Assassin's Creed: Outlaw - Book One

Meeting The Minstrel

Yughi fell through the air, he felt giddy, uncertain, out of control. These were sensations he did not feel comfortable with and he did his best to overcome them in every situation. Still, when he jumped from one tree to another he still hadn't got past it.

When he ran across rooftops he could keep his hips low and his feet flat. The discipline of roof running was actually rather grounded. Up here, in the canopy of the forest, the centre of balance was the same but it required a more nimble foot that Yughi still had not mastered.

"Keep up!" shouted Scarlet. "You'll not be a proper tree dweller till you can run branches!"

The lithe outlaw skipped ahead of him. His feet danced along the lengths of branches no wider than Yughi's hand, easily vaulting through splits in the branches, or navigating by smoothly hugging the trunks and confidently shifting his weight.

Yughi was not a victim of false humility, he knew he was not dreadful at this new discipline, tree running. He also knew that being proficient was not enough by itself. The young boys of Masyaf imitated the assassin training that they saw the initiates undergo, their play was a source of recruits for Alamut. Even so, the best among them was no match for a trained assassin, they were relatively clumsy, noisy and imprudent in their judgement.

As Yughi pushed himself to keep up with the thief he was aware that neither of them was as good at this as they could be. Will was fast, sure-footed and brimming with confidence, unfortunately, he was also unfocused and overconfident. He was proficient at the movement part of the exercise but he would be easy to detect from ground level by someone who knew what they were looking for. Either of the two of them could have fooled a non-combatant or even a foot soldier but neither of them could have hidden from a well trained Templar in Yughi's estimation.

The assassin, on the other hand, was consciously reigning in his speed trying to achieve a greater fluidity of movement. In a way, he was trying to work with the trees, not against them as Will was. For three days now he had run the trees until every muscle in his body ached, he believed he was making progress in his exercise but this was a discipline he sensed it would take a long while to master.

It had been six weeks since the outlaws had rescued Will Scarlet from Newark. The state of affairs between the outlaws and the sheriff's men had stagnated. The outlaws kept themselves ready whilst Robin, John and Tuck ran operations that built up the band's strength and improved their living situation.

The growing band of outlaws were splitting their time between fortifying their underground hiding spots, creating dwelling places in the networks of caves that ran under Nottinghamshire and training in the skills of hunters and, now assassins.

In Masyaf it was the master assassins that ran chapters of the assassin's guild, Yughi was nowhere near that level of competence. He felt a little fraudulent training these young men in the arts of combat, sharing a little of the assassin's knowledge with them. It was not his place to do so.

He justified his actions with the thought that the outlaws would be fighting no matter what. Many of them were no more than boys themselves. Yughi had already found himself in a position of helping out the woefully under-prepared Much and Dun from getting themselves killed. He reasoned that preparing more of these boys for the reality of their situation was the responsible thing to do.

A piercing bird's note rang out through the branches, catching Yughi's attention. Yughi swung across a wide gap using a branch too thin and high to provide a foothold and caught up to Will who was grinning in the shade of the canopy resting in the 'Y' junction where the trunk of a large tree split.

"Look ye, assassin," Scarlet said, indicating a path below. "An opportunity for sport."

Yughi looked down to see a lone man making his way along the thin path that wound through the trees. He carried a lute on his back and wore dark clothes fringed in brightly coloured fabrics, marking him out as a minstrel.