by Judith Tarr
Aidan’s falcon, unhooded, screamed and struck at his gauntlet. Hunt! it raged at him. Hunt!
He laughed and flung it into the air.
oOo
Chance and the pattern of the hunt divided the company, some cleaving to the river and its coverts, others venturing into the hills. Aidan found himself with Murhaf and the old man who must be his father, and Ishak, and their attendants and their falconers, and a hound or two. The drummers were all down by the river, likewise the cheetahs. It was quieter without them. The hounds led them away from the Barada, up the path of a streamlet that fed it: hardly more than a trickle in a stony bed, but the thickets about it were full of birds.
Aidan’s bag filled quickly. His falcon was hardly tired; appeased but not sated by a mouthful of its last kill, it circled lazily, not hunting, simply riding the air. It was aware of Aidan, but not as it would of a human man: as a power like wind and sun and the joy of the kill, riding with it, part of it.
Human speech came dim and strange. Words of stopping, resting, sharing water, apples from the orchards, a mouthful of bread.
Aidan wandered a little away from them, following his horse as it grazed. He drank from the stream, slaking the thirst that was his own, but the blunted edge of hunger was the falcon’s. He filled his eyes with sun and sky, his mind with the freedom of the air.
The falcon was tiring. Its temper, never sweet, had grown uncertain. It bethought itself of the wideness of the world and the narrowness of its captivity, and remembered that no bond or creance bound it, only the will of the one who flew it.
A dove burst out of cover below it, flaring fear. The falcon stooped upon it, drank its terror with wicked delight, veered aside in the last hurtling instant. The idiot bird darted back into its tree, startling the whole flock into flight. The falcon chose at its royal leisure, sighted, plunged to the kill.
Aidan let it feed, bound lightly with it still, demanding nothing. The falcon quieted as it gorged; it yielded before it knew what it had done, raised its head to his approach, sprang to his fist. He gave it the gift of his pleasure, swift and falcon-fierce.
oOo
The others had eaten and drunk and settled to rest. That it was for the old man’s sake, they very well knew, and the old man as well as any. He did not, Aidan noticed, betray that he understood. That was wisdom. It was also kindness: Murhaf, no youth himself and contending with a wound gone bad and still barely healed, was in hardly better case than his father.
They greeted Aidan in their various ways, Ishak with guilt and a word about bread. Aidan shrugged it off. He sat in the space they left for him, between Ishak and the old man. His falcon regarded them with a baleful eye. Their own birds waited in bound and hooded silence near the horses, with the falconers watching over them. Aidan stroked his falcon’s back with a feather, gentling it. It settled; its eyes blinked shut. Softly he shifted it to the perch that its falconer had set beside him. Unhooded, lightly jessed, content with its hunt and its full belly and his presence, it slid into a drowse.
“You are a falconer,” the old man said.
Aidan bowed his head. Murhaf, belated, a little irascible with his wound and his oversight, named them to one another. The old man was, indeed his father: Usamah of the house of Munqidh in Shaizar. Usamah was hardly awed to greet a king’s son of a country he had never heard of, although his courtesy allowed a modicum of respect. It mattered rather more to him that Aidan knew how to hunt with falcons. “They know the art, then, in your country.”
Which, his tone said, was as far away as the moon. Aidan swallowed a smile. “We have some small pretense to knowledge.”
“Do you fly eagles?”
That was a test. Aidan’s smile escaped its bonds. “Once. When I was young and mad. I’d rather fly a good goshawk, or a gyrfalcon. The hunting’s better, and the weight’s less burdensome on the fist.”
“I used to hunt lions,” said Usamah.
The others exchanged glances. The old man’s mind was wandering, surely. Aidan, who knew better, said, “I went against a boar barehanded once.”
“How long were you recovering?”
“A whole winter. The boar,” said Aidan, “lived to a ripe old age.”
Usamah laughed. Age had thinned his voice, but it was still rich and deep. “No doubt you took revenge on the tribe of his sons.”
“I tried,” Aidan said. “Sometimes I succeeded.”
“Ah,” said Usamah, “we’re all reckless in youth. I went after a serpent once, when it chose to make its nest in our house. In the inner court, mind you, amid the carvings of the portico: hardly a pleasure for anyone who walked beneath. It would sleep with its head hanging over the arch, looking like part of the carvings. When I had had enough of it, I went for a ladder and set it under the nest, with the snake watching every move I made, for though it was asleep its eyes were open, as serpents’ always are. Then, while my father watched and did his best not to upbraid me for a fool and so startle the beast, I went at its head with a little dagger. No room up there for a sword, you see, and I never thought of trying my archery. Its face was a bare elbow’s length from my own, and as hideous as you may imagine. I sawed at the neck. The body whipped out and wrapped about my arm. And there we were, swaying on the ladder, I sawing for my life, it coiling for its life, and just when I was sure that I would topple, head and body parted, and it was the snake who went down, and not I. It would have been fair justice had the ladder gone down with it and left me clinging to the carving, till the stone let go or my fingers did, and I fell. But Allah was merciful. My father,” said Usamah, “flayed me handsomely thereafter, for risking my neck in front of him.”
“Would he have preferred that you do it out of his sight?” Aidan inquired.
Usamah’s eyes glinted. “I think he regretted that he had not thought of it first. I was a wild youth, but my father, given cause, could be wilder than I.”
“Mine had trained himself out of it before I knew him, since he had to be king; but there were many who remembered what he had been before he was crowned. When I drove my tutors to distraction, they would console themselves with remembering. ‘Lathan was worse,’ they would say. Until they learned not to do it in my hearing. I could never abide a rival in deviltry, even if it were my father.”
“I should be stern,” the old man said, “and speak of honoring one’s elders.”
“So you should, sir,” said Aidan, “and I shall consider myself chastised.”
“You are well-spoken,” said Usamah.
“For a Frank,” said Aidan.
“For a Frank,” the old man conceded, “and for many a Muslim. I have had friends among your people. The best are as good as any man living. The worst are no worse than we, and sometimes less misguided. When I was in Jerusalem on an errand for my lords, I was suffered to do my devotions in the little mosque, the Father Mosque that lies in the shadow of the Dome of the Rock. A Frank who was new come from the west saw me praying south toward Mecca, and could not abide it; he lifted me bodily and flung me down with my face to the east. ‘This is how to pray,’ he said to me, not at all with hostility but as if he wished to teach me the error of my ways. Nor would he hear aught in opposition, until my friends of the Temple came to escort him out. They were most apologetic, and most courteous.”
“Templars?” Aidan was startled.
“Templars,” said Usamah, much amused.
Aidan shook his head. “No one in my country would ever believe it. It’s so very simple there. Enmity pure, without taint of expedience. Or of plain courtesy.”
“So it is often here. I had occasion to learn otherwise. Men are men, in the end, whatever their faith.”
“Do you regret your battles, then?”
Usamah’s eyes were clouded with age, but the fire behind them was as fierce as a boy’s. “I do not. War is the one great test of a man. Without it he is but a woman, or a woman’s toy. And you, king’s son? Are you a child of peace?”
Aidan laughed, fu
ll and free. He had to pause to breathe, to muster words. “Your pardon, sir. It is only...my people say that I am too well named. I’m the fire in the dry wood, the hawk of battle. For that there was no war at home, I came here seeking one.”
“Have you found it?”
Aidan lowered his lids over his eyes, lest the glamour fail and bare the wild green light. “I have found it.”
“May God give you good fortune,” said Usamah.
oOo
While they spoke, Aidan had been aware of hoofs on the stones of the watercourse, the ring of bit and bridle bell, the approach of a small party riding without haste. He looked up unsurprised as two men in golden coats came up side by side, and behind them one in black, with one lone falconer. The hounds leaped up baying; the huntsman whipped them down.
The sultan swung lightly from the saddle, returning Usamah’s calm greeting, Murhaf’s sketched bow. Ishak was all eyes and awe. Aidan sat unmoving, and let this lord of the Saracens choose how he would greet a Frankish prince. That this had been intended, he could well see. It was like these people’s subtlety.
Saladin regarded him with eyes as clear as a child’s, taking in the whole exotic length of him; fascinated, and delighted with that fascination.
“There was once a king in the west,” Aidan said, “who would not dine of a festival, until he had seen a marvel. Has my lord dined yet today?”
The sultan laughed. “Now I think I may. We are well met, sir prince. How fares your hunt?”
“Well, my lord, and well companioned.”
“I had thought you might take pleasure in their company.” Saladin sat by Aidan with the ease of all these easterners, to whom a chair was a useless inconvenience. He was smaller than Aidan had expected, and slighter even in mail, and although sun and war and the livid new scar had aged his face, he still seemed younger than his years. It was his manner. He had no hauteur; he saw no need of it.
With a small cold shock, Aidan realized that this was a rarity indeed: a man whom the glamour could not touch. He saw Aidan as he was. All the strangeness, but for the eyes, which Aidan would not give him. And more than that. He did not see youth in the white smooth face. He saw no age at all.
It was most strange, not to be looked on as a raw boy; to be granted from the first the respect due a man’s years. Aidan knew a moment’s emptiness; even a flicker of resentment. Where was the pleasure here, in indulging a mortals’ folly?
Joanna would have had a word or two to say to that. Aidan settled against a tree-bole, because he must move, however little, and it was no courtesy to leap up and stride away from a king. Even Ishak had more native quiet; the sultans’ presence had frozen him where he sat.
Saladin beckoned to the nearer of his guards. The man — youth, more nearly, blue-eyed and ruddy-fair, which was startling under the turban of a Muslim — brought forth a flask and a pair of silver cups, which he filled. The sultan took one with simplicity that was almost ceremony, and held it out to Aidan. “Drink,” he said.
That was more, far more, than courtesy. A Muslim should not share nourishment with an unbeliever, lest his purity be polluted. Ishak had sinned in setting Aidan at his father’s table; youth and recklessness and the witchery of Aidan’s presence barely excused him. But the sultan, the king and defender, the rectifier of the Faith, could never do so lightly what a swordsmith’s son had done.
A certain form was observed. Saladin waited until Aidan had drained his cup of water freshened with lemon, before he set lips to his own. The cup, he bade Aidan keep. It was ruined, certainly, for further use by a Muslim, but it was a beautiful cup, and a generous gift.
It always took these people an age to come to any point, and Saladin, though Kurdish born, was raised a Damascene. He could discourse, it seemed, for hours on the weather, the virtues and vices of falcons, the quality of the hunting; anything but what a Frankish prince was doing in Damascus. He honestly did not seem to care. It would be a release for him, this long drowsing noon away from the cares of his kingdom. Usamah had actually gone to sleep; Murhaf’s beard was on his breast, his awareness half in a dream. Guards and servants had sunk into quiet watchfulness. Even Ishak was nodding.
The sultan paused. Aidan had already forgotten what they were speaking of. He was on his feet, prowling among the sleepers, hardly aware that he had moved at all. Saladin watched him as people always did, as they would watch a leopard pace its cage. As a leopard would, he met the sultan’s stare.
Too late he remembered what this man of all men could see. Saladin’s eyes widened as if of their own accord, the mind hardly aware yet that it had perceived anything amiss. He peered closer, but Aidan had lowered his lids, half turning to sit where he had been before, and would not look up. After a moment Saladin sighed, shook his head, decided that he had seen but a trick of the light.
“What do you think of our city?” he asked.
“It’s very beautiful,” Aidan answered. “Like a city from a legend: old beyond measure, richer than kings. There’s strong magic in it.”
“Do you think so?” The sultan was pleased, but his eyes were intent. “Was it for the magic that you came?”
Aidan smiled a sword’s-edge smile. Still he would not raise his eyes. “I came because the road led me here. I stay while my caravan stays. The beauty of it, the excellence of its welcome, come as a surprise and a delight. I could wish that I had come in a happier time, to do the city justice.”
“If any of my people has done aught to offend you, I would know, that we may offer recompense.”
“Your people,” said Aidan, “have been the unfailing soul of courtesy.”
“Yet we have not eased your heart.”
“Only one man may do that, my lord, and that with his blood.”
The sultan sat for a while in silence, smoothing his beard along his jaw.
No; not his beard. The scar that ran into it, a thin livid line. “I have heard,” he said, “that that man is one whom I know.” And when Aidan said nothing: “You must forgive me that I do not name him. His terror is not easily forgotten.”
“Yet you laid siege to his castle,” Aidan said.
The sultan smiled, tight and small. “You know how panic is. Some, it causes to flee. Others, it drives full upon what they fear.”
“And the first are called cowards, but the rest are reckoned valiant.”
“Or mad.” The sultan was a little pale beneath the sun-stain of his skin. He touched the glint of mail at his throat. “This never left me, even when I bathed, from Ramadan to Ramadan, and half a year about it. For I had taken arms against Aleppo that is a Shi’a stronghold, and they are Shi’a, those of the Mountain and dagger; and their master paid well to remove my upstart presence. First before all my army, at the meal we shared in the camp, the servers turned on me and would have killed me, but that one of my emirs knew them and cried the warning. He died for it. They died, twelve and one of them, but I lived, and lived in terror. Every shadow must surely be my murderer; every man about me must owe fealty to the Master of the Knives. Asleep and awake I was on my guard. I trusted no one. I nearly died for nothing more than fear.
“And so I lived for a year and half a year, easing a little with time, until I had almost remembered the taste of peace; and he struck again.” His fingers trembled on the scar. “One of his slaves gave me this. Another pierced my mail but drew no blood. They died, all four, but one of my own men was dead, and they tell me that I had gone mad. I built a wall about my tent. I suffered none in my presence whom I did not know, nor spoke to any save those who had been with me from my youth. Then when I could bear it no longer, when I must act or break, I laid siege to Masyaf.”
Aidan leaned forward, rapt. The sultan sat with fists clenched on his knees, a sheen of sweat on his brow, eyes wide with memory. “I laid my siege. My men were starting at shadows, but they followed me. Maybe they loved me. Maybe they feared me a fraction more than they feared my enemy.
“But when I had established my camp
, set up my engines and settled for the long game of waiting and testing, a man came to me. He passed all my guards and sentries but those about my tent, and of those he asked leave to approach me. They gave it to him. He was one man, alone, not young, and they ascertained that he carried no weapon; and I was within the company of my captains and my servants and my most trusted slaves.
“He came before us, and named himself with calm that was not even insolence, as the very enemy we had come to destroy. My guards closed in on him, but I did not bid them seize him. He smiled at me and said, ‘We have somewhat to say to one another, I think. Will it please you to speak with me alone?’
“‘There is nothing you can say which my captains cannot hear,’ I answered him.
“His smile never faltered. ‘Are you, perhaps, afraid?’
“If he had sneered, I could have defied him. But he was gentle; he was compassionate. He maddened me. I dismissed my emirs, ill though it pleased them. But my servants, I kept.
“‘Alone,’ said the Old Man of the Mountain, gentle and inexorable.
“I sent away my servants, all but two mamluks. ‘These are as my right hand and my left,’ I said. ‘They have been at my side since they were children. They are part of me; they do not leave me.’
“My enemy inclined his head. He addressed my mamluks, gentle as ever, without heat, without mockery. ‘Isa; Buri. If I said the word, would you slay him?’
“And their daggers were in their hands, one at my throat, one at my heart, and they wore no expression at all. They were his. My very hands were not my own; I was all betrayed.