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The sun beat down mercilessly, and Altaïr could feel it digging fiery fingers into his back as he perched, crouched, trying not to sweat, focussing on the leaves in the tree he could see far across the distance across Masyaf, using it to keep himself balanced, to prevent himself from wavering.
He was perched, along with several other boys his own age, atop small wooden posts, barely a handspan in width. The training master walked between the posts, ready to shout or slap at any of the boys who showed signs of becoming tired. Altaïr was grateful for the thin shirt he wore, which allowed what little breeze there was to cool his skin.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Malik waver atop his own post, and then nearly fall off it as the Master slapped at the back of his head and chided loudly, "An Assassin must be prepared to wait as long as necessary, patient and shrouded by stealth. If that means perching atop a minaret to watch and observe all day long, you will do so."
It was something Altaïr had heard often, so he kept his eyes focussed on the leaves in the trees, occupying himself with counting them, diverting his mind from the burning in his legs.
A resounding slap brought him back to himself, making his ears ring. He looked up at the Master, who scowled at him.
"An Assassin must also be aware of his surroundings, or he will be the one dead on the floor," the Master said.
Altaïr's ears were ringing, but he had enough of his wits about him to answer, "Yes, Master," in the appropriately respectful tone.
He heard someone sniggering behind him, and felt his face burn in a way that had nothing to do with the sun beating down on them. He was saved from further humiliation by the distant sound of the bells in the Stronghold tolling for midday, causing the Master to glance over at them and harrumph to himself. "Get along, boys," he said, waving for them to get off their posts.
Altaïr carefully climbed down, feeling his muscles painfully protest the movement after what felt like days in a cramped uncomfortable position. Some of the other boys made noises of pain and dismay, but Altaïr kept his mouth firmly closed, and didn't even massage his leg muscles as some of the others did.
Midday, so it was time for food then. He started off after the others who were trying to slowly walk off their cramps as they headed for the Stronghold and the thin respite of the midday meal. There was a scuffling sound beside him as Malik caught up to him. Altaïr stifled a grunt of annoyance. It was nothing new.
Every day, for as long as he could remember, the day started the same way. He would get up at dawn with the other boys who trained to become Assassins, spend the morning honing some physical skill, whether it was fighting, climbing, running, balancing, then would come the midday meal, and Malik would come and attach himself to Altaïr's side, chatter at him throughout the meal, then sit beside him in the afternoons of learning letters and numbers. It would have caused too much trouble to disabuse the other boy of any notions of friendship, and so Altaïr tolerated it. He certainly had no intention of being chastised and beaten by the Masters for troublemaking.
"Hassan got in trouble," Malik said to him, in a low whisper, grinning as he conveyed what he no doubt thought was a juicy bit of gossip. He was absent-mindedly rubbing his thigh as they walked, wincing at the pain in knotted muscles. "He got caught sneaking into the kitchens to steal a bit of bread. Tried to cry off, saying he was hungry and they drive us too hard with too little sustenance."
Altaïr snorted softly. Malik was very fond of using long words. Sometimes he wondered why Malik continued with the Assassin's training, and why he did not ask to be placed in Al Mualim's library as a scholar. But then, none of them had chosen the life of the Assassin. It had been chosen for them, before they were born. There was little chance of any other life.
"He's a fool," Altaïr said, in a low voice, so as not to catch the attention of their fellows as they walked through the Stronghold's courtyard.
"Yes," Malik said, "The Masters don't take kindly to stealing after all."
"Not for that," Altaïr said, as they entered the shadows of the inside of the Stronghold, "He shouldn't have gotten caught."
Malik was silent for a moment, looking at him, then laughed, as if Altaïr had just made a great joke. Altaïr had been perfectly serious, however. There was no point in thieving if you were just going to get caught and punished for it. It was even taught in their classes, that art of stealthily taking that which was not yours. It was possible that the Masters had agreed with Altaïr, and decided that Hassan wasn't worthy Assassin material. He might be assigned to the lower soldier ranks, fit for guarding Masyaf and its Stronghold only.
Altaïr had no intention of achieving such a lowly position. He was faster than the other boys, stronger. He knew perfectly well that he was better suited to doing their work.
Convincing the Masters of that was a more difficult matter.
The meal was unappetising but filling, a plain fair that gave helped replenish the strength used up in the morning's exertions. The growling empty feeling in Altaïr's stomach vanished as he ate, cleaning the bowl, while Malik chattered away during the meal. Altaïr listened with half an ear, grunting in acknowledgement every once in a while to give the appearance of paying attention. So it was that Malik had to repeat himself to get Altaïr to respond to the one bit of interesting conversation.
"Al Mualim is watching you," he whispered, trying not to obviously look across the room.
Altaïr blinked, a little surprised, and turned to look, trying to make the motion seem casual. From the doorway, Al Mualim looked across the sea of young boys and met Altaïr's gaze. He smiled faintly, before turning and walking away, disappearing quickly from sight.
"He comes to our practices sometimes," Malik said, thoughtfully, stirring a spoon into his mostly empty dish. "I think he watches for the best, the most skilled."
"We are all to be Assassins," Altaïr reminded him, as he turned back to the other boy. "Equal under the Creed."
"Yes," Malik agreed, "But some are better at being Assassins than others."
Altaïr agreed, but knew better than to voice such immodest opinions of himself aloud where the Masters might hear and box his ears for being overly proud. If Al Mualim were here, making his presence felt amongst the initiates, then perhaps the afternoon would not be the typical reading and writing and endless boring politics that Altaïr found so utterly beyond his interest. Maybe they would be doing something interesting for a change, some test of prowess or skill.
Altaïr was not wrong, as he rarely was.
**
"Up there," one of the Masters said, as the boys stood before him, ranked in neat rows, "Is a small chest."
The initiates were gathered in the courtyard, which was normally filled with the sound of clashing swords in practice. For today though, practice was on hold, and the adult members of the Stronghold were standing around, out of the way, watching with grins of anticipation on their faces. They clearly knew exactly what was coming.
Master Hadi was Altaïr's favourite instructor. He taught the boys how to run atop buildings, how to balance on a narrow beam, how to leap across spaces with such apparent ease that it made Altaïr's heart ache for the freedom expressed in the movement. He had been surprised when Hadi had not taught the morning's class, but if he had been setting up this test, then his absence was not such a mystery.
"In it are five gold coins," Hadi continued. "Your task is to retrieve them. Should you do so, you will be permitted to keep the coins."
There was a moment of shifting amongst the initiates. It was no small amount, and, normally, initiates weren't allowed more than the meagre stipend they were given for festival days. All their other needs were provided for by the order of Assassins.
Altaïr heard Latif whisper, a few spaces down to his left, "Those coins will be mine."
His ire was stirred. Latif was a bully. Altaïr ignored his thuggish behaviour for the most part, and there were more appealing targets than Altaïr to draw Latif's interest. That did not mean, however, that Altaïr had any desire to see Latif get his own way. He found the other boy an annoyance worse than Malik's harmless chatter. He decided, then and there, that whatever happened he would beat Latif to the prize.
There was only one minor difficulty involved. Hadi was pointing upwards, to one of the highest points in the Stronghold. It was a dizzying height.
"Master," Altaïr said, raising his voice to speak. They were encouraged to question, to interrupt their teachers if they wanted knowledge. All was permitted, they were frequently told, and so Altaïr felt no embarrassment at speaking up. "That's a very long way up. What if we fall?"
"At best you will break a bone or three," Hadi said, grinning down at Altaïr, showing off the three gaps in his smile where he was missing teeth. He told the initiates that his wife had knocked them out when she caught him with another woman. It was entirely possible this was true. "At worst you will be killed."
"Best not to fall, eh?" called out one of the watching guards, to a round of muted amusement.
Altaïr didn't doubt there was genuine risk involved, but he and the other initiates were advanced in their training. There would only be a few more years before they were admitted to the ranks of fully fledged Assassins, and mostly that wait was to ensure they had finished growing and would not become clumsy in their final adult shapes. They had all been training since early childhood, spending their lives running and jumping over the rooftops of Masyaf. This should be no great challenge.
Although it really was a long way up.
Altaïr swallowed his fear, ignored the tension he could feel from the others. He knew what he had to do, and so he would do it. He would not fail, especially when Al Mualim was standing with a group of Masters, watching silently, his face invisible, thrown into shadow by his hood.
"There is no time limit," Hadi said, "The first one to retrieve the chest and return with the coin is the victor. Begin!"
Altaïr was light on his feet, and prepared for the command, and was moving almost before the Master had finished speaking. He wasn't alone. The others who were amongst the fastest runners were side by side with him. Speed wasn't the only factor though. Altaïr knew for a fact that the most apparently direct route to the top of the tower wasn't the correct one. He peered upwards as he ran, and could see that handholds became vanishingly few the closer to the top one got. So, startling a couple of boys who he suddenly veered in front of, he took off to the right, aiming for the wall and an adjoining tower. A few followed him, clearly and rightly thinking that he had an idea for a better route, but others carried on with the direct path, ignoring him. He used a small standing crate as a launching point to carry himself far enough up the wall to dig his fingers into a small crack in the wall, giving him enough time to find a bit of broken brick that would let him dig his feet in and continue the scramble upwards.
He kept his eyes fixed upwards, always looking for the next handhold. He could hear the cheering of the watching Assassins, and could occasionally catch flashes of movement as the other boys scrambled up the walls of the Stronghold, trying to reach the top of the tower.
Altaïr knew he was outpacing the others who had followed him. He was scrambling upwards, his lungs burning, his fingers scrapped and aching, but he didn't notice any of it. There was exhilaration in the movement, a feeling of intense freedom that never touched him while he walked around on the ground. He found that his lips pulled back in a fierce grin of pleasure, and even laughed as he swung himself the last few feet to the top of the wall, using his momentum to spring him in a new direction.
Behind him, he heard cursing as some of the other boys tried to mimic him and failed, tumbling off their feet, losing precious seconds to clumsiness.
He scrambled up the wall of the tower, digging his fingers into the edge of the arrow slits, using them to propel himself ever further upwards. A last leap brought him close enough to a metal flagpole to grab it, hauling himself upwards and using it to get those last few infinitesimal feet to the top of the tower...
And then he was there, first to reach the top of the tower, and an unassuming wooden chest, with a latch but no lock, was sitting dead in the centre. Altaïr laughed, and crouched down to scoop out the coins and quickly work out a way to get back down. He crouched down to unlatch the chest, and felt what seemed to be a brick land between his shoulder blades.
He stumbled, cursing, falling to the ground and twisting to look upwards to see what had happened, to see Latif standing over him, a smug and victorious expression on his face.
Altaïr jumped back up to his feet. "I won the race," he said, "Back off."
"Not likely," Latif smirked. He peered over the edge of the tower. No doubt the other boys were coming up fast. Altaïr and Latif were the fastest and most agile, though, and had clearly outpaced anyone else by a fair few seconds. "I think Al Mualim will be very impressed with me. Less so with you. Who knew you were so clumsy?"
"Clumsy?!" Indignation rose up in Altaïr's chest, "I am no such thing."
Latif shrugged. "How is anyone going to know that?"
Altaïr knew that Latif was fast, but hadn't had it directed at himself outside of the sparring ring. He wasn't expecting an attack, so he was too surprised to do anything when Latif lunged forward, hands fisting in his shift, shoving him backward. Altaïr kicked his legs, unable to gain a solid footing on the stone, and Latif bent him backwards over the edge of the tower, scattering the birds that had been peacefully roosting there.
Latif had a strange look in his eyes, and a manic grin on his face. "Those coins are mine," he said, and pushed Altaïr over the edge.
**
There were not very many thoughts that went through Altaïr's mind as he plummeted backwards from the tower. Partly this was because there simply wasn't enough time. The wind rushed past him as he fell, creating a roaring noise in his ears, and all he could see was the blue sky above them, the rapidly passing tower walls, and the wheeling of an eagle, the only thing to break up his view.
He wondered, idly, as he looked around himself, if this was how eagles saw the world, with it rushing past them in a blur of light and of colour.
Then he landed on his back in the haystack at the bottom of the tower, at the very top of the cliff upon which the Assassin's Stronghold rested, and everything went quite thoroughly black.
**
When he next awoke, he was in too much pain to truly know where he was or what was going on. Malik would later tell him that he'd snuck into the infirmary to witness Altaïr screaming on a bed, tied down so that he wouldn't injure himself any more than he had already done so in the fall. He would stare at the people around him, screaming about colours and knowing and through it all, Al Mualim stood silently by, watching.
During this time, Latif was banished from the Assassins for being too damaged of mind to be of any use to them. This was another thing that Altaïr would not learn until much later.
The first thing he remembered, after his fall, was coming around, his left arm bound tightly against his body to prevent him from moving it around too much, and his head ached something fierce, muddled though he clearly was with drugs that softened the pain and the senses.
Master Hadi was sitting beside the bed, staring off thoughtfully into the distance. When he realised that Altaïr was blinking groggily at the ceiling, he straightened, and grunted. "Good, you're finally awake. Took your time, boy."
Altaïr stared at him, unable to gather enough words to form a full sentence.
Hadi didn't seem to take that as much of a deterrent to conversation. "Well, the point of the experience was to realise a Leap of Faith. I suspect your introduction was a little less than intentional."
"Leap of faith?" Altaïr said, or tried to. He was reasonably certain that he slurred his words.
"To jump, and to have faith that God will guide you to Earth, unharmed. It seems He was certainly on your side today. A shoulder knocked out of joint was the worst you suffered. At least in body. You knocked your head pretty hard." Master Hadi frowned at Altaïr. "Do you remember that?"
"I remember nothing," Altaïr said, vaguely.
Hadi harrumphed, mostly to himself. "Ah, well. I'm sure it will come back to you in time. When you are fully recovered you will recommence your training, but when you are on your feet, Al Mualim wishes to speak to you."
**
Al Mualim wasn't where Altaïr expected him to be. When he was finally released with nothing more than a loose cloth sling and an admonishment not to go climbing any buildings for at least a fortnight in order to let his shoulder heal properly and without permanent damage, he went to Al Mualim's library in the Stronghold to find that while scholars slipped amongst the shelves quietly murmuring to each other, Al Mualim himself was absent. None of them could help Altaïr when he enquired as to Al Mualim's whereabouts, so he went looking personally.
Altaïr had never really had an opportunity to explore this part of the Assassin's Stronghold, and so he wasn't exactly sure what he would find. If anyone had thought to ask what he would expect, he would have answered that he expected to find Masters training, or perhaps great strategies being discussed.
What he didn't expect to find was a large number of rather scantily clad women sunning themselves in the gardens, talking and laughing amongst themselves. Altaïr stumbled to a halt, suddenly and acutely embarrassed. The guards hadn't stopped him from passing through the gateway into the garden, so he clearly wasn't forbidden to be there, but he couldn't stop feeling like he was seeing something he had no right to.
He fidgeted fixing his eyes firmly on the long stalked plants that brushed his leg. He reached out and rubbed one of the leaves between the thumb and forefinger of his good hand, trying to decide if it was too undignified to run away.
"I would wash my hands before I next eat if I were you." A warm, amused and definitely female voice interrupted his panicked thoughts. He looked up to see a dark eyed woman standing nearby. She was older, her skin better covered that the other ladies in the garden, her skin rough and weathered from years in the sun. She folded her arms as she regarded him.
"The leaves of the plant," she said, gesturing to the foliage that had been so enrapturing a moment ago, "When crushed, and the essence distilled into a tincture, is a potent poison. A single drop can kill a full grown man, and make those around think he died of an affliction of the heart."
Altaïr abruptly let go of the plant, but couldn't resist saying, in response, "Poison is a dishonourable method of assassination."
The woman tilted her head, a smile gracing her lips and making Altaïr feel unaccountably childlike. "Oh?" she said, "Do tell?"
"Assassination sends a message, as well as bringing death to the target. Killing through poison, so that no one knows that a murder even took place is... deceitful."
"Of course," the woman said, placidly, "That is why it is forbidden by our Creed. Yet, change cannot always come through the hidden blade, and not everyone is capable of wielding it." She gestured to the woman of the garden, some of whom occasionally glanced over in curiosity, "None here would be able to wrestle their prey to the ground and put a blade through a man's skull."
Altaïr started, "These women are Assassins?" he blurted, slightly shocked.
The woman just looked at him for a long moment, then resettled her sleeves. "You are Altaïr, yes? Al Mualim is waiting for you. He is over there, on the wall." She pointed to the far end of the garden. "My name is Amsha, if you ever desire conversation with me again. Good day, Altaïr."
Before he could respond, Amsha turned, walking away to insinuate herself into a small group of women, immediately commanding their attention.
Feeling very much like a small mountain goat amongst a pack of hungry wolves, Altaïr made his way through the garden towards where Amsha had indicated. As he passed the women, some of them looked at him before turning back to each other in a flurry of whispers and giggles.
Altaïr felt out of his depth. Since he could remember, he had been training with the other Assassin initiates, all of whom were male. While he had certainly known the girls of Masyaf (and had enjoyed himself with one or two of them occasionally), the girls here were dressed in rich and revealing fabrics, hair elegant, neat and not a callous on their hands to ever indicate they'd worked. They were a world away from the girls of Masyaf, and Altaïr felt suddenly awkward.
Al Mualim was standing at the edge of the garden looking out over the mountainous vista that surrounded their home. Altaïr pointedly did not look down to the river that ran through stretching out of sight to the left and right.
"You seem to be much recovered," Al Mualim said, without preamble. He turned his back on the view, looking down at Altaïr. "And quickly too."
Altaïr would have shrugged, but it sent a jagged shard of pain through his shoulder to do so. "I am not dead. Anything beyond that is an improvement."
Altaïr hadn't intended it as a joke, but Al Mualim chuckled regardless. "An excellent attitude to take, and one I am sure will serve you well in the future. For now, I do wish to speak to you of the... incident... involving your former classmate."
Altaïr frowned. "Latif was cowardly in his attack-"
Al Mualim waved him into silence before he could carry on. "I do not care about Latif. He has been dismissed. One Assassin cannot attack another, or how can they be trusted not to harm an innocent if they are so willing to harm a brother. We will talk about what happened afterwards."
"Afterwards?" Altaïr didn't have to pretend confusion. "Afterwards I... fell. I recovered, and then I came here."
Al Mualim sighed, ever so slightly. "What do you recall of your recovery, child?"
"Not much," Altaïr admitted, and frowned as he tried to search his memory. "I... I remember vague flashes of colour... but little more."
"Let me tell you what you said, in your delirium," Al Mualim said, "You spoke of seeing those around you wreathed in colour, bright blue in hue. You spoke of Latif, and flashes of red. This may seem like nothing more than the ramblings of an injured child, but they struck a chord with me, and so I reviewed some of the documents left to us by the Assassins who came before. They speak of a rare gift, the ability to discern friend from foe with nothing but a glance, to be able to identify a target without needing to know their face."
Altaïr stared at Al Mualim.
Al Mualim smiled gently at Altaïr, at his perplexed expression. "There is no name for this in our texts. They are amongst some of the oldest, and most decayed, but I believe it to be an ancient trait of the Assassins that has been lost to our bloodlines for some time now. That is has appeared in you is..." His mouth twisted, and he looked out at the mountains for a moment, "Truly significant."
"This gift," Altaïr said, cautiously, "Will it make me a better Assassin?"
"Child," Al Mualim said, "It will make you the best."
Altaïr felt pride welling up in his chest.
"But you must learn to control it," Al Mualim said, "Or it will be useless. Like your body and your mind, you must hone your vision." He gestured to the women ranged around the garden. "Look at them," he instructed, apparently apropos of nothing.
Altaïr blinked, turned and obligingly looked. When he couldn't work out what Al Mualim wanted him to look at specifically, he glanced back at the Master, questioningly.
"One of them," Al Mualim said, "Is an enemy. She is armed and prepared to fight. Identify her."
Altaïr turned back to the assembled women, who were all mostly ignoring him. He had no idea what he should be looking for. He couldn't see any obvious weapons on any of them, couldn't see any obvious signs of preparation for battle. No one subtly rebalanced theirselves, no one was lurking just out of sight.
"I don't understand," he said to Al Mualim.
Al Mualim leaned back against the wall. "We will not leave here until you identify her, so unless you desire missing your meals, you will tell me who the armed woman is."
Altaïr turned back, feeling ambushed. It wasn't a pleasant feeling. Still, it was no different from any other test of skill he undertook every day. No matter how much he stared and stared, though, he couldn't pick out the woman Al Mualim wanted him to.
There was a creeling sound from above, and Altaïr's head raised briefly to see the eagle wheeling through the sky, raising and dipping as it travelled over thermals. It made him think. Maybe he was looking too closely, fixating on the details. Maybe he should look as an eagle did, from a distance, where people became nothing more than smudges, and details blended into one another.
And just like that, it all snapped into place.
The world around him seemed to dim, throwing the people into stark contrast. All around him were a sea of calm blue figures, but one of them, and one only, was bathed in red, standing out from the crowd.
Altaïr started, in surprised, but the movement snapped him out of whatever mild trance had been necessary to see the world in such bright, stark colours. But his eyes still rested on the one who had been bathed in red, and now he could see that it was a woman no different in garb from the others, but now he knew what to look at, he saw several tiny clues he'd missed when he was obsessing over every detail of every woman there, overwhelming himself with information.
"Her," he said, pointing, and looking back to Al Mualim for confirmation.
Al Mualim simply smiled, and raised bushy eyebrows at the woman. Most of the women had turned, attention attracted by Altaïr's words. She looked back at the pair of them and grinned, and flipped the edge of her slit skirt back to reveal a slim blade with the Assassin's seal engraved in it, strapped to her thigh.
**
Life did not change vastly for Altaïr in any practical sense after that. Once his shoulder recovered, he spent his mornings in physical training, and the afternoons in learning, but now, instead of having free evenings after dinner, he found himself summoned to Al Mualim to learn what to do with his new gift, and he found himself being schooled in far more than the vague knowledge handed down from their forebears.
Understandably, as Al Mualim was the Master of this branch of the Order, he was thoroughly familiar with the politics of the region, bringing up names and places that Altaïr had never had cause to learn of before. Some evenings were spent walking the streets of Masyaf, learning how to call upon the gift he had been given at will, a more difficult task than Altaïr had ever thought possible, and some evenings were spent sitting in Al Mualim's library, while the old man taught him directly, and shared tea.
Altaïr found himself developing a warmth and attachment to the Master that he'd never truly felt with any of his other teachers.
It was around that time that Altaïr developed another habit. In an attempt to put his confused thoughts in perspective, he had taken to writing down his progress with his studies at the end of the day, adding his thoughts and opinions on the subject. He did this after returning to the barracks where the other students glared resentfully at him for having become Al Mualim's obvious favourite so quickly. Even Malik had stopped talking to him, only gracing him with sour expressions that Altaïr pointedly ignored.
It seemed unimportant somehow.
He wrote in the dark, but had no difficulty in writing in the pitch black, quill scratching against parchment under the covers, the sound easily masked by the snoring of the other boys. Seeing was not hard; the difficulty lay in holding himself very still so that he didn't knock himself out of the light trance needed to work his strange vision. The ink left glowing red lines across his vision, standing out starkly in a way that made Altaïr paranoid that their light would awaken someone.
No one stirred, however. It was a light only Altaïr could see.
He wrote in ciphers found in Al Mualim's books, different ones on every page. Some were substitution ciphers; some used mathematics, some symbols. Altaïr wondered if he was being overly paranoid, but he had no desire for someone to find the pages while he was out training, and distribute them for mockery later.
Al Mualim says it is a gift, he wrote, many weeks after beginning his 'special' training with the old man, But it does not seem right to call it thus. No gift is granted unreservedly, without expectation of something in return.
He wrote slowly, taking his time to translate his words into the cipher before committing it to the page. It made him frame his thoughts more carefully.
It does not seem to be a divine gift, for I am not divine, and certainly do not feel that way. Perhaps it is nothing more than another way of thinking, of seeing the world. I remember the Eagle that flew overhead, and wondered how he perceived the world differently from me. Perhaps that is what this is: the Vision of the Eagles.
He wrote his words on the backs of scrap pieces of parchment, old inventories and missives that no longer had any use. Before morning, he rolled them up tightly into thin tubes, and stuffed them inside the straw mattress that he lay upon, and wondered at the turn his life had taken.
**
One day, Al Mualim finally said, "Altaïr, you are ready."
Altaïr had been peacefully engaging in throwing practice knives into a block of wood while several younger initiates pretended not to watch, and who scattered at Al Mualim's arrival.
"Master?" he questioned, bowing politely, lowering the arm that had been about to loose a knife. "Ready for what?"
Al Mualim looked at him silently, significantly, and Altaïr felt his heart pound in his chest. Could he mean...?
"Join me in the library when you have secured your weapons," Al Mualim said, his eyes flicking to the knives already embedded in the wood, and when Altaïr glanced over to follow his gaze, Al Mualim walked away silently.
Altaïr crossed to the wood, pulling free the knives and tucking them away, making a mental note to himself to return them to the armoury later, after speaking to Al Mualim. He was pleased to note that in spite of the spark of anticipation that shot through his stomach his hands didn't tremble in the slightest.
Al Mualim was standing behind his desk, pages of neatly written information spread out before him. Altaïr could easy have read them, if he'd wanted to, but he didn't bother looking. It didn't concern him.
"Long you have worked for this day, Altaïr," Al Mualim said, as Altaïr came to a halt in front of his desk, "Ever since the day your parents gave you up to the service our Order."
Altaïr frowned faintly. He had never really given much thought to his parents. It was not the way of the Assassin. When they were given to the order to train and raise, the Masters and the other Assassins became their family. The bonds of loyalty and duty were far stronger than blood, and so Altaïr could not remember them. He vaguely thought his mother would not have been welcome in Masyaf anyway.
It was irrelevant. If he needed a father, he needed to look no further than the man pacing slightly in front of Altaïr now, the man who had taught him, listened to his confidences, praised him, chastised him, and encouraged him.
"I have ever strived to be the best that is possible," Altaïr said, with no small measure of pride. He knew he was better than the others his age, knew that he was faster and smarter and stronger. He saw no need to cloak his accomplishments with false modesty.
"Indeed," Al Mualim said, sagely, "That has not been true for all of your fellow initiates. Some of them have been sent away, and now seem to think that absence from the Brotherhood means that they no longer owe us their silence."
Altaïr knew better than to ask, even though he could not deny a certain amount of confusion. Al Mualim clearly sounded like he expected Altaïr to know what he was talking about.
"I trust you remember a young man by the name of Latif."
Altaïr frowned. He had, for the most part, dismissed the memory of a brutish young man from him mind. Certainly, in the days following his fall from the tower, he had harboured a certain amount of resentment towards the other boy, but he had eventually been forced to admit that, however angry he was, Latif was beyond any retribution at his hands. Eventually he'd come to believe he'd forgotten. He was therefore somewhat surprised at the sudden spike of anger that Al Mualim's mentioning of the name caused.
"I do," he said, carefully.
Al Mualim's mouth seemed to twitch into a smile, though the expression was mostly obscured by his beard. "I would be surprised if you did not," he said, "Since being required to leave Masyaf, he has decided that the tenets that bind all members of the Brotherhood, past and present, no longer apply to him. He speaks too freely, voicing secrets, voicing lies. He must be silenced."
Altaïr felt his stomach clench, but wasn't sure whether it was fear, anticipation, or excitement. He didn't say anything, for risk of saying the wrong thing, and watched as Al Mualim opened a small wooden box on his desk and took a small sharp knife that glinted in the late morning sunshine, and a white feather. These he set on the desk before Altaïr.
"This will be your task," Al Mualim said, "He was last seen on the roads to Damascus, in one of the smaller villages. You must track him down, silence him, and send a message to anyone who believes that the secrets of the Brotherhood are for anyone to hear. When you have done this, you will have shed your first blood. You will be an Assassin. You will have earned the right to wear the hidden blade, to be clad in the robes of our Order."
Altaïr reached out, took the knife, the feather. For some reason, even though he knew how much they both weighed, they seemed somehow heavier than normal.
"This is your task," Al Mualim said, "Now see to it," and he turned away from Altaïr, staring out over the Stronghold.
Altaïr took a deep breath, tucked both items under his sash, and went to find a horse.
**
He took very little with him, nothing that could be traced back to Masyaf and the brotherhood. He took a little food, water, and nothing else but the clothes on his back, the knife and the feather.
He went from village to village, ensuring that he was thorough in his investigations. He listened to rumours, heard the whispers of villagers and bandits, and eventually managed to narrow down his target's location to one particular village a few days out of Masyaf.
Every day he rose, did some brief exercises to keep himself limber, then resumed the hunt.
The village was unremarkable, poor and semi-derelict. But through watching the crowds and listening to rumours, he learnt of a gathering of mercenaries near the centre of town. He had learned through judicious eavesdropping that Latif had taken up the life of a paid blade since leaving Masyaf, so he climbed to the rooftops and made his way quickly to where he thought his target might be.
There was a large crowd of men there, laughing boisterously, indulging in drink, and there were several scantily clad women there. Altaïr felt his lip twitch vaguely in disgust. It had been so many years since he had seen Latif that he had no idea what the man looked like.
But that didn't matter. In a way, Latif was in part responsible for the gift that would bring about his downfall. Altaïr breathed out slowly, focusing.
There. The figure in gold, in a huddle of red.
This was how his life would be, he realised. This is what he had chosen. Every day would be like this. He would train, he would hunt, he would kill.
He slipped the knife from beneath his sash, took a deep breath, and jumped.