EIGHT MINUTES
Connor rolls the routed onto his back. Flood cries out like a hare in a trap; even this makes the Assassin's eyelids flicker and wince. But he has to extend this man's suffering. He needs answers.
Grabbing Flood by his shirt, Connor says calmly: "You do not have to suffer a coward's death, Thomas. Only tell me what I wish to know and I will end your pain."
"Anything — anything!" he whimpers, fingers clawing the earth. "I am no use to Master Lee now."
Connor catches sight of blood glossing the grass; his mind begins to race. Maybe his aim was not so accurate...and he has given Flood less time to live than he thought. Without this worry, the Assassin would scowl at the cowardice exuding from Flood's words. He ran away from the battle to save his life...but there is time yet. He may save many others.
"How did you know Kenway's Fleet would attack this fort?"
"Robert." The Irish accent is prominent even when he chokes.
"Of course." Connor lets go of Flood's collar — half-expecting someone to fire at him — but not a soldier is in sight. "But the fleet knew nothing of the Assassins. They knew nothing of my abduction and my father being led here. Why not abduct my mother here too, if she was such a threat to you?"
"Someone had to stay free...who else would warn the Assassins? Who else would lead you all here?" The tears in his eyes dry, watering the earth with his salty scorn: "Lee...wanted them all here. Your fleet, the best of your Brotherhood...all caught in one trap like fish in a net." A laugh, then a choke; a sudden leap of blood onto his thigh. "Not to mention Kenway and Ruth. He could execute you all at once...and still evacuate with the artefacts."
Execute us all at once?
Connor frowns concernedly— not only at Flood's growing weakness and shrinking life — but at this assertion. "But the Aquila has breached your defences," he tests. "You should have expected us to be more powerful."
The man raises his greying head to look his killer in the eye...with humour. "I could laugh at you, boy. Of course we half-expected it. Why, you didn't think that was the Aquila shooting these cannonballs, did you?"
The weight of this sinks between the boy's eyes with unendurable force. Connor's mouth opens; his eyes dilate; his balance tips like his stomach. He understands the implication. All at once, Kenway realises what he has lost.
It is a trap.
"You...you sank them...!" he stammers with a throat of oily tears. "You sank the Aquila...you sank the whole fleet?"
Flood closes his demonic, amber eyes; his chest aches with silent, dying laughter.
"What?" Connor is frenzied. "You couldn't kill them all. You couldn't! This is another part of your trap. You're lying, Thomas — and I want truth!"
"Of course we bloody sank them!" Flood wheezes; and when the enraged tries to shake his feeble body: "Ah! Stop!"
Connor knows he must hold back back his grig, like the floodgates before a storm.
But it is overwhelming. Unutterable. Unbelievable.
Faulkner, all those Assassins he trained to sail and fight...hundreds of former slaves, living a life of hope and conviction...struck down by the guns of their former master, Flood. All gone.
Gone.
But no. Connor must wait. There are more questions, and little time. The grass cannot take a single drop more of blood, and it begins to spread in a frame around the Templar.
"Wait!" he remembers. "Why all the gunpowder? Why have it if you are destroying your own fort? That defeats the trap!"
Thomas is paler (more translucent than) Death himself. He coughs, wasting more of his limited time and breath. "No, kid...it strengthens it. Just you wait...any minute now, the fire...the fire will..."
No. He cannot die. Not yet.
"Fire? What fire?"
"Ah..." Thomas whimpers, eyes scrunched shut.
"What fire?" Connor pleads.
"Ev...ev...ev-a-cu-a-tion..."
"What? What do you mean?" he yells. "Speak, man! Tell me what you mean!"
"Th...that is...all I know..." he moans slowly. "Please...end this..."
An anger begins to shoot through the boy's body, mixing with sorrow and confusion and the sound of the battle; the whirlwind inside him stuns his senses. He cannot think for a moment. But then he remembers: he made a promise to end Flood's life as soon as he outlived his purpose. Now, he has perhaps a minute left to live, but numb lips from which will come no numb words.
He does what he has to do. Connor finds the pistol on the blood-soaked grass, raises it to the passive animal, and shoots between the eyes. The crack of the bullet rises through the air, and could even be mistaken for the sound of gunpowder as Flood flops messily into the bloody landscape.
Gunpowder. Gunpowder.
His mind still gathering the pieces, Connor tries to make sense of it all. The ships firing on the fort are not the Assassins...but the Templars. The gunpowder is there to destroy the fort, and Charles plans to stage an evacuation; doubtless that he can take off with the artefacts. But surely they expect the Assassins to escape? Even Charles would not devise a scheme this fickle. It could so easily be thwarted; half of it already has.
So why fire at the towers of the fort? Is there not a possibility of the Templars accidentally killing other Templars?
It makes no sense in Connor's crazed state of mind. One thing is for certain: whatever is left of his Brotherhood, is in danger now. He must warn them.
Carefully, Connor reaches for the sword strapped around Flood's belt, and the dagger from the other side: he'll need all the defence he can find. Will he survive this? It is down to luck now.
Naively — like the rest of the Assassins — he is only just beginning to realise that no matter what he does, the Templars will always have a force of thrice the power. He is the first to truly realise this message, knelt by the mark of Cain on the fort that is Flood's body, still raw with unsung grief. He is the youngest of the leaders, and yet he has now become the wisest.
He stands and turns to the battlefield with a glint in his eye. It is time to share some wisdom in a place where there is none.