A trail indeed! It was but an impression of a trail, a shadow trail that turned my stomach hollow to see it. “No tracks, so perhaps even the Assassins do not know it. There is a high valley hidden among the peaks. There I shall wait, and from there I can watch the fortress, and from the fortress there is a way … I will show you.”
Our Arabs picked their way with dainty hooves and arched necks, blowing a little in astonishment that they could actually walk where they did. No plow had turned the rocks of these mountains, no seeds sprouted upon this barren soil. It was a brutal land, hard-shouldered against the sky. The night left a dripping of shadows in the canyons, but we mounted, higher and ever higher, pausing only to let our horses catch their wind, to recover our courage for going further. The air of morning was cool at these heights, startlingly clear, with far-off vistas of other peaks, other castles.
“Lie to them, cheat them, draw their blood!” Khatib muttered. “You are young, and honor rides with you, but honor is important only when dealing with honorable men.”
“Are these not honorable men?”
“Yes,” he said grudgingly, “and good men too, often enough, Sinan among them, but they are realists. They mean to win, not one battle, but all battles.
“I think of al-Zawila. Him I do not know, but lately I heard gossip of him. He came meekly to this place but with power has become a tyrant. There is evil in him.
“Many a small man is considered good while he remains small, but let power come to him, and he becomes a raging fury. So beware of al-Zawila.”
“My old Greek, who was my teacher when I was a boy in my own country,” I said, “taught me this. It was a Somali saying, I believe: ‘Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for the trickster and catch him at the first attempt, but beware of an honest man.’ ”
“Ah? Yes, yes, a good saying, a good saying.” The millenniums had rolled over these mountains; rain and wind had scoured the rocks; avalanches had wiped away trails until one rode one’s imagination across the great shoulders of rock, holding the mind tight against a fall.
Our trail ran parallel to the Chala derbend, the Chala Pass. Against the far-off sky we could glimpse the looming majesty of the Tahkt-i-Suleiman, or Solomon’s Throne, with a white cloak of thin snow about its shoulders. We paused where a small torrent spilled over the brink into the gorge below. Tying our horses by their heel ropes and allowing them to feed upon the thin grass, we rested, eating chapaties and hard wild pears while looking across granite cliffs streaked with tongues of ancient lava. When we rode on, we took our time, pausing often to let our horses catch their breath, for the altitude was high and the air thin.
Once, the beckoning finger of a tower lifted itself above the shoulder of the mountain and watched as we passed, miles away. Again we saw a tiny village clinging like an eagle’s nest to a gap in the rock, the trail that led to it long since fallen into the gorge below.
“My grandsons will speak of this,” Khatib said, “they will boast that their grandsire rode with Kerbouchard when single-handed he stormed the Rock of Alamut. Men will sing songs of this ride all down the ages that lie before us.”
“If we survive.”
“To survive? What is that? A mouse lives, a fly lives; one flees in terror, another lives in filth. They exist, they are, but do they live?
“To challenge the fates, that is living! To ride the storm, to live daringly, to live nobly, not wasting one’s life in foolish, silly risks, or ruining the brain with too much wine, or with hashish!
“Allah be blessed that I ride with a man! Let cowards run for cover; let them lie, cheat, and betray to keep from gripping a sword. Let them crawl in their holes; let them pretend they are women. They are only the dregs, the useless, the misbred. Let me hold a sword and die beside a man!
“Kerbouchard, there are things worse than death. I am an old man, and often have I fled, but when I fled it was only to fight again on another front. But this! This is a mission for heroes!
“A thousand armed fanatics are within that castle! A thousand swords wait to taste our blood, and all the hills about teem with others of their kind.
“These, Master, are the virtues of a man: that he has traveled far, that he talk well, and that he can fight. That he has traveled far, for travel brings wisdom; that he speak well to speak well of what he has seen; and that he can fight, to whip the man who doubts his stories!”
“You jest, Old Man, you jest! Honor is the thing, for he who is honorable needs no praise. He is secure with the knowledge of what he is, a decent human being first, all else after.”
A ridge lay athwart our path, a bridge like a great wall, and far below was the Shah Rud. We slept the night in a clearing among trees where a cold stream ran down from the mountains, a curious little stream that crept suspiciously from the rocks, looked inquiringly this way and that, then deciding all was well, plunged gaily over the brink of a small declivity to water a few acres of grass where larkspur, lavender, and some pink tufts bloomed.
We put together a small fire of dead willows which had no business growing there, roasted mutton on skewers, and ate chapaties while watching the ridges and the trail. We saw the ridges turn to flame as the sun slid down the sky.
“Over there”—Khatib pointed toward the Caspian and Mazanderan—”was where the Persian hero Rustum rode his fabulous horse, Raksh, when he went to slay the White Demon. He slew armies with his single sword and fought for two days with Asfandiyar. He fatally wounded Asfandiyar with an arrow provided by the bird, Simugh.”
“I have read of it in the Shahnamah.”
“Ah? I had forgotten you knew Firdausi. Over there,” he continued, “is where the bird Simurgh carried the baby Zal to his nest to protect it. Zal was the father of Rustum.”
“I can believe it.”
“There is mystery, too. There are treasures here. Over there is a mound that covers an ancient city. I have myself picked up shards of ancient pottery and once a marble hand. Allah, how beautiful it was! I carried it with me for years and valued it greatly. At lonely times I took it from my sash and looked upon it, feeding my soul with its beauty. I was never alone when I had the hand.”
“What became of it?”
“A prince took it from me, saying it was too beautiful for one such as I. Do not the poor also love beauty?”
He glanced at me suddenly. “It is whispered, Kerbouchard, that you have second sight. Is it true?”
“What is second sight? A gift? A training? Or is it simply that suddenly within the brain a thousand impressions, ideas, sights, sounds, and smells coincide to provide an impression of what is to be?
“The mind gathers its grain in all fields, storing it against a time of need, then suddenly it bursts into awareness, which men call inspiration or second sight or a gift.”
Khatib raked the coals together and banked them against a cold dawn. The chill had grown, and the gorges lay in darkness while the ridges were threads of scarlet in a tapestry of shadow, clinging to the last of the sun’s beauty, reluctant to yield their transient beauty to the night.
“The mind is a basket,” Khatib said, “if you put nothing in, you get nothing out.”
“It is a time for sleep,” I said, “not for philosophy.”
Khatib huddled in his burnoose. “I bless Allah that I ride with you, Kerbouchard. You are indeed a hero, the equal of Rustum.”
“If you think that, watch me on Alamut, for I shall have fear for a companion.”
“Aye, and he is brave, indeed, who fears but does what must be done despite it. You will do what you must, with reason to live, for there is always Sundari.” Ah … Sundari, where now was Sundari?
52
The mountain of Alamut, they say, resembles a kneeling camel with its neck stretched out on the ground. Deep ravines cut the rock on which the castle was situated from the’surrounding mountains, leaving the castle itself virtually impregnable.
The entrance to the valley that was the approach to Alamut was hidden by a fold of the mountain in such a manner that a traveler might easily pass by without seeing the opening at all.