Blood and death. Those were Kratos’s stock in trade. No one who’d ever seen him in battle, no one who’d even heard the tales of his legendary exploits, could mistake him for any other man.

Another impact knocked Kratos into his steersman. The ship shuddered and squealed, and the grinding shriek went on and on. The sailor fell to the deck, and Kratos grabbed the tiller-but it swung freely in his hands.

“The rudder!” the steersman gasped. “The rudder’s sheared away!”

Kratos released the useless tiller and peered over the stern. One of the derelict hulks of the ship reefs had speared his galley like a fish-a spar as thick as his body had been driven up through the hull and had sliced away the entire rudder as it had penetrated the stern from inside and below.

“Starboard sweeps! Backwater! Now!” Kratos roared. “Port sweeps! Pull for your useless lives!”

With a tooth-grinding shriek, the galley ripped clear of the spar. As its bow swung toward the struggling merchantman, Kratos ordered the starboard sweeps to full ahead. He twisted and snarled at the steersman. “Beat the cadence. Make it fast!”

“But-but we’re sinking!”

“Do it!” Kratos turned back to the oarsmen. “The first craven worm to take his hands off his sweep will die where he sits!”

The crew stared at him as if he had been driven mad by the gods.

“Now! Pull!”

Even as the stern sank lower and lower into the water, the galley surged ahead. The merchantman was only a couple of hundred paces away, then a hundred fifty, then An enormous swell driven by the Grave of Ships’ treacherous crosscurrents heeled the galley half over-and instead of righting itself, it crashed down upon a rotting hulk and stuck fast. His ship had nowhere left to go except down.