by Dan Davis
“You will welcome all cloudy days for the rest of your life,” Eva said. “And have you noticed, Thomas, that your sight is very much improved in the darkness?”
“I thought it was perhaps some quality of the stars or the air here in these parts. So, there are indeed also benefits to this terrible affliction.”
“The prime one, sir,” I said with more of a growl than would have been courteous, “being that you are now alive when you would otherwise have been dead.” You ungrateful old bastard.
I did not voice that final point because I was of course sympathetic with his situation.
The change in Thomas’ demeanour was quite severe. He was morose and close to silent most of the time, his head hanging low as he rode. Though we did not discuss it overly much, I had vast stretches on which to dwell on how he must have been feeling.
He had dedicated his life to the Templars as a man of God and of the sword. Living by the principles of chastity, obedience and poverty from his youth to old age while travelling on the Order’s business from Acre to Paris, and from Krakow to Cairo. This mission to Mongke Khan had been a desperate hope but he had undertaken it because his master commanded it and because it was his duty to protect the Christians of the Holy Land. An alliance between the Mongols and the Franks would have had a critical effect on the balance of power in the Holy Land and Thomas had believed in the potential worth of his task, despite the enormity of it.
But the man was not all duty and honour. It was clear he held the Mongols in distaste, even disgust, and I would venture that in his heart he both feared and hated them for what they had done to the Christian armies of Poland and to his brothers and the subjects of the Order who had been slain by the barbarians.
These Tartars. They are masters of war. And we are children.
His words kept echoing in my ears. They were full of bitter admiration and also deep despair. And he had spoken them before his dutiful squire Martin had been murdered in cold blood before him.
As well as the Mongols as a people, Thomas certainly felt anger and resentment at Hulegu and his men, also at my brother William.
And he resented me.
The old Templar must have cursed the day he had ever approached me in the field outside Constantinople. But we all make poor choices in our lives and it is how we learn to live with them, and ourselves, that determines whether we face the future as slaves to our failures or as masters of our destiny.
Stephen had none of my blood and he was beaten into submission by the travelling, his cheerfulness eroded by the winds, and his parched tongue shrivelled into silences that lasted for days. I watched him age, as the hunger shaved the last softness from his features and his face became stretched over the bones beneath, the soft skin turning to flaking leather.
None of us spoke much. Weariness and hunger get into you deep. All we knew was taking the next step, and the next, and so on. Weeks, months. Were there seasons flying by in those places, or did we just pass from lands of winter into vales of summer and back again, over and over?
Excitement came rarely, and it was far between each visit. Cities were wonders compared to the landscape outside, though they were often sad places with mudbrick walls designed more to keep out the wind than any attacker. Lonely monasteries would welcome us in, despite them being idolaters, and give us shelter and, if we were lucky, hot broths. There were other travellers, and sometimes they would challenge us but the Mongol laws at least prevented outright banditry. Still, barbarians that they were, they would attempt to poke their greedy fingers into everything that we had and begged gifts with such forcefulness that oftentimes the Assassins acquiesced in order to avoid murderous consequences, first for them, and then later down the road, for us.
Time passed strangely. At times, I would be astonished that it had been only that morning that some event had occurred when it seemed as though it was many moons before. While other moments would feel as though they had happened the day before when it had in fact been months.
As we barely spoke, and only rarely even looked at one another, I did not grow to know Thomas very much better, nor Stephen. And as leader of the group of Assassins, Hassan was preoccupied with driving them on, returning them home. It was clear as day that each of them was loyal, dedicated, and obedient to him. Never did I see a bitter glance thrown at Hassan’s back, nor did I ever overhear dissatisfied mumblings when he was out of his men’s earshot.
There was rarely wine to drink, and never enough to become inebriated. And so, Abdullah ceased with his nights of loquaciousness and days in misery. Instead, he reached an equilibrium of nothingness. On occasion, I would even find him staring at a distant vista, or squatting to examine a blade of grass, twisting it in his fingers.
“He is finding himself again,” Eva explained. I did not understand.
She always spent more time speaking to him, and all of them, than I ever did. I saw her place a hand on Stephen’s shoulder, or arm, or hand, many times, to reassure him that his weariness would pass and that all would one day be well. Abdullah would stare at my wife with longing in his eyes, and yet it was clear he remained terrified of her.
The Mongol pair often seemed set to leave us. Her name, I discovered, was Khutulun. His name was Orus. They would on occasion argue in hushed voices, him full of passion and her cold as ice. Abdullah would come to me every now and then to speak for them.
“You swear you will kill Hulegu,” Khutulun said.
“I have sworn it,” I would say. “It will be done.”
They found it difficult to believe but they stayed, for the time being. Where else could they go? Off from the road into the lands of the Mongols? They suggested they had potential allies here and there but they were hesitant to do so. No doubt any ally they could reach would be powerless should Hulegu turn his attention to them.
And, I soon discovered, they wanted something else.
“Will you give us your blood magic?” Orus, the man, asked. They both seemed hopeful.
“You do not want it,” I said. “You would never father a child, young man. Nor could you bear one, young lady.”
That silenced them for a while before the woman, Khutulun, responded. “I will take no husband. Ever.”
Orus, on the other hand, continued to look disturbed by my words. However, he said nothing further about it.
“Why do we flee with the Assassins?” Khutulun asked. “The people of Christ are the enemies of these people, no?”
“These people are our best hope,” I said. “Hulegu comes to conquer their homeland, and they are the only strong people between here and Syria who will stand against him.”
“They will not be strong enough,” Khutulun said.
Bit by bit, over the days and months, I picked up the history of Khutulun and Orus. The first surprise to me was that they were not lovers. They were siblings, sharing the same father and different mothers.
Their father was a chief of some tribe from an isolated and mountainous corner of the vast Mongol territories that had resisted the authority of Hulegu and his brothers for some time before being conquered and subjugated. The mother of Khutulun was herself a prize of conquest from a raid on the Tajiki tribes, who were a people closer in look to Persians, or even to Greeks or Rus, than Mongols. And it was from her mother that Khutulun got her astonishing beauty and also her wildness.
For she grew up with a love of fighting, riding, and hunting that was considered excessive for a girl but she did not care. Her father only encouraged her, because he loved her and her mother so much. Even when she reached the age where she should have been married, and she told her father and mother that she would never marry, they indulged her and believed that she would come around eventually, perhaps when she met the right suitor.
Then Hulegu had come. Their ordus was defeated and Khutulun was the greatest prize of all and he took her as one of his many wives.
Orus was a dutiful son, skilled in battle and destined to become a chief like his father. But he cou
ld not live knowing how his beloved sister would be suffering in the far-off ordus of Hulegu and so he said farewell to his home and dedicated himself to the impossible task of rescuing Khutulun.
Even though they had eventually been cornered and recaptured, I was astonished that he had managed it at all. I began to think that both of them could be even better assets than I had first imagined when it came to assaulting the ordus of Hulegu.
Little did I know quite how dangerous both young Mongols could be.
Despite what Orus and Khutulun said, the Assassins seemed to be a strong people. They travelled well, certainly better than I did through that land. I harboured a desire to learn their language, and to learn about them as a people, and to understand why they were heretics to other Saracens in Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and whether the rumours about them were true. But, though it was so long I walked and rode amongst them, I learned almost nothing until we finally reached their homelands in the mountains to the north of the Iranian plateau.
We ascended, on and off, for days. Sometimes rapidly and other times so gradually you did not notice until you turned and looked back on the way you had come. The mountains grew taller and more jagged as we reached the lands of the Assassins. They had over a hundred fortified settlements, possibly many more, but he would not give me the true figure, being that they were a secretive people. Abdullah whispered that it was most probably two hundred castles but some men desire to be givers of knowledge, even if their words are nonsense, and I waved him away. A hundred or two hundred castles, the Ismaili Assassins were certainly a powerful and well-protected people, but they were a small one.
All through that mountain range between northern Persia and the Caspian Sea, Hassan would point to peaks that we passed, and valleys that we could see, and say that there was an Assassin castle there. We stopped at a number of them, and Hassan and his people were welcomed as if they were dear family, though he assured me that they were not direct blood relatives but had great love for each other, for they all followed the true inheritor of Mohammed.
We Christians and Mongols, who were of course heathens in their eyes, were treated with courtesy and respect. But that respect was for Hassan and was only extended to us through him. I have no doubt that without his protection, those generous people would have torn us limb from limb.
But we never stayed long in those castles, despite their protestations, and Hassan would move us along, with fresh horses and provisions, from place to place. He had a message for the Master of all Ismaili Assassins, and he had to give it to him.
“Hulegu is coming, finally,” Hassan would say before we left each place. “Hulegu Khan is coming with vast armies and you must make ready.”
The people of each castle were afraid by Hassan’s warnings but they were committed to staying and holding their fortresses against the coming storm. I could not understand why they felt able to hold out against such overwhelming force in such small, isolated places with so few people in each place.
“What else can they do?” Hassan said when I asked him why they did not flee and gather in strength. “No other fortress is large enough to take them. Besides, this is their home.”
“If the walls are stormed by thousands of Mongols, it will be home to no one.”
Hassan could not find a way to explain it to me but he tried. “How could you call a place your home, if you were not willing to die to defend it?”
I had no answer to that. Wandering so far and so long, I had almost forgotten what it was to have a home.
We moved from mountain to mountain, through valleys and high passes by day, until, finally, after eight months of travelling, we reached our destination. The homeland of the Assassins.
“There it is,” Hassan said to me as we crested a ridge and looked down into the plain beyond. “The Valley of Alamut.”
All that time, all that way, listening to them talk about Alamut, I had expected a high and narrow gorge in the mountains. I heard talk of a river and lake and imagined it to be like valleys in Derbyshire, where one may stand upon the side of a vale and look across to the other, and see with perfect clarity the grazing sheep, and men and women moving about. Perhaps even a valley that, on a still day, a man might shout across from one side to the other and, though the meaning be lost, the call itself could be discerned and you might wave at each other.
Alamut was not like that.
It was vast. Wide, and flat along either side of the river, though surrounded by enormous and jagged peaks. We came in from the east and it curved away to the west until it faded into a haze of hills and peaks. In the lush lower valley were clusters of dark trees, scattered farmhouses, and well-ordered fields. Higher up on the sides, the vegetation was sparser, drier, lighter in colour. Steep pathways led up and along the uncounted jumble of slopes that undulated away along the complex valley, in between the giant, bleak peaks surrounding it all and in the far distance.
Hassan wore the expression of a man coming home. The others, too, stood and drank it in with reverence and solemnity.
I was jealous, and my heart ached for England.
Eva pressed herself against my side and slipped her hand into mine. I wondered if she felt the same sense of loss in that moment, or whether she was more apprehensive about what the end of our journey would entail. Whether we would face imprisonment, exploitation, violence.
I had dragged her all that way. And in my wake had come a Franciscan monk, a Syrian scholar, an immortal Templar, and two fugitive Mongols. Each of them looked wary of the sight before us. We were in no doubt we were all entering the heart of enemy territory.
“Will your lord truly let us stay?” I asked Hassan, for the thousandth and last time. “He will not have us all put to death for being unbelievers?”
He took a deep breath, sucking the air of his homeland into his lungs, and let it out with enormous satisfaction.
“We shall see.”
***
While the valley of Alamut was lush and beautiful, bursting with orchards and livestock and green life, the castle of Alamut was perched atop a savage peak. As soon as I laid my eyes upon it, I understood why the Assassins yet had confidence that they could resist the might of the Mongol hordes.
The enormous defensive walls of the castle sat on colossal slabs of well-eroded rock. The narrow path up to the walls crossed back and forth up the side of the valley and the final sections of that path were within arrow range from the battlements and towers that bristled along the high lines of the defences. Spars and ropes jutted up here and there, silhouetted against the blisteringly blue sky, which I recognised as the arms of catapults mounted on the walls and the tops of the towers. The realisation caused a shiver to run down my spine, as I imagined the stones that they could throw from such a height. Projectiles that could surely reach halfway along the valley floor.
“How could an army of any size assault this place?” I asked Thomas when we had dragged ourselves all the way to the top and stood beneath the walls. The entrance was up even higher still, where the road curved up and around a corner of the rocks that the walls sat upon.
Thomas shook his head. “It would take an act of God.”
“All of you should stay here,” Hassan said. “Other than Richard.”
Thomas stepped in front of me. “I do not like it, Richard. Once they have you up there, they can do as they wish with you.”
Hassan understood his fear. “I have given my word that no harm will come to him, or to any of you.”
“Your word?” Thomas said. “Your word? You are a people who survive through acts of murder. How can we ever trust your word?”
Hassan pressed his lips together and his men puffed themselves up, sensing that their lord was being insulted, or at least disrespected. Men had died for less.
I steered Thomas further to one side. Hot wind gusted up from the valley floor, bringing the smell of juniper and creosote. The sky was a searing ice blue above the castle walls and Thomas squinted beneath the hood of his
light robe.
“Thomas, these men could kill all of us, right now.”
He glanced around at the Assassins surrounding us. “We could make a fight of it, Richard.”
I nodded. “You and I might even be the last ones standing. Eva, too. Then what? How far is it to Acre? A thousand miles?”
“So that is it? You just submit to them?”
“It is not submission,” I said, urging him to understand. To see it my way. “We are negotiating. It is a trade. We cannot expect to be given shelter without giving something in return.”
He sighed and glanced up, wincing at the sky. “You cannot give them that. These damned Saracens. Our enemies. Mohammedans. God’s enemies. What they could do with this power.”
“They will help us to kill Hulegu, William, and the others.”
“Will they? And then who will they kill? The King of England?”
I hesitated. “We are a long way from such a thing, Thomas. In all likelihood, this Master of the Assassins will have us slaughtered to a man.” I patted him on the shoulder and turned to Hassan. “Lead the way.”
When I was finally led into the inner hall, deep within the castle, the Master of Assassins sat waiting for us on a low dais in an ornate but delicate throne. He was dressed in dark green robes of silk, with a sash about his waist. Over a dozen armed men stood at the ready, a handful behind the lord of Alamut, the rest arrayed about the hall. It smelled of incense and roasted spiced goat.
Still, he made us wait while he attended to some other business with clerks until, finally, Hassan was waved over. Silence fell over the hall while the leader of the Assassins glared at Hassan.
Rukn al-Din Khurshah had been the leader for a few months only. His father before him had lost his mind due to his great age, and so the respected lord, who was like a king and a pope to them all in one, was murdered. A murder committed from practical necessity, as the leadership has always passed from father to son upon the death of the elder.