by Oden, Scott
To Robert E. Howard,
whose tales of swordplay and sorcery
gave inspiration to a kid from Alabama
and caused him to take up the pen
in his own time
Acknowledgments
The tale of the Emir of the Knife owes its existence to quite a few people: to Josh Olive, first among readers; to Darren Cox, who made sure my plots and intrigues weren’t totally ridiculous, and who provided a second set of eyes; to Wayne Miller and Kris Reisz, the oldest of friends, who ensured I didn’t make an ass of myself—often by exploiting those times when I did; to Constance Brewer, Meghan Sullivan, Gabrielle Campbell, and David S. De Lis, who helped keep the gnomes at bay; to Russell Whitfield, for the loan of his Arabic-speaking stepfather; to Howard Andrew Jones, Deuce Richardson, Tom Doolan, and the late Steve Tompkins, who kept me going with their infectious enthusiasm.
Most of all, though, Assad owes his life to two men, both storied cavaliers in their own right: my editor, Pete Wolverton, and my agent, Bob Mecoy. Mecoy epitomizes the gentleman-agent: a tireless advocate, shrewd publisher, and hilarious raconteur rolled into one; he’s never too busy to answer a question or explain the publishing process for the umpteenth time. Across the desk from him, Pete is every inch an editor in the classic sense, gracious in manner even as he pores over endless drafts in search of the best bits contained in each, making suggestions and reining in the worst of my excesses. His notes on what would become The Lion of Cairo read like a master class in how to write a novel. To both men I owe an impossible debt of gratitude, not only for their expertise and passion but for their formidable patience.
And last, but far from least: to all the readers who have followed me from tale to tale—it is you who make this task of writing a joyful experience. To each and every one, my heartfelt thanks.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Maps
Author’s Note
Epigraph
Prologue
First Surah: Palmyra
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Second Surah: Into the City of Tents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Third Surah: Destroyer of Delights
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
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
Fourth Surah: Knife’s Edge
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Fifth Surah: Son of Wickedness
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Sixth Surah: Lion of Cairo
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Also by Scott Oden
Copyright
Author’s Note
The genesis for The Lion of Cairo lay not in the annals of history, but rather in the pages of such pulp-era magazines as Adventure, Argosy, and Oriental Stories; in the wild tales of Robert E. Howard and Harold Lamb, and in that compilation of bawdy and exotic stories known to western audiences as The Thousand and One Nights. The Cairo presented herein is not the city of history, but rather the Cairo of Scheherazade—a city where the fantastic occurs around every corner; a city steeped in its own history, where the magic of ancient Egypt meets the mysticism of the desert. Some elements of the city are contemporary to the twelfth century, others are imaginary; still others are drawn from diverse historical periods: columns scavenged from Egyptian temples sit cheek by jowl with the carved façades of the Mameluke sultans, which overlook gardens laid out by the Fatimid caliphs, with the whole protected by walls erected during the reign of the Ayyubids. It is the Cairo of fable and legend, and I’ve taken egregious liberties with its topography, its character, and its people for the sake of story.
Readers wishing to learn something more of the true character of Old Cairo need only look to Jim Antoniou’s Historic Cairo: A Walk Through the Islamic City (American University in Cairo Press, 1998); I also found Michael Haag’s Cairo Illustrated (American University in Cairo Press, 2006) and Cairo: The City Victorious by Max Rodenbeck (Knopf, 1999) extremely helpful.
In order to build a fantasy world that evoked the vanished era of the Crusades, I found myself consulting a wide variety of texts, both historical and modern, from Philip Hitti’s excellent translation of The Memoirs of Usamah ibn-Munqidh (Columbia University Press, 2000) to Roland Broadhurst’s The Travels of Ibn Jubayr (Goodword Books, 2001) to Amin Maalouf’s The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (Schocken Books, 1984). In particular, A History of Egypt in the Middle Ages by Stanley Lane-Poole (Methuen & Co., 1901) and The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam by Bernard Lewis (Oxford University Press, 1987) proved most invaluable. As always, I am to blame for any misreading or omission of fact.
Kan ma kan
Fi qadim azzaman
There was, there was not,
In the oldness of time …
—Traditional Bedouin rhyme
Prologue
The rasp and slither of steel died away, the sound lost to a wind that howled over snow-clad ridges, pouring into the passes and sheltered valleys of the high Afghan mountains. Ruptures in the leaden sky—a sky that promised little succor from the long winter at the Roof of the World—allowed mocking glimpses of blue heavens and golden light. And a mockery it was, for the sun’s rays did nothing to allay the knife-edged cold, which cut through leather and wool and thick cloth to freeze flesh and stiffen beards.
Still, the two men who faced off on the winding trail to the crag-set village of Kurram paid little heed to wind, cold, or sunlight. Snowdrifts and naked rocks were one and the same as they slowly circled, breath steaming with each panted
curse, each seeking an opportunity to bring this struggle to its bloody conclusion. Both fighters sported ragged Afghan turbans and trousers, girdled robes of striped silk and grimy wool, and belts bristling with knife hilts; they were alike in height—but where one was thick waisted with broad shoulders, a bull neck, and gray flecking his beard, the other was young and lean and as graceful as the Turkish saber he held in his scarred fist.
“Baber Khan,” said he, his Arabic punctuated by an Egyptian accent. “Make peace with Allah, for your time is at an end. The blood of Kurram is a poor price for the blood of my master’s servants but it is a price that must be paid.”
Muscles knotted in Baber Khan’s bull neck as he twisted his head and spat. He wielded a salawar—the sword-knife of the Afghan tribesmen—two feet of shadow-patterned Damascus steel, older than Islam, with a single-edged blade that tapered to a diamond point and a hilt braided with leather and silver wire. A leering face carved of yellowed ivory glared from the pommel. “Your master? Your master is a coward who sits atop his rock and plays at empire! Bah! Think you I do not know who you are, dog of Alamut? You may have killed a score of my Afridis, but I have killed a thousand of your brothers, a thousand of your so-called Faithful!” Baber Khan raised his salawar, eyes blazing. “Come closer, my little Assassin! Come closer, and let me make it a thousand and one!”
The Assassin’s temper flared; with a guttural curse, he leaped for Baber Khan, his saber whistling in a vicious arc that should have struck the Afridi chieftain’s head from his shoulders … had he not been expecting it. Baber Khan ducked and twisted, his teeth bared in a death’s-head grin as he lashed out at the overextended Assassin.
It was sheer reflex which saved the younger man’s life. He glimpsed the descending salawar, watered steel burnished by pale winter light; he wrenched his body to the right and awkwardly threw his saber into the path of Baber Khan’s blade. Steel met steel with a resounding clash as the salawar—fragile though it seemed—shattered the Assassin’s saber near the hilt. The young killer screamed as the tip of the Afghan blade bit into his brow and sliced down his left cheek, missing the eye by a hairsbreadth.
The Assassin staggered, clutching his bloodied visage. More than pain lanced through his skull. A crawling sensation shivered across his scalp and down his spine—a thousand tentacles of ice seeking to pry their way into his soul. His ears rang with phantasmal sound, with voices not his own—howling, gibbering, cursing, screaming; voices filled with rage, with terror, with purpose … cold, murderous purpose. His jaw champed, teeth grinding as his own fury blossomed. Did he survive the fearsome siege of Ascalon, the initiations of al-Hashishiyya, and the grinding hunt through the Afghan mountains to bring the death his master decreed for the Afridis only to fall prey to a poisoned blade? Not poison, a voice mocked, stronger than the others; an ancient voice tinged with madness. No, not poison.
The Assassin’s wrath cut through the agony, granting him a moment of absolute clarity. Rumors he had heard of Baber Khan’s cruelty, of his insane recklessness, of a pact between the chiefs of his clan and the djinn of the mountains, suddenly made sense. It must be the salawar. By what deviltry he could not imagine, but its touch filled his head with visions, ancient and bloody scenes of carnage, of slaughter, and of betrayal. It called to him … the Assassin’s body spasmed; he took a step toward Baber Khan then fell to his knees, glaring up at him through a haze of blood and fury. “That … that b-blade!”
“Yes! You feel it, do you not?” Baber Khan replied; he ran a thumb and forefinger along the edge of his salawar, collecting the Assassin’s blood. His grim smile widened as he licked his fingers clean. “It is the Hammer of the Infidel, and none can stand before it! What is your name, dog?”
“Assad,” the young Assassin replied. He sat with his head bowed, oblivious to the blood dripping down his lacerated cheek. The knuckles of his right fist were white where he gripped the hilt-shard of his saber. My birthright. His lips writhed, nostrils flaring, as he fought off the fearful paralysis induced by that devil-haunted blade by focusing on the broken steel before him. My father’s saber!
“The Hammer of the Infidel kills before ever the final blow is struck! Even the gentlest caress of the blade strips a man’s resolve from him to leave him naked and trembling at the edge of the Abyss!” Baber Khan laughed. “Assad, eh? My brothers will know the name of the fool who thought to challenge the chief of the Afridis!” He stepped closer and raised his salawar, its tip poised for a killing blow.
“A fine trick,” Assad said, glancing up, “since your brothers are already in hell!” The Assassin exploded with the unexpected desperation of a wounded lion. He launched himself at Baber Khan, drove the hilt-shard gripped in his right fist into the Afghan’s groin. Blood spurted and steamed as his ferocious bellow turned to a shriek. The jagged length of blade bit deep; Assad sawed upward, ripping Baber Khan’s belly open to the navel.
Color drained from the Afghan’s face. He swayed, eyes widening in disbelief; with one hand he reached out and knotted his trembling fingers in the collar of Assad’s robe. Baber Khan struggled to raise his salawar.
“Allah!” he croaked. “How?”
Assad caught the Afghan’s wrist and stripped the blade from his grasp. Touching its ivory-and-silver hilt sent white-hot wires of pain stabbing through the Assassin’s muscles even as he felt something cold and heavy touch his mind. Something ancient. Something filled with hate. Assad recoiled, but gritted his teeth and kept hold of the salawar. “I am al-Hashishiyya, you fool,” the Assassin replied. “Where others fear the Abyss, the sons of Alamut embrace it. Now, let my master’s will be done!”
Before Baber Khan could react, Assad drew the salawar across his throat in one smooth motion and then shoved the Afghan away. And Baber Khan, lord of Kurram and chieftain of the Afridis—Baber Khan, who had earned the wrath of the Hidden Master of Alamut by slaughtering his emissaries—took one halting step and toppled to the ground, his last moments spent writhing in a slurry of blood and snow.
But the Assassin paid no heed to Baber Khan’s death throes. He paid no heed to the cold or the wind or to the burning agony of the laceration bisecting his cheek. No, the Assassin’s attention remained fixed on the long blade in his fist, on its pommel of yellowed ivory carved in the shape of a djinn’s snarling visage. “I am al-Hashishiyya,” he said to the glittering-eyed devil. “I am Death incarnate.”
So am I, the devil replied …
The First Surah
PALMYRA
1
The sun hung in the bloodred sky like a misshapen lump of copper, its edges blackened, its face radiating waves of excruciating heat over a landscape ravaged by war. Thousands of mailed corpses littered the streets of Ascalon—bodies frozen in the act of dying; hacked asunder, blades of steel and iron yet clutched in their fists. Tattered pennons once carried with pride by Ascalon’s defenders now rustled like ghosts on the hot wind.
As a ghost, too, did the figure of a dark-haired child drift through the great mass of the slain, swinging a wooden sword in boyish abandon. With it, he lashed out at imaginary enemies, the flash of his pale limbs incongruous in this gore-blasted wasteland. He chased the wind, chased zephyrs of dust through deserted plazas and down winding streets; past fire-gutted buildings looted by victorious Nazarenes. The wind led the boy to the city’s heart, to where a ruined mosque squatted in the middle of a broad square.
Here the boy stopped, tapped the ground with the tip of his sword. His brows drew together as he eyed the structure. Curious, he mounted the shallow steps and peered through the open doorway. Inside, shadows swirled like smoke from a funeral pyre; shafts of copper light lanced through ruptures in the domed ceiling. The boy caught sight of a figure pacing the periphery of the chamber, a lean wraith clad in a surcoat of grimy white cloth who warily avoided the murky daylight.
The boy’s youth made him fearless. He crossed the threshold, his voice profaning the silence. “What was this place?”
Ins
tantly the silhouette stopped and spun toward the door, falling into a predatory crouch. It snuffled the air like a hound on the trail of a hare.
“Are you deaf?” the boy said. “What was this place?”
“A tomb,” the figure replied, its voice hard and guttural, full of rage. It crept forward, still in a crouch. “And a prison.”
The boy glanced around, disbelieving. “A prison? For what? There’s no door.”
“For a fell and terrible beast.” Closer it came. “One that has not tasted flesh nor drunk blood since before you were ripped squalling from your mother’s womb, little one.” Closer, sidestepping a column of light. Menacing eyes glittered and sinew creaked. Still, the boy displayed no trepidation; he stood motionless, unwilling to credit the stranger’s words.
“What kind of beast?”
Now, with only six paces separating them, the figure straightened. This close, the boy saw a design in blood caking the chest of the figure’s surcoat: a cross, red on white. The stench of death clung to it; the boy blinked, his nose wrinkling. The smell reminded him that perhaps he should be cautious.
“The worst kind,” it hissed. “One that hungers!” The Templar threw its head back, howling its rage as it sprang on the startled child. Too late, the boy raised his wooden sword as searing cold talons dug into his throat …
2
Assad bolted upright, his hands reaching for a weapon even as he stifled a cry of alarm. Sweat beaded his forehead; his nostrils flared as flint-hard eyes swept the shadowy corners of the room. Beside him, his companion mewled in her sleep. With titanic effort, Assad forced himself to breathe, forced his muscles to relax. Slowly, he sank back down on the bed, closing his eyes as the thudding of his heart abated.
It was a familiar nightmare. Even though fourteen years had passed, memories of the fearsome siege of Ascalon still haunted him—memories of hunger and thirst, of roaring fires and strangling clouds of smoke, of corpses left to rot in the sun and the blond giants whose hellish machines shredded the city’s ramparts like paper. An involuntary shudder ran through his body.
Assad sighed and opened his eyes. A faint breeze rustled colorful linen sheers hanging from the narrow windows; outside, streaks of crimson and gold heralded the rising sun. The air crackled with heat even before the first searing rays struck fire from the plastered mudbrick walls of the oasis city of Palmyra.