Robert Vardeman - God of War

Kratos understood: The God of War was deliberately funneling the most pious and devoted of Athena’s flock into one small area of the city-making it look as if this was the safest area, as well as the only route to the temple of their goddess. Instead of fleeing into the countryside, where tracking them down and slaughtering them would be a daunting task even for Ares’s minions, they were packing themselves into the illusory safety of this single neighborhood.

Concentrating where they could most easily be destroyed. All at once. No fuss. No mess. No chasing people through the forest or rooting them out of mountain caves. The citizens of Athens had made of themselves nothing more than cattle rushing to the slaughterhouse floor. It was brutal, and he knew it would be very effective.

He’d done this sort of thing himself.

Kratos grabbed his temples to keep his head from exploding as an image burned hotter than the sun through his brain.

No! It couldn’t be… The dead, those he had slaughtered in Athena’s temple… Guilty! He had killed Gasping, Kratos forced the horrible vision away. It seized him more powerfully each time, but giving in to the horror wasn’t going to make reaching the Parthenon any easier. He could conquer his own nightmares-for a short while-but it seemed the monsters were gathering on the streets below to block his path. And he knew those undead archers hadn’t forgotten he was up here. He had to move. Fast.

On the other hand, he saw no reason to surrender the high ground.

Three strides for momentum took him to the lip of the roof, and a mighty leap sent him hurtling over the street to the opposite roof. The skeleton archers below were so startled, none of them got off a shot. As he sprinted along, he heard the commanding bellow of a Minotaur, and he knew he’d been seen by the forces below.

His next jump drew a scatter of fire arrows, though none came close-and he could see undead legionnaires mounted on the backs of Centaurs racing parallel to his path on the streets below. Another rooftop and another leap, and harpies began to swoop and dive at him. He dodged and ducked across roof after roof without slowing, using the blades as grapnels to swing himself over gaps too wide to bridge, and whirling them about his head as he ran to keep the harpies at bay.

He sprinted from roof to roof, running faster than the harpies could pursue-but the shouts and bellows of the monsters below came even faster. Not even Kratos could outrun the speed of sound. More of Ares’s creatures streamed toward him, and he leaped from the last house of the neighborhood and dived once again into the fires and smoke of the rest of the city.

One Minotaur had the bright idea of calling for all Cyclopes, Centaurs, and other Minotaurs to forget about trying to catch the racing Spartan; instead, they should batter the walls of the burning buildings, weakening every structure in Kratos’s path.

Battling the strangling smoke and roasting flames, Kratos jumped to a rooftop which collapsed under his weight. A frantic scrabble at the structure beneath the splintered roof tiles and a swift overhead whip of a Blade of Chaos, which embedded it in a more-solid rooftop ahead, gained him enough purchase to keep aloft. A quick glance below at the countless enemies of all descriptions crowding there told him in no uncertain terms the outcome of an unlucky fall.

Grimly, he ran on, knowing that each rooftop would prove more fragile than the last-and even if he could stay up there all the way to the foot of the Acropolis, he would then have to descend to the streets and either deal with his pursuers or be slaughtered along with all these useless Athenians.

Better a nameless death being swallowed by the Hydra in the Grave of Ships than having his corpse burned in the same fires as those of his people’s most bitter enemy.

Along the base of the sheer cliffs below the Acropolis, Kratos raced parallel to the rock, making for the roadway. These buildings were sturdier, as they had the support of the rock wall at their back, and keeping close to the cliff face as he rounded the curve let him gain ground on his pursuers.

There! A gap in the greasy smoke showed him the broad flagstones of the roadway just ahead. With redoubled energy, Kratos hurled himself toward it-but only three houses short of the open ground he craved, roof tiles crumbled and the fire-weakened walls of the building collapsed around him. Worse, his charred, blistered back betrayed him. His usual strength had faded, and twisting about sent knives of pain into his shoulders, which prevented him from saving himself from the fall.

By the time he found his feet and shook himself free of the rubble, they were on him.

Undead legionnaires rushed him, swords drawn. The Blades of Chaos found first his hands, then their necks. More pressed in behind, and Kratos leaned in to them. He drove his way forward as though they were only earth, he was a miner, and the blades were his picks and shovels. Contemptuously, he stepped over their halved bodies.

Kratos found more legionnaires in the broad courtyard. These took a little more effort to dispatch, but he did so, regretting every second he wasted in mindless slaughter.

He made for the street, only to encounter more monsters at the gate. Three Cyclopes growled and swung their prodigious war clubs; any impact would have spattered his brains all over the street, but that wasn’t what worried Kratos. Even when they missed him, those clubs knocked huge holes in the walls. The already-fragile structures shuddered with every blow. On the rooftops above the courtyard, skeletal archers clattered into place, beginning a rain of flaming arrows to cut off any hope of retreat.

One brief glance over his shoulder was enough to escalate his sense of peril: Now coming up to support the Cyclopes were six Minotaurs, spreading to fill all gaps.

They came for him. All at once.

Pinned between the archers and the combination force of Minotaurs and Cyclopes, he saw no way out.

But he wasn’t ready to die. Not yet.

“Come on, then!” he roared. “Come and die!”

Kratos blocked an ax blow from one Minotaur and lunged, catching a Cyclops behind the hamstring. A slash hobbled the monster, but as he limped back, the other two crowded close to join the battle.

Kratos slipped out from under another earthshaking club blow from a Cyclops and began a steady parry. The Minotaurs had ditched their axes in favor of long spears, with which they could strike at him without getting in the way of the Cyclopes; one slip would leave him as full of holes as a cheese grater. They coordinated their attacks like a well-trained, experienced unit.

He was only one mortal against myriad creatures dragged from Hades, but it was he who attacked. “Out of my way or die where you stand!” he thundered, and then undertook to make his boast into a simple statement of fact.

Kratos slipped between the Cyclopes and struck a mighty double-bladed blow into the chest of the nearest Minotaur. New strength and power flowed up the chains into his body as the blades drank the man-bull’s life. He whirled to hamstring another Cyclops, but the enormous monster was faster than it looked. The one-eyed creature swept its vast club into a rising parry and cleared the blades from between them, then dropped its club and wrapped its arms around Kratos’s chest. The Cyclops squeezed until the Spartan’s ribs began to crack and clouds of blackness washed through Kratos’s vision.

The Cyclops roared its triumph-until its lone eye focused on the Spartan’s face.

Kratos was smiling.

The blades came down at the joining of the Cyclops’s neck and shoulders, carving a gore-splashing V downward until they met at the creature’s monstrous heart. Kratos released the blades to seize the Cyclops’s head-which still blinked its eye in astonishment-and then hurled it, along with much of the creature’s spine, into the path of the jabbing spears of the Minotaurs.