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

by Oliver Bowden

  It was followed by a scream from Bes, repeating the same word over and over again: ‘Sabu,’ he shrieked. ‘Sabu, Sabu, Sabu.’

  We crashed back through the undergrowth, sticking together this time, weapons drawn, with my father, Khensa and Neka at our head and myself and Aya behind, ready for attack, wary of traps or an ambush. Bes was in the same position we had left him. Yet again he was trembling with terror, looking up at us with big eyes repeating the name, ‘Sabu, Sabu,’ over and over again. Below his wide eyes he held his hands to his cheeks. ‘Demon, demon, demon …’ he chanted. I’d never seen a man so terrified. And yet …

  ‘Blood,’ said Khensa, pointing to his tunic.

  ‘Are you hurt, Bes?’ asked my father, kneeling to him, looking for wounds.

  ‘No, Sabu,’ he gibbered, ‘the demon is hurt.’

  Father stood, sighing. ‘Then the demon bleeds,’ he said.

  Part III

  * * *

  48

  Many Years Later

  Over the years, Bion had often thought about the night of the storm. He could have ended it that night if not for Sabu’s lucky shot inflicting a wound that caused him to withdraw and spend many months recovering. Were it not for his preference for close-quarters combat. For his only passable skill with the bow.

  It would not have helped, he thought. The sandstorm had been the ultimate advantage in so many ways. And its aftermath meant they had been able to regroup, present a united front. There was only so much a bow could have done for him. He just hadn’t planned for that – would not have, by personal inclination. Maybe. Still. But what if it had helped? Perhaps if he’d been a proficient archer then maybe he could have finished it that night, wounded or not; he could have ended his mission. Rather, perhaps if he’d been less focused on a close kill, more open to long-range plans.

  Or maybe it was all the winds and the storm, and the Medjay’s own skill with the arrow, superlative no matter what excuse he tried to think of. And so, he’d always end up thinking, his own, less than stellar competence in that respect had been his downfall.

  It was something that Raia had always taken great pleasure in teasing him about. Raia, of course, being an expert bowman. ‘It’s because you like killing too much,’ Raia had told him with that same knowing smile, as though he knew Bion intimately. ‘You like to see life leave your victims. You like to watch it in their eyes. Up close and personal. That’s your way, isn’t it?’

  Bion, who had always prided himself on his inscrutability, wondered at how opaque he actually was. He knew he was a monster. He’d always known. But he thought, at least, that he’d learned to hide it. To blend in, well enough at least. Then again, Raia was the one who knew him best. They’d worked together for many years. And he’d never judged. Others, thoughts Bion, would not have been so tolerant.

  Either way, his strength as Raia’s assassin had been his weakness out there in Elephantine that night. Compounded by the storm and his injury, which had forced him to retire from the fight, reassess, and make his base in the Red Lands, occupying the abandoned hut of a shepherd in order to recover and start again, wondering whether he would ever see home. He had healed. He had retrained himself, making up for the lost months spent recovering. He’d elevated his bow skills, practising assiduously until in that, as in every other aspect of death-dealing, he had gained the utmost proficiency.

  Eventually, Bion had also resumed his investigations – and they had taken him to Thebes, where he had crossed over to the necropolis and found the correct tomb, though it now offered no sign that the Nubians had ever been in residence.

  Outside he hailed an old man and crossed the burial ground to speak to him. The day was blue and bright, and over the old man’s shoulder Bion could see the city, tattered and beaten by war but still retaining stature and beauty, as though the gods refused to let anything ugly taint the world that they had created.

  All the ugliness was in men. Bion knew that better than anyone. He had his fair share of it, after all.

  The old man knew about the Nubians. They had moved on, he said.

  ‘Do you know where?’ Bion asked.

  The old man shook his head. He wasn’t sure. He thought that some of them had gone south. Not all.

  ‘They split up?’

  ‘That they did. There was a baby born. Off they went, maybe to start a new tribe somewhere else. Who knows?’

  And that was it for the Nubians. Bion had left, thinking they could have been worthy opponents but no longer interested in them. They were not the mission. His business was with the Medjay.

  49

  The camel rider had appeared in the distance some time after Bion. He’d watched the rider slowly materialize from the heat haze, a smear that became a figure that, in time, became a person.

  His messenger. Bion had first met Sumi as a boy, years ago, when he’d been hired in order to convey news to Raia in Alexandria. He had taken Hemon’s medallion as well as the added information that Bion was now in pursuit of the final Medjay.

  The message had come back: Why is this taking so long?

  Sitting in his sparse shepherd’s hut, Bion had thought of Raia. He’d pictured the commander in his Alexandria home with ivy growing up the walls of its central courtyard, raging at Sumi, wondering why he could not control his errant assassin. It had been entertaining, briefly, to imagine Raia’s important rage, the self-styled soldier now as helpless as the scholars he so loved to dismiss.

  So Bion had dispatched Sumi, a young man by now, to remind Raia that things had been made so much more difficult all those years ago because the Medjay knew of his coming. He reminded Raia that the blame for the leak lay at his feet. It was, after all, his scholar who had informed Rashidi, who in turn had alerted the Medjay to The Order’s plan. If not for that then Bion’s mission would already be at an end. Raia would have other medallions to add to his collection.

  Back had come the missive, Sumi cautious as he stood and repeated what he’d been told. ‘Raia has requested that you return to Alexandria in order that he can … let me get this right … “Discuss strategy”. He wants you to come at once.’

  ‘Tell Raia I have a plan in place,’ Bion had instructed. ‘Inform him that my request for him to trust me is made in the strongest possible terms. That he will be updated shortly.’

  And now the reply had arrived.

  He watched Sumi approach warily, and poured water for them both. When the messenger arrived he sat cross-legged to drink and talk.

  ‘He’s got a nice house, hasn’t he?’ Sumi looked around him as if comparing the two vastly different lifestyles. Nervous small talk. His hands were tight on the clay cup.

  Bion nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said blankly. ‘The commander was always a great believer in embracing luxury wherever he should find it.’

  ‘And he delegates to you tasks that lie beyond his own capabilities?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘He fears you,’ Sumi blurted out, and Bion saw fear there as well. He approved. It was important, to understand when one was in the presence of Death. The young man had good instincts.

  ‘We agreed you wouldn’t ask questions,’ replied Bion. ‘Now, the exchange. You gave him my message, I take it?’

  Sumi nodded quickly, so much so that Bion fancied hearing his brains rattling within his skull. He was all wide eyes and nervous limbs. ‘I did give him the message. He was not very happy.’ He rubbed his cheek, frowning in remembrance. ‘I got the sense that I was lucky to make it out of there alive.’ He paused, and Bion knew he was wondering whether he would make it out of this particular moment alive as well.

  ‘Did he want to know of my whereabouts?’

  ‘He said he knew better than to ask.’ Relief, bright and honest.

  ‘What was his dispatch in return?’

  ‘He says it has been many years now. He says he would like to see the job complete.’ Sumi sounded almost apologetic and Bion had not a single doubt that the original messa
ge had not been so carefully worded.

  Of course you want to see the job complete, thought Bion. Of course you do.

  ‘You didn’t tell him anything else?’

  The messenger shook his head. He and Bion had an arrangement: Sumi had recruited urchins, rapscallions and scamps – street children across the region – and those street children had recruited other street children, and yet more, all on the lookout for Sabu, Bayek and the girl, and each would report to a contact, who would report to other contacts, who reported to the grinning Sumi, who in turn would report to Bion.

  Bion, who had learned the bow. Bion, who had recovered from an injury that might have crippled a lesser being. Bion, who now intended to finish this particular mission, regardless of what Raia truly wanted, in the end. Bion sent the boy off. He knew his patience would reap a reward. Someday.

  And then one day, indeed, after even more time had passed, Sumi came to Bion again, only this time it was a visit that Bion had not been expecting, and as he watched the camel approach on the horizon, he allowed himself the hope that after all these years the Medjay had at last been found.

  And so it was.

  ‘I bring news,’ said Sumi, when they once more sat drinking thick, pungent beer. ‘I think you’re going to be happy about this one.’ He eyes flickered towards Bion’s pouch, but remained respectful. Money lured him back. Money, despite the worry of death.

  ‘Go on,’ said Bion.

  ‘I know where they are, the people you seek, the trio.’

  ‘Really?’ said Bion. ‘All three of them?’

  Sumi nodded definitively. ‘Uh-huh. All three of them. They have made camp. Looks like they have been there a couple of months or so.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘They sent a message.’

  Bion shook his head, almost surprised. ‘No, they wouldn’t be so careless as to involve another party.’

  ‘More than one other party,’ said Sumi, sipping his beer. ‘The message was given to a boy who took it to another boy. It’s the first one who is my contact.’

  ‘So you know where the message was coming from, but not where it was going?’

  ‘That’s about it. But I can find out, if you want.’ Sumi showed teeth and held up his fingers, scared but determined, in expectation of reward.

  ‘I’ll need you to do that,’ said Bion, but he was thinking – and what he was thinking was, This isn’t right. There’s something untoward here.

  He leaned forward, beckoning the messenger towards him, seeing his guest flinch a little but coming in close all the same. ‘Are you sure there is nothing amiss here? Nothing you want to tell me now? I can assure you that it will be better for you in the long run if you do.’

  Sumi pulled back with an earnest expression as he shook his head furiously. ‘No – you pay me well. I’ve worked hard for you and will continue to do so.’ He hesitated, then plunged on. ‘You’re scarier than anyone else out there. I would not deceive you.’

  Bion nodded, knowing the messenger was telling the truth, and they drank the rest of the beer together in silence. A little later, Sumi went to leave and Bion gave him a purse that bulged with coins. The young man looked at it, hardly able to believe what nestled in his palm, testing its weight. When he looked up at Bion he had forgotten, for a moment, to be scared.

  ‘You’re not coming back, are you?’ he said.

  ‘If your information is correct I have no need to.’

  Sumi nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Later, Bion packed and left his base of so many years. Finally, he was ready to complete his mission.

  50

  ‘I would like to take Aya as my wife.’

  My father dropped his sword. Where a moment ago his eyes had been watchful and focused as he concentrated on teaching me how to move from a left-foot forward defensive stance into a counter-attacking formation, now they became thoughtful.

  ‘I see.’ He frowned, and I steeled myself for an argument that never came. ‘Then you must do so,’ he said.

  We had left a camel train some days ago and set up camp on the edge of the desert. That morning I’d stepped outside mine and Aya’s tent, cast a look at my father’s shelter – I could hear him snoring gently inside – and then stood surveying the desert, the expanse of sand, trees on the horizon and, in the distance, the town. On the air was the briny scent of the sea and the damp smell of a morning preparing to be burned away by the day’s sun. These things were just as they were every morning. The world in which I found myself was unchanged.

  But as for me?

  I had changed. I’d changed so much that I was unrecognizable as the fifteen-year-old who had left Siwa all those years ago.

  I was different now. I knew my path. I was training to be a Medjay.

  ‘You still require more training.’

  That was what my father always said, whenever I dared suggest that the years of his teaching might have conferred on me that status once and for all. He would never say when, only that when the time came he would know. And when he knew, then I would be the second person to know.

  After that night in Elephantine, we’d said our farewells to Khensa and Neka; they would travel back to Thebes and reunite with their tribe, but in the meantime we had to stay on the move. Father, Aya and I had to keep one step ahead of the assassin who, despite his injury, continued to worry my father: this ghost, this ‘demon’ that seemed to shadow him.

  Our first order of business was to speak to The Elder, a man named Hemon and his ward, Sabestet, and we had spent months travelling to their home in Djerty. There we’d arrived to find the homestead empty and neglected. My father had taken one look and said, ‘Gods, not again.’

  With the house deserted, we travelled into Djerty and there it was confirmed what we already feared: Hemon and Sabestet had been murdered.

  Father had not handled the news well. Things had changed. He withdrew into himself for some time, as though seeking his own counsel, and during that period Aya and I looked after ourselves and, so far as we could, offered him support.

  It took him a while, but at last he came round, and one day, early in the morning out hunting, he made his announcement: ‘Your Medjay learning begins tomorrow,’ he told me.

  It was an acknowledgment, or as much of one as Father would give, that he had not been training me seriously before. First came a period of what he called unlearning – getting rid of all those bad habits I had apparently picked up. My mind had gone back to the hours Aya and I spent practising during our time in Thebes. Much of it wrong, according to my father, though not a disaster, considering we had been improvising, learning on our own.

  The whole time we’d kept moving. Years of being what Aya called ‘on the run’. I think I’d trained in every town and village in the region, honing my sword skills and becoming an expert with the bow, making death and defence my trade.

  In addition he schooled me in the ways and history of the Medjay. Once upon a time these proud warriors, whose ranks I hoped to join, had the status of the Phylakes or the Royal Guard. They were the protectors of the people, the meketyou, of temples and tombs, statues and idols. They were the guardians of everyday life but also of the people, keeping at bay the outside forces that threatened us.

  Just as the priestess Nitokris had told me, he reinforced the ideas that, although they had protected temples and tombs – and in the case of Siwa still did, the Medjay’s power and influence had decreased over the decades. No longer were they proud and very literal sentinels, protecting brick and flesh and blood. Now diminished, they protected something more important: a conceptual way of life, an ideology. His views differed from those of the priestess in one critical aspect, however. To him, Egypt was a country upon which others imposed their own convictions. First Alexander’s ideologies had come to us, and now there were other, Roman voices clamouring to be heard, and all this time our own countrymen had been happy, nay enthusiastic, to allow these changes. The great city of Alexan
dria, which Aya loved so dearly, had even been built in our conqueror’s image.

  ‘We did not ask for this mode of living. This way of life was imposed upon us,’ my father would say. ‘We are being asked to worship status and power and gold, and these things are taking the place of the old ways; they are taking the place of the gods, Bayek. But the Medjay can rise again, to restore the principles by which we used to live, in simpler, less corrupt times. We are a part of that, Bayek. You will one day be the torch-carrier for our whole creed. We will rise again, my son. Hemon envisioned a resurgence. He planned for one, and you and I are key to that. The fate of the Medjay rests upon our shoulders.’

  Then, of course, there was Aya. Nothing had changed between us, and yet it was as though everything had changed. She did not particularly care for my father, and he felt likewise. The two of them put up with one another mainly for my benefit. He made no secret of the fact that, as far as he was concerned, she could never be a Medjay – not a true Medjay – and she betrayed no interest in the brotherhood while in his presence. Her need to learn meant she’d often quiz me at night, rarely offering her own opinions, just listening, though I could tell she had doubts. She saw how much the teachings meant to me, whatever her feelings, and whether the Medjay principles as described by my father coincided with her own. I was never certain. After all, her heart lay in Alexandria; she was firmly an adept of the learned thinking there. No doubt that also meant being a supporter of its progressive ideology.

  Perhaps we should have spoken about that more.

  One thing she and my father did agree upon, however, was that I should act as Aya’s tutor, just as my father was tutoring me. There was learning to be acquired in the act of teaching, Aya had stated, and my father had acquiesced on the spot. Thus was fashioned the routine: in the mornings I trained with Father and in the afternoons with Aya, moving from being pupil to teacher.