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

Kassandra felt her lungs working harder than usual as she strode through Korinthia’s streets. The city was enveloped in a yellowish haze of temple smoke and dust, and the garishly painted and overly high tenements and villas loomed over the road. She had heard much of this city: bustling, Spartan-allied and wealthy. But today the streets were deserted.

The market was but a carcass of empty stalls, untended carts and stockpiles of the region’s famous pots and vases—some bare clay, others etched with black-and-orange images of gods and ancient heroes. The taverns were but a sea of empty benches and stools. No citizens, no traders, no children at play, no voluptuous and purring pornai —prostitutes for which Korinthia was well-known—in the tight alleys. The steps to the High Temple of Aphrodite were bare too. Every so often she heard the creak of a shutter or a snatched whisper, her head swinging to catch sight of pale faces ducking from sight. The people were here, but they were in hiding. Terrified, as if fearing an approaching storm. The war? she wondered. The war had not scarred this place yet—Korinthia was the naval superpower upon which Sparta heavily relied to fend off the Athenian navy, but as of yet, the city’s high, grubby walls were intact. She spotted a tavern keeper then. His eyes grew moonlike and he ducked behind a barrel. Unfortunately for him, he was about three times fatter than the barrel. She stomped over to him and kicked the barrel. “Out,” she demanded.

The fleshy tavern keeper rose, pretending he had only just seen her, taking to wiping at the barrel top with a cloth. “Oh, greetings. Wine, food?”

“Anthousa,” Kassandra replied.

The man winced and glanced at his feet again, as if contemplating hiding behind the barrel once more.

She leaned across the barrel, grabbing the man’s tunic collar and pulling him over so he was nose to nose. He reeked of onions and his skin was riddled with oily black pits. “I have walked for a day and a night all the way from Argolis to get here. Where is Anthousa, mistress of the Hetaerae?”

Just then, Ikaros swooped in through the tavern’s open front, landing on a counter with a shriek, pacing up and down, kicking over a few empty cups.

Another whimper, and then the man answered at last. “The Hetaerae women are all gone. They have abandoned the High Temple. They could not risk staying here.”

Kassandra’s brow furrowed. The Hetaerae were held in great esteem here. Temple-endorsed mistresses, blessed by the Gods, highly educated and often living in luxury. If anyone was to be chased from the city, the Hetaerae would surely be the last.

“Where?” She squeezed his collar.

“They’re at the Spring of Peirene,” he croaked, pointing off toward the south.

Why?”

“Because he… he’s supposed to be returning to the city today.”

“Who?”

“The giant—the Monger. He runs the streets where once Anthousa did. Anthousa is cold and cruel at times, but nothing compared to… him . Many have felt his wrath. He took every coin I had stored in here and I was sure he would take my head too.”

Her eyes darted. I don’t care who this brute is. I must find Anthousa.

She released him and clicked her fingers, beckoning Ikaros. Ikaros kicked over one last cup and pluckily jutted his head in the tavern keeper’s direction. The tavern keeper fell into a ball, covering his head and wailing, before the eagle hopped from the counter and took flight.

Out through the city gates she went. In the hazy light, she thought she spotted the guards up on the gatehouse walkway eyeing her carefully. Or was it just a trick of the light? She cared little and turned her gaze to the high, dusty bluffs about four miles inland and the imposing rocky mount rising from them. The ancient Spring of Peirene lay up there, if the tavern keeper’s directional sense was anything to go by. She and Ikaros trekked across the flats, the first winds of autumn scudding across their path, blowing dust onto her sweat-soaked skin as they rounded the many gaping clay pits dotting the plain.

When she reached the bluffs, she climbed the track that wound up the mount, her head pounding with the effort of the at-times-treacherous scramble. One section was a sheer climb with a deadly drop, and she felt the high winds claw at her as if trying to pull her from the fingertip-thin handholds. When she reached the top, she slung a thankful arm onto the flat ground and began to lever herself up… only to stare into the tip of a well-honed sword.

“Another step without my say-so and I’ll slit you from neck to groin,” the hard-faced woman spat. On either side of her, she heard the creak of drawn bows, saw two more women training their nocked arrows on her.

Kassandra rose slowly, hands outstretched, palms upward to show she held no weapon.

The woman flicked her head to the right. Kassandra edged onto the plateau mountaintop in that direction, guided by the sword point. Ikaros screeched and seemed set to come in at a dive, but Kassandra shot him a look and he pulled back. She looked around the windswept heights, dotted with a few cypress and fir trees, but otherwise barren. Then her gaze halted on the low, ancient and gold-painted edifice near the center. Ashlar blocks and cataryid pillars closed off a small square space inside. In the shade of the columns, women mended clothing, worked wood and carried caught game around on poles. When they saw Kassandra, many froze or backed away. That same look as the Korinthians. She saw a young girl squatting beside a cat, stroking the creature’s belly. The grubby stola, the unkempt hair… for a moment, she was almost tricked into saying “Phoibe?” but the girl turned, saw her, and scuttled away. The Spartan bars around Kassandra’s heart shuddered as her fears for Phoibe tried to escape once more. She dug her nails into her palms to quash such feelings of weakness.

The woman guided Kassandra into the golden building. The wind fell away; there was darkness for a few steps before she emerged into the building’s interior: the centerpiece was a wondrous teal set into a smooth basin of snow-white marble. Water bubbled through a small natural vent in the pool floor. Some said the ancient spring was born of the eponymous founder’s shed tears; others claimed it was created when Pegasus’s hoof struck the ground. Scenes of Odysseus’s travels adorned the enclosing walls, and some of the women were busy repainting the flaking sections.

The guiding woman halted Kassandra by the poolside. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Well the most recent of his mercenaries who came up here drowned in that pool.”

“His? You mean the Monger?”

“Don’t play the fool,” she said, jabbing the sword into Kassandra’s back.

“I do not know and do not want to know the Monger. I come to speak with Anthousa.”

“You have found her.”

Kassandra’s mouth dried up. “I, I am seeking my mother,” she said, trying to turn and face Anthousa. Another jab of the sword kept her facing the pool.

“Who sent you?” Anthousa barked.

“Alkibiades.”

The sword pressure lessened a little. “He stopped rutting long enough to speak? Impressive.”

“My mother fled from Sparta, long ago. She may have gone by the name of Myrrine.”

“Myrrine?” The sword point fell away completely now. Kassandra dared to turn to her captor. Anthousa’s granite features had softened, a faint glow of fondness in her eyes.

“She was here, wasn’t she?”

“Aye,” Anthousa said quietly, “and she left again all too soon.”

It all changed in the blink of an eye, and the sword point rose again. “She taught me to be who I am now: forged in flames, unbending. A businesswoman. I do not deal in emotions anymore. You want to know where she went, I presume?”