“You’re a British soldier,” I said.
“That’s the uniform I wear,” he sneered, “but my allegiances lie elsewhere.”
“Indeed, do they? To whom do you swear loyalty, then?” I asked. “Are you an Assassin?”
He shook his head. “I’m my own man, boy. Something you can only dream of being.”
“It’s a long time since anybody’s called me boy,” I said.
“You think you’ve made a name for yourself, Haytham Kenway. The killer. The Templar blademan. Because you’ve killed a couple of fat merchants? But to me you’re a boy. You’re a boy because a man faces his targets, man to man, he doesn’t steal up behind them in the dead of night, like a snake.” He paused. “Like an Assassin.”
He began to swap his knife from one hand to the other. The effect was almost hypnotic—or at least that’s what I let him believe.
“You think I can’t fight?” I said.
“You’re yet to prove it.”
“Here’s as good a place as any.”
He spat and beckoned me forward with one hand, rolling the blade in the other. “Come on, Assassin,” he goaded me. “Come be a warrior for the first time. Come see what it feels like. Come on, boy. Be a man.”
It was supposed to anger me, but instead it made me focus. I needed him alive. I needed him to talk.
I leapt over the branch and into the clearing, swinging a little wildly to push him back but recovering my stance quickly, before he could press forward with a response of his own. For some moments we circled one another, each waiting for the other to launch his next attack. I broke the stalemate by lunging forward, slashing, then instantly retreating to my guard.
For a second he thought I’d missed. Then he felt the blood begin to trickle down his cheek and touched a hand to his face, his eyes widening in surprise. First blood to me.
“You’ve underestimated me,” I said.
His smile was a little more strained this time. “There won’t be a second time.”
“There will be,” I replied, and came forward again, feinting towards the left then going right when his body was already committed to the wrong line of defence.
A gash opened up in his free arm. Blood stained his tattered sleeve and began dripping to the forest floor, bright red on brown and green needles.
“I’m better than you know,” I said. “All you have to look forward to is death—unless you talk. Unless you tell me everything you know. Who are you working for?”
I danced forward and slashed as his knife flailed wildly. His other cheek opened. There were now two scarlet ribbons on the brown leather of his face.
“Why was my father killed?”
I came forward again and this time sliced the back of his knife hand. If I’d been hoping he’d drop the knife, then I was disappointed. If I’d been hoping to give him a demonstration of my skills, then that’s exactly what I’d done, and it showed on his face. His now bloody face. He wasn’t grinning any more.
But he still had fight in him, and when he came forward it was fast and smooth and he swapped his knife from one hand to the other to try to misdirect me, and almost made contact. Almost. He might even have done it—if he hadn’t already showed me that particular trick; if he hadn’t been slowed down by the injuries I’d inflicted on him.
As it was, I ducked easily beneath his blade and struck upwards, burying my own in his flank. Immediately I was cursing, though. I’d hit him too hard and in the kidney. He was dead. The internal bleeding would kill him in around thirty minutes; but he could pass out straight away. Whether he knew it himself or not I don’t know, for he was coming at me again, his teeth bared. They were coated with blood now, I noticed, and I swung easily away, took hold of his arm, twisted into his body and broke it at the elbow.
The sound he made wasn’t a scream so much as an anguished inhalation, and as I crunched the bones in his arm, more for effect than for any useful purpose, his knife dropped to the forest floor with a soft thump and he followed it, sinking to his knees.
I let go of his arm, which dropped limply, a bag of broken bones and skin. Looking down, I could see the blood had already drained from his face, and around his midriff was a spreading, black stain. His coat pooled around him on the ground. Feebly, he felt for his loose and limp arm with his good hand, and when he looked up at me there was something almost plaintive in his eyes, something pathetic.
“Why did you kill him?” I asked evenly.
Like water escaping from a leaking flask he crumpled, until he was lying on his side. All that concerned him now was dying.
“Tell me,” I pressed, and bent close to where he now lay, with pine needles clinging to the blood on his face. He was breathing his last breaths into the mulch of the forest floor.
“Your father . . .” he started, then coughed a small gobbet of blood before starting again. “Your father was not a Templar.”
“I know,” I snapped. “Was he killed for that?” I felt my brow furrow. “Was he killed because he refused to join the Order?”
“He was an . . . an Assassin.”
“And the Templars killed him? They killed him for that?”
“No. He was killed for what he had.”
“What?” I leaned forward, desperate to catch his words. “What did he have?”
There was no reply.
“Who?” I said, almost shouting. “Who killed him?”
But he was out. Mouth open, his eyes fluttered then closed, and however much I slapped him, he refused to regain consciousness.
An Assassin. Father was an Assassin. I rolled the knifeman over, closed his staring eyes and began to empty his pockets on to the ground. Out came the usual collection of tins, as well as few tattered bits of paper, one of which I unfurled to find was a set of enlistment papers. They were for a regiment, the Coldstream Guards to be precise, one and one-half guineas for joining, then a shilling a day. The paymaster’s name was on the enlistment papers. It was Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Braddock.
And Braddock was with his army in the Dutch Republic, taking arms against the French. I thought of the pointy-eared man I’d seen riding out earlier. All of a sudden I knew where he was heading.
iv
I turned and crashed back through the forest to the cabin, making it back in moments. Outside were the three horses, grazing patiently in bright sunshine; inside, it was dark and cooler, and Reginald stood over Digweed, whose head lolled as he sat, still tied to the chair, and, I knew, from the second I clapped eyes on him . . .