Chapter Text
The next morning Haytham was loitering by the north entrance to the camp, carefully positioned just out of view of the guards. He had woken up outrageously early— before the sun even a thought on the horizon— in order to get to his position during shift change, when he was less likely to be spotted.
He had tried to get a good night’s sleep but he was pretty sure he only got a couple of hours, given how terrible he was feeling. It was probably, he admitted to himself, a good thing that he was used to running missions with no sleep at all or else this mission was over before it even began.
As it was, he managed to push past the tiredness to watch the camp carefully for any signals. There were none. Minutes passed by slowly and Haytham remembered why he preferred to be in the action— he did not deal well with boredom.
The minutes passed even slower and by the time the sun had properly risen he had resorted to practicing his Welsh to pass the time. Not that he didn't like speaking Welsh— it was just that he once he realised he didn't know a word, he needed to find out. And Welsh dictionaries were hard to come by in Germany. The game went something like this: every time he had a thought it had to be in Welsh. If he forgot a word then it was a point against him.It was very boring, but at least it let him keep his Welsh. His father had imparted a pride for the country and language in him that he hadn’t been able to shake, and this made him feel closer to the man who had been killed when he was a child.
When he had accrued so many points he was ashamed to call himself Welsh, he heard church bells ringing and, with a fervour usually reserved for dying men, counted the tolls. He knew that Jim was likely to be too busy in the morning so the signal would be closer to noon, and he didn’t have a pocket watch.
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Half and hour. It had only been half an hour. He felt like he was going insane. He prayed that Jim would hurry up.
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Whilst Haytham was busy pacing, Jim and his conspirators were preparing the signal. It was pretty important that this part went perfectly, because the plan was committing arson in a cramped, busy camp. No pressure, then.
They were outside the camp as well, but east, not north, and just out of sight of any…less sympathetic soldiers who would raise the alarm. They had a short window of time to act when Braddock went for his morning walk but there was a problem.
The plan was originally to commandeer one of the barrels of gunpowder they had in the camp and rig it to explode the blind spot and use it as a smokescreen for the attack, but they found out that the usual drunken guards had been replaced by those loyal to Braddock— it could be nothing, but he could also be on to them.
“We need to hurry,” Jim snapped. “We have maybe twenty minutes before Braddock comes and our only plan has gone to shit!”
“We could jump him ourselves,” said John. “But how do we get a signal to Kenway?”
“We could burn something?” Suggested Tommy.
“I mean, it would be easy ‘nough to pass off as an accident.”
“How do you suggest we do that?” Jim asked desperately.
“Well, get a bottle of wine, or some sort of drink, splash it on a tent or a piece of cloth, light it with a match and there you go! Nice and quick fire.”
“Will it burn well enough to get his attention?”
“Should do.”
That was better than nothing. But still there was a problem. “What do we burn then? Should one of us go find some deserter’s tent and rob it?”
“I have some rum— enough to light. And a lighter.”
“Then we just need the tent.”
Tommy looked like he was going to respond but his eyes widened as he looked behind him and Jim half-turned and saw Braddock at the end of the road and rapidly approaching, looking furious and like he was going to say something, and reacted instinctively. He took off his coat and doused it quickly in Tommy’s rum, who then whipped his lighter out and touched it to the coat. To say it set alight quickly would’ve been an understatement. Before they could blink it was sending up a fairly thick trail of white smoke —Jim thanked the stars that it was a clear day— and threw it at Braddock, who coughed, stunned.
Next to him, Tommy drew his gun and fired, but the smoke must’ve gotten into his eyes because they were red and he missed. But Braddock had recovered by then and drawn his own so Jim unsheathed his sword and swung, but Braddock managed to dodge and fire back and Jim felt a familiar stabbing pain in his shoulder and the shock made him drop his sword. Damn. He really didn’t want to die— he hadn’t even made it out of his twenties— but he straightened faced Braddock and—
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Luckily for him, Haytham had seen the signal or, more accurately, he had been pacing up and down the road and when he saw the smoke he had stopped to consider whether or not it was the signal. On one hand, there wasn’t a very high likelihood that someone had decided to start a campfire right next to an army camp. On the other hand, it was… kind of small for a signal. That was when he had heard gunshots and any doubts he had went out the window.
He had managed to make it just in time to see Braddock disarm Jim and before he could kill him, Haytham fired and he saw him fall. Jim and his friends , turned to him.
“Thank God you came!” One of them said. “We were done for.”
“We’ll still be done for if we don’t get out of here,” Haytham warned. “They must have heard us at the camp. I’d advise you to lie low for a time.”
“Thanks for the warning.” said a different one. Then he took his arm and shook it. “You don’t know how much you’ve helped us.”
Jim nodded. “I owe you one— anything you need..”
“We owe you one.” Emphasised—Tommy?— “Like Jim said if there’s anything we can do let us know.”
Haytham was oddly touched. “I will.”
He watched them head down the road towards the forest where all this started, and turned back. Up ahead he could see a group of soldiers approaching. He looked and saw them light up in a bright red light. He sighed. He had almost thought he could relax.