Alamut (26 page)

Saladin, thin and dark and clerkly in spite of the sword at his side, seemed in his element. He caught Aidan in the midst of a low and careful obeisance, embraced him, kissed him on both cheeks. “My lord prince! Well met, and welcome. I'd begun to fear that you had left the city.”

“Not quite yet, sire,” Aidan said, recovering himself quickly enough once he had recalled the eastern propensity for effusion. “I fear I gave your man a hard chase. I was dallying about the city, and taking little enough notice of where I went. It's a miracle he found me.”

“Arslan is a better hunter than most,” said Saladin, smiling. The young Turk, catching his eye, bowed low and took himself elsewhere.

The sultan's smile broadened to take in Aidan. “Come, sir, be at ease. You came in a good hour; I'd all but finished here. A moment longer, of your charity...”

Aidan inclined his head. A servant appeared with sherbet, fruit, a plateful of bread sprinkled with salt. Aidan understood the significance of that; and if he was not hungry, he had a respectable thirst. He nibbled a bit of the flat unleavened bread, finding it good; drank deep of the sherbet that was cooled with snow from Mount Hermon. The sultan bent toward his
qadi,
intent on the wording of a letter. His emirs waited in varying degrees of patience. Murhaf's head was bowed; his lips moved: reciting the Koran as a Christian would tell his beads. Masud observed the pattern of rose-leaves against the twining arabesques of the tiles. The third emir, who was Saladin's brother Turan-Shah, watched Aidan.

Not with hostility, Aidan took note. Not quite. Measuring. Pondering his usefulness.

This man had not his brother's simplicity. Saladin was no more and no less than what he was. Turan-Shah was the elder, born to rule among the sons of Ayyub, condemned by the fortune that had left him behind while his brother forayed into Egypt, to see one younger and, in his mind, lesser, made king twice over, while he remained but the servant of a king. He who coveted splendor saw his brother spurn it as if it were dust; he who would have ruled like a proper emperor, must bow to a man who could not even keep order in his council. Who — his eyes began to glitter — entertained Franks as if they had been decent Muslims, and never gave a thought to the propriety of his station.

Aidan struggled free of that small cold mind, clinging to his cup as to an anchor, fighting a fit of trembling. Dear God, who had this Ayyub been, that his sons should come so close to power? Saladin, who could see through any veil of glamour. Turan-Shah whose mind was more than open; who drew the power in and all but drowned it.

They were mortal enough. There was grey in Turan-Shah's beard; his face bore the marks of time and war and self-indulgence. His scent was man-scent, heavy with eastern musk. Aidan breathed deep of it, little comforted by it. He traced the cross on the hilt of his dagger, for strength, and for remembrance. Of what he was; of what he was sworn to.

The
qadi
withdrew at last, taking the secretaries with him. Saladin sighed and stretched and rubbed his eyes. “Allah be my witness, I could never be a scholar.” He captured an apple from the bowl which Aidan had not touched, and bit into it with every expression of pleasure. His eyes on Aidan were bright and appallingly clear, but his mind laid no traps for unwary power. “You leave the city soon, then, prince?”

Aidan nodded. “The day after tomorrow, sire.”

“So soon.” Saladin sounded as if he regretted it. “Will you still do as you swore to do?”

“I must,” Aidan said.

The sultan nodded. His fingers sought the scar of the Assassin's dagger, rubbing it as if it pained him. “You cannot in honor do otherwise. As I cannot, by my given word, grant you aid.”

“You know I ask for none.”

“I know,” said Saladin. “But what I know and what I could wish...” He sighed, gestured as if to thrust the thought away. “You who are royal know what choices royalty can force upon us. You who are...more than that...know why I do what I do. I've pondered you, prince, and all that we spoke of. This is what I shall do.” He smote his hands together.

A pair of servants came, burdened with what looked like a bolt of silk. They shook it out. It was a coat, a robe of honor, black but for the bands embroidered high on the sleeves: the
tiraz,
the graceful flow of Arabic in letters the color of blood. Aidan's name, and the sultan's, and the greatness of God woven through the word for honor.

And it was more than a coat. Its weight was steel weight, mail weight — the Syrian fashion, to conceal mere naked armor in the beauty and subtlety of silk. It was like the scabbard of Aidan's sword, damascened. Gold shimmered through its blackness.

The others looked away for their modesty's sake while the servants clothed him in it. It was lighter than his Frankish mail, and more supple, yet he suspected that it might be stronger. They bound it with a silken belt, and hung his sword from a baldric worked with gold. He looked barbarically splendid: quite properly civilized, to the eyes which saw him now.

The sultan smiled, and clapped again. Swift feet sounded. A company of mamluks entered at speed, in cadence. They all wore scarlet coats which, Aidan was certain, concealed the weight of armor. Ont of them was the Turk who had brought him here. They dropped down in the grovel of Muslim obeisance, but not to Saladin. They kissed the floor at Aidan's feet.

“These,” the sultan said, and his expression was frankly wicked, “are yours. What you choose to do with them is your affair. They are,” he added, “most well trained. And they have reason not to love our common enemy.”

Aidan could not say that he had ever in his life been truly dumbfounded. He had always been able to find something to say.

He contemplated the row of scarlet rumps and abject turbans. Each coat bore the
tiraz
which marked his own. The bodies within suffered none of the prized oriental plumpness. They were all youths — the eldest could not have been past twenty — lean and awkward-graceful as young wolfhounds. One or two might be as tall as he. Several were certainly broader. One long braid beneath its turban was the color of wheat in the sun.

“But,” Aidan said at last, “what in the world would I do with a company of mamluks?”

“Whatever you please,” said Saladin.

“Then I give them back to you.” Aidan raised his hands, pressing on before anyone could stop him. “Sire, this is a gift worthy of a king, and I cherish it for the splendor that it is. But these are soldiers of Allah. How can you so endanger their souls as to give them to me?”

“I trust you,” said Saladin, “not to forbid them their salvation.”

Aidan flung up his head. His eyes were wild. “You know what I am!”

The sultan nodded once.

Even half-mad, Aidan could not seize a king and shake him till he came to his senses. Nor would it do any good at all to blast the pavilion to its foundations. He clutched the rags of his temper and made himself speak quietly. “My lord. If I speak to them — if I give them the truth — will you allow them to choose?”

“It is not my part to allow or disallow. They are yours.”

Aidan bit his tongue. He clapped his hands. Sparks flew. He started; cursed. Only the sultan seemed to see, and he was more amused than not. “Up!” Aidan commanded this army which had been thrust upon him.

They obeyed with laudable alacrity. Boys, yes. Some were still beardless, or too fair for the down to show. He scanned their faces. Tallest to smallest. Clear blue eyes in a face that was pure northern snow. Grey eyes; green, below ruddy brows. Blue again, like ice, but startling in a face as olive-smooth as any Syrian's. Brown, thereafter, and eastern certainly, Turkish braids, Turkish ornaments, round Turkish faces. And on the end, as like as two reins on a bridle, a pair of broad-cheeked, yellow-skinned, slant-eyed imps of hell who dared him outright to remark on their manifold oddities.

In spite of himself, he smiled. “I, too,” he said, “am twin-born. And I'll wager I'm odder than you.”

“How much?” one demanded promptly. He would be the fire-twin. He was, perhaps, a shade the stockier, a whisper the shorter.

“Your freedom,” Aidan answered him. “You lose, you choose. Whether to follow me or go your ways.”

“That
is
odd,” said the other, the water-twin, with interest.

“Where's your brother?” the first asked: always one for the essentials, he.

“Home in the west, being a king, poor victim.”

“Odder and odder,” said the water-twin.

The others did not move, but the air about them rippled with impatience. Aidan addressed them all. “Your sultan has told you that you are a gift. Now you know that you are given to a Christian and a Frank. What you are given to do, you may well guess. Do you fear the Assassins?”

They paled. None of them, to do them credit, either moved or spoke.

Aidan smiled a cold white smile. “Good. I see that you are sane. I see also that you are brave. Are you brave enough to serve me?”

He gave it to them whole, without mercy. The truth of his face. The truth of his power, piercing their minds, reading their souls. None of them was secret slave to the master of Masyaf. None of them was such a fool as to be unafraid of the creature who faced them.
Ifrit,
they agreed, implicitly. The twins had another name, but it meant much the same.

None of them had the wits to turn and bolt. The young Northman wore a berserker's smile. “This is better than a song,” he said in a voice both light and startlingly sweet; a singer's voice.

The imps — Kipchaks, they called themselves — were grinning like mad things. “I like this,” said the fire-twin with wicked relish.

Aidan had all their names. His finger stabbed at each.

“Conrad.” The fair singer, who for all his size was one of the youngest.

“Andronikos.” The grey-eyed Macedonian with the Byzantine smile.

“Janek.” The Circassian, ruddy as a Frank.

“Raihan.” Half Frank, half Syrian.

The Turks: “Shadhi; Tuman; Zangi; Bahram; Dildirim; Arslan.”

And the imps last of all, water-twin, fire-twin, elder and younger: “Ilkhan. Timur.”

They went down one by one as he named them, abject at his feet. But not in their minds; ah, no. In their minds they were giddy with the joy that is the heart of terror.

The more he strove to drive them away, the tighter they clung.

He spun away from them, upon the sultan. “They are all mad!”

“But most well trained,” said Saladin, “and utterly loyal. They'll serve you well.”

Damn him. He had known what he was doing. He had chosen the best fighters and the worst hellions, and the ones least likely to balk at serving a demon. They were all pagans; even the ones who were born Christian. Even under the yoke of Islam.

They were, Aidan had perforce to admit, perfectly matched to their master. Their entirely unwilling, utterly nonplussed master.

As he would be whether he kept them as slaves or set them free. Once his own, always his own. He was obligated to them as they to him, while their lives should last.

It was damnably like being a king. “What am I to do with them?”

“Use us,” Arslan ventured to say. He was the eldest but one, and stood as their captain. “We all hate the one you hate. Our master before you — it was he who died when our sultan took his wound. He had no son; we passed into the hands of our sultan. We asked him for the right to vengeance. He promised it. Will you break his promise for him?”

“You could die for it.”

“Then we will go to Paradise, and Allah will reward us.”

Aidan threw up his hands in despair. “Do you know who would be glad to see this? Half the High Court of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. They wanted me with an army at my back. And now, by God, I have one. But I'll not command an army of slaves, even if your law would allow a Christian to master Muslim souls. You'll be free, or you'll not follow me.”

“It has been witnessed,” the sultan said.

He was inordinately pleased with himself. His emirs were more than slightly puzzled. His brother did not know what there was to fail to comprehend, except that a Frank had been given a gift as far beyond his desserts as if a dog had been granted entry into Paradise.

Saladin rose; he managed, by sheer force of will, to stand eye to eye with the tall Rhiyanan. He said, “Now you go as well attended as any man may. I pray God that He may grant you His good fortune, and somewhat of His providence. Walk warily, my friend. Look always to your back. You may know better than I what weapons of magic your enemy may wield, but that he has them, you may be certain. There may even — it is whispered — there may be some among his servants who are not merely human.”

Cold walked down Aidan's spine. But he held up his head; he smiled. “Whatever his servants may be, he himself is beyond all doubt a mortal man. I go well forewarned, and most well armed.”

Saladin's smile was as brittle as Aidan's own. He embraced the prince, as if with his strength alone he could will it all to end as he would have it. “Allah defend you,” he said.

Aidan bowed to the floor. The mamluks — his mamluks — followed him in a body. That made him laugh. Still laughing, with the sultan's wide and sudden grin to bear him company, he led them away.

17.

Joanna did not, as Aidan had half feared, react with horror to his new army. She was not even surprised. “Ismat told me,” she said. “It was partly her idea. She thought you ought to have followers you can trust.”

Aidan barely raised a brow. He was beginning to understand how these women ruled while letting their men believe that the world was in their own hands. No doubt Joanna was a traitor to her sex, for letting him know what she knew; or she would have been, if he had been a human man. Sometimes he wondered, a little bitterly, if that was why she accepted so easily what was between them. He was like a dream lover, not human and therefore not quite so mortal a sin.