Connor: Family and Freedom 2

It was an hour later that he came back wearing a black uniform that looked very much like the ones that the five men in front of the compound wore. The sky was just barely beginning to pale to the east, the stars gradually disappearing. The moon still shone with a brilliant light. A soft breeze came in from the ocean. The streets were deserted now. It was the quiet time before life asserted itself once more.

Haytham critically examined Connor’s outfit and made a few minute adjustments.

“That should do,” he approved. “Follow me.”

Together they approached the gated compound walking as if they belonged there on business. Showing fear or nerves would get them nowhere but full of bullets. The five men had the look of hard bitten veterans, thugs really, who obeyed the orders of any man who paid them, and paid well. One of them held up a hand to stop them.

“Hold strangers,” he said, eyes studying the two, full of suspicion. “You tread on private property. What business have you here?”

Without a pause, without showing anything in his face, Haytham intoned the formula, “The Father of Understanding guides us.”

The hard look on the guard’s face relaxed a trifle – but only a trifle – as he nodded in acknowledgment and then glanced over at Connor who let nothing show on his face. He had no choice but to trust his father in this and did not like that fact at all. He had been self sufficient all his life – ever since his mother had died in that fire, a memory that still brought him nightmares on occasion. To entrust his life to a man he mistrusted…

“You I recognize,” the guard said. “but not the savage.”

That rankled but Connor kept his temper in check. Insults like that had used to cause him pain but not anymore. Not really. He had almost grown used to them, to the contemptuous looks from the citizens who happened to catch a glimpse of his face some times. The guard in front of him clearly regarded him as less than human. A cur perhaps. Or a speck of dust – the words of Charles Lee so long ago came into his mind again.

“He is my son.”

Connor’s eyes widened. He glanced sharply at his father, disbelieving his ears. Had he heard right? Had his father just acknowledged him?

Why?

He leaned slightly to get a better look at his father’s face. There was pain there – a minute contraction at the corners of the Templar’s mouth. The honest admission had clearly cost his father. Haytham indeed did not feign affection.

With a leer, the guard leaned forward, “Tasted of the forest’s fruits did you?” He opened the gate, the sneer still hovering over his lips. “Off you go then.”

Connor gave the man a long hard look as he passed him, a deadly promise written in his black eyes. The man flinched only slightly, his sneer becoming just a little lopsided. The Assassin carried death about him like a dark miasma and the man unconsciously sensed that perhaps his words had gone too far. He stepped back and shut the gate, no longer certain of himself.


The enormous warehouse was moonlit, stacked full of barrels and crates containing gunpowder, bandages, medicines and food. Most of it undoubtedly obtained illegally. Some of it surely the stolen Patriot supplies. In the dark Connor could not distinguish between the British and the Patriot supplies.

At the back door Haytham tried the latch. As he had expected, the door was locked.

“Give me a moment,” he said reaching inside his robes to extract the long thin lock-picking tools he carried with him. He knelt and began to work by moonlight, searching for the right angle to press.

Connor leaned on the wall beside the wide wooden door, arms crossed across his chest. After a moment of silence he spoke in a neutral soft of voice, “Must be strange for you – discovering my existence as you have.”

“I am actually curious what your mother might have said about me,” Haytham replied, pausing in his work and glancing over at his son. “I always wondered,” he went on with a strange note of regret in his voice, standing up, the lock broken. “what life might have been like had she and I stayed together.” He looked over. “How is she by the way?”

“Dead,” Connor said bluntly, not softening the blow. “Murdered,” he added. The effect on his father of his words was clear. The older man blanched, grief appearing momentarily in his usually unflappable gaze.

But only for a moment.

“What? I am sorry to hear that.”

Connor had carried the pain of his mother’s death for all these years, hiding it, pushing it away as much as he could. Her death had changed him – irrevocably so. His father’s words sounded flippant, minimalistic compared to the size of the hurt that Connor had lived with. He could never forget that day, the raging fire, his mother’s large eyes that reflected the orange flames, her desperate pleas for him to run, to leave her alone, his own stubborn refusal to let her die, his helpless attempts to lift the heavy burning wood off her. His father’s words could not begin to describe the enormity of his grief for his dead mother. The man it seemed even did not consider her life important enough to grieve over. To him she’d just been a woman – obviously, to be used and then discarded when no longer necessary.

Connor pushed away from the wall, his grief momentarily replaced by a sudden blaze of anger at his father who belittled his mother’s memory with his all too easy admission of sorrow.

“Oh, you’re sorry?” Connor said facing his father again. “I found my mother burning alive,” he bore in. He would tell his father how it really was, how little he had truly known of their lives. Enough was enough. “I’ll never forget her face as she sent me away.” He pointed a finger at his father’s face. “Charles Lee is responsible for her death – by YOUR order.” He threw his hands up. “And you’re sorry?”

“That’s impossible,” his father denied flatly. “I gave no such order,” he insisted firmly. “I spoke the opposite in fact. I told them to give up the search for the Precursor site. We were to focus on more practical pursuits.”

Excuses. His father was offering him excuses for his own guilt – to assuage no doubt his own complicity. Connor was tired of the arrogance, the veiled and not so veiled insults, of the empty justifications. He was tired of listening to empty words.

“It is done,” he said coldly pushing Haytham aside. “And I am all out of forgiveness.”


Church indeed proved to be most clever. As the armed men surrounded the two of them, Connor finally realized that his father’s contacts had led him into an ambush. Church seemingly had ambitions to get rid of the Grand Master of his Order so that he could live out his perfidious life in what he would no doubt call peace. The renegade Templar and the cargo of stolen supplies were long gone as the decoy left behind explained. The thin moustached man now watched from a safe distance as his men attempted to dispatch Haytham and the Assassin.

The attempt to end the lives of the Grand Master of the Templars and the Assassin though was not going too well. Haytham fought with his usual cool proficiency, his sword flicking here and there, slashing at faces and hands to distract his opponents enough so that he could smoothly run them through or cut at their legs to disable their mobility. Haytham had too much skill to be stilled by street thugs like these even if they were the best at their profession. Now they had met their match.

The Indian savage though fought with the brutality that was only to be expected of one of his ilk. His blows were designed not so much to main as to kill. He would circle and dash in to deliver debilitating wounds, looking for that opening that would give him access to a vital area of his enemy’s body – usually the throat or the torso. Two men already lay dead, one stabbed through the throat by the short knife in the savage’s left hand and the other had had his guts spilled out onto the floor of the warehouse. The reek of voided bowels and blood was almost overpowering.


“Where is Church?” Connor demanded, his hand on the back of the prone decoy’s neck. The Assassin still felt anger deep inside him, his eyes blazed not only with bloodlust but with many emotions that the hapless decoy did not want to give name to. He swallowed hard, aware that his life hung by a thread.

“I’ll tell you,” he pleaded, swallowing hard. He was blubbering in his fear. “Anything you want. Only promise that you’ll let me live.”

Connor, after one glance at his father, hauled the man to his feet.

“You have my word.”

“He left yesterday for Martinique,” the decoy informed him. Haytham carefully paced around, hands behind his back in the shadows. “Took passage on a trading sloop called the Welcome,” the man went on eagerly. “Loaded half its hold with the supplies he stole from the Patriots.” Haytham was now behind the decoy, hidden from his eyes. “That’s all I know. I swear.” Connor looked away in relief, already planning his next move. He’d have to use the Aquila for this venture. There was little choice. They’d –

At that moment Haytham’s hidden blade entered the decoy’s back. The poor man’s eyes bulged in surprise and hurt as he stared at Connor who’d stepped back in shock.

“You promised,” the dying man accused falling limply to his knees, his eyes already glazing in death.

Haytham calmly wiped his blade with a clean cloth and stepped over the body.

“And he kept his word,” he informed the dead man ignoring Connor’s reproachful eyes. This was a vile act, a petty act, an action of a cruel man who cared little for the lives of others. The callous act worthy of Charles Lee. It was clear that his father’s association with the man had deep roots and unhappy consequences.

“Let’s go,” the Grand Master of the Templars suggested.

Just as Haytham turned for the door Connor grabbed him and threw him to the ground. The powder casks across the room exploded, throwing bits of wood, flames and glass everywhere. Connor had seen the men concealed on the upper balcony out of the corner of his eye a moment before they’d fired on the powder kegs. His reaction had been instantaneous. More explosions ripped through the now burning warehouse. The blazing flames licked up the wooden walls and stacks, popping the glass of the lanterns and various bottles in sharp little ringing bursts. The fire was feeding on the plentiful fuel and it was spreading. They had to get out and quickly.

The smoke and additional flames made moving through the warehouse difficult, almost impossible. Holding his arm across his face Connor coughed and choked his way up the still intact stairs after his father. Moments before they reached the upper floor the roof overhead collapsed taking the splintered floor beams with it. The staircase now ended in empty air, going nowhere. Haytham did not hesitate but jumped to a ceiling beam and ran along its length across the flames that raged below. Connor followed, spitting grit and smoke. His father was moving fast out pacing him. The weakened beams could only hold so much weight now. The fire was getting closer – Connor felt it licking at his feet.

Haytham had already made it to the far side when the thick wooden beam finally snapped under Connor’s weight. He swore and tried to leap off, to grasp another beam. He did not have enough momentum for that. Instead he crashed onto another balcony, one that had not yet been touched by flames.

Quickly he rolled to his feet and sought for another way up. Some large wooden crates, unignited as yet, provided a perfect route up to the railing of a staircase at the back of the warehouse. Wiping smoke and soot out of his face the Assassin agilely ran up the towering crates to reach the platform –

- just in time to see his father and three thugs disappear under a hail of the crumbling ceiling. Coughing Connor hauled himself onto the platform and stepped to the hole. His father hung by one hand looking up. He would not ask for aid – he would expect it from his naïve son. For just a few seconds Connor contemplated letting the man die, to let him be burned here. For a brief moment father and son came to the same deadly realization. And then Haytham motioned peremptorily for Connor to help him. The Grand Master of the Templars never asked. He commanded and men obeyed. Such was his due as the commander of the Order, as a leader of men. His life was worth more than those of his underlings. HE would survive while others died.

Before he thought too much about it, Connor reached out and grasped his father’s arm.


Haytham tried the bar across the wide door. It would not budge, not an inch. He exhaled in frustration.

“Stuck!” Over his shoulder he said, “See if you can find something to pry it open.” The growing silence behind him made him uneasy. The flames were getting closer. Half the ceiling was already gone. The interior of the warehouse was destroyed. If the boy did not obey him now…

“Connor?”

He turned around.

“What are you up to?” he demanded watching as his son carefully lined himself up, obviously measuring the running distance with his eyes. “Oh no,” Haytham said, the realization dawning on him. “Don’t do that. There is no way of knowing what’s on the other siiiii…”

But it was too late. Connor was already charging down on him like an unstoppable avalanche, the look of determination on his heavy jawed face such that few would dare to oppose him now. His son slammed into him hard, carrying them both through and out the door in a shower of dry splintered wood. The shock of the impact jarred Haytham’s back and teeth.

There was nothing for some time except weightless air – just how far up were they, Haytham wondered for a moment before hitting water. He’d had no time to close his mouth in his surprise at Connor’s action and water entered it before he could quite shut it. He struggled, water filling his lungs, pain beginning in his throat. Finally collecting the last shreds of his wits and dignity – that had gone out the window rather quickly, though, hadn’t it? – he pushed himself to the surface of the water.

“We do now,” Connor said cryptically once they were on the pier, soaked to the skin. Haytham glared at his son who appeared to be unaffected by the indignity he’d inflicted on his parent.

“Church has at least a day on us,” Haytham said coughing and breathing heavily. “We must move quickly if we’re to catch him.”

“I have a ship we can use,” Connor said again surprising his father. Haytham’s face revealed curiosity, shock and even a little admiration that he’d never admit to. He felt a little glow of satisfaction deep inside: naïve or not, his father had not, his father would have to reassess him. “Meet me on the pier when you’re ready.”