We kept watch throughout the night, but our shift was long and irrevocably boring, and we ended up passing the time with Connor's pack of cards. We set up our post next to a small window upstairs that provided a clear view of the road in to Lexington, but we saw nothing until the day broke.

At the first sign of redcoat activity - distant drums, marching feet, scouts sent ahead - we were out of the house and heading for the centre of the town, where the rebel militia were starting to gather.

Already, though the dawn had only just begun to light the trees, rebel commander John Parker was arranging the troops into lines. As captain of the militia, Parker had the authority to command the army; however, due to his failing health (he was suffering with the white plague, just as my grandparents had been), his voice did not carry quite as well as it should have. I strained to hear him, though when I caught the odd word here and there, they were of no interest to me, for he was merely encouraging the soldiers.

Connor's hands were clasped before him. I leaned up and murmured, "The noose is hung. The coming battle will be the executioner."

He knew what I meant. War could not be avoided now: whatever happened between the British and the Americans today would spell doom in capital letters.

Neither Connor nor I needed to say the words we were both thinking: whatever happened, we would stay by the other's side; we would not leave each other. Knowing this - not having to question or doubt him - brought me great comfort.

The air was hazy with early-morning mist, but, just beyond Lexington Green, it was beginning to lift. And through the smoke-like fog, I could see assembled the lines and lines of British soldiers, their red uniforms carrying the uneasy quality of seeing blood in a dream.

But I knew this wasn't a dream when Major John Pitcairn took control at the head of the army, his deep grey cloak rippling in the morning wind.

"Disperse, you damned rebels," commanded Pitcairn. "Lay down your arms, and disperse."

If there was one thing I had learnt from my years in the colonies, it was that the Americans took no orders from England - or her representatives.

Born and raised in Dysart, Scotland, Pitcairn enlisted in the Royal Marines in 1746 and was posted in Canada to aid in the French and Indian War, and during this time he was promoted from lieutenant to captain. By 1771 he was an army major - and considered to be one of the most respected officers by both the British and the colonists.

But, looking at him now, all I could see was the silver ring on his right hand, like the Templar cross was burning before my eyes.

I could see Connor watching him with a predatory stillness - it reminded me of a wolf stalking its prey. If he weren't my friend, it would have horrified me.

I caught Parker's eye and beckoned him over with a tilt of my head. With a scowl, he stomped over; Parker was of a perpetually ill disposition, and I wondered if he kept his soldiers in line using fear alone.

"Who are you?" he grumbled.

"Associates of Sam Adams," said Connor. "We have been sent to help you."

Parker gave a cough that rattled in his chest. "We need no help. Once the British see we're serious about this, they'll back down."

I wasn't so sure - and neither was Connor, if I were to judge by his face.

Parker remained unimpressed. "All right, you can start by–"

A gunshot cut him off and sliced into the early morning air. And, all at once, the opposing armies opened fire.

The British were better armed, better organised, than the rebels, and several American troops were shot down within moments. In the face of the carnage, many of the rebel militia turned tail and fled.

"What the deuce are you doing?" yelled Parker, but it was no use: he was shouting to the smoke trails left behind them. To the few remaining soldiers, he snapped, "Hold your positions. Cravens! Traitors!"

Bullets whizzed by closer than I would have liked, and the three of us ducked behind a cover as Parker began to cough again - wet, hacking coughs that left traces of blood on his lips.

A memory surged, unbidden, unwanted to the forefront of my mind: blood on my grandfather Ryan's mouth; the frail, sunken face of Sophia; the fevers that kept them bedbound for days. During the last days of their illness, they sent me away to live with Thomas and his family, but every day I regretted that. I regretted not being with them when they needed me most.

"They are not coming back." Connor's voice dragged me back to the light. "You will have to make do with those who remain."

Parker turned on him, then. Blood glistened on his teeth. "Don't you lecture me on how–" he poked his head above the barricade, trail of thought lost, and howled once more: "Return fire. Return fire!"

It was no use. Smoke scratched my throat and stung my eyes, and as I peeked out I saw that the numbers of rebel troops had dwindled further, and those who remained seemed mere seconds away from following suit.

"You need to get to Concord," wheezed Parker, "and warn the others. Show this-" he pressed a folded letter into my hand, for I was the closest to him- "to whoever leads there. Should be a man by the name of James Barrett."

The name was all we needed, and before Parker could say another word, Connor and I dashed out from our cover, retrieved our horses, and galloped for the road. The Americans had all but fled, now, and we passed many of them, red-faced and panting, on their way to Concord.

The smoke thickened the further afield we got, and the paths were strewn with bodies. I'd never seen so many dead in once place since the Massacre, and the smell of blood clogged my nose. I should have been disgusted - I should have been sick and sobbing - but all I felt was a grim, morbid fascination.

We rode hard until we reached the North Bridge just inside Concord, on the farmland of James Barrett, who was the representative of Concord in Boston legislature. He had allowed the Continental Army to use his land to store their ammunition, and now the British were coming to seize it all.

I recognised William Dawes standing next to a greying man I assumed was Barrett at the end of the bridge. Around them, colonial troops were arranging covers and forming firing lines.

Connor's horse skidded to a halt. "Blood's been spilled in Lexington," he said, "and there's more to come. The regulars are on the march."

If I thought Parker had looked grumpy, Barrett was absolutely disgusted as he looked up at us on our horses. "You don't say," he said slowly, as though we were both idiots. "And why do you think I've men up here? Go home, before you get yourselves killed. I've enough to worry about without a pair of green kids looking to play heroes."

I was reminded of what Achilles had told me when I first met him: Assassins are not heroes; we just sacrifice our lives for a cause larger than ourselves.

"I can vouch for them," Dawes spoke up.

Eager to prove Barrett wrong, I said, "John Parker, too," and gave him the letter.

Barrett regarded me as though for the first time as he took the letter and stalked back a few feet to read it. In one graceful movement, Connor had dismounted. "Where is Revere?" he asked in a low voice.

"Captured," Dawes whispered back.

"What?" I demanded, tone hushed, as I got off my horse.

Grey light filtered through the trees and made Dawes's face seem almost sickly in his nervousness. "Fear not," he said. "That man's no stranger to sticky situations. He'll be fine; I'm sure of it."

Connor and I exchanged a sceptical look that couldn't have lasted more than a millisecond. We both knew the odds of that.

Behind Dawes, Barrett cleared his throat. "You ladies finished gossiping?" He carried a rough Boston accent - one which, to my abject horror, I had noticed little Ryan beginning to pick up, in spite of the best efforts of Lydia and Gabriel to raise him with a sensible English accent.

Barrett regarded Connor and me, now: he looked us up and down with the scrutiny of an overly strict governess. "Parker seems to believe you're not completely useless," he drawled, with raised brows. "I suppose there's a thing or two you might be able to help with." Switfly, he told us his plan, eyes darting over to the bridge every so often to check for advancing patrols.

"That sound like something you can do?" he finished gruffly. When Connor and I nodded, he huffed. "You'd best be telling the truth."

"You have our word," said Connor.

We were both handed military rifles; we didn't need to be shown how to handle them, for Achilles, during our training, had ensured we knew how to handle every weapon we might come across - and how to improvise their use should the situation arise. Rifles, however, were nothing new - but when three massive cannons were rolled forward, I fought a sick feeling in my stomach.

This was it. This was war, then.

My grandmother had often said that love and war were the same thing. But this felt nothing like how I thought love should feel: this was not warm or secure. It was frightening and huge and so very, very dangerous.

When I looked to Connor, I couldn't see past the cold mask he had, so easily, slipped into place. There were no emotions in his eyes, no feeling to the hard set of his mouth. It was like he had frozen the world out.

A flash of red just beyond the bridge caught my eye, and I squinted into the bushes across the river, searching for the movement again. The attention of a few rebel scouts further ahead had also been snagged by this, for one man sprinted across the bridge to Barrett, calling: "Regulars!"

Moments later, we saw them: three squadrons of redcoat soldiers, identical in their blood-drop uniforms, marching forward with military precision. Their lieutenant colonels, at the head of each squadron, drew their sabres.

Barrett watched with a grim expression, then called to his men, in a voice of steel: "Man the barricades."

Connor and I started forward to join them, but Barrett held us back with a hand on each of our arms. "No," he insisted. "Ensure my men hold those positions. If the red devils break through, we're finished. And if any of those bastards do break through, engage them. You must keep my men alive."

Then he let us go. I joined the ranks of the rebel soldiers, shouldering my way between them and ignoring their grunts and huffs of breath. Connor mounted his horse, gaining the better vantage point, rifle slung over his shoulder. For a split second our eyes met, and the world slowed to a stop.

I blinked away an image of him blown full of bloody holes. He would be fine. He could look after himself.

I was ready when the first round of shots went off; though men fell around me, I held my ground, and fired when commanded. Achilles had often criticised my aim, pushed me to improve my precision - and how grateful I was for those lessons now. All of my failures and small victories had moulded together like dough to form the shooter I was today.

And I would need every moment of experience I had accumulated.

Smoke rolled in thick waves across the Old North Bridge, and my eyes began to stream. Lines of redcoats fell and reformed, but their advance, albeit slow, was steady.

I didn't dare spare a glance back at Connor; instead, as my line knelt down to fire, I let out half my breath to steady myself, stared down the barrel of the gun, and fired. Across the bridge, a soldier fell, with dark red blooming on his chest.

Before this day, I had never killed. I had never taken a human life; never touched that cold darkness. But now, as I stood back with my line to reload, I felt myself falling backward in an icy river. Deep water surrounded me; trapped in a chasm; everything was black.

Another round of shots went off, and I snapped back to the present. My boots sank into the mud, and I let myself focus on that. I couldn't afford to stop now, to think of the lives I had taken, of the families that would be waiting for a father, a son, a brother, who would never return.

I thought suddenly of Parker - had he managed to encourage his troops to stay? His chesty cough reminded me so much of the suffering of Sophia and Ryan that, for a moment, I almost missed my cue to fire.

The number of British soldiers seemed infinite, but the red bodies were piling up on the road. The soldiers could not afford to waste precious seconds moving them, so they merely stepped over the corpses and continued their advance.

I squinted through the smoke as the redcoats began to part their ranks - they were making way for a massive cannon to be rolled forward.

My line was only a few metres from the barricade that bisected the bridge. Granted, said barricade was only a few planks of wood and some bags of sand, but it would have to make do.

The British soldiers loaded the cannon. The officer leading my troop hollered, "Get down!" and we that remained threw ourselves behind the barricade. I scraped my chin on the harsh gravel, but hardly had a moment to catch my breath before the first cannon ball was fired.

It made the ground shake beneath us. A gaping hole was blown through the barricade to my left, leaving rubble and a severed arm where a soldier had just been. Blood began to trickle between the grooves of the gravel and, slowly, for the blood was thick, it dribbled down the path towards the grass. The earth was calling it home.

Both of my knees were wet from kneeling in the grass, and as I crouched behind the cover, sand began to cake my legs.

Another cannon went off to my right, this time striking the wooden fence at the side of the bridge. Splinters flew in all directions, and I threw up an arm to cover my face.

The officer now lay dead, with a long shard of wood protruding from his throat. Three remained in my troop, myself included; two hid further behind me, the other concealed himself behind fallen sand bags, bleeding heavily from a gash along his chest.

Two more cannons had been rolled out to target the squadrons at my right and left. As the cannons fired again, and the stone bridge began to shake, I stuck the end of my rifle over the top of the barricade and poked my head up only slightly.

My heart was roaring in my ears, but my mind was utterly silent as I picked off the British soldiers one by one. The bodies began to pile up, but even as the cannons fired over and over, I didn't stop until-

The high, panicked screech of a horse pierced the air above the gunshots, and I looked back just in time to see Connor's horse collapse under him, its legs and chest blown full of holes. Connor himself disappeared in the smoke.

A white-hot anger filled me. It was one thing to shoot at the Continental Army; it was another thing entirely to shoot at my friend.

My aim was precise. Blood and red coats were impossible to tell apart. As more splinters flew, my forehead began to bleed with a stinging pain, and I was forced to duck behind my cover once more.

The injured soldier near me was dead. I couldn't crawl over to him to close his eyes; they remained glassy and staring at the sky.

This was war, I realised. This was annihilation. This was mankind in its darkest form. Strip away all that is good, all that is civilised, and this is the remaining residue.

I faintly heard someone order the squadron on my right to fire. Twisting around, I squinted into the smoky clearing by the river - the position which the squadron was holding. At first I saw nothing, but then Connor emerged from the smoke. He was limping, and his leg was bleeding, but he seemed otherwise unscathed. Holding his head high, Connor waited for the troops to switch lines before ordering their shots again.

He took one look at what remained of my squadron and passed us by. We were too scattered, our numbers too little. He was content to leave me to pick off the soldiers from my place behind the barricade.

I started to cough against the smoke, which scratched my throat with the force of eight angry cats. Just when I was beginning to think I wouldn't last much longer, what with my eyes running, Pitcairn came forward on a horse, looking pale.

"Fall back," he ordered his men. "Fall back!"

I couldn't believe it. We - a ragtag group that was slowly but surely falling apart - had made Major Pitcairn fall into retreat. In fact, I didn't dare trust my eyes, nor my ears, until one of the surviving members of my troop poked his head above the barricade and called, "We did it! They're turning tail!"

And indeed they were. The legion of British troops were retreating down the road, stepping over bodies as they went. None of us moved from our positions until the last red coat had disappeared and the beat of their footsteps had faded; then a great cheer went up among the colonial troops.

I felt myself smile in spite of the blood and sweat and tears. When I looked back, Connor met my eye like he had been looking for me all along. An elated rush went through me, and I joined in the cheering and howling of the troops.

I picked myself off the ground so I could go to Connor. Though we were both relieved at our success and survival in this battle, Connor's eyes were hard - he had watched Pitcairn leave with cold anger. His gaze softened just a touch when I reached him.

Barrett, too, remained solemn, and looked upon the battlefield, at the wasted lives lying in the dirt. So many young men, gone far too soon. The earth was almost black with blood.

"Takes a true monster to do something like this," he murmured. "At least they're gone."

Connor's voice was rough from the smoke. "We should have struck when we had the chance. Do you know where Pitcairn could have gone?"

Barrett scoffed. "Back to the withered bosom of the British, no doubt - so that he might regroup and plan his next atrocity." His dark eyes didn't move from the dead that littered the ground - his men. Barrett's sadness was well hidden beneath his anger, but it was there nevertheless.

Connor addressed me. "We need to find him. Every day we wait, more will suffer."

"Chin up, friends," said Barrett gently. "Many who should have died today now live because of you."

True as that may have been, I still couldn't erase the faces of the fallen from behind my eyelids. I still couldn't change the fact that I had taken more lives than I cared to count today. My hands were filthy; I could feel their blood on my trigger finger.

Connor, too, remained morose. "And what of them?" he asked, with equal quietude, and pointed to the dead.

Barrett followed his hand and set his jaw. "We do the best we can with what we've got."

"It's not enough," I said.

When Barrett looked at me, his dark eyes were heavy with mourning. "It never is."

Barrett then turned back to deal with his remaining troops, and I realised I was shaking. Adrenaline made me light-headed.

Now I had Connor's full attention. "You are bleeding," he said, looking me up and down in search of further injuries.

"I scraped my chin on the ground." I waved him away. "You're bleeding worse than I am."

He looked down at his leg; the side of his left knee was a deep, wet crimson. "I am fine. Bullet grazed my leg as my horse went down. Head up," he ordered me, and took my face into his hands.

I remained still as he tilted my head up and gently picked bits of gravel from the cuts on my chin. His fingers were warm and light on my skin; his breath tickled my cheeks.

When he finished, he tilted my head down again so it resumed its normal position. "We should go," he said. "Pitcairn still walks."

He was right: so long as Pitcairn still breathed, more innocents would die. Today's carnage was proof of that. The Templar scheme was laced with darkness; as good as their intentions may be, their methods were always bloody. One by one, we would make the Order fall.

One.

By.

One.

*

Hi all!

I know I never normally do Author Notes / don't do them any more, but I have news I must share with my dear readers. Someone drew Cassandra for me and she looks absolutely RADIANT.

Anyway, that's all. I hope you're all safe and healthy. You bring me joy. ♡

God bless!

–Panda