Assassin's Creed Odyssey (The Official Novelization)

by Gordon Doherty

“So that’s what the Cult told you?”

  “That’s what I know.”

  Kassandra laughed coldly. “So what now? Have you come to open my throat?”

  “I could, anytime I want. Right now, even,” he rumbled.

  She felt a deep resignation, a will for him to do as he threatened. But then she noticed him looking back over his shoulder, an edginess in his eyes, as if checking that nobody else was in the jail with him.

  “But before that”—he raised a hand and clasped one of the gate bars, then pressed his face to a gap—“tell me what you know.”

  “I thought the Cultists told you everything. Sounds like you’re on their side, but they’re not on yours. You know that’s why they keep me here, don’t you? As a spare.”

  Deimos’s mouth flashed in a rictus and he shook the gate by the bars, causing it to clank. “You think I’m replaceable? Just a puppet? The Cult are nothing without me.”

  “Did they tell you that too?” she asked calmly.

  Deimos’s eyes flicked this way and that. “Do not goad me, Sister. Perhaps I should kill you right now—to spoil your theory, to show that you are nothing.”

  “Then open the gate, come, do it,” she said, her heart gathering pace as she wondered if her legs had the spring they might need to make a break for it.

  Deimos’s anger ebbed. “First, you will tell me your twisted version of the truth. Why was I abandoned that night on the mountain?”

  Kassandra’s plans of escape faltered then. All she had wanted since that night was the chance to explain. Her thoughts began to gallop like a herd of Thessalian steeds, but she drew on invisible reins, slowing them, taking a breath, remembering her discussions with Sokrates. The best way to win a debate was to gently guide an opponent to the conclusion, using simple questions and plain reasoning like oars. She knelt on the cell floor, gesturing for Deimos to do the same on the other side of the gate.

  “What do you remember of it?” she said. “I don’t mean the memories the artifact has shown you. What do you remember of it?”

  Deimos slid down the gate to sit as well, one hand wringing his hair. “Mother, Father . . . you. Watching, all of you, as an old man lifted me.”

  “An old man?”

  His brow furrowed. “An . . . ephor.”

  “Aye, it was.”

  “Why? I was not lame or ill, was I?”

  “No. But you were kissed by the poisonous lips of the Oracle.”

  Deimos’s eyes searched the ether.

  “And you know who feeds the Oracle her words.”

  He nodded slowly, silently, staring into space. “A baby with a fate so terrible it was thrown off a cliff. What kind of prophecy would lead to that?”

  “The Oracle said you were going to bring about Sparta’s downfall if you lived. Waiting for the outcome was too big a risk. When you survived, the Cult took you for themselves. They molded you into a champion . . . a weapon.”

  “I made myself,” he growled, his eyes rolling up to stare at her like an angered hound.

  “Into what? Is this what you wanted to be?”

  “The Cult think me a God. They worship me!”

  “Do they?” said Kassandra glibly.

  Deimos rose again, chest rising and falling. He began to pace before the cell gate. “Malákas!” he cursed. “And your bones are made of gold, are they? Ha! They threw off the wrong child! No . . . I was saved that night, shorn from you and my wretched family.”

  “Do you remember the last time you saw me that night?” she said.

  Deimos slowed. “I remember . . . a look. A final look.”

  “Aye, it was when I rushed for the edge of the mountain. When I tried to save you, to catch you.” Her head lolled as a sob tried to grow in her chest. “I failed. I killed an ephor instead. I was thrown from the mountain too as punishment. My life ended up there also.”

  “The tragic hero,” he growled, swiping a hand but unable to look her in the eye.

  “Nobody is to blame but the Cult, Deimos. Even Father—duty-bound and blinded by his Spartan pride—was their victim that night. It took me more than twenty years to understand his quandary that night. Had he not done what the Oracle demanded, we would all have been disgraced.”

  “Disgraced?” Deimos raged. “And that would have been worse than the position we find ourselves in now?”

  “Mother went after you too,” Kassandra pleaded.

  Deimos halted. “What?”

  “She went down into the bone pit to find you. And she did find you.”

  Deimos stared at her.

  “She fled Sparta and took you to a healer. But that healer was Chrysis the Cultist, who lied to Mother, told her you had died.” She wrapped both hands around the cell bars. “Don’t you see? You’re being used. You wouldn’t be here with me if you thought they were telling you the whole truth.” She gestured to the jail’s exterior door. “This is what the Cult do. They harness power while it is useful. They have done it with you. They have done the same with Athens. They once did the same with Sparta, planting their number among the ephors and even the kings. When a person or even a state ceases to be useful, they will be cast off, destroyed.”

  “Kleon has the power in Athens now. He will not be letting go. And he would not be so foolish as to underestimate my part in bringing him that prize.” He grabbed the bars like Kassandra, his nose touching hers. “The Cult will never control me,” he seethed. “I’m winning this war for them.”

  Kassandra stared into his eyes. “At what cost . . . Alexios?”

  Deimos trembled. “Whatever it takes,” he whispered. “Is that not your very mantra, Misthios?”

  Both beheld each other for an age.

  The groan of the exterior door snapped both from the moment.

  Kleon strode in and looked Kassandra up and down as if she were a scrap of dog meat. Deimos backed away from the bars as if caught in some criminal act.

  “We’ve been searching for you, Deimos,” Kleon snapped. “Interesting that I should find you . . . here.”

  “I came to . . . It’s nothing.” He shook his head, not meeting Kleon’s sharp look.

  “You came to kill her?” he guessed, arching an eyebrow. “That was not your action to take, boy. Leave. Now!” He snapped his fingers, pointing at the door.

  “I am not your puppet,” Deimos rumbled, looking Kleon in the eye, “and you are not my master.”

  Kleon held Deimos’s gaze. An oily smile rose on his face. “Of course, Champion,” he said, his tone softening. “I merely worry for your well-being.”

  Deimos shrugged. “Do whatever you want with her,” he hissed, turning to leave. As he did so, he met Kassandra’s eye one last time before swinging away, leaving the jail.

  Kleon beheld her now, hands clasped over his belt like a fat man who has just enjoyed a double helping of food. She noticed the cloying scent of sweet wax wafting from his carefully groomed red locks and pointed beard, and that he wore one of Perikles’s robes.

  “No better fit than a dead man’s clothes,” she said flatly.

  Kleon chuckled. “Perikles’s strategy brought Athens to the brink of disaster.”

  “So you had him murdered.”

  “You can’t find the perfect yolk without breaking some of the quail’s eggs. He wasn’t right for us. Killing Perikles then taking Sphakteria was only the beginning. Since, I have heaped victory upon victory onto my glowing reputation. The neutral island of Melos rebuffed our offer to bring them under the Athenian wing. So we smashed their city and took their island for ourselves. The Aeginetans dared to side with the Spartans, and we routed them, utterly. The Spartan isle of Kythera fell to us soon after. My legend grows. I can do anything.”

  “Like raise the tax levy to crippling levels? Or lead young Athenian soldiers to their deaths? I heard the gossip of passers
by, about a crushing defeat at Delium. How many fell there?” she sneered. “I have sensed the change in tone during my time in here. The cheers and songs of the early days have turned sour and hoarse. People now grumble about your blind pursuit of conquest and instead champion talk of truces and armistices. You are no longer the hero you were once mistaken for, and—”

  “And my next move will be the finest yet,” he interrupted. “There are rebels on the isle of Lesbos, in the city of Mytilene. It is rumored that they have opened talks with the Spartans with a view to defecting to the Peloponnesian League.”

  “What have you done?” she said, spotting the evil in his eyes.

  “Me? I’ve done nothing.” He laughed. “The vote has been cast, and the fleet has set sail. The soldiers and citizens of Mytilene will have a hard time revolting once they’re all dead!”

  “Another atrocity? When they mocked you, called you the screaming ape—I thought it was because you were loud and repugnant. Well you are, but now I know that that is exactly what you are inside as well. You scratch every itch, paint over every crack, snap every rope to cling to power at any cost. That is tyranny defined. Perikles sought not to appease the animal whims of the masses, but to guide them to better ways of thinking, to understand democracy and reason.”

  “Democracy?” He smiled. “Well only one man sits at that much-vaunted table now. And that man . . . is me.

  “Now I must be going. Trouble stirs in the north, near Amphipolis. The Spartans simply do not know when they are beaten. Right now they try to secure the north as their own—to steal the gold, silver and good timbers of those lands. I smell a further triumph in the offing. Once I have crushed them, the gates to the north and to Thrakia will be mine to control. You know what lies up there, don’t you?”

  Kassandra felt a chill pass over her.

  “King Sitalkes once promised his vast Thrakian army to the Cultic cause: one hundred thousand spears and fifty thousand horse—fierce, brutish warriors. Sitalkes has since died, but his barbarian army is still very much at large. They will answer my call and they will descend upon and shackle all Hellas. An age of order and control awaits.”

  Kassandra stared at him, her heart plunging.

  He clicked his fingers. “The Cult wins, Kassandra. You lose. You lost the moment you rejected the chance to join us. And now . . . it ends for you.”

  He left, and two guards entered, armed with axes, faces set hard. They clicked the cell gate closed behind them, locking it. One twirled his ax and grinned. “He told us to make it hurt.” He flashed a look at the other. “Hack off her feet.”

  The other swung his ax at her ankles. Kassandra felt instinct take hold. She sprung up, catching the ceiling grate. The ax sped through the space her legs had been. She kicked down hard on the top of the first man’s skull. A crack of vertebrae echoed through the cell and he slumped to the ground. She landed and grabbed the dead man’s ax, slicing it up to catch the strike of the other, before driving him back against the wall, pirouetting on her heel and slamming the ax blade into his grinning face, chopping his head off from the top lip upward. The top half of his head rested on the wall-embedded ax and the rest of his body slid to the ground with a trail of wet, black blood.

  Shaking, she turned to the first fallen one, fishing the keys from his belt. She unlocked the cell door, tasting sweet freedom, almost there. Until she heard the thunder of more approaching feet. That frantic fight had taken almost every trace of energy from her malnourished body. No more . . . no more.

  “Charge!” a familiar voice roared. Two figures burst into the jail and staggered to a halt, back-to-back. One was armed with a shovel and the other with a broom. Both looked a little bemused then crestfallen when they saw her standing by the open cell door.

  Her heart surged with joy. “Barnabas, Sokrates?”

  “Misthios!” Barnabas wailed, dropping his “war-shovel” and seizing her in a tight embrace.

  Sokrates eyed the two butchered guards. “You asked me to stay alive.” He raised his arms aloft like an Olympic champion. “And here I am.”

  “We heard rumors that you were here,” Barnabas panted. “We weren’t sure. We sent Ikaros so you would know to—”

  “—to be ready,” Kassandra finished for him. Her ears pricked up when she heard yet more scuffling feet. “And we must remain alert. These two guards will soon be missed. But where can we hide? This city is Kleon’s.”

  “All is in hand,” Sokrates assured her. “Come, we will take the alleys and the hidden tunnel back to Perikles’s old home. It has been abandoned since his death. There, we will plan our next move. Hope is not lost, but it fades . . . fast.”

  * * *

  • • •

  In the noon heat of the sweltering Athenian summer, she stood on the balcony of Perikles’s old home, twisting the half spear in one hand in gentle repetitions of old combat training moves. It felt good to have the lance in her grasp again. Herodotos had salvaged it from the ashes of Sphakteria. Barnabas had brought her good leathers too—a warrior’s shell. She swirled the spear once more then slid it into her belt, feeling strong. Many days of rest, good bread, honey and nuts had recharged her body once again.

  Ikaros floated down to rest on the balustrade and she stepped over to preen him, kissing his head. He was an old bird now, she realized sadly. She looked out into the silvery heat of the east, seeing the Athenian fleet setting to sea, sails bulging as more than thirty vessels cut north toward distant Amphipolis. Kleon was gone to claim his glory. But the city was still his and the Cult’s. Or more accurately, given Sokrates’s update—that four more members of the Cult had been killed during her stint in jail—it might be Kleon’s alone if he was the last of them.

  The last and the darkest, he had said.

  Behind her, voices rose and fell as the survivors of Perikles’s retinue squabbled about this grim truth. She plucked a grape off of a vine dangling from the balcony trellis and popped it into her mouth. The explosion of cool juice could not sweeten the scene as she turned to look upon them. Sokrates, the ever-underdressed Alkibiades, Herodotos, Aristophanes, Euripides, Sophocles and Hippokrates stood around the dead leader’s dusty planning table, faces wracked with tiredness and indecision.

  “Call upon Thucydides,” Herodotos insisted. “There are boats and regiments who are loyal to him. They will stand against Kleon.”

  “Not enough.” Herodotos sighed. “And he languishes in exile, far from here, for his part in Amphipolis’s original fall from Athenian hands.”

  “We are here, in Athens, in her pulsing heart. She needs us now,” Hippokrates bleated, clapping the table.

  “What do you suggest?” Sokrates scoffed. “That we form a brigade armed with shovels and brushes and seize control? We would look ridiculous. Worse, it would make us tyrants.”

  “Kleon wrested power by sheer force. It is his way,” argued Aristophanes. “But there are other ways—more refined and lasting—with which to win the hearts and minds of Athens’s people.”

  “He’s going to suggest a play,” Sophocles said, his eyelids sliding down in exasperation. “And let me guess: only he is witty enough to compose such a work.”

  Aristophanes shot him a sour look. “Nonsense. I’ll let you hold my tablet and fetch me drinks.”

  Sophocles exploded in outrage. Sokrates wheeled away from the table with a sigh, only to bump into Alkibiades, who helpfully offered to massage his shoulders and alleviate his stress . . . then began to nibble on his ear. When Sokrates shrugged him off, exasperated, Alkibiades threw out his hands in innocence. “What? Is it not the purpose of a loved one to exude love?”

  Sokrates melted into a throaty chuckle. “So you have been listening to me? Perhaps it is, yes, but not now,” he said, gesturing back to the table.

  Kassandra watched, longing for these great minds to produce a jewel of a plan. But days passed, with no res
olution. One day, Barnabas came to her side as she watched.

  “I feel it too, Misthios. An itch that cannot be scratched by standing here.”

  She turned to him. “Even after all the strife you have been through with me, you yearn to travel to Amphipolis?”

  “They didn’t tell you, did they? About the Spartan garrison there.”

  She frowned. “There are thousands of Spartiates there, I hear. Kleon will gather up nine thousand of his own along the way. He will have a tough fight on his hands. He will not seize the gateway to the north easily.” She thought again of Kleon’s boasts about the Thrakian horde beyond those gates, and mouthed a prayer in support of the Spartans.

  Barnabas shook his head. “There are little more than one hundred Spartiates there, and a few allied hoplites.”

  “What?”

  “Since the disaster at Sphakteria, the ephors refuse to allow the purebred regiments to march to war. To defend Amphipolis, they commissioned just a knot of Spartiates and filled out the ranks with masses of Helots.”

  “Helots?” Kassandra gasped. They were effective support skirmishers and baggage handlers. But to make up an army almost entirely of them was madness. “May the Gods be with them. Who leads them?”

  “General Brasidas,” Barnabas replied.

  She stared.

  “He was rescued from the ashes of Sphakteria too. All this time while you were incarcerated, he has led his Helot army around the north, seeking allies, searching for cracks in Kleon’s iron empire.”

  She heard the group inside reciting the lines of the play they had concocted in these last days. Euripides stood on a crate, playing the part of Perikles, imperious, solemn, plainspoken. Aristophanes then entered the scene, skipping, waving his hands as if picking flowers, then squealing like a tortured pig. “No, listen to me, listen to me! Look, there is a dark cave. Come with me, let us leap blindly inside!”

  Alkibiades roared with laughter as he sucked on a wineskin. Herodotos clapped. Sophocles beamed with delight, tapping the tablet, reading along with the script as the two acted it out.