Barry Sadler - The Assassin

Casca slept. His dreams, as they had been ever since the Change, were delicious, though the details he knew would be gone when he awakened…

The Change. It meant he had gone through the rites to become the perfect Assassin. And as the perfect Assassin he automatically had the right to Paradise. Becoming an Assassin definitely had its good points

Casca was awake before Jerusalem, but he waited until the city stirred, until long after "the phantom of false morning died" — as one Persian poet said — and true dawn was bloodying the stones of the ancient city. When he was certain Dilorenzi's household was awake, he climbed the courtyard wall and went to the oil-soaked timbers piled by the scaffolding. He took from under his woolen robe the purchase from the Greek soldier, and broke the jar on the oil as he had been instructed, but when he tried to take the stopper from the vial of seawater, the resin that made it waterproof resisted. He was pulling on it when the surprised face of the cook appeared in the kitchen window. The cook yelled in alarm.

Giving up on the stopper, Casca picked up a rock and held the vial over the Greek fire mixture. When he broke the vial, and the water hit the mixture, flames exploded, and one piece of broken glass drove itself upward, narrowly missing his face. But the oil caught fire as planned, and the flames roared up the scaffolding. Casca ran to the side of the doorway.

The young Greek slave was first out. Casca felled him with a single blow of his fist and pulled him clear of the rope loop. The big cook was next. Casca used a timber on him, hitting the dirty head with enough force to topple the cook forward. His left foot, though, was still on the rope loop, and at that moment Dilorenzi, naked, eyes bleary with sleep, appeared in the doorway.

Casca did not have time to move the cook. He grabbed the rope and heaved, hoping the loop would clear or the cook would move, and yelled at the top of his lungs.

The ruse worked. The cook jerked his foot at the yell, and Dilorenzi was transfixed. The loop caught him around the ankles and tightened. Immediately Casca dropped the rope, moved to the friar, felled the fat monk with a blow behind the ear, ran back to the rope, and heaved. The monk was heavy. Casca threw his weight into it. The naked Dilorenzi rose, head down, hanging by the heels. Casca pulled him up, secured the rope to the scaffold, drew the butcher's knife from under his robe, and moved toward the dangling friar.

By now the young Greek slave had come to and the cook was trying to rise to his feet. Most of the scaffolding was in flames, but not yet near the doorway. An uproar was beginning in the streets, and men were running, hoping to peer over the courtyard wall.

Casca slit Dilorenzi's throat. Blood gushed out, a red fountain now in the bright sunlight. The fat monk, dying, hung like a side of meat from his own doorway.

He had considered his Turkish victims fit only for slaughter, so Casca paid him back in his own coin — slaughter.

Then Casca headed toward the courtyard wall, bloody knife still in his hand.

Nobody tried to stop him.

Bu Ali had completed his assignment. Dressed as a Sufi like Casca had been, he assassinated Nizam al Mulk with a dagger while Nizam was traveling with the court between Isfahan and Baghdad, in the Frankish reckoning October 14, 1092.

Bu Ali got clean away and returned to Castle Alamut expecting high praise from Hassan al Sabah for a job excellently done.

He arrived an hour after word of Kasim's much more gaudy execution of Friar Dilorenzi had come, electrifying the castle.

Kasim…

Jealousy burned in Bu Ali's heart.

One of these days…

Hassan al Sabah's eagle eyes gleamed. This Kasim was a find. One must make better use of his talents. There was, for example, the matter of the Emir of Apnea. The Emir had already been given the Golden Dagger, and Bu Ali had been given the assignment since it was recognized at Castle Alamut that Bu Ali was the best. Now Hassan called for Bu Ali.

Bu Ali was with Casca at the time, both heading for their "trip to Paradise," the reward for their deeds. Bu Ali looked forward to this, and there was need for haste since he had to get back to Baghdad and Mamud. The slaver must not discover that the captain of his Mamelukes was an Assassin and the cock-and-bull story of a visit to a sick uncle a bald lie. Therefore it pained Bu Ali to watch Kasim go ahead of him, and it pained him even more when he had to wait for Hassan. The leader of the Assassins was in one of his meditative moods, and by the time he had Bu Ali in his presence it was already too late for the Mameluke's "trip to Paradise." But perhaps he has some special reward for me…

"The matter of the Emir of Apnea…"

"Yes, my lord?"

"I have changed my mind. Kasim will get that assignment."

"Kasim?"

"Yes." For a moment Hassan saw an odd look in Bu Ali's eyes, and the thought occurred to him that perhaps Bu Ali might know of Kasim's past.

But there was no need to pump the Mameluke. Kasim himself would supply any answers needed. He had already seemed eager to talk. Up to now it had not seemed important to Hassan. Now he began to consider more and more the possibility of using Kasim as an impostor for Longinus. The matter of the scarred face could be taken care of. After all, one could put on a man's face as many scars as one wished…

Unknown to Hassan, the Assassin spy in the Emir's household, the man who had planted the dagger, had been caught and taken to the Emir's torture chamber. Before he died he had told his torturers the only pieces of information which he had — the date, the place, and the method of the Emir's assassination. Unlike most such matters, this Hassan had revealed the details of his victim's demise. Now the Emir knew these details — but not who the Assassin would be.

He also knew the place.

And the method…

Ah…!

Yousef the bandit did not know of Casca's role as an Assassin. But the image of the scar-faced man had been branded in his brain. Yousef had fallen upon hard times ever since the ill-fated raid, and he blamed his bad luck upon the scar-faced one. It was he who spotted Yousef and his bandits up in the high ground just before Mamud and his slave caravan would arrive safely in Baghdad. He had alerted the slave master at the moment when his archers were about to release their arrows. It was a brilliant ambush, but the scar-faced one had ruined it. Everything had gone wrong since that time. Even now, as Hassan gave the assignment to Casca, Yousef was standing in an alley in the Emir of Apnea's city, having gone there for temporary refuge and reduced to the status of a petty criminal who stole from those unwary enough to go out into the streets alone at night.

The scar-faced one…

If Yousef ever saw him again he would make him pay dearly.

One of these days…

Hassan gave Casca his orders as he showed him a map of Apnea and the route the Emir would take on the day of his death. He even had a selection of good sites from which Casca could pick the one that suited the moment. Oft-times it amused the Old Man of the Mountain to advise his victim of the manner of his death. This he did with the Emir of Apnea. It would be by spear. That of course did nothing to relieve the Emir's anxieties for he had spearmen by the thousands under his command. Any one of them could be the instrument of his death.

Taking a good solid horse from the stables of Castle Alamut, Casca rode off across the high valleys toward Apnea. The journey would take some days, but he had to arrive in the city in time for the ceremony which marked the eighth anniversary of the Emir's rise to the throne. For the journey Casca affected the look of a wandering mercenary. There were no shortages of these usually lone men who traversed the deserts and valleys of Central Asia and Persia. Casca had been riding on his journey six days when he first spied the spires of the minarets that stood like sentinels over the walls of the city of Apnea. As he did time and again, he waited for the busiest hours of the day before entering. Once the Golden Dagger had been found in the Emir's bedchambers the sentries had been placed on special alert for any strangers who came into the city. By mixing with the camel and donkey drivers who brought the day's goods to market, Casca looked like just one more of those lonely, hard-faced men who crossed the face of the world in search of plunder or death. The guards gave him a curious but cursory inspection. He was obviously not of Persian or Arabic or even Turkish blood. Therefore it was unlikely that he could have belonged to the Shiite faction of which the Assassins were members.