Vampire Khan

by Dan Davis

  Hassan wore the expression of a man coming home. The others, too, stood and drank it in with reverence and solemnity.

  I was jealous, and my heart ached for England.

  Eva pressed herself against my side and slipped her hand into mine. I wondered if she felt the same sense of loss in that moment, or whether she was more apprehensive about what the end of our journey would entail. Whether we would face imprisonment, exploitation, violence.

  I had dragged her all that way. And in my wake had come a Franciscan monk, a Syrian scholar, an immortal Templar, and two fugitive Mongols. Each of them looked wary of the sight before us. We were in no doubt we were all entering the heart of enemy territory.

  “Will your lord truly let us stay?” I asked Hassan, for the thousandth and last time. “He will not have us all put to death for being unbelievers?”

  He took a deep breath, sucking the air of his homeland into his lungs, and let it out with enormous satisfaction.

  “We shall see.”

  ***

  While the valley of Alamut was lush and beautiful, bursting with orchards and livestock and green life, the castle of Alamut was perched atop a savage peak. As soon as I laid my eyes upon it, I understood why the Assassins yet had confidence that they could resist the might of the Mongol hordes.

  The enormous defensive walls of the castle sat on colossal slabs of well-eroded rock. The narrow path up to the walls crossed back and forth up the side of the valley and the final sections of that path were within arrow range from the battlements and towers that bristled along the high lines of the defences. Spars and ropes jutted up here and there, silhouetted against the blisteringly blue sky, which I recognised as the arms of catapults mounted on the walls and the tops of the towers. The realisation caused a shiver to run down my spine, as I imagined the stones that they could throw from such a height. Projectiles that could surely reach halfway along the valley floor.

  “How could an army of any size assault this place?” I asked Thomas when we had dragged ourselves all the way to the top and stood beneath the walls. The entrance was up even higher still, where the road curved up and around a corner of the rocks that the walls sat upon.

  Thomas shook his head. “It would take an act of God.”

  “All of you should stay here,” Hassan said. “Other than Richard.”

  Thomas stepped in front of me. “I do not like it, Richard. Once they have you up there, they can do as they wish with you.”

  Hassan understood his fear. “I have given my word that no harm will come to him, or to any of you.”

  “Your word?” Thomas said. “Your word? You are a people who survive through acts of murder. How can we ever trust your word?”

  Hassan pressed his lips together and his men puffed themselves up, sensing that their lord was being insulted, or at least disrespected. Men had died for less.

  I steered Thomas further to one side. Hot wind gusted up from the valley floor, bringing the smell of juniper and creosote. The sky was a searing ice blue above the castle walls and Thomas squinted beneath the hood of his light robe.

  “Thomas, these men could kill all of us, right now.”

  He glanced around at the Assassins surrounding us. “We could make a fight of it, Richard.”

  I nodded. “You and I might even be the last ones standing. Eva, too. Then what? How far is it to Acre? A thousand miles?”

  “So that is it? You just submit to them?”

  “It is not submission,” I said, urging him to understand. To see it my way. “We are negotiating. It is a trade. We cannot expect to be given shelter without giving something in return.”

  He sighed and glanced up, wincing at the sky. “You cannot give them that. These damned Saracens. Our enemies. Mohammedans. God’s enemies. What they could do with this power.”

  “They will help us to kill Hulegu, William, and the others.”

  “Will they? And then who will they kill? The King of England?”

  I hesitated. “We are a long way from such a thing, Thomas. In all likelihood, this Master of the Assassins will have us slaughtered to a man.” I patted him on the shoulder and turned to Hassan. “Lead the way.”

  When I was finally led into the inner hall, deep within the castle, the Master of Assassins sat waiting for us on a low dais in an ornate but delicate throne. He was dressed in dark green robes of silk, with a sash about his waist. Over a dozen armed men stood at the ready, a handful behind the lord of Alamut, the rest arrayed about the hall. It smelled of incense and roasted spiced goat.

  Still, he made us wait while he attended to some other business with clerks until, finally, Hassan was waved over. Silence fell over the hall while the leader of the Assassins glared at Hassan.

  Rukn al-Din Khurshah had been the leader for a few months only. His father before him had lost his mind due to his great age, and so the respected lord, who was like a king and a pope to them all in one, was murdered. A murder committed from practical necessity, as the leadership has always passed from father to son upon the death of the elder.

  Necessary and practical though it was, the new lord, Rukn al-Din Khurshah, had convicted the murderer and had him executed himself. It was likely that Rukn al-Din had ordered, or at the least encouraged, the regicide and everyone knew it. And yet the assassin still had to pay the price. It seemed strange to me, cold and improper, and yet it had secured for the Ismailis a secure succession during a time of great crisis.

  Rukn al-Din was in the prime of his life, perhaps in his mid-thirties. His beard was thick and luxuriously oiled. He was not a tall man and his body looked soft; shoulders narrow and belly bulging.

  Over the decades in the Holy Land, I had picked up fragments of Arabic, the language of the Saracens. Abdullah had grudgingly taught me a few phrases and the names for common items during our travel across the steppe and our stay in Karakorum. I had picked up a lot more during our return toward the west with the Assassins, listening to them work, joke, and argue when camp was made and struck.

  Still, I struggled to make sense of the words that were traded by Hassan and Rukn al-Din. But with what little I did know, and by watching closely the gestures and expressions of the two men, it became clear that Hassan was angry. Furious, even. Yet, out of respect, he contained that fury.

  Not only Hassan, but Rukn al-Din grew angry, too.

  I was able to discern that much of it was directed at the foreigners Hassan had brought into their midst.

  It was not long before Hassan turned to me.

  “I have tried to explain to him,” Hassan said. “What you are. What you can do. What you could do to us. He does not understand. And so he wishes to see your abilities demonstrated for himself.”

  I sighed and nodded. I had expected it and began to bare my arm so that I could cut myself, and so this Rukn al-Din could watch it heal.

  “No, Richard,” Hassan said. “Not those abilities.”

  Three of the bodyguards stepped forward from their positions by Rukn al-Din, and drew their swords before me, well out of striking distance.

  “My weapons and armour are outside,” I said. “Down with my companions.”

  Hassan drew his own sword and handed it to me, hilt first. “I have seen you admiring this blade. Now, you may try it for yourself.”

  I felt a need to protest. Explain to him, to all of them, that I had never trained with one of those long-curved blades, only played with them. That I always trained to fight in armour, with helm and shield. Always, I favoured thrusting with the point of my blade and yet there I was, expected to fight, unarmoured, with a strange weapon.

  Against three men.

  Three of the feared fedayin Assassins, men who trained to kill without thought to their own lives, and these three young men were considered skilful and steady enough to serve as bodyguard to their king.

  It was not possible, for almost any man, to fight alone against even two competent opponents. The obvious strategy is to strike with speed at one man, to drive
him away from the other and to finish him before the other can bring his blade to bear.

  What good strategy there was for a man to fight three others, without armour, I could not imagine.

  But I did not voice my protest. It would have achieved nothing.

  And anyway, I had been more than a man for some time.

  “What are the rules of this bout?” I asked Hassan while I looked along the blade to discern any sign of existing damage.

  “If you die,” he said, “you lose.”

  “Ah,” I said, nodding while I flourished the blade to test the handling of it. “I have played this game before.”

  No signal, nor even any warning, was given.

  They all three attacked at once.

  Their blades slashed at me as I leapt back, swept my sword up and swatted away one of them with the flat of my blade. While Hassan fled to the edge of the hall, two circled quickly to either side of me while the third threatened to attack me head on.

  The only sensible thing to do was to retreat back. Only, that would end with me cornered and attacked on three sides at once.

  After feinting that retreat, I leapt forward, charging the man in front. Though I surely moved faster than any man he had ever faced before, he was not so surprised as I would have liked.

  His blade slashed into my left shoulder. As he pulled the cut, he stepped back and to the side with well-practised footwork, and his blade sliced through the sleeves of my tunic, and my shirt, and deep into my flesh. Pain lanced through me, a sharp ache that took my breath away.

  The clever move did not save him.

  I sliced up and across his throat, pulling the edge across the front of his neck. He jerked back, so the cut was not as deep or as wide as I wanted but it was enough to cut into his windpipe and one of the great veins beside it. It would take him some time to die, and he was still dangerous. Using our momentum, I grabbed hold of his sword arm and twisted as I stepped by him, throwing him back at the men behind me.

  Even as I did so, the tip of a blade sliced into the back of my skull, hitting bone but sheering off.

  The swordsman was on me, following up with another blow. His cuts fast and precise, I parried with the strange curved sword in my hand and cursed my lack of a shield.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the other man leap over his falling comrade and come at me from the flank.

  Both twirled their weapons, flashing and frightening by their display of mastery.

  Why should I fear a blade?

  Years of training had taught me how to defend. Any fool can learn to swing a sword, my old teachers had told us, but a great knight is one who can protect himself from harm. Any cut could be fatal, and often was, even if it was weeks later due to infection. Any blade thrust into gaps in your armour would very likely kill you quite quickly, assuming it severed an artery. Training that gets into you when you are young gets in deep. Old habits die hard.

  And there was the fear of pain, of course. An animal fear, barely controllable, that says get away from harm, from injury, from some danger or other that you know, down to your bones, will be agonising. The pain from a sword cut will take your breath away, buckle your legs, cause you to weep and to shake in spite of your desire to be virtuous.

  But I could heal my wounded flesh in mere moments. And I had already felt so much pain in my life that it was like an old friend.

  I forced myself forward onto him and ground my teeth as his sword slashed me across the chest. Before he could retreat, I grabbed him by the upper arm, slashing at his groin while in close and butting his face. While he reeled, I stabbed my sword into his guts, twisting and tearing it out. The foul stench of hot shit filled the air as his intestines popped out through the gash.

  Sometimes, your body takes an action before you realise it. And so it was as I turned, slid sideways and slashed behind me at the last man, whose own blade missed me by a hair’s breadth. Mine caught him across the face, the impact from his skull jarring my arm. It was a poor cut, but it did the job and he retreated, wailing, his sword clattering on the tile floor. I had cut through one of his eyes and his nose was a bloody, flapping piece of gristle dangling from his face.

  Someone in the hall shouted, perhaps a cry to let the man live.

  But the smell of blood filled my head and I would not be denied.

  I seized the man, though he flailed and attempted to flee, and slipped the curved point of my blade into his neck, slicing through the skin. While he still attempted to fight me off, I dropped my sword and grabbed him with both hands. I bent my head and placed my lips around the wound on his throat.

  Oh, such sweet relief. That hot, rich blood pumped into my mouth and I gulped it down, mouthful after mouthful. It surged to fill my mouth, I swallowed, and another pulse flooded between my lips as I held him close, pressed to me like a lover. The man’s black beard tickled my nose, and I could smell olive oil on his skin and garlic in his breath. His strong, young heart beat frantically, not yet knowing it was dead.

  My belly felt good. Warm and heavy, the strength of it spreading through me. It was not long before I had my fill, and I dropped the dying man. He was as limp as a rag doll, and his ruined face hideous to see.

  The other two men lay dead also. Under my feet, the white tiled floor was smeared with blood and dark pools of it continued to spread from beneath the bodies.

  Around the edges of the hall, the other bodyguards stood with their own blades drawn, staring at me, some with disgust, others wore a look of horror. All would have liked to kill me, I have no doubt.

  Rukn al-Din held a cloth over his mouth and nose. His eyes were narrowed above them, glaring at me with malice. He muttered something and the guards around me advanced.

  This is it, I thought. This is the place where I die.

  I took a quick step and scooped up my sword.

  They all froze.

  “Drop your sword,” Hassan shouted. “They will not kill you.”

  “I do not believe you,” I said, turning and turning to keep an eye on all of them. Yet they did not advance.

  Rukn al-Din shouted at me but my Arabic was not good enough to understand.

  “He says you will come to no harm,” Hassan explained, walking forward into the blood with his hands spread apart. “He wishes to see if your wounds have healed, as I told him they would.”

  It seemed plausible. Anyway, even if I killed every man in the room, I would never escape from Alamut alive.

  I dropped my sword and held out my arms as they seized me. Hands tore at my tunic and my undershirt, baring my shoulder and my chest to the Master of Assassins. Water was brought and they washed the dried blood away. My skin was marked with pink lines where the cuts had been. Even these seemed to fade while I watched. They turned me around and scrubbed the blood from my hair with their fingers.

  Finally, they were waved away and I stood, naked from the waist up, wet and bloody. Rukn al-Din held the cloth over his mouth and nose while he stared at me, thinking. It felt as though I was being examined like livestock.

  I decided that, should he order that I be led to the slaughter, I would be sure to kill him, Rukn al-Din, before they could do so.

  But he muttered something to Hassan, leapt up and hurried from the stinking, filthy room, trailed by a handful of his men.

  Hassan rushed forward, grabbed my elbow and dragged me from the room while the remaining men glared.

  “What did he say?” I asked Hassan in the corridor. “What is happening now?”

  When we reached the antechamber where his own men waited, Hassan paused and turned to me.

  “I am allowed to hold you and your people at my castle, Firuzkuh. He orders me to use your blood to make thirty of my men into immortals. And with them, perhaps, he will allow us to infiltrate the Mongol army and kill Hulegu.”

  ***

  Hassan’s Castle Firuzkuh was a journey of two days from Alamut. I was struck, time and again, by the beauty of the place. The lushness of the fields, t
he prosperity of the people who worked them.

  “It will be very different in winter,” Hassan explained when I spoke of it to him. “The snows will fill the passes. Travel will be impossible.”

  “Every winter?”

  “It never fails. It is one of our greatest defences. Every settlement must be stocked with enough food and fuel every winter. We are well used to sieges here. God besieges us in our homes for months on end, every year.”

  “That is why you want the Mongols to make a concerted attack. You want the snow to kill them for you.”

  “The Mongols are hard people,” Hassan said. “The hardest, perhaps. But if they are caught out in the mountains when the snows come, thousands of them will die while we sit content in our fortifications. It was always the plan of ‘Alā’ ad-Dīn Muḥammad, who was the lord of all Ismailis for my entire life, and who sent me on my embassy to Mongke Khan. He wished to delay and delay, to frustrate the Mongols for long enough that they would turn their attention elsewhere.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Every time the Great Khan dies, a successor must be chosen. All campaigns are called off, all leaders return to their homeland to take part in the choosing. It has taken many years on previous choosings. It has saved Christendom when they turned back decades ago.”

  “And that was why your old king sent so many fedayin to kill Mongke. Not just for vengeance but because it could save your people. But you called them all off? So that you could leave with me and my companions. Why would you do that?”

  “I swore that I would do it,” Hassan said. “But it was not true. I could not call them off, even if I wished to. They are everywhere and I have no way to contact them all.”

  “You lied?”

  He nodded. “Lying is a moral act if it leads to furthering the aims of our people.”