Assassin's Creed: Underworld (11 page)

However, noted Cavanagh, with relief, the jezzail
was a muzzle-loaded weapon, and by the looks of things the stack in front of them were not
primed. Either way, the tribesmen would reach for the Khyber knives at their waists. Excellent
close-quarter weapons.

Cavanagh looked at his two companions. The sepoy,
as he knew, was a decent shot. He wasn’t sure about Lavelle, but he himself had trained at
the Domenico Angelo Tremamondo fencing-master academy and was an expert swordsman.

(Here, The Ghost came across a note, presumably
left by whichever Assassin curator had assembled the dossier. The writer wondered how a mere
corporal had studied at the great Angelo’s School of Arms in Carlisle House, Soho, in
London, where the aristocracy were tutored in swordsmanship. Or, perhaps, to turn the question
round: how a graduate of that particular academy had ended up a mere corporal? The note was
appended with an inscription from Ethan, a single word. The Ghost knew it well from the dreaded
Latin lessons Ethan had insisted upon as part of his tutelage. ‘
Cave
’ it
said, meaning beware.)

Cavanagh knew this was his chance to impress upon
Lavelle that he was more than a mere deserter. The day before, when
Lavelle had asked him why he might wish to curry favour, the question had gone unanswered. But
the truth of it was that Cavanagh was well aware of Lavelle’s position within the Order
and wished to take advantage of it. So Cavanagh drew his sabre silently, gave his own service
pistol to the sepoy, and indicated for Lavelle to ready his.

When the two men were in place he indicated for
them to take the two tribesmen on the left.

Next he rose up slightly on his haunches,
stretching out his calves. The last thing he needed was his legs seizing up when he made his
move.

Which he did. Trusting Lavelle and the sepoy to
be accurate and putting his faith in the element of surprise and his own not-inconsiderable
swordsmanship, Cavanagh sprang from behind the boulder to do battle.

He saw the soldier on the left spin and scream at
the same time as he heard the pistol shot from behind, and then came a second shot, this one not
so accurate but enough to lift the next man off his feet and take him down clutching at his
stomach. As the second tribesman turned and snatched for the Khyber knife at his waist, Cavanagh
reached him and attacked with the sabre, a single chopping blow to the neck that opened the
carotid artery, and then stepped nimbly away to avoid the rhythmic fountain of blood.

The Englishman had chosen his first strike
deliberately. Afghan warriors were as tough and unflappable as they come, but even they could
not fail to be disturbed by the sudden appearance of bright arterial spray arcing and
splattering in the dying light of the afternoon. It sent the other two into a
state of disarray, one of them wiping his comrade’s blood from his face with one hand,
even as he reached for his curved knife with the other.

His knife cleared the belt but that was all.
Cavanagh spun his own blade mid-air as he swung backhand, slicing open the luckless
hillman’s throat. The man’s skullcap tumbled from his head as he folded to the dirt
with blood sheeting down his front and a final wet death rattle, but there was no time for
Cavanagh to bring his sabre to bear and take the last man. He heard a shot from behind and felt
the air part, but the shot went wild. Too late he saw the Khyber knife streak from outside his
peripheral vision, and though there was no immediate pain he felt the hot wash of blood coursing
down his face.

[A note from the dossier curator:
NB Cavanagh
bears this scar to this day.
]

Had the Afghan pressed home his advantage he
might have made it out of the clearing alive, and maybe even with the blood of a British
corporal to show for his pains. Instead he chose to make a break for the horses. Possibly he
hoped to escape and warn his friends; maybe he knew of a loaded pistol secreted within the
saddlebags. Unfortunately for him the sight of a terrified man running towards them was too much
for the normally imperturbable Afghan steeds and they reared up, pulled their tethers free and
scattered.

Hell’s teeth
, cursed Cavanagh, as
he watched the horses, the supplies and not to mention the second goat carcass, go scarpering
out of sight along the frosty track.

Meanwhile, the Afghan
wheeled, his teeth bared and his Khyber knife slashing. But Cavanagh went on guard sabre-style,
his right hand raised, the point of the sword tipping downwards, and it was with some
satisfaction that he saw the tribesman’s eyeballs swivel up and to the left for a second
before he buried the tip of his blade into the man’s face.

In the aftermath of the battle was silence. The
gut-shot Afghan writhed and moaned, and Cavanagh delivered the coup de grâce, wiping his
sabre clean on the man’s robes, which were already so bloodstained as to be useless.

‘Quick, grab whatever clothes you can
before the blood ruins them,’ he told Lavelle and the sepoy, who had emerged from behind
the rock. The sepoy had acquitted himself well, just as Cavanagh always thought he would, and
Cavanagh congratulated him. Lavelle congratulated Cavanagh. Nobody congratulated Lavelle.

The three men ate heartily of goat, which having
been left unattended during the conflict was slightly overdone. Not that it mattered to the
ravenous British. They ate until their bellies were full of overcooked goat, and after that they
donned the robes and turbans of the dead, cobbling together what outfits they could that
didn’t show obvious bloodstains. When that was done, they hid the bodies as best they
could and carried on their way.

For a day they rode, staying ahead of the
retreating column, a mile or so as the crow flies. Despite the distance they heard the constant
crack of shot, even the occasional shriek of pain that was carried to them on the chill wind.
Cavanagh began to grow in confidence. They drew further
away from
prescribed routes, finding a new track higher up the rock pass. And then, on the afternoon of
the fifth day, they came upon the outskirts of another much larger travelling encampment. And
they faced their most difficult test yet.

Thinking about it later, Cavanagh would come to
the conclusion that they had happened upon a roaming settlement belonging to one of
Akbar’s warlords. From such a base the chieftain could dispatch snipers to take up
position on the passes above the column, where they would use their jezzails to rain devastation
on the poor marchers below, and send riders to make their way down near hidden paths to the
floor of the pass, where they could make terrifying damaging charges into the rear, less
well-guarded sections of the column, mercilessly cutting down servants, women and children and
plundering what few supplies were left.

It was here that Cavanagh’s knowledge of
Pushtu came in handy. Indeed, it saved their lives. Coming over the brow of a hill, with their
horses slipping and sliding on a frosty, flinty path, they were hailed by a lookout.

Thank God. The man had taken one look at their
garb and from a distance taken them to be Afghans. When he called hello, Cavanagh’s quick
thinking once again saved the day, for instead of showing surprise and taking flight, he kept
his composure and replied in kind.

At his signal, the three men came to a halt. Some
two hundred yards in front of them the lookout had risen
from behind a
rocky outcrop, his jezzail slung across his back. His features were indistinct as he cupped his
hands to his mouth and called again in Pushtu. ‘Hello!’

Cavanagh’s mind raced; there was no way
they could get too close: they would be recognized as imposters. But the Afghans would mount a
pursuit if they turned tail and fled, and being the superior horsemen it would in all likelihood
be a short pursuit indeed.

Sitting beside him, Lavelle’s eyes flicked
nervously. ‘What the hell are we going to do, man?’

‘Shut up,’ hissed Cavanagh, oblivious
to Lavelle’s outrage. ‘I’m thinking. Just whatever happens, don’t say
another word and follow my lead.’

Meanwhile, the lookout, again with his hands
cupped to his mouth, was calling to unseen others behind him, and faces appeared from the
landscape. Six or seven men. Christ, they’d almost ridden slap-bang into the middle of the
camp. They now stood staring across the space between the two groups, one or two of them
shielding their eyes against the dying winter sun, all no doubt wondering why their three
visitors had stopped on the perimeter of the camp.

Cavanagh’s mind reached for answers.
Couldn’t run. Couldn’t advance. And any attempts to answer any further interrogation
would surely expose his shaky grasp of Pushtu.

One of the men unslung his rifle, but Cavanagh
pre-empted what might happen next and called out to him before he could bring the weapon to
bear. ‘My good friend, we come from hounding the British cowards. With
us is a captured Sikh scum. A man trying to adopt our dress and escape as a
deserter.’

From over the way came Afghan laughter.
Unschooled in Pushtu, the sepoy sat oblivious to what awaited him. Loyal, faithful.

‘What are you saying, man?’ demanded
Lavelle.

‘Quiet,’ snapped Cavanagh back.

His voice rose again. ‘Here. We’ll
leave our prize with you as a gift for your women, and take our leave if we may.’

With that he drew his stolen Khyber knife and in
one quick movement pretended to cut binding at the sepoy’s hands. Confused, the sepoy
turned in his saddle to face Cavanagh, his face clouding with confusion. ‘Sir?’ But
Cavanagh reached down, snatched the man’s foot and dragged it upwards, unseating him at
the same time as with one almighty and merciless slice of the Khyber knife blade he slashed open
the desperate man’s Achilles tendon.

As the Afghans over the way jeered and laughed,
Cavanagh waved goodbye, and he and Lavelle pulled their horses round. At the same time the sepoy
tried to pull himself off the ground, but his torn-open heel folded beneath him gushing blood,
and he was sent back to the ground mewling and pleading. ‘Sir? Sir?’

But they left him there, to his fate at the hands
of the Afghan women. Flaying alive or death by a thousand cuts. They left the nameless sepoy
there to die an unspeakable death, so that they might save themselves.

‘Christ, man, that was cold,’ said
Lavelle later, when they had made camp in the rocks above the pass.

‘It was him or
us,’ said Cavanagh.

That night the sound of gunfire came to them, and
both men fancied that they could also hear the screams of the sepoy in the far distance, as the
Afghan women began their work.

The Ghost had seethed with hatred for Cavanagh. A
month or so later, when he faced the men in the churchyard, he understood the strength of the
impulse to survive. That he understood. But what he could not understand (and maybe this was why
he was never truly cut out for a life of bloodshed) was the ability to sacrifice another
man’s life, to let another man die in your stead. Not only that, but a man who’d
shown you nothing but loyalty.

He wondered whether the face of that sepoy
haunted Cavanagh in his dreams. Did he feel anything at all?

The dossier had gone on. Cavanagh and Lavelle had
turned up at Jalalabad a day after William Brydon had made his historic appearance. Their
survival went unheralded, shrouded as it was in rumour and suspicion.

Despite their insistence, and the fact that they
had steadfastly stuck to a prepared and detailed story about becoming detached from a cavalry
section and losing their way, the gossip at the Jalalabad Cantonment was that the two men had
deserted. Nothing about Lavelle suggested any other explanation, but when, on 7 April 1842, the
Jalalabad garrison attacked Akbar Khan’s lines, Cavanagh acquitted himself well, proving
indomitable in combat.

His movements were next noted some years after
his return to England, by which point he had gained a position
for himself
within the Templar Order. It was shortly after this that Colonel Walter Lavelle met with a fatal
accident. According to the dossier the Assassins believed it was Cavanagh who had not only
recommended but carried out the execution.

Up until this point, The Ghost had been wondering
where he came in. Why was he reading about this man Cavanagh?

Then it became clear. The next time Cavanagh
appeared as a person of interest to the Assassins was when, quite out of the blue, he had
secured an appointment with the company building the world’s first underground railway
line. He became a director at the Metropolitan Railway and directly involved with the
excavation. The company’s ‘man on the ground’, as it were.

Now The Ghost was beginning to understand.

When he arrived in England he did as he’d
been told by Ethan. He found lodgings at the tunnel and he gained an appointment to the
Metropolitan dig, though in a rather less exalted position than his quarry. And so it was that
he had been there at New Road to see the shaft sunk. He had seen wooden houses on wheels come
into view, then wagons piled high with timbers and planks, men armed with pickaxes and shovels
marching by their side like an oncoming army.

He had bought a spade from a drunken man in a
pub, etched the name of ‘Bharat Singh’ into it and then joined them. He had helped
to enclose hundreds of yards of roadway, when New Road had been transformed from a part of
London’s history to a significant part of its future.
Horses,
carpenters and troops of navvies had arrived, the sound of pickaxes, spades and hammers and the
passing of steam began, a clamour that was rarely to cease, day or night.

Huge timber structures sprung up at intervals
along the centre of the road, spots for opening shaft holes were marked out, iron buckets had
been brought on to the roadway, which was dragged up, peeled reluctantly away from the surface
of the earth and carted off to be tilted down a gaping pit; the noise of it like a storm –
another distant rumble to add to the din that was to reign from then on.

The Ghost had been there for all of the problems
encountered by the line. On paper it had been a simple – well, a relatively simple –
operation: Paddington to Euston Road and the Fleet Valley to the city. But gas pipes, water
mains and sewers had all stood in its way, and along Euston Road they had discovered that the
land was made up of sand and gravel, which had to be drained, while at Mount Pleasant the usual
policy of cut-and-cover had been abandoned and a tunnel dug.

Meanwhile, The Ghost had watched the world around
him change. He had seen the squalid streets of the Fleet Valley destroyed. A thousand homes were
demolished and the twelve thousand people who lived there (a damning statistic by itself)
displaced to other slums.

Some of them had come to the Thames Tunnel.
Perhaps some of them had enjoyed the benefit of the benign form of protection that The Ghost
provided there. There was a circularity to the process that he could appreciate.

At the site his bare feet were often the subject
of a
remark, and of course his skin tone marked him apart, but otherwise he
never did anything to stand out. He never attempted a jump he knew he could make. He never
carried loads he knew he was capable of bearing. If a joke was cracked, he laughed. Not too
loudly, and not distinctively. This was how he maintained his cover, by ensuring that it
remained solid at all times. So that when in future he was called upon to penetrate the
organization further it would withstand any amount of examination. He must be Bharat, the
dirt-poor but conscientious Indian worker, below contempt and thus above suspicion. He must
maintain that cover at all times.

Maintaining his cover was essential to staying
alive.

The first day he clapped eyes on Cavanagh he had
been manning one of the buckets, dragging it from the mouth of the trench to deposit its
contents into a cart. Over the way he’d seen the door to the mobile office-on-wheels open
and a familiar face emerge. Not Cavanagh, but Marchant, who managed the roster, ticked off names
and passed the worksheets to the wages’ clerks who appeared every Friday, setting up desk
and handing out coins with pained expressions, as though it was their very own money. Oh yes,
The Ghost knew Marchant. A weasel of a man with a wheedling, nasal voice.

And then came Cavanagh himself.

Just as The Ghost had been led to believe,
Cavanagh had a horizontal scar below his right eye, almost two inches long. The eyes themselves
were hard. The chin set. In all the times that The Ghost ever saw Cavanagh, it was impossible to
know what he was thinking.

‘I want to find out
what they’re up to,’ Ethan had said.

They had met in the grounds of the Foundling
Hospital, just as arranged on the harbour wall at home in India. Ethan had led The Ghost to a
folly in the hospital grounds, where foliage obscured them from view. There the master had taken
a good look at his former pupil, eyeing up the boy’s rags, his general demeanour.

‘Very good,’ he said, when he’d
finished giving the boy the once-over. ‘Very good. You look the part, that much is
certain.’

‘I have a position at the dig,’ said
The Ghost, ‘just as instructed.’

Ethan smiled. ‘I know. I’ve been
keeping tabs on you.’

‘Is that wise?’

‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

In response, The Ghost shrugged and spread his
hands. ‘Anything that increases the chance of my deception being uncovered is to be
discouraged.’

‘Well, I see I taught you well,’
smiled Ethan.

‘You need to practise what you
preach.’

‘You’ll excuse me if I don’t
accept advice from a young pup like your good self.’ Ethan smiled in pretence of a little
friendly badinage, but his eyes were flinty.

‘You know,’ said The Ghost,
‘you shouldn’t sit with your chin on your leading hand.’

‘Oh?’ Ethan’s eyebrows raised
in surprise. ‘Pupil has turned teacher, has he? You have another lesson in Assassin-craft
for me?’

‘You risk an accident with the
blade.’

‘I deceive any potential
opponent.’

‘There are no
opponents here.’

‘Now who’s being careless?’

‘I didn’t say you were being
careless, master. Just that mistakes can happen. They can happen to the best of us.’

He hadn’t meant that last statement to
sound as significant as it did, and for a second he allowed himself to hope that Ethan might not
pick up on it, but of course what Ethan lacked in focus he more than made up for in intuition
and perception. ‘You think me careless?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You didn’t need to.’

The Ghost glanced away. He had been looking
forward to this meeting. Part of him anticipated his master’s praise. Somewhere along the
line – and he wasn’t even sure how – the conversation had taken a wrong turn.

When he turned back to look at his old friend and
tutor, it was to find Ethan regarding him with hard baleful eyes, but he decided to ask a favour
anyway. ‘May I try on your hidden blade, master?’ he asked.

Ethan softened. ‘And why would you want to
do that? Check it for maintenance, perhaps?’

‘I’d like the feel of it once again,
to remind myself of what I am.’

‘To remind yourself you are an Assassin? Or
to remind yourself of home?’

The Ghost smiled, unsure of the answer.
‘Maybe a little of both.’

Ethan frowned. ‘Well, I’d rather not.
It’s perfectly calibrated.’

The boy nodded understandingly, though sadly.

‘Oh, get the stick
out of your arse!’ exploded Ethan. ‘Of course you can have a go.’ And he
yanked up the sleeve of his robes and reached for the buckles …

Some time later the two men, having resolved
their unspoken differences, sat in silence. The Ghost could see the bronze glowing lights of the
Foundling Hospital from his seat inside the folly and thought how peaceful it seemed, and how
difficult it was to believe that just a few hundred yards away lay the turbulence of the
Metropolitan dig. The new underground line was like a bended arm, and right now they sat
somewhere near the elbow: Grays Inn Road, New Road – a world of turmoil.

Beside him, Ethan finished recalibrating his
blade. That familiar snicking sound it made when he ejected it. Ethan was right – wearing
it hadn’t made The Ghost yearn for his life as an Assassin. It had made him yearn for
home.

The older Assassin flexed his hand to check for
unintended discharge. He slapped his hands on his thighs, satisfied all was in order.

‘I wonder if now is the time to tell me the
purpose of my mission,’ said The Ghost.

‘You’ve guessed it is something to do
with our friend Cavanagh, of course?’

The Ghost nodded. ‘The dossier on him made
interesting reading.’

‘His position at the Metropolitan is an
example of the level of power the Templars currently hold in London. They are very much in the
ascendancy. They have the advantage of knowing how weak we are, though I rather
doubt they realize just how weak. “We” in this context being myself and another
member of the Brotherhood based not far away. And now you.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it, my dear boy. The best we
can do to challenge their supremacy is take little potshots in the hope of diminishing some of
their fringe activities. Well, we can do that and we can do this. This being we can try to find
out what their game is.’

‘This?’

‘Yes, this. This area of land in the
north-west of London is, we think, of interest to the Templars. We think that they are digging
for something. Perhaps a Piece of Eden.’

‘A Piece of Eden? Like the Koh-i-Noor
diamond?’

‘Something like that, perhaps. Who knows?
Something related to the First Civilization, Those Who Came Before. The point is we don’t
know and nor do we have the resources to interrogate the issue at any higher level.

‘There is an advantage to that, of course.
Without our involvement the Templars have no need to suspect that we harbour any suspicions
about their activities. As a result, they may get careless. Nevertheless, it’s a sad state
of affairs. The fact is we have no idea how deep the Order has penetrated into London society,
beyond a handful of names.’

The Ghost nodded as though satisfied, but
nevertheless harbouring doubts. Meanwhile, Ethan opened his robes to reveal the brown-leather
strap of a documents case. He lifted the flap and pulled from it a dossier – bound in the
livery of the Assassins, just as the Cavanagh
file had been – and
handed it to The Ghost, watching wordlessly as the younger man began to leaf through pages of
information gathered on active Templars in London.

Leading the pack, of course, was Crawford
Starrick, the Templar Grand Master. Owner of Starrick Industries, Starrick Telegraph Company and
the Millner Company, he’d once been called ‘a great rail baron’ by none other
than Charles Dickens. Then there was Benjamin Raffles, the Templar kingpin and Starrick’s
‘head of security’, as well as another kingpin, Hattie Cadwallader, the keeper of
the National Gallery, who maintained Starrick’s extensive art collection.

Another kingpin: Chester Swinebourne, who had
apparently infiltrated the police. Then there were Philip ‘Plutus’ Twopenny, the
governor of the Bank of England no less; and Francis Osbourne, the Bank of England manager.

Second-in-command was Lucy Thorne. She
specialized in the occult. The Ghost had seen her at the dig. Starrick too. Then there was
Rupert Ferris of Ferris Ironworks. He’d been spotted at the works as well. As had Maxwell
Roth. He wasn’t a Templar, but he had helped them set up the London gangs.

Dr John Elliotson. Ethan knew him personally. He
was the inventor of the panacea Starrick’s Soothing Syrup.

Then there was Pearl Attaway, the proprietor of
Attaway Transport and a cousin to Starrick. A gang boss called Rexford Kaylock. A sleazy
photographer by the name of Robert Waugh (and now, of course, The Ghost knew all about him).

Still others: Sir David
Brewster, Johnnie Boiler, Malcom Millner, Edward Hodson Bayley, James Thomas Brudenell,
otherwise known as ‘Lord Cardigan’, a soldier called Lieutenant Pearce, a scientist
called Reynolds …

The list was seeming endless.

‘This is a rather large dossier,’
said The Ghost at last.

Ethan smiled ruefully. ‘Indeed it is. And
these are just the ones we know about. In opposition? Just the three of us. But we have
you
, my dear boy. One day you will be recruiting spies of your own. One of them may
very well be in this motley crew we have here.’