Chapter Two: I See Blades
It was when he opened his eyes that he realized he had fallen asleep. Nina was walking around, her feet silent against the wooden floor. He sits up, arms limp against his straight legs. There was the faintest pull of his burnt skin against the gauze and he readied himself for the pain but felt nothing.
"Sleep well?" Nina asks.
He swings his legs over the bed and rests his feet on the ground. It's cold, but the wool socks ease the chill. He doesn't stand yet, just stares past her out at the sunny, snowy scenery through the one window above the sink.
He can hear Achilles' voice in the distance, yelling at Connor to chop more wood to keep the Davenport Mansion warm.
The mansion was nowhere near. At least three hundred or so miles to the small village on the coast of Massachusetts from where he currently was in upstate New York.
Well, at least he remembered where he was. What he was doing there, was another question on its own.
"It was fine," he replies. Slowly, he stands and while his knees are weak and his ankles threaten to buckle, he takes easy steps across to the kitchenette. He drinks from the bucket of melted snow, her eyes on him.
"Good to hear," she comments and walks over to the door to slip her feet into her boots and shoulder her jacket. "I'm going to check some traps. The road has about two feet of snow. Won't be able to shovel out my truck until it gets a little warmer."
He looks at her, looks at the second pair of boots. They must be his.
"Can I join?" he asks and she hesitates.
"Only one jacket."
It was a fair enough reasoning. He would just be useless weight, anyways. He was weak and only had one good arm – and it wasn't his dominant arm, either.
He nods and goes to sit back on the bed, legs crossed under him.
"There's a couple books if you get bored," she mentions, motioning toward the stack as she wraps a scarf around her neck. "Oh, and this."
She picks up a strange leather brace from on top of the table and hands it to him.
"It was strapped to your left arm when you found me. Don't know what it is, but I figured it'd jog your memory."
When he takes it from her, there's a connection and each are shocked by the strange electricity. Nina pulls away quickly.
She says nothing more and quickly leaves the cabin.
He spins the brace in his hands, feels the worn leather and touches the metal sheath. Near the edge of stitching, are two letters pressed into the material.
DM
There's the smallest button on the inside of the brace, built into the sheath. A blade, with small flecks of dried blood still on the tip, shoots out. As soon as his finger is taken off the button, the blade slides back in.
He does this over and over again, listening to the shink of the metal as it slides in and out, in and out.
It's familiar, comforting almost. Like the touch of a close friend after a bad day.
This is your gauntlet, son. You will learn how to use it and you will never take it off.
Assassins were born by the blade and killed by the blade.
He could remember watching his uncle cut the umbilical cord of his cousin with his own blade. And he could remember the last Master, gone mad from Templar poison and begging for the mercy of death. He wasn't even thirteen and he'd already seen a complete life cycle.
Things came rushing back to him, but he couldn't distinguish his own memories from the men he heard in his head. He couldn't piece together what went where. He couldn't piece together correct time lines. Did he die before he was born? Did he answer questions before they were ever asked?
He knew Nina. Or, at least, he once knew Nina. Maybe not even this Nina, although it wasn't a very common name. And while her rigid hazel eyes didn't match the ones he saw in his memory, the ones tear filled and narrowed in anger – there were similarities.
He knew the Farm, knew the people that he once called family. The training, more rigorous than that of Army Ranger boot camp. He could remember what caused the scar that slashed across his upper and lower lips. He could remember the crazy winter storms and the constant craving of warmth as he stayed close to his mother and cousins while his father ran around, making sure everyone in the compound was safe.
He could remember his hatred for the blade.
You will never take it off.
How wrong he man had been. He did take it off. Why and when and how, he wasn't sure. That piece hadn't been sewed back into place yet.
Yet he felt bare without the leather rubbing his skin. Yet he yearned to feel the sensation of warm life's blood rushing down his wrist as his blade struck through the atoms that made up his enemy's body.
He pulled back, body seizing as he watched a shadow pass over him. It was still outside of the cabin. It didn't feel right. He looked back down at the brace.
He didn't feel right without it on, even if he couldn't remember why.
He slipped on the brace, tightened the leather straps until it felt snug and would not slide off. His wrist pressed against the button as he pulled his hand back and the blade unsheathed away from the brace. As he relaxed his hand back down, it disappeared.
Standing, slowly, he shuffled his feet to the door. It took him a few minutes to gather his boots and walk over to the chair in order to pulled them over his socks and lace them up. He didn't see the shadow again, but the unease did not falter. Once the last lace was knotted, he grabbed the throw blanket off the recliner and shuffled his feet out of the cabin.
The snow was to his knees, but soft and fluffy and gave way easy enough. It clumped on his jeans and slowly soaked through, chilling him to the bone, but he did a full perimeter check of the cabin. There was a bird resting on a nearby tree branch, cleaning its feathers.
Crunch
He turns as quickly as he can, wrist moving and the blade flicks outward. Nothing. He could see where he had broken through the snow, leaving almost a perfect circle around the cabin.
The trees were covered in a thick layer of soft snow, and while the sun felt warm on his pink cheeks, the wind chill was enough to make his eyes burn.
The top. Be high. See the area. See your enemies.
He shuffled toward the nearest large tree, an oak that was well over two hundred years old.
Amazing how something so large could have started out as an acorn a squirrel buried and forgot about.
Dropping the blanket around from his shoulders, he climbed the heavy trunk, stopping every few branches to catch his breath. It was almost like an automatic response, like he was on autopilot. He knew exactly where to put each foot and each hand. He knew where to grab and where to push and when a limb gave the ever smallest give, he changed his position to a stronger branch and continued. Soon he was at the top, out of breath and the bandages on his right arm torn, but he could see the tops of the tallest trees and the cabin look as a speck under him.
Nina's trail through the snow could be seen.
It light up as bright gold path, her footsteps marked in his mind. The rest of the world around him was a mixture of dark gray and blue. There were a few figures lit up white, but the animals were skittish once his feet hit the ground again.
One of his knees gave and he had to catch himself from going down into the snow. He'd never get back up then.
It took him a few minutes, but when he finally had the blanket back around his shoulders and his knees were willing to work again, he took off down the golden-lit path of Nina's footsteps. They curved down a hill and followed along the bank of a creek, barely a meter and a half wide and a half meter deep.
He found the shortest distance from his side to the other, found a sturdy rock to use as a step that wouldn't give underneath him, and moved across to the other side.
That's when he saw the other tracks.
They were marked in the faintest of a pink glow, and the closer they got to Nina's gold path, the darker the pink got until it was a blood red.
Too big to be a fox or a stray dog.
Wolf.
The deep stern voice spoke to him, and the unnatural sense of tracking animals could be explained to that one extra voice that spoke when he did.
He walked quickly but with light steps, not wanting to attract more of the pack. Where there was one, there was two or three more. One distracted while the rest came up behind for a quick and easy kill. Nina would be like a rabbit, falling right into their trap.
At the top of the hill that he climbed, quicker than usual thanks to Nina's trail breaking through the deep snow, he could see where Nina's gold trail finished and her golden body shined. The tracks cut off to the side but he could still see the wolf coming around the back, and another three banking around to the other side.
Nina was kneeled over a trap, loosening the cogs to free a dead squirrel.
He couldn't yell, then that would make them just rush her and there'd be no time to stop them. He continued on the trail she had, sticking as low as he could. The blanket, while warm, limited his movement and he dropped it near the top of the hill. He knew if he flicked his wrist the sound of the blade would alert the wolves and it would futile. He would have to wait until the right moment.
Nina stood, hooked the squirrel onto a latch on her belt where two others hung, and turned. She saw the wolf first, and froze. It crept closer, and its ears fell back on his head as his lips pulled back into a low growl.
Nina's knees bent, her body dropping and to make herself look bigger. She felt her hunting knife in her right hand, her own growl vibrating in her throat. She saw him, crouching in the deep snow and moving as quickly as he could.
Their red figures stood out against the white and gray-blue world, but not as bright as her white-gold form.
The wolf pounced, and Nina ducked, catching its back legs to flip it, sending it meters away and whimpering in the snow. The other three jumped to its rescue, one going straight at Nina while the others barked and snapped at him.
He took off, no longer worried about staying unseen.
One of them went running towards him, and as it leaped for a throat shot, his wrist flicked and the blade slid out the sheath, ringing in the air, and his hand came around to meet the wolf's neck. It met with a crunch and a slick entry wound. He watched the light go out and continued the rest of the cycle, catching the wolf to let it lie on the snow and not plop sickeningly.
The cycle shall now begin again.
He had to shake it out of his head and focus on Nina. She had two wolves on her now, and she wasn't letting them get behind her. The third went after him, trying to grab the opening it saw but he bypassed it, and when the wolf went past him, he dug the blade into its throat as well. It crumbled near the other.
Nina cursed loudly as a pair of jaws latched onto her arm and didn't let go. The bone was surely broken, especially with the amount of force the wolf had in its jaw. She didn't fight it, knowing it would only make it worse.
She would rather keep her arm than lose it.
With one firm swing, Nina embedded her hunting knife into the eye of the wolf. It yelped as it released her arm, jumping back and twitching around, trying to now see with only one eye. He took it out with a deep stab to the spine, and it collapsed into the snow.
The fight was evident in the snow, between his quick steps and the wolves' tracks that would soon be covered with the next blizzard.
As the last wolf attacked Nina, John stepped in front of her, his left arm held up. The sharp teeth could be felt through the thick leather of his brace, but Nina stabbed the wolf in the neck, and the wolf's jaw gave away soon enough.
The two stood near each other, their breathes making clouds in the cold around them.
"Glad I left the cabin?" he asks, almost smugly. The situation became lighter in the thick air.
Nina exhaled sharply, a smile ghosting on her lips, but it turned into a grimace as the cold began to hit her injured skin.
"C'mon. I need to clean this and get it bandaged," Nina says, drawing her left arm close against her chest and keeping pressure on the wound. He bends down to pick up her blood soaked knife and holds it tight, just in case more wolves are around.
"Lead the way," he says, taking up the rear of the two as they make their way back through the snow.
His vision returns to the gray blue it had been, Nina's form now a bright white instead of gold. The wolves once red forms now lay a dull gray like they are a part of the surrounding environment. He picks up the blanket from the snow and places it around Nina's shoulders.
She looks at him with momentarily surprise before they continue on. Once at the small creek, Nina kneels and dunks her arm into the cold water. He watches her, watches the grimace cover her face and the pain flash in her eyes, before the skin grows numb and the pink water continues to slowly flow away. After half a minute, Nina pulls her arm out of the water and looks at the now-pale skin.
The blood flow has slowed, but it still trickles into the snow. She uses the blanket to apply pressure and they linger on.
Back in the cabin, Nina goes about disinfecting her bite wound, while he walks around the cabin, keeping eyes to the woods. His right arm tingles suddenly, and he turns at the sound of the wind blowing particularly hard.
A woman, dressed in a strange pale-blue garb stands in the shade of a tree. The same oak tree he had climbed before finding Nina.
His right hand fists, and his left arm tenses, ready to unsheathe the blade in his brace, but she's gone in a small cyclone of snow flurries.
When he takes shelter in the cabin as well, John finds Nina laying on the small bed, propped against the wall with the first aid kit sitting near her legs and her left arm thickly bandaged and eyes closed. There is no blood showing through the dressing, so he does not worry about waking her up.
John sits in the recliner and inspects his leather brace. There are teeth marks pressed into the material, but it did not puncture.
His eyes raise up and settle on the almost smothered fire. He throws two logs in and it gradually builds back up.
With a flick of his wrist, the blade extends once again, and he wipes the flaking blood from it on the leg of his pants.
