Desert Oath: The Official Prequel to Assassin’s Creed Origins

by Oliver Bowden

  As Machairophoroi, he and Raia had supposedly been among those moving away from the ancient pharaonic rule – and thus the ways of the Medjay. He’d never met one, but what he’d heard about them had intrigued him, at the time. Thinking about it now, it made perfect sense to Bion that Raia would join The Order. He was always eager to embrace modernity and was unsparing in his criticism of ‘the old’. It was inevitable that he would consider the Medjay his natural enemy.

  As for Bion, he had no thoughts on the matter, other than mild curiosity. He had been paid to guard, and sometimes to kill. Not to think.

  ‘A Medjay resurgence?’ he said now, still wondering how it involved him. ‘That’s what your boss Theotimos thinks, is it?’

  ‘He’s not quite my boss,’ bridled Raia, ‘but yes, in a word that is precisely what he believes.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  Hopefully this time Raia would be to the point.

  ‘I can’t read scrolls written in fancy ancient languages,’ said Raia with pride, ‘I’m a soldier, not a scholar. This is why we have historians like Theotimos, so that they can tell us what the scrolls say.’

  ‘And what does Theotimos say the scrolls tell him?’

  Bion was patient in many situations. Now, he found, was not one of those times.

  Raia pulled a pained face and shifted weight. He’d noticed Bion’s irritation. ‘I’m afraid that Theotimos did not get very far with his translations of the scrolls before illness indisposed him.’

  ‘I see.’

  Bion made no comment regarding soldiers and poisons. After all, he did not know for certain, and Raia would not tell him anyway.

  ‘I hope he will recover soon, and can resume his studies.’ He went on hurriedly, sparing Bion the trouble of prodding him onward. ‘However, what he’s been able to tell me from his sick bed is that the Medjay are not defeated. Perhaps I should say: they refuse to admit defeat and plan to manoeuvre themselves into a position where they will once more be vying for power in Egypt, which, as you might imagine, will bring them into direct conflict with The Order.’ He paused. ‘And as you might also imagine, Bion, we want to prevent that occurrence.’ He held up a hand as though Bion had been about to interrupt him, although Bion was about to do nothing of the sort, ‘You might ask when the Medjay plan to make their move. We do not know. Only that it is a long-term plan, something involving future generations of Medjay warriors. As I say, we would like to strangle such notions at birth.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘The Order.’

  ‘Yourself and Theotimos?’

  A small flicker of irritation on Raia’s face was dismissed as quickly as it appeared. ‘Does it matter? Either way it’s to the benefit of The Order that the Medjay are stopped before any such plan can gather momentum. I would very much like to see to that.’

  In order to increase your own standing, thought Bion, saying instead, ‘So there is nobody else in your organization who knows?’

  ‘This is a strategic point, soldier. The fewer people who know what we intend, the less likely it is that the Medjay can take action against us. We need to hit them quickly and hard. Our actions must be covert.’

  ‘And that’s the only reason?’

  Raia’s eyebrows knitted together. ‘What other the reason might there be? These people are dangerous. We need to give them the respect they deserve.’

  Which is why you’re here.

  ‘Which is why I’m here. Did I come to the right place?’

  ‘You need me to kill Medjay for you.’

  Raia chuckled. ‘Bluntly put, but yes, that’s exactly what I need you to do, Bion. Any surviving Medjay, you put them to the blade. Not just them, but their bloodline: man, woman or child …’

  And here he paused, as though waiting to see if Bion would flinch, which he did not, because he had killed man, woman and yes even child just the same, making no distinction for age or gender.

  Bion had no care for such details. Killing was killing.

  ‘I want them dead, Bion, and I want you to collect the Medjay medallion to prove it, bring it to me in Alexandria so that I may have proof of the job done.’

  ‘And in return?’

  Raia preened. ‘As I say, I think I am being primed for a leadership role in The Order. Of course, I would be extraordinarily grateful to anybody who had helped me and my ascent, and I might confer upon them greater status within The Order itself.’

  ‘You mean me, do you, Commander?’

  His visitor rolled his eyes. ‘I mean anyone who helped me, Bion, just as I say.’

  ‘What if I have no wish to return to the city or its ways, or revisit my old life?’

  Raia folded his arms, looking at his old comrade carefully. It was clear he did not believe Bion wanted to stay there at all. ‘Is that really your wish?’ he said knowingly, and then, when Bion failed to reply, added, ‘Do I need to remind you …’

  20

  They had been in Naukratis. Bion remembered it well. Like Alexandria, Naukratis was one of the modern cities, the Greek-built ones. Nevertheless, it still had some of the old problems, one of them being – as Raia and Bion were to find out that day – the constant conflict between landowners and the peasants, the sekhety, who worked their fields.

  Bion and Raia had been in charge of guarding the child of a lower-ranking civil official within the pharaonic government, a little princeling by the name of Qenna.

  They were there as a gift to the mother, a sop to convention, the child considered low risk. However, both were professionals and they didn’t intend to let their guard down.

  That day they had come with the boy into a square surrounded by cracked stone columns on all sides. Being from Alexandria, neither Raia nor Bion realized it was at least twice as busy as usual, and that the atmosphere was more fervent. What they saw was a bustling square, with a raised stone platform at its centre, and steps on which men stood delivering impassioned speeches to a lively crowd.

  One orator in particular seemed to have gained a large audience. ‘Why should we put up with this?’ he was shouting, bent forward, one hand held out as though begging for the crowd’s attention. His dirty robes seemed only to emphasize the significance of his message. ‘Why must we stand by and allow ourselves to be treated this way!’

  They had watched as the orator continued to speak against what he called the godless methods of a landowner named Wakare. It wasn’t until a little later that Bion conducted his own investigations into Wakare’s working practices and found that they were indeed unethical and exploitative, and that the anger and hatred he had experienced that day in the square was entirely justified.

  But for now …

  ‘We must rise up,’ bellowed the speaker. Bion saw the boy look startled, taken aback by the strength and passion of the man’s message. Maybe they should leave, he thought. After all, the crowd seemed lively, these situations had a habit of spiralling quickly out of control.

  On the other hand, maybe it would do the boy some good, he thought. Let him see life as it is truly lived.

  ‘We must take back the land that we farm, on which we break our backs. Why should our hard work line the purses of those who have done nothing to deserve it? How is our work rewarded?’

  The speaker reached into his tunic and he must have had a small sack hanging at his side because he brought out a handful of soil that he let crumble between his fingers, the crowd roaring its approval in response.

  And then it happened.

  Perhaps Wakare had only just been made aware of the orator’s rabble-rousing; more likely, he’d been told in advance and had enough time to raise a mob of his own. Either way, as the speaker brought the crowd to fever pitch, their excitement threatening to boil over, three men appeared from the left-hand side of the square and made their way towards him, shouldering their way through the crowd.

  Reaching him, one of the men drew a sword and waved it to ward off the crowd as his two companions set about the speaker, a blur
of flailing fists as they pummelled him to the ground. The crowd reacted with cries of outrage, surging forward but deterred by the waving swords as the men delivered a pitiless beating, silencing the speech with the orator’s blood.

  Bion’s first thought was his only thought: The mission, and then Protect the boy. Raia the same.

  ‘Stay with us,’ said Raia, his voice more commanding and harsh than Qenna was accustomed to hearing from a man who was his social inferior, his employee. But the child, imperious as he was, was no fool; moreover, he’d been schooled by his father, who had always instilled in him the necessity of obeying the commands of his bodyguard at all times, so this is what he did, scooting behind Bion and waiting there as his protectors gauged the situation.

  And then came a renewed shout from the crowd and a ripple of fearful expectation, as a second group of men appeared from the opposite side of the square, seven or eight of them armed with long blades, swords and pitchforks – all manner of weaponry. They seemed to bristle with it, a skyline of dark, pointed, death-dealing instruments brandished overhead as they closed in.

  Raia had swept back his robe to reach for the sword that hung at his belt. Bion, thinking ahead and seeing how the situation might be inflamed, reached to stop him, but it was too late; the new arrivals were wide-eyed and angry, drunk on beer or bloodlust or simply seething with injustice, and they saw the Royal Guardsmen and began rushing towards them. Either they didn’t know the two men were protectors, expert swordsmen, ruthless and precise in combat and, more pertinently, prepared to lay down their lives as necessary for members of the royal family. Or, perhaps they simply didn’t care. What they saw was three members of the elite – people who were, in some small way, architects of their pain. And even though Bion and Raia wore no uniform, just clothes befitting their royal appointment, that was enough to mark them out as rich and well-to-do. It announced them as belonging to the wrong side. Bion drew his sword. He knew what was coming.

  ‘Royal Guards!’ Bion shouted. ‘We are Royal Guards!’ They were foolish, these people, he thought idly. Did they not realize how easily they could be killed?

  ‘We have no wish to fight you,’ called Raia. Bion stood steady, hoping this would be over soon, though in truth other than the danger to the mission, he did not care whether any single person in that ragtag bunch lived or died. So when the first of the mob reached him he simply ran through the protester, who dropped with blood saturating his tunic, dead before he hit the flagstones. The sight of it enraged the group further, and as bystanders scattered, the battle intensified, the two guardsmen fighting with their backs to the platform, shielding the boy.

  With his free hand Raia signalled to Bion, trying to execute a retreating manoeuvre. Those bystanders sufficiently curious not to have fled formed a circle in order to watch the fight and it was into their ranks that Raia was hoping to escape. Now, seeing an opening, Raia whirled a finger and pointed. Bion grabbed the boy and they pushed their way into the crowd, using their hilts to bludgeon a path between onlookers.

  Now Raia was through, surging past the protest’s fringes, beckoning for Bion and the boy to follow. But the crowd they hoped to leave behind was vengeful and hostile and legs snaked out, tripping them up.

  Bion crashed to the ground, covering the boy, and then with a lurching shock he realized that the unthinkable had happened: his sword – as much a part of his arm as his own hand – had slipped from his fingers. He was unarmed.

  He scrambled to protect the boy, using his body as a shield as the first of the land workers burst through the crowd, a scythe held two-handed above his head. Bion saw rotten teeth and straining sinews in the man’s neck. He saw hatred and the need to kill, and he threw up a useless arm in defence as the implement sliced the air towards him.

  It never met its target. Raia had stopped, turned back and used his sword as a spear, and the attacker fell with the blade embedded in his chest. Plunging back towards them, Raia stooped, snatched up Bion’s sword and felled a second man, wrenching his own sword free, tossing Bion’s blade back to him as his comrade scrambled to his feet, dragging the boy with him, the three of them continuing their escape to safety. And at last they ran from the square, losing the last few pursuers in the streets of Naukratis.

  Bion remembered the grateful eyes of the boy when at last they reached the Royal Court. He himself had thanked Raia for saving their lives, but had done so with annoyance. Why? Because he knew Raia well: a good soldier, perhaps, but lazy too. Too ambitious. Always scheming. Eager for more, for things beyond his station. And Bion knew that one day he would be reminded of the fact that Raia had saved his life, and be honour-bound to repay that debt.

  When Raia had left to begin his return journey, Bion’s feelings were like a blanket in need of unravelling. He knew Raia hadn’t told him the full truth. He knew he now had a job to do, and though he had no wish to be bound to the man in such a manner, Bion was not a man to leave any obligation unfulfilled. It was irksome. His life, though frugal, was pleasing to him; he had no desire to leave his small home for what would be months, maybe even years on end. He had no desire to kill again.

  And yet …

  Why was it, he wondered, that he felt a tingle of anticipation? That he remembered the smell of blood so easily, how flesh parted before a sharp blade so readily?

  And as he’d made the preparations that were to take him away, first to Hebenou, and then on the trail of Emsaf, he had wondered, Do I miss the killing?

  21

  Aya was taking long, frustrated strides back and forth in front of the rock that we’d called home for the past two days.

  ‘I can’t believe we let him fool us,’ she was saying. ‘A little street rat, letting him get the better of us like that. He saw you coming in Zawty, he saw you for the inexperienced mark you were then, and he hasn’t stopped since, I’m telling you …’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I told her, squinting up at her from where I sat cross-legged. ‘Tuta and I have been through a lot together.’

  ‘Brothers in arms, is it?’ she said, not unkindly. She sat down next to me, leaning against my shoulder. ‘You think there’s honour among thieves?’

  Was I worried?

  I wasn’t sure.

  Our journey had not been an easy one. We’d crossed rocky terrain, our horses’ hooves slipping on shale beneath our feet, making camp and hunting for food. Those survival skills that had been taught to me by my father and Khensa, and in turn passed to Aya during our expeditions in Siwa, we now handed on to Tuta. In doing so, we amazed ourselves. We took pride in our subsistence. This was unforgiving land that gave up its fruit begrudgingly. Survival was not easy and ensuring Tuta’s well-being as well as our own was an added challenge. We felt ourselves harden beneath the unforgiving sun. The fear that we felt being so far from home, cast adrift of those things that usually provided so much security, became resolve.

  I had lain awake at night wondering whether this course of action – to find Khensa – was the right one, but pleased we were taking action. And even if one day I was forced to return to Siwa with my mission a failure, then I would at least return as one more suited to the role of protector.

  I would know I had tried. That I had not turned from the task merely because it seemed insurmountable. That I had become the better for it.

  Then, on the horizon, we saw columns like broken teeth and knew them for what they were: the Theban pillars – the Great Hypostyle Hall – and we saw the shape of a temple that seemed to form itself from the desert before our eyes, gaining mass the closer we came. The river span curled in the distance, a bright blue thread through sandstone buildings, while beyond it lay the Thebes Necropolis, stretching from the banks almost as far as the eye could see.

  We’d been exhausted, hunched over on our horses, but the sight of the city in the distance straightened our backs. This was Thebes. To me in Siwa it had been as remote and legendary as Alexandria, and yet the two cities could not have been more different:
Thebes, the once-proud Egyptian capital, had suffered during a series of revolts from which it had never quite recovered. Spread out like a tattered patchwork blanket to the left of the temple, the city’s ramshackle collection of houses and buildings looked as though they’d been tossed like dice to the desert floor and left to rest, or maybe rot, gradually becoming at one with their surrounds.

  It was only up close that we began to see flashes of colour from the awnings and lines of washing, but from afar it had simply looked like a huge grey structure at once crumbling and foreboding. The great pillars seemed to brush the clouds above and yet looked exhausted, as though in danger of simply collapsing to the sand below: awe-inspiring yet damaged and ageing. A symbol of strength succumbing to age and neglect – much like the city itself.

  On the fringes of the city we found the shade of a tree and a rock that would serve as a windshield, and decided to make camp. ‘You wait here,’ Tuta told us both. He wanted to venture into his old home city alone, in order to find his mother and his sister, Kiya, and he took the horses, the idea being to barter them for food. Aya was suspicious but Tuta and I prevailed, and off he went.

  The first day out there in the shadow of Thebes Aya and I talked of home, as we often had on our journey, recounting our camping expeditions, reliving them; the second day, the conversation had turned to the whereabouts of Tuta, Aya growing more suspicious. What did we know of him? On the one hand, he had not only once lived in Thebes but also was used to living by his wits on the streets. Who better to find his own family, and then Khensa?