Alamut (28 page)

“Are you crazy!? Didn’t you hear the order?”

Suleiman howled in powerless rage. He flung his bow and lance aside and threw himself on the ground. He started writhing around as though he were out of his mind. He bit his knuckles and cried.

The Turks, who had been scattered by the unexpected attack, had now regrouped and were charging toward the canyon again to force their way through. Their commander had concluded that the entire Ismaili army was here outside Alamut, and that the fortress itself must be only lightly defended. The fedayeen watched in painful trepidation as the first casualties fell from Alamut’s ranks. Watching the battle with their arms crossed was intolerable.

Abu Soraka kept his watch toward the horizon. At last a second swarming line appeared there. The fedayeen didn’t notice it, but Abu Soraka’s heart pounded in elation when the white flags of the martyr Ali appeared, fluttering above them.

Now came the moment when he could send the fedayeen into battle. His eyes sought out the enemy’s regimental flag and he pointed it out to them.

“Mount up! Go capture the enemy’s regimental flag! All of you, in full force, to battle!”

The youths whooped for joy. They went flying down the hillside and leapt onto their horses in a flash. They brandished their bare sabers, and Jafar raised the white flag high up in the air. They all broke out at once toward the enemy and with their first thrust pressed them toward the river.

Chaos broke out among the Turks. Suleiman grimly brought down his first opponent. Jafar went flying with the flag into a gap that had opened up, and the other fedayeen pressed close behind him. Yusuf roared and thrashed wildly around, causing the frightened Turks to yield way. Ibn Tahir tirelessly hacked away at a small round shield, behind which a bowlegged Tatar was hiding. The latter had dropped his useless lance and was jerkily trying to pull his heavy saber out of its sheath in time. Finally the arm he held the shield with gave out. Covered in blood, he tried to slip away from the battle.

Suleiman and the others alongside him knocked several more of the enemy off of their horses. The white flag drew closer and closer to the black one.

The Turkish colonel finally guessed what the fedayeen were trying to do.

“Defend the regimental flag!” he howled, so that friend and foe alike could hear him.

“Let’s go for their leader!” ibn Tahir called out.

The Turks crowded around their flag and their commander. At that moment Abdul Malik and Muzaffar’s men slammed into them. The clash was horrible. The Turks dispersed to all sides of them like chaff.

Suleiman had not lost sight of the enemy flag bearer, just as ibn Tahir still tracked the colonel, who was shouting, “Retreat! Each man for himself! Rescue the flag!”

At that point ibn Tahir had fought his way up to him. Their sabers crossed. But Muzaffar’s men came racing up. Several Turks tried to hold them back. A hopeless tangle ensued, burying the colonel and his horse. Ibn Tahir extricated himself. He turned to look for the enemy flag bearer. He caught sight of him racing alongside the stream with Suleiman close behind. He rushed after him to help, and several of their comrades followed.

Suleiman rode alongside the flag bearer. The Turk was wildly whipping his horse. He shoved his lance out to the side to repel his pursuer. Suleiman was riding abreast of him. Suddenly his opponent turned his horse and Suleiman was struck by the lance. The unexpected blow was so strong that it threw him from his saddle.

Ibn Tahir howled. He spurred his horse on and within an instant was riding alongside the flag bearer. He realized vaguely that Suleiman was on
the ground, possibly dead. But now only one thing mattered: to carry out the assignment, to seize the enemy’s flag.

He forced the Turk right up to the edge of the stream. Suddenly an avalanche of earth broke loose under the horse’s legs. It crashed into the rapids with the rider on it.

Ibn Tahir hesitated for a moment. Then he raced down the steep embankment into the river. For an instant the water covered him and his animal. Just as quickly they came back to the surface. They waded after the Turk, who was holding his flag out of the water. They caught up with him. Ibn Tahir slashed at his head with his sword. The arm holding the flag dropped and the Turk vanished under the waves. The black flag fluttered again in ibn Tahir’s hands.

A victorious shout greeted him from the shore as the current carried him downstream with tremendous speed. His horse was beginning to choke. The fedayeen raced down the river bank alongside him and shouted encouragement to hold out.

By exerting all his strength he finally drew the horse toward the shore. The horse felt firm ground beneath its legs, but the current was still dragging it downstream. One of the fedayeen jumped off his own horse, got on his stomach, and held a long lance out toward ibn Tahir. Meanwhile the others unwound snares and threw them to their comrade so he could tie the horse to them. Eventually they pulled them both out of the stream.

“What happened to Suleiman?” he asked when he was standing on the bank again. Unthinkingly he handed the enemy banner to ibn Vakas.

The fedayeen looked at each other.

“That’s right, what’s happened to him?”

They turned to look back. Suleiman was slowly walking toward them, downcast and leading his horse.

Ibn Tahir hurried toward him.

“It’s only thanks to you that we seized the enemy’s flag.”

Suleiman brushed the comment aside.

“What’s the point. For once I had a chance to do a great deed, and I failed. I can tell, fate is against me.”

He grabbed his leg and cursed. His comrades helped him onto his horse, and they headed back toward their camp.

The victory over the Turks was complete. The enemy commander and a hundred and twelve of his men had fallen. They took thirty-five wounded enemy captive. The rest had scattered to the four winds. Horsemen pursuing them returned, one after the other, and reported how many of them they had managed to kill. The Ismailis themselves lost twenty-six men. Slightly more than that had been injured.

Abu Ali ordered a large ditch dug at the foot of the hill, into which they threw the enemy dead. He had the Turkish colonel beheaded and his head stuck onto a lance atop the watchtower. Manuchehr and his men arrived from the castle and listened downcast to the victors’ raucous accounts of the course of the battle. Al-Hakim and his assistants hurriedly treated the wounded and had them carried on litters to Alamut. He knew he still had hard work ahead of him there.

When the wounded had been tended to and the enemy bodies disposed of, Abu Ali ordered for the trumpet to sound the return. The soldiers loaded their fallen comrades and plunder onto the camels and donkeys, mounted their horses, and, amid impetuous shouts, returned to the castle.

Hasan had observed the course of the battle from his tower. He saw the Turks rushing in and Abu Ali cutting off their path. He saw the fedayeen joining the battle and Muzaffar’s horsemen, with Abdul Malik at their head, assuring victory. He was extraordinarily satisfied.

A gong sounded the arrival of news for him. No one was allowed atop his tower, under punishment of death, not even his eunuchs. He went back into his room. Buzurg Ummid was waiting for him there.

Hasan rushed toward him and embraced him tightly.

“Now I’m perfectly happy!” he exclaimed.

In contrast with Abu Ali, Buzurg Ummid was a man of striking appearance. He was tall and strong and had an aristocratic face. His magnificent black beard was curled, with silver threads showing only here and there. His lively eyes expressed will and determination. His lips were full and well articulated, though sometimes, when he laughed, they hinted at inflexibility and even cruelty. Like the other leaders he was dressed Arabian style in a white cloak and white turban, from which a wide kerchief draped down onto his shoulders. But his clothing was cut from choice fabric and tailored to fit. Even now, with a long and arduous ride just behind him, he looked as though he had dressed expressly for a formal occasion.

“The Turks nearly got me under their sabers,” he said, smiling. “Yesterday after third prayers your carrier pigeon brought me your order. I had barely managed to give instructions to cover my absence, when your messenger came swimming up Shah Rud with the news. The Turks had positioned a large detachment in front of the castle, and your man had to ford the water on his horse so they wouldn’t catch him.”

Then he described how he had taken a shorter route on the other side of the river and finally managed to outdistance them. Barely a hundred paces ahead of them, he forded another stream, and he became infernally fearful that Hasan’s men wouldn’t be able to let the bridge down for him or, if they did so, that the Turks would be able to charge into the fortress right behind him.

Hasan rubbed his hands in delight.

“Everything is working out beautifully,” he said. “You and Abu Ali are going to get to see what I’ve come up with. You’ll be so amazed your head will spin.”

Abu Ali returned and Hasan embraced him, grinning.

“Truly, I wasn’t mistaken about you,” he said.

He had him describe the course of the battle in detail. He was particularly interested in the fedayeen.

“So the grandson of Tahir, our poet, seized the regimental flag? Excellent, excellent.”

“Suleiman was right behind their flag bearer, but he fell, and ibn Tahir finished the job,” Abu Ali explained. “The Turk slid into the river on his horse, and the poet chased after him and took the flag away from him.”

Then he provided a count of the casualties and described their plunder.

“Let’s go to the assembly hall,” Hasan said. “I want to congratulate my men on their victory myself.”

Al-Hakim assigned several fedayeen to work with his assistants, so they could see in real life how the injured were cared for and treated. They helped him straighten out broken limbs and bandage wounds. Some of the wounded had to have large wounds burned out, so that the entire infirmary smelled of burnt flesh. The injured shouted and wailed, and their cries were audible throughout the fortress. Those who had to have a limb sawed off lost and regained consciousness repeatedly and bellowed most hopelessly of all.

“This is horrible,” ibn Tahir whispered to himself.

“How lucky that we fedayeen came away intact,” Yusuf remarked.

“War is something terrible,” Naim said.

“It’s not for little doves like you, that’s for sure,” Suleiman laughed.

“Leave Naim alone,” Yusuf shot back. “He was at my side the whole time, and I wasn’t hiding.”

“You were roaring so loudly the Turks had to hold their ears instead of fight,” Suleiman joked. “Small wonder our cricket hid under your wings.”

“You couldn’t get to the Turkish flag, no matter how hard you tried,” Obeida snorted at him.

Suleiman went pale. He didn’t say a word but watched al-Hakim as he approached another injured man.

The Greek was a capable physician. The cries and moans of the injured didn’t bother him a bit. Now and then he would comfort a patient with an encouraging word, but otherwise he did his job skillfully and matter-of-factly, like a craftsman at work. In the process he explained the basics of dressing wounds to the fedayeen, seasoning his words with his personal wisdom.

A Turk had broken Sergeant Abuna’s arm. Al-Hakim approached him,
removed the improvised sling, took a board from the hands of a feday and used it to straighten and then reinforce the broken limb.

While the sergeant gnashed his teeth in pain, the Greek spoke to the fedayeen.

“The human body’s predisposition to harmony is so strong that the separate parts of a broken limb long to be reunited and fused. The power of this passion for reestablishing the whole is so great that even wrongly adjusted parts will reunite. The skill of a good doctor is in knowing the body’s true structure, avoiding that kind of irregularity and being able to rejoin the parts of a broken limb in accordance with nature.”

By the time he had finished with the Ismaili wounded, he was dead tired. He saw how many Turkish wounded were still waiting for him, and he sent ibn Tahir to ask Abu Ali what he should do with them. He secretly hoped he could deal with them more quickly, perhaps even “curing” some of the more critically wounded with a dependable poison.

Ibn Tahir ran into Abu Soraka, who went to ask the grand dai.

The order came back: “Treat the Turks as carefully as if they were our friends. We need them as hostages.”

The doctor cursed and threw himself back into his work. Now he no longer offered encouraging words to the groaning wounded, and he didn’t bother to explain anything to the fedayeen. He left the easier jobs for his assistants. Of the fedayeen, Obeida proved to be the most capable.

It wasn’t until late afternoon that he finished treating wounds and setting broken bones. He gave his assistants appropriate orders and then left to find the commanders.

Meanwhile the commanders were talking about the day’s exploits over food and wine in the assembly hall. They shared conjectures about the supreme commander’s next moves and what advantages the day’s victory might bring them. They all praised Abdul Malik for carrying out his assignment so brilliantly.

Their mood reached a high point when Hasan appeared in the hall with the two grand dais. His face shone with satisfaction, and as he and the commanders greeted each other, his cheeks trembled from smiling.

“I have excellent assistants in you,” he said as they sat over the platters and jugs. He particularly praised Abu Ali, who had led the entire expedition. Then he turned to Abdul Malik and asked him how he had fared with the harems at Muzaffar’s. He acknowledged his successful contribution to the battle and thanked him for it. He also praised Abu Soraka for leading the fedayeen and carrying out his instructions so precisely. Then he looked at Captain Manuchehr. A roguish smile came over his face.

Manuchehr had not been participating in the discussions. He was sulking because he had been forced to stand with his arms crossed while the
others were winning battle laurels. He stared gloomily ahead, eating little and drinking a lot. His gigantic body shuddered when he was accosted by Hasan’s grinning gaze.