Assassin's Creed Odyssey (The Official Novelization)

by Gordon Doherty

  She halted in her tracks. “Stentor?”

  Stentor’s face paled, then his cheeks glowed red, and his lips grew thin as a blade. He stepped away from the table, swept the nearest adviser from his path and strode over to her.

  “I did not realize it was you who was in command of—”

  Whack!

  His knuckles caught her square on the mouth and a white spark struck through her head. A moment later, she realized she was on her back, head spinning. “Malákas!” she groaned, then saw her attacker perched over her, his face ablaze with fury, his sword drawn. A crowd had gathered. At once, her daze vanished and she rolled back, drawing the scroll and shaking it. “I’m here to help you, you idiot!”

  “Not after Megara. Not after what you did, you murdering whore!”

  The gathered crowd of Spartiates rumbled in anger. How much had Stentor told them?

  She lifted the scroll high so all could see. “King Archidamos sent me to aid you in securing this region.”

  The thunder of voices ebbed, all eyes on the edict. Stentor, chest heaving, slammed his sword back into its sheath, then spun away and stomped over to the northern edge of the camp. “This is how much Archidamos trusts me,” he bawled back over his shoulder. “By putting his faith in a fucking mercenary?”

  Kassandra touched her jaw—the lips tender and the bone aching. Carefully, she followed her adopted brother. She stopped behind him, seeing the view of the north: sweeping, sun-baked golden plains and in the center, the great Lake Kopais fed by the green ribbon of the River Kephisos. Shadows rolled across the land where light clouds moved across the sky.

  Stentor’s ears pricked up, detecting her closeness. “The Gods are punishing me with your presence.”

  “If I was here to punish you, you’d already be dead,” she said, her patience deteriorating.

  “What is Archidamos hoping to achieve by sending you—a single, traitorous mercenary—here?”

  “To do what you clearly cannot,” she snapped, fueled by the now-blinding pain in her jaw.

  His head snapped around. “You have no idea, have you? For four years, this war has raged. You think you know all about it because you walked to battle with us once in the Megarid?”

  The pain peaked, then began to settle. Kassandra harnessed her anger. “I have remained entangled in conflict ever since that battle, Stentor. Let us not make swords of our every word. We have a job to do. I expected to find mercenaries and allies in this place. I did not realize the main Spartan force was here. Why? Why Boeotia?”

  Stentor’s head dropped a little—as it had been at the map table. “We had Athens,” he said, raising one hand and clutching at the air, shaking his fist then letting it fall. “And then Kleon seized power there. He directs Athens with an iron glove. He has piloted many foolish land invasions, but some have been successful: when we tried to return to Attika, he drove our forces back. We find ourselves now mired in this region—a patchwork of allies and staunch enemies. The armies of Athens and their Platean allies threaten to squeeze us from this region too. That would be disastrous.”

  “I will do what I can to ensure that does not happen,” Kassandra said calmly.

  Stentor remained, staring out over the land. “The only reason you are still alive is that writ you carry. You are no ally. You are merely a weapon.”

  “There is much you do not know about what happened that night in the Megarid,” she began.

  He threw up a hand in demand for silence. “I have pieced it together, since, Sell-sword. You were the Wolf’s lost daughter. You came in the guise of a mercenary . . . when all along you were an assassin.”

  Kassandra said, daring to take a step to the mountain’s edge beside him, “You do not understa—”

  Screech. Stentor quarter-drew his sword again. “One more word.”

  She let the matter rest.

  After a time, Stentor spoke again. “We have just one lochos here. Just as in the Megarid. The omens were too uncertain and so the ephors withheld the other four regiments. So the chances of victory for Sparta in these lands rests on the shoulders of her allies. Thebes.” He gestured to the east, where a pale-walled city was just visible in the weltering heat of the plain. “And south, across the Gulf, Korinthia: they have a fleet ready to land and support us—with great numbers of men.”

  She beheld the city of Thebes, then ran her eye across the most direct route from there to here—over the golden flatland. But her gaze snagged on a silvery vein that stretched from the southern shores of Lake Kopais to the easterly foot of the Helicon range upon which they stood. At first she thought it was a river, and then she saw it was in fact earthworks and men. Athenian hoplites.

  “Very good,” Stentor mocked. “You see it too. That line is like a wall between us and our Theban allies—our only source of cavalry support. Pagondas and his riders cannot travel to join with us. That band of flickering Athenian steel controls the flatland like a strangler’s rope. They have plentiful supplies, and more men arriving by the day. The Athenian army swells like a boil, some say; Kleon is heedless of the nearly bare treasury—so obsessed is he with appeasing the people’s disquiet over his predecessor’s cowardly defensive strategy.”

  Kassandra’s eyes shifted to the far end of the Athenian line where it met with the southern shores of Lake Kopais. She flicked her gaze across the lake to its northern edge. A way around?

  “Rugged, impassable highlands,” Stentor preempted her suggestion. “The horsemen of Thebes know this land better than any other, and they do not even try to take their prize steeds through those treacherous passes to come around and meet us that way lest they lose half to broken limbs.” He pointed out the strange X shapes on the ground before the Athenian line, on the side nearest Mount Helicon. Kassandra squinted for a time before she understood what they were: two dozen Spartan men, staked out spread-eagled, naked, baking in the sun. “By the Gods, we have tried to break that wall of spears, and that is the result.”

  “Then the Korinthians and their vast numbers are the key,” Kassandra mused. “When they land, they can fall upon the southern end of that line. It would distract the Athenians enough to allow your lochos to assault them from this side, and Pagondas and his Thebans from the other side.”

  “Well observed.” Stentor’s shoulders jostled as he laughed dryly. “Yet Boeotia is famed for its plains, its woods . . . and its damnable lack of landing sites. There are just two good spots for the Korinthian fleet to make shore.”

  Kassandra’s eyes slid shut. “The Athenians hold them both, don’t they? The Korinthian fleet is unable to land.”

  “Welcome to my bed of thorns, Misthios. Not so confident now, are you?”

  * * *

  • • •

  She spent many nights planning, traveling along the Helicon range, roving south and north as far as she could go unseen, watching, searching. At last, she knew what she had to do, and she returned to Stentor’s command tent.

  “You are but one hired blade. What can you do that my lochos could not?” Stentor spat, rising from the stool and taking a long draft of watered wine.

  “Give me a dozen men.”

  Stentor glared at her with an icy half grin. “By all the Gods, I will give you nothing.”

  “You need victory here. Sparta needs victory.”

  Stentor’s grin turned into a snarl as his teeth ground and he turned away from her, striding around his map table. “I promised the Korinthian fleet a beacon before the summer was out. If they receive no such signal, they will have to return to their own city. But we cannot light a beacon until we clear one of the landing sites for them.”

  “Give me men and I will make it so.”

  He turned to her, his angry mien melting into a grin again. He snapped his fingers, making some signal at the staff behind her. She heard light feet pattering up.

  “Maste
r?” the wiry Helot croaked, his face all but hidden behind curtains of black hair and his dogskin cap.

  “The Misthios here has a plan,” said Stentor.

  Kassandra’s mouth opened to object.

  “You are to aid her in her efforts,” Stentor finished before she could speak.

  Her top lip twitched. “So be it,” she spat, turning away. “Be ready at dawn, as I explained.”

  * * *

  • • •

  She and the Helot trekked south as darkness fell. They stopped not to sleep but to eat and rest for a short time, eating hare roasted on a spit, Ikaros picking over the bones. The Helot introduced himself as Lydos—a shy and afraid man of thirty years. Kassandra tried to put him at ease by asking him about his family, but he gave their names and offered little else. He had a nervous habit of tucking his hair behind one ear every few moments, and when he did, she noticed one of his cheeks were sunken—broken at some point in the past. More, the backs of his legs were laced with scars.

  “The kryptes have been cruel to you,” she said, thinking of the young Spartan men whose job it was to torment the Helots. She felt a rising sense of pity for this poor wretch, and of loathing that her homeland was built on such cruel pillars.

  Lydos shuffled in discomfort, licking his lips, refusing to meet her eye. “It was not the kryptes.”

  “Then who?”

  “King Archidamos’s temper is legendary. He lets his anger loose on us Helots. He had me whipped with a barbed scourge for interrupting him while he was having talks with a group of strange visitors one night. Over the years he has broken my ribs, my leg, my nose.”

  “Your cheek?”

  He smiled awkwardly. “No, that was King Pausanias. He is less cruel, and that wound was deserved. I was pouring wine for him one night and I clumsily spilled some of it. I tried to mop it up with the hem of my tunic. I really did. But I just made a bigger mess—making a wine print of my hand on the edge of a document he was writing. He rose and punched me. At least he stopped there. If it had been Archidamos, I would have been beaten to a pulp.”

  She lowered her voice, as if afraid Cultic spies might be listening in this open, deserted countryside. “You said Archidamos . . . had strange visitors one night?”

  Lydos frowned. “Travelers from afar, strange to my eye and ear. But then even Spartans are strange to us Helots. I mean no offense, of course.”

  She tipped her head to one side to indicate none had been taken. “Did these visitors wear anything odd . . . like masks?”

  He seemed confused. “Masks? No. They wore the garb of officials and traders.”

  She sought another angle to question him, but could not find one. An owl hooted, breaking her chain of thought, and she realized that time was pressing. They continued southwards, spotting a low plain of ferns and a glow of torchlight on the coast ahead.

  “Korsia,” Kassandra whispered. “This is one of the two harbor villages.”

  Lydos nodded hurriedly.

  “So you remember everything I told you?” she added.

  Lydos nodded again.

  She sighed, wondering if this was a mistake, and one that might be the death of her. “Go,” she said at last.

  Lydos hitched his leather bag and sprinted off into the black hills overlooking Korsia.

  Kassandra crept forward through the ferns toward the harbor village, Ikaros on her shoulder. The night was muggy and the sky treacherously clear—the moon and stars like torches, betraying everything in their veil of ghostly white. She stooped to lift earth as she went, blackening her face and arms. Toads croaked and foxes and voles darted. She came to a halt an arrow shot from Korsia. Hundreds of Athenian hoplites lined the wooden walls of the dock itself, and the rest of the garrison—two taxiarchies each five hundred strong, she counted—sat encamped in and around the village streets. She understood Stentor’s reticence—assault this well-defended place with his five hundred Spartans and lose, and Boeotia would fall into Athens’s hands. The war might pivot on such a defeat. She heard the bawdy roars from the tavern, saw the silent vigilance of the archers patrolling the rooftops and watching the seas, admired the rugged claws of coastline that struck out into the sea on either side of this soft, short bay. There was one structure that stood out above all the others—a freshly hewn timber tower, upon which an archer captain strode, his bare chest and white cape glinting in the moonlight. Far beyond, she even saw the dark shapes of the Korinthian fleet, picked out by torches. Waiting out at sea in impotence. The Athenians had the coastline so well watched that the flotilla could not hope to make shore without losing most of their men in the initial landing.

  She looked into the heart of the town, and at the archer platform once again, then at the dark hills behind her. For all the world she was sure Lydos was right now bounding through the heights, making a break for freedom. Too late to worry about that. She sighed.

  Turning back to the town, she shrugged one shoulder, setting Ikaros to flight, then stole through the ferns, toward the town’s outskirts. The landward-facing Athenian guards were less numerous, and she found one asleep. A way in. She vaulted a low fence, creeping through a private yard, then peered over a half wall, seeing the village’s main packed-dirt road and the foot of the high timber archer tower. She watched a pair of Athenian hoplites stroll past, then leapt up and over, rolling into a tall pile of hay just before another pair came into view. She heard their muted conversation rise then fade as they too passed. Climbing free of the straw, she came to the base of the archer tower. Here, a stink of resin spoiled the air. She saw scores of amphorae of the stuff stacked around the tower’s base. Death by fire for any Korinthian vessel that dared approach. There was a strange device too: a hollow, ironbound beam as long as a mast, with bellows at one end and a cauldron hung with chains at the other end. A war machine of some sort? For a moment, her mind began to work on a new plan . . .

  But that would only matter if she did what she needed to here. She turned her attention from the strange device and looked up. The timbers were smooth, but she saw notches and binding ropes here and there, and as soon as she had picked out a climber’s path to the top, she set off. Her fingers ached with the effort, her shins burning as they slid on the ropes and wood. Near the top, she heard the archer captain’s slow, deliberate strides, and the heavy breathing of another. She halted when they began to speak.

  “The Korinthians will turn for home by the end of this moon. The Spartans will be forced back to their farms too, and then Thebes will fall,” the captain mused. “The war will turn on our efforts here,” he said, “and our part won’t be forgotten.”

  “But, Captain Nesaia. What you did . . .” said the heavy-breathing other. “The families you killed here.”

  “It was naught but the spoils of conquest,” Nesaia scoffed. “You will be getting the blame, should the matter ever arise. And you—”

  Kassandra leapt onto the archer platform. Both men swung to face her. “Set your minds at rest,” she said, “the matter is over.” She flicked out one hand, the small knife in her bracer streaking out to take the heavy breather in the neck, her spear flashing forward to plunge into Captain Nesaia’s chest. They both fell without a sound. She waited a few moments to be sure nobody down below had noticed, then set her mind to the next step of the plan.

  She turned not to the sea, but to the landward side of the village, stared at the black hills, cupped her hands around her mouth and made a shrill call like that of a bird. Three times.

  Then . . . nothing. Just the continued clacking of tavern cups and rumbling laughter. She glared at the hills. You fool, she cursed herself.

  Now she saw a few figures turning from the dock palisade and squinting up at the archer tower. “Nesaia, all quiet?” one called.

  Kassandra froze. “Aye, nothing,” she boomed in her best attempt at the dead captain’s voice.

  Then she
saw, to her horror, the runnel of blood oozing from Nesaia’s body and spilling from the platform edge.

  “Blood?” the voice of a passing guard murmured down below. “Something’s wrong. Up on the tower.”

  Footsteps staggered from the nearest tavern. The warm repartee changed, the voices becoming hard-edged.

  “Nesaia? What’s going on up there?”

  She heard the scrape of boots, felt the timbers shaking as men began to climb up. Ikaros swooped from the night to claw at the climbing men, but he could not stop their ascent.

  Then the night shook with the most haunting moan of Spartan war pipes. The plaintive howl spilled from the dark hills and poured across the ferns, flooding the streets of Korsia.

  The scrape of climbing men and the scuffle of boots halted, then the voices below changed, joined by hundreds more, spilling from the tents, billeted quarters and taverns. “The Spartans come!” they roared. “Form up, take your shields, face the land!”

  Kassandra watched as the two taxiarchies shambled into formation, combing out into the ferns to face the hills and the oncoming phantom army. Thank you, Lydos. She cast her eye over the shore defenses, now stripped of most of its men—just a score of archers left behind on the dock palisade, and none of them had braziers or pitch nearby. She regarded the jar of pitch up here and the crackling brazier, then looked out to sea at the Korinthian fleet. I hope you’re awake, she thought, then booted the pitch vase over. The stinking, viscous liquid spilled all over the tower top. She then moved over to the brazier. Because here is the beacon you were promised . . .

  She kicked the brazier over, leaping from the platform as the flames rose behind her with a whoosh. Her eyes grew wide as she plummeted down for the straw pile.

  * * *

  • • •

  Many miles north, oblivious to the goings-on at the distant coast town, Stentor’s Spartan lochos formed up near the foot of Mount Helicon. He stepped out in front of them and gazed across the Boeotian plain, streaked with dawn light, toward the huge Athenian line.