An Assembly of Bones: Chapter Three.

[communi_kate]

Title: An Assembly of Bones (3/?)
Fandom: Assassin's Creed.
Spoilers: Post-game.
Rating: PG-15.
Warnings: Mild violence.
Summary: Malik finds the Garden of the Hesperides, and a great deal of trouble... 

 

An Assembly of Bones

An Assassin's Creed fan fiction by xahra99

 Chapter Three.

 

The Templars caught up with them two days out of the nomad camp.

It was late enough that Malik had already begun to search for a place to camp and early enough that he had not yet found one. They were half way across an empty plain the colour of baked brick when Marîd announced. "I see horses."

Malik shaded his eyes and looked up. Mountains ridged like a dragon's spine in the distance. A small puff of pale dust hung on the horizon. The dust-cloud grew larger as Malik watched. He could just make out bright shapes within the dust. He felt his stomach lurch with simultaneous anticipation and wariness.

"Knights?" Marîd asked eagerly.

Malik shook his head. He lowered his hand."No. Scouts. Knights would be more heavily armoured."

"Do you think they're Templars?"

Malik stretched. He felt the heat of the afternoon sun on his back, sliding towards tolerable as the night grew nearer, "Almost certainly."

"What do we do?"

"We wait," Malik said. "And you learn."

Marîd frowned. "Why don't we fight?"

"On this plain? I did not realise you wanted to die so badly."

The boy looked nervously around. "We could hide-"

Malik shrugged."Where? They've already seen us." The soldiers were close enough that he could make out individuals. There was nowhere to hide.

"So we're just going to give up?" Marîd asked disbelievingly. His mouth gaped open.

Malik shook his head. "Get behind me," he told the boy. "Now."

"I can fight-" Marîd protested.

Malik inhaled sharply. "Must you disregard everything I say? We're not going to fight! Besides," he added, "if you even think about reaching for a weapon you'll learn a lesson about impossible odds a little sooner than I would have liked."

"But-"

Malik; unwilling to risk his life on a young man's foolish pride, did not wait. He drew his own knife and lunged sideways in a single motion. Razor-sharp steel sliced through the thongs that attached the scabbard to Marîd's belt. The knife thumped into the sand. Malik kicked it towards him, bent down and tucked the knife into his own belt before Marîd had finished groping for the blade. 

He straightened up just as the riders came within arrow-distance. Three men, well fed and well-equipped, riding small tough desert ponies. They wore mail shirts and carried spears with the red-and-white pennants of the Templars wrapped around the shaft. They approached at a steady canter. Malik heard the hooves of their horses thudding against the baked earth. He could sense the boy waiting in mulish, impatient silence just behind his left shoulder.

As the soldiers trotted the last few metres towards the Assassins they spread out and lowered their spears. Malik bowed, his one good arm outstretched so they could see he held no weapon. "As-salaam aleikum," he said politely.

The lead soldier's expression never wavered. He stared at them down his nose from the back of his pony while Malik thought of all the techniques he could use to wipe the supercilious smile from his face. "As-salaam aleikum," he repeated.

The soldier frowned. The leaf-shaped iron tip of the spear hovered an arm's length from Malik's throat, the frayed ends of its silk pennant drifting in the desert breeze. Eventually he cleared his throat and said in a voice which did not sound at all friendly, "What is your name, friend?"

Malik bowed again. He had found that it did no harm to be polite to men holding weapons. "I am called Malik al-Sayf. This is Marid al-Fassi. We are-"

The soldier cut him off. "Your accents are strange. Where are you from?"

"We are from Cairo," Malik said cautiously.

"You've travelled far." The soldier did not sound so much interested as suspicious. "What are you doing here?"

Malik hesitated.

The Templar's frown deepened into a scowl. "Your business?" he asked again. The spear-tip moved a hands-breath closer to Malik's neck.

Malik swallowed. He dredged up his old lie and thought better of it as soon as the words had left his mouth."We're traders," he said. "But we're searching for a new world."

"What sort of world?" 

Malik searched desperately in his memory for threads of Templar dogma. "A world of peace, without war or suffering," he hazarded. "A better place, where all might live as equals."

"For whom do you seek?" The soldier's eyes were hard.

Malik tamped down a flicker of satisfaction. "We seek the Father of Understanding," he said.   

"Then you seek the Master."

Malik shrugged. "We seek the truth," he said.

"Yet...you bear a sword," said a leaden voice.

Malik snapped his head around to the left. Behind him, Marîd startled. Malik did not blame him. The rusty monotone of the second soldier's voice was unsettling enough to make Malik wish the man had stayed silent. The skin on the back of his neck crawled as the second soldier tilted his head down to stare at them both. The movement was uncanny, almost mechanical. As Malik watched, the third man mimicked the head-tilt down to the last detail. Their leader sat his horse and watched both Malik and Marîd with a supercilious and slightly amused expression.

There is something very strange about these men, Malik thought, besides them being Templars.

The leader gestured with his spear-point. "Answer the question."

Malik kept his voice very even and his hand a long way from his knives as he replied, "The sword is for protection. We have travelled a long way, and the roads are dangerous."

"Indeed," the first man said. "It's a long way to Cairo."

"The Master's teachings have spread far." Malik said uneasily. He had expected questions-but not out here in the desert, and not so soon. He was unsurprised to discover that he did not like even pretending to be a Templar. "Enough talk. Will you give us entry, or not?"

The leader frowned. He nudged his pony a step forwards, close enough that Malik could smell the stink of horse-sweat. His two companions stared at the Assassins through the narrow slits of their visors. Malik could not see their faces, but he got the unsettling feeling that they did not blink. From their attitudes, they could have been twins.

"Your sword."

Malik tore his gaze back to the lead knight. He noted with relief that the man had righted his spear. The Templar cross flew starkly against the blue midsummer sky. "My pardon?"

"Your sword," the knight repeated. He tilted his helmet back on his head, revealing hard brown eyes and sun-leathered skin. "Hand it over. I'll admit you, but I won't have you armed." He shrugged. "Or you can walk back to Cairo. Your choice." 

Malik was already unlacing the leather thongs that held his sword to his belt with no protest and some difficulty-the leather had stiffened in the dry air. As the laces slid free he caught the weapon one-handed before the tip of the scabbard touched the ground. Reversing his grip on the scabbard, he handed it to the soldier without complaint. Any man who relied solely on a sword lacked imagination as far as Malik was concerned.

The soldier examined the battered weapon, sniffed in surprise or derision, and tied the sword to his sash beside his own. He spun his horse on its hocks and gestured over his shoulder. "Come with us."

Malik shrugged and followed. Marîd hesitated for a second before he fell into line. It took him a few seconds to catch up, and a few minutes to regain enough confidence to whisper to Malik "Are we guests, or prisoners?"

Malik shrugged again. "Does it matter?"

"Of course it d-" Marîd hesitated. "No. We're where we want to be."

"You're learning. Good." Malik looked around. He saw only the sweating flanks of horses as the knights bunched around them."Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. We can't be far from their castle."

Marîd nodded. Sweat streaked his face. He swiped a hand across his forehead and wiped his palm on his ragged robe. They walked on.

The Templars took them due north across the plain. They rode in silence, with only the jingle of harness and the click of horseshoes on rocks to mark their passage. The sun sank towards the horizon, painting the sky with vivid streaks of amber, scarlet and rose.

After three hours of hard walking they reached a stream.

It was nothing much. In Syria it would have been a meagre trickle of water narrow enough for a man to jump over. Here in the desert it was a river. The party waded across, ankle-deep. The horses snorted and sidled across the rivulet, pulling at the reins until blood showed at the corners of their mouths in a futile attempt to reach the water. Marîd stooped to snatch a drink in mid-stream. As he bent down one of the horses barged into him. Malik shouted and slapped its chest-a horse would not willingly trample a human-and the horse flung up its head. White rimmed its eyes. Its rider cursed Marîd.  

"Leave him be," Malik said sharply. "We must drink."

The lead soldier nodded curtly. All three urged their horses from the river and sat mounted on the opposite bank, where they watched as the Assassins drank quickly. The soldiers showed no sign of thirst. Their horses drooled and fought their bits. Sweat dampened their dark flanks. Marîd, who had tended camels in the desert, looked at the soldiers with disdain. "Are they mad?" he whispered.

Malik, who had been wondering the same thing, shrugged. "Mad, no. Maybe just careless," he said quietly. 

"They are fools to push their animals so hard."

"True," agreed Malik. "But they are Templars. And it is none of our business to tell other men how to tend to their horses. Even if they are fools." 

Marîd scooped up another handful of water. "There is no doubt of that, or they would have stopped for the night by now," he complained. "The water is good, but rest would be better. Besides, their horses are nearly spent. They seem more demons than men. Don't they tire? "

Malik paused with his hand half way to his mouth. "Maybe not," he said.

Marîd's questions were drowned out by the Templar leader's curt command. "Move on now," he snapped. "That's long enough."

They followed the knights on across the desert. As they walked, Malik recalled just where he had seen men like these. They had been Assassins, rather than Templars. Men under the control of Al Mualim, and his Apple...

The Apple bends their minds, he thought, I am sure of it.

The idea made Malik's skin crawl. He had never trusted the Eden fragments the way Altaïr did. I never thought the price was worth the cost, he thought. These soldiers do nothing to change my mind.

Still, at least we are in the right place.

It was cold comfort. Malik resolved to keep his suspicions to himself until they had reached the castle. Unlike Marîd, he did not think it far. The landscape was already beginning to change.

The alterations were subtle at first. A few ridges of mountains emerged from the haze and dust of the horizon. Bare rock gave way to thorn-bushes, and thorn-bushes to scrub, and finally, as they rounded a hill, grass of such a startling emerald green that it seemed to have been carved from bright jade. Strange rounded hills dotted the landscape every hundred paces, each with a bucket and well, and channels directed the water between every patchwork scrap of grass. A few houses clustered around the flanks of the hills. Smoke drifted from the chimneys of the houses. Malik smelt cooking on the wind but saw no villagers.

The knights followed the ribbon of green around the hill and into a deep valley on the other side. Crops that Malik could not name bent beneath the horses' hooves, and date palms-which he could-nodded above their heads. The knights did not stop, but they allowed-or at least did not prevent-their horses to snatch mouthfuls of grass as they rode. The scent of rich damp earth drifted up from the ground as mud squelched under Malik's boots.

The canyon narrowed like a fish-trap until there were only three fields squeezed abreast into the narrow space, and then finally only one. The last field tapered into a canyon that was just wide enough for Malik and Marîd to walk abreast. The tail of the leader's horse swished in front of Malik as the canyon turned through two right angles- a natural fortress-gate, he realized- and then they were out in the open again. The two outriders squeezed silently  through the narrow space behind them as the valley spread out in front.

It was the closest thing to Paradise Malik had ever seen on earth.

Directly in front of where they were standing the ground rose to form a steep hill. On top of the hill was a fortress-no, Malik realised, a palace-city, for the castle had low walls of backed adobe and had surely never been used for war. 

 Despite himself, he had to admit that he was impressed.

The slopes of the hill had been terraced to form a garden, with pools that cascaded from tier to tier in steep waterfalls that cooled the air and made the evening heat a little more bearable. The surface of the nearest pool was, from the look of the rippling rings that marked the surface of the water, well stocked with fish. Trees bordered every pool. Large and small, they dipped low branches into the fish-ponds or stood, neatly pruned, in glazed pots as tall as Marîd. Malik was no gardener, so it took him a few minutes to realize that the trees were all of the same variety. They were all apple trees.

"The garden of the Hesperides," he whispered. 

The lead soldier kicked his horse in the ribs. "Come on."

Malik tore his eyes away from the garden and followed the Templars.

He had expected to be taken to a barracks, or maybe a clerk's office. Instead the soldiers dismounted, handed their horses to a group of waiting grooms and tramped straight across the carefully raked gravel paths, climbing each terrace towards the fortress itself.

Malik raised his voice. "Where are we heading?"

He did not expect an answer, but the leader surprised him by complying. "We're taking you to the Master."

"Really? That is good news. I did not expect an audience to soon," Malik replied, making no effort to hide his surprise.

The Templar shrugged. "Saves us time. The Master can read a man's intentions with a look. He'll spy out if you are an honest man, or a coward." He dismissed Malik with a sniff and turned back to the pathway. 

Malik considered the prospect without enthusiasm. He doubted that any man could divine intent from a glance. With an Eden fragment, though-who knew? The orbs were powerful.

As they climbed he realized that the garden was as full of people as the fields outside the canyon had been empty. There were more villagers here than in Masyaf. They worked industriously, pruning or digging or carrying water. None of them looked around at the Templars as they passed. Nobody spoke. At first Malik thought that the peasants were afraid, but nobody even seemed to notice them.

They have the same look as the soldiers, he thought, and felt a trickle of chill sweat snake down his spine. Malik examined the villagers closely, trying to steal a better look at their faces. He did not realise that the knights had slowed until he had walked straight into the back of the man in front of him.

The lead knight's head snapped around. "Look where you're going, you clumsy peasant," he said.  

"My apologies," Malik said in a tone that was not at all apologetic. He ducked his head to disguise the look of contempt upon his face. Keeping his eyes on the path, he followed the man up another tier of steps and into a small courtyard. Two men sat at the opposite end of the pool on a narrow stone bench. Their reflections in the still water were just visible in the dim light. One was heavily-built and broad. The other was as thin as a praying mantis.

They looked up as the soldiers approached. The stocky man inclined his head. "Nayir. What on earth have you brought me?"

The knight bowed. His silent companions stood motionless at his side. "Travellers, lord." His diction was a little clearer than it had been in the desert, his eyes a little brighter."Travellers who seek the Father of Understanding."

"Then they are welcome in the Garden of the West." The Master gathered his robes around him and stood up.  The thin man followed him.

Assassins only bowed to their own Grand Master, but Malik judged it best to follow tradition. He ducked his head, making sure that Marîd mimicked him. "Our thanks," he said.

The Templar Nayir cleared his throat. "This is our Master,  Al-Walid," he said. "And Ziri al-Ghurab, the right hand of our Master. It is they who will decide whether you are to stay."

Malik fixed his gaze on the dusty floor. He heard footsteps in front of him. "I am honoured," he said, and glanced up.

The Master of the Templars in Morocco had the eyes of a madman.

Malik had seen stranger things, but few so disconcerting. He took a step back involuntarily. He'd seen that look before.

Al Mualim, he thought.

  To be continued...

 
I got some more fanart from caroline! This scene ended up not making it into the fic, but it's awesome. Malik and Marid, searching Istanbul's Basilica cistern for another Eden fragment. You can find it here, and you can find more about the Basilica cistern here.