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

She shook her head to prevent the memories from taking hold and thought instead of her empty purse. Markos had yet again wriggled out of paying her when she had returned to him to report her successful efforts at the dockside hideout. How much did he owe her now? She felt her hackles rising. He’s a scumbag, a crook, a filthy…

Another memory staggered across her spiraling thoughts—her first moments on this green island, twenty years ago. The day Markos had found her on the stone beach north of the town, washed up beside her broken raft. She remembered his pitted, oily features and curly, greasy black hair as he beheld her. “You are a strange-looking fish.” He had chuckled, patting her back as she vomited gutfuls and lungfuls of seawater. He had fed her for a time, but seemed eager to be rid of her… until he noticed how nimble and strong she was. “Who in all Hellas trained you to move like that? I could use someone like you,” he had remarked.

The thoughts faded as Sami fell into the distance behind them. Phoibe skipped ahead, looking up at the soaring Ikaros while “flying” a wooden toy eagle of her own, making screeching noises. When they came to a fork in the track, Phoibe raced off down the rightmost tine. “We’re nearly there,” she chirped over her shoulder. Kassandra gazed after her, perplexed. That route led toward Mount Ainos. An imperious, sun-bleached statue towered up on those rocky heights: Zeus, God of the Sky, crouched on one knee, holding a thunderbolt in his raised hand. The soils ringing the lower slopes were enriched with minerals washed down during the rains and so terraced vineyards decorated the base of the mountain, each lined with green vines, silvery-stone storehouses and small, red-tiled villas. “Don’t be a goat, Phoibe,” Kassandra called after her, gesturing to the leftmost track. “Markos’s place is farther on—near the southern cove and…” Her words trailed off when she saw Phoibe speed on into the nearest vineyard. The estate had always been there, but the figure down by the crops in a green-and-white cloak, had not. “Markos?” she whispered.

“He asked me not to tell you,” Phoibe said when Kassandra caught up with her on the vineyard’s edge.

“I’m sure he did,” Kassandra burred. “Stay here.”

She stole past two workers pruning the crop on the lowest terrace. They didn’t even notice her approach, or Phoibe—following in her wake, disobedient as always. As she crept through the vines, she heard Markos, bickering with a worker who clearly knew better.

“We,” he started, then paused to stifle a hiccup, “we will grow grapes as big as melons,” he insisted, before throwing back his head and taking a long pull on what was evidently a skin of barely watered wine.

“You’ll kill the vine, Master Markos,” the worker reasoned, tilting his broad-brimmed sun hat back. “We can’t allow the fruit to grow this year or the next, or the stems will bend and snap. The third year will be the time for the first harvest.”

“Years?” Markos spluttered. “How in Hades am I supposed to pay back—” He fell silent when Kassandra emerged from the vines. “Ah, Kassandra,” he beamed, throwing his arms out wide, nearly backhanding the well-meaning worker.

“You bought a vineyard, Markos?”

“Only the finest wines for us from now on, my girl,” he purred, spinning on the spot to gesture all around, nearly losing his footing. Phoibe, darting in and out of the vines nearby, tittered then set off again after Ikaros. Ikaros began to screech, agitated, but Kassandra’s mind was on other matters.

“I don’t want your grapes or your wine, Markos,” Kassandra insisted. “Phoibe and I need food, clothing, bedding. I want the drachmae you owe me.”

Markos shrank a little then, fiddling with the mouth of his wineskin. “Ah, ever the misthios.” He chuckled nervously. “Well, you see, there will be a short delay in getting those coins to you.”

“A short three years, by the sounds of it,” Kassandra said flatly. She shot a look up at the circling Ikaros, now screeching madly. A rising sense of unease nagged at her: the eagle did not usually become this agitated when playing with Phoibe.

“When the grapes become wine,” Markos interrupted her thoughts, “I will have money aplenty, my dear. First, I must make sure I pay back my loan for this place. I’m, er, slightly behind on my payments you see.”

“Quite,” said the nearby worker absently as he returned to snipping and tying vines, “and the Cyclops doesn’t like late payments.”

Markos shot a wild, scolding look at the man’s back.

“You borrowed from the Cyclops?” Kassandra gasped, stepping back from Markos as if he were riddled with a pox. “This”—she gestured around them—“was funded by him ? You have bought yourself a nightmare, Markos. Are you a fool?” She glanced around at the shimmering green-gold slopes of Mount Ainos, concerned about how far her voice had carried. “The Cyclops’s men ransacked my stores last night. He hates me already. He’s killed scores of men on this island and has put a price on my head. He knows you and I work together. If you fall short of your payments to him then I will be one of the first to suffer.”

“Not quite,” a gruff voice said, behind them both.

Kassandra swung to the forest of vines. Two strangers stood there, grins stretched across their faces. One, with a face like a stepped-on pear, held a fear-frozen Phoibe, clasping a hand over her mouth and holding a dagger to her throat. Kassandra now recognized the duo: the ones who had plundered her storage pit last night. Ikaros, why didn’t I listen to you? she chided herself, seeing the eagle still circling, shrieking in alarm.

“Try anything and the girl’s throat will be opened,” said the second man, patting a short sword against the palm of his free hand, his brow jutting like a cliff, casting his eyes in shadow. “Markos has run up quite a debt, but so have you, Misthios: you’ve hulled one of my master’s boats, you’ve killed a convoy of his men—friends of mine. So how’s about you come along with us, eh? Settle matters to my master’s satisfaction?”

Kassandra felt the blood freeze in her veins. She knew that to go with them would mean death for her and slavery at best for Phoibe. But to resist might mean death for them all here and now.

A tense moment passed and Kassandra did not move.

“Seems the misthios is not keen on coming quietly,” Shadow-brow growled. “Let’s show her we mean business.”

Kassandra’s heart froze. Watch your opponent, Nikolaos hissed from the mists of the past. Their eyes will betray their intentions before they even make a move.

She saw the thug holding Phoibe roll his eyes down toward the girl, and his dagger-hand knuckles whiten. It all happened in a single, visceral reflex: she lunged forward, simultaneously clasping and pulling the roped spear from her belt and lashing it forth like a whip. The flat of the ancient lance head licked up and whacked into the thug’s temple. The man’s eyes rolled in their sockets, blood trickled from his nostrils and he crumpled like a kicked-over stack of bricks. Phoibe staggered away, weeping. Kassandra yanked the spear rope, catching the lance by the haft this time, holding it like a true hoplite might.

Shadow-brow held her gaze, shuffled, feinting left then plunging right with a roar. Kassandra drew her weight onto one foot to let the foe hurtle past, and when he skidded and came back at her, she fell to her haunches and slashed her spear across his belly. He stumbled on a few steps, then glanced down, confused, as a writhing mass of blue-gray gut ropes slipped and slithered out into the noon light to slap down upon the dusty ground. He looked at the cavity that remained of his belly, then up at Markos and Kassandra with a confused grin, before falling face-first onto the ground.