they study statistics in Hell

[communi_kate]

Title: After This Age (4/7)
Fandom: Assassin's Creed.
Rating:PG
Spoilers:None
Warnings:None
Summary: Malik prepares for his initiation.

After This Age

An Assassin's Creed fan fiction by xahra99

Chapter Four,

Masyaf, 1183.

Ten years later...

"How many do you see?" Rauf asked.

Malik leaned out from the great dome of hammered bronze that topped the keep of Masyaf. "Nineteen-no, twenty. Twenty-one....twenty-two......twenty-three. That's all. Three missing."

They studied the small line of white-robed Assassins and Assassin novices that wound through the pass towards Masyaf. Malik shaded his eyes against the sun, but he was unable to tell one man from another. He certainly couldn't distinguish Kadar amongst the crowd.

"Kadar is bound to have survived," Rauf said with a confidence that Malik certainly did not feel. "Who was his partner, anyway?"

"Altaïr," said Malik glumly.

Rauf hesitated. "He'll probably have survived."

Malik adjusted his position on the dome's warm bronze skin. "Altaïr is a jackal and the son of a jackal," he snapped, "and if my brother is not well when next I see him I shall make that yellow-eyed sister-fucker wish he'd never been born."

"You've said that before," said Rauf, "and I've heard better insults. Besides, Altaïr would win. You're not a bad Assassin, Malik, but you're no match for Altaïr in a fight." He smirked. "If you studied less maybe you'd beat him."

"If you talked less, maybe you would." Malik retorted. He watched the thin white line creep closer to the gates of Masyaf village. The great flag of Masyaf flapped above his head with a sound like a thousand drying blankets. "I don't care. I'd ask Al Mualim for Altaïr's head if he ever harmed my brother."

Rauf snorted. "You think the old man would give up his favourite for that? You're taking this far too seriously, Malik. Putting novices in danger isn't a sin. That's what novices are for."

"It is if the novice is my brother."

Rauf shook his head. "Don't let dai Ali or dai Ismail hear you speak that way. They'll just give you some menial task to teach you not to cling to family ties."

Malik snorted. "We spend our every waking moment training as it is. I am not foolish, Rauf. Why do you think I speak of such things up here?"

"You can't protect Kadar forever."

"I can try." Malik said firmly.

Rauf adjusted his grip upon the dome's spire. "True. You can try. But Kadar will live and die by his own skill, Malik. Not yours. Besides, there are other things to think about. I can see Al Mualim's gardens from here. Want to take a look?"

Malik shook his head. "Let's go down."

"We should have been down at midday. A bit longer won't make much difference."

"Dai Ismail will be looking for us."

"No, he won't."

"Trust me, he will. He's always looking."

Rauf shrugged. "Maybe you're right," he said. "We've got to look our best for the ceremony. That'll take time." He raised an eyebrow at Malik. "More time for some than others."

Malik smacked Rauf on the shoulder. He would have put more force into the blow if they hadn't both been crouched on the dome's sloping surface. The ground was a very long way down. "Then you should have started at dawn. We best hurry. I'll race you down."

"I-"

Malik let go of the spire. He slid on his heels down the dome and caught the very rim with his hands before dropping onto the sloping tiled roof below. Stone-dust and pigeon feathers rose in a cloud as Rauf followed. Malik raced past the pair of stone eagles that kept unceasing watch over the passes. He heard Rauf close behind him and allowed himself a hair's breadth more speed as he jumped from the roof to a buttress and from the buttress to a stretch of crumbling wall that seemed too perfect to be anything but artifice. From the sound of it, Rauf had chosen a slower but less technically difficult route over the south face of the building. Malik wondered how he thought he'd win that way.

He concentrated on navigating the steep course of arrow-slits and stones. A low balcony ringed the tower's top story. It gave Malik a moment's respite before he gathered himself and dropped onto the first of a row of empty flagpoles that ran perfectly just above the great rose window above Al Mualim's study. The heat intensified as he descended. Malik rolled his palms in grit to stop his hands from sliding and went down.

"You'll never make it that way!" Rauf called from the other side of the tower. From the sound of it, he was slightly out of breath.

"Watch me." Malik completed the course of flagpoles and leapt from the last one onto the first of a series of smaller domes that flanked the main arcade. He clambered down the steep wall beneath and came to a halt hanging by his fingernails above a very long drop. A sheer wall stretched to his right. It was punctuated by a single, solitary flagpole.

There was no time to waste. Malik whispered a curse and let go of the ledge while he still had enough momentum. He ran with short, quick steps in an arc to the empty flagpole and tried not to think about the void below him as his feet began to slip. He'd intended to perch like a pigeon on the flagpole, but instead one of his boots skidded and he caught the flagpole with both hands and enough force to nearly dislocate his arms from their sockets. A nearby flock of pigeons took off in a clatter of wings.

The rest of the climb was easy in comparison. Malik could have done it in his sleep. His aching shoulders only slowed him slightly, and the tower's arched windows provided a good handhold. He clambered hand over hand down the sheer wall of stone to the battlements, where he ducked beneath the parapet to avoid the guards. Once they had passed Malik ran in a crouch beneath faded banners of red silk to the end of the battlements and climbed down the north tower into the courtyard. The flagstones were so hot he half expected his boots to smoke.

There was no sign of Rauf.

Malik stood casually next to the main gate and watched the novices sparring in the fighting ring until his friend arrived. Nobody took any notice. The novices in his own group were all preparing for their own initiation, and the teachers were, by and large, too busy with younger trainees to pay Malik any mind. Rauf skidded around the corner just as Malik wiped the last of the grit from his hands.

"You started later."

"You should have taken the same route. Maybe then we'd have had a proper race."

"Nonsense. I didn't see room for two on that wall. We'd both have ended up in a heap."

Malik shrugged. "You always did lose poorly."

Rauf swiped at him as they both set off across the courtyard to the dormitory and Malik ducked, laughing. They were still faking punches at each other as they reached the archway of the dormitory, though they both had the sense to quieten down as they entered. Those novices that passed their initiation would be given their own rooms as fidai'in after the ceremony, and the dormitory had to be spotless for the new crop of recruits.

"Where have you been?" Yasu snapped. His hands balled into fists around the handle of a wooden bucket. A few more novices looked up from their cleaning."We're almost finished."

"That," Rauf drawled, "was the idea."

Malik elbowed him. No. It wasn't." He caught Yasu's furious eyes and submitted to temptation. "It was just a pleasant side effect."

Yasu growled. "Ali will take it out on both of you. What were you doing?"

"Does it matter?" countered Malik.

Yasu watched him with a sour expression."You were watching for your brother, weren't you?" he said. "We're all your brothers. You're supposed to be helping us."

Malik shrugged. "It's none of your business what we were doing, Yasu. We're not novices any more-at least we won't be, after the initiation."

"You won't be Assassins if you fail." Yasu snarled. "

It was not the first time that Yasu had preached the Creed at Malik. The reproach stung, but Malik had learned that Yasu would see any retort as more proof of Malik's guilt. "We'll pass," he said.

"And if we don't, then we'll have bigger problems," agreed Rauf. "Come on, Yasu. We'll help you finish off."

Yasu glared at him. "Stop working," he said to the other novices. "We've completed our task. You can do what's left."

The other novices set aside their work with varying degrees of hesitation and filed out, leaving their buckets, brooms and brushes where they were. Yasu turned on his heel and kicked his bucket over behind him as he left.

Rauf sniffed. "Surely that's against the Creed? It seems everything else is."

Malik shrugged. "A skilled Assassin maintains control of his environment," he said, half-seriously.

"Control-" Rauf broke off. "Malik? What's that?"

Malik followed Rauf's gaze over to his pallet, where several pages of the latest manuscript he had been assigned to copy lay sodden on the floor. Ink leaked from the ruined parchment and stained Malik's mattress. Malik automatically checked that the manuscript itself was safe within his weapons chest. It was; which meant Yasu had only ruined several weeks of work rather than an irreplaceable work of art. "La'anatullah. At least the book itself is safe."

"And you'll soon be assigned a more exciting mission," Rauf said.

Malik scowled as he lifted Al Mualim's copy of the Nuzhat al-mushtaq fi'khtiraq al-afaq carefully from the chest and tucked it beneath his arm. "Maybe. I need to return this." He glanced into Rauf's bucket. The water was the colour of weak tea. "And we need more water. I'm going to the well."

Rauf picked up a rag. "Don't take too long."

Malik took the manuscript back to Al Mualim's library. Once the book had been safely replaced upon the dusty shelves he went to the well in the courtyard to refill the bucket. There was nobody else at the well, so Malik lingered a moment to study his reflection in the water as it settled. It was not a view he considered particularly impressive. Rauf had a beard you could lose your sheep in, but so far Malik hadn't been able to grow more than a small tuft on his chin. He looked more like a ruffled crow than a hawk.

Malik shrugged. If there were more important things in life than Kadar, then there were more important things than beards.

He was half way to the dormitory when somebody called his name. Malik turned, and grinned when he saw who it was. "Kadar! You've returned."

His brother smiled. "Did you expect otherwise?"

"Not so soon," said Malik, as they clasped arms in a gesture that a year ago would have been an embrace. And maybe not in one piece.

"Are you well, brother?"

Malik nodded. "Well enough," he said briefly. "I have only a minute. The initiation is this afternoon."

Kadar sighed. "Good," he said. "I thought that we had missed it. The road was washed away. And then a horse was sick, and Ismail failed at his assassination. Three men were killed, and Yusef lost a hand."

Malik stepped back to get a good look at his brother. "Did you have much trouble?" he asked, pleased to see that all Kadar's limbs appeared intact-not always the case when a novice was partnered with Altaïr-and less pleased to see that the difference in height between himself and his brother was narrowing with every season.

Kadar grinned. "My mission was only a courier assignment. But I found some excitement all the same. Word got out, and I must have been chased by twenty Templars. They caused me no end of trouble." He frowned."I lost them in the alleys, but I wish that I'd have stayed to fight."

"Then you'd have been stupid." Malik told him. "Nobody fights twenty men and lives to tell the tale."

"Altaïr does!" Kadar protested.

Malik shook his head. "I don't know how Altaïr does the things he does, but I know for certain most of us shouldn't even try it. Nobody who's sane battles twenty men, because nobody who's sane can walk away from a fight like that. Trust me."

"I can." Kadar protested. He took a step away from Malik and plucked his dagger from his belt, flipping it from hand to hand in a complicated figure of eight pattern. It was the sort of flashy trick no Assassin was meant to practice but every novice did. "I'm better."

Malik caught the knife by the hilt and handed it back to his brother. "No. You can't, and you're not. The only thing you'll hurt with that is yourself."

"I can look after myself. I'm an Assassin! You don't have to watch over me!"

"No," Malik said."I don't. But I'm your brother, and I'm going to anyway."

"But Al Mualim says-"

"Al Mualim is wrong," said Malik, without thinking.

His words hung in the still air of the courtyard far longer than they should have done. It was never wise to question Al Mualim's teachings. The Old Man taught peace, in all things, and he was never wrong. The Assassins did not question. They simply obeyed.

He looked around in case anybody else had heard his hasty words, but nobody was watching save Kadar. Kadar looked at Malik as if his brother had suggested that he walk on the ceiling.

Malik sighed. "Forget what I said. I must go. Safety and peace, brother."

Kadar clasped his forearm. "On you as well. You will pass, Malik."

Malik turned away as Kadar hurried from the courtyard, his thoughts in turmoil.

I have never been able to hold my tongue, he thought. I do not truly doubt Al Mualim, but I will not abandon Kadar.

An Assassin's loyalty was to the Creed. He had no family but his brothers in the Creed. Like so much of the Creed, the tenet was easy to repeat, but hard to practice. And the teaching ran counter to everything Malik had been told as a child amongst the tribes, where family was paramount and the honour of the clan a killing matter. It was the one part of Al Mualim's teachings that Malik had always ignored. He had been cautioned many times not to show too much favour to Kadar.

He was deep in thought by the time he arrived back at the dormitory. Rauf looked up as Malik arrived, but he had to cough twice before Malik even noticed that he was there. "Where have you been? I've finished."

Malik smirked. "That was the idea," he said, ducking as Rauf got to his feet and threw a punch at him. "Kadar is back. I've seen him."

Rauf looked mollified. "Oh? Well, that is good news."

"Mm. Although he now considers odds of twenty to one a good idea."

"That's not good news. But it's a phase. He'll grow out of it."

"If he survives," Malik said glumly.

"If we survive. Let's get these things packed away. We're going to be late."

"Are you ready?"

"I've been ready for years," said Rauf, not entirely convincingly.

"Liar," said Malik, who had heard it all before.

He was still thinking of the conversation later that day, when they cut off his finger and Malik discovered that he wasn't ready at all.