Assassin's Creed: Outlaw - Book One

A Meeting In Sherwood

It turned out that I'd way overestimated the possible interestingness or otherwise of the journey. After their argument, Helen and Paul lapsed into silence. Helen drove on an extremely circuitous route around London's West End and eventually out towards Edgeware. We picked up the M1 and drove out as far as Northampton before Helen took us off the motorway and along a terrifying variety of B-roads in the dark of a countryside night.

If we'd driven direct the journey would only have taken four or five hours. Because Helen was trying to stay out of the way it took closer to nine. I dozed for a little of the journey but it generally seemed as if sleep did not want to be my playmate at this time.

I began to wonder whether I was getting animus withdrawal or experiencing some other kind of side effect from living an ancestor's life for days at a time.

Turned out that it was impossible, in any sensible way, for me to make that assessment. I was sleep deprived, probably, and way too deep down the rabbit hole to tell whether I was spinning into madness or just feeling a bit under the weather.

What was really odd was that the sound of the engine and pitch black, rain-streaked, badly lit night outside was less stimulating than the animus.

The animus stitches together days and nights, it passes from event to event with a holding pattern in between. All I had to do was follow the prompts inserted into the environment and I would tip into the next memory. As the simulation unwound my synchronisation with Yughi grew, I almost felt as if I knew the guy now, like I could expect to see him in a coffee shop.

On the other hand, lying out in the back seat of a saloon car driving along country roads in the night was a mundane kind of isolation tank experience. No minute was substantially different to any other, I wasn't synchronizing with anything.

Still, sleep would not take me. Some strange fugue state did get into my brain, however, seeping into my consciousness until I felt like I was some strange flesh and bone clock ticking with a heartbeat.

As soon as Helen switched off the engine of the car I was shocked back into full wakefulness from my dreamless non-sleep. I was cold and stiff, my body had spent the time in the car filling my muscles with pain and I felt that I could really benefit from a run.

"Where are we?", I asked.

"Edge of Edwinstowe, near the edge of modern-day Sherwood Forest," Helen said. "I hope you're right about the bleed of local knowledge about the area because otherwise, we're really out in the middle of nowhere."

"Sunrise is due in about ten minutes," Paul said. "There's really only one way to find out."

"Sure," I said, sitting up straight and pulling on the door handle. I was so grateful to be getting out of the car which, at present, represented nothing to me so much as an unwelcoming metal tomb.

Outside the car the air was cold and, if the saying was true, it was currently being darkest right before the dawn. I could almost taste the night surrounding me. We were on a small B-road somewhere in the reasonably anonymous countryside.

Helen had parked the car in a passing place, some of it still stuck out onto the thin strip of two-lane tarmac that wound its way around a long, meandering bend in one direction and rose up a hill in the other. To the side of the car was a low hedgerow that opened up onto some scrubby fields. Along the opposite side was a bank of grass that lead up to a dark and shadowy forest area.

"Anything ringing any bells?" Helen asked. "Or is this a complete waste of time?"

"Give it a rest," Paul said. "It's a borrowed memory from about 1000 years ago, it might need a little jog."