DISCLAIMER: I do not own Assassin's creed or it's characters. I do not own Selah, she belongs to The-Stupidest-Author-Ever.
A/N: thank you The-Stupidest-Author-Ever for beta reading this chapter for me.
Chapter One
Kanatahsehton 1760
I looked through the book that I had found in the longhouse. It was quite interesting. Suddenly, as I was reading, I heard footsteps behind him and immediately dropped the book and slid it under the table I was standing by with my foot. I turned around and saw my mother, Kaniehtí:io, walking towards me.
"Good morning, Mother." I said respectfully, hoping she hadn't seen the book, and more fervently hoping that she didn't put me to work for reading said book. Mother looked at me suspiciously.
"Hmmm… and what are you up to in here?" she asked.
"Nothing, I was… uh… I was only-" I said quickly before getting saved by one of my friends, Kanen'tó:kon.
"Ratonhnhaké:ton, come play with us!" he said, drawing Mother's attention away from me. "The others have gone hunting and the rest of us are bored."
I looked at Mother pleadingly, silently asking to go. She barely nodded in return and I walked out of the longhouse, not quite believing my luck. I should have known the spirits would ask for something in return.
"Go. But do not venture beyond the valley" Mother's voice warned as I joined Kanen'tó:kon.
We ran and caught up with the other children of the village. We all ran through the village without a care in the world. I listened as some of the elders complained about the ruckus we made or warned us not to venture to far away from the village. We arrived at our favorite meeting spot and tried to determine what game we would play now that we were out here.
"We could play tag." I suggested.
"No, you're too fast for the rest of us, Ratonhnhaké:ton." Kanen'tó:kon complained. "How about tackle the elk?"
"No, I got kicked in the head the last time we played that." Teiowí:sonte complained. "We could play Hide and Seek."
Everyone agreed to that and so Kanen'tó:kon picked up the set of sticks we used for picking who was it. He held the bundle out to each of us and we all took a stick. After comparing the sticks we found that Kahionhaténion, Teiowí:sonte's brother, was it for the first round. We all scattered as Kahionhaténion started to count to one hundred.
I hid in the bushes near a rock out cropping. I must've stepped in some wet dirt because Kahionhaténion found me in only a minute or two. I followed him around and tried to help him find the others. By the end of the game I had found two out of the five other hiders.
Most of us wanted to play another game and so Kanen'tó:kon picked up the sticks again. When all of the sticks were passed out the loser was me. So I turned and started to count to one hundred while all of the others scurried off.
"Enska, tékeni, áhsen, kaié:ri…" I counted with my eyes closed.
When I had reached "énska tewen'niáwe" I turned around and saw no signs of my friends. What I did see was a crushed leaf and a small indent left from a boot pointed in the direction I was facing. I walked a little further and noticed a bunch of bushes had been trampled. I followed them and found Kanen'tó:kon, crouching at the base of a cliff.
"You're too good at this." He complained. "Is there any game in which you don't completely oust us?"
After that it was relatively easy to find Kahionhaténion and Teiowí:sonte as they had chosen to hide right next to each other and were quietly arguing about which one of them would have to move.
"This is your fault." Teiowí:sonte scolded his brother as we went in search of the remaining three hiders.
"My fault? You were the one who hid right next to me." Kahionhaténion complained.
"Quiet!" I said "I'm listening." I knelt close to the ground, trying to hear the rustling of leaves I had thought I heard. Nothing. I eventually found two of the others but had to call out in the end.
"You win. Come on out." I raised my hands to my face to amplify the sound. Suddenly Atasá:ta jumped down from the trees.
"Ha-ha I win." He said laughing. "Let's play again!"
We all ran to the bundle of sticks and divvied them out one last time. This time Kanen'tó:kon was it. I ran over to a pile of leaves that was about as tall as me, taking care not to step in anything this time, and leapt in. In my hiding spot I could see and hear quite well. I watched for Kanen'tó:kon waiting to see my friend. But it wasn't my friend who found me. As I was watching for Kanen'tó:kon I heard a snap of twigs under foot and was then roughly drug from out of my hiding place and thrown to the ground a few feet away.
It was several of the coated white men who had been invading our lands, according to Mother. I quickly looked around at the six men and one woman. Each person wore something different. One wore a sickly green and brown coat, another, brown and white. One of the men wore the blue coat of the invaders that my mother had described. One of them wore a large red coat along with a chief shawl. Why would he wear one of those? One wore one of those strange triangular that the strange men favored. He wore nothing but various shades of blue. The final man wore a large black coat. It was so black it reminded me of the eyes of a rabbit I had caught not two days before. The woman wore a white coat that included a hood like what our shadow warriors would wear.
"What have we here?" asked the man wearing green and brown. He spoke not in my language but in the language of the invaders. Mother had taught me some of it, but I still had to struggle to understand it. The coat man was holding a long hollow stick to my face as he asked this.
"Church," The woman said sternly "we are here to help them not harm them." While they were talking I got up and tried to run away from them, only for the black one to tackle me to the ground.
"Try not to do that again little one. Some of them there wouldn't hesitate to kill you." He said as he got off of me. But it sounded weird; I had trouble putting the words to the correct translation. The man turned to the blue one who had yet to even look at me fully.
"Grandmaster, do you think this wise?" he asked in his strange way. "What's the likelihood of a mere child knowing anything about what we're looking for?" The brown and white one came over to where I was lying and leaned down to look at me.
"You look… familiar." He said. "Where have I seen you before?" Instead of answering him I spit some blood from where I had bitten my lip when the black one had tackled me to the ground in his face.
"That wasn't very nice." He sneered, wiping the blood off of his chin with his sleeve. Suddenly he grabbed my arm and started to drag me across the ground.
"Let me go!" I yelled in their tongue. Some of the men laughed. The black one looked like he didn't care, neither did the blue one. The woman looked a mix between furious and scared.
"Ha, look at that, 'e knows English." The one dressed like the invaders said. "Smart for a savage don' ya think" The one dragging me laughed at that, then hoisted me up to where I was several feet off of the ground.
"He's spirited too." He said as he held me against the trunk of a tree in a strangle hold. "Now, we have questions for you elders. Just tell us where you village is and we'll let you go."
Why would they want to talk with the elders? I could only think of forcing us to move off of our land and I wasn't going to help them make that happen. The red one came over to us and looked at me sadly.
"Best tell him where it is, boy. It's not worth your life." He said. I was starting to struggle to breathe has the brown and white man held my neck firmly, but maybe that was the point. My eyes flicked pleadingly over to the others. The woman started forward, only to be stopped by the black man.
"Let me handle this." I thought I heard him say quietly. He then walked over to the blue man, who had his back turned to us and looked as if he was just enjoying the scenery. The balck man spoke to him quietly.
"I could snap you neck you know." the brown and white man said, drawing my attention once again. "Just a little more pressure and-pop!-the sad little flame of your life extinguished. You are a nothing-a speck of dust. You and all your ilk. Living in the dirt like animals, oblivious to the true ways of the world. The wiser among you recognize the shape of the future. They throw themselves at our feet and BEG mercy."
By this point I was nearly unconscious, gasping for breath that would not come through the man's hold. The man continued, uncaring of my suffering.
"But not you, it seems. No, you cling desperately to your ways, too ignorant to know your folly." He said tightening his grip on my neck.
"That is enough, Charles!" The blue one said, dragging the brown and white man's arm away from my neck. This, in turn, caused the man to let go entirely, allowing me to drop to the ground and breathe again. I gasped, trying desperately to get air into my lungs. "We cannot help them if they are all dead, and killing the only one we have found will not help us help them."
He squatted down to where I was still gasping. As I looked at him his eyes widened.
"Ziio? No it cannot be," He said, shocked. He got up and turned to the others. "We need to find the village now. He is a child meaning they would not have let him wander far." At this point I fell unconscious, strained from lack of air.
"Shay, watch him and make sure he stays safe." That was the last thing I heard the blue man say before I went into the realm of dreams.
When I woke up I didn't see the men or the woman anywhere. What I did see, however, was lots of smoke. The air was thick with it. I got up, coughing. I knew what it was, a forest fire. I needed to get to the village, the fire had to be nearby and I needed to find the clan and warn them if they didn't already know. I ran. But as I approached the village I saw that it was not a forest fire but in fact the village itself was on fire.
"No!" I yelled, running faster now.
The air was filled with black smoke that made hard to breathe and see. I ran through the front entrance and looked around for Mother. I saw many people helping the wounded and the crippled but I did not see my mother.
"Mother?" I called out in our language. I passed the helpers and asked. "Have you seen my mother?" one of the pointed to one of the burning lodges and I ran in that direction.
As I was running the building started to collapse and a burning tree branch fell in front of me. I ran into the collapsed building and shifted a log so that I could get under it. I saw no sign of my mother. Where was she?
"Mother?" I called out. "Where are you?"
I ran through the longhouse remains and avoided several burning poles that had fallen down. At one point another lodge had exploded outward with the splinters nearly hitting me. I finally saw my family's longhouse and through the cracks in the boards I saw the back of my mother. I ran to her and pounded on the wood.
"Mother!" I yelled
"In here… Ratonhnhaké:ton." She yelled at me, coughing. I saw she was trapped under several poles which were slowly lighting on fire.
"I'm coming." I yelled. I ran around the lodge, praying to every spirit I knew that I would be able to save her. As I ran I noticed that the fire was getting larger, and drawing closer, but kept going.
As I ran around the building, the wall collapsed, narrowly missing me. I ran into the lodge and saw my mother buried under a pile of wood.
"Help us!" I yelled, praying that someone could hear me. I ran to Mother and tried to lift the logs off of her. "I'm here. I'm here. It's going to be fine!"
"No, Ratonhnhaké:ton, you must leave, now!" she said firmly, struggling to escape..
"No, not without you!" I screamed
"It's too late for that!" she yelled back. She reached through the logs and grabbed my hand. "You must be strong, Ratonhnhaké:ton. You must be brave." Even then I knew what those words meant.
"Stop it. Stop it!" I begged "I can get you out of here."
"You will think yourself alone. But know, I will be at your side, always and forever." She said sadly. Then she looked behind me. "Get him out of here!" That time she wasn't speaking our language she was speaking the invader's language. I turned around and saw the black man from the forest.
"Help me!" I begged him. "Help me save my mother."
"You can't save her, child. Can't you feel the heat?" he asked. Seeing that he wasn't going to help I turned back around and continued to try and lift the logs. He grabbed me around the stomach and hauled me away from Mother.
"No! Stop! Let me Save her!" I yelled at him. The entire longhouse collapsed then and I stopped using his language. "Ista!"
"I love you" I heard her say. The man carried me out of the burning village and away from my people.
"Where are you taking me? Let me go." I yelled
"I can't do that." He replied quietly "Haytham told me to keep you safe. So I'm taking you to the manor."
I kept struggling until he threatened to put me out until we got there. I stopped as I didn't know what he meant. He carried me for several hours then he stopped and set me down.
"Alright, we're here." He said. By "here" he meant at a giant stone longhouse.
"This is Kenway Manor, previously the Davenport Manor." The black man said as he walked up to the door of the building.
I followed him in and he found me a chair and set it up in the middle of a room off to the left. I sat in the chair, ready to spring out of it at a moment's notice.
"Wait there while I figure out what to do with you." The man said. He then walked out of the room, pinching the bridge of his nose. It took less than five minutes for him to return. In which time I had already checked all of the holes in the walls to see if I could get through them.
"Alright then, I suppose we'll just wait for the grandmaster." The man decided after finding a chair of his own.
We waited for half an hour. Neither of us said anything. I was trying to find a way to get out of there. And the man, he was watching me. When the others arrived I honestly couldn't tell which of us was more relieved. The man got up and talked to the blue man. The blue one nodded and came towards me.
"What is your name?" he asked me.
"Ratonhnhaké:ton." I spat. "Now let me go return to my village." He looked at me, confused as I wasn't speaking his language.
"What?" he asked.
"My name is Ratonhnhaké:ton." I repeated, this time in his language. "Now let me go."
"I cannot do that I'm afraid." He said. "Your mother is dead and your village burned to the ground."
"Because of you!" I screamed at him. "you set fire to my village and now you won't let me go back to it!" the man sighed.
"My name is Haytham Kenway. I plan to take care of you." He said. "it will be easier if you know what is going on so I will tell you. Me and my colleagues were trying to save your village, not burn it to the ground. The blame for that atrocity belongs to General Washington. I met your mother several years ago and I helped her get rid of a man named Braddock. He was capturing your people and enslaving them. I put a stop to it."
I glared at him, wishing my mother hadn't told me the stories of my father.
"I see that you are starting to understand. Good. I will take care of you and train you in the ways of my organization. After that you will be free to leave as you see fit. Until that time I would like it if you stayed here with me." The man said.
I slowly nodded. I wouldn't be a burden to the village. Without Mother I would not have anyone to look after me and others would have to provide for me and I would not be of assistance until I was fifteen at least. The man could keep me until then then I could return to the village to help them in any way.
"Good." The man said. He turned to the assembled mass of people and waved his hand. They all came into the room. "Gentlemen," he nodded at the woman from before. "my dear, this is my son. He will be staying with us for the time being, that said, he should probably know our names."
The black man nodded. "My name is Shay Cormac, pleased to make your acquaintance."
The red man inclined his head. "William Johnson, good to see you alive, child."
The woman stepped forward. "My name is Selah."
The brown and green man held his hands behind his back. "Benjamin Church
The invader tipped his hat downward. "My name is Thomas Hickey, at your service."
The brown and white one grimaced and nodded. "Charles Lee." Finally Haytham turned back to me.
"Now that we are all acquainted let us get on with our business." He said "There is a room up the stairs and to the left that you can use. Shay, goodnight."
Nine years later
I awoke from the dream that had haunted me since that night. The night that my mother had died. Haytham had raised me from then on. And Shay had trained me. I knew how to disappear into a crowd, how to kill from afar, among other things. I had still retained what I had learned in my village and knew how to track and hunt.
I had survived and now I would be joining Haytham and his colleagues in their work for that day was the day I found out who to kill to avenge the burning of my village and the murder of my mother.