Assassin's Creed

by Oliver Bowden

  ‘Help me, help me.’

  An insistent, beseeching sound that made him want to cover his ears. Until, suddenly, he heard a louder voice: ‘You should not have come here, Assassin.’

  Talal, surely.

  Altaïr swung in the direction of the noise, seeing the shadows shift in a balcony above him. Bowmen? He tensed, crouching, his sword ready, offering the smallest target possible.

  But if Talal wanted him dead, he’d be dead by now. He’d walked straight into the slave trader’s trap – the mistake of a fool, of a novice – but it had not yet been fully sprung.

  ‘But you are not the kind to listen,’ mocked Talal, ‘lest you compromise your Brotherhood.’

  Altair crept forward, still trying to place Talal. He was above, that much was certain. But where?

  ‘Did you think I’d remain ignorant of your presence?’ continued the disembodied voice, with a chuckle. ‘You were known to me the moment you entered this city, such is my reach.’

  From below he heard sobbing and glanced down to see more bars, more dirty, tear-streaked faces staring at him from the gloom.

  ‘Help me … Save me …’

  Here there were more cages, more slaves, men and women now: beggars, prostitutes, drunkards and madmen.

  ‘Help me. Help me.’

  ‘So there are slaves here,’ called Altaïr, ‘but where are the slavers?’

  Talal ignored him. ‘Behold my work in all its glory,’ he announced, and more lights flared on, revealing more frightened and beseeching faces.

  Ahead of Altaïr a second gate slid open, admitting him to another room. He climbed a flight of steps and walked into a large space with a gallery running along all sides above him. There he saw shadowy figures and adjusted the grip on his sword.

  ‘What now, slaver?’ he called.

  Talal was trying to frighten him. Some things frightened Altaïr, it was true – but nothing the slave master was capable of, that much he knew.

  ‘Do not call me that,’ cried Talal. ‘I only wish to help them. As I myself was helped.’

  Altair could still hear the low moans of the slaves from the chamber behind. He doubted whether they’d consider it help. ‘You do no kindness imprisoning them like this,’ he called into the darkness.

  Still Talal remained hidden. ‘Imprisoning them? I keep them safe, preparing them for the journey that lies ahead.’

  ‘What journey?’ scoffed Altaïr. ‘It is a life of servitude.’

  ‘You know nothing. It was folly to bring you here. To think that you might see and understand.’

  ‘I understand well enough. You lack the courage to face me, choosing to hide among the shadows. Enough talk. Show yourself.’

  ‘Ah … So you want to see the man who called you here?’

  Altaïr heard movement in the gallery.

  ‘You did not call me here,’ he shouted. ‘I came on my own.’

  Laughter echoed from the balconies above him.

  ‘Did you?’ scoffed Talal. ‘Who unbarred the door? Cleared the path? Did you raise your blade against a single man of mine, hmm? No. All this I did for you.’

  Something moved on the ceiling above the gallery, throwing a patch of light on to the stone floor.

  ‘Step into the light, then,’ called Talal from above, ‘and I will grant you one final favour.’

  Again, Altaïr told himself that if Talal wanted him dead his archers would have filled him with arrows by now, and he stepped into the light. As he did so, masked men appeared from the shadows of the gallery, jumping down and noiselessly surrounding him. They regarded him with dispassionate eyes, their swords hanging by their sides, their chests rising and falling.

  Altaïr swallowed. There were six of them. ‘Little challenge’ they were not.

  Then there came footsteps from above and he looked to the gallery where Talal had moved out of the half-light and now stood gazing down at him. He wore a striped tunic and a thick belt. Over his shoulder was a bow.

  ‘Now I stand before you,’ he said, spreading his hands, smiling as though warmly welcoming a guest to his household. ‘What is it you desire?’

  ‘Come down here.’ Altair indicated with his sword. ‘Let us settle this with honour.’

  ‘Why must it always come to violence?’ replied Talal, sounding almost disappointed in Altaïr, before adding, ‘It seems I cannot help you, Assassin, for you do not wish to help yourself. And I cannot allow my work to be threatened. You leave me no choice: you must die.’

  He waved to his men.

  Who lifted their swords.

  Then attacked.

  Altaïr grunted and found himself fending off two at once, pushing them back, then straight away turning his attention to a third. The others waited their turn: their strategy, he quickly realized, was to come at him two at a time.

  He could handle that. He grabbed one, pleased to see his eyes widen in shock above his mask, then threw him backwards into a fifth man, the pair of them smashing into a scaffold that disintegrated around them. Altaïr pressed home his advantage and, stabbing with his swordpoint, heard a scream and a death rattle from the man sprawled on the stone.

  His assailants reassembled, glancing at one another as they slowly circled him. He turned with them, sword held out, smiling, almost enjoying himself now. Five of them, trained, masked killers, against a lone Assassin. They had thought him easy prey. He could see it in their faces. One skirmish later and they weren’t quite so certain.

  He chose one. An old trick taught to him by Al Mualim for when facing multiple opponents.

  Altaïr very deliberately fixed his gaze on a guard directly in front of him …

  Don’t ignore the others but home in on one. Make him your target. Let him know he’s your target.

  He smiled. The guard whimpered.

  Then finish him.

  Like a snake, Altaïr struck, coming at the guard, who was too slow to react – who stared down at Altaïr’s blade as it thrust into his chest, then groaned as he sank to his knees. With a tearing of meat, Altaïr withdrew his sword, then turned his attention to the next man.

  Choose one of your opponents…

  The guard looked terrified, not like a killer now, as his sword began trembling. He shouted something in a dialect Altaïr didn’t understand, then came forward messily, hoping to bring the battle to Altaïr, who sidestepped, slashing at the man’s stomach, gratified to see glistening insides spill from the wound. From above Talal’s voice cajoled his men to attack even as another fell and the two remaining attacked at once. They didn’t look so intimidating now, masks or not. They looked like what they were: frightened men about to die.

  Altaïr took another down, blood fountaining from a slashed neck. The last turned and ran, hoping to find shelter in the gallery. But Altaïr sheathed his sword, palmed a pair of throwing knives, which spun, glittering – one, two – into the escaping man’s back so that he fell from the ladder. Escaping no more.

  Altaïr heard running footsteps from above. Talal making his escape. Bending to retrieve his knives, he took the ladder himself, reaching the second level just in time to see Talal scramble up a second series of steps to the roof.

  The Assassin went after him, arriving through a hatch in the top of the warehouse and only just jerking his head back in time as an arrow smacked, quivering, into the wood beside him. He saw the bowman on a far rooftop, already fitting a second shaft, and pulled himself from the hatch, rolling forward on the rooftop and tossing two knives, still wet with the blood of their previous victim.

  The archer screamed and fell, one knife protruding from his neck, the other in his chest. Further across, Altaïr saw Talal darting across a bridge between housing then jumping to a scaffold and shimmying down into the street. There, he craned his neck, saw Altaïr already following him, and set off at a run.

  Altaïr was already gaining. He was quick and, unlike Talal, he wasn’t constantly looking over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. Which meant he w
asn’t barrelling into unsuspecting pedestrians as Talal was: women who screeched and reprimanded him, men who swore and shoved him back.

  All this slowed his progress through the streets and markets, so that soon he had squandered his lead, and when he turned his head Altaïr could see the whites of his eyes.

  ‘Flee now,’ Talal screamed over his shoulder, ‘while you still can. My guards will be here soon.’

  Altaïr chuckled. Kept running.

  ‘Give up this chase and I’ll let you live,’ screeched Talal. Altaïr said nothing. Kept up his pursuit. Nimbly, he wove through the crowds, hurdling the goods that Talal pulled behind himself to slow his pursuer. Altaïr was gaining on Talal now, the chase almost done.

  Ahead of him Talal turned his head once more, saw that the gap was closing and tried appealing to Altaïr again.

  ‘Hold your ground and hear me out,’ he bellowed, desperation in his voice. ‘Perhaps we can make a deal.’

  Altaïr said nothing, just watched as Talal turned again. The slave trader was now about to collide with a woman whose face was hidden by several flasks. Neither of them was looking where they were going.

  ‘I’ve done nothing to you,’ shouted Talal, forgetting, presumably, that just minutes ago he had sent six men to kill Altaïr. ‘Why do you persist in chasing –’

  The breath left his body in a whoosh, there was a tangle of arms and legs and Talal crashed to the sand along with the flask woman, whose wares smashed around them.

  Talal tried scrambling to his feet but was too slow and Altaïr was upon him. Snick. As soon as his greedy blade appeared he had sunk it into the man, and was kneeling beside him, blood already gushing from Talal’s nose and mouth. At their side, the flask woman dragged herself to her feet, red-faced and indignant, about to let fly at Talal. On seeing Altaïr and his blade, not to mention the blood leaking from Talal, she changed her mind and dashed off wailing. Others gave them a wide berth, sensing something was amiss. In Jerusalem, a city accustomed to conflict, the inhabitants preferred not to stand and stare at violence for fear of becoming part of it.

  Altaïr leaned close to Talal. ‘You’ve nowhere to run now,’ he said. ‘Share your secrets with me.’

  ‘My part is played, Assassin,’ responded Talal. ‘The Brotherhood is not so weak that my death will stop its work.’

  Altaïr’s mind flashed back to Tamir. He, too, had spoken of others as he died. He, too, had mentioned brothers. ‘What Brotherhood?’ he pressed.

  Talal managed a smile. ‘Al Mualim is not the only one with designs upon the Holy Land. And that’s all you’ll have from me.’

  ‘Then we are finished. Beg forgiveness from your God.’

  ‘There is no God, Assassin.’ Talal laughed weakly. ‘And if there ever was, he’s long abandoned us. Long abandoned the men and women I took into my arms.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Beggars. Whores. Addicts. Lepers. Do they strike you as proper slaves? Unfit for even the most menial tasks. No … I took them not to sell, but to save. And yet you’d kill us all. For no other reason than it was asked of you.’

  ‘No,’ said Altaïr, confused now. ‘You profit from the war. From lives lost and broken.’

  ‘You would think that, ignorant as you are. Wall off your mind, eh? They say it’s what your kind does best. Do you see the irony in all this?’

  Altaïr stared at him. It was just as it had been with de Naplouse. The dying man’s words threatened to subvert everything Altaïr knew of his target – or thought he knew, at least.

  ‘No, not yet, it seems.’ Talal allowed himself one final smile at Altaïr’s evident confusion. ‘But you will.’

  And, with that, he died.

  Altaïr reached to close his eyes, murmuring, ‘I’m sorry,’ before brushing his marker with blood, then standing and losing himself in the crowds, Talal’s corpse staining the sand behind him.

  15

  Altaïr would make camp at wells, waterholes or fountains on his travels; anywhere there was water and shade from palms, where he could rest and his mount graze on the grass, untethered. It was often the only patch of green as far as the eye could see so there was little chance of his horse wandering off.

  That night he found a fountain that had been walled and arched to prevent the desert swallowing the precious water spot, and he drank well. Then he lay down in its shelter, listening to dripping from the other side of the rough-hewn stone and thinking of the life ebbing away from Talal. His thoughts went even further back, to the corpses in his past. A life punctuated by death.

  As a young boy he had first encountered it during the siege. Assassin and Saracen and, of course, his own father, though mercifully he had been spared the sight of that. He had heard it, though, heard the sword fall, followed by a soft thump, and he’d darted towards the wicket gate, wanting to join his father, when hands had gripped him.

  He had squirmed, screaming, ‘Let me go! Let me go!’

  ‘No, child.’ And Altaïr saw that it was Ahmad, the agent whose life Altaïr’s father had traded for his own. And Altaïr stared at him, eyes burning with hatred, not caring that Ahmad had been delivered from his ordeal battered and bloody and barely able to stand, his soul scarred with the shame of having succumbed to the Saracens’ interrogation. Caring only that his father had given himself up to die and …

  ‘It’s your fault!’ he had screamed, twisting and pulling away from Ahmad, who stood with his head bowed, absorbing the boy’s words as if they were punches.

  ‘It’s your fault,’ Altaïr had spat again, then sat on the brittle grass, burying his head in his hands, wanting to shut out the world. A few steps away, Ahmad, exhausted and beaten, had folded to the ground also.

  Outside the citadel walls, the Saracens departed, leaving the headless body of Altaïr’s father behind for the Assassins to retrieve. Leaving wounds that would never heal.

  For the time being Altaïr had stayed in the quarters he had shared with his father, with their walls of grey stone, rushes on the floor, a simple desk between two pallets, one larger, one smaller. He’d moved beds: he had slept in the larger one, so that he could smell his father’s smell, and he had imagined him sometimes, in the room, sitting reading at the desk, scratching away at a roll of parchment, or returning late at night to chide Altaïr for still being awake, then snuffing out his candle before retiring. Imaginings were all he had now, the orphan Altaïr. Those and his memories. Al Mualim had said he would be called in due course, when arrangements had been made for his future. In the meantime, the Master had said, if Altaïr needed anything, he should come to him as his mentor.

  Ahmad, meanwhile, had been suffering from a fever. Some nights his ravings were heard throughout the citadel. Occasionally he screamed as if in pain, at other times like a man deranged. One night he was shouting one word over and over again. Altaïr had pulled himself from his bed and gone to his window, thinking that what he heard was his father’s name.

  It was. ‘Umar.’ Hearing it was like being slapped.

  ‘Umar.’ The shriek seemed to echo in the empty courtyard below. ‘Umar.’

  No, not empty. Peering more closely, Altaïr could make out the figure of a child of about his age, who stood like a sentinel in the soft early-morning mist that rippled across the training yard. It was Abbas. Altaïr barely knew him, just that he was Abbas Sofian, the son of Ahmad Sofian. The boy had stood listening to his father’s demented ravings, perhaps offering silent prayers for him, and Altaïr had watched him for a few heartbeats, finding something to admire in his silent vigil. Then he had let his curtain drop and returned to his bed, putting his hands over his ears so that he could no longer hear Ahmad calling his father’s name. He had tried to breathe in his father’s scent and realized that it was fading.

  They said that Ahmad’s fever had abated the next day, and that he had returned to his quarters, albeit a broken man. Altaïr had heard that he lay on his bed attended to by Abbas. That he had lain that way for two days. />
  The next night Altaïr was awoken by a sound in his room and lay blinking, hearing somebody moving about, feet that went to the desk. A candle was put down that threw shadows on the stone wall. It was his father, he thought, still half asleep. His father had come back for him, and he sat up, smiling, ready to welcome him home and be chided by him for being awake. At last he had woken from a terrible dream in which his father had died and left him alone.

  But the man in his room was not his father. It was Ahmad.

  Ahmad was standing at the door, emaciated within his white robe, his face a pale mask. He wore a faraway, almost peaceful expression, and he smiled a little as Altaïr sat up, as though he didn’t want to frighten the boy. His eyes, though, were sunken dark hollows as if pain had burned the life from within him. And in his hand he held a dagger.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and they were the only words he spoke, his last words, because next he drew the knife across his throat, opening a gaping red mouth in his own neck.

  Blood swept down his robe; bubbles of it formed at the wound on his neck. The dagger dropped with a clunk to the floor and he smiled as he slid to his knees, his gaze fixed on Altaïr, who sat rigid with fear, unable to take his eyes from Ahmad as the blood poured from him, draining out of him. Now the dying man lolled back on his heels, at last breaking that ghastly stare as his head dropped to the side, but he was prevented from falling backwards by the door. And for some heartbeats that was how he remained, a penitent man, kneeling. Then at last he fell forward.

  Altaïr had no idea how long he sat there, weeping softly and listening to Ahmad’s blood spreading thickly across the stone. At last he found the courage to step out of bed, taking the candle and carefully skirting the bleeding horror that lay on the floor. He pulled his door open, whimpering as it made contact with Ahmad’s foot. Outside the room at last, he ran. The candle snuffed out but he didn’t care. He ran until he reached Al Mualim.