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The couple had dismounted in the village to find it in a state of semi-chaos. Assassins moved left and right, questioning villagers and speaking of crows and ravens. Moving upward along the slope of the mountain, they made their way to the keep, where a trio of men and a single woman stood arguing.

"Our brothers have been captured, Abbas," Malik snarled. "It is more than our duty to go rescue them."

"My husband was among those captured as well, brother, or do you forget that?" Sarah added.

"Be silent, woman! Those men were here for one purpose and that was to capture Jameel. If they took the two infidels with them, why should we be bothered?" Abbas responded, only to stagger back as Tancred pushed him up against the walls of the keep. Despite being no taller than either of the two men and certainly not as strong as his brother, Abbas' surprise and his own anger fueled his strength.

"Ungläubig? Wer bist du dass du dir elaubst meinen Bruder einen Ungläubigen, du widerliches, scheissbloedes Schwein? Und du wagst es so mit seiner Frau zu sprechen? Ich sollte dir deine Zunge rausreissen und sie die Klippe runter schmeissen, damit du sie dir selbst wieder holen kannst!" It took Malik, Sarah, and the couple to pull him off. Tancred swung around, facing the taller of the two newcomers. "Und wer bist du, Arschloch?"

The man looked down his nose at him with golden brown eyes and remained silent. Beside him, Sarah bowed her head. Malik took the merchant by the shoulder and said in his ear, "That man is our Grandmaster, Altair ibn La'Ahad."

"Oh. Oh..." Tancred pressed his hand to his eyes, then turned to Altair. "My apologies, sir. One moment." He swung around and rammed his fist into Abbas' face. The Assassin slumped to the ground, clutching at his bent nose. Tancred returned to facing Altair. "Again, my apologies. If I had known your station, I can assure you I would have given you a much more flowery insulting, one fit for some of those poetry books in that library of yours." Altair ignored this and turned to Malik.

"What's happened?" he asked.

"Jameel has been captured, along with your lookalike, Jameel's boy, and his Novice."

"Jameel has another Novice?"

"No, his boy has one."

"He's a Journeyman already?"

"Yes, yes, Altair, the point is that they're taken!"

"Wait, then who is this?" He pointed to Tancred.

"The Novice's brother."

"The Novice is German?"

"Altair! Will you kindly shut up for a minute?" The second newcomer pushed back her hood, revealing a fair face to go along with her English accent, hair black, eyes blue, but darker than Jameel's. "Maria Thorpe," she said by way of short introduction. "Who's captured them?"

Malik had to take a moment to register the woman's presence from the shock he'd been given before he stammered, "The...These Crows."

"Wouldn't it be wise then, Altair, for you to go after these Crows, if we know where they've taken the men? Your men?" She looked toward Malik. "That is, if we know where they've taken them."

"Their tracks are still here." They looked at Sarah. "Please, Master," she said to Altair, "find my husband quickly." She looked at Maria. The older woman gave her a nod before going to fetch fresh horses for the man and whoever would accompany him. Altair turned to Tancred.

"Since you're so eager to do something..."

"Informant," supplied the one-armed Dai.

"Informant, I propose you come with me and teach me a little of your language. I've yet to learn the insults." He hurried down the slope. Tancred rolled his eyes. At least someone had fallen in with his original idea, however inadvertantly. I like that woman he brought with him. She and this man Malik will no doubt be the brains of this outfit. As he made to follow the pair, a hand stopped the merchant. He looked toward his sister-in-law.

"Thank you, Bakr." Sarah gripped his arm tightly. "I wouldn't have expected..." Tancred gave her a slight smirk and pulled her hands gently from his arm, holding them between his own.

"Well, even a young camel can give a good kick, can't it, Schwesterherz?"



Jameel opened his eyes to a nice view of the inside of a stone cell and a fierce headache. He reached back and touched his head; the spot where he'd been hit was tender. He hadn't been hit hard enough to do much more damage than that, just enough to make sure he didn't squirm and struggle during transport. Squinting, he was able to see by the dim light that was thrown into the cell by the torch in the hall beyond the door.

The Master Assassin promptly went into panic mode. s**t! I'm inside their nest! I'm inside their castle! In the dungeons, granted, but still inside their castle! He patted at himself furiously, at his belt and arm. All he felt was empty leather and bare skin. His weapons had been stripped from him; his Hidden Blade was gone.

I'm going to die here. Jameel swallowed and prayed that the part of his brain that had come to that conclusion was wrong. He rubbed at the place on his left arm where the blade usually rested. He felt naked without his weapons, but mostly without that familiar one. The Owl's talons had been shaved down to blunt nails.

Feeling his way forward, he found the door. He tried shoving at it, but it wouldn't budge even when he gave the shove a running start. The dull thump of meat on metal reached his ears as his shoulder rammed into the door. Not only locked, but reinforced. He looked at the door and kicked it uselessly, kicked it out of helplessness and an ever mounting frustration. Even if we had lock picks to free ourselves, where would we go? It's too dark to see and they're sure to have traps set up. Not to mention guards in every nook and cranny. Nook and cranny? Allah, I'm sounding like...

"Hello?" called the Red Owl.

"Jameel?" Desmond's voice calling over from his cell. "You okay in there?"

"My head is sore from where they hit me, but I'm fine. I don't have my weapons. They took them from me."

"No good here either. I'm out. What about you, Gilbert?"

"No weapons but I've a few scratches to my name," said the German. Concern followed in his next words as he asked, "What of the little Sparrow?" Jameel's stomach knotted itself into a ball as he felt bile rush up into the back of his throat.

"He was pretty banged up when I last saw him," answered the young Eagle.

"What happened?" Desmond almost jumped at the sudden harshness in the Master Assassin's voice.

"He shot one of the bastards and they cracked his head on the ground. He was bloody, but I think he was okay. He was still breathing when they put him in his cell. Hey, Lex!" Jameel felt the bile shift up into his mouth. He forced a swallow, fearing the pounding of his heart would be heard by the guards in the silence. "Lex?"

The man gripped at the wall to steady himself, knees suddenly weak as he heard a rasped, "Des...?"

In his cell, the young Journeyman stirred, opening his eyes. They blurred and his world spun. He shut them, though it did nothing to assuage the nausea. The world still spun and it was dark with his eyes open or shut. He groaned, "Where...?"

"The Crows took us to their nest."

"Hella blood..."

"Yeah, you hit your head."

"Jameel?"

"I'm here, Lex. I'm weaponless, but alive." Lex raised himself from the floor slowly, swayed, then backed up to the far wall. He took a running start and slammed his shoulder against the door once, twice. "I've tried. It won't budge. Don't waste your energy." He shuddered and slid down along the door to the floor, feeling at the usual places where his weapons had hung. No gun, no sword, no daggers, no knives. Even his pockets were empty!

"I don't have any weapons. Nothing." Hell, they probably won't even feed us--God knows what Assassins can do with spoons! Lex crawled over to the wall closest to the direction from which Jameel's voice had come and pressed his head against the cold, almost soothingly cold, stone. His voice was almost a whisper. "What do they plan to do with us?"

Jameel opened his mouth to answer, but his tongue was stilled by the sound of the door in the hall opening. The Assassins moved to the bars of their cell doors and peered out. In the hall stood a Ravenwatch member, a crow on each of his shoulders. He had the Ravenwatch white bird mask, but in the flickering torchlight the lenses were tinted sulfur yellow. His clothing, like the rest of his murder, was black, but in the form of what looked to the time travelers like an attempt at a trench coat. This member also carried a rather superfluous cane and a third crow perched on top of his head. His attire left the men confused and through the confusion even more intimidated. As he walked down the hall, the guards stationed along it bowed.

This must have been the boss.

He quietly glided forward, back and forth in front of them, once in a while turning his head to look at the captives in their cells. He stopped at Gilbert's cell, keeping himself at a good distance from the bars. The German lifted both his brows and nodded once.

"Yes, sir, you have given us fine accomidations. You also look very silly."

Lex, who'd been leaning forward as far as he could to look at the boss through the bars, sank back down and started laughing. Desmond stared as he heard the Sparrow's laughter. Is he insane? Did he hit his head too hard?

"He looks like...hahaha...a Steampunk Marylyn Manson." More laughter. Strangely, it had a calming effect on the Eagle. He smirked. Steampunk Manson had turned his mask toward them before striding toward Lex's cell from Gilbert's. Desmond snickered as he watched him. He did look like a poor, demented man's Manson cosplay.

The boss reached into his coat and revealed one of their guns, pointing it at Desmond. The crows scattered as their perch moved and fluttered to little wooden pegs on the wall. The boss's shifting in the light revealed that what had first been thought of as a dark mane of hair was really a head full of long, black feathers, almost like a headdress had been grafted to his skin. He also had the rest of their weapons tucked away beneath the coat, the men saw as he looked between them.

"Steam...punk?" The mask hardly did anything to muffle the voice, which was deep enough to make the time traveler's bones rattle. The mask only helped to amplify the eeriness of the voice. The laughter had fallen silent. Not so funny now, is it? Jameel thought. From where he stood, he didn't think so. Deciding that the prisoners had been attempting some form of jibe, the Crow Master stated, "Why belittle your already feeble minds with attempts at insults when the tables are clearly not in your favor? That would be placing your head in a hungry lion's mouth and expecting to remove it safely. I'll remove your tongues with this weapon of yours and nail them to the wall for the fledglings to see and laught at."

Desmond clamped his mouth shut and swallowed visibly. He held up his hands. The man had a point. The Novice just hoped the Journeyman would keep his yap shut and didn't want his brains splattered all over the cell wall like some macabre interior design.

When Desmond had shut up, Lex had taken a long breath and done likewise, but couldn't keep his lips from forming a smirk. His blood was frozen in his veins and he had nowhere to run. Try as he mgiht--and he was trying his damnedest, the muscles of his cheeks twitching as he sought to rid his face of the expression--the defiant little look wouldn't be removed from his features.

His body tensed instinctively as he drew a breath.

Why in God's name the words left his mouth, his mind wasn't ever given time to process.

"At least I'm not bald, you feather-headed freak."

Silence reigned in the hall, but for the crackling of the torches.

"It seems we have one of those willing types," said the Crow Master softly. "Very well." The click of the hammer being pulled back harmonized well with the sound coming from the torches. The Assassins almost missed it.

There was no missing the defeaning explosion as the gun went off. Jameel gripped at his ears as they rang, the dull sound of a thump reaching him through the hum. He wished it hadn't. At the same time, he struggled to clear his ears.

Desmond shook in his cell as he heard the muffled voice of the Ravenwatch Grandmaster say, "Hand me the needle." Oh, God... What are they doing? Is he dead? What the hell are they doing?

One of the guards handed the head of the Ravenwatch Order a needle filled with...something. Jameel peered at it. What was it? It was a liquid, but it was such an odd color, almost like milk. In return, the guard was given all of the captives' weapons that were on the Grandmaster's person and was sent away to lock them up, including the gun.

The lead Crow moved into the cell.

Lex lay on the floor, breathing heavily. He stared at the needle, then at the blood seeping out of his upper arm from the ragged bullet hole, then at the needle again. His pupils were huge in the dim light, almost seeming to blot out his irises, whites visible in a bright, wide circle. Like the whites of the Sparrow's eyes, the tinted lenses of the Crow's mask caught what light there was being thrown into the dungeon. Whether it was the shock distorting his perception or not, the eerie, yellow glow of those things that weren't quite eyes unnerved him.

"This won't sting at all."

Lex gasped as the needle was pushed into the hole in his arm, the liquid injected. His eyes rolled up and shut.

This lasted only for a moment. As the Ravenwatch Grandmaster looked on, the small Assassin began to shudder. Lex's eyes opened and stretched to their widest. A strange smell was in his nose, like someone had spilled bleach nearby. His arm was being squeezed by some invisible vice. His mouth buzzed as if someone had zapped him with one of those gag electrical shockers worn against the palm.

It was then that he began to choke and vomit, spit clinging to his mouth. He gagged, clawing and kicking at the air, then gripping at his arms and curling into a ball, rocking back and forth on his side, as waves of intense cold wracked his body.

The drug had begun to take its effects. Good. He would think like they did soon. Turning, he commanded two of the guards, "Take him to the barracks." The two fledglings picked up Lex by the arms, beginning to take him out. They pulled up sharply as the jittery Assassin was jerked from their arms. Jameel's fist curled around a buched section of Lex's tunic.

The Master Assassin was forced to release his hold on the Journeyman as twin daggers snaked dangerously close to his wrist. Sheathing their weapons, the fledglings took hold of the limp figure by the shoulders of his tunic and continued to drag Lex along. All Jameel could do was watch until a yellow-eyed, white bird face blocked his line of sight.

"Do you know what that drug does to my fledglings? It makes them very susceptible to commands." The white beak poked through the bars. Jameel was tempted to snap it off, but refrained, lest it be barbed with some sort of poison or worse. "The entire castle and the village below are mine. This is the reason my men are like what you might call zealots. This drug is potent. They can't survive without more. It brings them pain unimaginable to go without it. My commands are their very lives." The beak withdrew.

No wonder they're so organized. No wonder they fight like demons. Jameel leaned his head against the door. They're trained under the effects of this drug. But didn't the Assassins use hashish with much the same effects? his brain wanted to know. No, no, no! We're nothing like this...this thing! This man--no, he's not a man--this creature is pure evil!

And now the creature had turned his attention to Desmond, another guard replacing the empty needle in his hand with one that was full. "You're next."

Desmond glared at the man, meeting his eyes through the mask's eyeholes as well as any one of them could with the light making them into shimmering gold coins.

"Bring it on."