Author's Note: I apologize for the delay of this chapter, but halfway through writing it I changed my mind about something and had to start over. Hopefully the extra length will make up for it.
Assassin's Creed: Raptor's Bane
Chapter 9
Templars. The word rang sourly in Altair's ears, the instinctive bloodlust already rising in him. The knights' personal vendetta against the Assassins was common knowledge, a hatred for the name practically bred into each brother at novicehood. They were a despised nemesis, a dangerous one never to be underestimated.
His eagle fluttered distraught feathers against the blinding anger, and the Assassin paused, realizing that he was torn. Considering what Isam said was true, something already doubtful given the fact he had betrayed the Brotherhood, there was no way of knowing if the information was a trap in itself; bait to lure him away from the Bureau.
"How are you so sure of this?" Altair asked carefully, eying the novice who was still cowering by the fountain.
"A letter," Isam responded promptly, words flowing freely from him now as if he believed confessing all he knew would pardon him from his crime. "Ra'id asked me to deliver a letter to the Knights Teutonic to be passed on to their brothers in Jerusalem. They decided a double ambush would be best after I… after I told them about the pass through the mountains outside Acre, the one known only to those of Masyaf."
Altair's eyes narrowed. The pass, running parallel to a main thoroughfare flanked by two mountains, was hidden in plain sight, just as those who frequented it. It had been a close-guarded secret for many years, a stretch of sanctuary between Bureaus.
Isam's two-facedness, one rivaling even that of the snakes, was finally coming to light, he thought bitterly. To have told the enemy side such furtive information and turn around the next minute to admit what he had done to the other side was evidence of fickleness. He who sided with everyone was sided with by no one. This lack of loyalty had damned him. He would never be allowed to be an Assassin, perhaps would not even be given the chance to be a man.
"You said there would be two ambushes," the Master Assassin continued, sheathing his short blade and watching Isam attentively as the other visibly relaxed. "The false one made up of Ra'id's mercenaries, and the true one of the Templars, correct? But how can that be in such a narrow pass?"
The boy said nothing, perhaps weighing his options. He was quite skilled in hiding truths if nothing else, Altair admitted, he having fooled the Brotherhood of his allegiance for so long. But no man could completely mask guilt, especially when subjected to fear. Altair idly drew one of his throwing knives, eyes slowly ranging over targets he could aim for. A shot to the arm or the leg would not kill him. Isam felt his gaze and tensed, realizing his intentions and backing a step further away from the white-robed one. "I would suggest you answer quickly, boy, I have little patience."
There was a brief, heavily laden silence as the novice shifted minutely, skittishly. "I d-don't know-!" he finally admitted shakily, eyes unable to leave the eagle-motif blade glinting past Altair's fingers. "I honestly don't! The letter assumed that the receiver knew where to station his men. It was more of an affirmation of a plan, it said nothing of the plan itself."
The Assassin's dark eyes bore into Isam's brown ones, seeking signs of deceit. He could read none, only fear and apprehension but with a truthful tinge all the same. Trusting in his ability to sense the hidden signs, he gave a short nod. "Then you are of no more use to me."
The Master Assassin left the Bureau within the hour, trap or no, leaving the novice bound securely behind the desk of the safe house. Though he would have never admitted it to the younger one, he had been loath to actually injure the boy. Despite the fact that Isam was the reason Altair had fallen to Ra'id and his men, the reason Acre's Bureau was now unmanned, he could not help but see him as a brother.
Slightly irked by his own moral weakness, Altair scowled, distracting himself by running his attention over the equipment he had taken with him. Along with his throwing knives, he had tied two of his weapons to either side of his belt, the short dagger where his saber usually hung, and his hidden blade set comfortably against his flank. Though the blade itself was unusable, the embossed metal at its back provided a certain amount of protection. The weapon was still important to him, whether he could wield it properly or not.
Altair moved at a measured pace through the steadily filling streets, his eagle thoroughly weary of this constant flight. He was unsure if he would be able to warn Malik and his brothers before they reached the pass, but he needed to try. Seeking revenge was a suitable penance for failure while trying, but to not even attempt to help could only be absolved with his own death.
He paused as he drew near the northern gates, glancing at the four guards standing attentively before it, sweeping all who passed with a practiced eye. His timing could not be worse, he realized dully. The shift had just changed, relieving the night-wearied guard with fresh soldiers who were actually intent on doing their jobs. Altair ducked into a side street to readjust his plan.
The Assassin began to unwind the sling Malik had tied across his left shoulder, knowing it would attract too much attention. It would be difficult enough passing as a scholar with the blades at his side, much more so if he was a supposed intellectual with an arm injury. He allowed his left to hang rather stiffly at his side, cautiously flexing his fingers. The pain had gentled to an uncomfortable numbness, but he reminded himself that any attempts to use it would aggravate his injury.
Wrapping the extra cloth from the sling around his forearm to mask the browned stain of old blood, Altair began searching for a group to blend into, knowing the white-robed Assassin allies frequented the areas by the gates. It took several minutes of waiting and scanning the crowd, but finally he caught sight of a small collection of about a half-dozen scholars moving serenely past the merchants stocking their stalls for the morning sale.
He slipped into their group as they passed the alley, greeting the non-Assassin brothers with a deep nod. The leader of the scholars, a hoodless elder capped in white, acknowledged his presence with a tilted head and a casual change in direction, heading instead for the walls of the city. Altair ambled along with them, head bowed in a careful mimic, and cautiously tugged the peak of his hood lower over his face to hide the mar Ra'id's gauntlet had left across his cheekbone.
The guards ignored the assembly as it passed and Altair chanced a quick glance at them past his hood. He checked for the faces of the enemy that were still burned into his memory, those faces of the last of the faction who had fled after he had killed Ra'id. However, none of the low set helmets masked any of the men he was searching for, so he moved on with disinterest.
The Assassin gave a quiet word of thanks to his companions once they had left the confines of Acre's walls and left them in the direction of the stables. At his approach, a black stallion at the far edge of the corral flicked its ears and came towards him, prancing in happiness at the return of its master. Altair stroked the horse's muzzle in greeting and went to collect his gear from the nearby stable hand, tossing him the payment for his steed's lodging.
He rode up the shallow rise of the hill that curled about Acre's northern border at a steady canter, his injured arm lying rather uselessly against the saddle horn. As the city disappeared over the lip of the rise behind him, Altair urged his horse into a gallop, knowing the Assassins' most likely route through the pair of mountainous roads lay just beyond Arsuf. The low road that was used only by the Brotherhood passed between tall cliffs, one sheer and the other carved into a second road, the frequented high pass.
Altair found himself searching for Malik's white steed on the path ahead of him as he went along at a swift pace, but quickly shook his head at the foolishness. His brother had left hours before, and had no doubt joined up with the convoy from Masyaf by now. He could only hope that the Templars had not yet assumed their positions when the Assassin had passed. If ever they had, he assured himself. They had likely only been wary of a large group moving in the opposite direction.
There were few other travelers on this path, and the Assassin was able to reach the dissection of roads in the mountain pass without incident. He glanced up at the high road to his left, the path inclining gently upwards on well-worn stone to a rather modest height about the same as a three-storey building. Though there was only a small difference between the two paths, it was this higher one that most took, almost all passersby thinking the lower one haunted by thieves and the danger of rockslides. Altair turned his mount towards this neglected, slightly overgrown road.
Altair had barely passed into the mouth of the valley when he felt eyes upon him, his eagle hackling at the dangerous aura. He remained impassive with his head bowed, discretely tugging on his horse's reigns to slow it to a trot. With his eyes safely shadowed from all else, he darted glances around him, trying to pinpoint the enemy presence. He searched avidly for the familiar and hated bloody red crosses, guessing that the mercenaries' ambush was further in, towards Masyaf, and that the one he could sense now was that on the Templars.
A sharp clatter of stone on his right caught his attention, and his dark gaze fixed upon a small falling rock, dislodged from a high, narrow ledge. It landed with a minute clatter, rolling some distance down the path. The Assassin resisted the urge to look up, instead listening for movement. He caught a shift, a light rustle of a robe and an almost inaudible scrape of a metal boot on stone. No more than five archers, he gauged, hidden in an elevated outcrop to his right, roughly half the height of the high road on the left.
Even his horse could feel the danger now, ears flattening to the side of its head as it snorted a little in distress. Altair carefully kept it steady, flicking his attention to his other side. The knights were growing restless, he guessed, again hearing more movement from an indention in the cliff face some distance ahead of him, narrow but deep enough to conceal at least a half dozen men from anyone passing it from either direction.
The Templars were unused to hiding and waiting, so accustomed to parading through streets in full view and chasing down their enemy with great clamor. This standing still was costing them their cover, easily noticeable even with the sounds of a considerable amount of horses from passing caravans floating down from the higher path. Even had he not learned of their presence from Isam, any Assassin would likely still have been able to sense them.
Altair wondered if they would risk springing their trap on him, would take the chance of alerting the other, larger group from Masyaf of their location in exchange for a lone enemy. He doubted it, but perhaps they were restless enough to try it. It mattered not if they killed him here, so long as his comrades were forewarned of the knights' involvement. This path was the only safe stop along the wearying journey between Masyaf and Acre; the only location Assassins chanced a drop of guard. To protect his brothers, he would need to provoke the enemy into action.
Already hearing Malik reprimand his foolhardiness, the Master Assassin deliberately stopped before the concealed entrance to the Templars' hiding place, hearing a quiet intake of breath from within. He counted three creaking of bowstrings from on high, arrows tightening across the long bows as if to threaten him to stay away. He ignored them, a hand passing slowly over the throwing knife scabbard at his hip. He thumbed over four, noting an additional five still at his boot. More than enough.
The Master Assassin's eyes slid shut, leaving the aim to his more skilled eagle and visualizing the blood red aura of the men upon the cliff behind him. His motion was sharp and calculated, compensating for his injuries with a practiced air now, his movement little more than a twist and a flick of the arm. The single dagger pierced the air in a broken mirage of silver, landing true deep in the arm of one of the enemy. A quiet cry and a misaligned twang of a cord followed, shattering the strained hush. With a gentle tug on his horse's reigns, Altair dodged the misfired arrow, the shaft landing harmlessly on its side below him.
The pause as the shock settled in seemed a comfortable eternity to the Assassin, attention already turned to his next move. As the unspoken command of attack rustled through the archers, resulting in a menacing chorus of loosed bowstrings, the white-robed man dove sideways off his horse, flicking into the shelter of the stones that also concealed the main force of the ambush.
The cleft in the cliff face was partially roofed by a rocky overhang, shading its interior with a light gloom. The first shape Altair encountered was downed before any realized that the eagle was amongst the pigeons. He turned sharply to the left, jerking his short blade from the chest of the enemy's white tunic in an unnecessarily flamboyant arc, splattering the others in blood. His dark eyes adjusted to the twilight-like shade, narrowing as he searched for the startled faces of the accursed Templars, those not hidden by red crossed helmets.
Six pairs of frightened eyes stared back at him from familiar faces, half-masked by the black and silver of Teutonics.
The Assassin took a rather staggered step back, startled. The men before him, Ra'id's last, looked upon him with petrified recognition, some still bearing the injuries he had burdened them with in the warehouse. This was not the ambush, but the false one, the decoy-! The realization confused him, throwing his intentions into disarray.
Some, realizing his off-balanced state, rushed him, brandishing long daggers. Altair skipped back several steps, narrowly dodging the blades as he attempted to regain his composure. The third man who attempted to take a lucky strike off him was rewarded with a stab in the throat, the Assassin springing forward as the men unwittingly drew into a single line, easy to handle. Tucking his left arm protectively against his chest to keep it from hampering him, he kicked the guard impaled against his blade backwards, throwing the limp body against its comrades.
In the resulting disarray, he retreated back out of the fissure in the rocky wall, well aware of the archers opening fire on him again as he came back into view. Altair tersely studied the path he had passed through mere minutes ago, trying to catch sight of the true Templar ambush. How could he have missed it? Perhaps Isam had simply been lying and it did not exist at all—
The Assassin was suddenly aware of a deafening quiet, the soldiers who had followed him out of hiding freezing where they stood and the thuk of arrows hitting the ground silencing. As the snakes stilled, Altair realized he could hear the sound of shifting hooves, a considerable number of them, drifting down from the high pass. He noticed too late now that the horses above them, those he had attributed to a passing merchant's caravan, were accompanied by a light clatter of scabbards and chain mail.
Altair's gaze raked the skyline. He retreated away from the high road as he was greeted by the sight of a multitude spanning a considerable length of the high road, white tunics marked by blood red crosses blazing clearly against the gray stone, each mounted knight's and archer's attention turned upon him.
The Assassin bristled, giving a small snarl in response to the scrutiny from the enemy, short blade held ready. He counted no less than a score, an impressive number against the small company they had been expecting. At this thought, Altair glanced up the road, wondering where his brothers were. Hopefully they would approach slowly enough to realize the danger, the soldiers now in full view upon both roads, and would be able to draw back without falling into the trap.
The Master Assassin let out a breath and returned his attention to the enemy about him, composing himself into an outward calm. He had achieved his objective, whether or not he escaped was trivial. As he watched, warily tense, a mahogany red horse detached itself from the faction on the high pass. It moved forward carrying a man of imposing build and presence, their commander no doubt. His bald head was bared, distinctly unlike the heavily helmed ones of his subordinates, his authority commanding a certain measure of respect from the last of the mercenaries who lowered their weapons submissively as they looked up at him.
"Interesting, an eagle who flies so willingly into a cage." The even, lightly accented voice that drifted down to him rang with a natural sureness, proof of a man accustomed to being obeyed. Altair eyed him rather jadedly, unable to see his face clearly with the distance. He wasn't sure why, but the tone seemed familiar. The man turned his steed up the path towards Acre, intent on going around and down to the low pass with a small escort of two other Templars. Just before he disappeared from view, he called down to Ra'id's men, "Hold him for me, brothers, I'd like to meet this one face to face."
The soldiers about him saluted eagerly, dogs wagging their tails for their master. They closed in around the Assassin as the Templars above once again vanished from their line of sight, moving back into hiding after deeming him as an easily dealt with threat. Altair lowered his short blade, standing still as they reached for him, jeering and heartened by the presence of their close by allies. "Come quietly, Assassin," one said confidently, seeming to have forgotten the still visible bruises he had received in the warehouse. "There's no chance you can fight all of us."
Slowly, rather hesitantly, he sheathed his curved dagger, knowing he would need to move quickly if he wanted to escape. A smirk passed over several of the faces around him, assured that he would surrender. "You may have powerful friends," the Assassin interrupted suddenly, his tone cold as he flicked his gaze towards the one who had spoken. "But that will not save you."
With a swift movement, the white-robed one knelt, right hand closing around three of the daggers at his boot and sending them all into the air with a jerk. The narrow, feather-like daggers stabbed lethally into necks and chests, downing exactly three men with cries coiled in blood. Altair did not pause to watch the reaction of the remaining soldiers, instead leaping for his horse that had waited obediently in place by the cliff wall, ever calm despite the flying arrows and battle cries.
Even before he had settled in the saddle, he jabbed his heels into the black stallion's sides, taking off away from Acre. He listened intently, leaning in the saddle to dodge the arrows aimed at his retreating back. His horse, spirited and well rested over the weeks its rider had spent in Acre, galloped eagerly, leaving the ambush behind with ease. However, as the enraged shouts of the mercenaries faded, they were replaced by a thundering of hooves, and Altair chanced a glance back to see who was following him.
The commander's escort was in hot pursuit close behind him, the two knights fanning out to flank the Assassin's horse. Altair gave a low oath, realizing he wouldn't be able to properly ride and fight at the same time, given he had the use of only one hand. Turning forward again and gritting his teeth wordlessly, he moved the reins to his still-paining left, forcing his fingers around the leather strap and gripping it with some difficulty. Luckily the pass was quite smooth and his steed required little direction from him.
As he waited for the dark shapes of the Templars to pass into his peripheral vision, his hand against the remaining throwing knives at his belt, Altair realized he could hear movement ahead, around one of the few bends in the low pass. He cocked his head, trying to tune out the rapid hoof beats below and about him, and reached out with his eagle's senses. With sudden recognition, he realized he had picked up on his brothers' quiet voices, the Masyaf caravan seeming to have halted at the sound of the possibly hostile approach.
It was now or never. With an uncharacteristic cry to startle his enemy, Altair jerked against the reins, pivoting his horse sharply around just as the Templars reached him, taken aback by the abrupt aggression. His stallion's chest and front hooves connected bodily with one of the enemy's steeds, pitching its rider forward and into the shrub-grassed ground. The Assassin growled against the sudden ache in his wrist from the pull of the reins, channeling the pain instead into a savagely thrown dagger. The metal embedded itself neatly through the crossed eye slit of the second knight's helmet, the man toppling off his horse noisily and smashing into the passing cliff face.
As the white-robed man attempted to catch his breath, already turning his snorting horse towards the man he had unseated, he noticed that the sound of approaching hooves had not stopped. Altair looked back, almost too slowly, and saw the distinctive mahogany horse of the commander almost upon him, its rider's broadsword drawn. However, it was not the danger of the bared blade that stilled him, but the face of its wielder. The narrowed eyes of Robert de Sable, Grand Master of the Templars, met his own dark ones coolly, pinning the eagle in place as he raised his sword for a strike.
Author's Note: I do wonder if it's too awkward to bring him in so late in the story, please let me know what you think.