Prologue
London, 1534
"Out of my way!" Roger Arterton, messenger and soldier of the king's court, shouldered people aside as he ran through the crowded London street. That he could speak at all was a miracle to him; his chest was tight with terror, and he clutched at the satchel over his shoulder with a death grip. He couldn't hear it above the din of the streets, but he knew the hooded man was still in hot pursuit on the roofs above. A braver man might draw his sword and try to take on his pursuer, but Arterton knew he couldn't possibly win, judging by the speed with which the obviously hostile stranger had dispatched Arterton's armed escorts. He tripped over a dog and paused long enough to curse it as he scrambled to his feet. In those few seconds he happened to glance up towards the rooftops; to his horror, the hooded stranger was almost directly above him, effortlessly leaping from balcony to buttress as he chased down the fleeing messenger. Even at this distance, Arterton could see the sword that hung at his hunter's side, and the sight of it induced yet more horror in the already terrified Englishman. He resumed his frantic sprint, perhaps faster than before. He ignored the indignant curses of the people he knocked aside, hearing only his own terrified breathing and the hammering of his heart.
Was it only minutes ago that the thing in white – no human could move like that – had dropped down from above and slaughtered the soldiers protecting Arterton without even drawing a sword? His mind could still vividly picture the crimson spray of blood that fountained into the air as each of his guards fell, though the killer had no obvious weapon drawn – a wrist-mounted blade, perhaps? He heard the screams of agony that were abruptly cut off as the man emitting them fell dead on the ground. With the strange clarity that comes in such moments, he realized that none of the five guards had even managed to draw their weapons before being struck down; one had gotten the blade halfway out of its sheath before two swipes of the attacker's hands had left great bloody gashes across his throat. He was lucky to be alive, lucky that one of the soldiers had yet lived after the lightning attack and reached for his sword. Had the scraping noise of the blade's metal on the hard leather sheath not distracted the killer from his slow advance on the petrified messenger, Arterton would likely be dead. Even so, his luck probably wasn't going to hold out much longer. Despite himself, he saw in his mind's eye the inhumanly graceful movements with which his pursuer traversed the makeshift highway above. He saw the booted feet dance lightly from one improvised stepping stone to the next, coming ever closer to the end of Roger Arterton.
"Out of my way, damn you!" he roared as he continued his desperate sprint. Where were the guards? Where were all the damn soldiers who were supposed to be patrolling the streets? Why wasn't anyone doing anything? Then again, what could anyone do against so deadly a foe? Arterton backhanded a man out of his way and skidded around a corner. In his haste to escape, he didn't realize the alley was a dead end – oh, what an ominous phrase – until he nearly ran into the wall that blocked his path. "Ohgodohgodohgod," he muttered as he frantically searched the walls on either side for a door, a window – anything that could give him a way out. A shadow fell on him, and he looked up into the sky. His heart leapt into his throat as he saw the silhouette of his pursuer standing on a beam high above. "Oh God, no," Arterton whispered. The hooded man set one foot back, then leapt into the air. Arterton screamed as he realized the man was going to land right on him. He continued screaming as he saw the sun glint off steel that seemed to come from the killer's arm. He continued screaming right until nearly a foot of forged metal penetrated his skull as the weight of his murderer drove his body to the ground.
Minutes later, when a patrol of soldiers was finally drawn to the area by the cries of the crowd, they found a body that had been rearranged to imitate a peaceful slumber – with the exception of a hole in its forehead and the pool of blood around it. Not having been aware of its presence, none of the guards noticed that the body was missing a satchel containing documents the king himself treasured almost as much as his own life. None of them knew the importance of those documents as weapons in a dark war that had been waged since well before they were more than twinkles in their mothers' eyes, a secret war concerning the very fate of the human race – a war of knights and Assassins.