Pillars of Light (39 page)

The pig had almost touched him! With a thrill of disgust, Kamal Najib pressed himself back against the side of the ship until the hard wooden rail bit into his spine. He watched the unclean creature skittering crazily down the deck to join the other half dozen that had also been let loose from the crate, and felt nothing but contempt for a captain who had thought such a facile stratagem could deceive the might and intellect of the infidel.

Everyone had shaved their beards off just before they set sail from Beirut on the
Crescent Moon
(and the name of the ship had been painted out): if challenged they would claim they were Christian sailors come to relieve the hardships of the besieging army. He had barely even started growing his own chin-hair, but even so the cool sea breeze on his naked skin felt strange, adding to his general sense of discomfort. He hated being on board a ship, hated the idea of the heaving sea beneath the hull. He had never learned to swim. When Zohra and Aisa had been competing with one another as to who could dive deepest and swim fastest, Kamal had always stayed on the beach, crying with fear at the thought of someone pushing him in. He had learned ways to control fear during his training in the mountains, but beneath the Grand Headmaster’s chants he could still sense the cold profundity of his dread.

For months now he had been plagued with nightmares of drowning from which he woke gasping in terror. It seemed cruel
of Fate to decree that he should be sent on this particular mission. Or maybe—and this seemed even more likely—the Grand Headmaster knew his greatest fear and was determined he should face it head on.

To get out of the way of the revolting hogs, he climbed the steps up to the high forecastle. The Grand Headmaster had drummed into all of them how the sultan was no true Muslim, that he was a man bent on power for his own pleasure and ambition. After all, he was not a true Arab but one of those troublesome Kurds, barely more than savages. That Salah ad-Din had come to prominence in such a far-flung region of the Ummah, the cradle of debauchery and corruption that was Egypt, whence came that abomination the eunuch Karakush, further emphasized the wrongness of the situation. Twice, the Order had attempted to assassinate Salah ad-Din; twice, he had eluded them.

But this had not stopped the sultan from sequestering the goods of the Nizari sect. And so the Old Man had declared him their enemy. To the naive it might seem illogical to support the efforts of the infidel against a man leading the troops of the Ummah, he’d said, but the ways of Allah were mysterious, far beyond the comprehension of ordinary men. He—Sidi Rachid ad-Din Sinan—was one of the few to whom such understanding was vouchsafed. One day his disciples would take pride in having played their small part in the great scheme.

It had not been hard to persuade Kamal of the sultan’s iniquity; after all, he had heard his father deriding the man often enough. Bashar, though, had owned up to private doubts in the beginning of their training. He had left Akka to emulate his dead elder brother, who had died in the service of the
hashshashin
, and who had always said Salah ad-Din was as close to a saint as any man he had ever met. But the Grand Headmaster was a highly persuasive man, able to quote the Holy Book at will to back up his every utterance, and
in the end Bashar had forgotten everything he had ever believed in his former life. Where his mission had taken his erstwhile friend now, Kamal did not know. What he did know was that when he had completed this, his own first mission, he would be a fully fledged
hashshashin
, beloved of the Order.

From the top deck of the
Crescent Moon
’s forecastle, Kamal could see the foreign ships bearing down behind them—one handsome galley and three smaller craft. But even the big galley was tiny compared to the
Crescent Moon
, which carried six hundred and fifty fighting men, a hundred camel-loads of weapons and ammunition, thousands of bottles of Greek fire, and large ampullae filled with poisonous snakes to be hurled from the walls of Akka. The hold was stuffed with provisions for the starving inhabitants of the city—distantly visible as a line of pale ochre beyond the Christian naval blockade. The warriors on board would bolster the beleaguered garrison; the supplies would feed the city for many months, long enough, it was hoped, for troops to muster from across the caliphate to answer Sultan Salah ad-Din’s call to arms.

If they could run the blockade and force their way into Akka, it would surely be the downfall of the Franj. The siege would fail and the sultan would once more be victorious, confirmed in his power and potency.

But that was the last thing the Old Man of the Mountains wished for. As soon as the Grand Headmaster had heard from his spies about the great ship being provisioned at Beirut, he had sent Kamal to infiltrate the crew and thwart the attempt. Kamal hoped he could complete this part of his mission successfully. His stomach contracted, he thought he might throw up, but once more his training came into play and he forced himself to calmness.

A smaller craft was approaching them. When it came within hailing distance of the
Crescent Moon
’s mighty prow, a man stood up and challenged them, inquiring as to their identity and the port
they had set sail from. The captain was ready for this—but so was Kamal, well schooled in the various tongues of the Franj. The Beiruti captain spoke, and Kamal translated his words for the captain of the foreign ship.

“My captain says we have come from Genoa and are bound for Tyre with supplies for the Christian army! But you may tell your master this is not the full truth.” He knew he could not mention the word Beirut—even the dull-witted captain would be suspicious if he heard the name of his home port mentioned.

Kamal watched the foreigner’s smooth face take in this information. “You fly no Christian flag,” the man called back.

He translated this for the captain, who cursed. “Tell them we left port in a great hurry, knowing the army’s need for provisions.”

It was a feeble response, and Kamal duly relayed it, grinning his contempt. “If you take me back with you,” he told the officer in the skiff, “I can tell your master a great deal more. Demand me as a hostage. You will not regret it.”

And so it was that he climbed nimbly down the rope into the enemy skiff and was rowed swiftly away, his eyes firmly shut against the proximity of the terrible sea.

Once safely on board the foreign ship, he relaxed a little and looked around. The crew seemed very organized, very workmanlike. They went about their tasks quickly and with discipline. Sidi ad-Din Sinan would have approved. Kamal relayed all his information to the captain of the vessel in the presence of a tall, red-haired man, relating how they had come from Beirut on the sultan’s command, listing the goods contained in the hold, the numbers of men stowed below.

Perhaps they would not believe him. He must make them believe him, for this was only the first part of the plan. Whatever danger he put himself in did not matter. All that mattered was the Way and the Grand Headmaster’s will.

Kamal watched the
Crescent Moon
plough on towards Akka, heading for the blockade of Christian vessels lined up across the entrance to the harbour. Not too fast, but with purpose, as they had been proceeding before the challenge had come from the other vessels. He knew they would use the oars to power the ship through the blockade once they approached the city, but that they would reserve the rowers’ strength for that final push.

Beyond the
Crescent Moon
, Kamal could clearly make out the Tower of Flies rising like a spear past the breakwater of the inner harbour, and the pale-gold walls that bounded the seaward face of the city. He had never before seen his home from the sea. It looked beautiful, serene. The minarets of the mosques extended gracefully towards the sky. If you ignored the Christian ships and the swaths of enemy forces stretching for miles outside the walls, it looked untouched by war. For a moment he experienced a pang of nostalgia for his lost life; then he tamped it down ferociously.

Suddenly there was a cry. “Get after them! Stop them reaching the blockade!”

And now it was a race. The galley he was on was big, but it was nowhere near as powerful as the
Crescent Moon
. At top speed that ship might well bully its way through the blockade and into Akka’s harbour, but the pursuing vessels were faster and more nimble. They sailed alongside in no time, and their crews rained missiles on the Arab vessel. The crew of the Arab vessel—ordinary sailors, untrained for war—took cover, but the game was up now.

Kamal watched from a safe place behind a bulwark as the Muslim troops swarmed up onto the deck and returned fire. But now, as if to confirm once more the Order’s righteous plan, the wind suddenly dropped, threatening to becalm the
Crescent Moon
if the rowers did not prevail against the tide. Down on the rowing decks the overseers would be lashing the oarsmen for all they were worth, but now the foreign galley he was in came around in the
Crescent
Moon
’s path. He watched as some of the Franj threw themselves into the sea, ropes slung across their backs.
They are better men than me
, he found himself thinking.
Even if the Grand Headmaster himself ordered me to leap into the sea, I could not do it
.

Somehow they had got their ropes around the prow and were pulling the
Crescent Moon
around. And while the smaller ships harried it, ramming its sides with the iron beaks attached to their prows, the ship he was on came up on the Arab ship, and its crew hurled grappling irons over the side and hauled themselves closer, till the two vessels collided broadside. And then suddenly the main deck of the
Crescent Moon
was swarming with foreign soldiers, and there was a chaos of hand-to-hand fighting as the Muslim soldiers met them in force, and the pigs charged and squealed.

Even at a distance, Kamal could smell the foul stench: pigshit and blood, and the sweat of terrified men. The ship gave a shudder as if it too felt Kamal’s disgust, and then one of the foreign vessels staved a hole in the
Crescent Moon
’s starboard side. As the iron beak withdrew, taking splintered planking with it, he saw the water rush in. He imagined it, a boiling sea filling the hold, weighing it down. He watched while the ship began to list as water filled the hold; and then men were throwing themselves off the decks down into the waves, giving themselves up to the sea rather than be taken by the Franj. Kamal felt a frisson of horror, mixed with a nasty, small stir of satisfaction.

Again and again the Christian galleys attacked, ramming their monstrous beaks into the
Crescent Moon
’s sides. The greedy sea rushed in and suddenly the mighty vessel foundered. Just moments later the
Crescent Moon
sank, taking to the bottom its precious cargo—men and weapons, and the food to sustain the city and its inhabitants.

For the briefest moment Kamal thought of his father, of his brother Sorgan, of his sister Zohra and his twin, Aisa, no doubt
slowly starving to death or dying of pestilence, like everyone else in the doomed city. And then he remembered what he had done to them, and shut all his feelings away as the Grand Headmaster had taught him to do.

The red-haired man strode to the prow of his galley, smiling with satisfaction. Beside him stood the captain of the
Trenchemere
, and beside them both was Kamal Najib.

They stared intently at the ochre city beyond, now close enough to see the blackened scorch-marks made by Greek fire and the scars made by the rams and mangonels on the east wall.

“I see Philip has kept his promise not to take the city until I arrived,” the red-haired man said cheerfully.

The captain grinned. “If that ship had made it through our blockade, our task would certainly have been made a great deal tougher, sire.”

Sire.

Kamal stared up at the red-haired figure: a giant of a man. He had felt in his bones the identity of the man even as he had given up to him his information. It was similar to the way he felt when he was in the presence of the Old Man of the Mountains, that corona of power, as if God had crowned them both in some intangible yet unmistakable way.

Well trained in the ways of the Franj, he went down on one knee.

“King Richard, I am yours to command,” he said, with hardly any trace of an accent.

“C
hrist! Another one.” Quickfinger fiddled in his mouth, grimacing foully, pulled out a tooth and brandished it at us.

Our gums were bleeding; we had sores on our tongues and the insides of our cheeks. We were scrawny and aching in limb and joint, in no fit state to fight a determined foe.

“Yah, get away with that thing!” I scrambled to my feet. Black stars and nausea: the ground met my face. I felt so weak it was like dying, but Ezra got me sitting up.

“Ah, look at the two of you. Ain’t it sweet?” Little Ned gave us both a nasty look, then spat a brown streak of phlegm onto the ground between us.