Oliver Bowden: The Secret Crusade

The truth was a different matter altogether.

20 June 1257

This morning I awoke with Maffeo shaking my shoulder – not especially gently, I should add. However, his insistence was prompted by an interest in my story. For that at least I should be grateful.

‘So?’ he said.

‘So what?’ If I sounded sleepy, well, that’s because I was.

‘So what happened to Ahmad?’

‘That I was to discover at a later date, brother.’

‘So tell me.’

As I pulled myself to a sitting position in my bed I gave the matter some thought. ‘I think it best that I tell you the stories just as they were told to me,’ I said at last. ‘Altair, ageing though he is, is quite the teller of tales. I believe I shall adhere to his narrative. And what I related to you yesterday formed the bulk of our very first meeting together. An episode that took place when he was just eleven years old.’

‘Traumatic for any child,’ reflected Maffeo. ‘What of his mother?

‘Died in childbirth.’

‘Altair an orphan at eleven?’

‘Indeed.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘Well, you know what happened. He sits up in his tower and -’

‘No, I mean what happened to him next?’

‘That also will have to wait, brother. The next time I saw Altair he had moved the focus of his narrative forward by fifteen years, to a day that found him creeping through the dark, dripping catacombs beneath Jerusalem…’

The year was 1191, more than three years since Salah Al’din and his Saracens had captured Jerusalem. In response the Christians had gnashed their teeth, stamped their feet, and taxed their people in order to fund the Third Crusade – and once more men in chainmail had marched upon the Holy Land and laid siege to its cities.

England’s King Richard, the one they called the Lionheart – as cruel as he was courageous – had recently recaptured Acre, but his greatest desire was to re-take Jerusalem, a holy site. And nowhere in Jerusalem was more sacred than the Temple Mount and the ruins of the Temple of Solomon – towards which Altair, Malik and Kadar crept.

They moved fast but stealthily, clinging to the sides of the tunnels, their soft boots barely disturbing the sand. Altair went ahead, Malik and Kadar a few paces behind, all with senses tuned to their surroundings, their pulses quickening as they came closer to the Mount. The catacombs were thousands of years old and looked every day of it; Altair could see sand and dust trickling from unsteady wooden supports, while underfoot the ground was soft, the sand wet with the water that dripped steadily from overhead – some kind of nearby watercourse. The air was thick with the smell of sulphur from the bitumen-soaked lanterns that lined the tunnel walls.

Altair was the first to hear the priest. Of course he was. He was the leader, the Master Assassin; his skills were greater, his senses sharper. He stopped. He touched his ear, then held up his hand, and all three became still, like wraiths in the passage. When he glanced back, they were awaiting his next command. Kadar’s eyes gleamed with anticipation; Malik’s were watchful and flinty.

All three held their breath. Around them the water dripped, and Altair listened intently to the priest’s mumblings.

The false Christian piety of a Templar.

Now Altair placed his hands behind his back and flicked his wrist to engage his blade, feeling the familiar pull on the ring mechanism he wore on his little finger. He kept his blade in good order so that the noise it made when it released was almost inaudible – he timed it to the water droplets just to be sure.

Drip… drip… snick.

He brought his arms forward and the blade at his left hand glittered in the flickering torchlight, thirsty for blood.

Next Altair flattened himself to the tunnel wall and moved forward stealthily, rounding a slight bend until he could see the priest kneeling in the tunnel. He wore the robes of a Templar, which could only mean there were more ahead, probably within the ruins of the Temple. In search of their treasure, no doubt.

His heart quickened. It was just as he’d thought. That the city was under Salah Al’din’s control wasn’t going to stop the men of the red cross. They, too, had business at the Mount. What business? Altair intended to find out, but first…

First there was the priest to take care of.

Crouched low, he moved behind the kneeling man, who prayed on, unaware of death’s proximity. Shifting his weight to his front foot and bending at the knee slightly, Altair raised the blade, his hand bent back, ready to strike.

‘ Wait! ’ hissed Malik from behind him. ‘There must be another way

… This one need not die.’

Altair ignored him. In one fluid movement he grasped the priest’s shoulder with his right hand and with his left jammed the point of the blade into the back of his neck, slicing between the skull and the first vertebra of the backbone, severing his spine.

The priest had no time to scream: death was almost instantaneous. Almost. His body jerked and tautened but Altair held him firm, feeling his life ebb away as he held him with one finger on his carotid artery. Slowly, the body relaxed and Altair allowed it to crumple silently to the ground where it lay, a spreading pool of blood blotted by the sand.

It had been quick, soundless. But as Altair retracted the blade he saw the way Malik looked at him and the accusation in his eyes. It was all that he could do to suppress a sneer at Malik’s weakness. Malik’s brother, Kadar, on the other hand, was even now looking down at the priest’s body with a mixture of wonderment and awe.

‘An excellent kill,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Fortune favours your blade.’

‘Not fortune,’ boasted Altair, ‘skill. Watch a while longer and you might learn something.’

As he said it he watched Malik carefully, seeing the Assassin’s eyes flare angrily, jealous, no doubt, at the respect Kadar afforded Altair.

Sure enough, Malik turned on his brother. ‘Indeed. He’ll teach you how to disregard everything the Master taught us.’

Altair sneered once more. ‘And how would you have done it?’

‘I would not have drawn attention to us. I would not have taken the life of an innocent.’

Altair sighed. ‘It matters not how we complete our task, only that it’s done.’

‘But that is not the way…’ started Malik.

Altair fixed him with a stare. ‘My way is better.’

For a moment or so the two men glared at one another. Even in the dank, cold and dripping tunnel, Altair could see in Malik’s eyes the insolence, the resentment. He would need to be careful of that, he knew. It seemed that young Malik was an enemy in waiting.

But if he had designs on usurping Altair, Malik evidently decided that now was not the right moment to make his stand. ‘I will scout ahead,’ he said. ‘Try not to dishonour us further.’

Any punishment for that particular insubordination would have to wait, decided Altair, as Malik left, heading up the tunnel in the direction of the Temple.

Kadar watched him go, then turned to Altair. ‘What is our mission?’ he asked. ‘My brother would say nothing to me, only that I should be honoured to have been invited.’

Altair regarded the enthusiastic young pup. ‘The Master believes the Templars have found something beneath the Temple Mount.’

‘Treasure?’ gushed Kadar.

‘I do not know. All that matters is the Master considers it important, else he would not have asked me to retrieve it.’

Kadar nodded and, at a wave of the hand from Altair, darted off to join his brother, leaving Altair alone in the tunnel. He looked down, pondering, at the body of the priest, a halo of blood on the sand around the head. Malik might have been right. There had been other ways of silencing the priest – he hadn’t had to die. But Altair had killed him because…