As it turned out Robin was highly interested in Alan's tale and the associated implications. Before long a small party consisting of Robin, John, Yughi, Alan, Much the Miller's Son and Dun set out for Derby. It was soon to be Yuletide and every church was preparing for the twelve holy days with a variety of lesser events.
The cathedral at Derby was no exception. The college of priests who ran the establishment under the deanship of Thomas de Say was preparing a grand feast for local nobles. The stated aim was to gather alms in preparation for the opening of the poor boxes on St Stephen's Day. If Alan's tale was true then any donations would more likely end up in the hands of the Templars, more specifically the Sheriff of Nottingham.
At first, Yughi had not been comfortable with the idea of Much and Dun being allowed to do much more than guard patrols. The two boys were naturals at tree running but they were still not formidable assassins or outlaws in many other respects. It was not Yughi's place to object, however, so he had kept his own counsel.
As the party reached the outskirts of Derby, Robin led them all into the shadow of a cave. Once safely hidden from view within the dark tunnels John lit torches and passed them out to Robin, Yughi and Alan, he lit a fourth and kept it for himself.
"I've seen you climb," Robin said to Yughi, "you are comfortable in the air."
"Rooftops offer a good vantage point and makes for swift transport between given locations," Yughi said.
"So you assassins go up," Robin said. "Outlaws? We go under. I will show you. Stick close everyone."
The cave tunnels spidered under the Sherwood Forest, seemingly stretching out forever in every direction. Robin and John lead the rest of them confidently across junctions and forks, evidently, they knew these tunnels well.
Alan and the boys looked a little nervous following along behind, Yughi could understand why. The eagle senses meant that Yughi could remember the passages taken and could find his way back out of here even in the dark. If one did not possess such a gift then it would be almost impossible to navigate the labyrinthine tunnels.
After walking for the best part of an hour the way ahead was mostly blocked by a gigantic wall, but there was a crack in the wall big enough for a man to squeeze through, widening at the roof of the cave. Tree roots wound around the blocks of the wall and down the sides of the tunnels.
"The Romans built sewer tunnels under Derby," Robin explained. "The system was elaborate. The cave system stretches back under Nottingham and intersects in several places with the main tunnel connecting Derby to Newark. The entrances have mostly fallen to ruin until now that is."
The party made their way through the crack in the wall. Yughi looked about as he crossed from the natural cave system into the Roman tunnels. They were wide enough for three or four men to walk abreast, they were not tall maybe seven feet, but they were sturdily built.
"These tunnels are too broad and wide to merely serve as sewers," Alan remarked inspecting the brickwork and the square support columns that were spaced around twenty feet apart and built into the walls. "Besides, I know what sewers smell like, and this is not what I remember."
"They haven't been in use for hundreds of years," Robin said. "There are parts that still gather pools of water and filth, they smell as you might expect."
"There has to be more to this than just a sewer system," Alan persisted. "This must have taken time and resources to build, far in excess of what a wise king would spend on such things."
"Before the assassins were the Brotherhood of Horus, known to the Romans as the Falconi," Yughi said. "Before the Templars were the Order of Mithras. They built tunnels like this under Constantinople, under Rome, under Cyprus, anywhere that their influence went. The original tunnel systems built under the Nile were constructed by the Brotherhood of Horus. It is the first thing the Templars stole from the Assassins, I doubt it will be the last."
"A scholarly explanation for the teller of tales," John said. "Now we can all stand around admiring the architecture or we can try to stay a little more alive than the bastards who built this, whyever they built it."
"I brought my knowledge from Alamut," Yughi said as they once more resumed progress through the tunnels. "No doubt the Templars have similar knowledge from their forebears. All I am saying is that you should not be overly confident that the presence of these tunnels will remain your own secret forever."
"I will bear that in mind," Robin said. "But now we must to our own business. Alan, Much, Dun, follow John, he will take you to a tunnel exit that comes out in the cellar of an inn on St. Mary's Gate. Yughi, you will come on with me a little further, John will catch us up."
Robin led Yughi down the tunnel a little way to a junction. There John went on the main passage and Robin lead Yughi down a tighter passageway, off to the left of the main concourse.
Before long they emerged into a vestibule, a round room with a single exit behind a barred metal gate. Robin undid the catch on the gate and lead Yughi up a spiral staircase that brought the outlaw and the assassin out in a small room within a larger building.
Once there, Robin lifted his hood to obscure his features from prying eyes, Yughi did the same.
"We will have to hold back from entering the main hall," Robin said. "It will be heavily guarded, this room is storage at the edge of the north transept. If we cross the transept we will be able to get to the chapel where the cooks are. We shall have to stay there until Alan, Dun and Much begin their distraction. Then we shall have to all be quick, I imagine De Say's first move will be to run."
Robin led the way out of the room and along the transept. Leading off from the south transept was a tall arch that opened out, down a flight of wide steps, into a broad chapel. The room was filled with noise and scent, people of Derby cooking rich food for the wealthy patrons of this feast. In the distance, partially obscured by clouds of steam from the many bubbling pots, were some low trestle tables where the poor waited to receive table scraps.
"We had best split up," Robin said. "Alan will give John time to arrive, then we must wait until we hear a commotion from the nave. That will be our signal to attack."
With that Robin pulled his cloak about him and disappeared into the crowd. Yughi was a little relieved to be left to his own devices for a few moments. He did not actively resent following Robin's orders but he did very much regard himself as following them out of politeness.
Assassins followed the orders of their masters, not of outlaws. Even so, there was something compelling about the Hood's presence. No wonder when he had managed to build a fighting force of outlaws from the broken men of the surrounding cities towns and villages.
The position of John Little as Robin's right hand was prudent in the extreme. Robin was, so Yughi had heard, a deposed noble of Yorkshire. He did appear a little distant and cold, a military officer used to giving orders and formulating strategies.
In fact, Yughi sometimes found it hard to see why John followed Robin. John was far easier for most of the outlaws to relate to but Yughi could tell that Tuck was right, if they ran things John's way the forest would be stained red with outlaw blood by now.
Yughi could not doubt that Robin was keeping these men alive because he needed bodies for the cause but he did his job beautifully. Still, it must be hard for some of the outlaws to obey a man who appeared to want them to keep breathing out of expedience, not out of love or fellow feeling.
In the order of assassins, there was a similar issue, but the master assassins were steeped in ancient knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom could give you someone to lead you for philosophical or spiritual reasons. Robin fought only for freedom and cared little for arcane knowledge, his men were the same.
The outlaws were an army on the back foot, fighting for a tangible goal, united by a disgraced noble, a gruff soldier and a slippery clergyman. Yughi could not help but think that there was little in the way of heart in that mix. John Little loved the outlaws as fiercely as any man could love his brother but it was a love of fire and heat, there was nothing soft in it, more like something mighty.
What would Yughi do if the outlaws were scattered? They provided him with every resource to conduct his search for Ra's Will. Yughi had learned a little of the methods of a master assassin in building a new guild. He did not have the luxury of humility. He must establish himself here, quickly. If the outlaws scattered there would be a need for assassins in England.
Before too long Yughi caught sight of John in amongst the crowd. So all of the outlaws were in place. Yughi was not at all pleased with the position that Robin had told them to maintain. The signal that Alan would give to them would no doubt be a noise of some sort. That meant that the first time Yughi would have an opportunity to see the nave would be after the alarm had already gone up.
No doubt Robin was hoping that in the confusion the guards would find their efforts too divided to notice the outlaws getting to de Say. To succeed on that basis would still take a great deal of luck and luck was not something that an assassin wanted to rely on.
Looking about Yughi could see that the roof of the cathedral was vaulted. The walls that separated the chapel of this church from the nave did not stretch all the way to the roof. There was plenty of room in the rafters for someone to move about as they pleased.
Waiting to fail not being something Yughi was particularly comfortable to do the assassin found a quiet corner near the apse and climbed up to the roof beams. The nave was hidden from view behind a gigantic, heavy curtain but the sounds of minstrel music, talking and laughing rang out into the heights of the ceiling.
Comfortable now, nimbly hopping from crossbeam to crossbeam Yughi surveyed the feast of the rich from his perch. The nave was a lot less busy than the chapel, a trestle ran around three sides of the nave, in the centre of the room young couples danced to the music played by the minstrels.
It didn't take Yughi long to locate Alan, playing his lute whilst Much unenthusiastically knocked out a pattern on a tambour. The young man appeared as unenthusiastic about his diversion into the arts as he was sloppy about the business of an outlaw. Yughi could not see Dun.
Yughi turned on the beam to look toward the head of the table. He tuned in his eagle sense and searched the crowd for their target. Thomas de Say was not hard to spot. For a holy man he dressed rather opulently, he moved his hands to flash the large rings adorning five of his fingers. He had a great chain of office about his neck and was not about to willingly leave anyone present in any doubt as to who was the dean of this cathedral.
There were many similar targets in the Holy Lands. Merchants who traded in slavery, bogus gurus, once formidable commanders who had settled into a life of luxury. It was not the target who was difficult to catch, it was the paranoia that made them build up vast retinues of guards.
Present in the cathedral that night Yughi could see nearly fifty armed men and he knew he wasn't seeing them all. At that moment Yughi knew that Robin's plan by itself was doomed to failure, the enemy's forces were just too numerous.
Had Robin Hood become complacent? Surely not, his enemy's forces were ascendant, the outlaws had barely strength or influence. This tactical miscalculation was an odd one, Robin had always presented himself as cautious and conservative in the execution of a plan before.
Thomas De Say sat at the table for a little while, laughing and joking with his close friends. Eventually, he got up to walk around the table, intent on pressing the flesh. Whatever distraction Alan had planned Yughi hoped that the minstrel had the sense to save it until De Say was back in his seat.
As Yughi followed De Say's progress around the room something hung above the rafters of the cathedral caught Yughi's eye. It was a large sack of something suspended from the end of a short rope, directly over the centre of the room. It did not look like something that was intended to be there, he guessed that it could have been put up here by Dun, or even Much when they arrived. The two outlaws had been learning to climb with Yughi and both of them had a talent for it.
Even as Yughi permitted himself half a grin to see the handiwork of his proteges something whistled through the air and struck the sack. It exploded in a shower of fine white powder. Flour instantly filled the air of the cathedral nave. Even as the billowing payload hid the crowd in a gigantic cloud of fine dust so there was a sound of high pitched squealing from the floor of the nave.
Quickly following this was shouting, screaming and the general chaos that Robin had occasioned Alan to incite. Yughi tried to catch sight of de Say again but the flour cloud obscured his vision.
One thing was for certain, the Dean had started to run already. He must have known that he was a target. At the first sign of trouble, the Templar had dropped everything to make his escape.
Moving swiftly along the rafters Yughi hunted for a sign of De Say, it didn't take him long to see the Dean slip behind the giant curtain at the back of the nave.
Yughi followed to see the holy man duck into the apse, back towards the sanctuary. There he pulled a lever obscured from view behind a brick support. There was the grinding sound of gears as the lid covering one of three tombs in the sanctuary lifted up, revealing a set of steps down. De Say descended, the lid came down after he had passed concealing the exit once more.
It was already too late to hide, though, Yughi had seen the Cathedral's secret. He scaled down the wall, ran over to the lever and pulled it, opening the way again. He briefly considered finding Robin or John but, in the end, time was of the essence, De Say could not be allowed to escape.
Yughi followed the Dean down the steps and through a short passageway that appeared to be contemporary to the cathedral building rather than being one of the Roman kind. It emerged into a yard behind the cathedral building and Yughi came up to ground level in time to see a carriage pulling away at speed.
Scaling the nearest building Yughi followed behind the carriage over the rooftops of Derby, the carriage made it to the edge of the town square before Yughi dropped on top of it. He sliced into the canvas, covering the carriage bed with his hidden blade.
Dropping into the carriage body Yughi used a throwing knife to kill one guard and sliced the other one's throat with the tip of the hidden blade. Finally, he pinned Thomas De Say to the floor of the carriage and pressed the blade to his throat.
"I should have known this day would come," De Say cried out. "Though I did what I could to serve this country, Richard's way will prevail. Have the crusades come to these shores so soon?"
"No crusade," Yughi said. "But an end to your provision of supplies to the Hood's enemies."
"So you kill me over business arrangements," De Say spat. "Is that all?"
"I kill you because you allied with the Templars," Yughi said. "You would give them control over these lands through arranged marriages and the rule of force."
"The Templars control this land no matter what you or I say. I just know that Richard does not see England as more than his plaything, whereas my people sought to give it strength."
"The power of an army cannot protect those who would seek to subjugate their fellow man," Yughi said. With that he let the blade slip into Thomas de Say's neck, ending his life once and for all.
His work done, Yughi hopped off the wagon and disappeared once more into the winter's night.