their midst.
Just before the sun reached its noon zenith he did spot one such caravan in the distance, and he turned hastily off the trail into rough ground that was covered by coarse shrubbery, a few stunted trees, and up ahead where the narrow path he was following in a deepening defile turned right, a fairly respectable-sized tree. The pattern of the undergrowth suggested to Casca that there might be water ahead. If not, there ought to be enough cool shade for him to get out of this damn iron clothing and take a nap, letting the caravan he had seen get ahead of him.
But turning into the defile had been a mistake.
Before he got to the tree with the big branches, he was confronting the one man in all of Persia he had thought he was least likely to meet Bu Ali.
Bu Ali and two big ex-Mamelukes who had been in the group that had taken Casca back toward Castle Alamut at the time Casca had plunged into the Bottomless Pit.
Apparently the affair of the Imam hadn't been settled years ago, and Bu Ali was over in this area either to settle it, or already had settled it.
Casca was far enough away from the three men — all of them mounted — not to hear their talk, but he was close enough to see the look of astonishment on Bu Ali's face at finding a Frankish knight in this unlikely spot and then the recognition of just who that knight was. The man must have nine lives. If Casca had heard what he was thinking, he would have corrected the misinformed Assassin. Bu Ali drew his sword, said something to the two Mamelukes, kicked his horse in the ribs, and charged.
Bu Ali, too, like Casca, was wearing armor, and, also like Casca, he had left off his helmet. But Bu Ali had a big butt, difficult to fit in chain mail — particularly since what he was wearing was probably taken from some dead Frankish knight — so there was a line where the mail did not come all the way down, as the scarlet gambeson he was wearing plainly showed. But armor or no armor mattered little. Bu Ali was the better with the blade; Casca knew that in seconds his own head would be rolling along the rocky path.
No time for anything fancy. Casca hefted the lance with the heavy head, aimed it at Bu Ali's scarlet strip of gambeson, kicked his own horse in the ribs — not, however, with totally satisfactory results. Casca's horse had had a hard day. But he did get up some speed. Casca held the lance with both hands. They had just passed the tree with the big limbs when the hit came.
Since Bu Ali's horse was traveling faster, the lance was ripped out of Casca's hands, but the lance head had already been buried deep in Bu Ali's gut. When the shaft of the lance dropped from Casca's hands and fell to the rough rocks of the path, because of the shock, the lance shaft-end wedged instantly between two large rocks, and the momentum of Bu Ali's charge tossed him up and over the neck of his horse on the end of the lance being thrown upward. And when he and the lance reached the top of the arc, there was the crook in the branch of the tree to catch his head by the neck and leave him hanging there while the lance, steel head red with blood, dropped. He was dead before he hit the tree, but the broken neck would have taken care of matters had he been living.
Casca, reining in his horse and looking back, saw Bu Ali hanging in the tree and thought of one of the stories Miriam had read him — Absalom, son of David…
But he didn't think about it for long. There were still the two ex-Mamelukes, and all he had was one short sword. He turned to face them.
Neither had yet drawn a weapon, though Casca recognized the biggest one as the second best archer in Mamud's band of slavers. The other man was Karzan (the Mameluke who guarded Casca on the ill-fated journey to Castle Alamut).
The two rode slowly up to Casca and stopped just short of him. The big archer spoke first, his voice formal and surprisingly officious as befitted the officer-type that he was:
'Kasim al Jirad, thou hast done what befits a man wronged as you have been wronged. We will make no mention of thy name in our formal report to the lord Hassan al Sabah. Go thou in peace, and may the blessings of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate go with thee.'
Karzan spoke up next.
'The Master will know only that a big Frank in an iron suit killed Bu Ali. He kept his helmet on; we never saw his face. Go now and make for yourself a new life.'
So once again Casca headed north. In mid-afternoon he came upon the caravan he had avoided, this time having recognized who the two men were.
'Kasim! Kasim! Join us, my son! Join us!' Omar Khayyam was happily drunk. His son, much less so, explained to Casca the reason for the caravan and its destination. The court of Persia was not a particularly pleasant place to be at the moment, so Omar had left for an extended period to 'take astronomical observations.' Actually they were headed for the Rh'shan country to the north. The big bully Rh'shan Casca had taken off Omar's son several years ago had now become — since the Rh'shans were strange people — the son's fast friend. He had shared with the son some of the cereal wine which the Rh'shans drank. This, put through the alembic and 'improved,' had become a wonderful nectar, clear as the purest water, which Omar Khayyam's son had named 'vd'khan', after the sound in his throat when he first took a drink of it. Now the caravan was on a humanitarian 'mission of mercy' to the Rh'shans; they were going to introduce vd'khan to them.
'Mission of mercy?' Casca asked.
'Yes. They need help. The people are all right — but they got the toughest set of rulers you ever saw…'
Casca thought, What the hell, I've got nothing better to do, and all the time in the world to do it in…
