To my left was a set of steps used to reach the high shelves. On them sat a boy, about ten years old, the storekeeper’s son, by the look of him. He almost lost his footing in his haste to scuttle off the steps and stand in the middle of the floor with his hands by his side, awaiting his orders.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” said the shopkeeper in German. “You look like you have been riding a long time. You need some supplies to continue your journey?” He indicated an urn on the counter before him. “You need some refreshments perhaps? A drink?”
Next he was waving a hand at the boy. “Christophe, have you forgotten your manners? Take the gentlemen’s coats . . .”
There were three stools in front of the counter and the shopkeeper waved a hand at them, saying, “Please, please, take a seat.”
I glanced again at Reginald, saw he was about to move forward to accept the storekeeper’s offer of hospitality, and stopped him.
“No, thank you,” I said to the shopkeeper. “My friend and I don’t intend to stay.” From the corner of my eye I saw Reginald’s shoulders sag, but he said nothing. “All we need from you is information,” I added.
A cautious look fell across the shopkeeper’s face like a dark curtain. “Yes?” he said warily.
“We need to find a man. His name is Digweed. Jack Digweed. Are you acquainted with him?”
He shook his head.
“You don’t know him at all?” I pressed.
Again the shake of the head.
“Haytham . . .” said Reginald, as though he could read my mind from the tone of my voice.
I ignored him. “Are you quite sure about that?” I insisted.
“Yes, sir,” said the shopkeeper. His moustache quivered nervously. He swallowed.
I felt my jaw tighten; then, before anybody had a chance to react, I’d drawn my sword and with my outstretched arm tucked the blade beneath Christophe’s chin. The boy gasped, raised himself on his tiptoes, and his eyes darted as the blade pressed into his throat. I hadn’t taken my eyes off the shopkeeper.
“Haytham . . .” said Reginald again.
“Let me handle this, please, Reginald,” I said, and addressed the storekeeper: “Digweed’s letters are sent care of this address,” I said. “Let me ask you again. Where is he?”
“Sir,” pleaded the shopkeeper. His eyes darted from me to Christophe, who was making a series of low noises as though he were finding it difficult to swallow. “Please don’t hurt my son.”
His pleas fell on deaf ears.
“Where is he?” I repeated.
“Sir,” pleaded the owner. His hands implored. “I cannot say.”
With a tiny flick of the wrist I increased the pressure of my blade on Christophe’s throat and was rewarded with a whimper. From the corner of my eye I saw the boy rise even higher on his tiptoes and felt, but did not see, Reginald’s discomfort to the other side of me. All the time, my eyes never left those of the shopkeeper.
“Please sir, please sir,” he said quickly, those imploring hands waving in the air as though he were trying to juggle an invisible glass, “I can’t say. I was warned not to.”
“Ah-ha,” I said. “Who? Who warned you? Was it him? Was it Digweed?”
“No, sir,” insisted the shopkeeper. “I haven’t seen Master Digweed for some weeks. This was . . . someone else, but I can’t tell you—I can’t tell you who. These men, they were serious.”
“But I think we know that I, too, am serious,” I said with a smile, “and the difference between them and me is that I am here and they are not. Now tell me. How many men, who were they and what did they want to know?”
His eyes flicked from me to Christophe, who though brave and stoic and displaying the kind of fortitude under duress that I’d hope for my own son, whimpered again nonetheless, which must have made up the storekeeper’s mind, because his moustache trembled a little more, then he spoke, quickly, the words tumbling from him.
“They were here, sir,” he said. “Just an hour or so ago. Two men with long black coats over the red tunics of the British Army, who came into the store just as you did and asked the whereabouts of Master Digweed. When I told them, thinking little of it, they became very grave, sir, and told me that some more men might arrive looking for Master Digweed, and, if they did, then I was to deny all knowledge of him, on pain of death, and not to say that they had been here.”
“Where is he?”
“A cabin, fifteen miles north of here in the woods.”
Neither Reginald nor I said a word. We both knew we didn’t have a minute to spare, and without pausing to make more threats, or to say good-bye, or perhaps even apologize to Christophe for frightening him half to death, we both dashed out of the door, untethered and mounted our steeds and spurred them on with yells.
We rode as hard as we dared for over half an hour, until we had covered maybe eight miles of pasture, all of it uphill, our horses now becoming tired. We came to a tree line, only to discover that it was a narrow band of pine, and we arrived on the other side to see a ribbon of trees stretching around the summit of a hill on either side. Meanwhile, in front of us the ground sloped down into more woodland, then away, undulating like a huge blanket of green, patched with forestry, grass and fields.
We pulled up and I called for the spyglass. Our horses snorted and I scanned the area in front of us, swinging the spyglass from left to right, crazily at first, with the emergency getting the better of me, panic making me indiscriminate. In the end I had to force myself to calm down, taking deep breaths and screwing up my eyes tight then starting again, this time moving the spyglass slowly and methodically across the landscape. In my head I divided the territory into a grid and moved from one square to another, back to being systematic and efficient, back to having logic in charge, not emotion.
A silence of gentle wind and the songs of birds was broken by Reginald. “Would you have done it?”
“Done what, Reginald?”
He meant kill the child.
“Kill the boy. Would you have done it?”
“There is little point in making a threat if you can’t carry it out. The storekeeper would have known if I was shamming. He would have seen it in my eyes. He would have known.”
Reginald shifted uneasily in his saddle. “So, yes, then? Yes, you would have killed him?”
“That’s right, Reginald, I would have killed him.”
There was a pause. I completed the next square of land, then the next.
“When was the killing of innocents ever part of your teaching, Haytham?” said Reginald.
I gave a snort. “Just because you taught me to kill, Reginald, it doesn’t give you the final say on whom I kill and to what end.”
“I taught you honour. I taught you a code.”
“I remember you, Reginald, about to dispense your own form of justice outside White’s all those years ago. Was that honourable?”
Did he redden slightly? Certainly he shifted uncomfortably on his horse. “The man was a thief,” he said.
“The men I seek are murderers, Reginald.”
“Even so,” he said, with a touch of irritation, “perhaps your zeal is clouding your judgement.”
Again I gave a contemptuous snort. “This from you. Is your fascination with Those Who Came Before strictly speaking in line with Templar policy?”
“Of course.”
“Really? Are you sure you haven’t been neglecting your other duties in favour of it? What letter-writing, what journalling, what reading have you been doing lately, Reginald?”
“Plenty,” he said indignantly.
“That hasn’t been connected with Those Who Came Before,” I added.
For a moment he blustered, sounding like a red-faced fat man given the wrong meat at dinner. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“Indeed, Reginald,” I said, just as I saw a tiny plume of smoke coming from the woodland. “I see smoke in the trees, possibly from a cabin. We should head for there.”
At the same time there was a movement not far away in a crop of fir trees and I saw a rider heading up the furthest hill, away from us.
“Look, Reginald, there. Do you see him?”
I adjusted the focus. The rider had his back to us of course and was a distance away, but one thing I thought I could see was his ears. I was sure he had pointed ears.
“I see one man, Haytham, but where is the other?” said Reginald.
Already pulling on the reins of my steed, I said, “Still in the cabin, Reginald. Let’s go.”
iii
It was perhaps another twenty minutes before we arrived. Twenty minutes during which I pushed my steed to her limit, risking her through trees and over wind-fallen branches, leaving Reginald behind as I raced towards where I’d seen the smoke—to the cabin where I was sure I’d find Digweed.
Alive? Dead? I didn’t know. But the storekeeper had said there were two men asking for him, and we’d only accounted for one of them, so I was eager to know about the other one. Had he gone on ahead?
Or was he still in the cabin?
There it was, sitting in the middle of a clearing. A squat wooden building, one horse tethered outside, with a single window at the front and tendrils of smoke puffing from the chimney. The front door was open. Wide open. At the same time as I came bolting into the clearing I heard a scream from inside, and I spurred my steed to the door, drawing my sword. With a great clatter we came on to the boards at the front of the house and I craned forward in my saddle to see the scene inside.
Digweed was tied to a chair, shoulders sagging, head tilted. His face was a mask of blood, but I could see that his lips were moving. He was alive, and standing over him was the second man, holding a bloodstained knife—a knife with a curved, serrated blade—and about to finish the job. About to slit Digweed’s throat.
I’d never used my sword as a spear before and, take it from me, it’s a far-from-ideal use for it, but at that exact moment my priority was keeping Digweed alive. I needed to speak to him, and, besides, nobody was going to kill Digweed but me. So I threw it. It was all I had time to do. And though my throw had as little power as it did aim, it hit the knifeman’s arm just as the blade arced down, and it was enough—enough to send him staggering back with a howl of pain at the same time as I threw myself off the horse, landed on the boards inside the cabin, rolled forward and snatched out my short sword at the same time.
And it had been enough to save Digweed.
I landed right by him. Bloodstained rope kept his arms and legs tied to the chair. His clothes were torn and black with blood, his face swollen and bleeding. His lips still moved. His eyes slid lazily over to see me and I wondered what he thought in the brief moment that he took me in. Did he recognize me? Did he feel a bolt of guilt, or a flash of hope?
Then my eyes went to a back window, only to see the knifeman’s legs disappearing through it as he squeezed himself out and fell with a thump to the ground outside. To follow through the window meant putting myself in a vulnerable position—I didn’t fancy being stuck in the frame while the knifeman had all the time in the world to plunge his blade into me. So instead I ran to the front door and back into the clearing to give chase. Reginald was just arriving. He’d seen the knifeman, had a better view of him than I did, and was already taking aim with his bow.
“Don’t kill him,” I roared, just as he fired, and he howled in displeasure as the arrow went wide.
“Damn you, man, I had him,” he shouted. “He’s in the trees now.”
I’d rounded the front of the cabin in time, feet kicking up a carpet of dead and dry pine needles just in time to see the knifeman disappear into the tree line. “I need him alive, Reginald,” I shouted back at him. “Digweed’s in the cabin. Keep him safe until I return.”
And with that I burst into the trees, leaves and branches whipping my face as I thundered on, short sword in hand. Ahead of me I saw a dark shape in the foliage, crashing through it with as little grace as I was.
Or perhaps less grace, because I was gaining on him.
“Were you there?” I shouted at him. “Were you there the night they killed my father?”
“I didn’t have that pleasure, boy,” he called back over his shoulder. “How I wish I had been. I did my bit, though. I was the fixer.”
Of course. He had a West Country accent. Now, who had been described as having a West Country accent? The man who had blackmailed Digweed. The man who had threatened Violet and shown her an evil-looking knife.
“Stand and face me!” I shouted. “You’re so keen for Kenway blood, let’s see if you can’t spill mine!”
I was nimbler than he was. Faster, and closer now. I’d heard the wheeze in his voice when he spoke to me, and it was only a matter of time before I caught him. He knew it, and rather than tire himself further he decided to turn and fight, hurdling one final wind-fallen branch, which brought him into a small clearing, spinning about, the curved blade in his hand. The curved, serrated, “evil-looking” blade. His face was grizzled and terribly pockmarked, as though scarred from some childhood disease. He breathed heavily as he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He’d lost his hat in the chase, revealing close-cropped, greying hair, and his coat—dark, just as the storekeeper had described it—was torn, fluttering open to reveal his red army tunic.
“You’re a British soldier,” I said.
“That’s the uniform I wear,” he sneered, “but my allegiances lie elsewhere.”
“Indeed, do they? To whom do you swear loyalty, then?” I asked. “Are you an Assassin?”
He shook his head. “I’m my own man, boy. Something you can only dream of being.”
“It’s a long time since anybody’s called me boy,” I said.
“You think you’ve made a name for yourself, Haytham Kenway. The killer. The Templar blademan. Because you’ve killed a couple of fat merchants? But to me you’re a boy. You’re a boy because a man faces his targets, man to man, he doesn’t steal up behind them in the dead of night, like a snake.” He paused. “Like an Assassin.”
He began to swap his knife from one hand to the other. The effect was almost hypnotic—or at least that’s what I let him believe.
“You think I can’t fight?” I said.
“You’re yet to prove it.”
“Here’s as good a place as any.”
He spat and beckoned me forward with one hand, rolling the blade in the other. “Come on, Assassin,” he goaded me. “Come be a warrior for the first time. Come see what it feels like. Come on, boy. Be a man.”
It was supposed to anger me, but instead it made me focus. I needed him alive. I needed him to talk.
I leapt over the branch and into the clearing, swinging a little wildly to push him back but recovering my stance quickly, before he could press forward with a response of his own. For some moments we circled one another, each waiting for the other to launch his next attack. I broke the stalemate by lunging forward, slashing, then instantly retreating to my guard.
For a second he thought I’d missed. Then he felt the blood begin to trickle down his cheek and touched a hand to his face, his eyes widening in surprise. First blood to me.
“You’ve underestimated me,” I said.
His smile was a little more strained this time. “There won’t be a second time.”
“There will be,” I replied, and came forward again, feinting towards the left then going right when his body was already committed to the wrong line of defence.
A gash opened up in his free arm. Blood stained his tattered sleeve and began dripping to the forest floor, bright red on brown and green needles.
“I’m better than you know,” I said. “All you have to look forward to is death—unless you talk. Unless you tell me everything you know. Who are you working for?”
I danced forward and slashed as his knife flailed wildly. His other cheek opened. There were now two scarlet ribbons on the brown leather of his face.
“Why was my father killed
?”
I came forward again and this time sliced the back of his knife hand. If I’d been hoping he’d drop the knife, then I was disappointed. If I’d been hoping to give him a demonstration of my skills, then that’s exactly what I’d done, and it showed on his face. His now bloody face. He wasn’t grinning any more.
But he still had fight in him, and when he came forward it was fast and smooth and he swapped his knife from one hand to the other to try to misdirect me, and almost made contact. Almost. He might even have done it—if he hadn’t already showed me that particular trick; if he hadn’t been slowed down by the injuries I’d inflicted on him.
As it was, I ducked easily beneath his blade and struck upwards, burying my own in his flank. Immediately I was cursing, though. I’d hit him too hard and in the kidney. He was dead. The internal bleeding would kill him in around thirty minutes; but he could pass out straight away. Whether he knew it himself or not I don’t know, for he was coming at me again, his teeth bared. They were coated with blood now, I noticed, and I swung easily away, took hold of his arm, twisted into his body and broke it at the elbow.
The sound he made wasn’t a scream so much as an anguished inhalation, and as I crunched the bones in his arm, more for effect than for any useful purpose, his knife dropped to the forest floor with a soft thump and he followed it, sinking to his knees.
I let go of his arm, which dropped limply, a bag of broken bones and skin. Looking down, I could see the blood had already drained from his face, and around his midriff was a spreading, black stain. His coat pooled around him on the ground. Feebly, he felt for his loose and limp arm with his good hand, and when he looked up at me there was something almost plaintive in his eyes, something pathetic.
“Why did you kill him?” I asked evenly.
Like water escaping from a leaking flask he crumpled, until he was lying on his side. All that concerned him now was dying.
“Tell me,” I pressed, and bent close to where he now lay, with pine needles clinging to the blood on his face. He was breathing his last breaths into the mulch of the forest floor.
Assassin's Creed: Forsaken Page 9