Assassin's Creed: Forsaken

by Oliver Bowden

  “Brown, leather-bound, bearing the seal of the Assassins.”

  I nodded. “Do you think you’d recognize it if you were to see it again?”

  She shrugged. “Probably,” she said.

  I looked across to where Holden lay, sweat glistening on his torso, “When the fever has broken, we’ll leave.”

  “To go where?”

  “To France.”

  8 OCTOBER 1757

  i

  Though it was cold, the sun was shining this morning, a day best described as “sun-dappled,” with bright light pouring through the canopy of trees to paint the forest floor a patchwork of gold.

  We rode in a column of three, me in the lead. Behind me was Jenny, who had long since discarded her servant-girl clothes and wore a robe that hung down the flank of her steed. A large, dark hood was pulled up over her head, and her face seemed to loom from within it as though she were staring from the inside of a cave: serious, intense and framed by grey-flecked hair that fell across her shoulders.

  Behind Jenny came Holden, who, like me, wore a buttoned-up frock coat, scarf and cocked hat, only he sagged forward a little in his saddle, his complexion pale, sallow and . . . haunted.

  He had said little since recovering from his fever. There had been moments—tiny glimpses of the old Holden: a fleeting smile, a flash of his London wisdom—but they were fleeting, and he would soon return to being closed off. During our passage across the Mediterranean he had kept himself to himself, sitting alone, brooding. In France we had donned disguises, bought horses and begun the trek to the chateau, and he had ridden in silence. He looked pale and, having seen him walk, I thought he was still in pain. Even in the saddle I’d occasionally see him wincing, especially over uneven ground. I could hardly bear to think of the hurt he was enduring—physical and mental.

  An hour away from the chateau, we stopped and I strapped my sword to my waist, primed a pistol and put it into my belt. Holden did the same, and I asked him, “Are you sure you’re all right to fight, Holden?”

  He shot me a reproachful look, and I noticed the bags and dark rings beneath his eyes. “Begging your pardon, sir, but it’s my cock and balls they took off me, not my gumption.”

  “I’m sorry, Holden, I didn’t mean to suggest anything. I’ve had my answer and that’s good enough for me.”

  “Do you think there will be fighting, sir?” he said, and again I saw him wince as he reached to bring his sword close at hand.

  “I don’t know, Holden, I really don’t.”

  As we came close to the chateau I saw the first of the patrols. The guard stood in front of my horse and regarded me from beneath the wide brim of his hat: the same man, I realized, who had been here the last time I visited nearly four years ago.

  “That you, Master Kenway?” he said.

  “Indeed it is, and I have two companions,” I replied.

  I watched him very carefully as his stare went from me to Jenny then to Holden and, though he tried to hide it, his eyes told me all I needed to know.

  He went to put his fingers to his mouth, but I had leapt from my horse, grabbed his head and ejected my blade through his eye and into his brain and sliced open his throat before he could make another sound.

  ii

  I knelt with one hand on the sentry’s chest as the blood oozed fast and thickly from the wide-open gash at his throat, like a second, grinning mouth, and looked back over my shoulder to where Jenny regarded me with a frown and Holden sat upright in his saddle, his sword drawn.

  “Do you mind telling us what that was all about?” asked Jenny.

  “He was about to whistle,” I replied, scanning the forest around us. “He didn’t whistle last time.”

  “So? Perhaps they changed the entry procedure.”

  I shook my head. “No. They know we’re coming. They’re expecting us. The whistle would have warned the others. We wouldn’t have made it across the lawn before they cut us down.”

  “How do you know?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I snapped. Beneath my hand the guard’s chest rose and fell one last time. I looked down to see his eyes swivel and his body give one last spasm before he died. “I suspect,” I continued, wiping my bloody hands on the ground and standing up. “I’ve spent years suspecting, ignoring the obvious. The book you saw in the carriage that night—Reginald has it with him. He’ll have it in that house if I’m not very much mistaken. It was he who organized the raid on our house. He who is responsible for Father’s death.”

  “Oh, you know that now, do you?” she sneered.

  “I’d refused to believe it before. But now, yes, I know. Things have begun to make sense to me. Like, one afternoon, when I was a child, I met Reginald by the plate room. I’d wager he was looking for the book then. The reason he was close to the family, Jenny—the reason he asked for your hand in marriage—was because he wanted the book.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I tried warning you on the night that he was the traitor.”

  “I know,” I said, then thought for a moment. “Did Father know he was a Templar?”

  “Not at first, but I found out, and I told Father.”

  “That’s when they argued,” I said, understanding now.

  “Did they argue?”

  “I heard them one day. And, afterwards, Father employed the guards—Assassins, no doubt. Reginald told me he was warning Father . . .”

  “More lies, Haytham . . .”

  I looked up at her, trembling slightly. Yes. More lies. Everything I knew—my entire childhood, all of it built on a foundation of them.

  “He was using Digweed,” I said. “It was Digweed who told him where the book was stored . . .”

  I winced at a sudden memory.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “The day at the plate room, Reginald was asking me where my sword was kept. I told him a secret hiding place.”

  “Was it in the billiards room?”

  I nodded.

  “They went straight there, didn’t they?” she said.

  I nodded. “They knew it wasn’t in the plate room, because Digweed told them it had been moved, which is why they went straight to the games room.”

  “But they weren’t Templars?” she said.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “In Syria, you told me the men who attacked us weren’t Templars,” she said with a mocking tone. “They couldn’t be your beloved Templars.”

  I shook my head. “No, they weren’t. I told you, I’ve encountered them since, and they were Braddock’s men. Reginald must have planned to school me in the Order . . .” I thought again, and something occurred to me: “. . . because of the family inheritance, probably. Using Templar men would have been too much of a risk. I might have found out. I might have arrived here sooner. I almost got to Digweed. I almost had them in the Black Forest but then . . .” I remembered back to the cabin in the Black Forest. “Reginald killed Digweed. That’s why they were one step ahead of us—and they still are.” I pointed in the direction of the chateau.

  “So what do we do, sir?” asked Holden.

  “We do what they did the night they attacked us at Queen Anne’s Square. We wait until nightfall. And then we go in there, and we kill people.”

  9 OCTOBER 1757

  i

  That date above says 9 October, which I scribbled there, rather optimistically, at the end of the previous entry, intending that this should be a contemporaneous account of our attempt to breach the chateau. In fact, I’m writing this several months later and, to detail what happened that night, I have to cast my mind back . . .

  ii

  How many would there be? Six, on the last occasion I came. Would Reginald have strengthened the force in the meantime, knowing I might come? I thought so. Doubled it.

  Make it twelve, then, plus John Harrison, if he was still in residence. And, of course, Reginald. He was fifty-two, and his skills would have faded but, even so: I knew never to undere
stimate him.

  So we waited, and hoped they’d do what they eventually did, which was to send out a search party for the missing patrol, three of them, who came bearing torches and drawn swords, marching across the dark lawn with torchlight dancing on grim faces.

  We watched as they materialized from the gloom and melted away into the trees. At the gates they began calling the guard’s name then hurried along the outside of the low perimeter towards where the patrol was supposed to be.

  His body was where I’d left it, and in the trees nearby Holden, Jenny and I took up position. Jenny stayed back, armed with a knife but out of the action; Holden and I were further forward, where we both climbed trees—Holden with some difficulty—to watch and wait, steeling ourselves as the search party came across the body.

  “He’s dead, sir.”

  The party leader craned over the body. “Some hours ago.”

  I gave a bird call, a signal to Jenny, who did what we’d agreed. Her scream for help was launched from deep within the forest and pierced the night.

  With a nervous nod, the party leader led his men into the trees, and they thundered towards us, to where we perched, waiting for them. I looked through the trees to see the shape of Holden a few yards away and wondered if he was well enough, and I hoped to dear God he was, because in the next moment the patrol was running into the trees below us and I launched myself from the branch.

  I took out the leader first, ejecting my blade so it went through his eye and into his brain, killing him instantly. From my crouching position I sliced up and back and opened the stomach of the second man, who dropped to his knees with his insides glistening through a gaping hole in his tunic then fell facedown to the soft forest floor. Looking over, I saw the third man drop off the point of Holden’s sword, and Holden look over, even in the dark the triumph written all over his face.

  “Good screaming,” I said to Jenny, moments later.

  “Pleased to be of assistance.” She frowned. “But listen, Haytham, I’m not staying in the shadows when we get there.” She raised the knife. “I want to deal with Birch myself. He took my life away from me. Any mercy he showed by not having me killed I shall repay by leaving him his cock and . . .”

  She stopped and looked over at Holden, who knelt nearby and looked away.

  “I’m . . .” she began.

  “That’s all right, Miss,” said Holden. He raised his head and, with a look I’d never seen on his face before, said, “But you make sure you do take his cock and balls before you finish him. You make that bastard suffer.”

  iii

  We made our way around the perimeter back to the gate, where a lone sentry looked agitated, perhaps wondering where the search party had got to; perhaps sensing something was wrong, his soldier’s instinct at work.

  But whatever instinct he had wasn’t enough to keep him alive, and moments later we were ducking through the wicket gate and keeping low to make our way across the lawn. We stopped and knelt by a fountain, holding our breaths at the sound of four more men who came from the front door of the chateau, boots drumming on the paving, calling names. A search party sent to find the first search party. The chateau was on full alert now. So much for a quiet entry. At least we’d reduced their numbers by . . .

  Eight. On my signal, Holden and I burst from behind the cover of the fountain base and were upon them, cutting all three down before they even had a chance to draw their swords. We’d been seen. From the chateau there came a shout, and in the next instant there was the sharp report of musket fire and balls smacked into the fountain behind us. We ran for it. Towards the front door, where another guard saw us coming and, as I thundered up the short steps towards him, tried to escape through it.

  He was too slow. I rammed my blade through the closing door and into the side of his face, using my forward momentum to shove open the door and burst through, rolling into the entrance hall as he fell away with blood sluicing from his shattered jaw. From the landing above came the crack of musket fire, but the gunman had aimed too high and the ball smacked harmlessly into wood. In an instant I was on my feet and charging towards the stairway, bounding up towards the landing, where the sniper abandoned his musket with a yell of frustration, pulled his sword from its sheath and came to meet me.

  There was terror in his eyes; my blood was up. I felt more animal than man, working on pure instinct, as though I had levitated from my own body and was watching myself fight. In moments I had opened the gunman and toppled him over the banister to the entrance hall below, where another guard had arrived, just in time to meet Holden as he burst through the front door with Jenny behind him. I leapt from the landing with a shout, landing softly on the body of the man I’d just thrown over and forcing the new arrival to swing about and protect his rear. It was all the opportunity Holden needed to run him through.

  With a nod I turned and ran back up the stairs, in time see a figure appear on the landing, and I ducked at the crack of gunfire as a ball slapped into the stone wall behind me. It was John Harrison and I was upon him before he had a chance to draw his dagger, snatching a fistful of his nightclothes and forcing him to his knees, drawing back my blade arm to strike.

  “Did you know?” I snarled. “Did you help take my father and corrupt my life?”

  He dropped his head in assent and I plunged the blade into the back of his neck, severing the vertebrae, killing him instantly.

  I drew my sword. At Reginald’s door, I halted, throwing a look up and down the landing, then leaned back and was about to kick it open when I realized it was already ajar. Crouching, I pushed it, and it swung inwards with a creaking sound.

  Reginald stood, dressed, at the centre of his chamber. Just like him, always such a stickler for etiquette—he had dressed to meet his killers. Suddenly there was a shadow on the wall, cast by a figure hidden behind the door and, rather than wait for the trap to be sprung, I rammed the sword through the wood, heard a scream of pain from the other side then stepped through and let the door swing closed with the body of the final guard pinned to it, staring at the sword through his chest with wide, disbelieving eyes as his feet scrabbled on the wooden floor.

  “Haytham,” said Reginald coolly.

  iv

  “Was he the last of the guards?” I asked, shoulders heaving as I caught my breath. Behind me, the feet of the dying man still scuffed the wood, and I could hear Jenny and Holden on the other side of the door, struggling to open it with his writhing body in the way. At last, with a final cough, he died, his body dropped from the blade, and Holden and Jenny burst in.

  “Yes.” Reginald nodded. “Just me now.”

  “Monica and Lucio—are they safe?”

  “In their quarters, yes, along the hall.”

  “Holden, would you do me a favour?” I asked over my shoulder. “Would you go and see that Monica and Lucio are unharmed? Their condition may well help determine how much pain we put Mr. Birch through.”

  Holden pulled the body of the guard away from the door, said, “Yes, sir,” and left, shutting the door behind him, with a certain finality about the way he did it that wasn’t lost on Reginald.

  Reginald smiled. A long, slow, sad smile. “I did what I did for the good of the Order, Haytham. For the good of all humanity.”

  “At the expense of my father’s life. You destroyed our family. Did you think I’d never find out?”

  He shook his head sadly. “My dear boy, as Grand Master, you have to make difficult decisions. Did I not teach you that? I promoted you to Grand Master of the Colonial Rite, knowing that you, too, would have to make similar decisions and having faith in your ability to make them, Haytham. Decisions made in the pursuit of a greater good. In pursuit of ideals you share, remember? You ask, did I think you’d ever find out? And of course the answer is yes. You are resourceful and tenacious. I trained you to be that way. I had to consider the possibility that, one day, you’d learn the truth, but I hoped that when that day arrived you’d take a more philosophical view.�
�� His smile was strained. “Given the body count, I’m to assume disappointment in that regard, am I?”

  I gave a dry laugh. “Indeed, Reginald. Indeed you are. What you did is a corruption of everything I believe, and do you know why? You did it not with the application of our ideals but with deceit. How can we inspire belief when what we have in our heart is lies?”

  He shook his head disgustedly. “Oh, come on, that’s naïve rubbish. I’d have expected it of you as a young adept, but now? During a war, you do what you can to secure victory. It’s what you do with that victory that counts.”

  “No. We must practise what we preach. Otherwise, our words are hollow.”

  “There speaks the Assassin in you,” he said, his eyebrows arched.

  I shrugged. “I’m not ashamed of my roots. I’ve had years to reconcile my Assassin blood with my Templar beliefs, and I have done so.”

  I could hear Jenny breathing by my side, wet, ragged breaths that even now were quickening.

  “Ah, so this is it,” scoffed Reginald, “You consider yourself a mediator, do you?”

  I said nothing.

  “And you think you can change things?” he asked with a curled lip.

  But the next person to speak was Jenny. “No, Reginald,” she said. “Killing you is to take revenge for what you have done to us.”

  He turned his attention to her, acknowledging her presence for the first time. “And how are you, Jenny?” he asked her, raising his chin slightly then adding, disingenuously, “Time has not withered you, I see.”

  She was making a low, growling sound now. From the corner of my eye I saw the hand holding the knife come forward threateningly. So did he.

  “And your life as a concubine,” he went on, “was it a rewarding time for you? I should imagine you got to see so much of the world, so many different people and varied cultures . . .”

  He was trying to goad her, and it worked. With a howl of rage born of years of subjugation she lunged at him as though to slash him with the knife.