Desert Oath: The Official Prequel to Assassin’s Creed Origins
Page 6
Taking deep breaths, I squatted, feeling my leg muscles bunch – and then took the jump.
I made it, feet finding purchase, forward motion taking me on as I traversed first one roof and then – jump – another. On the roofs was bedding, but thankfully nobody settling down for the night. I raced on, keeping Tuta and his father in my sights, leaping from one rooftop to the next.
My heart hammered. What I planned to do when I caught them, I had no idea. What drove me was a sense of injustice, a feeling that I’d messed up, a need to put things right.
On I went. We were coming out of the city now, where there was more housing. Finally, I reached a gap between the roofs which was too wide for me to jump, and that was my cue to let myself down to the street below, keeping out of sight behind a cart as I took stock.
I cursed. There was no sign of them, but …
Stepping out from hiding I scanned the ground and, yes, there it was, a blood trail. For the length of a street I followed it and there it ended.
Here was where they had gone to ground.
And now I was standing in front of a house, much like any other on what was a quiet lane. The bloodstains led directly to its door. Coming as close to the house as I dared, I strained to hear through the window.
From inside came the sound of harsh discussion: Tuta’s father was cursing. There was the noise of a slap and Tuta crying out in pain that made me clench my jaw with anger.
What to do now? Surely Tuta’s father would need to take to his bed and heal. After all, apart from his injury the robbery was a success. As far as he knew there was nobody in pursuit and they had their money.
If I could just get that money back.
I crept to the darkened rear of the house, thankful there were no neighbours to sound the alarm. Sure enough, from one of the back rooms I heard what sounded like Tuta easing his father into bed, the older man complaining, demanding beer for the pain and honey for his wound.
Good. Drink – drink yourself into slumber.
I moved to the darkest part of the rear courtyard, navigated my way through some scattered clay bricks and took a seat on a step, deciding to wait until I thought it was safe.
How long was I there? I did not try to read the stars in order to know, as I’d once been taught. But everything inside the house was still when I slipped around to the front. There I took my knife from my belt, finding scant comfort in a weapon I had never used in anger before but knowing it was better than nothing. With hands that shook, I moved the screen aside and stepped inside.
15
The front room of the house was almost bare. There were none of the stools, cushions or rugs I was used to seeing in the homes of Siwa. None of the home comforts you’d expect. On the one and only table in the room was a clay flask lying on its side, the rusty short sword, a single candle flickering – and the two money purses.
Also in the room was Tuta. He had been sitting against the far wall in the dark, but at my entrance he dragged himself to his feet and let out one short yelp of surprise, ‘Hey!’ before recognizing me.
I winced at the sound. For a second I thought he might shout again, raise the alarm and bring his father running. After all, I had no real way of knowing exactly where his loyalties lay. But he did no such thing. And instead we stood stock still, our eyes locked as we listened and waited to learn whether Tuta’s strangulated shout had roused his father. Tuta’s face was badly bruised and he had been crying. The cocky lad I’d met that afternoon was absent now. In his place this frightened, beaten little boy.
No sound came from the back room. I stepped to the table, scooped up the two purses and dropped them into my pouch. Perhaps I could find out if the messenger had family and deliver them the money. I thought I could make my way back to the street where I’d first seen him, perhaps ask some of his friends there.
First, though, I had to get out of this house.
Tuta had been watching me, making not a murmur as I retrieved the money. His face was open, bottom lip trembling, and I knew what he was thinking. He was wondering how his father would react when he woke up. He was wondering how bad the beating would be.
‘Come on,’ I whispered, ‘you’re coming with me.’
He shook his head, stepping back to the safety of the wall.
‘You want to stay here and be thrashed?’ I hissed. ‘He’ll most likely kill you when he finds out I’ve been in and taken the money.’
‘Then don’t take it, sir,’ pleaded Tuta.
I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry, Tuta, whether you come with me or not, half that money belongs to me, the other half to the messenger – his family at least. Come with me. Earlier you told me you lived on the streets. Any life is better than life with him.’
‘He’ll find me.’
‘Then leave the city with me.’
To go where, I wasn’t sure, but what else could I do?
There was silence. Tuta seemed to consider. ‘How can I be sure this isn’t a trap, sir?’ he said, looking at me sideways. ‘To pay me back for what I did to you?’
‘You saved my life back there. That’s what I want to repay you for.’
At last he seemed to reconsider, nodding and moving across the room towards me.
Just then, his father appeared.
His hair was wild, his leg crusty with dried blood. He roared with frustration, pitching himself forward on his good leg as he went for Tuta, seemingly heedless of the knife I held.
‘You trying to take my money, boy!’ he yelled, snatching up Tuta by the scruff of his neck like a naughty dog and yanking him backwards. ‘You dare! You dare!’
‘No, Father, no, Father,’ pleaded Tuta, but his father was laying about him with his good foot. In the next instant he stopped, almost as though he had remembered my presence and more importantly the money, and his eyes went to the table, saw the purses missing and then flashed at me. Before I could react he was launching himself across the room at me.
My attempts to fend him off with the knife were useless, and he far outweighed me. He barrelled into me, taking the wind out of me and knocking me down so that I fell hard to the flagstones, a piercing ringing in my head as it made hard contact with the stone. Made strong by anger, he held me down, fingers of one hand closing around my neck, pinning me with his legs. Spittle landed on my face and I felt blood seep through my tunic and realized it was his, and in some far-off part of my brain I wondered if he might simply bleed out and collapse before he was able to finish the job.
His hand squeezed. I tried to drag breath into my lungs and couldn’t. Twisting my head, I saw Tuta lying motionless, his eyes closed, dazed or out cold. My own hands went to grab at the huge, calloused hand at my neck, trying to prise his fingers free. He was reaching behind himself with his other hand now, fingers pawing at the table, going for his short sword.
And then, in a movement of shadow I saw a figure behind him. Not Tuta. Someone new. A hand swept away the knife which clattered to the floor. Next I saw a clay brick rise and fall, splintering over Tuta’s father’s head a second after he realized his weapon had been taken away. His eyes rolled up, his grip relaxed and he sank to one side.
And in the dim light of the candle that still burned, I saw my rescuer for the first time.
It was Aya.
16
‘Gods!’ Aya knelt, taking my face in her hands. We looked at each other and I saw that she, too, bore the signs of her long journey across the desert from Siwa to Zawty. Her braided hair was matted and dirty, face grubby.
We kissed, but there was no time for reunions and none for explanations. On the floor, Tuta’s father groaned, attempting to pull himself to his hands and knees. Aya pulled me to my feet, dragging me to the door, but I stopped her.
‘Tuta,’ I called to him, ‘come now, it’s your last chance.’
And this time he needed no further encouragement, joining us as we raced out of the front door and along the street, feet echoing on the stone as we made our escape.
‘Same way you did. By horse. Matter of fact, our horses are currently in the same stables being looked after by a young man who remembered you and knows him,’ she indicated Tuta. ‘And with a little greasing of his palm he told me where I could find him.’
‘Bastard!’ exclaimed Tuta then pulled an apologetic face when Aya and I both shot him furious looks.
‘Can’t say I expected to find you at the same time,’ she said to me. ‘But who’s complaining?’
‘Not me,’ said Tuta, ‘but we’re going to have to get back to the stables and find your mounts, get out of here tonight. Father knows you’re stabled there, sir. He’ll get you for sure if you stay.’
As we collected our horses, the stable boy and Tuta regarded each other warily, Tuta clearly wanting to give stable hand a piece of his mind but deciding against.
Either way, we didn’t hang around. We took our horses and a short while later, with no sign of Tuta’s father in pursuit, we were riding out of the city, putting Zawty at our backs at last.
For perhaps two hours we travelled, Tuta sharing Aya’s mount and clinging on to her for dear life, and it was almost dawn when at last we stopped to build a fire and cook fish that Aya had bought or sweet-talked from a fisherman on the banks of the Nile.
As Tuta built the fire, Aya and I moved a short distance away to talk. We walked like soldiers returning exhausted from battle, supporting one another, and then plopped gratefully down to the sand to sit. Her head found its regular spot, and there we rested, with the sun rising at our backs, watching Tuta busy himself arranging brush into kindling. For some moments the only sound was the scratching of his flint. Otherwise the desert felt uncommonly still, as though we were the only three people in the world.
‘Why did you leave?’ she said.
‘I need to find my father. I need to show him that …’
‘No, I mean like that. The way you did.’
I paused, all that guilt I felt rising to the surface. ‘I wasn’t sure I could leave you any other way,’ I told her at last. ‘I wasn’t sure I could leave you at all.’
‘Well, don’t do it again. Ever. Creeping off without saying goodbye.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Tell me, then,’ she said. ‘Tell me everything that’s happened.’
So I did. I told Aya the full story, beginning with my visit to Rabiah’s house and ending where she came in.
Everything. I didn’t miss out a thing.
‘And that was the message, was it?’ She said when I had finished. ‘ “Come at once to Location Mother. We fear The Order gathers.” ’
‘That was it.’
‘Location Mother,’ she said. ‘A secret meeting place. Does it mean anything to you?’
‘No.’
‘And “The Order”?’
I shook my head.
‘You never overheard anything while you were growing up?’
‘No.’ And for a moment, I was speechless. I knew full well how little I had to show for so much effort, nearly dying twice, and the messenger – a blameless, innocent man – dead because of my clumsiness and inexperience.
‘And now I just don’t know what to do,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where to start, where to go.’
Reassuring arms encircled me. ‘Well you would know,’ said Aya, ‘if you’d stuck around to hear what Rabiah had to say. She told you about Khensa, but did she also tell you what happened after Menna’s attack on the temple?’
‘Go on.’
‘There was a priest who died in the attack, yes? You remember that?’
‘Yes. Vaguely.’
‘Well, he didn’t die in the attack.’ She stopped herself. ‘What I mean to say is, he died, but not in the attack. The Nubians killed him the following day. Your father had asked them to do it because it was this priest who had been working with Menna, passing him information.’
I thought about visiting the Nubians’ camp – or should I say the site where the Nubians had been camped – and finding it deserted. ‘I never saw Khensa again. Is that why she left Siwa?’
‘The Nubians were dispatched on a mission – again, by your father. They were assigned the task of tracking down Menna and his men and stopping them once and for all. According to Rabiah, Khensa has grown to become the leader of this mission, and though she has wreaked havoc on his gang her task remains uncompleted. Menna and some of his lieutenants remain at large.’
‘And this is what Rabiah thinks the message was about?’ I asked.
I couldn’t see her, but I felt Aya pull a face. ‘Well, that’s what she said, yes.’
‘You’re not so sure?’
‘No, not really. Maybe Rabiah has us just where she wants us.’
‘She wants us to pick up a stray and sit in the desert without a clue what to do?’
‘That’s not strictly true, though, is it? We do know what to do, because that’s another piece of information you missed out on by doing your moonlight flit. Rabiah suggests we go to Thebes, find Khensa and enlist her help.’
‘You’ll excuse me if I don’t find the prospect of doing Rabiah’s bidding too enticing. It hasn’t really worked out for me so far.’
‘Do you really think that?’ she said.
I considered for a moment. ‘No,’ I admitted, ‘maybe not. I guess it was her idea for you to follow me, after all.’
‘Then we eat, we sleep, and tomorrow we set off for Thebes,’ she said.
‘It is at least a plan of action,’ I said, ‘but our problem is that we know nothing about Thebes. Look what happened when I went into Zawty with that particular philosophy.’
‘That’s where I can help you, sir,’ said Tuta. We had not heard him approach but now he stood before us. Behind him the fire blazed, dancing orange flames mirroring the coppery rising sun.
‘You know Thebes?’ said Aya. I could tell she was reassessing him in light of everything I’d told her.
‘It’s where my mother and sister live,’ he said, and had the decency to throw me a sheepish look at the same time.
‘So there really is a mother and sister, is there?’ I asked.
‘What I told you was partly true,’ said Tuta. ‘We did live in Thebes. It’s where I spent the first ten summers of my life and I loved it there, but my father made some powerful enemies and we had to leave for Zawty. He used to beat my mother just as regularly and painfully as he beat my sister and me. I bet you can imagine, too, can’t you, sir, that he drank a lot too.’
‘Can’t say I’m surprised about that,’ I told him.
‘Our house did indeed burn down, sir. Father knocked over a lantern while drunk, and it was the last straw for my mother, who took my sister with her back to Thebes.’
‘And you?’
Tuta’s reply was a rueful smile. ‘Loyalty, I suppose, sir,’ he said.
‘You can come with us to Thebes, Tuta,’ said Aya. ‘We’ll be glad to have you as a travelling companion. You can prove your worth when we get there.’
‘I will, my lady.’
We cooked the fish and then slept, Aya and I curled up together on the sand, Tuta not far away, until the heat of the sun woke us and, tired as we still were, we set off for Thebes. On my mind were the messenger’s last words.
What had he meant? What was The Order?
17
‘The Order is supposed to think us outdated and redundant, of no threat,’ raged Sabu. ‘What has happened, Hemon?’
The old man pursed his lips, furious. There was a time he would have shouted right back at Sabu, but though Hemon was still imposing, muscle had become sinew, age had dulled him, and shouting matches no longer held much appeal for him. ‘Possibly this is what we need to find out,’ said the old man instead.
‘Our master thanks you for the efforts you have made on our behalf,’ said Sabestet, placing a cupful of hot carob in front of Sabu, who had to fight hard to contain a wave of irritation.
Sabu hadn’t known Emsaf well, but Emsaf was one of his kind, and though they had no contact during the present, their pasts were linked, their futures inextricably entwined. Sabu had always believed that one day they would fight side by side in order to restore Egypt to its old ways, its right ways.
Funny, how an ironclad certainty could be so easily obliterated.
‘How were they killed?’ he had asked.
‘Stabbed, so they say.’ Not that the new owners had seen the bodies, of course. ‘We had nothing to do with their deaths, you understand.’
‘I understand.’ The man and his wife were clearly nervous. Sabu had spent his life in Siwa protecting people like this, and he despised being the cause of their trepidation. He hated himself for being its envoy. But his smiles did little to put them at their ease. His only option was to learn what he needed to learn then leave them in peace as quickly as possible.
‘There was no body of a man found?’ he asked, thinking of Emsaf.
There was not, he was assured.
‘And what of the family’s belongings?’
Most had been buried with them, as was tradition. They had set aside the rest, they said, nothing of much use but still. Just in case a friend or relative should come, and they were happy to give him the pack with the possessions, for him to look through.
He did.
There was no medallion. Creative questioning also confirmed that none had been buried with mother and child.
And so he had left, taking the route back to Hemon’s home at Djerty, barely stopping until he saw the town appear in the distance. Rising from its centre was the granite pillar of the Pharaoh Userkaf. Not far away was a temple to the falcon god Monthu, the war-god who, when enraged, appeared as a white bull with a black face.