re hoping for.”

  Athena hid the beginning of a smile. The Skyfather’s words led her to an inescapable conclusion: Zeus himself had been the gravedigger, and he supported Kratos. She knew he could not openly favor the Spartan, because of his own edict. The other gods would protest. With so much turmoil in Olympus, thanks to Ares and his disobedience, Zeus walked carefully. He was King of the Gods but could never withstand open rebellion among all the other gods.

  She exulted. Zeus aided Kratos in ways she did not know, but aid him he did. That increased Kratos’s chance for success.

  Zeus had bestowed the power of the thunderbolt on her Kratos surreptitiously.

  Athena needed even more from Zeus. “Father, we must help Kratos more openly. He cannot hope to conquer Ares without our aid.”

  “No!” Instantly changeable, Zeus jerked to his feet and now towered over her so that her whole body was in his shadow. “You will not help Kratos, because Ares’s blood will not stain your hands!”

  Everything fell into place. The intricacy took her breath away. Zeus had maneuvered her so she would guide Kratos to where he, the Lord of Olympus, could bring about Ares’s death.

  “What more is there, Father? You said that Kratos had to prove himself to be worthy. Of what? What more than killing Ares do you plan for him?”

  “You thought to use your mortal to accomplish your end, but I foresaw failure. Now there is a chance for Kratos to kill a god and… attain more.”