But something caught her eye, halting her. It was a strange thing—the kind of thing that is conspicuous for its irregularity, like a drunk man behaving himself: out there, on the sea haze, a galley cut through the waves. One of hundreds, but this boat was not tacking around the distant headlands and into the Korinthian Gulf. Instead, it was coming straight across the water, toward Kephallonia. Her eyes narrowed and beheld the white sail—or, more specifically, the staring, grimacing gorgon head emblazoned upon it. It was a most hideous depiction, discolored gray-green lips peeled back to reveal fangs, the eyes glowing like hot coals, while the nest of snakes that served as the creature’s hair seemed to writhe with every lungful of wind that buffeted the sails. She stared at the terrifying mien for a time, the legend of Medusa stirring from the depths of memory: once a beautiful and strong woman, betrayed and cursed by the gods. A morsel of empathy rose and fell within her, like a spark from a fire. But there was something else; she could not see anything of the crew on the strange boat, but she was sure—certain—that she was being watched from those decks. For a moment, the pleasant coolness of the sea spray and wind became unwelcome, chilling.
Spartan children must never be afraid of the dark, of the cold or of the unknown, a voice drawled from buried memory. His voice. She spat into the sand, turning away from the sea and the strange boat. The taunting memories of her father’s teachings were all that remained of her once-proud family. Passing traders had brought with them bleak tales of the broken house of Leonidas. Myrrine, bereft, had taken her own life, they said, driven to death by the loss of not just one, but both of her children. Because of what I did that night, she thought.
She strode from the beach, through the dunes and the wind-bent marram grass and picked her way up a rocky path. This brought her onto a small promontory overlooking the coast, and the simple stone shelter that was her home. The white-plastered walls shimmered in the sunlight, the poles and pegged rags that served as an awning of sorts creaked and flapped in the gentle wind and the lone olive tree nearby rustled and swayed. Greenfinches pecked at a pool of lying water near a broken stone column, chirruping in song. A good few hours’ walk from the shore town of Sami, days could pass here with little contact from passersby. The perfect place for a woman to live out her time and die alone, she mused. She paused to twist back toward the sea again, gazing into the distance and the faraway blur of the mainland. How might things have been, she wondered, had the past not been so cruel?
She turned back to her home, ducking under the low door to enter, the constant sea breeze falling away to nothing. She glanced around the single room: a wooden bed, a table, a hunting bow, a chest of simple things—a broken ivory comb and an old cloak. There was no cage around Kephallonia’s shores, nor shackles upon her limbs, but poverty was her keeper. None but the rich men of this island could ever hope to leave it.
She sat on a stool by the table, pouring a cup of water from a clay krater, then unwrapping the hide package she had prepared earlier. A small loaf of bread—hard as a pebble—a finger-sized strip of salted hare meat and a little clay pot containing three small olives stared up at her. A pathetic meal. Her belly howled in protest, demanding to know where the rest was.
She looked up and through the small window at the back of her home, seeing the recently dug hole in the ground. Until yesterday, her storage pit had held two sacks of wheat and a full salted hare, a round of goats’ cheese and a dozen dried figs. Enough for five or six days’ nourishment. Then she had returned from yesterday’s fruitless fishing session to see two thugs stealing away into the distance with those provisions. They had a good half-mile head start on her and she was too hungry to give chase in any case, and so she had lain down to sleep with an empty belly last night. Absently, she ran the pad of her thumb along the edge of the Leonidas spear: honed to perfection. She felt the top layer of skin split, and hissed the name of her present tormentor—the one who had sent the thieves: “Curse you to the fires, Cyclops.”
Turning back to her meager meal, she took the bread, dipping it in a little oil to soften it, then lifting it to her mouth. A further belly groan stopped her—but not her own. She looked to the doorway. The girl standing there stared at the pathetic loaf as a man might eye a torc of gold.
“Phoibe?” Kassandra said. “I haven’t seen you for days.”
“Oh, don’t mind me, Kass,” Phoibe said, examining her dirt-caked fingernails, tucking her dark tresses of hair behind her ears and fidgeting with the frayed hem of her grubby off-white stola.
Kassandra turned from the girl to the loaf to the sill of the window, where a dark shape fluttered into view. Ikaros gave her that same wide-eyed look of hope, his affections directed toward the sliver of salted hare. Nor me, she heard when Ikaros screeched.
With an unconvincing smile, she pushed back from the table, tossing the meat to Ikaros and the bread loaf to Phoibe. The pair were transformed into gannets at that moment, each devouring their meager meal with relish. Phoibe, Athenian-born and orphaned, was just twelve. Kassandra had first come across the girl begging in the streets near Sami, three years ago. She had given her a few coins that day on her way into the town. On the way back, she had lifted the mite and carried her home, feeding her and letting her sleep in the shelter. Watching her reminded Kassandra of times past, of distant memories of that soft, gentle heat within, of that long-ago snuffed-out flame inside. Not love, she assured herself, I will never be so weak again.
She sighed, standing and slinging on her bow and lifting a leather waterskin. “Come, let us eat while we walk,” she said, taking the olives and popping them into her mouth. The soft, salty flesh and rich oil was tantalizing, awakening her taste buds but doing little to satiate her hunger. “Unless we want this to be the last meal we eat, we should go to visit Markos.” The scumbag, she added inwardly as she strapped on her leather bracers. “It is time to call in some debts.”
* * *
• • •
They headed south, following a sun-beaten track that hugged the coastal bluffs for a while, before bending inland. The heat grew strong as noon approached, and they cut across a meadow freckled with violas—the air rich with the scent of oregano and wild lemon groves. The long grass stroked her calves, butterflies flitted across their path in flashes of crimson, amber and blue, cicadas chirruped in the heat and for all the world the war and the past couldn’t have been more distant, until they bypassed and overlooked Sami. The port town was an unwalled warren of shacks and simple, white-painted homes surrounding a raised mound of marble villas. Rich men chatted and supped wine on the roofs and verandas. Horses and bare-chested, sweat-slicked workers toiled in the tight lanes and bustling market, hauling olive crops and pine logs toward the docks. There, transport vessels jostled for space at the pale stone wharf where the materials were to be conveyed to the Athenian military shipyards and supply warehouses. Bells pealed, whips snapped, lyre music rose and so too did pale twists of scented smoke from the temples. Kassandra only entered the town when she needed to—for food or supplies she could not obtain in other ways.
And to carry out the jobs Markos lined up for her.
A misthios, they called her. A mercenary. Sometimes to carry messages, sometimes to escort shipments of stolen goods . . . more often though, to do what so few could. Her heart hardened as she thought of her most recent assignment—to a dockside den where a group of notorious bandits were hiding out. The Leonidas spear had been stained red that dark night, and the air fouled by the smell of torn guts. Every slaying was like a prickly seed of guilt that took root deep within . . . but nothing she had done for Markos compared to the twisted, gnarled oak sown on that night of her youth on the edge of the abyss, and the two deaths that had changed her life forever.
She shook her head to prevent the memories from taking hold and thought instead of her empty purse. Markos had yet again wriggled out of paying her when she had returned to him to report her successful e
fforts at the dockside hideout. How much did he owe her now? She felt her hackles rising. He’s a scumbag, a crook, a filthy . . .
Another memory staggered across her spiraling thoughts—her first moments on this green island, twenty years ago. The day Markos had found her on the stone beach north of the town, washed up beside her broken raft. She remembered his pitted, oily features and curly, greasy black hair as he beheld her. “You are a strange-looking fish.” He had chuckled, patting her back as she vomited gutfuls and lungfuls of seawater. He had fed her for a time, but seemed eager to be rid of her . . . until he noticed how nimble and strong she was. “Who in all Hellas trained you to move like that? I could use someone like you,” he had remarked.
The thoughts faded as Sami fell into the distance behind them. Phoibe skipped ahead, looking up at the soaring Ikaros while “flying” a wooden toy eagle of her own, making screeching noises. When they came to a fork in the track, Phoibe raced off down the rightmost tine. “We’re nearly there,” she chirped over her shoulder. Kassandra gazed after her, perplexed. That route led toward Mount Ainos. An imperious, sun-bleached statue towered up on those rocky heights: Zeus, God of the Sky, crouched on one knee, holding a thunderbolt in his raised hand. The soils ringing the lower slopes were enriched with minerals washed down during the rains and so terraced vineyards decorated the base of the mountain, each lined with green vines, silvery-stone storehouses and small, red-tiled villas. “Don’t be a goat, Phoibe,” Kassandra called after her, gesturing to the leftmost track. “Markos’s place is farther on—near the southern cove and . . .” Her words trailed off when she saw Phoibe speed on into the nearest vineyard. The estate had always been there, but the figure down by the crops in a green-and-white cloak, had not. “Markos?” she whispered.
“He asked me not to tell you,” Phoibe said when Kassandra caught up with her on the vineyard’s edge.
“I’m sure he did,” Kassandra burred. “Stay here.”
She stole past two workers pruning the crop on the lowest terrace. They didn’t even notice her approach, or Phoibe—following in her wake, disobedient as always. As she crept through the vines, she heard Markos, bickering with a worker who clearly knew better.
“We,” he started, then paused to stifle a hiccup, “we will grow grapes as big as melons,” he insisted, before throwing back his head and taking a long pull on what was evidently a skin of barely watered wine.
“You’ll kill the vine, Master Markos,” the worker reasoned, tilting his broad-brimmed sun hat back. “We can’t allow the fruit to grow this year or the next, or the stems will bend and snap. The third year will be the time for the first harvest.”
“Years?” Markos spluttered. “How in Hades am I supposed to pay back—” He fell silent when Kassandra emerged from the vines. “Ah, Kassandra,” he beamed, throwing his arms out wide, nearly backhanding the well-meaning worker.
“You bought a vineyard, Markos?”
“Only the finest wines for us from now on, my girl,” he purred, spinning on the spot to gesture all around, nearly losing his footing. Phoibe, darting in and out of the vines nearby, tittered then set off again after Ikaros. Ikaros began to screech, agitated, but Kassandra’s mind was on other matters.
“I don’t want your grapes or your wine, Markos,” Kassandra insisted. “Phoibe and I need food, clothing, bedding. I want the drachmae you owe me.”
Markos shrank a little then, fiddling with the mouth of his wineskin. “Ah, ever the misthios.” He chuckled nervously. “Well, you see, there will be a short delay in getting those coins to you.”
“A short three years, by the sounds of it,” Kassandra said flatly. She shot a look up at the circling Ikaros, now screeching madly. A rising sense of unease nagged at her: the eagle did not usually become this agitated when playing with Phoibe.
“When the grapes become wine,” Markos interrupted her thoughts, “I will have money aplenty, my dear. First, I must make sure I pay back my loan for this place. I’m, er, slightly behind on my payments you see.”
“Quite,” said the nearby worker absently as he returned to snipping and tying vines, “and the Cyclops doesn’t like late payments.”
Markos shot a wild, scolding look at the man’s back.
“You borrowed from the Cyclops?” Kassandra gasped, stepping back from Markos as if he were riddled with a pox. “This”—she gestured around them—“was funded by him? You have bought yourself a nightmare, Markos. Are you a fool?” She glanced around at the shimmering green-gold slopes of Mount Ainos, concerned about how far her voice had carried. “The Cyclops’s men ransacked my stores last night. He hates me already. He’s killed scores of men on this island and has put a price on my head. He knows you and I work together. If you fall short of your payments to him then I will be one of the first to suffer.”
“Not quite,” a gruff voice said, behind them both.
Kassandra swung to the forest of vines. Two strangers stood there, grins stretched across their faces. One, with a face like a stepped-on pear, held a fear-frozen Phoibe, clasping a hand over her mouth and holding a dagger to her throat. Kassandra now recognized the duo: the ones who had plundered her storage pit last night. Ikaros, why didn’t I listen to you? she chided herself, seeing the eagle still circling, shrieking in alarm.
“Try anything and the girl’s throat will be opened,” said the second man, patting a short sword against the palm of his free hand, his brow jutting like a cliff, casting his eyes in shadow. “Markos has run up quite a debt, but so have you, Misthios: you’ve hulled one of my master’s boats, you’ve killed a convoy of his men—friends of mine. So how’s about you come along with us, eh? Settle matters to my master’s satisfaction?”
Kassandra felt the blood freeze in her veins. She knew that to go with them would mean death for her and slavery at best for Phoibe. But to resist might mean death for them all here and now.
A tense moment passed and Kassandra did not move.
“Seems the misthios is not keen on coming quietly,” Shadow-brow growled. “Let’s show her we mean business.”
Kassandra’s heart froze. Watch your opponent, Nikolaos hissed from the mists of the past. Their eyes will betray their intentions before they even make a move.
She saw the thug holding Phoibe roll his eyes down toward the girl, and his dagger-hand knuckles whiten. It all happened in a single, visceral reflex: she lunged forward, simultaneously clasping and pulling the roped spear from her belt and lashing it forth like a whip. The flat of the ancient lance head licked up and whacked into the thug’s temple. The man’s eyes rolled in their sockets, blood trickled from his nostrils and he crumpled like a kicked-over stack of bricks. Phoibe staggered away, weeping. Kassandra yanked the spear rope, catching the lance by the haft this time, holding it like a true hoplite might.
Shadow-brow held her gaze, shuffled, feinting left then plunging right with a roar. Kassandra drew her weight onto one foot to let the foe hurtle past, and when he skidded and came back at her, she fell to her haunches and slashed her spear across his belly. He stumbled on a few steps, then glanced down, confused, as a writhing mass of blue-gray gut ropes slipped and slithered out into the noon light to slap down upon the dusty ground. He looked at the cavity that remained of his belly, then up at Markos and Kassandra with a confused grin, before falling face-first onto the ground.
“By the balls of Zeus,” Markos wailed, wringing his hands through his greasy curls and falling to his knees as he gawped at the two corpses. “The Cyclops will kill me for certain now.”
Kassandra hugged the weeping Phoibe tight, kissing the top of her head, drawing her hands over the girl’s ears to shield her from the discussion. “We’ll bury the bodies. Nobody will know what became of them.”
“But he will find out,” Markos groaned. “You must learn: today you cut two heads from the beast, but four will sprout to take their places. And the Cyclops’s rage will
be tripled. Like any tyrant, you must either obey him utterly . . . or destroy him completely, don’t you see?” He swiped a dismissive hand. “I am no tutor. Perhaps one day you will find a better one.”
“And perhaps you had better set down that wineskin and let your head clear. You need to find a way to pay the Cyclops back.”
Markos’s bulging eyes searched the ether before him, his face gradually slackening in despair. Then, as if struck by an invisible lightning bolt, he jolted, rising to his feet, stomping over to seize Kassandra by the shoulders, shaking her. “That’s it, there is a way.”
Kassandra shrugged him off. “A way to earn a sackful of silver on this island? I doubt it.”
Markos’s eyes tapered. “Not silver, my dear. Obsidian.”
Kassandra stared at him blankly.
“Think. What does the Cyclops value most? His men, his land, his ships? No. His obsidian eye.” He tapped madly under one of his own eyes. “It’s even veined with gold. We steal the eye, we sell it—somewhere on the mainland, maybe, or to passing traders. Then we have our sackfuls of silver. Enough to pay off my vineyard, enough to pay you what I owe you. To feed Phoibe,” he yelped, delighted at having found an altruistic rationale at last.
“We steal the Cyclops’s eye?”
“He never wears it. It’s too valuable. He keeps it in his home.”
“His home is like a fort,” she said drily, thinking of the well-watched den on a small peninsula that sprouted from the west of the island. “Skamandrios was the last person to try to break in there. He has never been seen since.”
Assassin's Creed Odyssey (The Official Novelization) Page 2
