the-secret-crusade-oliver-bowden

ran along the wall of a cavernous shaft, leading downwards. Torches on
the walls gave out a meagre light, casting dancing shadows on the
Templar crosses that decorated the walls. It was quiet.
No, not quite.
From somewhere far below he could hear shouting. Guards, perhaps,
alerted to the presence of … Maria? Such a free spirit could never align
herself with Templar ideologies. She was a traitor now. She had come
over to the way of the Assassin: she had slain a Templar and shown an
Assassin the location of the archive. They would kill her on the spot.
Although, of course, from what he had seen of her in combat that might
be easier said than done.
He began to descend, running down the dark steps, occasionally
leaping gaps in the crumbling stonework, until he reached a chamber
with a sandy floor. Arriving to meet him were three guards, and he
disposed of one with a throwing knife straight away, wrongfooted a
second and rammed his sword into the man’s neck. He thrust the body
into the third, who fell, and as they writhed on the ground, Altaïr
finished them. Probing deeper, he heard rushing water, and found
himself on a bridge passing between two waterfalls. The sound was
enough to smother the noise of his arrival from the two guards at the
opposite end of the bridge. He felled them both with two slashes of his
blade.
He left them, continuing down and into the bowels of … the library.
Now he saw shelves of books, rooms full of them. This was it. He was
here. What he’d expected to see he wasn’t sure, but there were fewer
book and artefacts than he had imagined. Did this really constitute the
famous archive he’d heard about?