him this time, because Bayhas was coming forward to Altair, 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, Altair 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.
Altair 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 Altair 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 Altair, 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 Altair 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 Altair would have died rather than allow such a thing,’ he said.
He leaned forward, watching the figure in the bed very carefully. ‘The Master, Altair 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 Altair.’
Altair nodded. Tears pricked Mukhlis’s eyes and he dropped from his seat to the stone floor, grasping one of Altair’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?’
‘Do you need saving?’ said Altair.
‘We do. Was it your intention to come to Masyaf when we met?’
Altair thought. ‘When I left Alamut it was inevitable I would find myself here. The only question was when.’
‘You were in Alamut?’
‘These past twenty years or so.’
‘They said you were dead. That the morning Maria died you threw yourself from the citadel tower.’
‘I did throw myself off the citadel tower,’ Altair smiled grimly, ‘but I lived. I made it to the river outside the village. By chance Darim was there. He was returning from Alamut, where he had found Sef’s wife and children. He retrieved me and took me to them.’
‘They said you were dead,’ said Mukhlis again.
‘They?’
Mukhlis waved a hand that was meant to indicate the citadel. ‘The Assassins.’
‘It suited them to say so, but they knew I was not.’
He disentangled his hand from Mukhlis’s grasp, pulled himself to a sitting position and swung his legs out of the bed. He looked at his feet, at their wrinkled old skin. Every inch of his body sang with pain but he felt… better. His robe had been washed and replaced on him. He pulled his hood over his head, liking the feel of it and breathing in the scent of the clean cloth.
He put his hands to his face and felt that his beard had been tended. Not far away were his boots, and on a table by the side of the bed he saw his blade mechanism, its new design gleaned from the Apple. It looked impossibly advanced, and he thought of the other designs he had discovered. He needed the assistance of a blacksmith to make the objects. But first…
‘My pack?’ he asked of Mukhlis, who had scrambled to his feet. ‘Where is my pack?’
Wordlessly, Mukhlis indicated where it sat on the stone at the head of the bed and Altair glanced at its familiar shape. ‘Did you look inside?’ he asked.
Mukhlis shook his head firmly and Altair looked at him searchingly. Then, believing him, he relaxed and reached for his boots, pulling them on, wincing as he did so.
‘I have you to thank for tending me,’ he said. ‘I would be dead by the waterhole were it not for you.’
Scoffing, Mukhlis retook his seat. ‘My wife and daughter cared for you, and I must thank you. You saved me from a grisly death at the hands of those bandits.’ He leaned forward. ‘Your actions were those of the Altair Ibn- La’Ahad of legend. I’ve told everyone.’
‘People know I’m here?’
Mukhlis spread his hands. ‘Of course. The whole village knows the tale of the hero who delivered me from the hands of death. Everybody believes it was you.’
‘And what makes them think that?’ asked Altair.
Mukhlis said nothing. Instead he indicated with his chin the low table where Altair’s blade mechanism shone dully, wicked and oiled.
Altair considered. ‘You told them about the blade?’
Mukhlis thought. ‘Well, yes,’ he said, ‘of course. Why?’
‘Word will reach the citadel. They will come looking for me.’
