Assassin's Creed: Underworld (5 page)

On the night he first met Maggie, then, The Ghost
had been returning home to his place in the tunnel, when he passed Marylebone churchyard, as he
always did, and glanced to check the angle of the stone, as he always did, but found his
attention arrested by events taking place in the graveyard.

It was dark, of course – this was almost
exactly a year ago, when the days were as short as they were now – and it was cold too,
the kind of night where you didn’t hang around in darkened churchyards unless you had a
very good reason to be hanging around in a darkened churchyard.

And nobody had business to be in a darkened
churchyard on a night like that. Not any kind of business that wasn’t wicked business.

Sure enough, what The Ghost heard was very wicked
business indeed.

He stopped on the pathway by the low church wall.
Listened. And he decided that on a scale of wickedness, with not-very-wicked at one end (some
fornication, perhaps: a consensual business proposition conducted between a prostitute and her
client), he was hearing something from the other end. And what he heard was the sound of several
men – The Ghost knew instantly it was five men – some
of whom
were laughing and urging others on, as well as the sound of violence, of boots being used in a
way their innocent maker never intended, and above all that the sound of a woman – The
Ghost knew instantly it was one woman – in pain. In very great pain.

There were others who passed by, of course, who
would have heard the commotion in the churchyard, the unmistakable sound of a woman screaming
and calling for mercy as the blows rained in, but it was only The Ghost who stopped. He
shouldn’t have done. His job was to blend in at all times. But he stopped because he was
an Assassin – he was still an Assassin – trained by Arbaaz Mir and Ethan Frye,
instilled in the values of the Brotherhood.

And he was damned if he was going to walk on by
while five men got their jollies beating up a woman.

He vaulted the low stone wall that acted as the
churchyard boundary and moved further into the gloom. The noises continued. The drunken,
boisterous sound of men at play. From their accents The Ghost was able to tell that two of them
were gentlemen, the other three of indeterminate class.

Now he saw the glow of lanterns, and what he made
out in a clearing in the shadow of the great church were two well-dressed men and a figure on
the floor.

‘What do you call that?’ one of them
was saying as he stood astride her, slapping her face, the second man laughing and swigging from
a flask.

In the foreground were three bigger men, all of
whom wore bowler hats. They stood with their backs to the two
gents and
their victim. Bodyguards. They stiffened as The Ghost navigated the graves towards them. Arbaaz
and Ethan would have advised a stealthy intrusion; The Ghost could have killed two of the men
before they had even had a chance to react. But what he saw had awakened in him a primal anger,
a sense of righteous justice, and he wanted a confrontation. He wanted justice to be done and
for justice to be seen to be done.

‘Move along, mate,’ said one of the
bodyguards. He had his arms folded. ‘Nothing for you to see here, lad.’

The other two bodyguards had shifted. One of them
had his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his coat. The other clasped his hands behind his
back.

‘Let the woman go,’ said The
Ghost.

The two men had stopped their game, and they
stood away from the prone and bleeding body of the woman. Released, she groaned with a mixture
of pain and relief and rolled over to one side, her skirts in disarray at her legs, face
bloodied behind a tangle of matted hair. A poor, pitiable creature, she looked to be in her
sixties.

‘Move away from her,’ commanded The
Ghost.

One of the toffs sniggered and passed the flask
to the second man, whose eyes twinkled with delight as he put it to his lips and drank greedily.
Both looked as if they were anticipating the beginning of an entertaining show. Standing there,
a lone man against five, The Ghost hoped he wouldn’t disappoint.

He also hoped that with all his fine thoughts of
seeing justice done, he hadn’t bitten off more than he could chew.

The first bodyguard tilted his chin and spoke
again, his
words dropping like stones in the newly still churchyard.
‘Move along, my lad, before we do it for you.’

The Ghost regarded him. He regarded them all.
‘I’ll move on when I’m satisfied the woman will be harmed no longer
…’

‘Well, that …’

‘And when I’m satisfied that the two
men who did this to her have been sufficiently punished.’

The other two bodyguards burst out laughing but
the leader stilled them with a hand. ‘Well, now, look, that ain’t going to happen,
because you see these two gen’men here? They pay handsomely for the services of myself and
my two colleagues, specifically to ensure that no harm comes to them as they tour the less
salubrious sides of this nation’s great capital, if you catch my meaning. To get to them
you have to come through us, and you know, don’t you, that ain’t gonna
’appen.’

Behind him the two pleasure-seeking toffs
tittered some more, passing the flask back and forth, enjoying the show, an aperitif prior to
the main course. They were weak and drunk and The Ghost knew he could take them both with one
hand tied behind his back, but …

First the bodyguards. Number three’s coat
was unbuttoned, his hands still clasped behind his back. Either he was carrying a revolver or a
cutlass hanging at his flank. He looked dangerous but also a little too relaxed, too confident.

The same went for number two. He wore an
ankle-length coat buttoned up, and though his left hand flexed in the pocket of his coat, his
right hand was motionless, which meant he’d be holding a cosh or knife in there.

Good. He was wearing a coat
that was not conducive to close-quarter combat and, secondly, though unwittingly, he’d
shown The Ghost from where his weapon would appear. For these two reasons The Ghost would target
him first. He would be easiest to overcome, and he needed a weapon. He hoped it was a knife.

Number one was cleverer. He didn’t think a
lone attacker would face up to five without good reason. His arms had remained folded across his
chest – he carried a shoulder holster, perhaps? – but his eyes had roamed the area
behind The Ghost, seeking out whatever reinforcements might be lurking there.

When he saw nothing he regarded The Ghost with
even greater interest, suspicion and apprehension, guessing what his colleagues did not even
suspect: that this Indian lad was playing some kind of angle. That he was more than he seemed to
be. Number one was sharper. He would be the hard one.

The Ghost had finished sizing them up. He wished
he held a kukri in one hand and had his hidden blade strapped to his other wrist. Were that the
case the battle’s outcome would be in no doubt. What’s more, it would have ended
some moments ago. But even so he was confident he could prevail. He had certain factors on his
side: that his foes were largely underestimating him; that he was disgusted and supremely
motivated; that he was highly trained and very adept and very fast and had assessed his
distance, his surroundings, his opponents.

And now came one more thing in his favour. For,
as number one began to speak, saying the words, ‘I’ll give
you
one last chance, lad …’ The Ghost awarded himself the advantage of surprise.

And he struck.

Number two was still trying to pull his hands
free of his coat pockets when The Ghost’s forehead smashed into his nose. This blow
– a ‘dirty trick’ that Arbaaz had never fully endorsed but of which Ethan was
most fond – had the advantage of causing massive pain, instant, traumatic blood loss and
temporary blindness and disorientation. For the first crucial moments of the battle, number two
was incapacitated. He was out of the game, unable to resist as The Ghost spun and jabbed an
elbow back to knock the wind out of him as his other hand delved into the coat pockets and found
… a cosh.
Damn
.

But it had some weight at least, and he pulled it
out of the coat then swung back in the other direction, the black leather cosh connecting with
the temple of number two. The Ghost swung hard, with all his might, which was a lot of might
indeed, and the blow almost took the top of his target’s head off.

The second man had been reaching inside his coat
at the time, but The Ghost never got to find out what he had inside. The man’s hand was
still inside his coat as he staggered to one side with his mouth gaping like a fish on dry land.
The ball bearings in the cosh had opened a gash in the side of his head and blood was already
pouring from it. He would probably live, but would be brain-damaged, likely to spend the rest of
his days in a bath chair drooling, being fed mushed-up food on a spoon and lacking the faculties
to wonder how a mere boy had so easily bested him
in a fight. The Ghost
stepped forward, punched him twice in the throat and his body was still folding to the floor as
The Ghost spun back round.

The whole move was over in the time it took to
draw a sword, which was exactly what number one had done. Between them both was number two,
reeling from the headbutt, yet still on his feet and about to gain control of his senses when
The Ghost, keen not to relinquish his forward momentum, struck once more, swinging with the cosh
and not making full contact but doing enough to break the man’s jaw. He kicked out at the
same time, this one a clean connect, snapping the bodyguard’s leg, which folded beneath
him and sent him sprawling to the dirt of the churchyard. This one would never walk again and
the broken jaw meant that very few people would understand him when he spoke.

In the same movement The Ghost lashed out with
his other foot, kicking a lantern into the face of number one, who was hoping to use the opening
to his advantage. The bodyguard knocked the lantern away with a cry of surprise and frustration
that his move had met failure, and it gave The Ghost a moment to gather himself.

He checked his balance, moved away from the
possible obstacle of a nearby headstone and shifted the cosh from one hand to the other, then
back again.

The guardian gathered himself. He raised his
cutlass, moved into position between The Ghost and the two men he was paid to protect, and then
he called to them over his shoulder. What he said was, ‘Sirs, run.’

The two toffs needed no further invitation,
stumbling
over one another and crashing into the stones as they took their
leave, disappearing noisily into the night. Behind them on the floor lay the flask of booze.

The Ghost clenched his teeth. He couldn’t
let them get away.

‘You don’t have to die for the likes
of them,’ he told the bodyguard, who gave a short chuckle.

‘You’re wrong, my friend,’ he
replied. ‘Dying for the likes of them is
exactly
what the likes of me do. We do
it all over the world.’

Young though he was, The Ghost knew how it
worked. The rich purchased commissions so they could rise quickly through the ranks of the
British army, ensuring that for the most part they stayed out of the bloodiest fighting and
enjoyed the best comforts. ‘It doesn’t need to be that way,’ he said.

‘It does, lad. When you’re as wise in
the ways of the world as you are in combat – and by Christ you’re wise in that
– then you’ll know.’

The Ghost shook his head. Time was wasting.
‘It doesn’t matter, sir. Either way, it’s not you I want, it’s who you
serve.’

‘Still can’t do it, son,’ said
the bodyguard sadly. ‘I can’t let you do it.’ The cutlass was raised, he kept
his opponent on point and his stance remained firm, but there was something in his eyes The
Ghost recognized. A look of impending defeat. The look of a man who knows he’s beaten,
whose death or downfall is not a matter of
if
, but
when
.

‘You have no choice,’ The Ghost
replied, and was
already in motion, and to the bodyguard he was a mere blur,
as though the night had rippled, the darkness shifting to accommodate the young Assassin’s
sheer speed as he sprang forward.

The Ghost had not made the mistake of
underestimating his foe of course. He had anticipated how his opponent might defend, as well as
factoring in that his opponent would expect him to attack a certain way. And so he feinted first
one way and then the other, feeling the flow of his own body as he manipulated it in two
different directions at once as he leapt, using a gravestone as a springboard to come at the
bodyguard from an unexpected height and angle.

Too good, too fast, and much too
combat-intelligent for the bodyguard. This man, trained no doubt by the English military, tough
as old boots to begin with and toughened even more by countless overseas campaigns, even he was
no match for The Ghost. No match at all. The cosh, sticky with blood from its last victim,
crashed into the back of his head and his jaw slackened and his eyes rolled as he fell
unconscious to the ground.

An hour or so later he would awaken, with a sore
head but otherwise unharmed, when he would need to answer searching questions as to how he and
his three equally battle-hardened companions could possibly have been bested by a mere squit of
a lad.

For now, though, he was out cold.

Meanwhile, The Ghost vaulted a gravestone, coming
to the woman who had pulled herself up on her hands and now stared at him with a mixture of fear
and awe and gratitude.

‘Bloody hell, lad,
what the bloody hell are you, some kind of demon or summat?’

‘Go,’ he told her. ‘Leave this
place before our friend gets his wits back about him.’ And with that he took off after the
two pleasure-seeking gentlemen, the sight of the woman’s bruised, bloody and swollen face
spurring him on, kindling his anger as he snatched up the cutlass and ran.