“That’s what I keep telling myself. So far.”
“I was only trying to have a little fun. Just the tiniest amount. A bit of banter with my favorite sister. Cheer you up, yes? Take your mind off… well, you know.”
“I do know. And you shouldn’t forget it either.” She glanced past Hermes to a dressing table, where lay a circlet of gold studded with precious gems. Yet another trinket made for a sacrificial offering to her by some ambitious craftsman in the city that bore her name. It was quite fine, for the work of a mortal. She supposed that she should probably answer his prayer-and she would have, if she had bothered to remember his name. Her preoccupation with Ares had taken her thoughts away from those mortals who so relied on her even as they died. That must change soon, to repair more than sundered buildings.
“And, I, uh, I do apologize for the spying. Of all the Olympian goddesses, you are truly the most beautiful. Your form was elegant-nay, perfect with the bow curved back and the string taut. It was a sight to behold. Any foe would quake, just as an ally would rally to your cause.” Hermes rose from the couch, stretching his muscles in a fashion calculated to emphasize his lithe, youthful physique. “But you must admit, of the gods, I myself am the most handsome.”
“If you were half as handsome as you think you are, you would indeed outshine the sun.”
“You see? None can compare with me-”
“I’d like to hear you say so in front of Apollo.”
Hermes tossed his head haughtily. “Oh, certainly he’s pretty enough-but he’s such a bore!”
“The next words from your lips had best concern your message.” She leaned toward him and poked him lightly on the chest with the point of her sword. “You have lately seen, I believe, the consequences of making me angry.”
The Messenger of the Gods looked down at the blade against his ribs, then back up at the war goddess’s unwavering gray eyes. He drew himself up, adjusted his chlamys with exaggerated dignity, and said in a clarion voice, “It’s your pet mortal.”
“Kratos?” She frowned. Zeus had said he himself would be looking after Kratos until after the memorial. “What of him?”
“Well, I thought you might like to know, in view of all the aid he has given you and the concern you occasionally feel for him-”
“Hermes.”
He flinched, just a bit. “Yes, yes. Here: Witness.”
He lifted the caduceus and pointed. In the air between them, an image built of a mountain, tall beyond imagining, and a cliff, impossibly sheer, impossibly far above the Aegean’s watery surge. On the edge of that cliff, Kratos paused and seemed to speak, though no one was there to hear.
“Your pet has chosen a perilous path to tread. This one will take him to Hades.”
Athena felt herself go pale. “He takes his own life?”
“So it appears.”
“He can’t!” The disobedient mortal! And where was Zeus? Not looking after Kratos, obviously-or had he, she now wondered, said he would be looking upon the Spartan? Which would be an entirely different thing.
As her mind raced, sorting through all the possibilities and improbabilities, the Kratos in the image leaned forward and lifted a foot as though to step from the cliff into empty air… then he fell. Simply fell.
No struggle. No scream. No cry for help. He plunged headfirst toward his death on the rocks below, and on his face was only calm.
“You didn’t see this coming?” Hermes smirked. “Aren’t you supposed to be the Goddess of Foresight?”
When she turned her level stare upon him, he smothered that smirk with a cough. “When next we meet,” she said, low and deadly, “I will share what I foresee for you.”
“I, uh… was only teasing.” He swallowed hard. “Only teasing…”
“And that is why I haven’t found it necessary to hurt you. Yet.” Her sword cut the air in front of Hermes’s nose. To his credit he did not flinch. Much.
She gathered herself, and with a twitch of will she burst from the chamber, leaving Hermes gaping owlishly behind her. At the speed of thought, Athena descended from Mount Olympus to the rain-lashed cliffs. She arrived as Kratos hurtled into the ragged clouds below.
The messenger had had the right of it. She’d had no inkling that suicide would be the end of Kratos’s story. How could she have been so blind? How could Zeus have let this happen?
More important: How could Kratos be so disobedient?
The Grave of Ships, she thought. That’s where Kratos’s fall had really begun. It had to be. The Grave of Ships in the Aegean Sea…
ONE
THE ENTIRE SHIP GROANED and shuddered, lurching upward into the fierce winter squall as though it had struck unexpected shoals here in the Aegean’s deepest reach. Kratos threw his arms around the statue of Athena at the prow of his battered ship, lips peeling from his teeth in an animal snarl. Above, on the mainmast, the last of the ship’s square sails boomed and cracked in the gale like the detonation of a nearby thunderbolt. A huge flock of filthy, emaciated creatures like hideous women with the wings of bats swooped and wheeled above the mast, screaming rage and lust for the blood of men.
“Harpies,” Kratos growled. He hated harpies.
A pair of the winged monsters shrieked above the wind’s howl as they dove to slash at the sail with their blood-crusted talons. The sail boomed once more, then it finally shredded, whipping over the deck and slapping the harpies from the air. One vanished into the spray of the storm; the other managed to right herself by tangling viciously sharp talons into the hair of an oarsman. She dragged the unfortunate sailor screaming and flailing into the sky, twisting to sink her fangs into his neck and feast upon his blood, which spewed downward in a gory shower.
The harpy saw Kratos watching and screamed her eternal rage. She ripped away the sailor’s head and hurled it at Kratos; when he slapped this grisly missile away with a contemptuous backhand, she flung the sailor’s body with enough force to kill an ordinary man.
Her target, however, was nothing resembling ordinary.
Kratos slipped aside and snatched the decapitated sailor’s rope belt as the corpse plummeted. A savage yank snapped the rope and sent the corpse over the rail into the churning sea. Kratos measured the dive of the harpy as she swooped on him like a falcon, knifelike talons extended to rip out his eyes.
Kratos reached back over his shoulders instinctively, his hands seeking the twin enormous, wickedly curved, and preternaturally sharp chopping swords that nestled against his back: His signature weapons, the Blades of Chaos, had been forged by the smith god Hephaestus in the furnaces of Hades itself. Chains from their hafts looped about his wrists and burned through his flesh until they fused with his very bones-but at the last instant he left the twin weapons where they were.
A harpy wasn’t worth drawing on.
He cracked the slain sailor’s belt like a whip. It spun out to meet the harpy’s dive and looped around her neck. He leaped from the statue to the deck below, his sudden weight wrenching the creature from the sky. He pinned her to the deck with one sandal while he hauled upward on the rope with a fraction of his full strength. That fraction was enough: The harpy’s head tore free of her body and flipped into the air.
He snatched the head with his free hand, shook it at the wheeling, screeching flock above, and roared, “Come down here again! See what you get!”
He punctuated his challenge by hurling the severed head at the nearest of the harpies with deadly accuracy and incredible force. It struck her full in the face, cutting off her screech like the blow of an ax. She flipped ass over fangs as she tumbled from the sky to crash into the storm churn, three spans off the port sweeps.
Kratos only glowered. Killing those vile creatures wasn’t even fun.
No challenge.