by Dan Davis
No one answered, and Abdullah slumped.
“The Mongols will be surrounding this place soon enough,” I said. “These famous snows may never come. Either way, the Assassins can only slow the advance of the Mongols. They can never stop them.”
“Can we take the immortals,” Thomas said, “and cut through to Hulegu?”
“We should retreat,” Stephen said.
I agreed. “But where can we go?”
“Is it not obvious?” Thomas said. “We return to Acre and prepare our people for the coming storm.”
“That is a long journey,” Eva said.
Thomas was not concerned. “It may take Hulegu another year to conquer all of these mountain lands. And then he must subdue Baghdad to the south of here so that his path and his supply lines are unchallenged. Surely that siege will last at least a year, perhaps even more. Then he will take Damascus and the rest of Syria before he comes for us. We have time.”
Abdullah, who had been translating as usual for Orus and Khutulun had stopped at some point, and the Mongols were urging him to explain what we were speaking off. He stared at nothing. As if he was looking at something a thousand miles off. Khutulun turned to Stephen and asked him.
“We kill Hulegu,” Stephen said in French, speaking slowly and using elaborate gestures. “We kill Hulegu in three years.”
She jumped up, spoke to Orus, and both of them babbled at me.
“Yes, yes,” I said, holding up my hands, “be silent, will you, you damned barbarians. You are quite right. That is too long to wait.”
Stephen laughed. “But you will never die. You may live another century, at least. What is three years to you?”
“We will all die,” I said. “We may not even survive this month if we do not flee before the Mongols encircle us. The longer we wait, the stronger Hulegu becomes. He is on the move with his army, he will be more vulnerable in such circumstances than if he is settled in a palace in Damascus.”
“How, then?” Thomas asked. “How do we take him?”
No one had an answer.
“Armenia,” Stephen said. “They have submitted to Mongol rule but they are good Christians and must chafe under the yoke. There must be men who would ally with us. Or Georgia, if not.”
“I suppose that will have to do,” I said. “Does anyone have any knowledge of those kingdoms? Or any possible allies there? Thomas? No? Do you expect us to walk from place to place, asking strangers if they would spare some food, shelter, and some blood for a group set on murdering their overlords?”
Judging by the despair on their faces, I had them where I wanted them. All I had to do was to persuade them that attacking Hulegu and William in the mountains, there and then, was the only possible course of action.
But fate decided otherwise.
“Baghdad.”
We all turned to the voice who had spoken into the silence I had crafted.
Abdullah stood to one side, a cup in his hand. While we stared at him, he poured himself another cup of wine and drank it off. He turned and looked at me.
“Baghdad. We should go to Baghdad.”
Thomas laughed. “Why would we do that?”
“It is the strongest city in the world,” Abdullah said. “If any place can resist the Mongols, it is there.”
Thomas turned to me. “We would not get within a hundred miles before being killed.”
Abdullah responded. “I could guide us to the city. Through the city. Get us an audience with the Vizier.”
More of us laughed. I smiled to myself. “You would get us an audience with the most powerful man in the city, other than the caliph?” I said. “And how would you manage that, Abdullah?”
“Well, you see…” He poured another cup of wine and drank it. “The Vizier is my uncle.”
***
Two young rafiqs escorted me through Firuzkuh Castle but turned away from Hassan’s quarters and brought me out into the freezing pre-dawn courtyard. An old man guarded the door and he handed me a thick blanket that I wrapped around my shoulders. I nodded my thanks but he only sneered, full of contempt.
The rafiqs led me across to the front of the castle and there on the wall stood Hassan, wrapped in a cloak, staring out at the darkness. A bitter wind whipped at the fabric. The old men surrounding him fell into silence and backed away along the wall as I approached, and the rafiq announced my presence. To the east, the peaks were silhouetted against the rising sun beyond the horizon.
“They tell me that you are preparing to flee,” Hassan said without turning around.
I went and stood beside him. There was little to see out there but shadow and a cold that stung my eyes. The icy wind filled my ears, making them ache in moments.
“I was coming to tell you,” I said, speaking over the wind.
“Tell me?” he said. “You mean, to ask my permission.”
I pursed my lips. “I have fulfilled my part of the bargain. It is unfortunate that your people were not stronger. Not as strong as I believed.”
I expected him to berate me for that, for it was a grave insult, despite also being the truth.
Instead, he sagged and leaned his hands upon the crenellation in front of us. In one hand, he grasped something, crumpled up.
“Not as strong as I believed, either,” he said. His hood masked his face.
“Have you had another communication?” I asked, pointing to his hand
He took a deep breath and growled out a great cloud. “Betrayed. We are betrayed by our own master.”
A ball of apprehension formed in my guts. “What has he done?”
“You know that Rukn al-Din was besieged? He has surrendered and delivered himself and his family into the hands of Hulegu. He has ordered that all castles, all of us, submit also.”
I leant on the crenellation and turned to look at Hassan. His eyes glistened in the shadow. It was no wonder that he wept, for it was as deep a betrayal as I had ever heard.
“What are the terms of the surrender?” I asked. “For us, I mean?”
He scoffed. “The terms are that his family gets to live, and the rest of us will be killed and enslaved. Our women will be taken. Everything we have, everything we are, destroyed.”
“Good God,” I muttered. “But you will not surrender.” It was not a question.
“We shall make them pay with their lives,” Hassan said. I saw, then, that he wept from the anguish but also due to the depths of his rage. “But we will fall. All will be lost.”
“So,” I said. “We will flee at first light. You would not believe it, but Abdullah, our Abdullah, is the nephew of the vizier of Baghdad. He was banished, disowned, so it is certainly a risk returning with him. But we shall attempt to kill Hulegu there. When his armies surround Baghdad, it will take them months, perhaps years, to bring down those walls. While he is encamped, we shall slip through the lines and kill him, his men, and my brother.” He did not respond. “What do you think, Hassan? It is the best course of action if we wish to avenge the dead, no? Who knows, perhaps Rukn al-Din will be with Hulegu in the camp and you can kill the man yourself.”
“No,” he said. “It is too late.”
I could not believe what I was hearing. The defeatism had spread even to him.
“What do you mean, no? Come with us, Hassan. Bring Jalal and his men. Even your others, the savage immortals. Preserve your most powerful forces.”
“Richard,” he said, turning to look at me for the first time. “It is a fine plan. But you are too late.”
He pointed out across the wall into the darkness beyond. Even as I looked, the first rays of morning light rose over a gap in the mountains, and I saw.
The other assassins on the walls gasped and exclaimed.
Men, horses. Mongols in their hundreds. I could even make out the beams and trusses of their great siege machines being assembled.
“But the southern gate,” I said. “The route across the mountains. We must move, now.”
Hassan stayed perfect
ly still. “My men have brought me reports all night. The Mongols are already in the hills. It is no use. All we can do is make them pay dearly.”
I grasped his shoulder and turned him to face me. I sensed his men all around us come forward, ready to strike me down.
“You must act, now,” I said. “So there are Mongols in the hills. We can cut through them, Hassan. Think, man. Pull yourself together, for the love of God. Lead us out, Hassan.”
He nodded, slowly. “The woman and children. I cannot abandon them to their fate.”
“Their fate will be the same no matter where you chose to die,” I said. “But you can still kill Hulegu. You can. But only if we take the best fighters and go. Now. Right now.”
He stared at me. “Make your preparations. I must speak to my people.”
While I ran back, he called everyone but the sentries to the jamatkhana. Standing ready by the southern gate, my people strained and fretted. Stephen suggested that I overpower the guards so that we could go before any more of the Mongols circled into our path.
Eventually, the assassins emerged, and Hassan himself came to us, along with Jalal.
“It has been decided. Jalal will lead the immortals and go with you to Baghdad. I will keep the others, my savages. I will turn them against the Mongols when the time comes.”
“What will you do?” I asked him.
“They will send an envoy to negotiate terms,” he said, his voice flat and his eyes distant. “I shall welcome them in and do everything in my power to prolong the negotiation. That should at least grant you a day, perhaps more.”
Jalal could barely wait until his lord finished speaking. “All of us begged him to flee,” he said to me. “We want him to leave. To avenge our families. It need not be you, why not allow—”
Hassan waved his hand. “Negotiation is a knife edge and—”
An almighty bang shook the castle around us. Dust fell down from the ceiling.
We ran through the corridors to the courtyard and up to the wall.
You have to give it to the Mongols. They were a horse people, from the steppe, from the endless grasslands. They had never built anything permanent, not even a timber hall, let alone a fortified settlement or a castle. And yet, in fifty years or so, they had become masters of siege warfare. Rather, they had kidnapped masters from Cathay and pressed them into service. But not only that, they had provided the necessary logistics so that these masters could ply their trade.
In less than half a day, they had dragged timbers the size of ship masts up the hillside, assembled the first of the massive engines, and launched the first missile. An A-frame crane perched over the second trebuchet and men covered the structure like ants. The first trebuchet was already being reset.
In front of the engines, dozens of Mongol troops stood in war gear, gesturing at the walls and towers of our castle.
Already planning their assault.
“They do not mean to assault us today?” Jalal asked.
While we watched, the trebuchet launched another stone projectile at us. The long arm moved in deliberate slowness through a vast curve, flinging the sling over at the top of its arc. The massive stone rose into the sky. It seemed to be coming right for me, though I could not quite believe it. The fact that, out of the entire length of the defensive wall, the murderous boulder would be coming directly at me seemed absurd. I almost laughed.
“Is that—” Hassan began.
I dived to my side, shoving Hassan and Jalal down before me with all my strength, sending them sprawling.
The impact was so loud, so close, that I felt it resounding through my body and for a long moment I thought I was hit. Debris and dust filled the air and my ears rang.
It had clipped the crenellation right where we had been standing. The boulder had then crashed into the courtyard and obliterated an unlucky rafiq. Other than a great smear of blood of his body was gone, but a weeping relative or friend clutched the dead man’s tattered clothing. Someone else held aloft one of his severed arms in a corner fifty feet away. After bouncing once, the massive rock had crashed into the wall of a workshop and stopped.
After a moment where we checked ourselves for injury, Hassan and Jalal began shouting orders. The castle’s mangonel crews were ordered to take out the enemy’s trebuchets. Every able-bodied man was ordered to take up their weapons. The fedayin began to arrive, dressed in their full panoplies.
I hurried through the courtyard to my people at the gate.
“We are too late,” Thomas shouted from the wall above. “They are in the hills.”
I climbed to the wall and looked out at the jumble of rocks and hills. My heart sank. “Those devious savages.”
Dozens, perhaps hundreds of Mongol soldiers were busy setting up positions all across the hillside, their true number and activities obscured by the rises in the jagged landscape.
“Are they there to keep us in?” Thomas asked. “Or are they preparing to assault the walls?”
There were bundles of arrows being stacked with each group of ten Mongols. I could see no ladders or ropes but that did not mean they were not there.
“Either way, we must attack them now,” I said. “Break through and flee before we are trapped.”
Thomas looked at me as if I was mad. “Break through? How, Richard?”
In truth, I had no idea. “We must break through, and so we shall do it.” I clapped him on his back. We ran down to the others at the gate, as the castle walls boomed from the impact of further strikes. Would the walls crumble in a day? Would the Mongols even wait, or would they attempt to scale the walls directly?
“We have a fight on our hands,” I said. “A rare fight. Listen, we will go through the gate and we will stay together. Do you all hear me? We will stay together. Not only do we have to cut our way through the men outside, we must fight off all pursuit, and avoid or slaughter any patrols we meet, for days on end. Our provisions will be only what we can carry, and what we can take from our enemies. The passes over the peaks cannot be traversed by horses, and so we will be footsore for a long while. Then when we reach the foothills, we shall take the horses of the Mongols, and ride for Syria.”
They stared at me, apprehensive and unsure.
“Take heart. We get to show God what we are made of today, my friends. Are your swords sharp? Straps tightened? Make your final preparations, and I shall see what assistance we will receive.”
They turned to go over their equipment. I was most concerned with Stephen and Abdullah, who were neither warriors nor immortals. If Stephen died, it would make no difference but I needed Abdullah to get into Baghdad. They each had a helm to protect their head but no one would provide mail for a useless scholar. I could protect Abdullah from anyone who attacked with swords and even spears but we were all at terrible risk from those wicked Mongol bows.
“We need shields,” I said to the Assassins who were helping to equip me for the breakout. “Bring us shields, enough for each of us.” Of course, their home was under attack and they were understandably distracted, so I went to find Hassan or anyone senior enough who could order their men to find shields for my people.
The castle was in subdued chaos. Men ran across the courtyards and along the walls, carrying bundles of javelins. Most wore their mail, and many already had their conical helms.
A group of captains stood around Hassan up on the wall by the northwest tower, protected from the trebuchet by the mass of the tower itself. I pushed through the mass of men and called for Hassan. Before I could reach him, Jalal appeared and cut me off.
“Richard, listen. This is what will now happen. My men will leave first by the south gate. We will engage the enemy. You will break through, and my lord Hassan will go with you.”
I had questions that I wished to ask. What if we all joined together and routed the enemy on the south slope, perhaps we might lead a mass breakout from the castle and perhaps hundreds could escape into the hills. I wanted the immortals to come with me, to protect us on t
he road and to be used against Hulegu and William, so why not send the savage immortals, or even better, just the ordinary mortal fedayin?
“What about the immortals that you made with your blood, Jalal? Are they to stay?”
“They will replicate their success and charge the engineers. This may prolong our siege but either way should draw in the main forces to the front, hindering pursuit of you and Hassan, while my men tie down forces at the rear.”
It was the best chance for me to escape, so I asked no more questions but one. “Can you find shields for my men?”
Time passes strangely in such moments. Did it take half a day to finish the preparations or was it almost an instant, as it seemed? Orders were shouted, advice and reminders passed along between us. My Arabic was very good but I found that I could understand not one word of the men around me, wound as tightly as they were. The stones kept pounding the wall on the other side of the castle and we stayed tight to the internal walls that we prayed would protect us from more overshooting stones or debris.
“What is taking so long?” I shouted to Jalal. “We must go, now.”
“Not until my lord is here.”
I threw down most of my gear and went hunting for the lord of the castle. I found him standing on the front wall, alone and exposed like a madman. Running to him, I saw what he looked at beyond the wall. The savage revenants that he had made using Jalal’s blood, were charging the enemy. If the plan truly had been to attack the trebuchets then it was doomed to failure, as the machines were far back from the front lines. Hundreds of men blocked their path. The revenants were outnumbered ten to one, if not more.
Still, the revenants cut through the Mongols with ease. I was strangely proud, even though I had not contributed to their skills and had never wanted them created with my blood once removed. Yet the damned revenants did feel like my grandchildren, in a way, and I could at least appreciate their work. The first fifty Mongols were killed, and the enemy sent another fifty or a hundred forward. Arrows filled the air and some of the vampire assassins fell. The Mongols clustered around the twenty or so revenants who remained fighting.