by Jack Whyte
“You were here all the time. You could hear every word.”
“Every syllable. I was impressed by the charitable way you made excuses for my tardiness.”
André stooped and made his way back to where he had left his horse partially saddled. He completed the job of unsaddling, lugged his saddle and blanket to the fireplace, then crossed to a high wooden bin against the wall.
“What is in here?”
“Dried dung, some of it camel but mostly horse. We hoard it as fuel. It’s the only kind we have … camel dung and horse dung. There is a seam of anthracite— a hard, shiny, hot-burning coal—about ten miles from here, and when time permits, we haul fuel from there, too. But most of the time we burn dung.”
“And in here?” André was standing now in front of two large wooden chests with ornate hasps, and as he spoke Alec was already in the act of bending to open one of them.
“Clothing, for a range of purposes. Which is our next priority. Strip out of your armor. It is time to take on the protective coloration of the landscape.” He pulled open the top of one of the chests, exposing a welter of brightly colored garments. “You should make a fine-looking Muslim. Have you worn Saracen clothing before now?”
“Only twice before, at home and very briefly—you can imagine the notice it would have attracted. I have a basic understanding of what is required and how the various garments fit.”
“Excellent, then let us make a start on it. Quickly now, strip down and I will help you don new finery. Ibrahim should be here very soon.”
“Ibrahim is already here, Almania.”
The words, spoken in Arabic, were uttered close to André’s ear, and he spun around so quickly that he almost fell on the uneven floor. “How came—?” he gasped, dropping his hand to his dagger hilt. He did not finish the thought, for he saw the curling hairs on the back of the brown hand close to his jaw and felt the flat width of a blade pressing firmly upwards against the soft skin beneath his chin and he knew, beyond dispute, that the blade would have a very sharp edge. He tilted his head back, yielding to the pressure of the blade until the skin of his entire neck was tautly stretched, then remained motionless, his eyes focused on the face of the man who had come up so silently behind him and now stood eyeing him askance, smiling sardonically and daring him to move.
The fellow wore a tall, tapering helmet of shining steel, from which hung a facial mask of fine steel links, protecting his face without impairing his vision, and he stood with his own chin elevated almost as far as André’s, his body braced slightly rearward against the tension of the outstretched arm that was forcing André up onto his toes. Beneath the hanging links of his visor, the skin of the stranger’s face was a deep, dark brown, making the lines and shadows on his skin seem black, and his eyes were equally dark beneath bushy brows. His mustache and beard were so black that they appeared to have blue light in them, and although the mouth beneath them was closed now, André had seen the gleam of white teeth shining through as the fellow smiled. This man, André knew, was dangerous; tall, lean, and broad shouldered. He could see little of him below shoulder height, but he surmised that the man would be dressed from head to foot in flowing black.
“Ibrahim! I vow you are improving, in spite of yourself. I barely heard you come in this time.” Alec’s Arabic was flawless and betrayed no indication of surprise.
“You did not hear me at all, Almania.” The dark eyes did not leave André’s for an instant, even as the knifewielder spoke to Alec. “I was already here when you named me. Who is this ferenghi?”
“My cousin, André St. Clair.” He looked at André and switched back to their tongue. “André, say hello to Ibrahim al-Khusai, my liaison with the forces of Rashid al-Din Sinan.” Another swift switch and he was speaking to Ibrahim in Arabic again. “André is the one for whom I summoned the services of Saif ad-Din.”
Alec had made no reference at all to the dagger being held beneath André’s chin, and now André saw Ibrahim’s eyes narrow to slits. “The one who lost his father?”
“The one.”
Ibrahim blew a small snuffing noise through his nose and lowered his blade. He took a step backward and returned the dagger to its sheath. “That is an affliction no man should have to bear but, by the will of Allah, all men do. I lost my father less than two months ago, may Allah smile upon his memory, and the grief has barely left my bones.” He turned to Alec. “But you did not hear me coming, Almania, be truthful.”
André took the opportunity to scan the Assassin now from head to foot, seeing that he had been right in assuming the fellow would be completely robed in black, but over his long outer garment, Ibrahim wore a knee-length tunic of the finest open-link chain mail André had ever seen. Over that, he also wore a cuirass of shining steel to match his helmet, and a magnificent long-bladed scimitar hung from the belt at his waist.
He was still glaring defiantly at Alec, but Alec merely dipped his head slightly, dismissing the point as unimportant. “I was not listening, in truth, because I had no need to hear you coming, my friend. But truthfully, I smelled your presence the moment we entered the main cavern. I have told you before, you may recall, that cinnamon, in the amounts by which you consume it, is a highly recognizable aroma. You are inured to it and therefore unaware of how strongly you smell of it, but in your kind of work, it could get you killed.”
Ibrahim had stopped listening, having obviously heard and been bored by this before, and was staring now at André, his eyes moving up and down the length of his body. Now he nodded to himself and held up his hand. “I will help this one to dress like a man.” He turned his head back towards Alec. “Tell him to take off his clothes.”
“Tell him yourself. He speaks your tongue.”
Ibrahim straightened in surprise. “You speak Arabic?”
“Not well, but I do,” André replied in the same tongue. “I learned it before I ever left our homeland to come here, because our brethren there, who are the allies of your imam, Rashid al-Din, considered it wise to have me learn your language early, taught by a number of your finest scholars who live among them today, sharing common knowledge with our brethren.”
“So be it. Now, to our task. Disrobe, if you will.”
André removed his armor and his clothing, and Ibrahim instructed him thoroughly thereafter in the wearing of Muslim clothes, showing him the manner of applying and properly adjusting each separate garment, so the overall effect was one of loose and unrestrictive comfort. He ended by showing the Templar how to don the flowing headdress called the kufiya, and how to fasten it into place, tugging the securing band firmly into position, and then examining his own handiwork with a critical eye before nodding in satisfaction. “Thus it should hang,” he grunted. “You have the feel of it?”
“I have it now, but whether it will stay with me, I know not.” He could not have said why he had decided to say nothing about knowing the clothing already, nor why he chose to continue feigning ignorance.
“I will attend you from now until we meet the people we must meet. By then, you should know how to wear your clothing. It is not difficult. Our children can do it.” He glanced at Alec, who had been watching. “Come, Almania, we should be on the way already.”
As they saddled their horses, André spoke to Alec again in French. “What is that name he called you? Almania?”
“It’s the name of a tribe of Germans, the Alemanni. He thinks it means Englishman and he has called me it for years. I’ve tried to tell him different but he pays no heed, so now I simply accept it. And apparently there is no name for Scotland or for Scots in Arabic.”
“Where are we going now?” he asked. Ibrahim was leading the way out of the caverns.
“We are running errands, delivering messages to certain interested parties and to one in particular. There is no real need for you to come along, save that I think it is time we showed your face to the people with whom we have to work. That may or may not include the Old Man himself, for that is where we are ult
imately going, but whether or not he will consent to receive you is something we will not know until the moment arrives. So think of this as an orientation journey, to meet these people, see where they live, and take note of how they deal with us.”
Ibrahim had ridden ahead and vanished among the boulders soon after they set out, but now they glimpsed him coming back towards them, and he drew rein about a hundred paces ahead, waiting for them to catch up to him. Alec continued, “You should find it interesting, because it will be like nothing else you will ever encounter out here. They would as happily slit our throats as look at us, but they do not dare, because they know we are under the protection of the imam, Rashid al-Din. They do not know why that should be so, but they accept that it is, and so since we are not Sunni, yet are People of the Book, they tolerate us, irrespective of how much or how little they understand of the reasons for our presence here. They know, too—and I have no idea how or how much they know of that, or where they came to learn of it—that even although we appear to be Templars, we are nonetheless different from the other Templars with whom they have dealings. Some things we are simply not meant to know or understand, and that is one of them.”
He waved to Ibrahim as they began to draw level with him, but continued talking to André in French. “Thus, you will find most of them courteous, if not exactly friendly, but never, ever forget who these people are, André, and never think to trust them. They are the Hashshashin. The Assassins. Our brotherhoods may have arcane commonalities, but we, as brothers, have nothing in common with them. Beware of them at all times.” He switched smoothly into Arabic again, for he had seen Ibrahim’s shoulders straighten on hearing the name Hashshashin. “Forgive me, Ibrahim my friend, for my lack of courtesy in speaking our ferenghi tongue, but my cousin here still finds it easier to listen and learn in our own tongue than in yours. I was explaining to him the history of your brotherhood and its successes since the advent of Rashid al-Din to Syria, more than forty years ago, but it strikes me now that you are far more qualified than I to speak of your brotherhood’s intentions and ambitions, and listening to you speak of such things in your own tongue would be a great benefit to him. Will you not honor us both by educating my cousin from your own point of view?”
Ibrahim, it transpired, was more than willing, despite his lingering air of disgruntlement. For the next two hours he talked without pause and surprised both his listeners by being articulate and well informed, with clearly defined opinions and beliefs amplified by analytical and even philosophical observations on what he and his Shi’a people had been able to achieve in their campaign against the Sunni caliphate, personified at this time by Saladin himself, who had called for the extermination of the Assassin brotherhood. In retaliation, he told them, Saladin had been marked for death three times, and on the first two had escaped by sheerest blind chance. But the third attempt, carried out by Ibrahim in person and according to the specific instructions of Rashid al-Din, had achieved what failure could not. On that occasion, the Sultan had awakened to find warm hotcakes and an Assassin’s dagger lying on the pillow by his head. There could be no mistaking the message: Saladin’s life was safe nowhere, not even in his own tent, under the care of his personal bodyguard, among the legions of his army.
Since that day, Saladin had taken to sleeping in a secure wooden pavilion that he had specially made and took with him everywhere, and he had never again called for action against Rashid al-Din and his followers.
Long before Ibrahim’s commentary ran out, they left the boulders and their surrounding plains far behind them and struck up into the mountainous terrain of the northern region, arriving at a high mountain village as the shadows began to darken late in the afternoon. It was a large village and unusually prosperous, according to a grunted aside from Alec, who suspected that its wealth came solely from banditry. André was formally introduced to the headman and his council by Ibrahim, before sitting down to dine with them. The men talked openly enough throughout the meal and showed no overt signs of hostility to the strangers in their midst, but Alec would tell André afterwards that he had been highly aware of the differences between the men of this village and those who lived in the village ruled by his friend and former captor Ibn al-Farouch. There was no humor here, he noted, at any stage of the proceedings. Everything was deadly dull and serious, tinged with overtones of hardship and tragedy. No one laughed, and he did not remark a single smile around the fire pit or around the dining table.
The three visitors slept beneath the open sky, wrapped in blankets against the night chill, and they were up and away soon after daybreak, heading northward again. As he had promised, Ibrahim inspected André’s appearance before they left, and made him presentable with a few sharp tugs and tucks, explaining all the while exactly what he was attempting to achieve. And by the time the next day dawned, their business with Rashid al-Din, the Old Man of the Mountain, was completed and André and Alec were homeward bound, uncaring of what any casual observer might think of the finer adjustments of their dress.
The previous night, just before darkness fell, André had seen, and had been seen by, Rashid al-Din himself, but he had not met the great man, if great was the appropriate word to describe him. He had accompanied Alec to the meeting place under a sunset sky of brilliant golds and burnished browns and orange, and had then drawn aside to wait outside when one of the guards had held up a hand to bar him from entering. This had been expected, and Alec had already explained that he might or might not be summoned to go inside after Alec had informed Rashid al-Din of who he was and why he was there. There was no way, Alec had said, to foretell how the imam might react, for in matters such as this Rashid al-Din took pleasure in being known as a man of whims and varying moods. Either he would summon André to his presence, or he would not.
In the event, the imam did neither. André had been standing to one side of the door, removed by several paces from the orbit of the guards, when his attention was drawn by a minor disturbance of some kind in the doorway itself. It had turned cold as soon as the sun sank beneath the peak at their backs, for they were high in the mountains here, on the pinnacle fortress known as the Eagle’s Nest, and he had just finished wrapping himself in his cloak against the chill of the night air. And then, hearing a surge of movement behind him, followed immediately by complete silence, he had turned around slowly to find himself being watched by a man he knew could be no other than Rashid al-Din.
Part of his certainty stemmed from his instant awareness of the tension gripping the guards as they eyed the man, their entire attitude conveying awe and apprehension so clearly that it seemed to him as though their very bodies were straining backward, away from the man who stood between them. And then he grew aware of the man himself and the air of stillness that hung over him like a shadow. Like most of the Assassin brotherhood, he was dressed completely in black, but this man’s black seemed personal and it transcended darkness; he exuded blackness, and as André looked at him the thought formed in his mind, and icy cold … blackness and icy cold.
He realized then that he did not know how to react or how to behave. He felt a nervous gathering of tension at the base of his neck and thought, for a wild moment, that perhaps he ought to bow, but he dismissed the notion as soon as it occurred to him and willed himself to remain erect and motionless. If he were not to be summoned, but were merely to be looked at and inspected like some inert lump, a faceless prisoner or a slave, then he would give no man the satisfaction of seeing him as submissive, and so he squared his shoulders and gazed stonily back into the cold, basilisk stare of the man watching him. The face was flat and close to featureless, almost completely concealed by a heavy, full beard of wiry iron-gray hair with wide, white streaks running from the outside edges of the nose to come together beneath the chin. Beneath twin, pointed tangles of coarse gray eyebrows, glassy, opaque eyes stared at him emptily, expressionless and unreadable. They reminded him of serpents’ eyes, utterly lacking in humanity or warmth, and he held their gaze re
solutely, refusing even to blink as he mentally detailed the impressions this man had already made on him without speaking a word or offering a hint of recognition.
Arrogance was there, above and before all else, clearly discernible in the way al-Din held his head and even in the way in which the trailing ends of his black turban hung down to frame his face, as though positioned by someone who sought to achieve precisely the effect that he had captured. Intolerance was there as well, in the curl of the lip and the dead dullness of the sagging bags beneath the expressionless, unyielding eyes. Pride was there, too, he knew, although he could detect no overt sign of it, and so were monstrous vanity—denied and disavowed, no doubt, but there beneath the facade of faceless humility nonetheless— and sneering disdain for any but himself. André St. Clair decided then and there that he did not like Rashid al-Din Sinan, the Assassins’ Old Man of the Mountain, and that he had no wish to have any dealing with him on any pretext, even in obedience to the Council of the Order of Sion. And as that thought entered his mind, the other man slowly turned and stalked back inside the doors, the guards closing them reverentially and with evident relief at his back.
ALEC EMERGED FROM THE MEETING HOUSE about an hour later, frowning to himself as he tracked down André, who was warming himself by the fire the guards had built in the courtyard, and his first question, asked in French, was about Rashid al-Din. “He came outside to look at you when I told him who you are. Did you see him?”
“How could I fail to? He stood less than five paces from me, staring right at me.”
“And what did you think?”
André looked around him. There were more than a score of people in the courtyard now, and about half of them had gathered around the fire. “Do any of these people speak French?”
“Not that I know of. It is highly unlikely.”