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

Archidamos, at the circle’s rear, twisted to the trio of Kassandra, Myrrine and Brasidas. “Leave us. The matters of the past are now settled. The traitor will be a problem no longer.”

Kassandra felt a cold shudder of pity for Pausanias—despite everything—as they walked from the hall. As they stepped outside, they heard the most blood-chilling scream from within, before the Hippeis slammed the doors shut with a sepulchral boom.

Nearly all this time, she had been so sure Archidamos was the one. Pausanias’s un-Spartan eagerness to help them should really have been a warning, she realized. From the mist of memory, she recalled Sokrates’s wry line.

Things are rarely as they seem, Kassandra.

Kassandra hung over the bow of the Adrestia , watching the swell and the dolphins leaping alongside in the sparkling waters of the Aegean and Ikaros speeding along in time with the boat. Her mind combed over the autumn, winter and spring gone since Sparta had been rid of its poisonous king.

The autumnal and snowbound months had been spent exercising with Testikles in the gymnasium, running lap after lap of the track in driving blizzards. Barnabas and Reza helped where they could too, building a steep snow mound for him to race up and down. Yet one day they could not find him. Only when they heard a muffled, drunken song from within the mound did they realize where he was. They dug away the snow at one side to find him in a snow cave of sorts—really just a hole he had burrowed into. He was pickled to the point of oblivion, hugging a wineskin as if it were a baby.

“To teach young Spartans never to drink neat wine, they force Helots to get this drunk and make fools of themselves,” Kassandra explained to Barnabas as they dragged the champion by his ankles out into the silent snowfall. “Clearly, Testikles missed that lesson.”

Once Testikles had sobered up, Reza offered himself up as a sparring partner for pankration. Testikles showed flashes of brilliance, leaping, kicking, grappling and throwing the helmsman to the ground. Reza stood again, dazed, and the pair fell into a boxer’s pose, fists raised and ready. Herodotos, watching from the sidelines, chanted eagerly:

Testikles’s head swung to him, his crown of matted hair shuddering. “Hmm?”

“It’s a poem,” Herodotos replied with a sigh. “A famous Spartan poem.”

Reza’s fist whirled around and cracked the distracted Testikles’s jaw. He fell like a stone, then awoke, demanding neat wine to nurse his aching head. All groaned.

The freezing evenings were spent in the estate’s hearth room, Mother and Kassandra talking of the past, and of the strange lull in the war. No news of fresh battles. No word of Deimos. Perhaps it was thanks to the coming summer’s Olympics, and the truce that all in Hellas were sworn to obey while the games took place. It felt to Kassandra like that moment on the mountain, just before Alexios fell. A strange, pregnant bubble of respite… but one she knew could not last.

When the spring came, news broke that a large band of Helots had slain their masters and fled from Spartan lands, heading west. A messenger brought word that they had sought refuge on the island of Sphakteria, just off the coast. Worse, they had stolen arms and provisions. The runaway slaves’ boldness was a dangerous affront to the Spartan state; like a thread being pulled from the hem of a tunic, it had to be stopped lest the entire garment unravel. In an angry gathering, the ephors declared that a whole lochos would be dispatched under the command of Brasidas—fast becoming a hero of Sparta—to track down and capture the runaways.

While the Spartan regiments marched off to deal with this, the Adrestia set sail, almost unnoticed, carrying Testikles around the Peloponnese toward Elis, for the Olympic gathering. Herodotos chronicled every step of the champion’s voyage, while Barnabas was like a boy, brimming with excitement for the many events the great Testikles was sure to win. In the end, the only trophy he secured was the unofficial title of “Greatest Idiot in all Hellas.” It happened just a day’s sail away from the games, when the drunken athlete had woken with a burning need to be oiled before they landed. Reza and Barnabas had suddenly found pressing tasks to attend to high up on the ship’s mast, while Herodotos had vanished into the cabin, locking himself in there. So Testikles had turned to Kassandra, a lopsided grin cracking across his face. “You will oil me?”

“Oil yourself.”

“But there are certain regions I cannot reach,” The other half of the grin rose. “Come on!” He laughed, spreading his arms wide… then lurching at Kassandra.

She deftly stepped out of his way, never expecting for one moment that it could go so badly wrong. The fool tripped on a coil of rope and pitched overboard. A mighty splash and a plume of water brought everyone to the boat’s edge.

Barnabas grabbed the coil of rope, ready to throw it down to the champion.

“Testikles?” he called in the boat’s wake.

Nothing.

“Testikles?” he cried again, looking ahead.

Nothing.

Then, the tip of a black fin broke the surface adjacent to the ship’s edge, before submerging again. All stared, aghast, as the water quietly blossomed red. A few air bubbles rose, then Testikles’s filthy loincloth floated to the surface.

Barnabas, heartbroken for his hero, fell to his knees, hands outstretched to the waves. “ Testikleees! ” he cried out in a hoarse and never-ending wail.

After that, the summer games had been a blur: days of explaining to the officials that Sparta would have no entrant, before their sneering and gleeful attitude goaded Kassandra into competing in Testikles’s place. At pankration, she bettered every man she faced and took the olive-leaf crown. At running, she was swift as a deer, losing out only by a whisker to Alkibiades—who seemed all too eager to celebrate with her in his usual way. At the discus, she threw well, beating the previous Spartan record, only losing out to an islander with the shoulders of a bear.

“Ha… ha!” Martial yelps drew her from her reminiscence of all that had happened and back to the present.

She turned from the boat’s rail to see Barnabas reenacting the pankration victory, swinging punches at thin air. Herodotos stood atop a pile of grain sacks, narrating excitedly. “And then she grabbed him by the waist. Threw him down.” Barnabas acted out every step and Ikaros screeched from the ship’s spar like an excited spectator.

Kassandra had given the captain her olive crown, and he had worn it day and night since they left Elis. She wondered if any in Sparta would appreciate it as much as him. Sparta. For once she thought of her homeland without the spikes of hatred. She gazed ahead along the coastline, seeing the port of Trinisa roll into view. Skiffs and rafts dotted the calm waters near this good stretch of Sparta’s coastline, men diving from the small vessels and surfacing with armfuls of porphyria shells, their bodies stained with the crustaceans’ famous purple dye. She set her eyes on the land and felt her heart ache for Mother, for home.

When she saw Myrrine on the jetty, her spirits surged. But when they drew close enough to see the look on her face, she felt the strange bubble of elation burst like a thrown amphora.

“What is wrong?” she said, stumbling from the boat and onto the pier. All around the pair, soldiers shouted urgently, angry, troubled.

Myrrine took some time to collect herself and stave off the tears gathering in her eyes. “Brasidas and his men arrived at Sphakteria and found that the armed Helots were not the greatest threat. Athenian regiments were already there.”