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 birdsong 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 of 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 store
keeper 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,’ 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 counter-attack 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.
‘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 a few tattered bits of paper, one of which I unfurled to find a set of enlistment papers. They were for a regiment, the Coldstream Guards to be precise, one and a 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 Bra
ddock.’
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.
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