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

Suddenly, it all changed. The water roared and then fell away as the meaty hand wrenched his head up. His soaked tresses of long hazel, white-shot hair and beard swinging like octopus arms, spraying water in every direction. The crystal clarity of the air seemed deafening, and his head ached at the brightness of the sunlight. Blinking, retching and gasping for air, he stared up at the giant holding him, the lone eye staring down at him in return.

“Your loose lips are turning a little blue, Barnabas,” the Cyclops rumbled with laughter.

“What I said,” Barnabas coughed, “was meant as no affront to you. I swear to the Gods.”

“Too much talk of Gods,” the Cyclops sneered, his grip on the back of Barnabas’s head tightening again. “Time for you to go meet one of them, old man. Hades awaits you!”

“No—” Barnabas’s half plea ended with a splash and a mouthful of water. Back into the briny abyss, the darkening vision, the burning lungs. This time he saw his first mission as a triearchos, when he had led his crew to an island in search of an ancient treasure. They had found nothing but a labyrinth of caves. They wandered for days in those dark, underground passages, lost. They found no treasure. But Barnabas had seen something, one night, while all the others slept. It was a… creature. Well, it was a shadow at least: of a huge beast, broad of shoulder, with horns, watching them as they slumbered. As soon as he had seen it, it vanished. The mists of his dreams? That’s what his men had said when he tried to tell them about it, but later he had found the faint tracks and the markings of cloven hooves. He sucked in a lungful of water, felt his body slacken as the life seeped from him. The struggle was almost over. Then…

“What’s wrong, you old bastard?” the Cyclops hissed as he ripped Barnabas back from the pot again. “Are your Gods silent? Or did they tell you to go away?”

The bandits watching the tied crew exploded in laughter. “Finish it!” one cheered.

Barnabas felt the Cyclops’s hand tighten on the back of his head again. He did not bother to suck in a breath, knowing it would only make his end more lasting and painful. “Why did you not come to my aid?” he whispered skyward. The next thing he saw was the water in the pot rushing up toward him…

“Let him go,” a voice struck from across the bay.

The Cyclops’s hand froze. Barnabas stared at the pot water, his nose a finger’s-width from the surface. With his head locked like that, he rolled his eyes to the side. What he saw sent a shiver of awe through him. She walked across the bay with a swagger, tall, lithe and strong, wearing a hunter’s bow, an ax and a strange half lance. Her chiseled features seemed to be set hard, her eyes shaded under a baleful brow; and on her shoulder sat the most wondrous sight. An eagle. A bird of the gods. Tears gathered in Barnabas’s eyes. Who was this daughter of Ares?

“I will not ask you again, Cyclops,” she boomed, loose sand swirling around her like a mist.

The one-eyed giant shook with rage, then a low growl spilled from his lips, before he tossed Barnabas aside like a used rag.

The Cyclops of Kephallonia stared down at her from the boat’s stern, his long-ago mutilated face and the pitted hole that once housed his right eye pinched in a look of permanent anger. His oak-like limbs were tensed, glistening with sweat, his torso bulging beneath his bronze-studded leather thorax .

“Misthios,” he drawled, his scooped-up tail of black hair whipping in the wind like a living flame as Kassandra came to a halt twenty paces from the boat. “ Misthios! ” he shouted again in disbelief.

Kassandra shuffled to stand, feet apart, shoulders square, Ikaros bracing on her shoulder. Radiate power, Nikolaos growled in her mind. What she hoped the Cyclops and his men could not see was that her hands shook like the plucked strings of a lyre. But she had to face him—after years of avoiding this brute and his thugs, she had to face him, to end his stranglehold over her, Phoibe and Markos… over all Kephallonia. And to get that damned boat.

“What are you doing here?” the Cyclops boomed. “I asked my men to bring you to me in ropes.”

“They are dead. I came alone, to face you… Cyclops .”

The Cyclops bashed a fist upon the rail there. “Do not call me that,” he roared, then waved four of his men toward her. They vaulted over the rail and landed on the shore, spreading out to either side of her.

As they paced toward her, Kassandra’s mind whirred. “Have you only one ear as well as one eye, Cyclops? I said I came to face you , not your thugs.”

The Cyclops’s lips twitched, then he flicked a finger to direct his four men. “Tear her legs so she can never walk again, then drag her aboard and I will take her head once I have finished drowning this old sot.”

As he half turned back toward Barnabas, she plucked the obsidian eye from her purse and lifted it up to catch the sun. “Look what I found in your home.”

The Cyclops swung back to face her, his good eye growing moonlike. He rumbled with an evil, low laugh. “Oh, you will pay dearly for that…” He and his remaining six men dropped down from the boat, stalking out around her like a noose. Ten men and the Cyclops? Bravery and folly oft ride in company, Nikolaos hissed. Fight wisely, never overcommit.

A rough bleating sounded behind her, and the next step of the plan was born. She turned to the goat cropping on grass behind her. “Perhaps I should stow the eye for safekeeping?” she suggested, motioning toward the goat’s rear, lifting its tail.

The Cyclops froze, aghast. “You would not dare!”

Kassandra smiled by way of reply, popping the eye in her mouth to moisten it, then shoving it deep into the goat’s anus. The goat’s head rose with a startled bleat, confused, before she slapped its rump, causing it to bolt between two of the Cyclops’s men, off up the bay and over the horizon.

The Cyclops howled. “Catch the damned goat, get my eye,” he screamed. Three set off after the creature.

Three fewer bastards to deal with, she thought.

The Cyclops and the remaining seven now crouched like hunting cats, facing Kassandra. “A bag of silver to the one who rips open her throat,” he drawled.

She took the guard ax stolen from the Cyclops’s den in one hand and the Leonidas spear in the other, watching, waiting for the first to move. The meanest-looking of the thugs, bald with heavy gold earrings and a leather kilt, wriggled a little. When he lurched forward, she threw up spear and ax in an X to block, but the blow sent her staggering back toward those behind. She pivoted midstride to meet the expected attack from that direction, only to see the streaking shadow of Ikaros, swooping down to claw at the eyes of the brute behind her, saving her from his wicked-looking sickle. She swung to face her next attacker, parrying then chopping the ax into his shoulder, cleaving deep and bringing a gout of black blood. The foe fell away and she saw the next coming for her. She bent her body around his sword thrust and jabbed the Leonidas spear into his face. He fell with an animal moan, his head ruptured like a melon. Two more lunged at her now. One scored her breastbone with a swipe of his spear, and the other nearly crushed her head with a heavy iron mace. Too many… and the Cyclops himself was weighing up his moment to strike the killing blow. A Spartan must have the eyes of a hunter, see everything, not just that which lies before them, Nikolaos berated her. From the edges of her vision, she saw something on the Adrestia ’s decks: the ship’s spar and the rope holding it in place—one end knotted by the rail. As the two oncoming thugs screamed, she ducked, avoiding their twin strikes, and tugged the ax from the cloven chest of the first she had killed. Rising, she hurled the ax toward the ship. She did not wait to see if her aim had been good, turning to block another attack. The next thing she heard was the thunk of the ax biting through rope and into timber, the groan of wood, the roar of the Cyclops charging at her, his heavy blade tensed and ready to slice across her belly. Then the shadow of something passed overhead. The spar—freed—pivoted around on the mast, the rope flailing past overhead. Kassandra leapt up to grab the brine-wet rope and clung on for dear life, just as the Cyclops’s blade cut through the space she had been occupying. The rope dragged her through the air, and she kicked out at the Cyclops, smashing his nose in with her heel, then swept around like a stone in a sling, shooting free of the ring of thugs and toward the ship. She let go of the rope and slammed against the vessel’s rail then levered herself onto the deck. She ran to Barnabas and sliced through his bonds, then those of the nearest crewmen. They leapt up, panicked.