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

As the boy took this verbal barrage, another—the lad’s brother, Kassandra realized, stole up and pinched two of the scattered flour bags, running away unseen. A few of the watching Spartiates laughed in low rumbles of appreciation, slapping their hands on their thighs in applause.

The pair came to a fork in the road. Right led to Sparta’s marble centerpiece—an unwalled citadel on a low mound where the roads to the five most ancient villages converged and where the kings were to be found… and this treacherous “Red-eyed Lion.” But both looked instead to the left, to the sad, forgotten home on Pitana’s outskirts. Wordlessly, they guided their horses that way and came to a halt before the iron gates, long since chained shut. Kassandra remembered the innocent beginnings of that night: sitting with Mother, Alexios and Nikolaos by the fire. Ikaros, though he had never been in this home, seemed to sense Kassandra’s sadness, and he cried plaintively through the gates and toward the door.

“It is ours by rights. It shall be ours again,” said Myrrine, “once we have rid Sparta of the parasite king.”

“This estate is Stentor’s,” a voice spoke, behind them.

Kassandra swung around, seeing the shape of a tall, strapping Spartiate. For a moment she wondered if she might have to fight. Then she saw the man’s brooding expression, framed by his smooth, collar-length hair. “Brasidas?” she whispered.

Myrrine threw a hand across her chest when she tried to step toward him. “No, Mother, Brasidas is a friend. He helped me kill the Monger.”

Brasidas’s brow bent. “Well, I like to think you helped me to kill him, but anyway.” He nodded over their head at the forgotten villa. “The state holds the house for Stentor. He is ever away at war and so it has lain like this, ever since the Wolf disappeared.”

Myrrine and Kassandra did well not to flinch or look at one another.

“But I know who you two are. I know the place is yours as much as it is Stentor’s. The thing is, it’s not me you have to convince.” He shot a quick look over his shoulder toward the low, marble citadel.

“We came to see the kings anyway,” Kassandra said.

Brasidas tried to read her for a moment, then quarter-bowed. “Then perhaps I should introduce you. It has been some time, after all…”

The citadel region was nothing like Athens’s acropolis. The mound was no higher than a single story, and the slopes were gentle, paved or blanketed in grass and cypress stands. They walked by an open gymnasium, where naked men raced around a track. Women stood at the side, swearing at the slowest, spitting upon them as they passed. When one stumbled and fell, a woman cursed in derision, vaulted the wooden fence and tore off her robe, then broke into a sprint. Her face bent with effort as she caught up with the males, who looked momentarily ashamed and searched for more speed from their tired limbs. The onlookers roared in delight, cheering as the woman runner kept pace and challenged for the lead. Off to one side, men were having their bodies oiled by Helots, while an already-gleaming pair tied each other in knots in a bout of pankration . They passed a theater, the pale stone steps dotted with Spartiates who cheered and drummed their fists in applause as an actor played out the legend of Kadmos. The man leapt and rolled in a display of martial excellence around three Helots draped in a gaudily painted costume that was supposed to be the Theban Dragon. From another direction, they heard the pained bleating of a sheep, the sound rolling down from a nearby hillock. Up there, the sheep sighed its last on the altar to Venus Morpho, as a bloodstained priest held up the beast’s shining heart to the skies and sang some ancient prayer.

When they came to the base of the central mound, they passed by two young, shaven-headed men lashing their bakteriya staffs at a poor, grounded Helot.

Kassandra’s stomach twisted. The two were of the Krypteia , she realized: graduates from the Agoge, not yet allowed to grow their hair or beards, but permitted to terrorize the slave underclass, to keep them in a perpetual state of dread.

“Look me in the eye, would you, dog?” one screamed in the downed Helot’s nearly pulped face. Other Helots stood nearby, heads bowed, doing nothing. When the beaten slave fell unconscious, the perpetrator strode over to one of the nearby Helots and thrust out an expectant hand, not even looking the slave in the face. The slave handed him a towel without hesitation, and the Spartan wiped his hands of blood then threw the towel at the Helot’s feet. For all the Cult was responsible for the terrible things that had happened here in her youth, Sparta herself was a cruel and unforgiving creature, red in tooth and claw.

As they climbed the mound, they passed an old ashlar shrine. Kassandra had almost forgotten about its existence, until she felt her spear whisper to her, saw the flashbacks from Thermopylae again. A thrill chased over her as she looked at the old tomb and mouthed the legendary name etched on the entrance lintel: Leonidas .

“He walks with us,” Myrrine encouraged her. “His bloodline is good, true, strong.”

They left the tomb behind and the top of the mound rolled into view, the centerpiece being a rectangular royal hall topped with a red-tiled roof and supported by pale blue Doric columns. A warlike statue of Zeus Agetor stood over the high doorway, glaring down at their approach. A song of muffled chaos sounded beyond the tall doors. Two guards stood watch before this entrance. They were encased in ceremonial armor—or as decorative as Spartans could be. They wore highly polished Korinthian-style helms, molded-leather thoraxes, bronze bands on their biceps and fine spears—the blades patterned like the Leonidas lance—and blood-red cloaks. They both carried not lambda shields but stark black ones. The Hippeis , she remembered—the few hundred chosen men who formed the royal guard. They would not move aside for just anyone. Kassandra saw their eyes dart in the eyeholes of their helms as they drew closer, noticed their bodies rock forward just a fraction, ready to challenge.

Brasidas stepped before them and threw out a hand in salute. “ Khaire , I bring friends who seek counsel with the kings.”

The guards threw their hands in salute. “Lochagos Brasidas!” they boomed in unison and parted without question.

“Lochagos?” Kassandra whispered as the doors opened. “You now lead one of the five sacred regiments?”

“You are not the only one who has been busy, Misthios,” he said with the barest quirk of his lips.

The doors swung open and the muffled song of strife hit them in full like a dragon’s roar.

Hundreds of men heckled and jostled, roaring, punching the air, spittle flying. Two brawlers rolled across the floor, each bearing spears. For a moment as they stepped inside, Kassandra thought she had been led to a Kephallonian tavern. But then she got a better look at the two on the floor: a young, pleasant-looking man and an older, hoary one, with a mane of dry gray hair and bloodshot, furious eyes… King Archidamos?

Just then the two rolled apart. Archidamos leapt up and whirled his spear overhead, bringing the point expertly down to rest on the still-floored younger man’s throat. “Yield, Pausanias?” he snarled through clenched teeth.

Pausanias, chest rising and falling, face etched with a similar malice, growled like an angered mastiff, then waved a derisive hand. “Aye.”

The spear was lowered, the crowds cheered and both kings’ faces changed. Archidamos cackled in delight. Pausanias took his offered hand and rose, grinning. “Archidamos’s edict stands,” he conceded. “We send a levy of Messenians to support the effort in Boeotia.”