by Dan Davis
Necessary and practical though it was, the new lord, Rukn al-Din Khurshah, had convicted the murderer and had him executed himself. It was likely that Rukn al-Din had ordered, or at the least encouraged, the regicide and everyone knew it. And yet the assassin still had to pay the price. It seemed strange to me, cold and improper, and yet it had secured for the Ismailis a secure succession during a time of great crisis.
Rukn al-Din was in the prime of his life, perhaps in his mid-thirties. His beard was thick and luxuriously oiled. He was not a tall man and his body looked soft; shoulders narrow and belly bulging.
Over the decades in the Holy Land, I had picked up fragments of Arabic, the language of the Saracens. Abdullah had grudgingly taught me a few phrases and the names for common items during our travel across the steppe and our stay in Karakorum. I had picked up a lot more during our return toward the west with the Assassins, listening to them work, joke, and argue when camp was made and struck.
Still, I struggled to make sense of the words that were traded by Hassan and Rukn al-Din. But with what little I did know, and by watching closely the gestures and expressions of the two men, it became clear that Hassan was angry. Furious, even. Yet, out of respect, he contained that fury.
Not only Hassan, but Rukn al-Din grew angry, too.
I was able to discern that much of it was directed at the foreigners Hassan had brought into their midst.
It was not long before Hassan turned to me.
“I have tried to explain to him,” Hassan said. “What you are. What you can do. What you could do to us. He does not understand. And so he wishes to see your abilities demonstrated for himself.”
I sighed and nodded. I had expected it and began to bare my arm so that I could cut myself, and so this Rukn al-Din could watch it heal.
“No, Richard,” Hassan said. “Not those abilities.”
Three of the bodyguards stepped forward from their positions by Rukn al-Din, and drew their swords before me, well out of striking distance.
“My weapons and armour are outside,” I said. “Down with my companions.”
Hassan drew his own sword and handed it to me, hilt first. “I have seen you admiring this blade. Now, you may try it for yourself.”
I felt a need to protest. Explain to him, to all of them, that I had never trained with one of those long-curved blades, only played with them. That I always trained to fight in armour, with helm and shield. Always, I favoured thrusting with the point of my blade and yet there I was, expected to fight, unarmoured, with a strange weapon.
Against three men.
Three of the feared fedayin Assassins, men who trained to kill without thought to their own lives, and these three young men were considered skilful and steady enough to serve as bodyguard to their king.
It was not possible, for almost any man, to fight alone against even two competent opponents. The obvious strategy is to strike with speed at one man, to drive him away from the other and to finish him before the other can bring his blade to bear.
What good strategy there was for a man to fight three others, without armour, I could not imagine.
But I did not voice my protest. It would have achieved nothing.
And anyway, I had been more than a man for some time.
“What are the rules of this bout?” I asked Hassan while I looked along the blade to discern any sign of existing damage.
“If you die,” he said, “you lose.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding while I flourished the blade to test the handling of it. “I have played this game before.”
No signal, nor even any warning, was given.
They all three attacked at once.
Their blades slashed at me as I leapt back, swept my sword up and swatted away one of them with the flat of my blade. While Hassan fled to the edge of the hall, two circled quickly to either side of me while the third threatened to attack me head on.
The only sensible thing to do was to retreat back. Only, that would end with me cornered and attacked on three sides at once.
After feinting that retreat, I leapt forward, charging the man in front. Though I surely moved faster than any man he had ever faced before, he was not so surprised as I would have liked.
His blade slashed into my left shoulder. As he pulled the cut, he stepped back and to the side with well-practised footwork, and his blade sliced through the sleeves of my tunic, and my shirt, and deep into my flesh. Pain lanced through me, a sharp ache that took my breath away.
The clever move did not save him.
I sliced up and across his throat, pulling the edge across the front of his neck. He jerked back, so the cut was not as deep or as wide as I wanted but it was enough to cut into his windpipe and one of the great veins beside it. It would take him some time to die, and he was still dangerous. Using our momentum, I grabbed hold of his sword arm and twisted as I stepped by him, throwing him back at the men behind me.
Even as I did so, the tip of a blade sliced into the back of my skull, hitting bone but sheering off.
The swordsman was on me, following up with another blow. His cuts fast and precise, I parried with the strange curved sword in my hand and cursed my lack of a shield.
From the corner of my eye, I saw the other man leap over his falling comrade and come at me from the flank.
Both twirled their weapons, flashing and frightening by their display of mastery.
Why should I fear a blade?
Years of training had taught me how to defend. Any fool can learn to swing a sword, my old teachers had told us, but a great knight is one who can protect himself from harm. Any cut could be fatal, and often was, even if it was weeks later due to infection. Any blade thrust into gaps in your armour would very likely kill you quite quickly, assuming it severed an artery. Training that gets into you when you are young gets in deep. Old habits die hard.
And there was the fear of pain, of course. An animal fear, barely controllable, that says get away from harm, from injury, from some danger or other that you know, down to your bones, will be agonising. The pain from a sword cut will take your breath away, buckle your legs, cause you to weep and to shake in spite of your desire to be virtuous.
But I could heal my wounded flesh in mere moments. And I had already felt so much pain in my life that it was like an old friend.
I forced myself forward onto him and ground my teeth as his sword slashed me across the chest. Before he could retreat, I grabbed him by the upper arm, slashing at his groin while in close and butting his face. While he reeled, I stabbed my sword into his guts, twisting and tearing it out. The foul stench of hot shit filled the air as his intestines popped out through the gash.
Sometimes, your body takes an action before you realise it. And so it was as I turned, slid sideways and slashed behind me at the last man, whose own blade missed me by a hair’s breadth. Mine caught him across the face, the impact from his skull jarring my arm. It was a poor cut, but it did the job and he retreated, wailing, his sword clattering on the tile floor. I had cut through one of his eyes and his nose was a bloody, flapping piece of gristle dangling from his face.
Someone in the hall shouted, perhaps a cry to let the man live.
But the smell of blood filled my head and I would not be denied.
I seized the man, though he flailed and attempted to flee, and slipped the curved point of my blade into his neck, slicing through the skin. While he still attempted to fight me off, I dropped my sword and grabbed him with both hands. I bent my head and placed my lips around the wound on his throat.
Oh, such sweet relief. That hot, rich blood pumped into my mouth and I gulped it down, mouthful after mouthful. It surged to fill my mouth, I swallowed, and another pulse flooded between my lips as I held him close, pressed to me like a lover. The man’s black beard tickled my nose, and I could smell olive oil on his skin and garlic in his breath. His strong, young heart beat frantically, not yet knowing it was dead.
My belly felt good. Warm and heavy, the st
rength of it spreading through me. It was not long before I had my fill, and I dropped the dying man. He was as limp as a rag doll, and his ruined face hideous to see.
The other two men lay dead also. Under my feet, the white tiled floor was smeared with blood and dark pools of it continued to spread from beneath the bodies.
Around the edges of the hall, the other bodyguards stood with their own blades drawn, staring at me, some with disgust, others wore a look of horror. All would have liked to kill me, I have no doubt.
Rukn al-Din held a cloth over his mouth and nose. His eyes were narrowed above them, glaring at me with malice. He muttered something and the guards around me advanced.
This is it, I thought. This is the place where I die.
I took a quick step and scooped up my sword.
They all froze.
“Drop your sword,” Hassan shouted. “They will not kill you.”
“I do not believe you,” I said, turning and turning to keep an eye on all of them. Yet they did not advance.
Rukn al-Din shouted at me but my Arabic was not good enough to understand.
“He says you will come to no harm,” Hassan explained, walking forward into the blood with his hands spread apart. “He wishes to see if your wounds have healed, as I told him they would.”
It seemed plausible. Anyway, even if I killed every man in the room, I would never escape from Alamut alive.
I dropped my sword and held out my arms as they seized me. Hands tore at my tunic and my undershirt, baring my shoulder and my chest to the Master of Assassins. Water was brought and they washed the dried blood away. My skin was marked with pink lines where the cuts had been. Even these seemed to fade while I watched. They turned me around and scrubbed the blood from my hair with their fingers.
Finally, they were waved away and I stood, naked from the waist up, wet and bloody. Rukn al-Din held the cloth over his mouth and nose while he stared at me, thinking. It felt as though I was being examined like livestock.
I decided that, should he order that I be led to the slaughter, I would be sure to kill him, Rukn al-Din, before they could do so.
But he muttered something to Hassan, leapt up and hurried from the stinking, filthy room, trailed by a handful of his men.
Hassan rushed forward, grabbed my elbow and dragged me from the room while the remaining men glared.
“What did he say?” I asked Hassan in the corridor. “What is happening now?”
When we reached the antechamber where his own men waited, Hassan paused and turned to me.
“I am allowed to hold you and your people at my castle, Firuzkuh. He orders me to use your blood to make thirty of my men into immortals. And with them, perhaps, he will allow us to infiltrate the Mongol army and kill Hulegu.”
***
Hassan’s Castle Firuzkuh was a journey of two days from Alamut. I was struck, time and again, by the beauty of the place. The lushness of the fields, the prosperity of the people who worked them.
“It will be very different in winter,” Hassan explained when I spoke of it to him. “The snows will fill the passes. Travel will be impossible.”
“Every winter?”
“It never fails. It is one of our greatest defences. Every settlement must be stocked with enough food and fuel every winter. We are well used to sieges here. God besieges us in our homes for months on end, every year.”
“That is why you want the Mongols to make a concerted attack. You want the snow to kill them for you.”
“The Mongols are hard people,” Hassan said. “The hardest, perhaps. But if they are caught out in the mountains when the snows come, thousands of them will die while we sit content in our fortifications. It was always the plan of ‘Alā’ ad-Dīn Muḥammad, who was the lord of all Ismailis for my entire life, and who sent me on my embassy to Mongke Khan. He wished to delay and delay, to frustrate the Mongols for long enough that they would turn their attention elsewhere.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Every time the Great Khan dies, a successor must be chosen. All campaigns are called off, all leaders return to their homeland to take part in the choosing. It has taken many years on previous choosings. It has saved Christendom when they turned back decades ago.”
“And that was why your old king sent so many fedayin to kill Mongke. Not just for vengeance but because it could save your people. But you called them all off? So that you could leave with me and my companions. Why would you do that?”
“I swore that I would do it,” Hassan said. “But it was not true. I could not call them off, even if I wished to. They are everywhere and I have no way to contact them all.”
“You lied?”
He nodded. “Lying is a moral act if it leads to furthering the aims of our people.”
Stephen was trailing close behind me, listening keenly as he often was. “This concept is known as taqiyya, is it not?”
Hassan turned to glance over his shoulder. “Where did you hear that word?”
Stephen nodded over to Abdullah, who was walking beside Khutulun, babbling away at her. “Abdullah told me about it. He said taqiyya means you can lie if there is a good reason for it, and by the law of the Mohammedans, it is no crime.” Stephen smiled, as smug as always. He never discovered that the possession of knowledge was in itself worth very little.
“No,” Hassan said, scowling. “It is much more complicated than that.”
Thomas muttered in my ear. “These people have no honour.”
Firuzkuh Castle and surrounding settlement supported a little over two hundred fighting men, and a little over five hundred people in total, including children. It was not on the highest peak, nor was it a massive fortification. But it was a remarkable place, with four towers. Two of them squat and square, and two taller and round. Like the other Ismaili castles I had seen, Firuzkuh was built expertly into the landscape. A steep and rather narrow approach from the front would confine an attacking force between a steep cliff and a jutting rock wall. To the rear, a bleak plateau that was only accessible via long and difficult paths across the jagged mountains.
Even though he had been away so long, and others had been in command of the place for years, the transition of power back to Hassan was seamless. More than that, it seemed to be a happy homecoming for the people and Hassan both. They loved him.
We were tolerated and welcomed with cold courtesy. Given fresh clothes, good food. They even had people move out of their rooms within the castle so that Eva and I could have private quarters within the walls. The others of our party shared rooms near ours.
“We are prisoners as much as guests,” Thomas pointed out on our first night.
Stephen was simply amazed by the wonders that he saw. “What a place this is to be prisoners, though, is it not? Did you see the stores they have in place already to resist a siege? Rooms and rooms. That tank with the honey, it was big enough to swim in, I swear it was.”
Eva rubbed her eyes. “Sometimes I wonder how you can know so much about the world and yet still be such a fool. But then I remember that you are very young.”
Stephen did not like that. “In what way am I being foolish?”
“You do not seem to understand the danger that we are in,” Eva said.
“Hassan loves Richard. He would not let anything happen to us.”
Thomas scoffed. “He wishes to use Richard for his own purposes.”
“Still then,” Stephen said. “It is a fair trade. Sanctuary and support in exchange for… the Gift. Richard’s Gift bestowed on thirty of the men here.”
“And the Mongols,” Eva said, smiling at him. “You are not concerned about the fact that a hundred thousand crazed barbarians are bearing down on us?”
“This castle is safe. Who could assault such a fortress?”
Thomas and I glanced at each other. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is a strong site. Sheer cliffs on two sides, steep approach from the front and a Godless wilderness to the rear. Good walls and sturdy
towers. They have catapults. But do you think two hundred men could resist ten thousand, Stephen? We could kill five hundred, a thousand, five thousand. If they were determined, they could take us here.”
Stephen shook his head. “They are marching into a trap, you heard what Hassan said. If they arrive soon, the winter snows will trap them in the mountains. If they arrive late, we will have months more to prepare. To make more men into Richard’s immortals, if need be. More like you, Thomas. Make enough, perhaps, to defeat the Mongols?”
Thomas cleared his throat. It sounded as though he growled. “And that is what we wish to do, is it? These people are Saracens. Mohammedans. Do you wish for them to be made stronger? They are our enemy. Christ’s enemy. We should do nothing to help them.”
“But these Assassins are the enemy of all other Saracens. The kingdoms of Egypt, and of Syria especially. Mortal enemies. If we help to make the Assassins powerful, they could even help us defeat the Saracens in the Holy Land. With them attacking from the rear, with thousands of immortals, who knows, we could even take back Jerusalem.”
We groaned and shouted him down.
“Your flights of fancy are of no help to us here,” Thomas said to him.
We soon retired but I could not help but dwell on Stephen’s words. It was the sheer ambition of it that struck me so powerfully. My brother seemed always to be putting into motion such grand plans, as evil as they were. He created for himself a religious sect in Palestine, preying on travellers and caravans to build his strength until he could do more, such as take over a town, then a city. Even the Holy Land itself.
And then he worked to crush the King of England, creating immortals from men like the Archbishop, and the sons of great lords. He poisoned King John and might have won control of the Crown, or at least a great part of the country for himself.
Now, he had made more immortals in the heart of the most barbaric and evil force the world had ever known. What is more, he had in some way turned them toward the Holy Land, and then meant to drive them on to conquer Christendom. If his plans succeeded, then William could end up as the King of France, or the Holy Roman Emperor, and he could rule and rule for centuries until the Second Coming of Christ.