Nexus Point (Meridian Series) (32 page)

       “I counseled the
Fedayeen
that day,”
said the Sami,  “and told them what to do. A dagger was thrust into the earth
beside the sleeping pillow of Salah ad Din himself! The Sultan was so angry
that he redoubled the guard around his tent. He even gave orders that flour
should be spread beyond the edge of his camp so that the passing of any man
would be clearly seen. Yet we came, and we left our footprints in the flour
just to spite him. It was said that the guards outside his tent were white with
fear when they found the mark of the
Fedayeen
upon the ground the next
day—in spite of every effort they could not guarantee the security of their
master. And we left a message that he has taken to heart: that his life is ours
to grant or take, and we will hold him to account for any injustice pressed
upon us here.”

       The Sami took a moment’s comfort from that
recollection. It reminded him what could be accomplished by a few determined
men of skill, his chosen
Fedayeen
.  They had been well trained and
prepared to carry out yet another mission, only this time it was not to give
warning and frighten, it was to bring death to a mortal enemy of
Islam—Reginald, Arnat, the Wolf of Kerak.

       Then a madness seemed to fall upon the Sami,
and he was possessed by a compelling curiosity. This stranger had come in
through the Well of Souls and all his plans for the Wolf had slipped from his
grasp.

       Why had he allowed himself to be so
distracted by this infidel? He had been set to leave on the very day after the
man’s arrival, a troop of
Fedayeen
traveling in his wake like shadows
following after darkness in the night. He knew the time and the place where he
would find the Wolf, a lonely stretch of road near an inn on the way to
Tiberias. He knew Arnat would come to that place, swaggering with boastful
pride, yet and bawdy drunk with the swill of his mead.

       The Sami  could see the moment of truth in
his mind’s eye as he gazed at the blazoning dawn. Five of the faithful
Fedayeen
would fall upon his enemy there, all dressed in the manner of Christian
commoners, their bodies smeared with the offal and mire of their hovels so that
even their smell might not betray them. The long thin knives would whisk out in
the dark, the blades shaped and honed to slip through the laced iron of the
finest chain mail and strike the vile flesh beneath—each blade tipped with
poison to hasten the death of their victim. He saw it all, for it was written,
if anything could be inscribed and sure. While nothing was certain, the chance
presented itself for a great success. Yet it was not to be.

       Instead he had dallied a day, then two days,
while he bent his mind to the stranger in the chamber of greeting. By the third
day only the fastest horses would have carried his band of Assassins to the
appointed place in time. Why did he tarry? Why did he not strike at the man and
simply be gone? When the Kadi finally summoned the stranger to council chambers
for discernment, the moment was lost to him, and the Wolf would prowl
unfettered yet again. He had failed in his charge, and it galled him.

       Undoubtedly Arnat was seeking parley with
the strong knights of Christendom even now. The Sami knew what the Wolf would
argue at council. Bloody war and havoc were his creed. He would galvanize the
host of the infidels with his black ire and whip them to a frenzy.

       Salah ad Din was aging, and sick. He was not
the proud warrior of old and could not ride the great stallions of Arabia or
carry the heavy armor and shield as he might in his youth. Salah ad Din sought
to gain by truce and the feeble prattle of words what he might have taken by
force of arms years ago. Salah ad Din was weak. He overstayed his place in the
Sultan’s tent. The Christian host was a rabid animal, and he would not know
what to do.

       The Sami paced, his
quiet feet shifting to and fro about the tower; the bile of deep regret thick
in his throat. It occurred to him that the coming of this stranger was
perfectly timed, like a stone unsettling the waters of a still pond, his fall
through the Well of Souls was rippling out in every direction, and disturbing
the surely guided eddies of the hours and days the Sami had labored over so
long. It was as if it was all planned, some dark machination of the Order. In
one fell move they defile the Well and scatter his plans to naught. Now Sinan
himself was drawing nigh. The Sami could feel his wrath, a palpable heat,
coming with the rising sun beyond his window.

       As the
muezzin
began the haunting
call to prayer from the minaret below, the Sami knew at last what he must do.
Surely Sinan would bring the stranger here, to this very place, the eyrie where
no man could come unbidden and live. He would summon also the Kadi, to hear his
accusation and testimony of lies. No matter.

       If he could not slay the Wolf, there was yet
one thing he could accomplish. He would be called to stand in this very chamber
as well, to answer for his failed charge and the strife he had worked here in
the castle. He would be called, and he would bring with him his sharpest knife,
tainted
with the vile poison of an asp. One
sudden move, one flick of his wrist and the stranger would lie dead. If indeed
he was an enemy, as the Sami knew, then he could not be allowed to draw close
to Sinan. If banishment or even death was his own fate, the Sami held the
stranger’s death dearer. The Sami would have his vengeance. As surely as the
sun chased the gray dawn, this man, the infidel,  would die.

       Sinan was coming, like a quiet wind, stealing into
the valley on the heels of the great troop of horsemen led down by Taki ad Din.
He moved quickly, yet with stealth, on a swift white steed, and only two
guardians at his side. Even as he came home to the mountains of the Assassins,
word of his approach seemed to travel before him, as rumor, omen, the
presentiment of some great change that was working itself to life. The Sami
pressed his hands upon his ears to shut the voices out, yet they spoke still, a
faint rumble in the distance that promised war.

       All about him the world was pivoting on the
hinge. Christian Lords poured out the might of all their castles upon the land.
The black
stone
walls of Marghab spilled forth
a host of men at arms, and from the walled city of Tortusa long lines of
peasantry marched about clusters of mounted Turcoples. He knew that all the
Christian Lords were moving now. Thickets of spearmen came from Tyre, their
leather jerkins wet with oil; gallant sailors from the great harbors joined the
inland throng, filling the dusty roads with song and revelry. Lean archers came
down from Sidon and Acre, and Ascalon sent forth her hardy men at arms, some
with sword and heavy shield, others bearing long lances, javelins and pikes.

       These were but the rank and file, he knew,
for the real strength of Outremer lay in the hard stone walls of their great
castles, and the dour knights that stood watch there, prowling the lands on
great mailed steeds. The white mantle of the Templars emblazoned with a cross
and the dark robes of the Hospitalers brought fear and awe to any who looked
upon them. While their numbers were few, the hard iron of their chain mail and
their incredible strength and skill in combat made them nearly invincible when
they charged in battle. All of Islam had endured the blight of their march for
nearly a century now, but the issue would soon be decided.

       Against them came Salah ad Din, with all his
host. The warriors of Islam answered the call of
jihad
at last. There
were scores of Mamlukes with their brightly colored garb and gleaming
scimitars. Bedouin fighters drifted in from the deserts, riding camels and
braying horns on the wind. Ghulam cavalry rode with tall Amirs, proud and
haughty in the saddle. Swarthy Turks and Kurds thronged from the east, and down
from Aleppo came Taki ad Din with a host of twenty thousand Saracen horsemen,
veterans of many battles.

       In the face of all this commotion and
turmoil, the Sami’s own personal fate seemed a small thing to him.
The day
of reckoning
would soon be at hand. He hoped he would live to see it, and continue on in the
service of his master. Yet there were some things he could not set aside, and
his honor and pride demanded a death in place of the charge he had allowed
himself to despoil. The Wolf had escaped him, but the infidel would die in his
stead.

27

Kelly wasted little time
getting a focused data
search set up for Maeve. He would begin on the first offending year, starting
in January, and have the system run detailed comparisons of all matching data
files from the two banks. Maeve worked on the keyword set, compiling a list of
every important subject she could think of. She followed her hunch and focused
on the conflict between the West and the Muslim world where the two cultures
had been grating against one another for nearly a century in Palestine. Her
list culled the obvious keywords to spearhead the data search: Crusades,
Palestine, Outremer, Islam. She also threw in all the names of Christian and
Muslim Lords from the period, major principalities and cities in the region and
a few associated  subject areas like castles, trade, relics and shrines.

       “What am I leaving out?” she said aloud.
“Ah, how about the Assassins? They were probably causing a little trouble in
the region.”

       “Who were they?” Kelly looked over his
shoulder as she finished.

       “A nasty little cult that was hiding out in
the highlands of northern Syria,” she explained. “They finagled their way into
a few decent castles and used them as outposts and training centers for their
corps of secret operatives. A bit like Osama bin Ladin and his terrorist
training camps in Afghanistan.”

       “You mean they were terrorists?”

       “In a manner of speaking. They were few in
number, but used subterfuge, sleight of hand and threat of assassination to
exert influence on  both the Christian and Muslim lords in the region. In fact,
the word Assassin, as it’s used in the West today, dates from this period.
Here, let me show you.” She keyed the word and ordered an origins search to get
a number of reference links immediately.

       “See here,” she pointed reading aloud:
“
For 800 years,
the sect has been largely shrouded in mystery and still is glimpsed through a
mist of rumors, charges and speculations. But it is known that the word
assassin, still used to describe a political murderer, was applied to members
of the sect…”
She selected a second reference and read it aloud.

      
“The
origin of the organization’s name is unclear. Maalouf follows a number of
Ismaili sources in affirming that ‘assassin’ is derived from the Arabic assass
(foundation), via assassiyun (fundamentalists); they were simply believers in a
purer and more basic form of Islam. A more highly-colored derivation, favored by
Western writers, points to the Arabic hashshashin (eaters of hashish) to
explain both the name of the Assassins and their fanatical devotion to their
leader, the Old Man of the Mountain, as their sanguinary tactics were fueled by
narcotics.”
⁽¹⁾

       “How strange,” said Kelly. “Bin
Ladin’s group, Al Qaeda, was also supposed to mean ‘the base’ in Arabic, and I
ran across references associating the word for ‘foundation’ as well.

       “Birds of a feather,” said
Maeve. “I guess these Islamic fundamentalists all tend to think alike.”

       “Well,” said Kelly, “we had
better get the comparison run going. I’ll have the system flag any data that
has a variance rating of .05 or higher—that was my threshold for yellow on the
color bar. It will extract any dating information on the reference materials
and we’ll do a scan by month beginning with 1187.”

       He had the job ready to run a
moment later, and Maeve watched while the familiar green line started across
her screen, month by month. All was well until late in June when the solid green
line suddenly changed to yellow near the end of the month.

       “Bingo!” she chimed. “We get our
first deviations in June of 1187, just as I thought. The Battle of Hattin was
in early July, right on the 4
^th
or so. Seems history has a thing for
that week: the Declaration of Independence and the end of the battle of
Gettysburg, to name a few choice moments in our own affairs. Let’s see what’s
wrong. You better pull up a chair and help me out. I’ve already got over a
hundred files that show alteration.”

       Kelly settled in next to her,
and they began to work down the list. The system was designed to display red
text for any word in a file that did not exactly match the corresponding text
from the primary data, the signature files that Kelly had stored in the RAM
bank last month. They were getting little things at first: changes in grammar,
sentence structure and choice of words in the documents, but no real alteration
of key facts. A half hour passed like this, and Kelly began to get frustrated.

       “This is going to take forever,”
he breathed. “Here, I’m going to ask the system for data flagged with greater
deviation values. Just for yucks, I’ll query for outright anomalies.” He
entered a few commands and squinted at the screen.