Assassin's Creed: Outlaw - Book One

An Unnecessary Rescue

As Yughi drew closer to the outside of Nottingham Castle he understood Lady Bess's warnings better. The Sheriff of Nottingham had guards stationed everywhere around the castle walls. The Sheriff's men were on the streets, in the towers and on the rooftops.

To many, this would have represented too great a challenge but to Yughi this was no more than another Templar stronghold. He had spent too long feeling as if he was no more than a boy recently; taking on responsibilities that made him uncomfortable, trying to improve his tree-running, trying to fit in with the outlaws.

The task of finding and liberating the Maid Marian was little different to many things he had done in the Holy Land and back in Constantinople. This, at last, was an opportunity to feel competent, to feel that an objective was well within his grasp and he knew what he was doing.

He started by exploring the outside wall of the castle, trying to find a point of ingress. The castle was built on a hill, at one side a steep cliff dropped down into a river valley. From that side, guards could not be placed near the walls looking up.

Yughi knew from his study of the caves that the castle had many tunnel entrances underneath. The problem was that the immediate network surrounding the castle was well known. Barred gates had been erected to stop people entering the 'official' tunnel network used by the Sheriff and his men. Those passages were well guarded, virtually impenetrable from outside.

The weakness that Yughi had already identified was that the defences and patrols were designed to keep people out of the network. If you were already inside Yughi guessed that escape would be less of an issue.

So all he really had to do was get into the lesser hall, find Marian and get into the tunnels. He thought he could shepherd one woman through the network and come back outside near to Bess's lodgings.

The steep wall that backed onto the cliff provided Yughi with his entrance opportunity. As the side appeared to be sheer it was lightly guarded. Yughi believed he could get to the top and into the castle grounds leaving the minimum number of casualties in his wake.

The guard patrol only sent one guard up to the corner, a couple of times Yughi observed the man about his business he didn't even look up to examine the wall once. Even so, if Yughi was going to avoid catching the man's eye he would have to stick close to the corner and climb quickly.

Not wishing to delay Yughi descended from the roof of the tavern opposite the back corner of the castle and ran to the castle wall. Once there he threw himself up the wall pushing his fingers into a crack in the brickwork at the corner.

The business of climbing was not as easy as it could have been, in one place he had to jump upwards to make the last handhold, jutting out under the parapet of the tower. Had he missed the handhold Yughi would have fallen backwards, probably to his death. Such notions had not disturbed his mind since his mid-teens.

Yughi clung to the edge of the battlements and peered carefully over the edge of the wall. The tops of the walls were guarded better heading south to north than east to west. There were a couple of token guards patrolling the top of the southern battlements but it was clear that no one saw that as a viable avenue for attack.

Making sure he was unobserved Yughi climbed onto the battlement, headed east a little way and then dropped over the opposite wall on the inside of the castle. A little way in a winch point was built into the wall, tucked just out of sight of the battlements. Yughi went hand over hand to the jutting scaffold and dropped onto it, turning on the ball of his foot as he did so.

From here, using the eagle sense, he could get a good idea of the inner layout of the castle. To the north were built a number of small residences enclosed within the round wall of the castle. Underneath Yughi, in the northeast corner was the grand hall roof. Jutting out from the centre of the south wall was the main castle building.