On a cold day in Alamut, two years after the elimination of the Order in England, Hytham stood before his mentor. Hands clasped behind his back, shoulders tense, voice worried.
“I cannot be what you ask of me,” he had said. “I could never live up to the leader you are.”
Rayhan had looked at him wordlessly for a long moment. A gaze that had nearly gotten the younger to cower. Two years since the death of his second mentor and two years of attempting to rebuild something that had been lost for centuries. He had struggled.
Now Rayhan was asking him to take on that role officially. To become the Grand Master for their Brotherhood in the British Isles.
“There is no-one for you to live up to, Hytham.” Rayhan’s voice was, as it often was when directed to him, surprisingly soft and understanding. “I am asking you to be what you already are.”
And so he had. Despite his worries and his fears, he had taken a deep breath and accepted the role which he had been given. He was sent back to the North with red sashes and golden brooches. Despite it all, a leader.
But his first stop had not been the Hawk’s Nest, no, where Marcella had been observing and gathering files on potential recruits, young souls to fill the halls of the Bureau and continue the work the Roman Hidden Ones had started. His first stop had been the Londinium Bureau, still abandoned.
He walked the halls of the underground, closed his eyes and inhaled the earthy scent. Water and mud, dust and scrolls. He heard the scuffling of feet, the unfurling of paper, the scratching of quills. Soft voices speaking in murmured Latin. He imagined what it must have been like to be the last Hidden One of these Isles.
We gladly consume those who would subdue us—but I, Vitus, have failed.
An unmarked well in Cent, with little else but the remains of the man who had come before him. The Magister who laid forgotten.
It was the fate of the Hidden Ones to be forgotten. Their names, their actions... And if they did not fade away, their legacies were nothing more but myths. Stories made to be told for entertainment around campfires at night, otherworldly and inhuman. When the silent echo of his steps guided him further into the room, the murmur, the rustling of scrolls disappeared into something else. The crackling of a fire in the cold Abbasid night, the Eagle Master’s repeated but melodic story drifting in the air. One of betrayal and tragedy, love and heartbreak. Two souls united and separated once more. The cause of the foundation of their very creed, the legendary figures who ebbed and flowed between the collective memory of their cause. Those that had built something grander than themselves, something that had stood the testament of time.
He knew, as he gazed upon the ruins of what had once been, as he let his four-fingered hand brush against the stone pillars that had held it up for so long, that this would be his fate. He would build their Creed in the British Isles and like Vitus, he could fail, be the cause of more lives lost to the desperate battle between the light and darkness, be forgotten as another nameless mentor who had failed, another skeleton someplace where he would remain undisturbed for centuries.
Or he could succeed. He, like Amunet, whose very name sent a shiver up his spine, could build something that would survive. A legacy unspoken. The Hidden Ones could thrive among these rolling hills and its gentle rain, nestled between the churchyards and harbours of the Christian and Norse settlements that would remain here.
He would be forgotten either way. As was their way. As he now understood why they knew so little of their founders, the myths that were no more but rumours. A smile played on his lips, an anxiety shaped into a deep-dwelling comfort and stillness. The appeal of being laid to rest, to not be blamed for success or failure. He would follow in their footsteps, fulfil his purpose, and be forgotten.
CW: Lots of death, probably inaccurate depictions of Hytham's backstory, very brief thoughts (7th paragraph, counting from the end) that may trigger those with suicidal ideation.
His life, as it stood, had always been filled with grief.
The unspoken one, mourning a person he had never remembered but was expected to shed tears for. His father, taken from his mother before he had ever been born, whose death had shaped her so fundamentally that she had traversed the remainder of her life as a silent ghost herself. Her clothing was dark and her veils heavy, her footsteps silent. She spoke with a voice so gentle it sounded like she only barely managed to keep herself together, like she had done everything to do so while the cracks never truly healed, like she was no longer whole, like she was only shattered shards of the woman she once had been. But that was the woman he had known, the one who still loved him and smiled softly. Loving, despite her own sorrow.
It had been a strange thing, really. He had never felt anything for the man who was supposed to be his father; how could he, if he never knew him? If he was never spoken off with anything but misty eyes and strangled sniffles? But dutifully, he prayed for his father’s soul, occasionally, when his mother seemed saddened. But he knew nothing of him, nothing but his name, that he was brave, that bravery was the reason he was now dead. Not a person, barely a ghost, some sort of memory he could not remember.
His grandparents — the parents of his father — passed at some point, too. One after the other, grief, his aunts had said. By that age he understood grief a bit better, even if he was still too young to be able to put words to it. He just knew that he missed them and didn’t understand why they were gone.
Many years later, when life had been normal, their village was ransacked by bandits. Roaring fires spread chaos over their settlement, their neighbours and friends grabbed what they could and ran for their lives, many never even got that far. His mother had grabbed him — the most precious thing she had — and slipped away from the chaos their ambushers caused and ran towards the paddocks, where the livestock was rearing and panicking over the glistening fires in the cloudless night. With just enough time to calm a gentle steed, and without either saddle or reins they had fled from what they had called a home, travelled for hours into the night as the shock clouded their emotions and dark smoke loomed behind them. He remembered how badly his body was shaking, the quiet sobs he tried to strangle as his mother held him close, letting their horse lead them where God intended for them to be. He remembered that his mother had not made a single sound. They had never thought to turn around and see if their families survived, even as dawn sprawled upon the horizon and they came upon a village many, many miles from the one that had once been theirs. He remembered the women of that village, who held his mother kindly as the adrenaline had died off, and she had struggled to strangle sobs and cries of anguish. Exhaustion riddled them both.
He remembered little from his own behaviour that time. All he remembered was swollen cheeks, aching limbs and nightmares that followed him for years.
“Go to Baghdad”, the villagers had said. A sprawling city even more miles from where they had once lived, where they currently were. “There you can start your life anew.”
And so they had. Many days they rode among the riverways, helped more than once by kind people living in towns along the way. They had both decided, quietly, to forget the life they once had. Start anew with no one but each other, a mother and her son.
They had been happy in Baghdad, for a time. After a while it seemed like grief became something that shaped them, no matter how much they tried to forget, but could be looked past. His mother had found work with a group of other women of all ages selling their weavings and fabric. The first years had been rough, but they had managed. They lived, laughed, and had food on the table. That is what mattered.
The night it had happened had been so inexplicitly normal. He, barely seven years of age, stayed with his mother by her loom as she weaved that day, helping when even her slender fingers could not fix the thin threads. They had begun to return home, but she had been tense. Scared, almost. He didn’t know why, he didn’t realize when it started. She held his hand and looked over her shoulder as if expecting someone to follow them that still, dark, silent night. Baghdad was a large city, but unusually empty, even this late.
When footsteps could be heard behind them, he had known, deep in his gut, that something was wrong.
“Mother?” he had whispered, small voice barely audible over the midnight breeze. She had gripped his hand tighter, quickened her step.
“Keep walking,” she had said.
She didn’t look back, she just hurried, and his little legs had struggled to keep up. They weaved between the streets of Baghdad, trying to escape whoever was following them. Suddenly it felt like their home was on an entirely different side of the city, the streets began to all look the same and neither seemed to figure out what way was the right one.
In the end, they had cornered themselves in a dead-end alley.
“Hide,” she had whispered. “Do not come out until I tell you to.”
She pushed him towards stacks of crates and boxes, and he hurried to hide behind them. His breath had lodged into his throat and he got the sinking realisation that they would not walk out of this alive.
He peaked from behind the boxes when the assailants came. Three, faces covered in cloth, or perhaps masks. Their voices were muffled and crude. They had taunted her, he could tell, but if he had ever heard what it was they said or if his young mind had repressed it, he didn’t know. All he saw was the largest one grabbing his mother, she had struggled. They were all shouting something, he couldn’t remember — yet he could only remember thinking where are the guards?
It had all happened so fast. A blur of white had jumped down from the roof of the house opposite of the one he was pressed up against and it landed against one of the men who fell into a lifeless heap. For a short moment he had thought it was God, some mystical white mist saving his mother, but no; the mist itself manifested agile arms and blades that fought off the next man who attempted to cleave whatever it was. The third threw his mother against the wall as he readied his weapon.
She had barely made a sound. But the red stain on that wall had stayed there for years.
He had thrown his own hands over his mouth to stop himself from making any noise. All of the men, the mist itself, were out of sight as he pressed himself against the boxes. The clashing of metal echoed in the alley. He moved towards the wall and forced himself to be silent and still.
It was only when the battle stilled, a large weight falling to the ground with a groan, that he had dared to peak again, eyes blurred with tears and body shaking.
The mist, now recognisable as a white-clad man, stood still, looking where the little boy could not see, covered by the boxes that covered him. The man wore a hood that concealed most of his features, but he could see the man’s somber, regretful expression. He saw the large scimitar he bore, dripping with red.
He must have made a noise because the white-clad man looked at him, then. He made an attempt to hide again, but he had seen him. His heart had hammered so hard in his chest that it felt like his very ribs would break when he heard the stranger come closer with gentle footsteps.
“It’s okay,” the stranger said. “You are safe now, boy.”
Something made his voice heavy. Yet he had dared to look out again. The stranger had sheathed his sword and held his hand out for him.
“It’s okay,” he repeated. “They can’t hurt you.”
He had stepped out from behind the boxes despite every fiber of his being screaming to continue hiding, to listen to his mother. But the white-clad stranger stood like an angel against the Abbasid night and he wished for nothing more but to feel safe.
But that is when he had seen it, too.
Four corpses. His mother, slumped against the wall. Her eyes were closed, her clothing was stained red.
It had been a sight that had burnt into his mind. Like the night he left Syria, his memories had escaped him, shielded him, from truly remembering what had happened. But he remembered seeing her, he remembered clutching his mother’s dress and sobbing loudly, begging her to wake up. He remembered the stranger’s warm hand on his shoulder. He remembered that, at some point, when he had calmed slightly, the stranger had held him, let him sob into his shoulder and strangely ornate shoulderpads instead of his mother’s cold body. He remembered that the man smelt of iron and parchment, and he remembered that the smell had comforted him.
“I am sorry, little one...” The stranger had murmured, hands rubbing circles on his back. Those words, he knew, he would remember for the rest of his life.
He hadn’t replied.
When he had woken the next morning, he was in a home that was not his, the stranger by his bedside. He remembered being handed a bit of food, an apology that the stranger could not do more for him, and when he was ready, he had been ushered back onto the streets of Baghdad. The sun was warm, but he had never felt colder.
He had never even known what the men wanted from her. If she had simply been another victim of primitive cruelty or if there had been more to it, if she had known something she shouldn’t. If she knew she should have been scared.
Many years later, he had attempted to seek answers, find the man that had avenged his mother and maybe even saved his life. He wanted to ask if he knew, if he just happened to have been there at the right time, or if he had known his mother, if he had known she was in danger. It was only after his initiation that he was told the man had been killed, just a few years after that night. He was left with reopened wounds and desperation for answers no one could give him.
He had thought that what happened that night would be the worst grief of his life. But he was still a child, and children had the benefit of not remembering clearly, of forgetting. With age, causes of grief had returned, but he had managed to bite the inside of his cheek and pull through it. Walked the path of sorrow without shedding more tears, even when he had to take farewell to those he had come to so easily care about. But nearly twenty years later he found himself back to where his life always seemed to lead him, where his soul felt heavy and his body numb.
The night was quiet in Ravensthorpe, and he lingered on Valka’s doorstep. It had been three days since Eivor’s and Sigurd’s return to the settlement, and three days since he had gotten the news of his mentor’s fate. Valka had been expecting him.
One of his cold hands was warmed by the wooden cup filled with steaming tea, a herb-blend he himself had gifted the seer. His throat felt thick and his heartbeat felt fleeting.
She didn’t ask how she felt, for she knew. Instead she sat opposite of him by the small table she had in her hut, her own cup in hand.
“What will you do now?” she asked instead. And he considered her words for a long moment, and despite how much his heart ached, a bitter smile came to his lips.
“Suppose I will run away from it all,” he said quietly. Run away from grief. That is what his mother had done, that is what he had done. “That is what I did before. That was what... He did, too...”
Grief had plagued Basim as much as it had plagued him. He knew it, somewhere in his heart. He remembered conversations with hints of people that Basim had lost, that he never spoke of properly. Perhaps he could not blame him if his grief had blinded him so severely. He just wished he understood.
“Will you return?” she asked then. “To Syria?”
No, he could never. Syria was a ghost in his distant past, but so was Baghdad. Alamut lingered somewhere in-between. Constantinople was a closed door entirely.
“Maybe one day, when the wounds don’t feel as fresh.”
Over twenty years and they still did.
Valka hummed, sipped her own cup of tea.
“Somewhere new, then?”
He shrugged lightly.
“Maybe...”
Somewhere new... Where? Distant lands that he had dreamed about in the tales he had read his whole life, somewhere closer? Where could he go where grief would not continue to chase him, haunt him, curse him?
“You could stay, too.” Valka’s voice felt like a lighthouse for the storm he was in. Blinding but steady, comforting. “With us.”
He could, but inevitably grief would take him here, too. There were too many people here that he cared about, too many people he could risk losing. Eivor, Randvi, Valka herself... He closed his eyes, tilted his head upwards, tried to stop the tears that threatened to spill.
“Grief would find me here, too.” His voice broke slightly, and it felt so undeniably childish. But Basim was dead, like the rest of his family, and he felt alone and threatened to have everything he cared about taken away from him. A part of him had died with Basim, he knew. All their memories could now and forevermore only be told from one perspective, as if all they had been through had never been real in the first place.
“Grief will find you everywhere,” Valka said, voice soft and gentle. “But you needn’t isolate yourself for it. If you have no-one else but yourself, you will do nothing but mourn.”
Mourn what he had lost, mourn what he could have had. He would regret his choice either way. Those words remained silent.
“You have a home here, Hytham,” she continued. “You have friends, people that love you, and care for you. Do not let your sorrow make you think that you only have yourself.”
He took a shaky breath, tried to nod. When he opened his eyes and looked back at her, he couldn’t stop the tears from spilling. Silently. He wasn’t sure if he had it in him to sob anymore.
“Thank you, Valka...” He sniffled softly, tried to wipe the tears away with his sleeve. When his hand once more rested lifelessly on the table, Valka’s slender hand came to rest over his.
“It is normal to grieve, and I need you to allow yourself to mourn.” Her hand gave his a squeeze. “We are here for you, when you need us.”
He nodded again, felt something shudder through his body. The last three days had been spent in a state of disbelief, he hadn’t believed that it could be true. Yet tonight it all came crashing down and Valka was the one putting the pieces back together.
Guiltily, he wished to die first. If he were to stay, here, in this settlement, he wished to never have to witness losing more of the people he loved. He would rather be earth-bound while still young than have to watch another one of his loved ones be buried. He wasn’t sure if he could survive that. His heart would tear and burst to the point that he may as well join them in their grave.
And yet he knew he could not allow himself such thoughts. Such thoughts that would threaten to pull him under, that would only hurt him. A hypothetical he shouldn’t even think about.
“Could I...” He spoke before he realized, finding himself immediately regretting it. “I... I don’t want to be alone... Tonight, in the bureau..?”
“Stay,” Valka repeated. A gentle smile on her lips. “The extra bed may as well be yours at this point, anyways.”
So many days he had spent in that bed in the little sideroom of her hut, when the pain became unbearable or his injuries had been sparked. He couldn’t help but laugh only slightly, the first sound of such that he had done for nearly four days.
“Can’t let you get too lonely either...” he murmured softly, a small, brief smile tugging on his lips. Valka’s fingers ran comforting patterns onto the back of his hand.
His life, as it stood, had always been filled with grief. But as they sat there, in the glow of hearth, he realized that it was not the only thing that had coloured him. Love had, too. Perhaps, in a few years, when the wounds were not as fresh... Perhaps, then, he would know, that love was worth the grief it would one day cause.
CW: Very brief, small, and inconsequential spoilers the Valley Of Memory DLC, minor spoilers for The Golden City
He is not my son.
And so he was not his responsibility. It was out of the kindness of his own heart that he helped the boy down from the tower. The guilt he felt for letting the orphan run off with his friends, unable to help beyond saving him from an ill-fated fall, meant nothing.
He is not my student.
He was a spy, a bright-eyed acolyte who could not hide his distrust, his wary gaze that looked him over as if on the search for a sign, a confirmation that he was a danger. He was someone who disobeyed his orders, and yet he still found himself by Basim’s side at the end of the day. And so he had still taken him to the Hagia Sophia, the church that his own father had dreamt to see, and the church that felt so personal and close to his own heart.
I do not care for him.
But he thought and bled to save this foolish spy when he had gotten himself captured. He risked his life and their mission for him. The anger he felt in those days was not an anger he had felt before, it was deep, it gnawed at him, it felt like it boiled his very blood. It was an anger born out of worry and jealousy. When they fought, he did so with a wish to destroy him, for making him feel such strong fear, for being so foolish as to get himself captured, so foolish as to nearly get himself killed.
I should not care for him.
And yet, despite it all, Hytham trusted him. Even with his blade to his neck, even with all of Basim’s anger unleashed upon him, he trusted Basim to not give him the final blow. He trusted Basim to be there when he needed a helping hand. He trusted Basim to be there.
He is not my son.
But he slept with his head against Basim’s shoulder, like a son would. Leaning against the older man’s body as they rested by the campfire at night, far away from civilization in their travels. It was something Basim let him do, without complaint. He told himself it was so he could keep a better eye on him, or perhaps the boy simply deserved some rest free from worry. It made his heart ache and he hated it.
He is not my student.
Yet Hytham was eager to please. From their first weeks in Constantinople, his desire for approval shined as brightly as his wariness. He followed Basim’s advice and looked to him with soft eyes, silently hoping for what he wanted to hear, praise. Like a boy chasing his father’s approval. Even as the years had passed, both knew that this had not changed.
I do not care for him.
But his heart had nearly broken when he saw him take that ill-fated leap in the fjords of Norway, a cold-rushing anxiety as Sigurd held him back from jumping into the pit after him. When Kjotve was dead and Basim was by Hytham’s side, his hands shook as he clutched the foolish boy that squirmed in agonising pain. He told himself he did not care for him, but his leg bounced as he sat on a wobbly stool in the seer’s hut, watched intensely as she treated him. When Hytham awoke, he acted like he didn’t care. Told him he was foolish. Told him he was lucky to be alive. But he knew Hytham saw the way his eyes were soft, and heard how his voice was even softer. He couldn’t hide it, not even from him, not anymore.
I should not care for him.
But he did. No matter how long he wished to tell himself otherwise, how much he tried to act as if otherwise, he cared for Hytham. The foolish boy who had tempted death more than a man of his age should have. Whose demeanour had simply cracked the very shell of his being and found himself a nice spot deep in Basim’s heart. He was the only person still alive that Basim worried for, that he cared for, that he tried to look after. He was the only person alive that made his heart feel warm, that made him wish to be nice. Of course it had been Hytham. He was not a replacement for the children he had lost, once, in a life far away from this one, and perhaps he would never dare to speak this care out loud, either. But whatever Hytham was to him, it was a calming salve to his rugged heart in equal measures as it was a newfound catalyst to its aching. He is not my son, Basim thought. But he might as well be.
He is not my son.
And so he was not his responsibility. It was out of the kindness of his own heart that he helped the boy down from the tower. The guilt he felt for letting the orphan run off with his friends, unable to help beyond saving him from an ill-fated fall, meant nothing.
He is not my student.
He was a spy, a bright-eyed acolyte who could not hide his distrust, his wary gaze that looked him over as if on the search for a sign, a confirmation that he was a danger. He was someone who disobeyed his orders, and yet he still found himself by Basim’s side at the end of the day. And so he had still taken him to the Hagia Sophia, the church that his own father had dreamt to see, and the church that felt so personal and close to his own heart.
I do not care for him.
But he thought and bled to save this foolish spy when he had gotten himself captured. He risked his life and their mission for him. The anger he felt in those days was not an anger he had felt before, it was deep, it gnawed at him, it felt like it boiled his very blood. It was an anger born out of worry and jealousy. When they fought, he did so with a wish to destroy him, for making him feel such strong fear, for being so foolish as to get himself captured, so foolish as to nearly get himself killed.
I should not care for him.
And yet, despite it all, Hytham trusted him. Even with his blade to his neck, even with all of Basim’s anger unleashed upon him, he trusted Basim to not give him the final blow. He trusted Basim to be there when he needed a helping hand. He trusted Basim to be there.
He is not my son.
But he slept with his head against Basim’s shoulder, like a son would. Leaning against the older man’s body as they rested by the campfire at night, far away from civilization in their travels. It was something Basim let him do, without complaint. He told himself it was so he could keep a better eye on him, or perhaps the boy simply deserved some rest free from worry. It made his heart ache and he hated it.
He is not my student.
Yet Hytham was eager to please. From their first weeks in Constantinople, his desire for approval shined as brightly as his wariness. He followed Basim’s advice and looked to him with soft eyes, silently hoping for what he wanted to hear, praise. Like a boy chasing his father’s approval. Even as the years had passed, both knew that this had not changed.
I do not care for him.
But his heart had nearly broken when he saw him take that ill-fated leap in the fjords of Norway, a cold-rushing anxiety as Sigurd held him back from jumping into the pit after him. When Kjotve was dead and Basim was by Hytham’s side, his hands shook as he clutched the foolish boy that squirmed in agonising pain. He told himself he did not care for him, but his leg bounced as he sat on a wobbly stool in the seer’s hut, watched intensely as she treated him. When Hytham awoke, he acted like he didn’t care. Told him he was foolish. Told him he was lucky to be alive. But he knew Hytham saw the way his eyes were soft, and heard how his voice was even softer. He couldn’t hide it, not even from him, not anymore.
I should not care for him.
But he did. No matter how long he wished to tell himself otherwise, how much he tried to act as if otherwise, he cared for Hytham. The foolish boy who had tempted death more than a man of his age should have. Whose demeanor had simply cracked the very shell of his being and found himself a nice spot deep in Basim’s heart. He was the only person still alive that Basim worried for, that he cared for, that he tried to look after. He was the only person alive that made his heart feel warm, that made him wish to be nice. Of course it had been Hytham. He was not a replacement for the children he had lost, once, in a life far away from this one, and perhaps he would never dare to speak this care out loud, either. But whatever Hytham was to him, it was a calming salve to his rugged heart in equal measures as it was a newfound catalyst to its aching.
He is not my son, Basim thought. But he might as well be.
The fog moved silently between the trees, a mist that seemed a sign of something you shouldn’t know. The morning light could not yet penetrate entirely through the treetops, the branches moved obediently with the breeze yet made not a single sound. It was as if the very forest told you to turn back, to leave, that this was not your place.
If you continued forward, perhaps you would see him, then. With clothes pale, eyes nearly shining in a sort of golden colour you had never seen before. His black hair hung heavily, starkly against his face, and his body was slightly taller, perhaps slightly broader, than felt entirely proportional. The glimmer of his scimitar was all the warning you got as he struck.
It was a dream, or perhaps a memory, that Hytham relived often. No matter where they were, similar moments followed, where his mentor shrouded himself among the white shadows and seemed entirely otherworldly. Something about him, in these moments, seemed decidedly not human.
Basim Ibn Ishaq was a master of disguise, he knew. He saw the way the older man spoke with ease, moved with a natural elegance, his laughs seemed bright and warm and always used in the perfect moments. His voice was of silk and honey, his words were always a little too sweet, his gaze so intense it felt like he could see through your very soul. It felt rehearsed, in a sense, or perhaps Basim merely seemed older than he could possibly be; something about his very being made it clear that he had done all of this before.
Hytham was not naive enough to think that Basim was anything other than human. He did not believe in mythical beings, or the reincarnation spoken of by eastern traders in the caliphate. Basim was flesh and bone, bile and blood. He could be nothing else but the man he was when he stood before his apprentice with a glimmer in his eyes and a dangerous smile on his lips. And yet something in Hytham’s head whispered of immortality, of eternity. A feeling that seemed to infect him whenever he stood in the older man’s presence. The sense that it seemed like Basim had done all of this before somewhere far, far away, in another time, in another place. Such silly thoughts had no place in the mind of a reasonable acolyte, a man of empiricism and logic. But Basim’s soul felt ancient, like a thousand year old tree whose leaves still grew back every spring, whose life was as sure as the very turn of the season. He was the empire and its ruins, the blossoming spring and the rotting autumn. He was the blinding sun in summer and the unforgiving cold in winter. He was human and yet not, young and yet with a soul so old it may as well have been forged at the dawn of time. He was a contradiction and he knew it, yet he walked as surely as if all the world was his, as if he had seen everything there was to see, as if he knew what lurked behind every corner, where every crossroad led.
When Hytham observed him by the glow of the campfire, when Basim’s gaze was on the flames ahead, the older man wore a face that was not his. It was a trick of the light, of course, but in those moments it was as if there was a stranger sitting next to him. His eyes seemed aflame with unspoken emotions of lifetimes passed, a hatred burning like the smoldering of the oakwood. It was a grotesque change in shape and expression, something so similar to the man Hytham thought he knew but ultimately wasn’t. A spirit of who Basim once had been, maybe. A spectre of what he could be. Maybe something else entirely.
“You’re staring,” the man remarked, and suddenly it was as if everything changed back to how it always was. The vision of a stranger gone as quickly as it had come. And when Basim looked at him, then, his eyes no longer seemed to burn, and the dark brown irises seemed to hold nothing but curiosity, perhaps a small amusement.
It was moments like these where Hytham started to doubt himself, doubted his own mind. He wondered how much he could trust his own eyes in the darkness, and he wondered how much he could trust Basim to be the man he said he was.
What are you?
“My apologies,” Hytham said simply, turning his gaze away from the enigma of a man he now shared a life with. “It seems I got lost in thought.”
Something about the very air around Basim seemed to change, Hytham could almost feel his curiosity, even when he was not looking at him.
“Oh?” was the single sound the older man let out. Hytham huffed, and gazed towards the sky.
The stars seemed just as eternal, a sense of familiarity.
“It is silly...” Hytham continued, “It is merely exhaustion.”
If Basim was disappointed by his answer, he didn’t show it. Instead he hummed with that honeyed voice of his, and Hytham felt his gaze leave him.
“Our minds often play tricks on us, my friend,” the mentor murmured. “A mirage is not only for the deserts...”
“You are cryptic,” Hytham muttered dryly. Perhaps Basim was proving his point, perhaps he knew it. “But you are mere man.”
Basim laughed, then, that warm laugh that almost seemed rehearsed, but it felt so natural and genuine that Hytham wondered how much of this he had merely convinced himself to be strange and enigmatic.
“Be not so sure of that, my friend.” His voice seemed light, but something in the tone struck Hytham as foreign. “Nothing is true.”
If a mirage could pass with a howling wind, perhaps, then, Basim was somewhere in-between. When Hytham glanced at him again, the man bore a knowing smile that seemed to show a bit too much teeth, and with a voice so silken, he spoke again;
“Go to sleep, my friend.” For a moment, perhaps, the sparks of the fire gave his eyes a dangerous sheen. “It is late.”
The night was perfectly still, now. Not a cloud obscured the starry sky and the bright moonlight which illuminated the palace. It gave him an ample view of what narrowly had been his own fate. He didn’t want to watch, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the scene as the body was flung over the palace walls, into the sea.
He had never been scared of open water, or the darkness, for that matter. On the contrary, it had consoled him. In Syria, the fact that the sea had only been a few miles away had been an open comfort, a time and place where the children ran around by the shoreline and the village paths and played as their parents carried lines of fish with them back home. The sea had been close enough to promise food and far away enough for them to not witness its raging storms. He had been scared of the dark, once, as all children were, but it was a fear he had overcome quickly. It was the darkness that had hidden him when the life of his mother was taken. It was the darkness that saved his life that fateful night in Baghdad.
Perhaps he wouldn’t have felt as anxious if it had been daytime, when the sea did not seem like an endless void stretching out over the horizon, like black ink greedily swallowing whatever it was fed. But now it was night, and the vertigo and the ocean waves made his body feel like it was plunging helplessly down into the abyss, as had narrowly been his fate. A single missed moment and his lifeless body would have been the one tossed over the palace walls, never to be seen again.
He didn’t startle when he felt a broad hand clasping his shoulder. Basim’s presence, the weight he put into the touch, grounded him. Warm despite the cold Mediterranean night. Hytham wished to straighten himself, like a soldier in the presence of his commander, but he found his hands resting against the cold rocks, looking out over the horizon still. Into the darkness. He tasted salt and iron on his tongue.
“I’ve heard the sea at night can be terrifying to new sailors unused to being on the water,” Basim murmured, voice barely audible over the crashing of waves.
Hytham glanced at him. Basim’s own gaze was cast over the water, too. Like he expected to see something coming out of that darkness, or out of the sea. Like the body would attempt to clamber back up from its watery grave.
And yet...
“I’ve always found it comforting,” he said instead, because it was true. His fingers moved absentmindedly, picking on loose rocks. “That there’s something out there in the world so much bigger and grander than myself... Even if it seems infinite and likely to swallow me whole.”
He felt Basim’s grip on his shoulder tighten, perhaps he would have mockingly thought that Basim expected him to jump from the palace walls this very moment, but his soul felt somber and quiet, a deep stillness drowning out the anxiety that had been growing and any sense of normality, of mocking or teasing, that had been slowly disappearing within him for so many days.
It felt as if Basim felt that somber stillness, too.
Perhaps one day he would sail this sea with Basim, to lands far away from here. Or perhaps he one day would sail this sea back to Syria, back to where it all seemed to have started. He was not mystic enough to claim that the sea called him in such a fate-woven way, but at the same time, it felt like an undeniable future. One way or another this sea would claim him in any way it could, as a traveller or as a victim.
It was almost a comforting thought. Fate and determinism, things he had been taught to ignore, notions that didn’t align with their brotherhood. The sea did call for him with a siren’s song and he knew he would have to answer that call one day.
When he looked back towards the horizon, it felt as if the sea stilled, ever so slightly.
CW: Trans!Hytham, Male!Eivor, historically inaccurate top surgery.
“Where did you get those scars?”
The question came casually, somehow expected and yet unexpected, one summer afternoon. A sparring match had turned the Wolf-Kissed and the acolyte into sweaty heaps longing to wash off and relax, and a moment of bravery (or, perhaps, foolish adrenaline) had made Hytham agree to Eivor’s proposition to wash off together. It was a normal thing for Norsemen, after all. Hardly something to bat an eye over, despite what he hid under his robes.
Eivor was already in the water, stark-naked, lounging in the rocky hill pond which eventually trickled down to Ravensthorpe, and then into the river Nene. He leaned his arm on the edge and then his face on said arm, watching Hytham as he undressed. It wasn’t perverse, mere curiosity, they both knew. But Hytham was fiddling with the straps of his boots, and was therefore not focusing on wherever Eivor was looking.
“I’m afraid you will have to be more specific, my friend.” His voice came out as a light hum in the summer breeze. The life of an assassin was one filled with danger and injuries, and no amount of training could make one avoid wounds and scars, especially so when their training sometimes involved inflicting or being inflicted with injuries. Not deliberately, but one could hardly become a warrior if you never got to draw blood in even the safest of environments. He saw from the corner of his eye how Eivor angled his head to, supposedly, get a better look.
“The ones on your chest,” Eivor clarified. As Hytham looked up — his torso straightening with the movements of his head — the scars became even more prominent. Two thick, jagged but largely straight lines right under his chest, by his breasts, if one would use such words. In Eivor’s eyes, it seemed like such deliberate scarring, so parallel to each other, that it was hard to imagine them being the result of a battle. “Under your...”
He didn’t necessarily have to clarify, as the southern man looked down at his own torso, as if he had entirely forgotten he had such peculiar scars. In truth, he hadn’t, but he still seemed unprepared for Eivor’s questions. The awareness of them were always somewhere in the back of his mind, or in a proud corner of his heart, but Eivor had never questioned the scars he had seen on him before — the ones on his face, the cut to his ear, or the jagged ones on his hands — and so he had simply not assumed he would question these, either. Sometimes it was hard to know what things Norsemen would point out, and what they would silently forget.
“Ah,” was the single sound of acknowledgement that he let out. He gazed vaguely skyward for a moment, his face — unintentionally, as usual — showing clearly that he was hesitating. His nose wrinkled slightly, brows furrowed. He had come to terms with himself, and he knew Eivor better than to assume that he would not be, especially after his apparent friendship with Azar. What made him hesitate was more so actually explaining. He didn’t necessarily feel like going into detail with everything, his childhood, the Hidden Ones... The prologue to a story he was, frankly, too lazy to tell today. “It’s a long story.”
With that, he finished undressing. Both his boots were placed neatly by his tunic, gambeson, surcoat, and his hood, and his socks were then added to the pile. He removed his breeches too, and the only thing he kept on was the shorter, lighter pair of drawers he wore under his trousers. Why he kept them on or what the drengr might have seen if he had taken them off was yet another thing that he didn’t wish to explain.
Eivor’s gaze was undeniably curious, and Hytham did not find it in him to be offended by the intrigue. Perhaps it would have been forgiven if he felt it perverted or offensive, but his own gaze had roamed over the bodies of the Norse people before — simple curiosity of their tattoos, their builds, strength and muscles that was so different from the people back home — and so he could not blame Eivor for being equally curious about someone from so far away, with such a different culture and standard of living than he was used to. Either way, Hytham stepped carefully into the pond, letting out a soft sigh of relief as his overheated body cooled off, even in the summer-warmed water.
“If you do not wish to speak of it, I understand,” Eivor offered then. Understanding as always, a drengr like him knew to tread carefully in the matter of scars and wounds. “But I cannot deny that I am curious.”
Hytham eased himself further into the water, until it was up to his shoulders when he sat down on one of the many rocked edges. Not as comfortable as the seats of a Hammam, but not bad, either. He considered his words for a moment, what he might be willing to reveal.
“It is the result of a battle fought with no-one but myself,” the Hidden One explained cryptically, deliberately so, and obviously so, as a smile tugged on his lips. “Where a part of me was reborn, and came out the victor.”
He turned to glance at Eivor, who was looking at him blankly.
“You speak in riddles,” the Wolf-Kissed accused plainly. No bite behind the words, though, of course. Hytham smiled even more.
“I learned from Valka.”
Eivor huffed.
“You spoke in riddles when you taught me the leap as well. Will you claim that that was Valka’s doing, too?”
Hytham laughed, bright and clearly.
“Perhaps not,” he admitted. “But like the leap, this may be a riddle you will solve in time.”
“And what trial must I succeed in to learn this riddle?” It was mostly jest, but there was something serious in Eivor’s eyes; that of a true wish to learn the answer.
As much as he would have liked to tell him plainly, Hytham just shrugged.
“It is a battle few fight, perhaps it is a riddle few will solve, then, too.”
His words were teasing, and Eivor caught on immediately. The viking’s short, but charming laugh was more booming than Hytham’s.
“If you ever feel like sharing the answer,” the drengr suggested then, knowing there were considerably few questions Hytham willingly answered, “know that I am ready and willing to receive it.”
Hytham huffed, amused.
“Perhaps one day, my friend. But until then, know this;” he looked at Eivor intently this time, a small smile still at his lips. At ease, but fully serious. “The battle which caused them was one I knew I would win, and I did. These scars are the ones I am the most proud of.”
Eivor looked back at him equally intently. He felt the weight in the other’s words, and knew that there must be more to them than he could ever know.
A battle fought with no-one but himself, Eivor thought, where he was reborn. A battle he knew he would win, with scars he is proud of.
A riddle indeed.
“You sound like a skald, yet your metaphors seem much more hidden.” He couldn’t even begin to think what they could mean, and he considered the words Bragi and Alvis used; swan-roads, feather-fall, shield-thunder, blood-ember... Tricky for those that may not know their meanings, but undeniably clear which words were meant to mean something else. Hytham’s riddles all seemed like a big metaphor, like every word could be changed, twisted, and traded into a thousand different meanings.
“Like everything in my life,” Hytham mused simply. “And yet I have revealed more to you on this day than I have to most of my brothers and sisters in creed.”
To the acolyte’s surprise, Eivor’s eyes widened.
“Truly? Hytham, I...” The drengr moved, sitting up straight again. As if the other had just confessed a grave secret to him, something of deadly importance. Eivor grasped Hytham’s hand on his, held it over the water’s edge, cradled in both of his. “I thank you for trusting me.”
It was almost silly how serious his tone and expression had turned. Hytham had to admit, he had not imagined such a reaction: it surprised him and, frankly, flustered him. It must have been terribly obvious, too, what with how his cheeks reddened and he cast his gaze away from the other.
“It’s... Not that serious...” he mumbled weakly. “But...”
He scrunched his nose again. What was he supposed to say? ‘Thank you for taking this earnestly? ‘Thank you for saying thank you’? It was just awkward. Eivor, to his credit, seemed to wistfully ignore that.
Finally, Hytham sighed.
“You are a good friend, Eivor.” He forced his gaze back to the other, despite how flustered he felt. His smile was sheepish. “Thank you for that.”
They were leaving their former homes behind again, Basim had declared it so when Sigurd had offered to take them to his homeland, the one which travellers of their kind called cold, desolate, inhospitable. As the norseman’s crew prepared for the month-long coastline journey, Basim and Hytham began to pack.
Their robes, they knew, were far too thin for a land such as Norway, and Sigurd predicted that they would arrive in the dead of winter. It was not hard to get their hands on thicker, more suitable clothing, however, with both traders from Northern Europe and Hidden Ones who themselves have travelled from those regions often carrying robes more suitable for that weather. They were simpler than those of Constantinople's or Alamut's Hidden Ones, but it suited their purpose.
What caught attention the most was the golden, engraved brooch that Basim had bought from a Dane trader, separate from Sigurd’s crew. He had not even shown it to his acolyte before it was already fastened to his hood and his red sash that showed off his rank as a master and mentor. Hytham did not ask about it until it had been two nights since they left the golden city for a second time, and the crew had camped somewhere further along the coast of the Mediterranean.
Sigurd’s men were bustling about, setting up tents and gathering logs for a campfire. Others were hoping to get some luck at hunting something fresh, the last few were scouting the area in general. Basim and Hytham sat under a thick oak tree, backs resting against the trunk, shoulders pressed together as the sun began to set. Their tents were already up, and they were just observing. Still he could not help but glance to his mentor, and the glistening gold that glimmered gently in the last sunlight.
“It seems you want to ask something,” Basim mused then, voice so quiet it seemed barely like a rustle in the wind as he spoke in the language they both knew, that the Norsemen couldn’t understand. “Yet you keep yourself from doing so.”
Hytham bit the inside of his cheek. Five years and he had still yet to get used to how Basim seemed to be able to read his mind, observe every movement and — correctly! — assume meaning.
“I do not wish to be rude...” he replied simply. His fingers picked absentmindedly on the straps of his boot, one knee resting close to his chest. “I assume you have your reasons for everything.”
Basim huffed a short laugh. To Hytham, it felt obvious to say that he had now learned that Basim thought everything through, barely if ever acted impulsive or did things out of his own whim. To Basim, it was amusing how easy it had been to have the spy trust him so blindly.
Then again, this was not really something worth questioning, either.
“You know well by now that you can ask questions...” Basim’s arms were crossed a bit lazily over his chest, and where their shoulders touched it felt as if Hytham could feel the rumble in his voice through his very body. “It is good of an acolyte to want to know more and question things, big and small.”
Hytham snorted. It felt a bit foolishly encouraging for the question that had been on his mind. After some hesitation, he turned to look at Basim, pointing towards the golden brooch which rested on the other side of Basim’s chest.
“What’s that about?” he asked, rather casually. “I’ve never seen a master trade in their rank brooch before.”
Basim hummed. He still had not turned to look at Hytham fully, as he kept his eyes on their campsite.
“I felt it would suit our new locations better,” he said, and even he knew that that was not a complete lie, “it depicts figures from the Norse religion.”
Hytham furrowed his eyebrows. He moved slightly, trying to get a better look at it. The details were there but not engraved deep enough to be really noticeable at a distance, but indeed, he realised now it wasn’t incomprehensible figures. There were three of them; two animalistic ones, and one that seemed to resemble a skull. Sigurd had talked a bit of the religion of his homeland, but it seemed these specific tales might have escaped the memory of the otherwise so sharp acolyte.
“Who are they?” Hytham asked then, just assuming Basim did know. Then again, perhaps it was equally likely that he had merely picked it up because it was Norse, not because of what it symbolised.
Basim remained quiet for a moment. His fingers brushed over the golden metal, giving no indication that he would ever reply to that question. Just when Hytham was about to sigh and sit back, Basim spoke quietly again.
“They are seen as the monsters of the pantheon,” he murmured softly. “The harbingers of the end of the world, Ragnarök.”
Perhaps there was something in the way he said it, the tone he used, the emotions that seemed... Evident, behind his words, that made Hytham feel like this was more personal than he had really expected.
“They were children of Loki,” Basim continued, “the trickster god.”
To Hytham’s surprise, Basim unclasped the brooch. He held it securely in his hands for a moment before he held it out between them, showing Hytham more clearly. This was the most open Basim had ever been with him.
“The oldest was Hel,” He rested the brooch in his palm, and used his thumb to point to the figure in the middle, nestled between the two more animalistic figures. “She was a normal girl, but it was prophesied that she would lead an army to overthrow the gods at Ragnarök. She was cast from Asgard, the realm of the gods, and into the underworld, where she was forced to rule over the dead. The fall crippled her so severely that the side of her face looked... Skeletal.”
Before Hytham could ask any questions, Basim continued. His thumb moved to the left corner of the brooch, to the earless animal with a forked tongue.
“The second was Jörmugandr, the great serpent.” Despite it all, Basim’s tone was not the one he usually had when telling stories. This one was almost melancholic. “He was small, but he was prophesied to kill the god of thunder at Ragnarök. For that, he was cast into the ocean, where he grew to be so long that he could wrap across the entire world and bite his own tail.”
The length of the world was just estimates, and Hytham was not even such a seasoned traveller that he could even try to comprehend the size of the entire world they lived in. A serpent that large... He did not yet know if such a thought was fascinating or terrifying.
Still, something in Basim’s expression softened. A sigh escaped him as he gestured to the last figure, resembling a canine.
“The youngest was Fenrir, or the Fenrisulv.” As Basim spoke, Hytham put his head carefully against his shoulder, told himself it was just to see the brooch better, but he relaxed when Basim rested his own head against his. “A wolf. Nothing more but a small pup, yet prophesied to kill the king of the gods at Ragnarök. For that... He was bound, imprisoned. Locked away.”
Basim quietened. The way he seemed so unnervingly still reminded Hytham of that day, many years ago now, when Basim first told him about the family he once had. Nothing spoken directly, just words carefully left said and unsaid, leaving Hytham to piece together what Basim might have lived through, once.
“... This is personal to you...” Hytham stated softly. The way Basim smiled bitterly and huffed only seemed to confirm that.
“It reminds me of what I had, once.” His hand closed around the brooch, shielding it but still holding it there, in front of them. “All the more important for us to do the work we do. To protect those that cannot yet protect themselves, from people convinced they are doing the right thing.”
His words felt heavy, like a weight he had carried silently for longer than Hytham could ever guess.
“Is it not... Tough?” he asked then, “to carry such a reminder?”
Basim laughed lightly.
“It is,” he said. “Some in our Brotherhood think everything and everyone should be forgotten. But without remembering, you will never know what you fight for.”
A fighter. A survivor. As much a blade as those they wielded.
He had prided himself in it, once. Prided himself in being the perfect initiate; the one who did not fear death nor torture, blade nor arrow. The one who was ready to spill blood in the name of the Greater Good, and it did not matter if the sanguine was that of his own or his enemy’s. The one who had come to the Brotherhood as a child and been raised and nurtured by its ideals.
The one which was no longer anything but a damaged sword, hanging restlessly on a wall, of use to no-one but the desperate.
His mind was still sharp but his body was broken. It refused to stay joint when hit by a blow, his leg seemed tauntingly bratty and unwilling to cooperate, his ribs made it hard to breathe. Even then, he fought. He insisted. He argued and nearly pleaded. Even then, after years and years of supposed recovery, he knew he would not have survived his first proper fight, had he been alone.
But he was no longer alone. Or perhaps he never had been. There had been those who cradled the broken pieces of the sword he had once been, done their best to forge it back together again, who trusted in its abilities to protect them, should the time come. Those who slowly but surely sharpened its edges again, even when the weight of the metal was uneven and the blade was fragile. They forged him again, built him up again, until his muscles were stronger and he knew how to keep his body together once more. New challenges to overcome, but overcome them, he would, if it so would take the rest of his life.
A sword is only useful to those that wield it; a weapon only deadly by those that see its worth.
It did not matter if he would no longer be one of the many blades wielded by the Hidden Ones. It did not matter if they considered him a broken tool, a sacrifice already used. He would wield the sword he once had been and he would fight until he could no longer be reforged.
Through it all, he would still be the weapon he was meant to be.
