by Dan Davis
“We must go,” I said to Hassan. “Make their sacrifice meaningful.”
He shook me off, turned, and shouted orders at his men inside the castle. Those orders were relayed, and the two mangonels on the walls slammed into action moments apart, and their projectiles hurtled out over the combat.
Bright fire erupted. Both objects smashed into the massed, disorganised group of Mongols and burst into flames. The roar of the fire reached me and I saw men dancing in the fire. The sound of screams came next.
“By God,” I said. “Is that naphtha?”
He ignored me and shouted more orders down into the yard below. The front gates were opened and the fedayin marched out. Hassan was sending his troops out to take the fight to the Mongols rather than wait to be overrun.
The mangonels launched again, the fire bursting close to the immortals, surely engulfing and killing some of them, too.
“Hassan,” I shouted. “I am leaving, now. You are coming with me.”
He nodded, tearing his eyes away from the sight of his men dying in the flames. Bowstrings hummed as the assassin archers loosed a volley before advancing.
We fled back through the castle, his remaining men nodding to Hassan or offering a prayer or some other words. It was the end of their lives, their families, of their entire world. Their hopes for vengeance would be kept alive in Hassan, while they would achieve great holiness through their deaths, and spend eternity in Heaven with all the rewards that were due to them. Some were grim, others had the mad look that some men are filled with when they feel touched by God and have gone beyond the fear of death. I could only imagine what would happen to the women and children hiding deep within the castle. The best they could hope for would be a lifetime of slavery.
“Jalal,” I shouted when we drew near. “He is here. Go, now.”
Jalal’s immortals were out of the gate like wolves after a deer. Sleek, swift despite their armour, they slipped through the gate and were gone.
“How long should we wait?” Thomas asked.
I pushed to the front, shoved Hassan at Thomas for him to take care of, and grabbed Abdullah. “You stay by my side at all times. Leave my side and die, understand?” He swallowed and nodded. The man shook all over like a newborn lamb.
Eva had Stephen by the upper arm, and he clutched his shield to his chest.
“We go now,” I said to Thomas. “Orus, Khutulun. Go.” I nodded out the gate and they slipped out. One by one I ordered my people out and counted them all to be sure no one was left behind.
Once clear of the protection of the castle, wind howled down from the peaks and icy dust whipped into my face. Ahead, Jalal and his men were cutting through the enemy and their shouts and clashing blades rang in the bitter air. I pulled on my helm, grabbed my shield and held it ready, placing Abdullah behind and on the flank opposite the enemy. Arrows flew but not toward us, yet. Ahead, my people stomped across the hilltop, heading across the enemy front at an oblique angle so we could get by them and off into the passes and secret ways through the mountains.
Hassan, Jalal, and his men knew them, and so I prayed to God that he would spare at least one of those Saracens so that we might find our way clear of the heathen Mongols.
We made good progress and the fighting was clear of us. A few arrows clattered on the stones around us but it seemed Jalal’s men were keeping the enemy well occupied.
Then I heard—or rather, felt—the thing I dreaded most. A drumming on the hard ground, growing stronger.
“Cavalry!” I shouted, in French, English, Arabic. “Horsemen! Riders!”
I stopped to get a better look and saw a group of twenty horsemen charging into the flank of Jalal’s men. They were lancers, on armoured horses. Madness that the Mongols had brought them up the mountainside for a castle assault. But the Mongols were nothing if not full of surprises. The Assassins were run over, speared, and broken up.
How I wished I had squires. Even one, who could pass me a spear or a polearm of some sort. Together with two squires, we could face a mounted attack with our flanks protected.
“Run to our people,” I shouted at Abdullah and pushed him ahead while I followed, keeping an eye on the horsemen. “Come together,” I shouted at the others. Stopping, I slung my shield and removed my helm. “Come together,” I roared again.
Some of the horsemen turned to face our direction. One gestured at me with his bloodied lance.
Up ahead, my people were gathering in a group. The ones up ahead filing back, the ones nearest to me looking back for instruction.
“Keep moving,” I shouted as I hurried to them. “Keep moving but stay together.”
I reached them and Thomas turned his helmeted head to me. “By God, Richard. What I would not give for a horse.”
I laughed, clapped him on the back and jammed my helm back on my head.
“On, on,” I called, harrying them like a dog herding a flock. I searched in vain for a place where we could make a stand if we needed to.
The hillside curved away in all directions, and there were boulders and large stones, but nothing that would interrupt a cavalry charge.
“Richard!” Eva shouted from ahead. The ground thundered as the horsemen moved toward us.
I threw Abdullah at Hassan. “Keep him alive,” I said.
Eva pushed Stephen at him too. “And look out for Stephen,” she said. Eva was a warrior but she still had a woman’s heart, filled with compassion for useless boys like Stephen, a weak English monk who was nothing more than a liability.
“Two lines,” I shouted. “Thomas, Eva, you stay in front of Hassan. Work together. Orus, Khutulun, with me, understand? With me.”
Orus looked wild, eyes bulging and filled with the madness for blood, and the lust for glory of combat, of death. Khutulun was calm as a mountain lake, holding a spear in one hand and her wicked curved blade in the other focused on the advancing cavalry.
Putting distance between my first and second lines, I edged forward, checking that my two Mongol rebels stayed with me. Six horsemen, their lances low, came on. Behind them, two more circled to my left so that they could take us in the flank. I would have to let Eva and Thomas take care of them.
The Mongols had no need to thunder at us in an almighty charge. Their horses were heavy, and horse and rider were weighed down with armour. So high in the mountains, the air was thin and the horses laboured mightily. I considered attempting to force them to chase me down and thus exhaust them. But I put that thought aside. They were too many, and even if I could out-pace the horses, it would take too long.
“Come on,” I shouted. And I ran at the nearest rider. His armour was not mail but a kind of coat of plates, dozens or hundreds of small rectangular iron pieces covered his body and his legs to the knees. The horse had armour over its face and neck. He swerved to spear me but I was faster than he could have expected and I changed direction, ducked under his horse’s nose and leapt up on the other side. My first thrust glanced off the armour covering his legs, jarring my arm. I swung my shield up and smacked it into him, hard, but he stayed in the saddle and swerved on, heading for Eva behind me.
Orus brought a horse down, somehow. Khutulun dragged a Mongol from his saddle.
I was letting myself down.
Another rider was almost on me. This one had no lance but held a single-edged curved sword raised in one hand while he shouted some barbarian scream at me. He was armoured like the others. Where were they weak? His helm had no protection over his face. His raised arm showed a very large gap in the armoured plates. His hands had no protection, not even gloves.
Charging at him, I twisted and cut across his front to his left side and swung a tight cut at the hand that held the reins, parried the blow that he aimed at my head and slipped the point of my sword up into a gap between his ribs. My blade caught, twisted between two ribs. I grabbed my sword with both hands and pulled. He screamed in anger and pain as he tumbled from his saddle and smacked hard into the ice-hard ground, his felt-booted left foot cau
ght in the stirrup. Before I could finish him off, he was dragged away by his horse leaping ahead.
Eva and Thomas had brought down the rider I let through and Eva stabbed at him on the ground. Two riders circled Khutulun, shouting at her as they cut at her with their blades. I ran at the nearest one, crunching across the hilltop with my breathing loud inside my helmet. The Mongol faced away from me, all focus on Khutulun who darted and slipped from their attacks. From behind him, I slipped my blade between the saddle and the leg protection from his long coat of plates, slicing a vicious, deep gash along the back of his thigh. He kicked his horse away from me automatically, leaving Khutulun and I to kill the other.
So quickly, the tide had been turned. We outnumbered them now, and we killed them all but one, who rode away, bleeding heavily.
Jalal’s immortals had been hit hard, and half of them had been killed.
But their attack had been so powerful that the Mongols had retreated. Pulled back down the hill.
I rallied everyone to me, and we continued on with our escape. Jalal’s surviving men were almost all wounded in some way but I ordered them to cover our flanks and the rear, while Jalal and Hassan took the lead to guide us through the hidden ways.
We were free.
But we were far from safe.
It was hard, those first few days. Very hard. There were Mongols everywhere, and even with the masters of stealth guiding us through their homeland, we had to spend a lot of time hiding, huddled together, shivering and waiting for enemy scouts to pass by. We were spotted many times. Sometimes, they must have decided that a few fugitives far across a valley or gorge were simply not worth pursuing. Other times we had Mongols hunting us through the hills.
Jalal’s immortals, hungry and damaged though they were, saved us through laying ambushes for our pursuers, and by leading them away down blind gorges while the fedayin climbed up and out and met back up with us. One time, three men waited behind to spring an ambush. We heard the fighting. Despite Eva cursing me for my foolishness and selfishness, I crept back close enough to see the remains of my immortals being hacked to pieces by the Mongol survivors.
After such heroic actions, the Jalal’s immortal fedayin were down to two men. Black-eyed killers named Radi and Raka, dangerous and violent even before the disaster that had befallen them. Hassan, Jalal, Radi and Raka had lost their home and their families, including women and children, had been slaughtered or taken as prisoners while they fled in the faint hope of exacting future revenge on those responsible. It was a wonder that they did not break entirely but still I watched them all closely, lest they turn on us Christians.
My chief fear was that they would be seized by their lust and attempt to take Eva in the night but it was not long before I was disabused of that notion. Whatever their natural inclination may have been, the harshness of the journey turned each of us into hunched, shuffling old men who lusted only after warmth, bread, and blood.
Still, I endeavoured always to sleep with one eye open.
It was hundreds of miles to Baghdad, away to the southwest. Unimpeded and with enough supplies, we could have walked it in less than a month. But we could not walk straight there. Our route crisscrossed through the mountains and hills and later took us down from the highlands onto the vast Persian plateau before descending to the green plains of ancient Babylonia. First, we went northwest toward Armenia, driven away from Persia by the huge numbers of Mongols travelling in groups from place to place. They were everywhere. Soon, we discovered that they were many even in the north. We knew that Armenia and Georgia were in a state of formal submission but it was clear that the Mongols were a constant presence in those Christian lands, with horsemen carrying messages and even wagons carrying supplies through the winter. We spent many hours lying hidden on the bitter, hard ground in shallow depressions while we waited for groups of riders to pass.
If it had not been for the contacts that Hassan had in various small and scattered communities, we would certainly have perished. As it was, we barely made it. The journey was harder than any before, though it was far shorter in distance and in time than our previous crossings of central Asia.
It was not long before I had entirely forgotten what it was to be warm. My belly ached from hunger so severe that it was agony on occasion and many of us, myself included, woke ourselves in the darkness with involuntary wailing. We grew thin. The people who kept us for a night or more were themselves suffering in hunger. But even up on the plateau, it was not so cold as up in the mountains and so we could at least thaw ourselves a little.
One night, in a sheltered valley, we huddled in an outbuilding. The farmer and his extended family were asleep inside, the women and girls unseen by us. The trees of their orchard had been cut down and carted off by a band of Turkomen soldiers while the family hid in the hills. While the father was sympathetic and treated Hassan with respect, he could offer us nothing but a draughty roof where his sheep used to live. During the night, a hushed argument amongst Jalal’s two surviving fedayin welled up and broke out. Hassan and Jalal subdued Radi and Raka, physically pinning them until they relented, but the bitterness between the Assassins remained for days. When we bartered for strips of dried goat two days later, Radi and Raka were not allowed to eat so much as a bite.
“They wanted to eat the family,” Hassan admitted to me later.
“You did right to punish them,” I said, although I could not judge them too harshly, for I had momentarily considered the very same thing. Still, it did nothing to allay my fear of the desperate killers.
“If it comes to it,” I whispered one day to Eva while we walked, far back behind the others. “We will kill the Assassins, drink their blood and eat them.”
She screwed up her face but nodded. “Thomas will not like it,” she said.
Even without speaking their language, I knew that Orus and Khutulun would have committed any atrocity if it meant getting their revenge on Hulegu and William. I did not care what Abdullah thought.
“Stephen will be trouble, too,” I said.
“No,” Eva said. “He will be first in line.”
It was true that the monk had dealt with the hardship well, far better than I had expected. When his shoes wore away to pieces, he silently cut strips from his clothes and bandaged up his bleeding feet and continued on without a word. In response to my gaze, he merely nodded once and set his eyes on the horizon once more. Yes, he did rather well. Especially as he remained a mortal, as did Abdullah. Still, Eva’s certainty about him surprised me.
“Have you not noticed?” she asked, incredulous at my naivety. “Stephen is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He would kill us all if it gave him what he wanted.”
“And what does he want?”
“I do not know,” she said.
“He wants the Gift,” I said. “He wants to become one of us.”
“Obviously,” Eva said, rolling her eyes. “But that is only a stepping stone toward the shores of his ambition.”
I should have heeded her words, and the sense of foreboding that they aroused in me.
Other than Stephen and Abdullah, Hassan was the only other mortal amongst us. He was a remarkable man. A warrior, a leader, and a diplomat. Yet, the fall of his people, the loss of his castle, the deaths and unknown fate of the men, women, and children who he had sworn to protect, all weighed heavy on him. The first few days he was so dejected that I expected him to turn back or go mad. But, like Stephen, there was some ember deep within him that did not go out. And, despite the privations, he started to come back to himself.
Hatred can be a powerful motivation.
Stephen and Abdullah helped me to feed Eva, Thomas, Orus and Khutulun with our blood. While Hassan allowed Jalal and the fedayin to drink from him.
The mortal men resented it, for it was degrading and uncomfortably intimate, but they did it all the same. With familiarity, it became less unpleasant for them and even at times seemed to be an almost ritualistic undertaking. A ritual, if one could ca
ll it that, which was as disturbing as it was comforting. What is more, the immortals made sure to take good care of the mortal providers of their sustenance and usually offered them the first of the food and water.
So, stage by stage, over weeks that turned to months, we crisscrossed the highland plateau and finally descended to the fertile plains fed by the Tigris and the Euphrates. It was there where Abdullah, finally, began to show his worth. For all his faults, and for all he cowered in fear at the sight of physical danger, he could talk the hind legs off of a donkey. Local people would challenge us with scowls on their faces and after only a few moments listening to Abdullah jabbering away at them, they would be leading him into their homes for refreshments and begging his pardon for the state of the place.
The land around Baghdad, stretching for fifty miles or more from the city, was something like paradise on Earth. After so long in the pale, dusty, frozen hills and uplands, I had almost forgotten what deep green looked like. It was a land of superbly ordered canals and irrigation ditches, dividing the land into perfectly arranged parcels. It was a balm for the soul, I do not mind admitting so, despite it being the Saracen heartland. I felt like I could breathe again. The people were wary but welcoming, and they were of a healthier stock than the desiccated folk just up over the hills in Persia.
They were aware that the Mongols were threatening the caliph and they were understandably concerned. And no matter what we said, they did not believe that the Mongols could come that very year to threaten their great city.
And finally, after months of walking, we were there. We were exhausted and dragging our feet along the road, looking like the desperate beggars that we were.
The city of Baghdad was on the horizon, her walls every bit as imposing as their legend had suggested even from a distance. Towers jutted up all along the lengths of the varied walls and behind them thrust the peaks of minarets, some glinting in the powerful sunlight. Coming as we were from the sparsely populated wilderness, running for cover at the sight of horsemen on the horizon and conversing with locals only rarely, the masses of people travelling to and fro along the roads into the city were quite overwhelming and we gathered close to each other like a clutch of newborn chicks.