Assassin's Creed The Secret Crusade (35 page)

He looked for the sleeping old man but he was no longer there, although Mukhlis could see his horse. Had they killed him already? Was he lying with his throat slit?

‘Rope,’ called Bayhas. He still had the dagger held to Mukhlis’s throat as one of his companions tossed him a coil of rope. Like Bayhas, he wore black and had an unkempt beard, his hair covered with a
keffiyeh
. On his back was a longbow. The third man had long hair and no beard, a wide scimitar at his belt, and was busily rooting through Mukhlis’s packs, discarding unwanted items in the sand.

‘No,’ cried Mukhlis, seeing a painted stone fall to the dirt. It had been given to him by his daughter as a good-luck gift on the day he had left, and the sight of it tossed to the ground by the robber was too much for him. He pulled away from Bayhas’s grip and rushed to Long Hair, who moved to meet him with a smile, then felled him with a vicious punch to the windpipe. The three robbers roared with laughter as Mukhlis writhed and choked in the dirt.

‘What is it?’ jeered Long Hair, bending to him. He saw where Mukhlis was looking and picked up the stone, reading the words Nada had painted on. ‘ “Good luck, Papa.” Is this it? Is this what’s making you so brave all of a sudden, Papa?’

Mukhlis reached for the stone, desperate to have it, but Long Hair batted his hand away with disdain, then rubbed the stone on his backside – laughing more as Mukhlis howled in outrage – and tossed it into the well.

‘Plop,’ he mocked.

‘You …’ started Mukhlis. ‘You …’

‘Tie his legs,’ he heard from behind him. Bayhas threw Long Hair the rope and came round, dropping to his haunches and placing the tip of his knife close to Mukhlis’s eyeball.

‘Where were you heading, Papa?’ he asked.

‘To Damascus,’ lied Mukhlis.

Bayhas sliced his cheek with the knife and he screamed in pain. ‘Where were you going?’ he demanded again.

‘His cloth is from Masyaf,’ said Long Hair, who was winding the rope around Mukhlis’s legs.

‘Masyaf, eh?’ said Bayhas. ‘Once you might have counted on the Assassins for support, but no longer. Perhaps we should pay it a visit. We may find ourselves a grieving widow in need of comfort. What do you say, Papa? When we’ve finished with you.’

Now Long Hair stood and tossed the end of the rope over a branch of the fig tree, hauling back on it so that Mukhlis was pulled up. His world went upside down. He whimpered as Long Hair tied the end of the rope to the well arch, securing him there. Now Bayhas reached and spun him. He revolved, seeing the bowman standing some feet away, rocking back on his heels with laughter. Bayhas and Long Hair closer and laughing too. Bayhas bending to him.

Still revolving, he saw the wall of the well go by, then came round again to see the three robbers, Long Hair and Bayhas, behind them the third man, and –

A pair of legs appeared from the tree behind the third man.

But Mukhlis was still spinning and the wall of the well went by again. He revolved, slowing now, to the front, where all three robbers were oblivious that another man was among them, standing behind them. A man whose face was mostly hidden beneath the cowl of the robe he wore, his head slightly bowed, his arms spread, almost as though in supplication. The old man.

‘Stop,’ said the old man. Like his face, his voice was weathered with age.

All three robbers turned to face him, tensing, ready to cut down the intruder.

And all three began to snigger.

‘What is this?’ scoffed Bayhas. ‘An aged man comes to stop our fun? What do you plan to do, old man? Bore us to death with your tales of the old days? Fart at us?’

His two companions laughed.

‘Cut him down,’ said the old man, indicating where Mukhlis still hung upside down, swaying on the rope. ‘At once.’

‘And why would I want to do that?’ asked Bayhas.

‘Because I say so,’ rasped the old man.

‘And who might you be to demand this of me?’

The old man flicked his hand.

Snick
.

54

The bowman reached for his bow but in two strides Altaïr reached him, swiping his blade in a wide arc that opened the man’s neck, slicing the bow in half and shortening his headdress with one cut. There was a soft clatter as the brigand’s bow dropped to the ground, followed by a thump as his body joined it.

Altaïr – who had not known combat for two decades – stood with his shoulders heaving, watching Bayhas and Long Hair as their expressions changed from mocking to wary. At his feet the bowman was twitching and gurgling, his blood blotted by the sand. Without taking his eyes from Bayhas and Long Hair, Altaïr dropped to one knee and drove his blade into him, silencing him. Fear was his greatest weapon now, he knew. These men had youth and speed on their side. They were savage and ruthless, accustomed to death. Altaïr had experience. He hoped it would be enough.

Long Hair and Bayhas shared a look. They were no longer smiling. For a moment the only sound around the waterhole was the soft creaking of the rope on the branch of the fig tree, Mukhlis watching everything upside down. His arms were untied and he wondered whether to try and to get free but judged it better not to draw attention to himself.

The two thugs moved apart, wanting to outflank Altaïr, who watched the ground open up between them, revealing the merchant hanging upside down. Long Hair passed his scimitar from hand to hand with a soft slapping sound. Bayhas chewed the inside of his cheek.

Long Hair took a step forward, jabbing with the scimitar. The air seemed to vibrate with the sound of ringing steel as Altaïr stopped him with his blade, sweeping his arm to push the scimitar aside, feeling his muscles complain. If the thieves made short attacks he wasn’t sure how long he could last. He was an old man. Old men tended gardens or spent afternoons pondering in their studies, reading and thinking about those they had loved and lost: they didn’t get involved in swordfights. Especially not when they were outnumbered by younger opponents. He stabbed towards Bayhas, wanting to stop the leader outflanking him and it worked – but Bayhas darted close enough with the dagger to slice Altaïr at the chest, opening a wound, drawing the first blood. Altaïr attacked in his turn, and they clashed, trading blows but giving Long Hair a chance to step in before Altaïr could ward him off. Long Hair swiped wildly with his blade, making a large cut in Altaïr’s leg.

Big. Deep. It gushed blood and Altaïr almost stumbled. He limped to his side, trying to bring the well to his flank in order to defend from the front only. He got there, the wall of the waterhole at his side, the hanging merchant at his back.

‘Have strength,’ he heard the merchant say quietly, ‘and know that whatever happens you have my gratitude and love, whether in this life or the next.’

Altaïr nodded but did not turn, watching instead the two thugs in front of him. Seeing Altaïr bleed had cheered them and, encouraged, they came forward with more stabbing, stinging sorties. Altaïr fought off three offensives, picking up new wounds, bleeding profusely now, limping, out of breath. Fear was no longer his weapon. That advantage was lost to him. All he had now were long-dormant skills and instincts, and he cast his mind back to some of his greatest battles: overcoming Talal’s men, beating Moloch, defeating the Templar knights in the Jerusalem cemetery. The warrior who had fought those battles would have sliced these two dead in seconds.

But that warrior lived in the past. He had aged. Grief and seclusion had weakened him. He had spent twenty years mourning Maria, obsessed with the Apple. His combat skills, great as they were, had been allowed to wither and, so it seemed, die.

He felt blood in his boots. His hands were slick with it. He was swinging wildly with his blade, not so much defending as trying to swat his attackers away. He thought of his pack, secured in the fig tree, the Apple inside. To grasp the Apple would be to emerge the victor, but it was too far away and, anyway, he’d vowed never to use it again; he’d left it in the tree for that very reason, to keep its temptation out of reach. But the truth was that if he’d been able to reach it he would have used it now, rather than die like this and surrender the merchant to them, surely condemning him to an even more painful and tortured death because of Altaïr’s actions.

Yes, he would have used the Apple, because he was lost. And he’d allowed them to turn him again, he realized. Long Hair came at him from the periphery of his vision and he shouted with the effort of fending him off, Long Hair meeting his parries with attacking strikes – one, two, three – finding a way beneath Altaïr’s guard and cutting yet another wound on his flank, a deep slash that bled copiously at once. Altaïr staggered, gasping with the pain. Better to die this way, he supposed, than to surrender meekly. Better to die fighting.

Long Hair came forward now and there was another clash of the sword. Altaïr was wounded again, this time on his good leg. He dropped to his knees, his arms hanging, his useless blade gouging nothing but the sand.

Long Hair stepped forward but Bayhas stopped him. ‘Leave him to me,’ he ordered.

Dimly, Altaïr found himself thinking of another time, a thousand lives ago, that his opponent had said the same, and how on that occasion he had made the knight pay for his arrogance. That satisfaction would be denied him this time, because Bayhas was coming forward to Altaïr, who knelt, swaying and defeated, in the dirt, his head hanging. He tried to order his legs to stand, but they would not obey. He tried to lift his blade hand but he could not. He saw the dagger coming towards him and was able to lift his head high enough to see Bayhas’s teeth bared, his gold earring shining in the early-morning sun …

Then the merchant was bucking, swinging and had embraced Bayhas upside down and from behind, momentarily arresting his progress. With a great shout, a final burst of effort, energy summoned from he knew not where, Altaïr thrust upward, his blade slicing up and into Bayhas’s stomach, opening a vertical gash that ended almost at his throat. At the same time Mukhlis had grabbed the dagger just before it dropped from Bayhas’s loosening fingers, jerking upwards and slicing at the rope that held him. He dropped, smashing his side painfully against the well wall, but scrambled to his feet and stood side by side with his saviour.

Altaïr was bent almost double, dying on his feet. But he raised his blade and stared narrow-eyed at Long Hair, who suddenly found himself outnumbered and unnerved. Instead of attacking, he backed away until he reached a horse. Without taking his eyes off Altaïr and Mukhlis, he mounted it. He stared at them and they stared back. Then he very deliberately drew a finger across his throat, and rode away.

‘Thank you,’ said Mukhlis to Altaïr, breathlessly, but the Assassin didn’t answer. He had folded, unconscious, to the sand.

55

It was a week later when the envoy from the brigand leader arrived. The people from the village watched him ride through the township and to the hills leading up to the citadel. He was one of Fahad’s men, they said, and the wiser among them thought they knew the nature of his business at the fortress. Two days before, Fahad’s men had come to the village with news of a reward offered for anyone who identified the man who had killed Fahad’s son, Bayhas. He had been helped by a merchant from Masyaf, they said, and the merchant would be unharmed if he produced the cowardly dog who had cut down the brigand leader’s beloved son. The villagers had shaken their heads and gone about their business, and the men had left empty-handed, muttering dark warnings about their planned return.

And this was it, said the gossips – at least, this was a precursor to it. Even Fahad wouldn’t dare send men into the village when it enjoyed the protection of the Assassins: he would have to ask the permission of the Master. Even Fahad would not have dared make the request of Altaïr or Al Mualim, but Abbas was a different matter. Abbas was weak and could be bought.

So it was that the envoy returned. On the outward journey he had looked serious, if disdainful of the villagers who watched him pass, but now he smirked at them and drew his finger across his throat.

‘It seems the Master has given Fahad his blessing to come into the village,’ said Mukhlis, later that night, as the candles burned down. He sat at the bedside of the stranger, talking more to himself than to the man in the bed, who had not regained consciousness since the battle at the waterhole. Afterwards Mukhlis had manhandled him over the saddle of his second horse and brought him home to Masyaf in order that he might be healed. Aalia and Nada had attended to him, and for three days they had wondered if he would live or die. Blood loss had left him as pale as mist and he had lain in bed – Aalia and Mukhlis having given up theirs for him – looking almost serene, like a corpse, as though at any moment he might have departed the world. On the third day his colour began to improve. Aalia had told Mukhlis so when he returned from market, and Mukhlis had taken his usual place on a chair by the side of the bed to speak to his saviour in the hope of reviving him. He’d got into the habit of recounting his day, occasionally talking of significant things in the hope of exciting the patient’s unconscious mind and bringing him round.

‘Abbas has his price, it seems,’ he said now. He looked sideways at the stranger, who lay on his back, his wounds healing nicely, growing stronger by the day. ‘Master Altaïr would have died rather than allow such a thing,’ he said.

He leaned forward, watching the figure in the bed very carefully. ‘The Master, Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad.’

For the first time since he had been brought to Mukhlis’s home the stranger’s eyes flicked open.

It was the reaction he’d hoped for, but even so Mukhlis was taken aback, watching as the patient’s cloudy eyes slowly regained their light.

‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ whispered Mukhlis, as the stranger blinked, then turned his gaze on him. ‘You are him, aren’t you? You’re Altaïr.’

Altaïr nodded. Tears pricked Mukhlis’s eyes and he dropped from his seat to the stone floor, grasping one of Altaïr’s hands in both of his own.

‘You’ve come back to us,’ he said, between sobs. ‘You’ve come to save us.’ There was a pause. ‘
Have
you come to save us?’