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

by Oliver Bowden

  These were happy times. They were for me, and I think they were for her, too, because they were the times most like our childhood in Siwa and the months we spent in Thebes, when we were most … together. Teaching, learning, and, when the work was done, enjoying one another. I found comfort in her arms. On her lips I tasted rapture. They were heady times, spent in love with love and the joy of discovering the warriors within us.

  Like all things, of course, it had to come to an end, and in many ways – maybe all the ways – it was my fault, because at first, indeed, for many years, I felt as though Aya was happy with our life together. We were always on the move, but it was an adventure and she enjoyed it; she loved learning.

  But so did I, and as my learning progressed something happened that I couldn’t really help. I began to gravitate to my father. I took deep joy in finally getting glimpses of the man behind the façade. Of our familial bond finally settling in. Yet I saw what was happening between Aya and me as a result, and so I took the decision that I hoped would balance things. I decided that we should become man and wife.

  His acquiescence surprised me.

  The hardest part was done, for Aya would surely accept my proposal.

  51

  ‘No,’ she said. She was standing opposite me, her sword arm loose, a strange parallel of what had happened that very morning with my father.

  ‘What? Why? I talked it through with Father, and he is happy for us.’ I saw her face cloud and immediately tried to correct myself, ‘I mean, you know, don’t you, that might have been difficult for us. But he’s happy, he’s proud. He wants us to be together.’ She was shaking her head but I ploughed on. ‘And when my education is complete, we will return to Siwa so that I can take up the mantle of mekety as well as be a Medjay.’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m sorry, Bayek, but I shan’t be doing that.’

  I blinked. ‘We can have a house. A family. I will seek the permission of your aunt.’

  She flinched away, eyes dark with distress, but I wouldn’t realize the significance of that until later. For now I continued, ‘My father will stand down eventually and it will be up to me to protect Siwa. I shall be its guardian, Aya, I will be helping to keep the ways of the Medjay alive … But the most important thing is that you and I will be together. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to spend the rest of your life with me?’

  She raised her head, threw back her shoulders and then slammed her sword point into the ground so that it stuck there, the sword juddering slightly. Eyes ablaze she said, ‘Bayek, I don’t know where to start. I really don’t. The wife of Siwa’s protector. Medjay wife. Did you stop to reflect on whether I truly believe in the ways of the Medjay?’

  ‘Well, don’t you?’

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. That’s not my question. My question is, did you stop to think about it?’

  ‘Well, no, but …’

  ‘Of course you didn’t. Of course you didn’t, because he’s filled your head with all these …’ She was whirling her hands around her head as though trying to ward off a swarm of flies, ‘… ideas and you’re not willing to question them.’ She sighed explosively. ‘He’s holding you back, Bayek!’

  I felt a flash of anger at that. She’d given me space all these years, let me work on my relationship with my father. But a part of me had wondered, all this time. It was a part I’d not been willing to acknowledge then. I was not ready now. I pushed the doubts away and pressed my case, instead.

  I reached my hands towards her as though trying to bridge the gap between us, a gap that seemed to be getting wider with every passing second. ‘I have you,’ I said. ‘I have you to help me question things. To learn all I can. You won’t let me become complacent. He knows that too.’

  She was shaking her head. ‘Did you stop to think what I might want?’ I felt unsteady, unmoored. The question was fair. But I was still angry, too. I’d tried to talk to her earlier in my training. I’d tried to ask her – and she’d demurred, citing respect for what I was trying to build with my father. ‘Here’s something else: you say you’re happy to ask my aunt, but what about my mother and father in Alexandria?’

  ‘But you haven’t spoken to them in years, not since you were a little girl,’ I said defensively. Inside, though, I was thinking that she was right. If it even had crossed my mind to visit Alexandria and persuade her father of my suitability as a candidate for a husband, as was the tradition, then surely I would have dismissed the idea. Oh, I had a lot to persuade him with: I was a Medjay scion, destined to become Siwa’s protector, living in a well-appointed dwelling as one of the town’s most respected inhabitants. I had much to offer my potential bride, I had no worries on that particular score. And yet the idea of doing that, the thought of making that journey to Alexandria, filled me with more horror than the thought of fighting any man. And part of that, I was starting to realize as we spoke, was in no little part due to my father constantly hammering into my head how important Siwa should be to me. How it should matter to me, above all else, to protect both my home town and the people of Egypt.

  She knew it. She read my mind and answered her own question. ‘No, you were hoping not to involve my parents, the Alexandrians, is that right? Don’t they represent everything that your father worries about? His son, out in the world. A potential target for all and sundry due to his secret heritage.’

  ‘You’re a Siwan.’

  It was a feeble response and I knew it.

  ‘By birth I’m an Alexandrian. That great city was my home, and I hope that one day it will be my home again. Had you forgotten that, Bayek, son of Sabu? Had you forgotten my dream that one day I should study in the great library at Alexandria? Or did you assume I would simply abandon that plan in order to stay by your side, be left at home alone like Ahmose, your mother?’

  I found myself floundering, not knowing what to say. I was aware only that this was a situation that was getting swiftly out of hand. A scene that I’d pictured heading one way was hurtling off like a startled animal in the wrong direction.

  But she was also right. Many were the times I had worried about my mother, alone back home. Many where the times I’d nearly asked my father about her, only to stop before her name crossed my lips, worried I might cause even a greater rift between us.

  ‘Did you ever stop to think when you were considering your path, that I might be considering mine?’ she was saying.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, and despised the desperation I heard in my own voice, knowing how it made me sound. Then again, I couldn’t let things go this way. I had to convince her.

  ‘No you didn’t,’ she was saying. ‘You simply saw a way to please your father.’

  ‘ “Please my father”? How? He is approving of the union, if that’s what you mean.’

  She reached for her sword, plucked it out of the ground then slammed it back down again. But if the movement was designed only to dissipate some of her anger, it failed, because when she spoke the fury seemed to tumble from behind her teeth.

  ‘Your father has never liked me.’

  ‘But you just said –’

  ‘Gods, Bayek, can’t you see? What have you been telling me all this time? What has your father been telling you? He’s been telling you about the Medjay bloodline, hasn’t he? How it needs to be continued. That’s why he agrees to your request for a union. It’s nothing to do with what he thinks of me. He doesn’t care that I’m training, beyond my ability to protect myself and your heirs. He knows that I’m the best chance he’s got of carrying on the bloodline. Right now you and he are the only true Medjay left, maybe in the whole of Egypt. He wants to grow himself another one, and he’ll use anyone convenient in order to do it.’

  I felt myself becoming angry. Not because of what she was saying so much as that I knew she was right. I had hoped it would not matter – after all, we loved one another.

  The answer, of course, was that to Aya it mattered – it mattered an enormous amount.

  I held up
my hands. Tried to find words that were not placatory but mirrored what we both felt. Instead, all I could find was a question.

  ‘Why did you never tell me you felt this way?’

  That took her by surprise, and though she’d been ready to answer in anger, she hesitated, clearly troubled.

  ‘I … I was foolish.’ She bowed her head, took a deep breath, and offered me a pained smile. ‘I wanted to give you the opportunity to get to know your father once more, and so I stepped back. But I stopped talking to you in the process.’

  And that explained why she’d never answered the questions I’d asked of her, early on, as to her thoughts on my father’s ideological teachings regarding the Medjay.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ she continued. ‘You tried to ask me. I just … I did not wish to come between the two of you. I should have told you,’ she said, dignified yet sorrowful.

  ‘I don’t think I gave you much room to tell me,’ I murmured, reaching out. She came into my arms willingly, the both of us quiet as we reflected how we had grown closer in some ways yet drifted apart in others. We had a lot of talking to do.

  ‘We’ll speak of my proposal some other time,’ I offered. ‘For now, let’s just try to mend things between us.’ I could feel her smile against me, and felt some measure of peace steal over me. ‘We’ll continue training. Take our time.’

  She shook her head and gently disengaged herself, stepping away from me a few paces, bracing herself.

  ‘Bayek, we cannot. I have something to tell you.’

  ‘What now?’ I was puzzled, but no longer angry. Confused, but eager to talk, to discuss plainly as we’d failed to do so much the past few years.

  ‘There will be no more training. I have decided to return home.’

  52

  I knew what she meant, of course, but even so I couldn’t quite bring myself to acknowledge it, because acknowledging it made it true, and I didn’t want it to be true. ‘Back to the camp?’ I said.

  She shook her head gently. ‘No, Bayek. To Siwa.’

  ‘We will all be going back there soon, when …’

  She sighed, a touch of exasperation returning. ‘You mean when your education is complete; when your father is confident that you are fully indoctrinated, when you talk in exactly the same riddles he does. When he’s finished being scared for you. Is that what you want? We all go back to Siwa when he decides. When he says so.’

  ‘We are being hunted, don’t you forget that.’ I didn’t understand her urgency – for it was there, easy to see now that I was looking for it.

  She stared away, arms still folded, chin jutting, before replying, ‘No, I won’t forget it. I’ve never been allowed to forget it. And yet of our pursuer there is no sign. There has been no sign for years, Bayek – years.’

  ‘The blink of an eye.’

  She thumped a hand to her chest. ‘Not to me. It hasn’t been “the blink of an eye” to me because I’m not the one following my one true path, remember?’

  ‘And that’s why you’re going home?’

  I was so perplexed, but we were talking now. I could feel her relax too, realize that this communication was good, even if the topic was … difficult.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well …’ I stopped, not sure what to say. ‘Why, then? Why do you want to go home?’

  Had her eyes been misting up before or had I only just noticed? Either way, I saw now and the sight sent me spinning, because Aya rarely cried and seeing her do it now made me feel strangely uncomfortable – as though there was even more wrong with the world than I thought.

  And, of course, I was right about that.

  ‘My aunt Herit is ill,’ she said.

  This was it. This was the reason. But it took a few moments for me to process, to understand quite what she meant, and my heart went out to her because nobody knew better than me how much Aya cared for her aunt. Herit had raised her since she was small. Just a little girl. She was the only guardian Aya had ever truly known, even as she worshipped her scholarly parents from afar. While my relationship with my father was always … well, I suppose you’d have to say ‘complicated’, hers with her aunt could not be more different. Herit doted on the pretty little girl who had arrived from Alexandria. Aya had always made her proud. You only needed to look at her face when she turned it towards Aya to know, that mix of devotion and fascination. I knew because I sometimes felt it too.

  For her part, Aya treated her aunt with total respect and love. If Aya occasionally had the habit of seeming to think herself above her contemporaries in Siwa, that certainly didn’t extend to her aunt. I never heard her say a word against her. I never saw the slightest flicker of irritation or disdain for her aunt’s homely ways. If Herit was ill then, naturally, she would be devastated. Of course she would want to go back home.

  Could she, though? Was it possible when we were being hunted?

  Would my father even allow it? And …

  The realization had thumped into me late.

  ‘Wait – how do you know? How do you know she’s unwell? Oh no, you haven’t …?’

  She nodded defiantly. ‘I had to. I had to know how she was. I hoped merely to pass on news that we were well and hear the same in return. I never expected to be told that she was sick. It was the worst news imaginable.’

  My head was spinning. Looming at the back of my mind was my father, and I was worried what he might say despite my resentment at even feeling that emotion. How he would react – his anger if he discovered that Aya had endangered our position by sending messages – didn’t bear thinking about. But also, I shouldn’t have to feel that way, should I? Regardless of my father, though, one concern remained true and valid and very much present.

  ‘It was dangerous,’ I exploded. ‘How could you be so …?’ I stopped myself before I shouted some more, working to catch my breath, to deal with this properly. She took a step back as I did so, and I could see the emotions playing on her face – defiance, determination, concern for me – but in the end defiance triumphed.

  ‘I’m going back home.’ She spoke calmly, though her voice was shadowed in anger. I felt betrayed and adrift, and so very worried at the thought of the assassin finding us, and perhaps killing my father, myself, or her.

  ‘How could you? You know how dangerous the man hunting us is!’

  ‘You want your father to hear you?’ she retorted. I wasn’t keeping my voice down as much as I’d thought, it seemed.

  ‘He’ll find out anyway,’ I snapped out, aggrieved.

  ‘How? Because you’ll tell him?’ she snapped back.

  I was dismayed and scared of his reaction, I realized. And angry at myself for the fear, and more angry at Aya as a result, because it made me wonder if she had been right about him, about what he truly wanted. That I’d doubt my father after working so hard to get closer to him unmade me. In another world, in another time, some better future, maybe Aya and I would laugh about this and she’d apologize and say she’d pushed too hard, hadn’t explained well enough, and I’d say, ‘No, really, I went too far, I was scared, I was being blind. It served me right,’ and all would be well with the world.

  But not now. Now was just the whirling sense of things spinning suddenly and horribly out of control. Of all the hopes I’d nurtured slipping away.

  ‘I’ll have to tell him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, he’s going to want to know why we are having to move on, for one thing.’

  She pulled a face. ‘Maybe there is no hunter, did you think of that?’ She cast her arm around in a gesture that encompassed the hill on which we stood, our encampment below a desert on all sides of us, a town in the near distance. ‘Do you see any hunters coming to get us?’

  ‘What does that mean? Only that they’re not here yet.’

  ‘No one’s coming, Bayek. That’s what I mean. That’s the point. Anyway, you tell Sabu if you want to. I won’t be here to watch him curl his lip at me yet again. Yes, I sent the message months a
go. I’ve had a reply. I’m leaving in the morning.’

  She loved her aunt. So much. If it had been my mother, what would I have done? I took a deep breath, shoved everything aside and nodded. Regardless of the consequences, this was a choice only she could make.

  ‘Very well.’

  She looked at me, softening. ‘I’m leaving in the morning, Bayek. It just means that I won’t be here for a while. Not that I’ll be gone for ever.’

  I smiled back, reassured but tired beyond measure.

  ‘I’ll tell my father in the morning. After you’ve gone,’ I said.

  ‘Very well.’

  53

  When I woke the next morning and scrambled out of our shelter, my eyes went directly to where our horses grazed. Hers was missing. Aya was gone. Across the way, my father’s shelter flapped slightly in the breeze, empty, and when I looked across to the hill where we trained each day, I saw him there, his back to me, lunging and twirling, his shirt billowing.

  ‘Where is Aya?’ he said, when I’d dressed and joined him.

  He rarely referred to either of us by name. Not during our training, anyway. He seemed to consider it an act of weakness. This morning, of all mornings, it rankled.

  ‘Is she out hunting?’ he went on.

  ‘No, she’s gone.’

  His head jerked. ‘Gone?’

  ‘Home,’ I told him. ‘She’s gone home. To Siwa.’

  ‘Why wasn’t I told?’

  For all that I’d wanted to take his side the previous night, the doubts had grown into self-reflection. Dawn had brought to my heart a level of critical defiance towards my father that I’d never felt, never expected to nurture. And yet there it was.

  ‘Why do you think? You would have forbidden it.’

  ‘I would have.’

  ‘That’s your answer.’

  The focus he’d brought to training vanished, replaced by a flash of anger, and he stepped forward swinging his sword and I blocked it with my own, the clash of metal ringing like an early morning bell piercing the lazy morning. His wrist flicked and his sword came up from beneath, fast – too fast for me – and I only just managed to block in time. The move sent me slightly off balance, enough that he read my stance, adapted his own and advanced again, this time with the flat of his sword that he smacked against my temple. A little dink at the end opened a tiny cut on my face and I felt blood course down my cheek, and tasted it on my lips. He brought his left leg around, planted it and stood in a wide-legged stance with his hand on the hilt of his sword, the point of it on the ground.