by Dan Davis
“How bad is it?” I asked Stephen.
His face was grey. “There is a gash and, beneath, a… a flap, of skin.”
That would not do. I bent to the first man, who was still struggling for breath as his life pumped away onto the tiles beneath his body. Without a word, I bent to his neck and drank down the hot blood that welled up from the wound.
“Good God Almighty,” Stephen said. “That flap of skin has knitted itself back together, Richard. I watched it happen. Did you see that, Abdullah?”
A silence descended and hung over the room like a shroud.
The young Mongol woman stood at the top of the stairs, looking down on us like a princess. By God, she was a beauty. She was bareheaded and her shining black hair tumbled down in braids and was not shorn on top
Abdullah drifted towards the bottom of the steps, mouth agape.
As he started to speak, the young Mongol man pushed past the girl, a low growl in his throat, bare hands raised and ready to fight to defend his woman to the death. His eyes were steely but edged with that madness that shows a man is prepared to die.
I stepped in front of him with my hands up and out. “Stop!”
He jabbed his finger at me and snarled a stream of angry words.
“Tell him we’re here to help,” I said to Abdullah, and to the Assassin. “Tell him we are fleeing the city and we want them to come with us.”
The two young Mongols exchanged a look. The man barked a question.
“He asks why.”
“I want to kill Hulegu. And I want to kill my brother William, who serves Hulegu. And I want him and his woman to help me.”
They did not hesitate.
***
We wrapped ourselves in Mongol garb and hurried back through the bitter darkness. Faint moonlight provided just barely enough light to see the edges of things, whenever the clouds and dung-smoke did not obscure the sky completely. Every crunching step on the iron-hard icy ground made me wince, and my head swivelled left and right as I strained to hear any approaching danger over the heavy breathing of my strange company. The city appeared deserted but all it would take to ruin us would be for a single alert Mongol to raise the alarm before I could silence him. Inside the houses and tents, voices and laughter spilled out into the night.
And I wondered whether I would return to our ger to find Eva safe and well, or whether the knights had overpowered her, or if the Mongols had come for us while I was away.
It was quiet as I approached, with the others behind me. Smoke rolled from the top of the ger.
I tapped on the door in the pattern that Eva would recognise.
The few moments before the door opened, my heart was in my mouth.
Thomas opened the door, his face blank. He nodded and stepped back. All was quiet within and Eva smiled, briefly. I was glad to see her, too.
Waving everyone in, I closed the door behind us.
“Quickly,” I said to Eva. “We must make final preparations and be at the gate before sunrise.”
“You will bring disaster down upon us,” Friar William said, for the hundredth time.
“Save your breath,” Stephen Gosset said as he helped me to pack our belongings, including some stale food, and speaking over his shoulder.
“These murderers breaking the law is one thing,” Friar William said. “But you, Stephen, you are a brother of our order and you are bringing us into disrepute with your—”
“Be quiet, I said,” Stephen snapped, turning on his brothers. “I have seen things this night that are bigger than your notions of reputation. Go home, tell the Pope that you failed to convert anyone, and leave me be.”
The monks stared. Friar William recovered, shook his red face and took a deep breath ready to shout down the youngster.
“Quiet,” I said. “Quiet, all of you. And listen.”
They all broke off and turned to me.
“I am leaving tonight. Eva and I together. We are taking these Mongols with us. We will flee with the Assassins of Alamut, and go to their lands with them. In that way, I shall be free from the sentence of the Khan. Free to return and to fight again.”
“Why would the Assassins welcome you?” Thomas said. “And why would the Mongols let you go?”
I hesitated. “The Assassin envoy, Hassan al-Din, has gone this very night to the palace of the Great Khan. He will make a trade for my life and together we will ride to Alamut.”
“What trade?” Thomas asked. “What could they possibly offer that would be worth your life?”
“It does not concern you,” I said.
“He is giving the Assassins his blood,” Stephen said as if he was too proud of the knowledge to hold on to it. “He will make them into immortals, just as his brother has done for Hulegu.”
“Good God Almighty,” Thomas said.
“We should thank God Almighty,” Friar William said, “that this power of his blood is nothing but a nonsense.”
“It is true,” Stephen said. “I have witnessed it with my own eyes. As has Abdullah. The Assassins have seen it, and that is why they are risking everything to protect Richard.”
“How can you trust these Saracens?” Bertrand said, glaring at the Assassin who stood quietly by the door. “You are betraying God.”
I scoffed. “You are the least devout man here.”
“And yet he is right,” Thomas said. “You cannot go with the Assassins. You will make yourselves prisoners, to be used and exploited by these heathens. They will kill you whenever they are done with you. And you cannot give them this power of yours… if it truly does exist.”
“I need allies,” I said. “I cannot defeat my brother, nor Hulegu and the other immortals that William has made, without men to assist me. Men with the strength to face William’s evil.” I pointed at the nameless Assassin in his Persian headwear. “They are the only men with such strength.”
“It should be Christian men by your side,” Thomas said.
“I wish it were so,” I said. “But where are they? Will you join me, Thomas, and fight at my side? Would you bring Martin with you? Would you use the strength of your order to help me?”
Stephen stepped forward. “I will join you.”
I laughed in his face. “I need knights, Stephen, not clerks.”
He was deeply offended. “I have knowledge of the world that could help you. I gave you the means for your escape, did I not?”
I hesitated. The young monk had shown a certain gift for creative thinking. Something that I sorely lacked. “Very well, you will come.”
“I will come also,” Abdullah said, stepping forward and bowing his head. “With your permission, my lord.”
“Why in the name of God would you want to come with me?” I asked, appalled.
He glanced at the Mongol girl, who sat by the entrance with the man’s arm about her shoulder, next to the Assassin who watched us through his eyelashes. “I wish to be with my people,” Abdullah said.
“The Assassins?” I said. “You are a Saracen, subject to the Caliph in Baghdad, are you not? The Assassins are the sworn enemies of your people.”
Abdullah’s eyes twinkled in the lamplight. “They follow the word of the Prophet. They are closer to me than the Christians, or the Mongols. And I can be useful to you. How will you speak with the Ismailis without me?”
I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “Are you that smitten with the girl that you would risk death.”
He lowered his head. “I simply no longer wish to be cold, sir.”
“If you wish to serve me, I will not say no.”
“He belongs to me,” Friar William said, outraged. “He may not go with you.”
“Try and stop him,” I said. The monks cursed me but what else could they do?
Little Nikolas ran forward. “I, too, will join you, Sir Richard.” He grinned up at me with his hand on the ivory dagger I had given him.
“No, son,” I said. “It is not safe for you. Stay with the monks. Serve them well and in the
Spring they will take you back to Constantinople.”
His eyes filled with tears. “No, my lord, no, I will come with you. You and Eva. I will serve you well.”
William and Bartholomew protested but I waved them into silence. “You are too young,” I said to Nikolas.
Eva placed a hand on my arm. “Richard?”
I knew what she wanted but I did not want to have to look after the boy. He would be pestering us and slowing us down. And, absurd as it was, I found his obsession with Eva to be irritating. He was just of the age that his interest in her would not be purely a platonic one, and I felt like Eva was allowing herself to be exploited in some vague, ill-defined way. Perhaps it was as simple a thing as my feeling excluded, and that he took her attention away from me. Whatever the reason, I found myself relieved at the prospect of being rid of him.
“The boy stays with the monks,” I said. “It is fair to the Franciscans, who I am already depriving of one interpreter. Nikolas can assist them in Abdullah’s stead. And besides all that, it is not safe for you, Nikolas. We will be riding hard, riding in a fashion that you are too small to do. Stay safe. The monks have been promised safety by the Great Khan. It will please me to know you are safe.”
He half-drew his white dagger, gripping it tightly around the carving of Saint George killing the dragon. “Please, sir. I will make a good knight. I will serve you and become a brave knight and fight the Saracens.”
I saw then how I had wronged him. Patronised him and given him false hope for something that he could never be.
All I could do was ruffle his hair. “Serve your masters well,” I said.
Thomas grabbed me by the shoulder before I left. “I beg you,” he said. “Do not give your power to our enemies.”
“Come with me,” I said. “You and Martin, both. The Franciscans do not need your protection. They have Bertrand and Hughues, and they do not even need them. The Mongols, despite their savagery in every other way, keep all ambassadors safe and well. No harm will come to them.”
“I must return to the Holy Land,” he said. “And the Kingdom of Jerusalem. When I get to Acre, I must tell King Louis, and the Master of my order, that the Mongols mean to make war on the kingdoms there. I must tell them how these Mongols may destroy our enemies, but they may take everything that we hold, too.”
“Send Martin with the messages,” I said. “Ride with us yourself. God knows I could use your wisdom. And your skill in battle.”
“Yours is a personal quest,” he said, glancing at the Assassin and the Mongol couple. “I serve higher powers.”
“That is fair to say,” I admitted, though I knew would miss him very dearly. “Then I wish you well. Perhaps, one day, we shall meet again.”
“If your new friend Hassan al-Din is unable to make his deal with the Great Khan,” Thomas said, “I will see you dragged back here to Karakorum before sundown.”
***
We had to make haste, and our strange little group carried our gear, along with what supplies we could muster, to the south gate of Karakorum where the Assassins were already assembled in the pre-dawn light. It was intensely cold, and the ground was hard as iron and sheathed in frozen dew. After a nerve-wracking night and no sleep, we were all tired. And yet the fear of capture was so acute that I was jittery and ready to fight with a moment’s warning.
As we approached the gate along the empty road, I was surprised to see wagons gathered by the gate, with the Assassins heaving their wares into the backs of them.
“I thought we were riding hard,” I asked one of Hassan’s captains, who had been watching for our approach. “To evade Mongke or Hulegu’s men. These wagons will slow us terribly.”
Abdullah translated for me. “They say that no matter how hard we ride, we could never evade pursuit, should the Mongols decide to launch one. All depends on Hassan’s embassy.”
“Do you think he will have been received by the Khan yet?” I asked, though I knew the answer.
The Assassin captain looked at me like I was a buffoon, though he was kind enough to explain. “Mongke makes himself insensible from excessive drink very early every night. And though he wakes early, it takes much time for him to bestir himself for the day’s business.”
I nodded, for I had known many man who lived lives taken over by drink. I had been one of them myself.
The Mongols who guarded the gate were well armed and armoured with mail and steel helms beneath their thick coats and furs. They watched us all very closely, holding lamps out and peering into the Assassin’s wagons as they strolled through us all.
We would be caught, I was sure of it. The gate, such as it was, remained closed and I did not know how I could force it open. We had little chance of killing every guard before one of them raised a cry of warning that would bring hundreds or thousands more down upon us.
Not only was I not supposed to leave the city, I was harbouring criminals. The two young Mongols hid their faces beneath their fur hoods and held tight to each other.
I gathered the rest of my brood to me. Eva, Stephen, and Abdullah. In outer appearance, we were dressed much the same as everyone else; our thick overcoats hiding our amour or our robes, and our hoods hiding our faces. We kept our voices low and spoke barely at all.
Around us, the Assassins busied themselves. Hassan’s captain stood by my side, watching the Mongols all around us from the corner of his eyes.
A guard approached, lantern held high, and the Assassin directed us away from him while he went to intercept. Another Assassin took control of our group and directed us to one of the wagons, where he invited us to load our belongings.
While the sky lightened, and preparations continued, they moved us between them so to hide us from the Mongols in plain sight. I noticed how the Assassins formed another group like ours, with the same number, and one of them was tall, like me. This group was allowed to be inspected by a guard, and then we were swapped for their position. Not for nothing were the Assassins said to be cunning in the extreme.
We waited for the gate to be opened and I was gripped with a sudden, mad fear that William would be standing there as it did so, backed by a thousand battle-ready savages. No matter how much I told myself it was merely a weakness of my own heart, I could not shake the fear.
As the sun rose, finally the gate was opened.
William was not there.
It was the harsh and barren landscape with the silhouettes of groups of horses huddled together against the freezing night dawn. I breathed a short sigh of relief but remained tense and anxious as we mounted our horses all together, with us fugitives in the centre and the Assassins shielding us from view as well as they could. We kept our heads down, in shadow within our hoods.
Finally, we rode out through the gate into the freezing valley beyond. Our immediate route was to follow the frozen river southward as it wound along the valley, edged by the sharp hills.
We went slowly. The horses were hardy but it was so cold it was a wonder they were willing to walk at all. The oxen pulling the wagons were subdued as if they could sense our tension, our fear. I had heard often how the Assassins were joyfully willing to die for their lord, but they seemed fearful also to me. Perhaps it was concern not for themselves but for Hassan al-Din, who we left behind at the palace with only one attendant so that he could secure our safe passage.
If Hassan were killed, or his deal refused, we would be brought back and I would be executed by Hulegu, who was arriving on the other side of the city that day.
That freezing morning, facing my imminent death at the hands of my immortal enemy, it is fair to say that I ached for my home.
England.
I had felt cold there, but the deep, crisp snows of English winter were nothing like the bitter, dry, howling winds of the foothills and mountains at the edge of the great grassland plains. I hated it, suddenly, hated the strange land, that was so lifeless and miserable that I understood at once how it could create such a foul people as the Mongols and other ta
rtar peoples. England was green, with thick, dark, rich soil that crumbled between one’s fingers. Soil that was deep, and always moist, and grew tall, healthy crops.
The hills of my homeland in Derbyshire were beautiful, steep and hard in places but civilised and on a human scale. My dear hills were so unlike the savage grey and black giants that jutted up into the bleached skies in the distance, like dungeon walls. I knew, deep in my bones, that God had lovingly sculpted Derbyshire and all England with his own hand, and had set the climate to make civilised men, and good women. A land hard enough to make us strong, and courageous but generous enough to breed within us a fundamental decency and goodness of spirit.
That land of central Asia seemed to be scoured by the hand of some demon, bordered by mountains thrown up out of the bowels of the Earth. Even the low hills that hemmed us in were an unnatural shape, with peaks like the edge of a curved blade, or the backs of giant serpents undulating across the landscape in a grotesque parade. Hot enough to kill a man in summer, cold enough in winter that many a traveller never awoke in the morning but lay frozen to the ground, as if the land wanted to devour him. A brutal place that bred brutal men. A people without the luxury of civilisation.
A pale sun dragged itself halfway into the sky to our left, casting long shadows across the stony ground. From our right came the howling, bitter wind that could cut through half a dozen layers of clothing, including furs, to numb one side of your body and drive painful aches deep into your bones.
All the while, I felt the presence of Karakorum behind me. Would it be a galloping army come to take me away? Would William himself lead them? Would I be killed here, in this God-forsaken nightmare land? What would happen to Eva? Had I led her into ruin, finally?
It was the end of the day, as the sun grew weak and rested for a moment on the distant mountains when I had my answer.
A shout went up and the procession of Ismailis halted and turned. I could see nothing behind us but more broken land and a sky turned pale as ice, with a sun falling away to the West as if it were glad for the shelter.
Riders.
My hand went to my sword, and Eva moved to my side so that we could fight together against the pursuing enemies.