Robert Vardeman - God of War

“Help or get out of the way!” Kratos batted the man aside. The slave’s arms rose above his head, then the gusty wind captured his body and, like a gull, he became airborne. Kratos took no notice. The man had had his chance.

“You going to heave me overboard, Cap’n? Don’t think I got the strength left to fight the tiller.” The steersman sagged under the strain of holding the ship on a steady course in the fierce gale.

“Only if you fail.”

The tiller bucked like a thing alive, lifting the man off his feet. He clung fiercely to it, struggling for purchase. Kratos lent his strength to the task. The pair of them forced the rudder straight. Timbers creaked, and for a time Kratos thought the ship would tear itself apart.

When Zeus began sending his bolts dancing across the sky, Kratos saw gauzy lights of many colors sizzling on the spars, working up and down the mast and across the canvas, and he knew he had been given a reprieve. Athena protected him and the ship against the worst of the weather. The small globes of burning fire that did not sear were her message to him.

After what seemed to stretch to an eternity, the ship cleared the last of the hulks in the Grave of Ships and skated across open sea.

The wind remained steady, but the rain died away. Arms aching, back feeling as if it had been broken, Kratos sank to the deck.

“The sun, Captain Kratos, the sun’s shining!”

“Praise Apollo,” Kratos said. “Praise Athena.” He felt that at least three of the gods dwelling on Mount Olympus favored him now. Poseidon had thanked him and given him special powers-and had not claimed the ship and crew for his own watery realm. For the first time since boarding this ship, Kratos knew that he would once more step onto solid land. When he did so next, it would be in service to the goddess Athena.

“Steady course,” Kratos ordered.

“Even if I have to lash myself to the rudder, a straight course it’ll be, Capt’n,” the steersman declared. “I have a yearning for the countryside once more. The sooner we put into harbor, the sooner I can roll in the tall grass.”

Kratos left the man and once more descended to Lora and Zora’s cabin. He went into the cabin and closed the door behind him.

“Master,” they both cried.

He was tired to the point of exhaustion, but he could only gape at the pair.

“You disobeyed me,” he said. “You did not find suitable clothing.” Both wore only tunics and no skirts or pants.

“We must make amends then, master,” they said. “Will you punish us? Please?”

Though he did not find much rest in the bed he shared with the twins, the journey to the Harbor of Zea proved pleasant; their tender ministrations helped keep his nightmares at bay. But a full day before the great city topped the horizon, a vast column of black and swirling smoke warned him of the danger ahead.

Athens was in flames.

KRATOS STOOD in the tall tower that commanded the walls above Piraeus. From here he could see the great Long Walls that connected the port to the city of Athens, more than three miles inland. Though, as a Spartan, he considered Athenians to be weak, cowardly, and generally worthless, this day he had to give them a certain grudging respect. With only citizen soldiers to hold them, these twinned great walls still stood mostly intact. An impressive achievement, that, even against a conventional army.

Against Ares’s hordes of harpies, undead legionnaires, Cyclopes, and who knew what other monstrosities scraped from the underside of Hades, the Athenians’ ability to so far hold the walls was astonishing-something Kratos would not have believed if he had not seen it with his own eyes.

“It is said that the God of War, Ares himself, takes the field against us,” said the exhausted, hollow-eyed captain of the tower guard. “Ghost of Sparta, is it so?”

Kratos ignored him. The last thing he needed was to give these pathetic part-time soldiers an excuse to run away. His mind was on something else that he would not have believed unless he had seen it with his own eyes; he turned to cast his gaze seaward, in hopes of catching a last glimpse of the sails of his onetime ship vanishing over the horizon.

Coeus and many of the others had proven their worth to him. Having them beside him, for only a brief instant, would not change the outcome of this battle, but it would afford the ship’s new captain and crew the chance to die nobly in battle. Sailing off as they did only postponed their deaths.

Unless Ares was stopped at the walls of Athens.

And as Kratos had slipped away from the ship in the dark predawn hours, the statue of Athena at the prow spoke to him once more-to remind him that the death of Ares would earn him forgiveness for his crimes. As if he needed reminding. Athena also spoke to him of her oracle in Athens; the Oracle would tell him how to defeat the God of War.

He brought his attention once more to the battle for Athens. Ares’s legions were arrayed mainly against the city itself-and not uniformly either. For some reason Kratos could not fathom, the creatures seemed to avoid the groves and grottoes that dotted the countryside around the city. Kratos shook his head, uncomprehending-putting those groves to the torch would have made more sense-but the God of War had never been known for his keen tactical mind.

Unlike Athena, who was legendary for the subtlety of her battle plans, Ares preferred to simply drive his armies forward in great waves, a rising tide of death, until they finally smashed through his enemies’ defenses and slaughtered every living creature in their path.

Kratos knew this too well. For many years, he had been the one pushing the armies onward in great bloody battering rams of human flesh. For many years, he had laughed like a blood-drunk monster as his men put whole nations to the torch. And he would have been doing it still, were it not for that one little village… that one humble shrine to Athena… and those who sheltered within it.

Kratos shook himself free of the memories. Like quicksand, the madness that lurked always beneath the surface of his mind threatened to suck him down and drown him in an unrelenting nightmare.

His assessment of the tactical situation was unsentimental. Only a trickle of carts still crept up the wide road between the Long Walls. From what he’d seen in Piraeus, most of the draft animals had been already slaughtered for meat. No ships entered the harbor with fresh supplies; out past the breakwater, dozens of burning hulks sent the smoke of dead sailors toward the skies and formed a persuasive warning against daring the waters within. From the red-lit pall of smoke roiling upward from the city, Kratos guessed that Ares’s creatures had found a way to hurl Greek fire over the walls-or, perhaps, simply had their harpies carry the smoldering pots and cast them to the ground from above.

Once Ares’s legions breached the Long Walls, any hope of reinforcement or resupply would be lost-and, worse, those legions would have a wide paved road upon which to march against the weakest point in the defenses of the city in the hills above.

His army would march quickly and slaughter all as it went. Athens would fall, without doubt. To Kratos’s practiced eye, it looked as if the city might not stand until morning.

“Athena has not abandoned us.” The captain sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. “The gray-eyed goddess will break these armies-she would never allow her city to fall!”

“Hold fast to whatever courage you have,” Kratos said darkly. “Athena has heard your prayer.”

“She-” The captain sounded breathless with sudden hope. “What help? When will her aid arrive?”

“Today this Spartan is your Athena-sent ally,” Kratos said, and vaulted through the tower’s window, landing cat-footed on the wall below. Another leap took him to the road.