I'll continue my other story soon,but this little thing wouldn't leave my head.

He felt good. Not only good, great! His first mission completed! And it had been a complete success! He'd swept in from the roof, dove down like a hawk and pulled his target down with him. A clean cut to his neck and the deed was done. His target wasted his final moments cursing at him before dying with a wet rattling groan. He'd been slightly grossed out at the messy end of another human's life, and had fled the scene through the same window he'd used to enter.

Only one guard was after him. It was his target's only personal guard. He would be easy to outrun him. Easy to hide, sneak back to the bureau and claim victory. He thought about what he would say to his friends back in Masyaf and felt new energy flood through his body. This was a great day. 'Just run!', he told himself, run, jump, roll, get up, run further without losing any speed. This was how accomplishment felt like! He smiled thinking about all the other missions he would take and how often he would get to feel like this.

Then he fell. He'd calculated a jump wrong. When he braced himself for the landing he lost balance, slipped and crashed through some wooden scaffolding and landed unable to lessen the force of the impact. He had to bite into his leather covered hand to muffle his scream. His foot was bended in an odd way and it was unclear whether it was sprained or broken. Breathing fast he took the foot with both his hands and with a sickening crunch set it back into place. The pain made his eyes tear up, but he could hear the guard on the roof above him. A shiver run down his spine and his eyes widened. He got up as fast as possible and started hobbling away.

Running was incredibly painful but still necessary. The private guard had alerted two others and now they were running after him down in the streets. 'Stupid. Stupid!', he thought to himself. The guard had seen his red sash when he'd bolted from the scaffolding. He stumbled for a second and gritted his teeth at the wave of pain that shot up his spine. Somewhere in his head the word bureau separated itself from the storm that filled his head and knotted his stomach.

'Bureau! Bureau!', he kept telling himself. The pain grew stronger, his vision started to become blurry at the edges and the world around him zoomed in and out of focus. Suddenly white hot pain surged through his left side. He fell to the ground. At first he didn't comprehend what had happened. Then he felt something warm and wet coating his side and seeping into his tunic and breeches. When he touched his side and brought it up to his eyes his fingers glistened red in the bright sunlight. He'd disregarded the archers.

He tried to get up, but moments later four guards were upon him. One leaned closer and dug his fingers into his hair. The guard had rotten teeth and foul breath reeked from what could be called a mouth. " Well, well, ", he said "thought you were faster than we, didn't ya? Thought you could outrun us and get back to your hole to your other friends didn't ya?" The other guards barked with laughter. By now he had tears in his eyes. He thought of the doctors in Masyaf of his bed in the barracks and his friends. By now tears were spilling freely and his nose was running. He wanted to be back home, back in Masyaf. Safe! Away from these men. "Aww, are we crying right now? Does it hurt? ", the guard chirped. Then he let go of the journeyman's hair and kicked him in the stomach. "That should hurt!", he spat. The journeyman curled up on himself, face sinking halfway into the dirt. The guards started laughing again.

He winced and started to shiver. 'I trained so hard!', he thought and remembered the fights in the training ring. 'I was always the best at freerunning! But I did good, right? I finished the mission!' Far away he could hear footsteps. 'My target is dead, I finished the mission!' The remaining guard held a knife to his throat. 'I did good! Malik! Al Mualim! Mom! I did good! I did good!'

'Right?'

Malik looked through the lattice of the bureau into the dark night sky. He sighed quietly, took out a piece of parchment, dipped his feather into the ink and started to write.

'Target assassinated, casualties: 1'

He attached the note to one of the messenger pigeons and sent it on its way. Then he closed the lattice, blew out the oil lamps and prepared for the night.

While learning fro my final history exam, I thought of the people who died during their first battles. This is kind of how this story came to be. I don't think that the assassin order would spend a lot of time on their fallen brothers. Especially not low ranked ones.