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

Kassandra nodded.

“Then you must do something for me.” She flicked her eyes toward the enclosure opening and the distant, hazy smudge that was Korinthia. “The Monger is rumored to be returning to the city and his harbor warehouse. Free my home. Kill the Monger.”

Kassandra gazed at the distant city with her. “I will do anything to find my mother. But tell me: who is the Monger?”

“He is a bloodthirsty fiend. As big as a bull and even stronger.” Anthousa’s face crumpled in disgust as she spoke. The women nearest her shrank away at the words. “He has killed three of my girls already, and holds two more—Roxana and Erinna—hostage. Do you know what he does to his victims? He melts off their flesh, piece by piece, with a hot poker. Only one of my girls has ever escaped his den.” She looked over to the poolside. A girl sat there, head bowed. Kassandra could just make out the featureless mesh of scars and the two hollow eye sockets.

Kassandra’s mind shot back to the Cave of Gaia—recalling the excitable brute who had been burning out a poor wretch’s eyes with a white-hot brand. She realized she knew exactly who and what the Monger was. “I will kill him, or I will die trying.”

Erinna held out a hand and clasped Roxana’s. Both held on tight as the heavy footsteps approached. They stared at the gaunt man sitting opposite them. He was as filthy, bruised and scared as they were. The footsteps were joined by heavy breathing. Louder, louder… and then it all stopped. The cell door clicked and groaned open. The two girls hugged one another, closing their eyes tight, wanting to make these last few moments together count, waiting on the Monger’s meaty hands to snatch one of them away.

But it was the man who screamed. They blinked and looked around just in time to see the fellow on his front, clawing at the floor, aghast, the Monger’s oily hand wrapped around his ankle, dragging him like a toy. “Time to burn,” the giant brute grunted as he hauled his latest victim into the dock warehouse’s main chamber.

The cell door clicked shut.

“There is no one else,” Roxana whispered, looking around the filthy cell at the places where others had been sitting until one by one each had been dragged away like that. “Next time, it will be one of us. We will never see Anthousa again.”

Both of them jolted in fright when the cell door clicked again. They stared, seeing the reed that had been skillfully wedged in the door’s bolting mechanism—preventing it from locking—floating to the floor, then gawping at the woman standing in the doorway, draped in leathers and weapons. She paced over to them and crouched, her eyes like flint as she waved them up. “Go, stay low and head for the main doors. Make haste for the spring in the mountains.”

“Will you guide us?”

“I cannot,” said the woman. “My business here is not done.”

The chamber at the heart of the warehouse was a world of darkness, the air warping with heat and flying orange sparks and rife with the stink of smoke. The Monger stoked the crucible and lifted an iron rod from it, delighting in the white-hot soup that dribbled from the end. The scrawny man tied to the table convulsed and screamed as the rod moved over his face. A single droplet of molten iron landed on the man’s cheek, sizzled through his flesh and made its way deep into his skull. His screams grew inhuman. The Monger gripped his head. “Shut up, dog—you make my head throb with your whimpering.”

“Please, please. No more. I’ll do anything, I’ll—”

“You’ll tell me where in those cursed hills Anthousa and her girls are hiding?” the Monger finished for him.

A silence passed.

Then the chained man sobbed. “I cannot. That is the one thing I simply cannot do. Nor can any in this city. To betray her is to betray Aphrodite, to offend all of the Go—” His voice rose into a scream as the Monger raised his poker like a cudgel… then brought it swishing down, breaking the man’s bonds and tossing the poker to the floor. For a moment, the fellow was free. He gawped in disbelief.

And then the Monger grabbed the table at one end, tilting it.

“No… no… Nooo! ”

Kassandra was crawling along the top of a high pile of grain sacks, watching the gruesome spectacle, when the sweating, hulking giant tilted the table toward the crucible. The scrawny man scrabbled like a cat on a polished floor, before sliding into the molten soup with a piercing death cry. The giant watched, his gleeful face uplit by the glow. It was a mercy that he wore a mask when with the Cult, she thought, for without it, he looked like an ogre—heavy-jawed with no front teeth, his thick bottom lip and dark beard wet with saliva. Suddenly, he switched his head toward the sack pile. Whips of fright struck through her, and she dropped down through a small gap in the pile before he spotted her, into a deep, dark niche. There was a gap through the sacks ahead, affording a view of the crucible and the goings-on. She watched as the Monger edged around to stoke the crucible again, staring at his back and seeing the opportunity to leap through the gap and deal him a clean strike—right between the shoulder blades. She reaffirmed her grip on her spear. The gang of thugs standing in front of the grain sacks, between him and her, numbered twelve in total. They bore cudgels and maces. They can be tackled, she told herself. Don’t be a fool, she concluded moments later.

“Fun’s over all too quickly. Who do I burn now, eh? One of the whores?” the Monger snarled, then stared at one of his men. “Or maybe one of you!”

The man emitted a high-pitched yelp and then pointed at one of his comrades, who gawped in horror. The Monger grabbed the other and dragged him over to the crucible, pushing his face toward the surface, only to stop at the last moment, releasing the guard. “Ha!” he roared at his “joke.”

She watched as the Monger briefed them on their business for the next day: their extortion rounds, the muscle that needed to be shown to those who had not coughed up enough… and another scouting party into the hills in search of the Hetaerae leader, Anthousa. On and on for what seemed like hours he blared, and Kassandra felt her eyelids growing heavy. She had not slept the night before in her haste to reach Korinthia. Her limbs were sore and her belly untended. She pinched her fingernails into her palm to waken herself. Mother’s voice echoed from memory: Hesitation only hastens the grave! You have to act; you will only grow weaker. Twelve guards or not, it’s now or never.

She settled into a sprinter’s crouch, wiggled her hips a few times, and set her eyes on the Monger’s back. He was her target. Kill him and the rest might scatter. Might. She gritted her teeth to chase her doubts away, then tensed, ready to lurch from the sack pile…

… when a cold blade touched the small of her back.

She half gasped.

“Don’t be a fool. Make a move and we’re both dead,” a man’s voice rumbled.

She rolled her eyes around to see a young dark man in here too, just behind her. He was broodily handsome, bearded and with long hair. She noticed his red cloak. Not one of the Monger’s men.

“Aye, a Spartan, and an enemy of the Monger, just like you,” he hissed, reading her mind.

“Who in Hades are you?”

“I am Brasidas,” he whispered.

She had heard the name—spoken in war talks she had overheard on her travels. “The adviser, the officer?”

“A spy, for now. When messengers stopped coming to Sparta from this place, the ephors sent me to be their eyes and ears here, to find out what is going on. I have found out—that massive bastard has taken this city for himself. Anthousa was a scheming wretch, but the Monger is far more trouble than she ever was. I have not yet even been able to send word back to the ephors about all of this.”