Casca 13: The Assassin Read Free

be followers of Hassan at Sabah, and so they made good guards. And, since the Assassins of Hassan at Sabah might be one's own body slave – or even men of noble birth – no wonder there was such a market for men pure of the unclean contamination of the Assassins who had, to Mamud's knowledge, never failed to make their kill, usually after warning the victim in advance with a gold-handed dagger ....
    Thinking of the scar-faced one he had lashed earlier, Mamud looked again to his catch. It was as he turned his head that in the corner of his vision he saw the flash of light in the now-darkened western sky.
    A shooting star? An omen from Allah?
    Thinking as he was at the moment of profit and the new slave, Mamud chose to consider it an omen of good fortune. The scar-faced one was very strong.
    Mamud would take him to Baghdad and offer him up to Nizam al Mulk. The Vizier was known to be a connoisseur of fine fighting men. He would pay well for one such as this.
    Ah!
    Calling to Bu Ali to make certain that all the slaves' bonds were secured and the sentries alert, Mamud closed the flap of his tent and retired. He was at peace with himself, even though there were still many leagues to travel before he could indulge himself once more in those refined pleasures which made life worth living....
     
    Casca was not at peace with himself. He too had seen the shooting star, a thin scratch of light ending beyond the distant mountains, so minor that neither the guards nor the other slaves had noticed. But to Casca it was an omen, one more thing to feed the uneasy feeling that had been building in him all day, even before the fight in the rocks.
    I never should have come back to Persia. Something damned unpleasant is about to happen to me. I can feel it. I should have kept my ass away...
    It was not just being a slave. He had been that before. It was not the pain of his broken ribs ... or anything like that. No, it was something new. He was staring at the line of mountains, black against the starlit sky.
    Shit!
     

CHAPTER TWO
    Hassan ibn Hassad, Hassan al Sabah, the Sheikh al Jebal, the Old Man of the Mountain, the leader of the Assassins leaned over the battlements of Castle Alamut in the region of Dayam, set high as an eagle's perch in the Elburz Mountains, and surveyed the valley six thousand feet below. In the darkening twilight he looked with approval at his domain. His eyes were sharp and burning, set in deep sockets over a proud, hooked nose and thin, humorless mouth. He had eagle features. He was the eagle of this Eagle's Nest.
    It had taken long for him to find and secure just the right place from which he could launch his program of terror upon the world. Now he had it. Here he had total control. Control which Nizam never dreamed of , he thought with satisfaction. Control such as few in the course of history had ever tasted. Hassad stroked his beard, now turning gray with time but still tough and strong, like his eyes, youthful. For they were as clear as those of a twenty-year old man and burned in their dark brown depths with an intensity and fire that only one who knows he has a mission in life can possess. A mission. And a passion.
    Passion.
    In Hassad's chest beat passions that the loveliest houri dwelling in Paradise could never sate. Their earthly counterparts were only receptacles for his seed by which he would pass on his heritage to those who came after him.
    But even the flesh of his own flesh was not immune to his wrath if they angered him or failed in their duty to him and the Holy Mission. They would then pay the same price that the lowliest-born infidel would. Tolerance and forgiveness lead only to weakness. Hassad was not one who would ever be weak. He could not. His was a great calling, passed on to him from centuries past, and he would not fail.
    His word was never broken. That was one of the secrets of his power.
    To all the world his word was always kept – for good or iII. Those that he marked for death