Big. Deep. It gushed blood and Altaïr almost stumbled. He limped to his side, trying to bring the well to his flank in order to defend from the front only. He got there, the wall of the waterhole at his side, the hanging merchant at his back.
‘Have strength,’ he heard the merchant say quietly, ‘and know that whatever happens you have my gratitude and love, whether in this life or the next.’
Altaïr nodded but did not turn, watching instead the two thugs in front of him. Seeing Altaïr bleed had cheered them and, encouraged, they came forward with more stabbing, stinging sorties. Altaïr fought off three offensives, picking up new wounds, bleeding profusely now, limping, out of breath. Fear was no longer his weapon. That advantage was lost to him. All he had now were long-dormant skills and instincts, and he cast his mind back to some of his greatest battles: overcoming Talal’s men, beating Moloch, defeating the Templar knights in the Jerusalem cemetery. The warrior who had fought those battles would have sliced these two dead in seconds.
But that warrior lived in the past. He had aged. Grief and seclusion had weakened him. He had spent twenty years mourning Maria, obsessed with the Apple. His combat skills, great as they were, had been allowed to wither and, so it seemed, die.
He felt blood in his boots. His hands were slick with it. He was swinging wildly with his blade, not so much defending as trying to swat his attackers away. He thought of his pack, secured in the fig tree, the Apple inside. To grasp the Apple would be to emerge the victor, but it was too far away and, anyway, he’d vowed never to use it again; he’d left it in the tree for that very reason, to keep its temptation out of reach. But the truth was that if he’d been able to reach it he would have used it now, rather than die like this and surrender the merchant to them, surely condemning him to an even more painful and tortured death because of Altaïr’s actions.
Yes, he would have used the Apple, because he was lost. And he’d allowed them to turn him again, he realized. Long Hair came at him from the periphery of his vision and he shouted with the effort of fending him off, Long Hair meeting his parries with attacking strikes – one, two, three – finding a way beneath Altaïr’s guard and cutting yet another wound on his flank, a deep slash that bled copiously at once. Altaïr staggered, gasping with the pain. Better to die this way, he supposed, than to surrender meekly. Better to die fighting.
Long Hair came forward now and there was another clash of the sword. Altaïr was wounded again, this time on his good leg. He dropped to his knees, his arms hanging, his useless blade gouging nothing but the sand.
Long Hair stepped forward but Bayhas stopped him. ‘Leave him to me,’ he ordered.
Dimly, Altaïr found himself thinking of another time, a thousand lives ago, that his opponent had said the same, and how on that occasion he had made the knight pay for his arrogance. That satisfaction would be denied him this time, because Bayhas was coming forward to Altaïr, who knelt, swaying and defeated, in the dirt, his head hanging. He tried to order his legs to stand, but they would not obey. He tried to lift his blade hand but he could not. He saw the dagger coming towards him and was able to lift his head high enough to see Bayhas’s teeth bared, his gold earring shining in the early-morning sun …
Then the merchant was bucking, swinging and had embraced Bayhas upside down and from behind, momentarily arresting his progress. With a great shout, a final burst of effort, energy summoned from he knew not where, Altaïr thrust upward, his blade slicing up and into Bayhas’s stomach, opening a vertical gash that ended almost at his throat. At the same time Mukhlis had grabbed the dagger just before it dropped from Bayhas’s loosening fingers, jerking upwards and slicing at the rope that held him. He dropped, smashing his side painfully against the well wall, but scrambled to his feet and stood side by side with his saviour.
Altaïr was bent almost double, dying on his feet. But he raised his blade and stared narrow-eyed at Long Hair, who suddenly found himself outnumbered and unnerved. Instead of attacking, he backed away until he reached a horse. Without taking his eyes off Altaïr and Mukhlis, he mounted it. He stared at them and they stared back. Then he very deliberately drew a finger across his throat, and rode away.
‘Thank you,’ said Mukhlis to Altaïr, breathlessly, but the Assassin didn’t answer. He had folded, unconscious, to the sand.
55
It was a week later when the envoy from the brigand leader arrived. The people from the village watched him ride through the township and to the hills leading up to the citadel. He was one of Fahad’s men, they said, and the wiser among them thought they knew the nature of his business at the fortress. Two days before, Fahad’s men had come to the village with news of a reward offered for anyone who identified the man who had killed Fahad’s son, Bayhas. He had been helped by a merchant from Masyaf, they said, and the merchant would be unharmed if he produced the cowardly dog who had cut down the brigand leader’s beloved son. The villagers had shaken their heads and gone about their business, and the men had left empty-handed, muttering dark warnings about their planned return.
And this was it, said the gossips – at least, this was a precursor to it. Even Fahad wouldn’t dare send men into the village when it enjoyed the protection of the Assassins: he would have to ask the permission of the Master. Even Fahad would not have dared make the request of Altaïr or Al Mualim, but Abbas was a different matter. Abbas was weak and could be bought.
So it was that the envoy returned. On the outward journey he had looked serious, if disdainful of the villagers who watched him pass, but now he smirked at them and drew his finger across his throat.
‘It seems the Master has given Fahad his blessing to come into the village,’ said Mukhlis, later that night, as the candles burned down. He sat at the bedside of the stranger, talking more to himself than to the man in the bed, who had not regained consciousness since the battle at the waterhole. Afterwards Mukhlis had manhandled him over the saddle of his second horse and brought him home to Masyaf in order that he might be healed. Aalia and Nada had attended to him, and for three days they had wondered if he would live or die. Blood loss had left him as pale as mist and he had lain in bed – Aalia and Mukhlis having given up theirs for him – looking almost serene, like a corpse, as though at any moment he might have departed the world. On the third day his colour began to improve. Aalia had told Mukhlis so when he returned from market, and Mukhlis had taken his usual place on a chair by the side of the bed to speak to his saviour in the hope of reviving him. He’d got into the habit of recounting his day, occasionally talking of significant things in the hope of exciting the patient’s unconscious mind and bringing him round.
‘Abbas has his price, it seems,’ he said now. He looked sideways at the stranger, who lay on his back, his wounds healing nicely, growing stronger by the day. ‘Master Altaïr would have died rather than allow such a thing,’ he said.
He leaned forward, watching the figure in the bed very carefully. ‘The Master, Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad.’
For the first time since he had been brought to Mukhlis’s home the stranger’s eyes flicked open.
It was the reaction he’d hoped for, but even so Mukhlis was taken aback, watching as the patient’s cloudy eyes slowly regained their light.
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ whispered Mukhlis, as the stranger blinked, then turned his gaze on him. ‘You are him, aren’t you? You’re Altaïr.’
Altaïr nodded. Tears pricked Mukhlis’s eyes and he dropped from his seat to the stone floor, grasping one of Altaïr’s hands in both of his own.
‘You’ve come back to us,’ he said, between sobs. ‘You’ve come to save us.’ There was a pause. ‘Have you come to save us?’
‘Do you need saving?’ said Altaïr.
‘We do. Was it your intention to come to Masyaf when we met?’
Altaïr thought. ‘When I left Alamut it was inevitable I would find myself here. The only question was when.’
‘You were in Alamut?’
‘These past twen
ty years or so.’
‘They said you were dead. That the morning Maria died you threw yourself from the citadel tower.’
‘I did throw myself off the citadel tower,’ Altaïr smiled grimly, ‘but I lived. I made it to the river outside the village. By chance Darim was there. He was returning from Alamut, where he had found Sef’s wife and children. He retrieved me and took me to them.’
‘They said you were dead,’ said Mukhlis again.
‘They?’
Mukhlis waved a hand that was meant to indicate the citadel. ‘The Assassins.’
‘It suited them to say so, but they knew I was not.’
He disentangled his hand from Mukhlis’s grasp, pulled himself to a sitting position and swung his legs out of the bed. He looked at his feet, at their wrinkled old skin. Every inch of his body sang with pain but he felt … better. His robe had been washed and replaced on him. He pulled his hood over his head, liking the feel of it and breathing in the scent of the clean cloth.
He put his hands to his face and felt that his beard had been tended. Not far away were his boots, and on a table by the side of the bed he saw his blade mechanism, its new design gleaned from the Apple. It looked impossibly advanced, and he thought of the other designs he had discovered. He needed the assistance of a blacksmith to make the objects. But first …
‘My pack?’ he asked of Mukhlis, who had scrambled to his feet. ‘Where is my pack?’
Wordlessly, Mukhlis indicated where it sat on the stone at the head of the bed and Altaïr glanced at its familiar shape. ‘Did you look inside?’ he asked.
Mukhlis shook his head firmly and Altaïr looked at him searchingly. Then, believing him, he relaxed and reached for his boots, pulling them on, wincing as he did so.
‘I have you to thank for tending me,’ he said. ‘I would be dead by the waterhole were it not for you.’
Scoffing, Mukhlis retook his seat. ‘My wife and daughter cared for you, and I must thank you. You saved me from a grisly death at the hands of those bandits.’ He leaned forward. ‘Your actions were those of the Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad of legend. I’ve told everyone.’
‘People know I’m here?’
Mukhlis spread his hands. ‘Of course. The whole village knows the tale of the hero who delivered me from the hands of death. Everybody believes it was you.’
‘And what makes them think that?’ asked Altaïr.
Mukhlis said nothing. Instead he indicated with his chin the low table where Altaïr’s blade mechanism shone dully, wicked and oiled.
Altaïr considered. ‘You told them about the blade?’
Mukhlis thought. ‘Well, yes,’ he said, ‘of course. Why?’
‘Word will reach the citadel. They will come looking for me.’
‘They will not be the only ones,’ said Mukhlis, ruefully.
‘What do you mean?’
‘A messenger from the father of the man you killed visited the fortress earlier.’
‘And who was the man I killed?’
‘A vicious cutthroat called Bayhas.’
‘And his father?’
‘Fahad, leader of a band of brigands who roam the desert. It’s said they are camped two or three days’ ride away. It’s from there the envoy came. They say he was asking the Master’s blessing to come to the village and hunt the killer.’
‘The Master?’ said Altaïr, sharply. ‘Abbas?’
Mukhlis nodded. ‘A reward was offered for the killer, but the villagers spurned it. Abbas has perhaps not been so steadfast.’
‘Then the people are of good heart,’ said Altaïr, ‘and their leader is not.’
‘Truer words rarely spoken,’ agreed Mukhlis. ‘He takes our money and gives us nothing in return, where once the citadel was the heart of the community from which came strength, guidance …’
‘And protection,’ said Altaïr, with a half-smile.
‘That too,’ acknowledged Mukhlis. ‘All those things left with you, Altaïr, to be replaced by … corruption and paranoia. They say that Abbas was forced to quell an uprising after you left, a rebellion of Assassins loyal to you and Malik; that he had the ringleaders put to death; that he fears a repeat of the insurrection. His paranoia makes him stay in his tower day and night, imagining plots and putting to death those he thinks responsible. The tenets of the Order are crumbling around him just as surely as the fortress itself falls into disrepair. They say he has a recurring dream. That one day Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad returns from exile in Alamut with …’ he paused, looking at Altaïr askance and casting a glance at the pack ‘… an artefact capable of defeating him … Is there such a thing? Do you plan an attack?’
‘Even if there was, it is not an artefact that will defeat Abbas. It is belief – belief in ourselves and in the Creed – that will accomplish that.’
‘Whose faith, Altaïr?’
Altaïr waved an arm. ‘Yours. That of the people and of the Assassins.’
‘And how will you restore it?’ asked Mukhlis.
‘By example,’ replied Altaïr, ‘a little at a time.’
The next day Altaïr went out into the village where he began not simply to preach the way of the Assassins but to demonstrate it.
56
There had been fights in which Altaïr had had to intervene, disputes between traders that had required his moderation, land arguments between neighbours, but none had been as thorny as that of the two women who appeared to be fighting over a man. The man in question, Aaron, sat on a bench in the shade, cowering as the two women argued. Mukhlis, who had walked the village with Altaïr as he went about his business, was trying to intercede, while Altaïr stood at one remove, his arms folded, patiently waiting for a break in hostilities so that he might speak to them. He’d already decided what to say: Aaron would have to exercise free will in this instance, whether he liked it or not. Altaïr’s real concerns lay with the boy, whose fever had yet to break and to whom he had administered a potion, its recipe, of course, gleaned from the Apple.
Or with the basket weaver who was creating new tools for himself to specifications given to him by Altaïr, who had transcribed them from the Apple.
Or to the blacksmith, who had cast his eye over the drawings Altaïr had given him, turned them upside down and squinted at them, then laid them out on a table so that Altaïr could point out exactly what needed forging. Soon the Assassin would have new equipment; new weapons, the like of which had never been seen.
Or to the man who had been watching him these past few days, who had moved with him like a shadow, staying out of sight, or so he thought. Altaïr had seen him at once, of course. He had noted his bearing, had known he was an Assassin.
It had had to happen, of course. Abbas would have sent his agents into the village in order to learn about the stranger who fought with the hidden blade of the Assassin. Abbas would surely come to the conclusion that Altaïr had returned to reclaim the Order. Maybe he hoped that the brigands would kill Altaïr for him; maybe he would send a man down the slopes to kill him. Perhaps this shadow was also Altaïr’s Assassin.
Still the women argued. Mukhlis said, from the side of his mouth, ‘Master, it seems I was mistaken. These women are not arguing about who should have the unfortunate Aaron, but who should take him.’
Altaïr chuckled. ‘My judgment would remain the same,’ he said, casting an amused look to where Aaron sat chewing his fingernails. ‘It is for the young man to decide his own destiny.’ He stole a glance at his shadow, who sat in the shade of the trees, mud-coloured robes pulled around him, looking for all the world like a snoozing villager.
To Mukhlis he said, ‘I shall return presently. Their talk is giving me a thirst.’
He turned and left the small group, some of whom were about to follow until Mukhlis surreptitiously waved them back.
Altaïr sensed rather than saw his shadow stand also, following him as he walked into a square and to the fountain at its centre. There he bent, drank, and stood, pretending to take in the view over the
village below. Then …
‘It’s all right,’ he said, to the man he knew stood behind him. ‘If you were going to kill me you would have done it by now.’
‘You were just going to let me do it?’
Altaïr chuckled. ‘I have not spent my life walking the path of a warrior in order to let myself be taken by a young pup at a fountainhead.’
‘You heard me?’
‘Of course I heard you. I heard you approach with all the stealth of an elephant and I heard that you favour your left side. Were you to attack I should move to my right in order to meet your weaker side.’
‘Wouldn’t I anticipate that?’
‘Well, that would depend on the target. You would, of course, know your target well and be aware of their combat skills.’
‘I know that this one has combat skills unmatched, Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad.’
‘Do you indeed? You would have been but a child when I last called Masyaf my own.’
Now Altaïr turned to face the stranger, who pulled down his hood to reveal the face of a young man, perhaps twenty years old, with a dark beard. He had a set to his jaw and eyes that Altaïr recognized.
‘I was,’ said the boy. ‘I was a new-born.’
‘Then were you not indoctrinated against me?’ said Altaïr, jutting his chin towards the citadel on the promontory above them. It crouched there as if watching them.
‘Some are more easily indoctrinated than others,’ said the boy. ‘There are many who have remained loyal to the old codes, and greater numbers, as the pernicious effects of the new ways have become more pronounced. But I have even more reason to remain loyal than most.’
The two Assassins stood facing each other by the fountainhead, and Altaïr sensed his world lurch a little. Suddenly he felt almost faint. ‘What is your name?’ he asked, and his voice sounded disembodied to his own ears.
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