We had our targets. Out of all of Montforte’s ranking knights, four of them were Templars. One in the northmost edge of Gustavale would be dealt with by the Francian branch of our Brotherhood. Two accompanied Earl Simon himself, likely giving counsel that would sway the duchy into the favour of the Templars; which nobles to arrest and imprison, which castles to garrison troops in, those were matters that gave Templars the control they so desired.
And then there was our man, Knight Glen, the man whose journal revealed the communications between his Templar conspirators. He would be in Bayon for some time, sending troops to the countryside where many nobles were known to run off to when strife came for them. But Bayon was not a big city, not like Oxhoof or Griffonstone or Trottingham. He may have been able to operate from the barracks within the city, but the majority of his soldiers made camp outside the city. That put him and the bulk of his forces in separate locations.
The news Brighton and I brought to our bureau stirred everyone up, the new recruits the most. Suddenly they were training harder than ever, finishing up the rest of their tasks just to get the chance to assassinate the Anglian knight. But they wouldn’t get their chance.
I was in our records hall when the assignment was brought to me.
“Daughter, are you well?” The man addressing me was Father Chanting, one of the headmasters of our order. His white hooded robes and red sash made him look like an old monk, which he was, but its long sleeves also concealed the hidden blades which had taken dozens of Templar lives.
“Yes, Father.” I wiped the sweat of my brow. By candlelight, the records hall could grow warmer than even the training halls. As the collection of all our secrets and informants, the scrolls and books were hidden below the bureau, behind a false wall within the cellars.
“Brighton is waiting for you, on the roof of L’Eglise du Boreas.”
“What for?”
“To infiltrate and kill Sir Glen. Your brothers in arms have already done their part, scouting the fort and barracks he has hidden inside. You should have the element of surprise. Our presence in the city hasn’t been noticed.”
“Or the Templars just want us to think that we haven’t.”
“If they have lowered their guard to fool us, you will have to make them pay the price for their gamble.”
I sealed the scroll I had been writing on, noting the names of the Templars and their connections. Their network was as invisible as ours, and there would likely be a time when their names and duties would need to be recalled to better figure out the Templars’ next motives.
“Understood, Father.” There was no equipment I needed to fetch. I had my sword and my hidden blades already sharpened and waxed.
A bright light blinded Sunset as she felt her own body come back to her control. She reached out spastically, trying to grab onto something as she got off the Animus’ bed. Her hand found a crate to support her, a comforting sign which told her she was still in the warehouse.
Yet it was completely different than before. The lights were all on, exposing rows and rows of packaged products, from books to cooking utensils to computer parts. Some were put in boxes and labelled, others wrapped in plastic and set to be sorted.
It was so bright, Sunset couldn’t adjust herself quick enough before someone tackled her to the ground, followed by three loud bursts of gunfire.
“Argh!” she yelled, her shoulder felt the full weight of the landing. “That hur-”
A hand came over her mouth as her vision cleared. It was Mags.
“The Templars found us. We have to hold them off long enough for Johnick to move the Animus to the truck.”
Mags unclasped a leather strap on her wrist and removed the bracer. “Don’t worry,” she said as she strapped it onto Sunset’s left arm, “it’s not a hidden blade, just a wrist-mounted can of pepper spray, alright? Don’t hold back against these guys.”
Two more rounds fired and ricocheted above them. Sunset could see where the gunmen were coming from. They were dressed in thick black vests and helmets. They had no insignias, but they were armed like a paramilitary group.
“What? I can’t fight!” Sunset tried to get Mags to slow down, but she was already running to draw their attention away.
Dust and paper shreds blasted over Sunset as more bullets bounced around. The man who explained the Animus, Johnick apparently, had his head crouched down as he pushed the device out the back. Sunset didn’t notice before, but the machine was built on top of a set of wheels like a gurney as if they expected to be on the run.
The power cables bounced around on the ground behind him as he ran. Sunset wondered if he’d be able to make it, with such that heavy machine slowing him down. But that wasn’t her problem. Getting shot for a few magical relics wasn’t in her plan.
As soon as the attackers had spread out around the warehouse, Sunset got off the ground and started running for the exit.
Johnick hissed as she passed him. “Where are you going?”
She rounded the corner of some shelves and pushed through the boxes. Gunshots came dangerously close to her, but with all the clutter of the warehouse, no shot could land on her. The warehouse was big, sure, but in a sprint, the exit was just behind a few shelves.
As she closed in, the back of a rifle smacked her in the face. Sunset felt her hands catch the ground before she knew what happened. One of the men had found her and was dragging her up by her arms.
“Alpha is secure!” the man shouted to his comrades.
Without warning, the other attackers started throwing smoke grenades around the warehouse. They fired indiscriminately, covering their partner as he dragged Sunset through a cluttered aisle of fallen boxes.
Are they really Templars? If they wanted her, then they must’ve been after the same thing the Assassins were. But these men weren’t knights. They used kevlar and firearms. It seemed crazy to think that they were part of the same order that Grenda had fought against.
Sunset looked down at her left wrist with the pepper spray bracer. Then again, who had ever heard of Assassins with a machine that could see old memories?
A box of paint cans caught Sunset’s foot and she slipped from the man’s grasp.
“Damn it, get up,” he cursed under his helmet.
Though it had a visor, it was not airtight, and his face was exposed. Before he could grab her again, Sunset jumped up and jammed her hand in his face, grabbing at his nose and mouth. She pushed with her hips, coming under the man and putting him on the ground in a single hip toss.
He grunted and cursed when he hit the ground, not slowing down at all. His rifle clattered on the ground, but he drew his sidearm in a second and aimed it Sunset’s leg. She pushed his hand aside long enough to send the shot flying off its mark, and then she jammed her left hand in his face and triggered the pepper spray.
A face full of the burning liquid and he was tearing up. He held onto his gun, but from the pain, it wasn’t hard ripping the pistol from his hands. He made a mad dash for his rifle, pointing up and unloading wildly in Sunset’s general direction, but she was long gone from any position she might’ve gotten shot from.
“She’s on the north side!” he yelled, still trying to clear his eyes.
Sunset wasn’t going to wait for more Templars to come for her. She ran for the exit, where Johnick had already gotten the Animus out of the building. The other man from earlier, the one skulking in the rafters, was waiting with a “We-Haul” truck, ready to go.
“Help me push this up,” Johnick said, pointing to a ramp going up the back of the truck.
A second thought wasn’t needed, Sunset started helping immediately.
“Where’s Mags?” she asked.
He motioned his head back to the warehouse. “Still raising hell, I bet. She has an escape route planned. We just need to focus on getting to our next safe house.”
“You’re leaving her?” Sunset grunted as they gave the Animus a final shove.
“She’ll make it out of there. Right now, we need to get you out of here so we don’t lose our only shot at finding the relic. Mags can take care of herself.”
“How long are we going to drive for?” Sunset checked the time on her phone. It was getting late. Tomorrow was Saturday, but she was beginning to wonder if a weekend was long enough to finish whatever they were doing.
“Long enough to lose the Templars,” Johnick said.
They had been driving for about thirty minutes around Equestria City, stopping every few minutes to change direction and go somewhere else. In that time, Johnick had spent almost all of it working on the Animus.
“There, I think I have it set up,” he said.
“What?”
“The Animus. Its internal battery is a little smaller than an electric car’s, so I had to change some of its power settings and test the performance to see if we could still run through the memories. The bed cooling system might be off, but all the critical systems should work.”
Sunset got off the floor of the truck. “Uh, don’t you think we should do that when we stop?”
“Well, traffic around the city’s slow enough that the Animus won’t budge. Besides, it’s a matter of time before they find us again. If you start now, who knows? You could be done before we even reach the safe house.”
Sunset rubbed her arm, feeling the strap her hidden… well… pepper spray. She didn’t want to have to get into a fight like that again. She could go through it as Grenda, those people were in a simulation. And Grenda was a trained killer. She was just a student.
But, when she threw that man back in the warehouse, she didn’t even think about it. It felt like she was in the Animus again, doing it to an Anglian soldier. She had to. They were trying to capture her.
Sunset shook the thought. Johnick was right about one thing, the Templars were on their trail. If she could get the Assassins the relic they wanted, perhaps the Templars would go after that instead of tracking her down.
It was already nine o’clock on her phone.
Since she clearly wasn’t going home soon, what else could she do but dig through some memories?
“Fine,” she said, putting her phone back in her pocket, “but if the Animus moves, you better catch me.”
Johnick nodded. She wiggled herself into the Animus’ bed and together they started reading through Grenda’s memories again.
The stone fort was one of the tallest structures in the city. Only L’Eglise de Boreas, the city’s church built in the Boreas Age, was taller. If we entered through the first floor, that left four floors of soldier barracks, officer quarters, and message sorting rooms to go through to reach the lieutenant in the commander’s quarters.
The church was close to the barracks. It was a place for warriors to receive blessings, and the survivors to mourn for the dead. From the bell tower, we could make out which rooms were lit with candles and which were dead asleep.
“There,” pointed Brighton to the stables on the side of the fort. “The men who work the stables, one of our brothers paid them off to ignore their duties for a night. We’ll be able to enter and exit through some ancient sewer systems that run under the stables.”
“And them?” I pointed to two guards who circled the perimeter of the fort. “You said to keep an eye on them earlier.”
“Yes. They’re brothers, so their captain lets them work together.”
“Think if we capture one, the other will let us in?”
“I was thinking we kill both and take their uniforms. But if you think your way is better, I won’t stop you.”
“I’d rather not risk their bodies being found.” I looked up and down the street. The fort remained a show of strength to the city since it was first built over a hundred years ago. The main road ran through to the gates of the fort, giving it access out to the countryside. But it also put it in plain sight of anyone passing by.
Brighton unclasped his robes and revealed under his armour two bottles of black pitch. “Or I could draw them away while you scaled the wall on the other side. It’s a long way up to the commander’s quarters, though.”
“You could bring the whole fort down with that!” I hissed.
“In this weather?” he waved his hand around in the midnight fog. “No, I think it’ll burn long just long enough.”
We had our options. No one would see us through the sewers, but we’d still need to go up on our own. Then there were the brothers, a stroke of luck from our information gathering. I wanted to focus on those two choices; burning down the fort would certainly draw the Templar out, but it wouldn’t do any good for keeping secret.
“Take one brother hostage,” I finally told Brighton. “I’ll get the other to lead me to the Templar, then you take his brother and wait for me by stables. The place will be up in arms one the lieutenant's dead, and you’ll need to make sure the way out remains clear.”
“And the pitch?”
“Try to save that for an emergency.”
We crossed the road a few houses away from the fort, coming up to it along the side, away from the main road. In broad daylight, anyone could see us, but the light from the torches was just too short at night to catch us as we waited behind a bakery.
“Here they come,” Brighton unsheathed his hidden blade.
“Hold on.” I stayed his hand long enough to pull my hood back and let down my hair. I made a small cut on the back of my hand and dabbed the red on my lips. Not the best substitute, but at night, who could tell?
Brighton stared at me as the soldiers approached. “Wait, what are you doing?”
“Just keep them quiet and let me do the talking,” I said, taking off the cloak of my outside and springing out from behind the bakery. The brothers stopped the moment they heard my footsteps, though a woman lost in the dark didn’t give them a reason to draw their weapons.
“You need help, miss?”
“Oh, yes!” I ran to them, putting on the same routine I had seen young girls use on the streets with pretty boys. “I’m afraid I got a little turned around, that’s all. I’m not lost, I promise. I think your captain or someone asked for me to meet them here.”
“Yeah, who did?” the other brother, a slightly shorter man, asked.
“Um… I believe the letter was from Sir Glen. At least, that's what the Father said when I asked him to read it for me.”
“The lieu--” the taller one stammered. “I don’t see what he’d want with you.” He laughed over to his brother. “He’s the most devout man I've ever seen.”
The shorter grabbed me by the wrist. “Come on, why don’t you wait inside while we ask the Lord Green if he wants to see you now.”
With a flick and a twist, I reversed his grip, pulling the shorter brother closer as I held my hidden blade a hair’s breadth from his groin. Brighton read the signal instantly and lunged out, snatching the taller one by the back of the head and pressing his blade against the man’s throat.
“Now, you both sound like upstanding men of faith, but I’m certain you’ve heard that even faithful men are still men. Sir Glen just needs a little… tempering. And he’d like as few people to know about it, so you are going to get me to him straight away without spreading rumours around to your friends, is that clear?”
“Bloody hell!” the shorter one cursed, looking down at his trousers. “Alright then! Looks like Lord Green paid for the discretion.”
“In advance. So don’t think of any tricks. My brother will keep yours company until he knows I’ve done my work with your lieutenant.”
“My lord, your woman’s here to see you..”
“Eh? I didn’t send for a woman.”
“What? But she said… Oh, uh, right of course.” The brother soldier looked left and right for prying ears and eyes. All the way up to the commander’s quarters, guards spied him with either approval or envy, all the while spying me with all the same eyes that men used when they had spent too much time fighting.
“Um, never you mind, m’lord. I didn’t hear anything, so I’ll just be going back to my duties then.”
The poor soldier left us, leaving the empty hallway and quickly filing down the stairs. The commander’s quarters, and the rest of the fort, had been laid out and scouted by Assassins countless times in the past generations. It wasn’t as old as the church, it was built after the fall of the Boreas Age. But it still had an impressive design to it.
Whoever commanded the garrison in the fort would be given quarters at the top, giving a view of the soldiers training in the courtyard and small balcony which could overlook the entire city. It was a bastion of control. Many like it were built far across the duchy, long before Gustavale had come under an Anglian king.
And now, in that rich history, it seemed the Templars had finally gotten a hold of it. Glen Green opened an eye slit in the door and spied me through it.
“You, you do not have the look of a prostitute,” he said. “Yet one of my men has brought you to me as one. Why are you here? Come to extort money from me? You’ll find none, so leave before I find some reason to execute you.”
He closed the eye slit, but I reached in and held the gap open to speak. “And as for the ones inharmonious, accept them, but not to quarrel.”
“Boreas, fourteen-one,” the most faithful knight recited. “Who are you?”
“It would depend.”
“On?”
“If you would welcome me, my Lord. Will I be your informant or an enemy spy?” I lowered my voice. “Or, I can be anything else you desire.”
He hesitated. “I make a vow to God, if this be some falsehood, wrath will be set upon you.” The clinking of keys undid the door’s lock, but I could also hear something else in his hand. The cluttering of a sword, its sheath bumping against the ground as he opened the door.
“Now what’s all this--”
I kicked open the door before he could finish and lunged inward, my glove in his mouth to silence a shout. He reached for his sword, but I made us crash into a desk in the middle of the room, pinning his arm against it so he could not draw.
If he had armour, I would have had no hope against him. But he thought he was safe among his men inside his fort, guarded by walls and infantry. And no man, especially a knight, would think to ward himself against a woman. At least not against a physical assault.
Still, he was trained from birth for war. He wrapped his free arm tight around my waist and pivoted, moving me off. A drawn-out fight could not be won. My blades lunged as I lunged, and landed as I landed. Both on his chest.
“Gah!” He bloodied the floor with his coughing. “Assassin? I tho… I thought the troops had misplaced my letters. But your people were at the docks, weren’t they?”
“I was there myself. I watched you guide your ships here with tools and men of war. Do not be so surprised to meet with resistance, Templar.”
He spat. “War? War is a game played by fools. The King of Anglia wants his land and sent his rabid hound to guard it. But the Templars serve no Earl or King. We only came to temper the Earl of Leicester, to guide the man’s talent for chaos.”
I kneeled over him. “Then you have failed. Gustavian nobles flee at the mention of his retinue coming to arrest, or worse. Perhaps things would be better if you had stayed out of these affairs.”
Despite his injuries, he somehow still laughed. “What else would incite them to action? This world only bends to those who make it. Half the duchy is in revolt because the other half is willing to cower to a ruler who’ll spare them. But if it’s Simon, they’ll revolt again in no time, and stronger.”
“You bargain lives for chaos?”
“Order, madam.” He coughed again. His conviction was strong but not his body. “In the chaos, the balance of power will swing, and the ownership of this land will be decided. We aim to speed that along before the next disastrous war over land sends thousands more to their death. We bargain the lives of the living for the many more who will live.”
He rolled up in his own blood. “Hurngh. Whan shul me bones been at reste?”
“Désolée, cavalier,” I kneeled down to him and placed my blade on his neck. “But now, you must reposer en paix.”
“There she is!”
The sound of rushing soldiers shallowed my cut, and in a last gasp the Templar swung his arm out, swatting my head and plastering my face in blood.
But he was wheezing. “Assassin! Here!”
There was no time left. I was without my hood, and if I did not run now, Glen Green’s entire retinue would know my face. There was no time to find the sewer entrance. But the commander’s quarters had a small balcony, one that overlooked the entire city.
I rushed out the back of the room and scanned around. Trees, houses, anything to jump to. There was only one thing. Extra hay from the stables had been left in their carts along the road, and they were lined up against the wall of the fort.
“Got you!” An archer leaned in through the door and shot an arrow towards me, nearly hitting were it not for a desk to duck behind. There really wasn’t any time. They would be inside in a second, so I needed to be out in a second.
I found it ironic, seeing as I had just killed a devout knight of God. I needed to make a leap of faith. So I jumped from the balcony.