Kratos got his feet back under him again. Not ten yards away, the statue of Athena still bobbed on the waves. The wooden statue lifted almost free of the water and turned with unmistakable urgency, leaning like a lodestone drawn by the merchant ship.

He didn’t need another hint. He leaped and bounded, balanced and slipped and skidded across the tangle of floating beams toward a foundered ship that seemed to be relatively intact. Some of the merchantman’s crew must have sought refuge there, fleeing the Hydra’s assault; boarding planks, anchored at the merchantman’s rail, spanned the small gap between the ships. If he could only reach the foundered one, he could board the merchant ship with ease-but before he could reach the rail, the sea exploded before him.

Up from the invisible depths rose a vast reptilian head with eyes like shields of flame and gleaming swords for teeth. Its jaws could bite chunks from the mightiest ship on the Aegean; its spiny ears swung wider than a galley’s sails; from its nostrils poured a choking frigid smoke. It ignored the ships behind it, staring instead down at Kratos. Its immense neck arched, and its eyes blazed, and it roared down upon the Ghost of Sparta with a sound too vast to be called noise. The stark shattering thunder drove Kratos to his knees. Briefly.

Kratos rose. At last: something worth killing.

Harpies had died by his hand this day. The Hydra would be next. With grim satisfaction, he reached back and drew the Blades of Chaos.

TWO

“ZEUS, MY LORD…” Athena raised her eyes to the great Skyfather seated on his alabaster throne. The King of the Gods lounged upon his vast seat of authority, regal and at ease with the power he commanded from this high throne. “Zeus, my beloved father,” she amended. She chose to remind him in this subtle way that she was his favorite. “It matters little what Ares thinks of me. But deliberately assaulting my pet human-you personally banned that sort of behavior at Troy.”