Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part Two
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Part Three
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Part Four
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Epilogue
List of Characters
Acknowledgements
Prologue
The majestic ship creaked and groaned; its sails rippled, fat with wind. Days from land, it split the ocean towards the great city in the west, carrying precious cargo: a man – a man the crew knew only as the Master.
He was among them now, alone on the forecastle deck, where he had lowered the cowl of his robes to let himself be lashed by seaspray, sipping at it with his face in the wind. Once a day he did this. He appeared from his cabin to pace the deck, chose a spot to gaze out at sea, then returned below. Sometimes he stood on the forecastle, sometimes on the quarter-deck. Always he stared out at the white-crested sea.
Every day the crew watched him. They worked, calling to one another on deck and in the rigging, each with a job to do, while all the time stealing glances at the solitary, pensive figure. And they wondered, What kind of man was he? What kind of man was in their midst?
Furtively they studied him now as he stepped away from the deck railings and pulled up his hood. He stood there a moment with his head bowed, his arms hanging loosely at his sides, and the crew watched him. Perhaps a few of them even paled as he strode along the deck past them and back to his cabin. And when the door shut behind him, each man found that he had been holding his breath.
Inside, the Assassin returned to his desk and sat, pouring a beaker of wine before reaching for a book and pulling it towards him. Then opening it. Beginning to read.
Part One
* * *
1
19 June 1257
Maffeo and I remain at Masyaf and will stay here for the time being. At least until one or two – how shall I put this? – uncertainties are resolved. In the meantime we remain at the behest of the Master, Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad. Frustrating as it is to surrender dominion of our own paths in this way, especially to the leader of the Order, who in his old age wields ambiguity with the same ruthless precision he once wielded sword and blade, I at least benefit from being privy to his stories. Maffeo, however, has no such advantage and has grown restless. Understandably so. He tires of Masyaf. He dislikes traversing the steep slopes between the Assassin’s fortress and the village below, and the mountainous terrain holds little appeal for him. He is a Polo, he says, and after six months here the wanderlust is like the call of a voluptuous woman to him, persuasive and tempting and not to be ignored. He longs to fill the sails with wind and set off for new lands, show Masyaf his back.
His impatience is a vexation I could live without, quite frankly. Altaïr is on the cusp of an announcement; I can feel it.
So, today I declared, ‘Maffeo, I’m going to tell you a story.’
The manners of the man. Are we really kin? I begin to doubt it. For instead of greeting this news with the enthusiasm it so clearly warranted, I could have sworn I heard him sigh (or perhaps I should give him the benefit of the doubt: perhaps he was simply out of breath in the hot sun), before demanding of me, ‘Before you do, Niccolò, would you mind telling me, what it is about?’ in rather exasperated tones. I ask you.
Nevertheless: ‘That is a very good question, brother,’ I said, and gave the matter some thought as we made our way up the dreaded slope. Above us the citadel loomed darkly on the promontory, as if it had been hewn from the very limestone itself. I’d decided I wanted the perfect setting to tell my tale, and there was nowhere more apposite than the Masyaf fortress. An imposing castle of many turrets, surrounded by shimmering rivers, it presided over the bustling village below, the settlement a high point within the Orontes Valley. An oasis of peace. A paradise.
‘I would say that it’s about knowledge,’ I decided at last. ‘Assasseen, as you know, represents “guardian” in Arabic – the Assassins are the guardians of the secrets, and the secrets they guard are of knowledge, so, yes …’ no doubt I sounded very pleased with myself ‘… it’s about knowledge.’
‘Then I’m afraid I have an appointment.’
‘Oh?’
‘Certainly I would welcome a diversion from my studies, Niccolò. However, an extension of them I don’t desire.’
I grinned. ‘Surely you want to hear the tales I’ve been told by the Master.’
‘That all depends. Your pitch makes them sound less than invigorating. You know you say my tastes run to the bloodthirsty when it comes to your stories?’
‘Yes.’
Maffeo gave a half-smile. ‘Well, you’re right, they do.’
‘Then you shall have that, too. These are, after all, the tales of the great Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad. This is his life story, brother. Believe me, there is no shortage of event, and much of it, you’ll be happy to note, featuring bloodshed.’
By now we had made our way up the barbican to the outer part of the fortress. We passed beneath the arch and through the guard station, climbing again as we headed towards the inner castle. Ahead of us was the tower in which Altaïr had his quarters. For weeks I had been visiting him there, spending countless hours by him, rapt, as he sat with his hands clasped and his elbows on the rests of his tall chair, telling his stories, his old eyes barely visible beneath his cowl. And increasingly I had come to realize that I was being told these stories for a purpose. That for some reason yet unfathomable to me, I had been chosen to hear them.
When not telling his stories, Altaïr brooded among his books and memories, sometimes gazing for long hours from the window of his tower. He would be there now, I thought, and hooked a thumb under the band of my cap and shifted it back, shading my eyes to look up at the tower, seeing nothing but sun-bleached stone.
‘We’ve an audience with him?’ Maffeo interrupted my thoughts.
‘No, not today,’ I replied, instead pointing at a tower to our right. ‘We’re going up there …’
Maffeo frowned. The defensive tower was one of the highest in the citadel, and was reached by a series of vertiginous ladders, most of which looked in need of repair. But I was insistent, and I tucked my tunic into my belt then led Maffeo up to the first level, then to the next and finally to the top. From there we looked across the countryside. Miles and miles of craggy terrain. Rivers like veins. Clusters of settlements. We looked over Masyaf: from the fortress to the buildings and markets of the sprawling village below, the wooden stockade of the outer curtain and stabling.
‘How high are we?’ asked Maffeo, looking a little green, no doubt conscious of being buffeted by the wind and that the ground now looked a long, long way away.
‘Over two hundred and fifty feet,’ I told him. ‘High enough to put the Assassins out of range of enemy archers – but able to rain arrows and more down upon them.’
I showed him the openings surrounding us on all sides. ‘From the machic
olations here they could launch rocks or oil over their foe, using these …’ Wooden platforms jutted out into space and we moved over to one now, holding on to upright supports either side and leaning out into the air to look down. Directly below us, the tower fell away to the cliff edge. Below that the shimmering river.
The blood draining from his face, Maffeo stepped back on to the safety of the tower floor. I laughed, doing the same (and secretly glad to, feeling a little giddy and sick myself, truth be told).
‘And why is it you’ve brought us up here?’ asked Maffeo.
‘This is where my story begins,’ I said. ‘In more ways than one. For it was from here that the lookout first saw the invading force.’
‘The invading force?’
‘Yes. Salah Al’din’s army. He came to lay siege to Masyaf, to defeat the Assassins. Eighty years ago, a bright day in August. A day very much like today …’
2
First, the lookout saw the birds.
An army on the move attracts scavengers. Of the winged variety, mainly, which swoop upon whatever scraps are left behind: food, waste and carcasses, both horse and human. Next he saw the dust. And then a vast, dark stain that appeared on the horizon, slowly beetling forward, engulfing everything in sight. An army inhabits, disrupts and destroys the landscape; it is a giant, hungry beast that consumes everything in its path and in most cases – as Salah Al’din was well aware – the mere sight of it was enough to move the enemy to surrender.
Not this time, though. Not when his enemies were the Assassins.
For the campaign the Saracen leader had raised a modest force of ten thousand infantry, cavalry and followers. With them he planned to crush the Assassins, who had already made two attempts on his life and would surely not fail a third time. Intending to take the fight to their door he had brought his army into the An–Nusayriyah mountains and to the Assassins’ nine citadels there.
Messages had reached Masyaf that Salah Al’din’s men had been plundering the countryside, but that none of the forts had fallen. That Salah Al’din was on his way to Masyaf, intent on conquering it and claiming the head of the Assassin leader, Al Mualim.
Salah Al’din was regarded as a temperate and fair-minded leader, but he was as angered by the Assassins as he was unnerved by them. According to reports, his uncle, Shihab Al’din, was advising him to offer a peace agreement. Have the Assassins with them, not against them, was Shihab’s reasoning. But the vengeful Sultan would not be moved, and so it was that his army crawled towards Masyaf on a bright August day in 1176, and a lookout in the citadel’s defensive tower saw the flocks of birds, the great clouds of dust and the black stain on the horizon, and he raised a horn to his lips and sounded the alarm.
Stockpiling supplies, the townspeople moved into the safety of the citadel, thronging the courtyards, faces etched with fear, but many of them setting up stalls to continue trading. The Assassins, meanwhile, began fortifying the castle, preparing to meet the army, watching the stain spread across the beautiful green landscape, the great beast feeding on the land, colonizing the horizon.
They heard the horns and drums and cymbals. And soon they could make out the figures as they materialized from the heat haze: thousands of them, they saw. The infantry: spearmen, javelinmen and archers, Armenians, Nubians and Arabs. They saw cavalry: Arabs, Turks and Mameluks, carrying sabre, mace, lance and longsword, some wearing chainmail, some leather armour. They saw the litters of the noblewomen, the holy men and the disorderly followers at the rear: the families, children and slaves. They watched as the invading warriors reached the outer curtain and set it ablaze, the stables too, the horns still blaring, cymbals crashing. Inside the citadel, the women of the village began weeping. They expected their homes to be next under the torch. But the buildings were left untouched, and instead the army came to a halt in the village, paying little regard to the castle – so it seemed.
They sent no envoy, no message; they simply made camp. Most of their tents were black, but in the middle of the encampment was a cluster of larger pavilions, the quarters of the great Sultan Salah Al’din and his closest generals. There, embroidered flags fluttered; the tips of the tent poles were gilded pomegranates, and the pavilion covers were of colourful silk.
In the citadel the Assassins mulled over their tactics. Would Salah Al’din assault the fortress or try to starve them out? As night fell they had their answer. Below them the army began work assembling its siege engines. Fires burned long into the night. The sound of sawing and hammering rose to the ears of those manning the citadel ramparts, and to the Master’s tower, where Al Mualim called an assembly of his Master Assassins.
‘Salah Al’din has been delivered to us,’ said Faheem al-Sayf, a Master Assassin. ‘This is an opportunity not to be missed.’
Al Mualim thought. He looked from the tower window, thinking of the colourful pavilion in which Salah Al’din now sat plotting his downfall – and that of the Assassins. He thought of the great Sultan’s army and how it had laid waste to the countryside. How the Sultan was more than capable of raising an even larger force should his campaign fail.
Salah Al’din had matchless might, he reasoned. But the Assassins, they had guile.
‘With Salah Al’din dead, the Saracen armies will crumble,’ said Faheem.
But Al Mualim was shaking his head. ‘I think not. Shihab will take his place.’
‘He is half the leader Salah Al’din is.’
‘Then he would be less effective in repelling the Christians,’ countered Al Mualim, sharply. He tired sometimes of Faheem’s hawklike ways. ‘Do we wish to find ourselves at their mercy? Do we wish to find ourselves their unwilling allies against the Sultan? We are the Assassins, Faheem. Our intent is our own. We belong to no one.’
A silence fell over the sweet-scented room.
‘Salah Al’din is as wary of us as we are of him,’ said Al Mualim, after reflection. ‘We should see to it that he is made even more wary.’
The next morning the Saracens pushed a ram and siege tower up the main slope, and as Turkish horse-archers made passes, showering the citadel with arrows, they attacked the outer walls with their siege engines, under constant fire from Assassin archers and with rocks and oil pouring from the defensive towers. Villagers joined the battle, pelting the enemy with rocks from the ramparts, dousing the fires, while at the main gates, brave Assassins made sorties through the wicket doors, fighting back infantry trying to burn them down. The day ended with many dead on both sides, the Saracens retreating down the hill, lighting their fires for the night, repairing their siege engines, assembling more.
That night, there was a great commotion in the encampment, and in the morning the brightly coloured pavilion belong to the great Salah Al’din was taken down, and he left, taking a small bodyguard force with him.
Shortly after that, his uncle, Shihab Al’din, ascended the slope to address the Master of the Assassins.
3
‘His Majesty Salah Al’din has received your message, and thanks you most graciously for it,’ called the envoy. ‘He has business elsewhere and has left, with instructions for His Excellency Shihab Al’din to enter into talks.’
The envoy stood by Shihab’s stallion, cupping a hand to his mouth to call up to the Master and his generals, who were assembled in the defensive tower.
A small force had climbed the hill, two hundred men or so and a litter set down by Nubians, no more than a bodyguard for Shihab, who remained on horseback. On his face was a serene expression, as though he were not unduly concerned about the outcome of the talks. He wore wide white trousers, vest and red twisted sash. Inset into his large, blinding-white turban was a glittering jewel. That jewel would have an illustrious name, thought Al Mualim, gazing down upon him from the top of the tower. It would be called the Star of something or the Rose of something. The Saracens were so fond of naming their baubles.
‘Do begin,’ called Al Mualim, thinking, Business elsewhere, with a smile, his mind going back
just a few hours to when an Assassin had come to his chambers, raising him from slumber and calling him to the throne room.
‘Umar, welcome,’ Al Mualim had said, wrapping his robes around himself, feeling the early-morning chill in his bones.
‘Master,’ Umar had replied, his voice low and his head bent.
‘You’ve come to tell me of your mission?’ Al Mualim said to him. He lit an oil lamp on a chain then found his chair, settling into it. Shadows flitted across the floor.
Umar nodded. There was blood on his sleeve, noticed Al Mualim.
‘Was our agent’s information correct?’
‘Yes, Master. I made my way into their encampment and, just as we were told, the gaudy pavilion was a decoy. Salah Al’din’s tent was nearby, a much less conspicuous accommodation.’
Al Mualim smiled. ‘Excellent, excellent. And how were you able to identify it?’
‘It was protected, just as our spy said it would be, with chalk and cinders scattered on the perimeter so my steps would be heard.’
‘But they were not?’
‘No, Master, and I was able to enter the Sultan’s tent and leave the feather as instructed.’
‘And the letter?’
‘Pinned by dagger to his pallet.’
‘And then?’
‘I crept from his tent …’
‘And?’
There was a pause.
‘The Sultan awoke and raised the alarm. I was only just able to escape with my life.’
Al Mualim indicated Umar’s blood-stained sleeve. ‘And that?’
‘I was forced to cut a throat in order to make good my escape, Master.’
‘A guard?’ asked Al Mualim, hopefully.
Umar shook his head sadly. ‘He wore the turban and vest of a nobleman.’
At which Al Mualim closed tired and sorrowful eyes. ‘There was no other option?’
‘I acted rashly, Master.’
‘But otherwise your mission was a success?’
‘Yes, Master.’
‘Then we shall see what transpires,’ he said.
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