Assassin's Creed: Underworld Read Online Free PDF Page B

over the slumbering bodies of
the tradesmen and entertainers as he passed by, his footsteps ringing on the stone floor. He
peered into alcoves and passed his lantern over those sleeping under the arches of the partition
that ran the length of the tunnel.
    A strict hierarchy operated inside the tunnel.
The tradesmen took their places at the mouth. Further along, the derelicts, the homeless, the
vagrants, the wretched; and then even further along, the thieves, criminals and fugitives.
    Come morning time, the traders, who had a vested
interest in making sure the tunnel was free of vagrants and as sanitary as possible, were
enthusiastic in helping the peelers clear out the tunnel. The blaggers and fugitives would have
departed under cover of darkness. The rest of them, the vagabonds, beggars, prostitutes, would
come grumbling and blinking into the light, clutching their belongings, ready for another day of
surviving on nothing.
    The Ghost’s lantern played over a sleeping
figure in the gloom of an alcove. The next alcove was empty. He swung the torch to illuminate
the arches of the tunnel partitionand they too were vacant. He sensed the
miserly light receding behind him, the glow given off by his lantern so very meagre all of a
sudden, dancing eerily on the brick.
    From within the darkness had come a scuttling
sound and he raised his light to see a figure crouched in a nook ahead of him.
    ‘Hello, Mr Bharat,’ said the boy in a
whisper.
    The Ghost went to him, reaching into his coats
for a thick crust of bread he’d put there earlier. ‘Hello, Charlie,’ he said,
handing it over. The boy flinched a little, far too accustomed to the slaps and punches of
grown-ups, then took the bread, staring at The Ghost with grateful eyes as he bit into it,
cautiously at first.
    They did it every night. The same flinch. The
same caution. And every night The Ghost, who knew nothing of the boy’s background, just
that it involved violence and abuse, smiled at him, said, ‘See you tomorrow night,
Charlie. Take care of yourself,’ and left the boy in his alcove, his heart breaking as he
made his way further into the tunnel.
    Again he stopped. Here in another alcove lay a
man with a leg broken from a fall on the icy steps of the rotunda. The Ghost had set the leg and
he held his breath against the stench of piss and shit to check that his splint was still in
place and that the leg was on the mend.
    ‘You’re a fine lad, Bharat,’
growled his patient.
    ‘Have you eaten?’ asked The Ghost,
attending to the leg. He was not a man of delicate sensibilities but even so – Jake was
ripe.
    ‘Maggie brought me some bread and
fruit,’ said Jake.
    ‘What would we do
without Maggie?’ wondered The Ghost aloud.
    ‘We’d die, son, is what we’d
do.’
    The Ghost straightened, pretending to look back
up the tunnel in order to take a lungful of uncontaminated air – relatively speaking.
‘Leg is looking good, Jake,’ he said. ‘Another couple of days and you might be
able to risk a bath.’
    Jake chuckled. ‘That bad, eh?’
    ‘Yes, Jake,’ said The Ghost, patting
his shoulder. ‘I’m afraid it’s that bad.’
    The Ghost left, pressing further on into the
tunnel, until he came to the last of the alcoves used for sleeping. Here was where he and Maggie
stayed. Maggie, at sixty-two, was old enough to be his grandmother, but they looked after one
another. The Ghost brought food and money, and every night he taught Maggie to read by the light
of a candle.
    Maggie, for her part, was the tunnel mother, a
rabble-rousing mouthpiece for The Ghost when he needed one, an intimidating, redoubtable figure.
Not to be trifled with.
    Beyond this point few people dared to tread.
Beyond this point was the darkness, and it was no coincidence that this was where The Ghost had
made his home. He stayed here as a kind of border guard, protecting those who slept in the
tunnel from the miscreants and malfeasants, the lawbreakers and fugitives who sought shelter