Vladimir Bartol - Alamut

Yusuf instinctively drew back from him a few inches. He was afraid.

“That pellet of Sayyiduna’s must be to blame,” he said. “He used it to send us to paradise and now we’re constantly tormented by the desire to return.”

“Who wouldn’t give anything to return to paradise once he’s had a taste of it?! O Allah, Allah! Why this endless ordeal?”

Two days passed like this in feverish preparation and ominous silence. The anticipation strained each man’s nerves to the utmost.

From their tower, Hasan and the grand dais observed the enemy’s movements. They could sense they were getting ready for something, but the incline above the canyon blocked their view of whatever it was the enemy was doing. Through Abu Ali, Hasan ordered Obeida to use his scouts to establish contact with the sultan’s army.

Eventually the enemy managed to remove the obstacles from the canyon. From their tower, the three men watched the emir’s men exploring the canyon and studying the surroundings.

Halfa and ibn Vakas were ordered to climb over Alamut’s walls at first light, ford the stream, and then scale the canyon’s cliffs.

Practically the entire garrison of Alamut watched their perilous feat. The old soldiers held their breath as the two fedayeen climbed up the wall opposite. Ibn Vakas was the first to climb. When he reached a secure spot, he dropped a rope and pulled Halfa up. The sun was already high over the mountains as they approached the top. Forked tree trunks jutted out of the earth there. They took hold of them and cautiously climbed the final stretch.

The spectators in Alamut watched them suddenly disappear. The archers drew their bows to defend them should some danger materialize. Agile as monkeys, the climbers descended from one forked trunk to the next. They tied a rope around a mighty trunk and slid down it to the river bed. They forded the stream, and the men pulled them safely up the wall.

“The enemy has scaled the walls around Alamut and set up catapults for throwing rocks and fire!”

This shout immediately spread throughout the castle.

And indeed! The climbers had barely completed their report when a heavy, spherical rock came flying over the stream and crashed into the base of the cliff beneath Alamut. And soon after there came more, raining down at regular intervals in groups of ten or twenty. Their impact with the strata of rock drowned out the roar of Shah Rud. Some of the projectiles struck the fortress walls. The men standing on them felt the earth shake beneath them. Their faces pale, they waited for the enemy to appear.

Suddenly an enormous boulder came rolling down the opposite wall. It collided first with one outcrop of the cliff and then another, caroming between them in huge bounds and finally crashing into Shah Rud, crushing everything in its path. Then came more, each one tied to heavy logs. The river’s current carried some of them away, while those that landed in the river’s shallows remained. There they gradually accumulated and formed a veritable dam, against which the river’s waters foamed and splashed.

Now the men of Alamut began to notice movement on the heights opposite. They could make out men dragging equipment behind them. Manuchehr gave a command, and a swarm of arrows flew toward them, but the distance was too great for them to inflict any serious damage.

A flaming projectile came soaring toward Alamut and slammed into its walls. Others followed. A swarm of arrows poured down on the besieged castle. One of the soldiers was wounded.

Manuchehr went rushing to where the soldier was.

“Idiots! Don’t expose yourselves to them! Take cover!”

He was gasping loudly with excitement and rage.

Though pale, the soldiers grinned at each other. They were helpless against this way of fighting.

“It’s all just a lot of show,” Manuchehr roared. “It’s a bluff and doesn’t pose the slightest danger.”

But the hail of stones and fiery projectiles had an effect on the men. They knew they had nowhere to retreat to from the castle. Each of them would rather have faced off with the enemy in the open.

“If Sayyiduna would just give the word, I’d scale that wall with my fedayeen and cut down everyone up there,” Abdul Malik said, gritting his teeth in helpless rage.

Yusuf and Suleiman also had their fists clenched in anger. They would have been the first to volunteer for a slaughter like that. But apparently Sayyiduna was strolling around on top of his tower, discussing sacred matters with the grand dais. Suleiman could barely control his impatience anymore.

Abu Ali came to review the situation on the walls and then returned to Hasan.

“The men really are a bit upset,” he said, laughing.

“That’s precisely what Arslan Tash was after,” Hasan replied. “He wanted to make an impression on us, soften us up, frighten us. But if he plans to benefit from this mood, he’d better do it fast. Because in two or three days our soldiers will be so used to this hullabaloo that they’ll be throwing lassos at the missiles for fun.”

“So do you think they’re going to try an assault with ladders soon?”

“No, they’re not going to do that. But they might let us know something that’s weighing down on them.”

At the third prayer the emir’s barrage stopped abruptly. An ominous quiet ensued. The sense in the castle was that the morning’s bombardment had been just the prelude to something greater that was yet to come.

The three men atop the tower were the first to notice the three horsemen who came galloping into the canyon. Soon the adversary came to a halt on the far side of the bridge before Alamut and gave the sign of peace.

“This could be some kind of trick,” an officer said to Manuchehr.

“We won’t lower the bridge until we get the order from the supreme commander,” the commander of the fortress replied.

The order soon came. The iron chains clanked and the three emissaries of the enemy army proudly, if cautiously, rode over the bridge into the castle. Manuchehr welcomed them with impeccable courtesy.

In the meantime, at Hasan’s order the entire army, with the exception of a few essential lookouts atop the walls, assembled with lightning speed on the lower and middle terraces. Here the fedayeen and novices stood on one side, the archers on the other, while on the lower level the light and heavy cavalry stood in perfect formation.

Manuchehr and a contingent of officers escorted the emissaries to the middle terrace. There they came to a halt and waited for further instructions.

“This morning they tried to impress us,” Hasan said. “Now it’s my turn to make an impression on them that will last till judgment day.”

Once again his voice and face were projecting something that gave the grand dais an eerie feeling. There was something mysterious to him, as there had been that night when he sent the fedayeen into the gardens.

“Are you planning to cut them down and set their heads out on stakes?” Abu Ali asked.

“I’d have to be very stupid to do anything like that,” Hasan replied. “The emir’s army would be overcome with such a fury that they’d lose any vestige of fear they might have. But it’s that sense of fear that we have to magnify if we’re going to come out of this the victors.”

“The army is assembled and the emissaries are waiting,” Buzurg Ummid said, looking out over the battlements.

“Let them wait. They tried to soften us up with their bombardment, so we’ll soften them up with anticipation.”

The emissary of Arslan Tash, the cavalry captain Abu Jafar, was standing midway between the fedayeen and the archers. He rested one hand lightly on the handle of his saber and looked at the enemy army with feigned indifference and disdain. His two escorts stood tall to each side of him. They held on firmly to the hafts of their sabers, looking fiercely and grimly to all sides. All three of them summoned great self-mastery to subdue their growing impatience and fear for their fate.