Assassin's Creed: Outlaw - Book One

Highway Robbery

It did not take Bess's intelligence network long to provide fruit. The news came that the Sheriff intended to move a large consignment of wealth from West Goscote up to Nottingham.

The Sheriff had chosen New Year's Day as a time when most people would be busy with devotions and other business. He relied on the outlaws respecting the peace of the time and not suspecting that such an event would take place on a Holy Day.

In addition to his selection of a strange date for such business, the Sheriff had also sworn the band of men to do the job to secrecy. As some of the Sheriff's elite guard, they had chosen to spend some of their wages over the feast days on a visit to Lady Bess's district.

In amongst more general carousing, they had found time to brag about their return to be serviced by even more of Bess's girls because of the monies they were bound to receive from their accomplishments.

Of course, when sober, and about town, these men would probably have been more discreet, but when drunk the tongue loosened and after a little flattery the boasting came out. After all, what did it matter what you told a whore on a night of self-celebration?

So it was that Robin assembled a small band of men together. Yughi was there, of course, as were Scarlet and John. The latter two were accompanied by Hal and Stephen respectively and all had managed to bring a couple of others for support.

Marian was keen to prove herself in the field but eventually agreed to act in a support capacity. Neither Yughi nor Robin wanted it advertised that they had such a valuable asset as a combat-ready woman, she was more useful hidden.

Bess provided one of her best girls, under Marian's protection, to serve as a decoy. Marian was further persuaded to take a less active role in the actual attack because she wanted to keep Bess's girl, a pretty little blonde called Gwin, out of danger.

A fancy dress had been provided for Gwin to wear and the thieves had acquired a small wagon and a spare broken wheel.

"You know what would really finish off this decoy?" Robin said, looking over the scene with the hobbled coach and Gwin dressed up like a woman of noble birth. "We could really do with a couple of dead guards."

Taking the hint, Yughi set out to get Robin what he required.

It didn't take the assassin long to find a small guard patrol. Not only because Yughi knew where to look. The consignment they were looking to hijack was coming through the main road from Goscote to the south of Nottingham.

Thankfully there were a couple of small villages just off the road and that meant there were intersections with smaller roads. The ambush would take place at one of those intersections. In many circumstances, Yughi would not have confronted the guards he was intending to kill, but these two needed to look as if they had been in a fight.

Besides Yughi did feel a little bad that the two men would die purely from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You could say much the same about any guard an assassin killed in combat, but in this case, Yughi was going out of his way to find them, he wasn't encountering them en route to a mission objective.

So when he found his prey, rather than just dropping a smoke bomb, jumping down and killing them, he made his presence known. He did not really know what he would do if they decided to ignore him. He couldn't afford to let them go.

As it turned out this dilemma was not an issue. The minute they saw Yughi they called out for him to stop, drew their swords and gave chase.

Drawing his own blade, Yughi made ready to take them on. The fight lasted less than a minute. The Sheriff's general guard was not highly trained, in fact at this stage most of the outlaws were better trained than any ground level soldier in Nottingham's pay.