The Lion of Cairo
Authors: Scott Oden
To Robert E. Howard,
whose tales of swordplay and sorcery
gave inspiration to a kid from Alabama
and caused him to take up the pen
in his own time
Acknowledgments
The tale of the Emir of the Knife owes its existence to quite a few people: to Josh Olive, first among readers; to Darren Cox, who made sure my plots and intrigues weren’t totally ridiculous, and who provided a second set of eyes; to Wayne Miller and Kris Reisz, the oldest of friends, who ensured I didn’t make an ass of myself—often by exploiting those times when I did; to Constance Brewer, Meghan Sullivan, Gabrielle Campbell, and David S. De Lis, who helped keep the gnomes at bay; to Russell Whitfield, for the loan of his Arabic-speaking stepfather; to Howard Andrew Jones, Deuce Richardson, Tom Doolan, and the late Steve Tompkins, who kept me going with their infectious enthusiasm.
Most of all, though, Assad owes his life to two men, both storied cavaliers in their own right: my editor, Pete Wolverton, and my agent, Bob Mecoy. Mecoy epitomizes the gentleman-agent: a tireless advocate, shrewd publisher, and hilarious raconteur rolled into one; he’s never too busy to answer a question or explain the publishing process for the umpteenth time. Across the desk from him, Pete is every inch an editor in the classic sense, gracious in manner even as he pores over endless drafts in search of the best bits contained in each, making suggestions and reining in the worst of my excesses. His notes on what would become
The Lion of Cairo
read like a master class in how to write a novel. To both men I owe an impossible debt of gratitude, not only for their expertise and passion but for their formidable patience.
And last, but far from least: to all the readers who have followed me from tale to tale—it is you who make this task of writing a joyful experience. To each and every one, my heartfelt thanks.
Contents
Second Surah: Into the City of Tents
Third Surah: Destroyer of Delights
Fifth Surah: Son of Wickedness
Author’s Note
The genesis for
The Lion of Cairo
lay not in the annals of history, but rather in the pages of such pulp-era magazines as
Adventure, Argosy,
and
Oriental Stories;
in the wild tales of Robert E. Howard and Harold Lamb, and in that compilation of bawdy and exotic stories known to western audiences as
The Thousand and One Nights.
The Cairo presented herein is not the city of history, but rather the Cairo of Scheherazade—a city where the fantastic occurs around every corner; a city steeped in its own history, where the magic of ancient Egypt meets the mysticism of the desert. Some elements of the city are contemporary to the twelfth century, others are imaginary; still others are drawn from diverse historical periods: columns scavenged from Egyptian temples sit cheek by jowl with the carved façades of the Mameluke sultans, which overlook gardens laid out by the Fatimid caliphs, with the whole protected by walls erected during the reign of the Ayyubids. It is the Cairo of fable and legend, and I’ve taken egregious liberties with its topography, its character, and its people for the sake of story.
Readers wishing to learn something more of the true character of Old Cairo need only look to Jim Antoniou’s
Historic Cairo: A Walk Through the Islamic City
(American University in Cairo Press, 1998); I also found Michael Haag’s
Cairo Illustrated
(American University in Cairo Press, 2006) and
Cairo: The City Victorious
by Max Rodenbeck (Knopf, 1999) extremely helpful.
In order to build a fantasy world that evoked the vanished era of the Crusades, I found myself consulting a wide variety of texts, both historical and modern, from Philip Hitti’s excellent translation of
The Memoirs of Usamah ibn-Munqidh
(Columbia University Press, 2000) to Roland Broadhurst’s
The Travels of Ibn Jubayr
(Goodword Books, 2001) to Amin Maalouf’s
The Crusades Through Arab Eyes
(Schocken Books, 1984). In particular,
A History of Egypt in the Middle Ages
by Stanley Lane-Poole (Methuen & Co., 1901) and
The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam
by Bernard Lewis (Oxford University Press, 1987) proved most invaluable. As always, I am to blame for any misreading or omission of fact.
Kan ma kan
Fi qadim azzaman
There was, there was not,
In the oldness of time …
—Traditional Bedouin rhyme
Prologue
The rasp and slither of steel died away, the sound lost to a wind that howled over snow-clad ridges, pouring into the passes and sheltered valleys of the high Afghan mountains. Ruptures in the leaden sky—a sky that promised little succor from the long winter at the Roof of the World—allowed mocking glimpses of blue heavens and golden light. And a mockery it was, for the sun’s rays did nothing to allay the knife-edged cold, which cut through leather and wool and thick cloth to freeze flesh and stiffen beards.
Still, the two men who faced off on the winding trail to the crag-set village of Kurram paid little heed to wind, cold, or sunlight. Snowdrifts and naked rocks were one and the same as they slowly circled, breath steaming with each panted curse, each seeking an opportunity to bring this struggle to its bloody conclusion. Both fighters sported ragged Afghan turbans and trousers, girdled robes of striped silk and grimy wool, and belts bristling with knife hilts; they were alike in height—but where one was thick waisted with broad shoulders, a bull neck, and gray flecking his beard, the other was young and lean and as graceful as the Turkish saber he held in his scarred fist.
“Baber Khan,” said he, his Arabic punctuated by an Egyptian accent. “Make peace with Allah, for your time is at an end. The blood of Kurram is a poor price for the blood of my master’s servants but it is a price that must be paid.”
Muscles knotted in Baber Khan’s bull neck as he twisted his head and spat. He wielded a
salawar
—the sword-knife of the Afghan tribesmen—two feet of shadow-patterned Damascus steel, older than Islam, with a single-edged blade that tapered to a diamond point and a hilt braided with leather and silver wire. A leering face carved of yellowed ivory glared from the pommel. “Your master? Your master is a coward who sits atop his rock and plays at empire! Bah! Think you I do not know who you are, dog of Alamut? You may have killed a score of my Afridis, but I have killed a thousand of your brothers, a thousand of your so-called Faithful!” Baber Khan raised his
salawar,
eyes blazing. “Come closer, my little Assassin! Come closer, and let me make it a thousand and one!”
The Assassin’s temper flared; with a guttural curse, he leaped for Baber Khan, his saber whistling in a vicious arc that should have struck the Afridi chieftain’s head from his shoulders … had he not been expecting it. Baber Khan ducked and twisted, his teeth bared in a death’s-head grin as he lashed out at the overextended Assassin.
It was sheer reflex which saved the younger man’s life. He glimpsed the descending
salawar,
watered steel burnished by pale winter light; he wrenched his body to the right and awkwardly threw his saber into the path of Baber Khan’s blade. Steel met steel with a resounding clash as the
salawar
—fragile though it seemed—shattered the Assassin’s saber near the hilt. The young killer screamed as the tip of the Afghan blade bit into his brow and sliced down his left cheek, missing the eye by a hairsbreadth.