Gordon Doherty - Assassin's Creed Odyssey - The Official Novelization

“Each of them is a brother to me,” he said, noticing her gaze. “And you can rely on them utterly. But I must ask: why, of all places I could take you… why the Megarid?” He gazed off to where the ship was headed: the wide waters of the Gulf of Korinthia.

“At the Megaran port of Pagai lies a great prize.”

“And the heart of the war, Misthios,” Barnabas countered. “The Megaran lands crawl with Spartan phalanxes, and the waters are ringed with Athenian galleys. The latter will pose no problem, for although the Adrestia is small and aged, she is fast and swift to turn… and she sports a sharp beak. But even then, we will make shore at a time when rumors thicken of Perikles leading an Athenian land army into the Megarid to face and destroy the Spartan regiments. What prize could possibly be worth setting foot on such a war-torn land?”

“The head of a Spartan general,” she replied.

The crewmen nearby gasped.

“I have been hired to kill the one they call the Wolf,” she said, her confidence growing as the trireme sliced across deeper waters.

Barnabas blew air through his lips and laughed without humor, as one might when surveying a sheer-sided cliff smeared with oil that they have been asked to climb. “The Wolf? You have taken on a tall task, Misthios. They say Nikolaos of Sparta has shoulders of iron, sleeps with his spear in hand and one eye open. And his bodyguards are like demons too…”

Kassandra heard Barnabas’s words fade into a deafening ring. She heard herself mutter: “What did you say?” and saw the looks of confusion on the captain’s face and on the faces of the crew nearby who came to her aid when her legs weakened. She shook them off, grabbing the ship’s rail and leaning over to stare down into the water.

The Wolf is Nikolaos of Sparta? I have been sent to kill my father?

As he watched the Adrestia drift out to sea, spearing toward the Korinthian Gulf under power of sail, Elpenor stroked the strange mask in his hands, chuckling quietly to himself. He saw the small figure of Kassandra at the stern. Proud, brave, mighty, at first. Then he almost felt the crushing blow as it was delivered, seeing her fall to one knee, waving the men away.

“She knows…” he purred. “It has begun.”

“Hoist the sail!” Barnabas yelled. As the great blazon of the eagle was tucked away, twenty men settled on the padded-leather benches running either side of the ship, each taking up a fir-pole oar, lifting it and threading it through a leather loop and thole pin. With a rhythmic splash, the oars met the waves.

The Megarid was in sight. The journey was all but over.

Kassandra, perched at the prow, stared at the forest of Athenian galleys ahead. Flapping striped sails, fir masts and pitch-painted hulls. Every one of the mighty vessels was packed with glinting hoplites, archers, slingers, peltasts . Some were even laden with Thessalian steeds, their heads covered with bags to stop them becoming panicked at the sight of the ocean. A floating army stood between the Adrestia and the hazy Megaran hinterland beyond and the port of Pagai itself.

“I have to face him,” she whispered to herself. It was a mantra that had echoed in her thoughts for the past two days of the voyage as she came to terms with the Wolf’s true identity. “But there is no way through that blockade.”

The ships were serried in banks, four or five deep. She saw the knots of white-tuniced peltasts aboard the two nearest triremes turn from the blockaded land to behold the tiny vessel speeding toward their flotilla like a mouse charging a pride of lions. They shouted and pointed, their commander barking at them to lift their javelins and take aim. Kassandra looked back at Barnabas and his men, ready to tell them to turn around, that it had been a mistake. Maybe they could swing north or south and land on either side of the Korinthian Gulf. From there it might only take them a month or so to pick their way overland to Pagai and—

“ Kybernetes ,” Barnabas roared before she could say a word. “Turn… turn… turn !”

Under the shadow of the galley’s scorpion tail, the coal-skinned helmsman named Reza grabbed onto the twin steering oars, his mighty shoulders shaking with effort, leaning left to edge the boat to the right. He roared with the strain, until two crewmen rushed to add their weight to the mix.

With a hiss of churning water, the galley tilted sharply to the right, slicing through the waves. Kassandra grabbed hold of the rail for balance. A sheet of water leapt over her, soaking the deck too, and she saw the loosed javelins of the Athenian peltasts sail harmlessly into the churn of the Adrestia ’s wake. The galley rolled level once more and Kassandra gawped at the lone Athenian trireme ahead, side on to the Adrestia ’s prow. Barnabas had spotted it through all the other boats: a weak spot in the blockade.

“Aaand: O-opop-O-opop-O-opop …” the keleustes chanted faster and faster, passionately punching a fist into his palm as he strode along the spine of the deck. Every repetition of the sound saw the oarsmen draw back, brought the Adrestia up to ever-more-incredible speeds… the bronze beak speeding toward the flank of the lone Athenian galley. Kassandra’s eyes widened, and the Athenians’ faces dropped. “Brace!” Barnabas roared.

The world exploded in a roar of crumpling timbers. Kassandra felt her shoulders nearly leap from their sockets as the Adrestia lurched, and the sky darkened for a moment with clouds of kindling. Through a chorus of screams the Adrestia cut, the two halves of the broken Athenian galley swinging open like doors, the great mast falling, the crew clinging to timber poles for dear life. The commotion fell away as rapidly as it had risen.

Kassandra gazed back at the chaos of foaming waters and groaning wreckage, sure the rest of the Athenian fleet would fall upon them.

“They won’t follow,” Barnabas said. “They won’t risk getting too close to the shore to catch one small boat.”

The shore, she thought, looking toward the shingle bay and bluffs of Pagai. A flurry of icy thorns pricked her heart as she realized there was no excuse now. She was here… and so was he. She scoured the coastline, heart thumping. Nothing.

The ship drew in to a deserted stretch of shore, sliding onto the shingle. Kassandra leapt down onto the bay, staring along the deserted hinterland. Where are you, Wolf?

A desperate gasp nearby sent a jolt of fright through her. An Athenian warrior, from the ship they had halved, scrambled through the shallows and onto the shore, panting, spitting, his blue-and-white exomis sopping wet. All along the coast she saw more—hundreds of them, swimming in from the wreckage. Some used their shields as floats, and most were armed too. Those on the other boats out in the blockade raised a distant cheer. For a moment, it seemed that the Athenians had an unlikely foothold on the bay.

Until, from the pine woods, a crimson pack poured forth.

Kassandra dropped down behind a thicket of gorse and watched as a Spartan lochos —a regiment of some five hundred men, one-fifth of the ever-rarer purebred Spartiates—emerged from the trees. They went with their crimson cloaks flowing, their beards and hair tied tight in braids, jostling like ropes as they marched in barefoot lockstep toward the shoreline. Their helms dazzled in the late-afternoon sun, their bronze-coated shields streaked with blood-red lambda icons, their spears leveled like executioner’s fingers, pointing accusingly at the washed-up Athenians.