by Dan Davis
“Nothing,” I said because it was true.
Hassan tilted his head. “Is there anything that you can get that William might want?”
“I have no idea what he wants,” I said. “I have not seen him for decades, and I never knew him well. I have no way of knowing what he needs now. Neither him nor this Hulegu, who I have only heard of recently. How could I have anything that he would bargain for?”
Abdullah, standing against the wall, raised his voice. “You do.” Every face in the room turned to him and he trembled, lowering his head. “Forgive me, my lord, your pardon, sir, your pardon.”
“Spit out your words, Abdullah, for the love of God.”
“The girl,” he said. “The girl who was Hulegu’s wife. The young woman we saw in the palace who ran away only to be captured. She is to be killed tomorrow, too. Hulegu wants her, does he not? And also, might she not know Hulegu’s needs? And, if William and Hulegu are as close as they say, might she not know of your brother, too?”
Interesting.
“You just want to feast your eyes on her again,” I said.
“Oh, no, my lord,” Abdullah said. “I am thinking only of your interest, my lord.”
I looked at Hassan, who was stroking his beard. “They are being held in a house on the southern road,” he said. “Guarded, of course. We will not be allowed to see the prisoners.”
“I will kill the guards,” I said. “Seize her and force the girl to tell me Hulegu and William’s secrets.”
“Even if she does tell you something of use.” Stephen stepped forward, lowering his voice. “You will not have time to act upon that knowledge before you yourself are seized. They let us go from the palace but only because they knew where you were. What if Mongke’s men come for you at the ger tonight, and find you absent? A search of the city would not take them long. And even if Mongke washes his hands of it, you will be taken to Hulegu’s men come tomorrow. You must secure an escape, and the only possible chance you have is with these Assassins. Then, you can take the girl when we flee and question her on the road. Hulegu will want her and will pursue her but you could throw her off your horse once you were done with her and Hulegu’s men would find her again, then kill her as they intended.”
“Impossible,” I said. “There is nothing I have to offer the Mongols to stay their hand.” I looked at the servant holding a bowl of my blood. One thing I could do was promise to stay at Mongke’s court and turn him and a number of his own captains into immortals, as William had done for his brother. But the thought made me sick to my stomach. I would be making myself a slave in exchange for my life. “In exchange for letting us go free, I have nothing that I can offer them.”
“But he does,” Stephen said, pointing a finger at Hassan.
***
My breath frosted in the air. Night proper had fallen when I approached the door where the young Mongol woman was being held. It was a house, the same as the others around it, but the Assassin leading me—assigned by Hassan al-Din—pointed it out. Abdullah and Stephen followed behind.
The door was not barred. As I opened it and stepped through, the heat from inside poured past me out into the freezing night. A single large room filled with lamplight, with steep stairs up to the floor above on one side, and a door on each of the other walls. A small dung-fuelled fire smouldered in the central hearth, and the air was thick with smoke.
Hassan had suggested there would be a single guard inside, perhaps two.
Four men sat around the hearth, drinking together. They fell silent as I stood there in the doorway.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” I said, cheerily, and clapping my hands together. “Is this the Karakorum brothel-house?”
They jumped to their feet, their hideous faces twisted in anger at my intrusion.
Quite suddenly, my own days and hours of frustration and fear rushed up to engulf me in a murderous rage. I was on the first man before he had time to recoil, and my dagger punched him in the neck, up to the hilt. Shoving him down before me, I leapt into the next man, who was caught between drawing his own blade and retreating. As he turned from me, I grabbed his long, greasy hair and stabbed the side of his throat. I thrust the blade out of the front of his neck in a shower of blood and the gristly mass of his severed windpipe slapped onto the floor.
I sensed an attack coming from behind and ducked as a sword blade was thrust toward the back of my neck. As I twisted away, it caught the back of my head and cut a gouge into my skull. The attacker might have expected me to retreat in panic, so I turned low enough to place my offhand on the tiled floor and leapt up at him, close enough to hug him while I slammed my dagger up beneath his chin. As I followed him down I drew the blade out and jammed it through his eye.
The fourth man had been expertly dispatched by Hassan’s Assassin, who nodded at me while he wiped his curved blade on the Mongol’s coat.
In the doorway, Abdullah and Stephen stood with their mouths open at the sudden horror before them.
The delicious smell of blood filled the air and my mouth watered.
“You are injured, sir,” Stephen said, raising a shaky hand at my head.
I felt it. It seemed to be pouring with hot blood over my fingers.
“How bad is it?” I asked Stephen.
His face was grey. “There is a gash and, beneath, a… a flap, of skin.”
That would not do. I bent to the first man, who was still struggling for breath as his life pumped away onto the tiles beneath his body. Without a word, I bent to his neck and drank down the hot blood that welled up from the wound.
“Good God Almighty,” Stephen said. “That flap of skin has knitted itself back together, Richard. I watched it happen. Did you see that, Abdullah?”
A silence descended and hung over the room like a shroud.
The young Mongol woman stood at the top of the stairs, looking down on us like a princess. By God, she was a beauty. She was bareheaded and her shining black hair tumbled down in braids and was not shorn on top
Abdullah drifted towards the bottom of the steps, mouth agape.
As he started to speak, the young Mongol man pushed past the girl, a low growl in his throat, bare hands raised and ready to fight to defend his woman to the death. His eyes were steely but edged with that madness that shows a man is prepared to die.
I stepped in front of him with my hands up and out. “Stop!”
He jabbed his finger at me and snarled a stream of angry words.
“Tell him we’re here to help,” I said to Abdullah, and to the Assassin. “Tell him we are fleeing the city and we want them to come with us.”
The two young Mongols exchanged a look. The man barked a question.
“He asks why.”
“I want to kill Hulegu. And I want to kill my brother William, who serves Hulegu. And I want him and his woman to help me.”
They did not hesitate.
***
We wrapped ourselves in Mongol garb and hurried back through the bitter darkness. Faint moonlight provided just barely enough light to see the edges of things, whenever the clouds and dung-smoke did not obscure the sky completely. Every crunching step on the iron-hard icy ground made me wince, and my head swivelled left and right as I strained to hear any approaching danger over the heavy breathing of my strange company. The city appeared deserted but all it would take to ruin us would be for a single alert Mongol to raise the alarm before I could silence him. Inside the houses and tents, voices and laughter spilled out into the night.
And I wondered whether I would return to our ger to find Eva safe and well, or whether the knights had overpowered her, or if the Mongols had come for us while I was away.
It was quiet as I approached, with the others behind me. Smoke rolled from the top of the ger.
I tapped on the door in the pattern that Eva would recognise.
The few moments before the door opened, my heart was in my mouth.
Thomas opened the door, his face blank. He nodded and steppe
d back. All was quiet within and Eva smiled, briefly. I was glad to see her, too.
Waving everyone in, I closed the door behind us.
“Quickly,” I said to Eva. “We must make final preparations and be at the gate before sunrise.”
“You will bring disaster down upon us,” Friar William said, for the hundredth time.
“Save your breath,” Stephen Gosset said as he helped me to pack our belongings, including some stale food, and speaking over his shoulder.
“These murderers breaking the law is one thing,” Friar William said. “But you, Stephen, you are a brother of our order and you are bringing us into disrepute with your—”
“Be quiet, I said,” Stephen snapped, turning on his brothers. “I have seen things this night that are bigger than your notions of reputation. Go home, tell the Pope that you failed to convert anyone, and leave me be.”
The monks stared. Friar William recovered, shook his red face and took a deep breath ready to shout down the youngster.
“Quiet,” I said. “Quiet, all of you. And listen.”
They all broke off and turned to me.
“I am leaving tonight. Eva and I together. We are taking these Mongols with us. We will flee with the Assassins of Alamut, and go to their lands with them. In that way, I shall be free from the sentence of the Khan. Free to return and to fight again.”
“Why would the Assassins welcome you?” Thomas said. “And why would the Mongols let you go?”
I hesitated. “The Assassin envoy, Hassan al-Din, has gone this very night to the palace of the Great Khan. He will make a trade for my life and together we will ride to Alamut.”
“What trade?” Thomas asked. “What could they possibly offer that would be worth your life?”
“It does not concern you,” I said.
“He is giving the Assassins his blood,” Stephen said as if he was too proud of the knowledge to hold on to it. “He will make them into immortals, just as his brother has done for Hulegu.”
“Good God Almighty,” Thomas said.
“We should thank God Almighty,” Friar William said, “that this power of his blood is nothing but a nonsense.”
“It is true,” Stephen said. “I have witnessed it with my own eyes. As has Abdullah. The Assassins have seen it, and that is why they are risking everything to protect Richard.”
“How can you trust these Saracens?” Bertrand said, glaring at the Assassin who stood quietly by the door. “You are betraying God.”
I scoffed. “You are the least devout man here.”
“And yet he is right,” Thomas said. “You cannot go with the Assassins. You will make yourselves prisoners, to be used and exploited by these heathens. They will kill you whenever they are done with you. And you cannot give them this power of yours… if it truly does exist.”
“I need allies,” I said. “I cannot defeat my brother, nor Hulegu and the other immortals that William has made, without men to assist me. Men with the strength to face William’s evil.” I pointed at the nameless Assassin in his Persian headwear. “They are the only men with such strength.”
“It should be Christian men by your side,” Thomas said.
“I wish it were so,” I said. “But where are they? Will you join me, Thomas, and fight at my side? Would you bring Martin with you? Would you use the strength of your order to help me?”
Stephen stepped forward. “I will join you.”
I laughed in his face. “I need knights, Stephen, not clerks.”
He was deeply offended. “I have knowledge of the world that could help you. I gave you the means for your escape, did I not?”
I hesitated. The young monk had shown a certain gift for creative thinking. Something that I sorely lacked. “Very well, you will come.”
“I will come also,” Abdullah said, stepping forward and bowing his head. “With your permission, my lord.”
“Why in the name of God would you want to come with me?” I asked, appalled.
He glanced at the Mongol girl, who sat by the entrance with the man’s arm about her shoulder, next to the Assassin who watched us through his eyelashes. “I wish to be with my people,” Abdullah said.
“The Assassins?” I said. “You are a Saracen, subject to the Caliph in Baghdad, are you not? The Assassins are the sworn enemies of your people.”
Abdullah’s eyes twinkled in the lamplight. “They follow the word of the Prophet. They are closer to me than the Christians, or the Mongols. And I can be useful to you. How will you speak with the Ismailis without me?”
I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “Are you that smitten with the girl that you would risk death.”
He lowered his head. “I simply no longer wish to be cold, sir.”
“If you wish to serve me, I will not say no.”
“He belongs to me,” Friar William said, outraged. “He may not go with you.”
“Try and stop him,” I said. The monks cursed me but what else could they do?
Little Nikolas ran forward. “I, too, will join you, Sir Richard.” He grinned up at me with his hand on the ivory dagger I had given him.
“No, son,” I said. “It is not safe for you. Stay with the monks. Serve them well and in the Spring they will take you back to Constantinople.”
His eyes filled with tears. “No, my lord, no, I will come with you. You and Eva. I will serve you well.”
William and Bartholomew protested but I waved them into silence. “You are too young,” I said to Nikolas.
Eva placed a hand on my arm. “Richard?”
I knew what she wanted but I did not want to have to look after the boy. He would be pestering us and slowing us down. And, absurd as it was, I found his obsession with Eva to be irritating. He was just of the age that his interest in her would not be purely a platonic one, and I felt like Eva was allowing herself to be exploited in some vague, ill-defined way. Perhaps it was as simple a thing as my feeling excluded, and that he took her attention away from me. Whatever the reason, I found myself relieved at the prospect of being rid of him.
“The boy stays with the monks,” I said. “It is fair to the Franciscans, who I am already depriving of one interpreter. Nikolas can assist them in Abdullah’s stead. And besides all that, it is not safe for you, Nikolas. We will be riding hard, riding in a fashion that you are too small to do. Stay safe. The monks have been promised safety by the Great Khan. It will please me to know you are safe.”
He half-drew his white dagger, gripping it tightly around the carving of Saint George killing the dragon. “Please, sir. I will make a good knight. I will serve you and become a brave knight and fight the Saracens.”
I saw then how I had wronged him. Patronised him and given him false hope for something that he could never be.
All I could do was ruffle his hair. “Serve your masters well,” I said.
Thomas grabbed me by the shoulder before I left. “I beg you,” he said. “Do not give your power to our enemies.”
“Come with me,” I said. “You and Martin, both. The Franciscans do not need your protection. They have Bertrand and Hughues, and they do not even need them. The Mongols, despite their savagery in every other way, keep all ambassadors safe and well. No harm will come to them.”
“I must return to the Holy Land,” he said. “And the Kingdom of Jerusalem. When I get to Acre, I must tell King Louis, and the Master of my order, that the Mongols mean to make war on the kingdoms there. I must tell them how these Mongols may destroy our enemies, but they may take everything that we hold, too.”
“Send Martin with the messages,” I said. “Ride with us yourself. God knows I could use your wisdom. And your skill in battle.”
“Yours is a personal quest,” he said, glancing at the Assassin and the Mongol couple. “I serve higher powers.”
“That is fair to say,” I admitted, though I knew would miss him very dearly. “Then I wish you well. Perhaps, one day, we shall meet again.”
“If your new friend Hassan al-D
in is unable to make his deal with the Great Khan,” Thomas said, “I will see you dragged back here to Karakorum before sundown.”
***
We had to make haste, and our strange little group carried our gear, along with what supplies we could muster, to the south gate of Karakorum where the Assassins were already assembled in the pre-dawn light. It was intensely cold, and the ground was hard as iron and sheathed in frozen dew. After a nerve-wracking night and no sleep, we were all tired. And yet the fear of capture was so acute that I was jittery and ready to fight with a moment’s warning.
As we approached the gate along the empty road, I was surprised to see wagons gathered by the gate, with the Assassins heaving their wares into the backs of them.
“I thought we were riding hard,” I asked one of Hassan’s captains, who had been watching for our approach. “To evade Mongke or Hulegu’s men. These wagons will slow us terribly.”
Abdullah translated for me. “They say that no matter how hard we ride, we could never evade pursuit, should the Mongols decide to launch one. All depends on Hassan’s embassy.”
“Do you think he will have been received by the Khan yet?” I asked, though I knew the answer.
The Assassin captain looked at me like I was a buffoon, though he was kind enough to explain. “Mongke makes himself insensible from excessive drink very early every night. And though he wakes early, it takes much time for him to bestir himself for the day’s business.”
I nodded, for I had known many man who lived lives taken over by drink. I had been one of them myself.
The Mongols who guarded the gate were well armed and armoured with mail and steel helms beneath their thick coats and furs. They watched us all very closely, holding lamps out and peering into the Assassin’s wagons as they strolled through us all.
We would be caught, I was sure of it. The gate, such as it was, remained closed and I did not know how I could force it open. We had little chance of killing every guard before one of them raised a cry of warning that would bring hundreds or thousands more down upon us.