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

They fell upon their prey in silence, faces bent in malice, spears licking out to pierce chests, bursts of blood misting above the fray, screams rising from the stricken. Those Athenians still swimming in or crawling through the shallows on all fours were mercilessly bludgeoned with the bronze butt spikes on the base of the Spartan spears. When a band of seven or so Athenians dared to put up a fight, there was one among the Spartans who moved like a nightmare unleashed. Kassandra saw only glimpses of him, his whipping red tribon cloak, his head and face obscured by an old-style Korinthian helm, his spear flashing in the late-afternoon sunlight. Every one of the seven fell to him, riven. Within moments, the hundreds of survivors of the rammed ship were but a flotsam of cadavers, bobbing in a bloody soup. Silence befell the bay, leaving just the sound of the waves lapping gently on the shore.

She saw him in full at last, and knew it was the Wolf, for he wore the trappings of a general: a transverse plume—blood-red like his gore-sodden cloak. She stared at the T of shadow at the front of the helm, seeking out the face, memories of the past scourging her like whips of fire. Her heart hammered, the Leonidas spear seeming to shudder and vibrate in her grasp.

The men around the Wolf raised their spears to him. “ Aroo! ” they boomed once, solemnly.

The sheer aura and number of these warriors doused her in cold reality. Now was not the time to strike. She let go of the spear and drew her cloak over it, and the fire within settled. She watched as the Wolf moved toward a younger officer and clasped a hand to his shoulder. “You fought well, Stentor,” she heard him say. With that, the Spartan general, her father… her quarry, turned and left the bay, heading toward a path that wound up the coastal bluffs, a few men walking by his side.

Kassandra looked back over her shoulder, seeing Barnabas watching anxiously. Wait here, she mouthed to him, then rose from behind the gorse and approached the Spartan soldiers. The one named Stentor noticed her first and stepped over to block her path.

He was a little older than her: at least thirty, she guessed, given that he seemed to be an officer. He stared at her, impassive, his inky beard ringing thin lips, his nose like a blade. He was strong and lean… perhaps too lean—the tolls of battle and hunger? His mouth twitched, loaded with acid words of challenge, until he noticed the Adrestia , moored nearby, then glanced to the dead Athenians, and then across the water at the floating remains of the ship. “You… you halved that galley?” he concluded, the statement punctuated by the nearby stretch and snap of sinew as a vulture plucked an eyeball from a dead Athenian’s head.

“It was in my way,” Kassandra replied, matching his laconic tone.

She noticed a glint of respect in his eyes and followed his prideful glance up to the top of the coastal bluffs: up there, the Wolf now stood, looking over the bay, his cloak fluttering in the fiery light of sunset. He rested his weight on a bakteriya staff.

She realized she had been staring at him just a little too long. And so did Stentor.

“What do you want with the Wolf?” he snapped, his voice suddenly dripping with suspicion.

Kassandra feigned nonchalance. “I come to… serve him.”

“So you are a misthios. And you think that we need help? Did you not just witness what happened to these Athenian fools? Is Megara not still in Spartan hands?”

“For now,” she replied. “Though I have heard that Perikles of Athens plans to mount a major land offensive on these parts.”

Stentor’s top lip arched at one end.

“I am sure you will win most battles,” she replied before he could curse her, “but could you not use a mercenary for certain things? I ask only for a place in your camp and safe harbor for the men of my boat while I am here.”

Stentor snorted in dry amusement. “You want to serve us? Do you really think I would let a hired blade anywhere near my father?” He shot a look up at the Wolf as he said this.

“You are the Wolf’s… son?” Kassandra said, her voice breaking up.

“He adopted me not long after both of his children died,” Stentor explained. “He mentored me and trained me. It is thanks to him that I am a lochagos , leader of this regiment. He is everything to me, and he is everything I want to be. I would follow him to the gates of the underworld.”

“I ask only the chance to do the same,” she said.

He looked at her askance, eyeing her from head to toe like a merchant evaluating a nag, before chopping one hand into the palm of the other, decision made. “No. No misthios will enter our camp or set foot near the Wolf,” he insisted. “Enough of your kind lurk inland as it is, working for the Athenians…” His nose wrinkled. “Hyrkanos and his hired rogues have been smashing up our supply wagons, denying our men their bread. Others seek my father’s head and the purse it will bring. Too many thorns in the Wolf’s paw already. No more. For all I know you could be one of them—here to kill my father.” He stared hard at her for a time. “So go, sleep on your boat and be grateful that I let you keep your head, stranger.”

A gentle clank of spears being leveled behind her told her it was time to leave. She half bowed and backed away, toward the fragile sanctuary of the Adrestia .

Having eaten a meal of salted, roasted sardines and bread, washed down with well-watered wine, Kassandra lay down to sleep near the boat’s prow. An eerie silence descended over the bay. She could not find rest, despite her aching muscles and foggy mind, and so she sat up on the rail, hugging her knees to her chest, Ikaros preening himself beside her in the light of a sickle moon that illuminated the waters. She watched the ring of torchlight out on the Athenian galleys, and the glow of orange up on the bluff, where the Spartans were camped. Here in this netherworld of the beach, she was surrounded by a deckful of snoring sailors, and the still, stinking corpses of the Athenian dead a stone’s throw along the sands. They had been stripped of their armor but left unburied.

Her heart froze when she heard a lapping of oars out on the water. A night attack? But she saw just a small rowboat coming toward the shore from the blockade, and watched keenly as two unarmored Athenians disembarked and headed up toward the Spartan camp. Brave men, dead men, surely, she thought. But they returned a short while later, and then a larger team of unarmed Athenians rowed ashore to join them and helped dig graves in the sand and bury their dead, granted amnesty to do so by their fiercest enemies.

Kassandra stared up at the Spartan camp. The Wolf was at the bluff’s edge again, looking down upon the burials, framed by the inky sky and a silvery sand of stars. You no doubt congratulate yourself for showing such a crumb of honor, she mouthed hatefully. Yet where was your honor that night on the mountain?

For the next moon, the Adrestia remained beached near Pagai, and Kassandra set about winning the Spartans’ trust. By day, she shadowed the ranks as they marched to and fro, defending the few good bays and docking sites whenever the Athenians tried to land or driving off the infantry assaults from the north. Twice, she helped turn the fray. First, by perching on a rock near the shore and sending blazing arrows over the heads of the waiting, battle-ready Spartans and into the sails of the approaching Athenian triremes, the vessels going up in flames before they even reached the shore. Stentor had glowered at her like a vulture robbed of his corpse. Then, a few days later, she had entered the edge of battle again, springing from the woods to defeat an Athenian champion. Stentor had rewarded her with a tirade and a quarter-drawn blade. “Stay away from my soldiers. Stay away from my father,” he had spat. But she could see the black rings under his eyes and the flagging steps of the Spartan soldiers. Despite their pride and reputation for laughing in the face of hunger, the missing supply wagons meant many had not eaten solids for nearly half a moon.