The Lion of Cairo (44 page)

Now, even by the soft light of the moon, the place looked as cheap and mean as the old Greek’s wife: two ramshackle tenements rose from the uneven earth, the ground at their feet jumbled with refuse and choked with weeds. Waist-high tussocks of sedge grass rattled in the faint breeze.

Look beneath,
Musa had said.
Look beneath.
Assad frowned. Beneath what? Beneath the tenements? Beneath the ground? Beneath some marker he had yet to see?
Look beneath
 …

Assad prowled deeper into the Maydan, skirting heaps of smashed pottery and scatterings of yellowed animal bones. He stopped again and listened, his hand resting lightly on the carved ivory pommel of his
salawar;
raw hatred pulsed through the hilt—a sharper vibration than any he had felt in a long while. The blade hungered. It thirsted for blood, for slaughter. Baring his teeth in a bestial grimace, the Emir of the Knife exerted his will over the blade’s burning rage; the effort caused his biceps to bulge and thick ropes of muscle to writhe between wrist and elbow.

In that instant, with his senses heightened by ancient wrath, Assad caught a hint of movement on the periphery of his vision. He sank to a half crouch and peered through a fan of sedge. A dozen yards away, a dark shape disengaged from the deeper shadow between the tenements. A shape clad in black, its lower face muffled by a scarf. It straightened visibly as another figure seemed to emerge from the very ground—surely rising from the entrance to a cellar or the like, which, given Musa’s dying admonition, made perfect sense. This figure, too, was black clad, but with close-cropped hair the color of heavy gold. Words passed between the two; the first figure nodded vigorously and drew a knife while the other turned and scanned the expanse of the Maydan before returning into the ground. Assad had the impression of a hard and angular face, a Frankish face, with skin bronzed by the sun and pale eyes that glimmered with a strange inner light.

The Heretic.

Assad loosened his blade in its sheath. With measured steps, taking care never to rise above a crouch, he slowly worked his way around the edge of the Maydan. He passed wraithlike through deep wells of shadow and came in behind the lone sentry, who squatted in the lee of the nearest of the two tenements—perfectly still save for a twitch that caused a flicker of moonlight to reflect from the blade of his drawn knife. And in that position the sentry remained, even as Assad rose up behind him like a specter of Death.

The man stiffened at the cold caress of steel on his neck, the blade’s razored tip touching his flesh where the skull met the spine. “How many fedayeen remain below?” Assad whispered in his ear.

The sentry shook his head, pale with fear and yet defiant.

“Your end can be swift.” Assad increased the pressure on the hilt of his
salawar.
Blood oozed as it sank a hairsbreadth into the sentry’s flesh, provoking a sharp intake of breath. “Or I can make it so you linger in misery. The choice is yours. How many?”

“To hell with you, dog of Alamut!” Before Assad could stop him the sentry hurled himself to the ground, the point of his own knife jabbed against his sternum. Assad heard the pommel scrape on stone; the man groaned and writhed, flopping onto his back like a speared fish. The knife stood out from his chest. Blood glistened, beads of onyx on the sedge grass.

Swiftly, Assad knelt and clamped a hand over the man’s nose and mouth. Iron fingers stifled an agonized cry. His curved blade had missed his heart, and the bloody froth boiling in his throat promised that his suicide would be neither quick nor painless.

“Idiot,” Assad said. “The knife cut into your lung. You’re going to die, but if you tell me what I want to know, I’ll make a swift end of your suffering. Keep silent and I will leave you here to drown in your own blood. One last time: how many fedayeen remain to your precious Heretic?”

The sentry’s eyes pleaded for a quick death; he nodded. Assad lifted his hand away. An explosion of bright crimson jetted from the man’s nostrils. The wretch gurgled and choked. “S-six,” he managed around a mouthful of blood. “Six remain … you’re—you’re a dead man, dog of A-Alamut! My master—my master knows—he k-knows you’re c-coming…!”

“Good. It is your master I seek.” In one smooth motion, Assad wrenched the knife free of the man’s sternum and hammered it down again with the precision of a surgeon—upper chest, left of center.

Gasping, the man shuddered and died.

Assad rose to his feet and padded over to where the Heretic had vanished. As he expected, there was an entrance carved into the earth—a jagged cleft, its raw edges hinting at recent excavation. Slowly, Assad circled it. Moonlight filtered into the dark spaces. On one side, knotty planks and timbers shored up the earth; on the other, he saw the beginnings of an ancient stone wall, pitted and etched with fantastical figures. Crumbling steps followed it down into clotted shadow. There was something buried here, something hidden over the centuries by Nile silt and blowing sand. Something older than Cairo.
But what?
This was no cellar; Assad was certain of that, not with the totems of elder Egypt decorating its stonework. Such images, animal headed and profane, were anathema to Moslem, Nazarene, and Jew alike. Even if the locals had claimed this as their own they would have first effaced its walls. No, this was forbidden ground … a place where the sins and heresies of the past boiled to the surface, where a sense of dread conjured by the devilish friezes was reinforced by the eager knives of the Syrians.

The perfect bolt-hole for the thrice-cursed infidels of Massaif.

Savage fury vibrated through the Assassin’s hard-muscled frame, twisting through tendon and sinew as he descended into the earth. He made no attempt to muffle the sound of his approach. Down forty-two uneven steps, the heels of the Assassin’s boots scuffed and thudded until he reached the bottom of the cleft. A faint breath of air trickled out around the edges of the curtain-hung entry. Scowling, Assad knotted his fingers in the thick fabric, and with a savage jerk he ripped the curtain free of its fastenings. The dim glow of a lamp shone from deeper within, through a yawning doorway.

“Heretic! We have business, you and I!” Assad’s voice reverberated about the antechamber and out into the hall beyond, giving the Assassin some inkling of the dimensions of the place. “Show yourself!”

The echo faded, unanswered; Assad crossed the antechamber and crouched by the doorway, ears straining to catch any slightest hint of an ambush—the scuff of a foot, the rasp of steel on leather, the whisper of fabric. Anything that might betray the locations of the remaining fedayeen and their master.

Columns as tall and thick as the cedars of Lebanon filled the next room, a stone forest lit by small clay lamps, dim and widely spaced. Still, it was enough light for Assad to see by … and more than enough to create wells of impenetrable darkness between the columns. The Heretic and his fedayeen could be hiding behind any one of them, Assad reckoned, waiting for him to either pass by or to turn and show them his back.

The Assassin straightened. Though outnumbered and on unfamiliar ground he still had the advantage: he was the Emir of the Knife; every myth, rumor, and half-truth attached to that moniker would come shrieking to life as they waited there in the dark. Fear would squat like a misshapen gargoyle on the shoulders of the Heretic’s men, blunting the edge of their murderous zeal. Fear of
him
. The Assassin’s scarred face settled into a resolute mask, cold and brazen; like a conqueror, he strode through the doorway and into the columned hall.

“Heretic!” Assad roared.

Stronger light flickered from his left, a reddish glow that spilled out through an intricately carved doorway and into the columned hall. Assad’s eyes narrowed. A figure stood in partial shadow beneath the graven lintel with his hands clasped before him like a pious Nazarene. This man was older than the Heretic, a hairless pate and graying beard framing dark vulpine features.

“Where is he, old man?”

The fellow did not reply.

Assad moved between the columns. Years of stalking human prey had honed his senses to predatory sharpness; he knew after a handful of steps that he wasn’t alone. From both sides he could hear the faintest whisper of callused feet on stone. Assad caught the flicker of pale flesh, twinkling with sweat, and smiled. “Six little fedayeen cowering in the dark. You are wise to fear me, dogs. Bring forth this Heretic of yours and perhaps I will allow the lot of you to live.” Cloth rustled. Ruddy light glinted off bared steel. “Do you hear me? Bring him forth!”

“The Hammer of the Infidel!” the old man muttered, staring at the blade in Assad’s fist. Gnarled fingers twitched, as though he longed to reach out and caress the watered steel, to stroke the ivory pommel. “The spirits did not lie!”

Assad froze; suspicion clouded his scarred face. Never since bringing the blade down from the high Afghan mountains had he met someone who knew its name. “What spirits, old man? How do you know that name?”

“I hear its voice, as you do,” the old man replied. “I hear
his
voice. Listen to him howl! Still he rages against the injustices done to him, against the betrayals and the broken promises, unaware that his is a vengeance that will never be consummated.”

“And who is
he
?”

Assad regretted the question even as he uttered it. Instantly, comprehension sharpened the old man’s stare; a cold smirk twisted his thin lips. “Do you test me, or do you truly know nothing about the blade you carry? Gods below! You don’t know, do you? The Hammer’s history, its antecedents—such things are as alien to you as the meaning in these carvings!”

“I know enough!” Assad bristled.

“Do you?” The old man laughed. “It seems I have overestimated him, Badr.”

The Heretic emerged from the darkness at the old man’s side like a creature born of shadow. His close-cropped golden hair caught the dim lamplight, pale eyes ablaze with contempt. “He is artless, master.”

“Indeed, he is. The djinn of the blade merely toys with him. It deserves a stronger master, a more appreciative master.” The old man turned away. “Kill this fool and bring the Hammer to me.”

The death sentence hung in the air for a score of heartbeats. Assad met the Heretic’s pale-eyed stare without flinching, sizing up the man who casually drew a Frankish dirk from the small of his back. Half a dozen paces separated the two; Assad weighed his chances of reaching him and dealing a killing blow before the fedayeen, who were inching closer in the darkness, swarmed over him. The Assassin reckoned it would be suicide. Still, his muscles tensed. The blade in his fist throbbed with ancient hatred, its pent-up rage shredding every cell and synapse as it threaded his nerves with red-hot wires.

Blood,
the steel sang to him.

Time slowed, thickening like honey on a cold winter’s morning. A single heartbeat elongated into a caricature of eternity, and in that long moment of absolute stillness a series of disjointed images impressed upon Assad’s consciousness: a carving of a man with a falcon’s head lit by wavering lamplight; eerie blue eyes flicking right and left; tendons flexing as the Heretic tightened his grip on the hilt of his dirk, his weight shifting in anticipation …

Blood,
the steel cried.

Suddenly, the Emir of the Knife laughed, a sound like the swift footsteps of Death—and as he laughed, he struck. With a pantherish twist Assad sprang to his right, his
salawar
sweeping out before him. Flesh parted beneath its damascened edge; a Syrian who had strayed too close staggered, gurgling and clawing at his severed jugular as he fell to his knees. Assad barreled past him to ram his shoulder into a second fedayee’s midsection. The man catapulted backward, breath whooshing from his lungs; his spine crunched against a column and he sank to the ground.

The point of a Syrian dagger ripped through Assad’s
khalat,
ploughing a bloody furrow along his ribs. The fedayee who dealt the blow loosed a savage howl of triumph—a howl which abruptly changed to a death rattle as Assad’s flickering riposte split open his skull like an overripe melon. Wrenching his blade free of the toppling corpse, the Assassin wheeled to meet the rush of the remaining Syrians and their master.

Shadows danced on the walls as the dead gods of this ancient land, graven in stone, watched the tableau unfold like spectators in a blood-soaked arena. Assad faced three fedayeen, black-turbaned murderers with fists upraised and knives gripped white-knuckle tight. A fourth lay at the base of a column, writhing in agony and fighting for breath. Of the Heretic, Assad saw no sign. Yet, in that flash-frozen sliver of time he apprehended the tactic of his enemy—for it was one he had himself used to good effect, one he had learned from Daoud ar-Rasul:
If your prey would prefer a fight, then blunt his sword with the flesh of the Faithful.
The Heretic would wait until the fedayeen had exhausted him before moving in for the kill.

Inshallah,
Assad thought.
So be it.

Assad did not slacken his pace; even full in the knowledge his own doom might be upon him, he did not hesitate. His veins blazed with hatred not wholly his own as he waded into the Syrians’ midst, gore dripping from his blade and the stench of fresh-spilled blood yet in his nostrils.

The soldiers of Massaif were well trained, and they fought with the reckless bravado of men who held no fear of death. But against the fury of the Emir of the Knife, all their training and all their bravado accounted for nothing. Forged in the crucible of war and honed by the masters of Alamut, Assad moved with blinding speed, never still, his every step perfectly timed and without hesitation.

A maelstrom of steel rasped and whickered around him. A knife flashed past, a spirited lunge gone awry; Assad sidestepped and caught the man by the wrist of his knife hand. His own blade fell like a butcher’s cleaver, severing the fedayee’s arm at the elbow. The man screamed and reeled away, clutching the crimson stump to his body. Assad slung the amputated limb in the face of his nearest attacker.