Casca 13: The Assassin (13 page)

That night, two things:
One, he was healed completely. Good as new. And, two, she was very, very good...

''Time to go." It was Faisal's voice, rousing Casca out of sleep. When he looked up, his arms still around the nude body of the sleeping Miriam snuggled against his own naked flesh, he saw amused approval in Faisal's eyes. "Time to go," Faisal repeated. "Before the dawn comes."

Dawn found Casca miles from the caravan, riding an old French war-horse and wearing a second hand suit of armor but with a brand-new identity. He was now a knight, and he had a rolled-up parchment scroll in a brass case to prove it. "Not that it will do all that much good," Faisal had said. "I've never known a knight yet who could read and write, and the monks are so poor at it – about all they can do is stumble through a little of their Bible – that almost any piece of paper with writing on it will impress them."

So Cas
ca was now Sir Cayce Noire of Ruthmir in Ireland.

"Why Ireland?"

"I don't know. An old man's private whim I suppose. When I was younger – much younger than you – I was a soldier, a mercenary. I soldiered with a lot of men, but one I recall said he came from Ireland. ‘Where's that?' I asked. He said, in the Western sea, and, frankly, I don't know where that is – or whether such a place actually exists. But be was a damn good soldier. You are, too, so it fits. Besides, it's a good idea to have you from some very unfamiliar place. An Irish mercenary in Noire armor. The 'Noire' is for that black boss on your shield. The 'Ruthmir' I made up from Ruth and Miriam. There again none of the knights you might meet is going to show his ignorance by admitting he never heard of such a place. That's the beauty of dealing with ignorant people, my Roman friend. The one thing they least want known is the depth of their own ignorance."

So Casca
had set out in the darkness for a castle in the hills ahead that Faisal knew about. It was on the route the Frankisb pilgrims took to Jerusalem and was patrolled by a group of monks antagonistic to the order in Jerusalem. (The order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem to which Friar Dilorenzi had belonged.)

Casca did not tell Faisal that it was he who had assassinated the friar. These monks were competing for the "honor"
– there must be money in it somewhere, Casca interpreted – of aiding the pilgrims, and they were putting together a military arm.

"A perfect opening for you," Faisal had said. "You can consider joining them, go with the next band of pilgrims heading west, and then when you get to the sea you're on your own." Faisal smiled. He was holding the lamp while Casca mounted the horse, and the amusement of the brown eyes in the bearded face was matched by the amusement in his voice: "It's not exactly healthy for you in Persia right now, and won't be for a hundred years. But, of course, you won't be around then."

Want to bet?
Casca thought, but he didn't say it.

He had looked down then into Miriam's eyes... Well, life for him had always been, would always be, one farewell after another...

Now that was all behind him. The dawn had just begun to redden the bottom part of the eastern sky.

Everything else was dark, and it had been a moonless night. He could not even see the mass of the mountains ahead.
Guess I'm going in the right direction...

Faisal had shown him which group of stars to follow toward the mountains, and he supposed he had done it right.
Until the clouds had obscured his view. It had been an odd night, though, up until the clouds appeared. There had been an awful lot of shooting stars. Casca remembered what Omar Khayyam had said about "swarms" of shooting stars. This must be one of the "swarms."

Well, he would never see Khay
yam again. Too bad. He had liked the old man.

Someone else that he would never see again was Bu Ali. He had asked Faisal about the big Mameluke and discovered that the night of the palace fire had been almost as disastrous for Bu Ali as for him. The Jasmine Lady had turned her fury on Bu Ali
– by some logic known only to Turkish women of her turn of mind – and blamed him. Warned by his own spies, Bu Ali had gotten out just in time. As best Faisal knew he was now back at Castle Alamut with Hassan al Sabah, but that might or might not be true. Anyway, Casca decided, it probably didn't matter. It would be nice to go back and settle the score with Bu Ali but it wouldn't be too damn smart.

As the clouds cleared another shooting star blazed in the sky, this one very bright indeed. In the darkness, Casca smiled to
himself as he remembered the feeling that something unusual and important might happen to him – the feeling that night, years past now, in Mamud's camp. Hell, nothing unusual or important had happened to him – just more of the same old shit. But that was all over now. There sure wouldn't be anything exciting going on with the monks and the knights. If he ever got to the castle.
Hope I'm not lost.

He did not doubt Faisal's belief that he would be taken for what he said he was. After all, he looked the part. And while his equipment did not make him look prosperous, it was at least serviceable. Body armor was basically the
byrnie
or chain mail. He wore hose of mail and steel knee caps. His
lorica
or cuirass was of pretty tough leather. He was not particularly fond of his
gambeson
, the quilted garment worn under his mail, since it smelled strongly of perfume – one of Faisal's ladies had accidentally broken a vial of rosewater over it. But he knew that monks and knights were usually so dirty that one more spell would make very little difference.

His weapons left a little something to be desired.

He had a short, two-edged sword, not as good as a gladius, but better than a spatha; a battle-ax that had seen better days; and a lance with a larger-than-usual head and an extra-heavy shaft. It was a little too heavy for throwing, but excellent for the style coming into vogue of using the weight of the charging horse to add to the thrust. Personally Casca felt that this was a passing fancy, but one never knew in warfare. Old ways passed out of favor, were forgotten, then rediscovered, and the cycle would be repeated.

He had a decent shield.
Stout wood. Leather-covered.

All in all he was in pretty good shape for whatever he was likely to face. That is, if he was going to face anything, which he doubted.

Two more shooting stars burned in the sky and they seemed even brighter than the last one, so bright that he could see briefly that he was going up a slight rise ahead, and, beyond whatever lay in the dip below – if there was a dip – there was the castle.

Wrong. Now he knew he was lost.
Damn. Persia's been one pain in the ass after another. It's better if I just get my ass out of here now.

Deciding def
initely on that course of action, he was relieved and took off in a direction he felt would take him out of Persia the quickest possible way.

The armor had gotten hot as the sun climbed in the sky, and he took off the helmet so he could at least breathe. The henna Miriam had originally put on his hair had pretty well worn off by now, and his eyebrows had grown out, but he didn't really expect to see any of the Sultan's men in this particular area. As best he could remember from his days with Shapur, this was poorly-inhabited country with just a few hill tribes. In other words, it wasn't worth bothering with.

Except for Hassan aI Sabah. The head of the Assassins had gotten into a dispute (a religious dispute) with an Oman somewhere around here while Casca was still a Novice. But, of course, that had been a few years ago.

No, the biggest problem was the very perfection of the disguise Faisal had prepared for him. Any caravan he might meet would be a Muslim caravan, and they would not take kindly to the presence of a lone Frankish knight in 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 def
ile 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 Oman 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 bad 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 fo
rmal 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 bad 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's
hans; 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....