He looked for more creatures to destroy but saw nothing. He knew better than to believe all the monsters had disappeared.

Kratos wisely used the time he had bought himself to hunt for a pathway between the wrecked ships that might take him the last fifty-odd paces to the merchantman.

A wooden statue bobbing some distance away caught his eye.

“Athena!” He had placed her statue aboard his ship, at the prow, as tribute to the labors he had performed for the gods for the last ten years. He was unsure if the unending quests had been aided by the very gods sending him on them or if simple luck had been involved. Bad luck. Good luck. Nothing mattered. He had the blades.

That statue was hardly more than a hunk of ineptly wrought wood, no more significant than any of the flotsam throughout the Grave of Ships. Or so he had thought. Now the wooden Athena bobbed up and down on the waves, then rose three quarters of the way from the water and leaned in the direction of a tangle of floating beams.

A wetly splintering crash behind warned Kratos that more than Athena’s statue had broken free from the watery grave. He jumped, barely managing to seize a floating beam. He clawed his way onto it-and something cold and slick slid along his leg. He snarled and pulled harder, scraping his belly raw over the rough wood. He got his feet under him just as an undead hand tightened on his ankle and yanked hard.

He slammed down onto the beam and used the undead’s grip on his leg for leverage as he hauled himself around to straddle the beam, then he plunged his hands into the sea. The red-hot chains blasted water into steam and seared the legionnaire so that it jerked about wildly and withdrew without pulling him down to his death.