by Barry Sadler
A bearded ruffian with enormously muscled arms and hunched shoulders, the legacy of a childhood spent at a blacksmith's forge, he was Yousef's de facto second in command. This man, Shojan, spat-away from the wind and asked his dusty leader, "Now what?"
"They are probably resting their horses at some water hole in the wadis to the west. But they will leave a dust trail when they start out again. We will stay to the high ground and watch for signs of movement then try to cut them off. While they're resting we move. I want all the men to get off their horses and lead them. This way we will have a chance of catching up if we rest our animals on the move."
Shojan spat another mouthful of wet dust into the wind, "All right, we've gone this far and I am beginning to think you're right about the ferengi being bad luck for us. I just don't know if catching up to him would be good or just more bad."
Yousef hissed, "What else do we have to do? If we can take the Mamelukes we'll have their weapons and animals, which are worth something and any prisoners can be sold. That is still better than skulking like beaten dogs through the streets of Apnea trying to steal coppers from beggars."
Dismounting they began to follow in the direction the Mamelukes had taken. Ahead of them there was a high ridge with great open plains on either side. From there they'd be able to see in any direction for as far as the horizon. If the Mamelukes moved while it was still light they'd be seen. If they waited till dark then there would be no chance to catch up with them. Yousef and his weary band labored on, the tails of their turbans wrapped around their noses and mouths to keep out the dust whipping at their faces.
Casca had a mouthful of dust and a terrible throbbing pain at the back of his head. Before he managed to get his eyes open he had the strangest feeling of rising and falling, jolts and thumps. And he was paralyzed. Only his mouth had mobility, opening and shutting to the strange thumps and bumps. And every time it did, he got more dust in it. He wished he could fall back into the darkness and end the pain in his chest as well as that damnable throbbing at the back of his skull.
But wishing didn't make the pain go away, so he finally opened his eyes and instantly wished he hadn't. He was on a horse; his legs tied to the animal's sides by a rope under the animal's belly, his hands lashed together and the rope looped around the horse's thick neck. Ahead of him rode Bu Ali and one of the Mamelukes. Beside him rode a warrior he'd known slightly during his time with Mamud the slaver. He was known as Kanan. Casca's head hurt too much for him to look back, but he could hear the sounds of other horses' hooves behind him, so he was in the middle of a small column heading, where?
"So you are back with us, Kasim?" The voice was that of Kanan, a slow, easy-paced voice almost too soft for the size of the man. The Mameluke was larger than most of the brothers and stood half a head over Casca. His face and coloring along with slightly green eyes showed a mixture of many bloods in his veins. "Yes, you have been out for a long time."
"Where are we?"
"Who knows? Bu Ali is heading for the mountains. I heard the mob saying something about an Assassin being captured. You're not one of them are you?" Casca shook his head to clear the remaining cobwebs.
“That's a dumb question to ask anyone." He left the question unanswered since anything he said might have been the wrong thing. He didn't know if Kanan was a follower of Hassan al Sabah or not.
"Why am I tied down on this horse and why the hell did Bu Ali hit me?"
Kanan shrugged his sloped shoulders. "You're tied to the horse because that is what Bu Ali said to do. I don't know why he hit you, that is his business and he is in command." That was it. Kanan was content to follow his orders without question. Things he didn't understand, he wasn't meant to.
Casca was given water to drink from a leather skin and then studiously ignored. But Ali looked back at him once from the head of the column to give him a wide grin.
Bu Ali halted his men and rode to a small rise and looked back toward Apnea. He saw no sign of pursuit. Whoever it was that had been after them was no longer in view nor had they been since three hours past. Now he was facing one of the patches of wasteland where not even the creosote could survive. It was dry with fine dust that went ankle deep and stretched for twenty leagues.
Casca looked ahead. There shimmering in the distance and rising above the clear desert air was a range of mountains that would be a five-day ride away. The Elburz. Bu Ali was taking them to Castle Alamut. The small unit of Mamelukes moved into the endless dust of the ancient seabed.
"Dust," Shojan pointed.
"I see it," Yousef said. He looked from the thin plume of dust to the mountains on the horizon, then back again.
“They have a good head start."
"True, but there is but one place they can head and that's toward the mountains. From where we are we can intercept them by going straight, then cutting across. Also we will have a better supply of water from some springs that I know of. The Mamelukes will have to ration theirs. We'll catch them."
"What if they travel all night?"
"It will make no difference for that is what we will be doing. It will only prolong the chase a few more hours, no more. Be patient, Shojan. Be patient. We will have them, this I swear."
Bu Ali made no camp. They traveled all that night stopping only to water their animals, then to cover more miles before the heat of day turned the seabed into an inferno. With first light they sought what thin shelter they could, using their cloaks to make tents to shield them and their animals from the hammering rays of the demon sun. Three more days and nights passed in this manner till they reached the base of the Elburz Mountains still in darkness. Dawn found them climbing a steep trail on foot, the horses left behind with a single Mameluke to guard them. Casca had one rope noosed around his thick neck, a second tied securely to his waist. The ends of both were in the hands of Kanan, who was quiet for the first two thousand feet. But when the sun warmed their backs in full light, he looked up at the steep climb ahead and muttered to no one, "I hope Bu Ali calls a rest when we get to that level site ahead." Never once had he or the other Mamelukes questioned why Bu Ali was taking them to Elburz instead of back to Baghdad and their Master Mamud. They, like Kanan, left the problem of thinking to others. Their job was only to obey and Bu Ali was in command therefore he must know what he was doing.
Casca also hoped for a rest. His legs were cramped from being tied under the belly of his horse and burned with each labored step up the foot trail. He had never been on this path before and wondered how long it would take them till they reached the summit of Alamut, where he would face Hassan and find out why this was being done to him.
Not once in the days of their trek had Bu Ali spoken to him, and after seeing Kanan do so had ordered all the Mamelukes to avoid any conversation with their prisoner at the risk of losing their tongues. Another hundred yards of climbing and Casca could barely make out the parapets of Castle Alamut still two thousand feet above them. He knew of this place. One of the Novices at Alamut had pointed it out to him from the Castle walls and had told him that this was where many who had transgressed were sent to their maker.
He looked down, There were jagged rocks below, and to his left, the black cleft that was the opening to the Bottomless Pit, which was, as the Novice had said, the entrance to death for many. Casca grunted knowing that every pit had a bottom. It was only a matter of reaching it.
A jerk on his lead rope and Casca stumbled over a rock to fall on his face. It distracted Karzan's attention and that of the other Mamelukes in front of him and behind him at the very instant that Yousef and his men attacked. They poured out of the rocks circling the level site by the Bottomless Pit.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Casca rose in time to be hit by Shojan's cane spear, its tip made of iron. Kanan dropped his rope in order to defend himself against an attack by two of the bandits. Casca staggered to the edge of the dark hole. The spear had passed through his right side, the head extending two hands breadth out the other side of his b
ody. In his pain he stumbled again at the edge of the Bottomless Pit and tried to regain his balance. For what seemed an infinitely long second he wavered there, body half cast over the brink. Then the earth gave way. He fell far and long, his body bouncing off of boulders and branches that poked out from the sides of the pit. Then he was no more to be seen or heard from.
When Casca fell the fight at the top of the pit came to a quick conclusion. Though Yousef and his men outnumbered the Mamelukes they were by no means their equal in battle and none of the outlaws had a desire to die for such little profit. They fled the scene leaving Bu Ali looking over the edge of the Bottomless Pit wondering how to explain things to Hassan. Back down the mountain the bandits fled. One had died in the exchange but the others all had minor wounds. Still Yousef gloated. He had accomplished his main purpose and the scar-faced one was finally dead. No one could live through such a fall. Perhaps now their luck would change and he would be able to pursue his dream of being a bandit chieftain.
Bu Ali had no such dreams of glory for he had to stand before the Master and explain his failure. To Kanan he ordered, ''There is no need for you to go any further. Take the others and go back to Mamud. Your job here is finished." Kanan saw a look of desolate acceptance of fate on the face of Bu Ali. Yet this was no concern of his. He was to do as he was ordered. He asked no questions but merely nodded his head in agreement, glad to be rid of whatever job it was that Bu Ali had led them on.
They left Bu Ali at the edge of the pit tossing rocks over the side then cocking his head to listen. He never heard any of them hit bottom. Raising his eyes to the mountain above and the Castle Alamut he resigned himself to whatever fate was in store for him at the hands of the Old Man of the Mountain. There was no use trying to fight one's destiny for it had long ago been written by the hand of Allah and what would be would be.
Yousef's troubles were not yet over. The next dawn left him with two of his men gone, one of them Shojan, who had decided that he had seen and tasted enough of Yousef' s generalship and would do better on his own. He had made the right decision, for on the following day, Yousef and what remained of his band ran straight into the captain of the Emir's guard and were taken prisoner.
Each of them was carefully skinned alive and staked out on the desert floor to slowly roast under the relentless sun of Persia. It was a horrible, torture-filled death. Without their skins to keep in the moisture, in less than a full day their bodies would be dried to rubbery husks which the captain would bring back to Apnea in triumph.
Casca was just beginning to experience his own kind of torture, torture worse than any he had ever known in the centuries since the Jew had damned him to eternal life.
The first plunge into the blackness of the Bottomless Pit was of course filled with pain – pain Casca had known. But when his body had hit the jagged rocks, the jirad shaft inside him had splintered, the two sawtooth edges raking back and forth inside his burning gut, and that alone would have made him scream. But a rock had smashed into his head and had broken bones, pinched his nerves, and paralyzed the functions of his voice as well. He jerked into and out of consciousness, awake when his falling body smashed into the rocks on the side of the pit so that he knew the full pain of the thousand-foot drop, unconscious as he entered the complete darkness. He was awake, though, when he hit the water, shockingly cold water that gagged him, suffocated him, drowned him.
Death.
He had often longed for death, longed for the eternal sleep that would end the misery of his eternal life. But this was not death as an eternal sleep. It was a gagging, suffocating horror that repeated itself over and over and over. Quite literally, be was dying a thousand deaths, one by one. In one of his conscious moments be surmised that he was in a qanat, in one of the underground rivers the wise men had said existed, but he had no way of knowing whether he was being carried along by the river or simply hanging in one spot. He had no sense of time whatever. The recurring horror he was experiencing could've taken hours, days, weeks, or years. He had no idea. At first he wondered how he could return to consciousness, then gag, suffocate, and drown again. Finally he realized that the strange healing powers of his body were working. When he was below water, he was dead, drowned. But apparently there were pockets of air over parts of the river, and when his dead body would rise into such a pocket, the healing would bring him back to life – only to suffer the gagging death again when the waters swept him under.
But was the water carrying him along? Or was it that his body was simply bobbing up and down in the same spot, the same pocket of air? He had no way of knowing. The wise men had said that the qanats fed the oases. If that was so, and the river was carrying him along, then he might have some hope of getting out of here. But how long would it take? And would he have gone completely mad by the time it happened? But what if it was the same spot, over and over and over again?
He was certain of one thing.
He knew time passed because his wounds healed. Sometime during the ordeal he even pulled the two ends of the broken jirad from his body. Finally, in the brief moments of waking, he was completely healed. When that happened he found that he could prolong his time of "life" by treading water until the swift current forced him under again. But that in itself told him something. He was being carried along. And the air pockets were different. Some were much larger than the others. Maybe there really were underground openings to the oases...
He hit upon a rough way to calculate time. By assuming that he might hit two pockets in a single day, he began to reckon in his mind how long he was under. Using this method, days passed... weeks... months...
Always when he came "alive" he was ravenously hungry and terribly thirsty – for wine – not water. There was something else he wanted. Something he wanted even more than all the others put together...
Revenge.
Long before the first "month" was up he had made a promise to himself of what he was going to do if and when he got out. No longer were other people going to be doing things to him. When he got out he was the one who was going to do the doing. And he knew how he was going to start.
Bu Ali.
It was the Mameluke captain who was responsible for all his misery. And it was the Mameluke captain he would make pay. Not the bandit chief and his men. There was nothing personal in their killing him. The Emir? Perhaps. But Bu Ali came first. As the days passed, the weeks, the months, the ways in which Casca imagined killing Bu Ali multiplied. But he never really got confused about method. One way or another, once he was free, he would waste that bastard.
Eventually, of course, he tired of keeping track of time. One moment of "life" melted into another. But with its passage the fire within him burned stronger: nobody sure as hell better get in his way...
As time passed Casca noticed that the air pockets were beginning to get bigger and bigger, and the flow of the river not nearly as swift. Were they approaching an oasis? Finally...
An underground cavern. Muddy floor, but a floor nevertheless. Casca could walk upright. And up ahead, something strange. The faintest sliver of light.
He had come to an oasis. He was alive, healed, ravenously hungry. And ready to even the score.
Getting out wasn't as easy as he expected. The passage narrowed, and though he got down on his hands and knees; he still couldn't get out. He would have to dig his way through an earthen dam, with only his hands to pull away the mud, earth, and rocks. And when he did it, the built-up pressure of the water would probably grab him and thrust him upwards.
Unless there was a ridge of solid rock within the earthen dam. In which case he would stay here forever, conscious, the length of his own body away from freedom – and unable to reach it.
He began to dig....
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
In the year 1095 (by the Frankish reckoning) two groups of pilgrims were approaching each other at a certain oasis in Persia. One group was Christian, pilgrims on their way to the holy city of Jerusalem. The other group was Muslim, p
ilgrims on their way to the holy city of Mecca. Both had armed protectors, though the size of the guard of either was not apparent to the other. Consequently they viewed each other as harmless and peaceful religious folk on a pilgrimage.
Therefore, as they approached the oasis, each signaled their peaceful intentions to the other.
In actuality each had concealed three-fourths of its soldiers and was planning to do the other in, this oasis being too remote for anybody to interfere. It never occurred to the leaders of either that the other side might be planning the same thing they were. So both groups proceeded peacefully toward each other.
It wasn't much of an oasis, but adequate as oases go. It was larger than usual, that is, except for the water. Actually, it covered quite a bit of ground, and there were some fairly large-size trees, but these were in rising ground at least five hundred feet away from the spring. In truth it was a shallow pool of fairly stagnant water surrounded by a very much larger expanse of mud. The underbrush did not really start to get very thick until two or three hundred feet from the pool, and then it shaded rapidly up into heavier growth that completely concealed what might be in the grove of trees on the rising ground. Odd. One would expect the big trees to be where most of the water was.
The two groups of pilgrims paid no attention, however, to this odd geological fact. Nor did they notice that there was a thin, almost invisible, spiral of blue-gray smoke coming from the area of the densest tree cover. (There was also a rather odd odor – definitely not jasmine – emanating from this same area, but considering how they themselves smelled, it was not to be expected that this would come to the pilgrims' attention.) Neither group was close enough to see that the surface of the muddy pool was being periodically disturbed by some force beneath it.
