by Dan Davis
When my vision cleared, I saw that he was no longer grinning. In fact, his face was contorted in fury and, sword held ready, he strode forward to cut me down.
A fire pot smashed into him. The blistering heat of the flame rolled over me and the keshig became a screaming torch, while the blaze covered the gallery from side to side in a wall of fire. I backed up to Eva and Khutulun, who were almost out of fire pots. Four sacks of the evil things and they had gone through them with admirable rapidity. Both were drenched in sweat and coughing from the smoke, eyes running, and their hands were burned.
“We did it,” I shouted at them.
The entire hall was engulfed. The heat was incredible and most of the people within were already long dead.
Eva clapped me on the back and pointed into the hall, shaking her head.
I looked down through the shimmering, boiling air to see Hulegu drinking blood from a dying woman’s neck before pausing to shout orders. The Ilkhan was blackened with oily soot and his clothes were tatters where they had burned on him, showing bright pink skin beneath. He directed a group of loyal men who attacked the rear door with their fists and feet. With horror, I realised they were all but through the timbers. The fire had burned the door, weakening it and though it was all aflame and the fire licked and burned the men who tried to break through, they did it for their lord, for their Khan. They killed themselves, died in agony, so that he might live.
“He will get away,” I shouted at Eva.
Lighting the fuse, she hurled her very last fire pot at him. Her aim was perfect and it was certain that he would be drenched in flame and killed.
Hulegu raised up the dying woman and ducked behind her. The pot exploded on the woman and a ball of fire engulfed him. Yet he stood and tossed the screaming, flaming woman aside before jumping into a group of servants cowering at the food of his dais. He seized another girl to use as a shield, holding her aloft as easily as a wineskin. His boots and one trouser leg had caught alight but one of his surviving men threw his own body around his lord’s limbs to smother the flames.
“Come on,” I said to Eva, as Khutulun threw her last pot down into the screaming masses. The heat and smoke were almost unbearable and we needed to retreat down the stairs, join Orus and go into the hall to kill Hulegu by the sword. I raised my voice to shout over the roar of the flames and the screams. “We have to go down and—”
A group of shrieking Mongols rushed through the wall of flames on the gallery and brought me down beneath the weight of them.
They brought the fire with them. The men were all burning as they fought me and their burning clothes and hair licked my skin and the pain seared through me. A blade cut into my head, glancing off my skull.
A dagger was punched into my lower back and I arched and bucked, throwing the men off of me. Eva killed them and dragged me out from under them while Khutulun put out the fires on me with her hands and then yanked the dagger from my kidney.
I screamed and shivered with the agony of it as they pulled me to my feet. The burns were excruciating.
“Blood,” I said, or tried to. Eva was already dragging a burned, bloody, dying man up to me and I drank a few mouthfuls from the puncture wound in his eye, enough to give me the strength to move.
As we fled from the gallery, I peered into the hall one last time. The masses of flames and smoke obscured the details but surely everyone was now dead. Nothing could have survived such an inferno. The flames had caught the beams and joists of the ceiling alight and flames jutted up at the roof. It would soon all collapse in and bury any survivors in masses of burning timbers.
We stumbled down the stairs and Khutulun cried out. A wail from the depths of her soul.
Orus was dead.
Lying against the wall of the antechamber amongst a pile of dead Mongols, his head almost severed under his chin and his eyes staring wide, mouth hanging open. His clothes smouldered. Thick, black blood from wounds on his chest welled out.
The door into the hall was a burning ruin, the charred remnants hanging on the hinges, with fire pouring out of it at the top and rolling upward along with billowing black smoke. The hall beyond was a mad wall of bright orange flame.
I paused by Orus but a moment, for I was filled with a rage that made the fire in the hall pale in comparison.
Hulegu had escaped me.
Throwing myself down the stairway into the storage area, I kicked through the door and ran out into the black night. After the cacophony and incandescence within, I was hit with the bitter darkness and it was like plunging into a winter lake. My eyes were filled with the glare and I could see almost nothing and the stench of smoke was everywhere around me.
A bell was ringing, clanging frantically, and people shouted all around the palace and in the city beyond. Unseen hooves and feet drummed in panic on the paving as people fled the massive conflagration.
But I staggered on toward other sounds. Fainter sounds. Footsteps, laboured breathing. The sounds of men hurrying away. As I followed, my vision cleared and I discerned the outlines of three men I was pursuing, cutting across the servants’ courtyard toward the royal stables. All three limped or shuffled as they hurried away, wounded and burned.
Two immortal keshig turned when they heard me coming after them. Hulegu glanced back and snarled an order before continuing on.
It was only as they attacked that I recalled I had no sword. No proper weapon at all, and no armour either.
One hulking bodyguard was silent and armed with an axe, and the other big sod roared some Mongol insult and swung his sword wildly as he rushed in.
It would have been prudent to retreat and procure a weapon but I was very far from rationality by then and in my madness, I believed that I could fight through them with my bare hands.
I dodged the blow from the axe and shifted away from the wielder but was forced to block the sword of the other man with my forearm. It was that or lose my head. The blade hit the bones of my wrist and, as we both moved, it ripped downward along my forearm and tore off a great flap of muscle and skin before biting deep into the bone. While his sword was bound in my arm, I grabbed his wide-open mouth with my other hand and yanked with all my might, ripping down in fury. His jawbone came off in my hand along with the stretched, tattered skin from his temples, cheeks and neck. I tossed it away and he fell, making a horrendous, gargling scream and clawing at the ruin of his throat.
The axeman winged his weapon at my face and I jumped back, yanking the first man’s sword from my arm. I tried not to think about the sight of the flesh from half of my forearm flopping back and wet, like I had been peeled.
With a sword finally in my hand, I rushed the keshig, grappled with him and slid the point of my blade up into his groin and wriggled it in, cutting the great vein there, as well as gelding and, eventually, disembowelling him also.
Astonishingly, the man with no lower face climbed back to his feet and came at me making a gurgling, keening sound from his chest. His eyes were screwed up in desperate rage as he threw a pathetic punch at my face. I stabbed him in the chest. As repulsive as it was, I needed blood and so I drank from his ruin of a neck while he struggled with the last strength of his life, drowning in his own blood. After spitting out an enormous, slimy clot or a length of vein, I tossed him to the ground and looked for Hulegu.
“He went in there, Richard!” Eva shouted, running up behind me. She pointed across the courtyard to one of the nearby kitchen buildings.
Without wasting time on thanks, I chased after Hulegu and kicked my way inside. I saw right away what it was. The low-ceilinged, one-room building was for housing a group of blood slaves. It was dark, lit by only a couple of smoky lamps. There must have been forty or so men and women chained to the two long walls, with piles of straw for beds.
At the far end, Hulegu Khan limped alone through the filthy room and barged his way out of the door.
He was still heading for the royal stables. Hulegu meant to take his swiftest horses and to ride of
f into the night, to find his armies out in the country where he would be safe from me.
Following at a full sprint, I kicked open the door and rushed back outside. I found myself at the edge of a large, paved courtyard.
Where I stopped.
Ahead, the palace stables were ablaze. Great red-orange flames jetted up and lit up the night, throwing manic shadows and lights all around. Horses bolted away from the roaring fire toward the front of the palace complex, directed by brave stable hands but many other servants fled in panic.
God love you, Stephen. You did it.
Silhouetted against the flames, stood Hulegu.
He had his back to me and I stalked toward him.
Rapid footsteps sounded behind me. I could tell at once that it was not Eva’s familiar gait, so I jumped to the side and whipped around with my blade up and ready.
Khutulun ran past me and struck Hulegu in the base of the spine with her sword, thrusting him forward off his feet. He landed on his face and she was on him, flipping him over onto his back and pulling her sword back while spitting a furious stream of insults in the Mongol tongue, while he snarled up at her like an animal and writhed in pain from his wound.
I seized Khutulun by the shoulder and dragged her away before she killed him. She turned on me, mad vengeance in her eyes, and shook her sword in my face while she raged.
But I was too gripped by my passion for the death of that man, and I would not be denied. My own anger was very great, and though she had lost far more to him that I had, I was the lord and would make her submit to my will. I struck her in the face, kicked her legs out and stole her sword. She screamed and tried to attack me but Eva jumped in and restrained her while I turned on Hulegu.
His wild, barbarian features, twisted in rage, were cast in mad shadows by the slanting, dancing red light of the flames. His arms flailed and grasped at the ground but his legs were motionless due to the wound to his spine. A pool of blood spread through his silk coat low on his body, and a shining shadow of blood leaking from his body grew and spread beneath him.
“My brother made you,” I said. “And now I will unmake you.”
He growled in his own language and spat a mouthful of blood onto his chest. Hulegu’s contempt turned to bitter laughter. I sensed that he was mocking my judgemental tone. And he was right. I had just murdered hundreds myself, including innocent slaves.
But I already knew I was not a righteous man. Just as I knew that he was an evil one. All of a sudden, I was filled with a powerful loathing, for him, for his entire people. For William.
I slashed my dagger across his throat and dragged him upright while his fists hammered ineffectually against my head. My rage consumed me and I sank my mouth into the gushing wound and sucked down the hot blood, which spilled over my face and soaked my chest. His blows grew weaker and I stopped to look him in the eye. Hulegu’s mouth opened and closed and his eyes glared at me even as the light began to go out from them. I tossed him to the ground, snatched up my dagger again and planted one foot on his chest while I sawed through his neck with my blade. I was shouting at him, but I do not know what I said. When I ripped his head from his body, I held it aloft and sucked the last remnants of blood from the tattered neck. Finally, I tossed it to the ground and spat on his corpse.
I let out a huge sigh and looked up at the smoke billowing into the night sky.
It was done.
When I turned, Eva and Khutulun were holding on to each other and their eyes glinted red with the light from the inferno of the palace stables. Behind them, the palace itself was being swiftly consumed by the vast conflagration and the roofs were already collapsing, throwing sparks and flame into the black night.
“Richard?” Eva said. “We must flee.”
I nodded. “You go.” I pushed past her, snatching up my stolen sword and heading back to the outbuilding near us. “I will see you at the meeting place.”
She stared at me, aghast, as I strode back into the hall of the blood slaves. Those inside cowered away from me on their filthy piles of straw. Of course, I was drenched in blood and no doubt looked like a horror. While they wailed, terrified of me and the fires all around their prison, I moved to pull their chains from the iron rings affixed to the timber walls. A young man shivered in terror as I used my blade to prise the ring out. The Mongol sword bent and I tossed it aside and gripped the ring and pulled.
“What in the name of God are you doing?” Eva said from the doorway.
“Go,” I said, through gritted teeth. “Please, go.”
She came closer, incredulous. “Leave them, for the love of God, Richard. We must flee in the great rush of the people or we shall be isolated and captured. You know this. Leave these slaves.”
“I will not,” I said, growling as the ring wriggled loose and came free. The idiot blood slave stayed where he was, eyes wide and shivering. I tossed the ring into his lap so that he could carry the chain with him. “Go, you damned fool.” I said it in Arabic and when he still did not move, I grabbed him and threw him to the door and moved to the next slave. She was a hideously ugly young woman but her eyes said she understood her freedom was at hand. I grabbed the ring by her with both hands, planted my feet and heaved backwards.
“You are a bloody fool, Richard!” Eva shouted as she pulled out her dagger and stomped to the next slave.
Instead of killing him, she used her dagger to hack at the iron fixture next to his head.
Khutulun had no compassion in her, no Christian conscience or moral consideration for the weak. And yet she also came back to help. Working together, we freed the blood slaves from their chains very swiftly and followed the last of them out.
The palace complex was in chaos, and we joined the flow of fleeing people without being challenged. Our agents in the city had started small fires in various quarters when they saw the flames in the palace. They had the effect that Hassan had sworn they would. The danger of fire panicked the residents and soldiers in the city. When we made it beyond the palace gate we fell into the crush of people pushing and shoving their way out. We were covered in blood and burns and blackened by smoke and I assumed we would have to fight our way clear at some point. Yet, the people were Armenian Christians and Persians and Mongols and people from all over the region and the lands that Hulegu had dominated and thus everyone was a stranger to everyone else. So, although some people around us gave us suspicious looks, we escaped unchallenged into the suburbs and then into the rural farmland just as the sun began to lighten the sky.
Hulegu and his men were dead and Eva and Khutulun had made it out with me.
Whether Thomas, Stephen and Hassan had survived, we had no idea.
***
Our meeting point was an isolated fisherman’s house many miles to the west on the shores of Lake Urmia that we had taken over days before. We chased down an escaped horse and, later, another one, and the three of us made it to the house before midday.
Stephen was already there. The shrewd young man had used his fire pots to thoroughly burn the stables and had ridden one of Hulegu’s magnificent Saracen mares all the way to the shore before dawn. He was wide-eyed and shaken by it all and filled with the disbelieving giddiness that men experience after surviving battle.
Inside the house was a large table stained with fish blood, a few stools and benches and the supplies we had stashed there. Chief amongst them was the wine, which I drank with great enthusiasm.
Khutulun spent the day alone, on the shores of the lake, deeply affected by the death of her brother. I wondered whether she regretted trading Hulegu’s life for his. Those in mourning contemplate past moments shared with the fallen but they also lament facing the future without them. If she was considering the future, perhaps she already regretted her immortality and the bareness that came with it.
“She should come inside,” Eva muttered. “She will draw attention to us.”
“Leave her be,” I said.
None of us truly expected to see Thomas or Has
san but late in the day the old Templar appeared on the horizon. I rode out and brought him in. He trudged all the way across the plain wounded and thirsty and cold and he collapsed once inside the door. After I gave him my own blood, he recovered rather quickly.
“Hassan sacrificed himself so that I might escape the palace,” Thomas explained while he drank some wine. “We defended the hall door against more men than I could count. They all wanted to free their khan. We abandoned the position when the door turned to flame and yet we were pursued by a great number as we fled. Hassan pushed me through and closed a door, defending it from the other side so that I might make my escape without him.” Thomas shook his head. “A Saracen. Sacrificed himself for me. A Templar.”
Stephen nodded as if he understood. “The Assassins are obsessed with death. All they want is to enter Heaven.”
“No,” I said. “His home was destroyed. His family. Everyone he knew was dead. All he had left to do with his life was to end it.”
“And what is left for us?” Thomas asked. “Half of our task is done. It has taken so long. And now we must find William.”
“No,” I said.
They looked at me.
“William has gone to the East. He swore that he will be gone for decades, at least. Centuries, perhaps. If he returns at all.”
“So that is it?” Thomas said, growing angry. “He saved your life with his blood in that Baghdad gatehouse and you just forgive his crimes?”
“I forgive nothing,” I said, keeping calm. “William will certainly die. And yet, he will wreak his evil on a distant people. His mischief will be directed amongst the Mongols and their enemies in the East. When he returns, I will kill him.”
None of them wanted to face that journey eastwards again.