Assassin's Creed: Forsaken

by Oliver Bowden

  “Your father . . .” he started, then coughed a small gobbet of blood before starting again. “Your father was not a Templar.”

  “I know,” I snapped. “Was he killed for that?” I felt my brow furrow. “Was he killed because he refused to join the Order?”

  “He was an . . . an Assassin.”

  “And the Templars killed him? They killed him for that?”

  “No. He was killed for what he had.”

  “What?” I leaned forward, desperate to catch his words. “What did he have?”

  There was no reply.

  “Who?” I said, almost shouting. “Who killed him?”

  But he was out. Mouth open, his eyes fluttered then closed, and however much I slapped him, he refused to regain consciousness.

  An Assassin. Father was an Assassin. I rolled the knifeman over, closed his staring eyes and began to empty his pockets on to the ground. Out came the usual collection of tins, as well as few tattered bits of paper, one of which I unfurled to find was a set of enlistment papers. They were for a regiment, the Coldstream Guards to be precise, one and one-half guineas for joining, then a shilling a day. The paymaster’s name was on the enlistment papers. It was Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Braddock.

  And Braddock was with his army in the Dutch Republic, taking arms against the French. I thought of the pointy-eared man I’d seen riding out earlier. All of a sudden I knew where he was heading.

  iv

  I turned and crashed back through the forest to the cabin, making it back in moments. Outside were the three horses, grazing patiently in bright sunshine; inside, it was dark and cooler, and Reginald stood over Digweed, whose head lolled as he sat, still tied to the chair, and, I knew, from the second I clapped eyes on him . . .

  “He’s dead,” I said simply, and looked at Reginald.

  “I tried to save him, Haytham, but the poor soul was too far gone.”

  “How?” I said sharply.

  “Of his wounds,” snapped Reginald. “Look at him, man.”

  Digweed’s face was a mask of drying blood. His clothes were caked with it. The knifeman had made him suffer, that much was certain.

  “He was alive when I left.”

  “And he was alive when I arrived, damn it,” seethed Reginald.

  “At least tell me you got something from him.”

  His eyes dropped. “He said he was sorry before he died.”

  With a frustrated swish of my sword I slammed a beaker into the fireplace.

  “That was all? Nothing about the night of the attack? No reason? No names?”

  “Damn your eyes, Haytham. Damn your eyes, do you think I killed him? Do you think I came all this way, neglected my other duties, just to see Digweed dead? I wanted to find him as much as you did. I wanted him alive as much as you did.”

  It was as though I could feel my entire skull harden. “I doubt that very much,” I spat.

  “Well, what happened to the other one?” asked Reginald back.

  “He died.”

  Reginald wore an ironic look. “Oh, I see. And whose fault was that, exactly?”

  I ignored him. “The killer, he is known to Braddock.”

  Reginald reared back. “Really?”

  Back at the clearing I’d stuffed the papers into my coat, and I brought them out now in a handful, like the head of a cauliflower. “Here—his enlistment papers. He’s in the Coldstream Guards, under Braddock’s command.”

  “Hardly the same thing, Haytham. Edward has a force fifteen hundred strong, many of them enlisted in the country. I’m sure every single man has an unsavoury past and I’m sure Edward knows very little about it.”

  “Even so, a coincidence, don’t you think? The storekeeper said they both wore the uniform of the British Army, and my guess is the rider we saw is on his way to them now. He has—what?—an hour’s head start? I’ll not be far behind. Braddock’s in the Dutch Republic, is he not? That’s where he’ll be heading, back to his general.”

  “Now, careful, Haytham,” said Reginald. Steel crept into his eyes and into his voice. “Edward is a friend of mine.”

  “I have never liked him,” I said, with a touch of childish impudence.

  “Oh, pish!” exploded Reginald. “An opinion formed by you as a boy because Edward didn’t show you the deference you were accustomed to—because, I might add, he was doing his utmost to bring your father’s killers to justice. Let me tell you, Haytham, Edward serves the Order, is a good and faithful servant and always has been.”

  I turned to him, and it was on the tip of my tongue to say, “But wasn’t Father an Assassin?” when I stopped myself. Some . . . feeling, or instinct—difficult to say what it was—made me decide to keep that information to myself.

  Reginald saw me do it—saw the words pile up behind my teeth and maybe even saw the lie in my eyes.

  “The killer,” he pressed, “did he say anything else at all? Were you able to drag any more information out of him before he died?”

  “Only as much as you could get from Digweed,” I replied. There was a small stove at one end of the cabin and by it a chopping block, where I found part of a loaf, which I stuffed into my pocket.

  “What are you doing?” said Reginald.

  “Getting what provisions I can for my ride, Reginald.”

  There was a bowl of apples, too. I’d need those for my horse.

  “A stale loaf. Some apples? It isn’t enough, Haytham. At least go back to the town for supplies.”

  “No time, Reginald,” I said. “And, anyway, the chase will be short. He only has a short head start and he doesn’t know he’s being pursued. With any luck I can catch him before I have need of supplies.”

  “We can collect food on the way. I can help you.”

  But I stopped him. I was going alone, I said, and before he could argue I’d mounted my steed and taken her in the direction I’d seen the pointy-eared man go, my hopes high I could catch him shortly.

  They were dashed. I rode hard, but in the end the dark drew in; it had become too dangerous to continue and I risked injuring my horse. In any case, she was exhausted, so reluctantly I decided to stop and let her rest for a few hours.

  And as I sit here writing, I wonder why, after all the years of Reginald’s being like a father to me, a mentor, a tutor and guide—why did I decide to ride out alone? And why did I keep from him what I’d discovered about Father?

  Have I changed? Has he changed? Or is it that the bond we once shared has changed?

  The temperature has dropped. My steed—and it seems only right that I should give her a name and so, in honour of the way she’s already starting to nuzzle me when in need of an apple, I’ve called her Scratch—lies nearby, her eyes closed, and seems content, and I write in my journal.

  I think about what Reginald and I talked of. I wonder if he’s right to question the man I have become.

  15 JULY 1747

  I rose early in the morning, as soon as it was light, raked over the dying coals of my fire and mounted Scratch.

  The chase continued. As I rode I mulled over the possibilities. Why had Pointy-Ears and the knifeman gone their separate ways? Were they both intending to journey to the Dutch Republic and join Braddock? Would Pointy-Ears be expecting his confederate to catch him up?

  I had no way of knowing. I could only hope that, whatever their plans, the man ahead of me had no idea I was in pursuit.

  But if he didn’t—and how could he?—then why wasn’t I catching him?

  And I rode fast but steadily, aware that coming upon him too quickly would be just as disastrous as not catching him at all.

  After about three-quarters of an hour I came upon a spot where he had rested. If I’d pushed Scratch longer, would I have disturbed him, taken him by surprise? I knelt to feel the dying warmth of his fire. To my left, Scratch nuzzled something on the ground, a bit of discarded sausage, and my stomach rumbled. Reginald had been right. My prey was much better equipped for the journey than I was, with my half
a loaf of bread and apples. I cursed myself for not going through the saddlebags of his companion.

  “Come on, Scratch,” I said. “Come on, girl.”

  For the rest of the day I rode, and the only time I even slowed down was when I retrieved the spyglass from my pocket and scanned the horizon, looking for signs of my quarry. He remained ahead of me. Frustratingly ahead of me. All day. Until, as light began to fade I started becoming concerned I had lost him altogether. I could only hope I was right about his destination.

  In the end I had no choice but to rest again for the day, make camp, build a fire, allow Scratch to rest, and pray that I hadn’t lost the trail.

  And as I sit here I wonder, Why haven’t I managed to catch him?

  16 JULY 1747

  i

  When I woke up this morning it was with a flash of inspiration. Of course. Pointy-Ears was a member of Braddock’s army and Braddock’s army had joined with forces commanded by the Prince of Orange in the Dutch Republic, which was where Pointy-Ears should have been. The reason he was hurrying was because . . .

  Because he had absconded and was rushing to get back, presumably before his absence was discovered.

  Which meant that his presence in the Black Forest wasn’t officially sanctioned. Which meant that Braddock, as his lieutenant-colonel, didn’t know about it. Or probably didn’t know about it.

  Sorry, Scratch. I rode her hard again—it would be her third successive day—and noticed the tiredness in her, the fatigue that slowed her down. Even so, it was only around half an hour before we came upon the remains of Pointy-Ears’ camp and, this time, instead of stopping to test the embers, I urged Scratch on and only let her rest at the next hilltop, where we stopped as I pulled out the spyglass and scanned the area ahead of us, square by square, inch by inch—until I saw him. There he was, a tiny speck riding up the hill opposite, swallowed by a clump of trees as I watched.

  Where were we? I didn’t know whether or not we had passed over the border into the Dutch Republic. I hadn’t seen another soul for two days, had heard nothing but the sound of Scratch and my own breathing.

  That was soon to change. I spurred Scratch and some twenty minutes later was entering the same band of trees I’d seen my quarry disappear into. The first thing I saw was an abandoned cart. Nearby, with flies crawling over sightless eyes, was the body of a horse, the sight of which made Scratch rear slightly, startled. Like me, she had been used to the solitude: just us, the trees, the birds. Here suddenly was the ugly reminder that in Europe one is never far from conflict, never far from war.

  We rode on more slowly now, being careful among the trees and whatever other obstacles we might find. Moving onwards, more and more of the foliage was blackened, broken or trampled down. There’d been some action here, that much was certain: I began to see bodies of men, splayed limbs and staring, dead eyes, dark blood and mud rendering the corpses anonymous apart from flashes of uniform: the white of the French army, the blue of the Dutch. I saw broken muskets, snapped bayonets and swords, anything of use having already been salvaged. When I emerged from the tree line we were in a field, the field of battle, where there were even more bodies. Evidently it had been only a small skirmish by the standards of war but, even so, it felt as though death were everywhere.

  How long ago it had been I couldn’t say with certainty: enough time for scavengers to strip the field of battle but not enough for the bodies to be removed; within the last day, I would have thought, judging by the state of the corpses and the blanket of smoke that still hung over the pasture—a shroud of it, like morning fog but with the heavy yet sharp scent of gunpowder smoke.

  Here the mud was thicker, churned up by hooves and feet, and as Scratch began to struggle, I reined her to the side, trying to take us around the perimeter of the field. Then just as she stumbled in the mud and almost pitched me forward over her neck I caught sight of Pointy-Ears ahead of us. He was the length of the field away, perhaps half a mile or so, a hazy, almost indistinct figure also struggling in the claggy terrain. His horse must have been as exhausted as mine, because he’d dismounted and was trying to pull it by the reins, his curses carrying faintly across the field.

  I pulled out my spyglass to get a better look at him. The last time I’d seen him up close was twelve years ago and he’d been wearing a mask, and I found myself wondering—hoping, even—that my first proper look at him might contain some kind of revelation. Would I recognize him?

  No. He was just a man, weathered and grizzled, like his partner had been, filthy and exhausted from his ride. Looking at him now there was no sense of suddenly knowing. Nothing fell into place. He was just a man, a British soldier, same as the one I had killed in the Black Forest.

  I saw him crane his neck as he stared through the haze at me. From his coat he produced his own spyglass, and for a moment the two of us studied one another through our telescopes, then I watched as he ran to the muzzle of his horse and with renewed vigour began yanking at the reins, at the same time throwing glances back across the field at me.

  He recognized me. Good. Scratch had regained her feet and I pulled her to where the ground was a little harder. At last we were able to make some headway. In front of me, Pointy-Ears was becoming more distinct and I could make out the effort on his face as he pulled out his own horse, then saw the realization dawn on him that he was stuck, and I was gaining on him and would be upon him in a matter of a few short moments.

  And then he did the only thing he could do. He dropped the reins and started to run. At the same time the verge around us gave way sharply, and once again Scratch was finding it difficult to keep her feet. With a quick and whispered “thank you” I jumped from her to give chase on foot.

  The efforts of the last few days caught up with me in a rush that threatened to engulf me. The mud sucked at my boots, making every step not like running but wading, and the breath was jagged in my lungs, as though I were inhaling grit. Every muscle screamed in protest and pain at me, begging me not to go on. I could only hope that my friend ahead was having it just as hard, even harder perhaps, because the one thing that spurred me on, the one thing that kept my legs pumping and my chest pulling ragged breaths from the air was the knowledge that I was closing the gap.

  He glanced behind and I was close enough to see his eyes widen in fear. He had no mask now. Nothing to hide behind. Despite the pain and exhaustion I grinned at him, feeling dry, parched lips pulling back over my teeth.

  He pressed on, grunting with the effort. It had begun to rain, a drizzle that gave the day an extra layer of haze, as though we were stuck inside a landscape coloured in charcoal.

  Again he risked another look behind and saw that I was even closer now; this time he stopped and drew his sword, held it in two hands with his shoulders slumped, breathing heavily. He looked exhausted. He looked like a man who’d spent day after day riding hard with little sleep. He looked like a man waiting to be beaten.

  But I was wrong; he was luring me forward and, like a fool, I fell for it, and in the next instant was stumbling forward, literally falling as the ground gave way and I waded straight into a vast pool of thick, oozing mud that stopped me in my tracks.

  “Oh, God,” I said.

  My feet disappeared, then my ankles, and before I knew it I was in up to my knees, desperately yanking at my legs, trying to pull them free, while at the same time bracing myself with one hand on the firmer ground around me, trying to keep my sword raised with the other.

  My eyes went to Pointy-Ears, and it was his turn to grin now as he came forward and brought his sword down in a chopping, two-handed blow that had plenty of force but was clumsy. With a grunt of effort and a ring of steel I met it and parried, sending him back a couple of steps. Then, as he was off balance, I pulled one of my feet clear of the mud, and my boot, saw my white stocking, filthy as it was, bright compared to the dirt around it.

  Seeing his advantage being squandered, Pointy-Ears pressed forward again, this time stabbing forward with his
sword, and I defended once and then twice. For a second there was only the sound of clashing steel, of grunts and the rain, harder now, slapping into the mud, me silently thanking God his reserves of cunning were exhausted.

  Or were they? At last he realized I would be beaten more easily if he moved to the rear of me, but I saw what was on his mind and lashed out with my sword, catching him at the knee just above his boot and sending him crashing back, howling in agony. With a cry of pain and indignity he got to his feet, driven on perhaps by outrage that his victory wasn’t being given to him more easily, and kicked out with his good foot.

  I caught it with my other hand and twisted it as hard as I could, hard enough to send him spinning and sprawling facedown to the mud.

  He tried to roll away, but was too slow, or too dazed, and I stabbed downwards with my sword, driving it through the back of his thigh, straight into the ground and spearing him there. At the same time I used the handle as a grip and with a wrench pulled myself from the mud, leaving my second boot behind.

  He screamed and twisted, but was held in place by my sword through his leg. My weight on him as I used the sword as leverage to drag myself from the ooze must have been unbearable, and he shrieked in pain and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. Even so, he slashed wildly with his sword and I was unarmed so that, as I flopped on to him, like a badly landed fish, the blade caught me on the side of the neck, opening a cut and letting out blood that felt warm on my skin.

  My hands went to his, and suddenly we were grappling for possession of the sword. Grunting and cursing we fought, when from behind I heard something—something that was surely the sound of approaching feet. Then voices. Somebody speaking in Dutch. I cursed.

  “No,” said a voice, and I realized it was me.

  He must have heard it, too.

  “You’re too late, Kenway,” he snarled.

  The tramping of the feet from behind me. The rain. My own cries of “No, no, no,” as a voice said, in English, “You there. Stop at once.”