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

The reenactors were in full sway now. His chest stung with anger, but now was not the place to deal with them, in full view of the rest of the army. They would respect punishment, yes, but not the horrible death he had in store for the offenders. He thought of his dogs back in Eion, and glanced south to that small harbor. Those hounds would feast upon these actors’ open bodies, while they still breathed.

“General?” asked one of the Athenian taxiarchs, snapping Kleon from his dark thoughts. “What say you? Do we assault the city walls?”

Kleon eyed Amphipolis, and the lonely figure of Brasidas watching him up on the city walls. Some of his officers had claimed the Athenian hoplites were growing restless, and whispering that after so many years of bombast against Perikles’s conservative strategy, now the great Kleon was afraid to attack what was no more than a shower of Helots. A hot spike of pride shot through him, and he made to grab his sword, imagining hoisting it aloft and booming out the order for the advance—a heroic moment that would be talked about forever, trampling the irksome gossip of the play…

“Because I’m not so sure we should,” the taxiarchos added. “See the trees beyond the city—there could be horsemen in there. Remember the carnage the Theban riders wreaked at Boeotia? If such a force was to fall upon us here then…”

Kleon felt his guts twist and turn, and a loud gurgle of distress rumbled from his abdomen. He heard little more of the taxiarchos’s advice. “Send scouts to reconnoiter the woods. Establish a watch up here. The army will return to Eion.”

Grumbles and gasps of frustration rose from the Athenian ranks. Kleon’s neck burned with indignation. “We will return tomorrow,” he howled. “By then the Spartans will have had another day of dwindling bread and growing dread. Tomorrow, we will parade their heads on our spears. Tomorrow… for victory !”

The speech stirred a few cheers, but the barked orders of the many officers quickly drowned it out, as they shouted for their regiments to turn and descend the hill’s southern slope. A thunder of boots rose from the hilltop as the Athenian army shuffled around, turning away from the city of Amphipolis, kicking up a thick plume of dust. Kleon saw the Korkyraean allies forming the left wing of the pivoting force. In theory they were supposed to be leading the march back to Eion. Yet they were slow and shambling, out of line—some still snatching up their helms and spears, putting corks back in their drinking skins. His fury rose like a burst of molten bronze.

“Move!” he roared, heeling his horse over toward them, drawing a wooden baton to whack the slowest of them on the back of the head.

Brasidas felt the hot wind fall still at that moment. “They withdraw?” he whispered to himself. Through the dust-obscured sunlight he saw the shambolic maneuver. Memories of childhood in the Agoge exploded across his mind: of the tacticians teaching him and the other boys how to identify a weak spot in an enemy force. Backs and flanks, the hoary old expert had implored them, arranging lines of polished pebbles on the dirt floor to demonstrate. His neck lengthened and a shiver scampered up from the base of his spine and across his scalp.

“Spartans,” he boomed down to his hundred and fifty. “Be ready.”

They stiffened, holding their spears aloft. “Aroo!”

“The shame of Sphakteria has burned in my heart for too long. Is it not the same for you?” he roared as he sped down the battlement steps to come before them. They thundered in agreement, beating their spears on their shields.

He turned to the mass of Helots, led by Clearidas. “And you, brave warriors, throw off your dogskin caps, take up your spears and prepare to stride with us… into eternity !”

The Adrestia sliced into the sands of the bay by the mouth of the River Strymon, halting with a violent judder. Kassandra leapt down into the coarse sands. Silence reigned. Until she heard a distant sound, carried on the hot breeze: a low groan of timbers. Gates swinging open, and the colossal roar of men. She looked up the long, low ridge—a grassy wall blocking her from the source of the sound. She sped up the slope, slipping in the scree, skin slick with sweat. Ikaros circled and shrieked madly, already high up there and seeing it all. When she came to the ridge’s brow, she staggered to a halt, struck by a hot blast of wind and frozen by the sight ahead.

A round hill dominated the flatland. Down the southern slopes, the Athenian army washed in a perilously loose formation. Streaking around the hill’s faraway eastern side was a tiny knot of red-cloaked Spartans, and she knew at once who led them. Yet the small Spartan force was dwarfed by the Athenian army.

What are you doing, Brasidas? she mouthed. You know you cannot win this fight.

But when those 150 smashed into the unprepared Athenian left, they gouged deep and without mercy. With a thunder of shields and clatter of spears, a din of screams and a crackle of breaking bodies, Brasidas’s Spartans laid waste to the Athenian left, pinning the center too. It was like that vision at the Hot Gates: Brasidas leapt and spun among the enemy, he and his comrades cutting them down in scores, but she knew he could not win due to sheer lack of numbers. When the Athenian trumpets blew, she saw Kleon’s right swing in to support the stunned left, and felt a great sadness rise within her, knowing this was it for Brasidas.

But then new Spartan pipes blared from the slopes of the hill’s obscured western side. From the haze, a great wave of armed Helots spilled into view. Kassandra shivered at the Helot war cry as they sped around the hillside and into the unprotected backs of the Athenian mass.

The hillside became a riot of flashing silver and geysers of crimson. Kassandra saw Brasidas now deep in the fray, the best Athenian hoplites crowding around him, Kleon himself yelling and cajoling them, demanding Brasidas’s head. The vision of the Hot Gates pulsed in her mind, the fall of the Spartan hero. No, not this time.

She lunged down the ridge, leaping over a brook and speeding to the edge of the fray. She ducked an Athenian spear, sliding through the blood-wet earth and leaping up, shoving a Korkyraean who tried to attack her aside. There was no enemy on the field today but Kleon.

A gawping head bounced across her path, and a shower of hot blood and innards slapped on her back as she ran. At last she came to the heart of the fray. Athenian champions hacked at Brasidas. She grabbed one foe by the shoulder, twisting him to face her then ramming the Leonidas spear up and under his ribs. A second lashed his spear across her belly, slitting the skin and coating her thighs in blood. She dodged his second strike then sliced off his hand. Now Brasidas pounced upon the momentary upturn in fortune to headbutt a third Athenian champion, then rip a fourth from face to groin. Swaying, shaking, face striped with blood, eyes and teeth white in a manic battle grin, he raised his spear to salute Kassandra. “I knew I had not seen the last of you! And your timing is perf—”

He spasmed, and then the tip of a lance burst through his chest with a gout of red.

“No!” Kassandra cried, reaching out.

The spear rose, taking Brasidas up with it like a fisherman’s catch. The general twitched, vomiting blood. Deimos raised the spear like a banner of triumph, his muscles bulging with the effort, before he cast Brasidas down.

Deimos stared at her. “So Kleon could not organize your execution?” he spat. “Perhaps he should have left it to me after all.” With that, he flew for Kassandra, drawing his sword and swishing it for her neck. She backstepped and threw up her half lance to cage the blow. Pressed together, the two blades shook madly—just like at Sphakteria—and both roared with effort, the battle raging on around them. “This is it, Sister,” Deimos rasped, his sword gradually edging her weapon toward her own neck. “One of us must die.”