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

The scrape of climbing men and the scuffle of boots halted, then the voices below changed, joined by hundreds more, spilling from the tents, billeted quarters and taverns. “The Spartans come!” they roared. “Form up, take your shields, face the land!”

Kassandra watched as the two taxiarchies shambled into formation, combing out into the ferns to face the hills and the oncoming phantom army. Thank you, Lydos. She cast her eye over the shore defenses, now stripped of most of its men—just a score of archers left behind on the dock palisade, and none of them had braziers or pitch nearby. She regarded the jar of pitch up here and the crackling brazier, then looked out to sea at the Korinthian fleet. I hope you’re awake, she thought, then booted the pitch vase over. The stinking, viscous liquid spilled all over the tower top. She then moved over to the brazier. Because here is the beacon you were promised…

She kicked the brazier over, leaping from the platform as the flames rose behind her with a whoosh . Her eyes grew wide as she plummeted down for the straw pile.

Many miles north, oblivious to the goings-on at the distant coast town, Stentor’s Spartan lochos formed up near the foot of Mount Helicon. He stepped out in front of them and gazed across the Boeotian plain, streaked with dawn light, toward the huge Athenian line.

“We should not have abandoned the mountain camp,” a Spartan officer advised.

Stentor, head aching from a night of little sleep, bit his lip to cage his initial response. “Yet here we are.”

He tried once again to sight a weak spot in the earthworks and assembled Athenian troops. Some of them had boomed and roared when the dawn had revealed the Spartan’s descent from the mountains: five hundred men facing some five thousand. What if this was the misthios’s final joke—luring him and his lochos into a poorly defensible position like this?

Be ready at dawn, she had implored him as she set off with her lone Helot. For a time, he had wished he had not been so mule-headed as to give her only a slave.

“Lochagos,” the Spartan by his side hissed. “The Athenians are moving, look!”

He saw it for himself: their long line, bristling, as if readying to march forth and smash his lone regiment here. Shame and ignominy awaited. His heart plunged.

“Lochagos!” another Spartiate yelled. “Look!”

Stentor turned toward the southern end of the Athenian line. There, he saw something strange, ethereal. It was as if a god had grabbed the land like a rug and shook it, sending a slow, mighty ripple northwards. Dust rose. The southern end of the Athenian line became a frantic scattering of men, turning to face the south. Turning to face the armies of Korinthia, landed, marching.

“She did it,” he growled in envy and delight. “Spartans, ad- vance !”

Under the red banners of Korinthia, Kassandra marched with the allied Strategos , Aristeus, and his high guards. The Korinthian divisions moved like a great sickle, driving at the southern end of the Athenian line.

“Savage their flank, roll up their line,” Aristeus bellowed. A drummer thundered out a rapid tune.

Kassandra tapped her helm, causing it to slide down from her brow to cover her face. She stepped up the closest earth mound in time with the royal guards, holding her pike firmly. One Athenian commander rose to point at her and no doubt mock her as the cur at the Megarid had. He did not manage a single word before her spear punched through the center of his face, crumpling helm, skull and brain. Dozens of Athenians fell as the Korinthian advance crunched up and over a carpet of fallen, capturing the mound. Glancing west, Kassandra saw a red swell emerge from the heat haze, coming this way from the lower slopes of the Helicon range.

“The Spartans march from the west. Now signal the Thebans,” she cried.

Trumpets blared in rapid song, whistles blew and the undying cry of war grew louder and louder as first Stentor’s Spartans smashed into the western side of the disrupted Athenian line, then—from the east—a vast wing of silver Theban riders exploded into view. Led by the magnificently armed Pagondas, they came in a huge wedge, faces shaded from their wide-brimmed bronze-and-iron helms, their huge pikes trained on the disordered Athenian line’s eastern side.

“ Áge! Áge! Áge! ” they trilled, bringing their steeds into a wedge in perfect time, then exploding into a full charge. They speared into the Athenian midsection with a terrific boom like a thunderstorm, the flanges of the wedge hitting home with successive peals of iron upon iron. Blood whorled above the battle line in sudden bursts. Severed limbs flew into the air, heads spun and bounced through the dust and the screams seemed to tear the very ether. Kassandra kicked away the first of a band of Athenians who tried to recapture the captured mound, then braced behind her shield when more came for her. She saw the great Athenian line now coiling and thrashing, like a snake that had been bitten on its tail and both sides by dogs… but the moment of surprise was over—and the Athenian numbers were still more than the allies combined.

A Korinthian guardsman streaked his spear across the chest of one Athenian, opening him to his lungs. The foe fell away, yet scores more foes came for the mound. “Protect the strategos!” the guardsman screamed. They clustered with Kassandra around Aristeus, shields interlocked. The Athenians came at them with a forest of spears, then a rain of arrows. Kassandra speared one in the guts and smashed the knee of another, but the world darkened as they surrounded her in an ever-thickening surge. Arrows rained down on her helm; the wet sighs of stricken Korinthians sinking into silent deaths rose around her. The circle protecting the king was growing smaller… smaller.

“Bring the device,” she screamed through it all, knowing not if anyone would hear above the dreadful song of war. “Bring it!”

An Athenian giant cleaved the head of the Korinthian next to her, then ran the strategos’s personal bodyguard through. Kassandra leapt into his place, throwing down her hoplite spear and drawing the Leonidas half lance. The Athenian giant struck out at her. She blocked, but felt her entire body shake, such was the force of the blow. Two more coming in for her from the sides. Not enough time to react. And then… the most colossal roar.

It came with a hard slap of heat and sudden weltering of the air right in front of her. She screamed, so intense was the heat, stinging her skin, burning her eyes. The smell too—the stink of burning flesh and singed hair. As if the sun had fallen to the ground and burst across the plain, a wall of orange rose behind the Athenians fighting her. The rearmost one fell away, shrieking, his back ablaze. Behind him, hundreds more pitched over and rolled to and fro like human torches. Almost all others nearby dropped weapon and shield and ran from the flames. The giant before her, deserted by the two at his sides, now suffered the point of the Korinthian strategos’s lance, right through his throat.

Kassandra gasped for air in the midst of the choking tendrils of black smoke that scudded across the land. She saw the huge ironbound copper pipe, on the back of a wagon, and the three Korinthians working the leather bellows at one end. With every strained compression of the bellows, a great whoosh of air spewed from the far end of the pipe, lending fresh rage to the small cauldron of resin-fueled fire hanging from a cradle there, sending a new breath of flame across the Athenian ranks. It had been her suggestion to take the device from the port and bring it here. Villainous acts for a greater good, she reassured herself.