The Secret Crusade

43

Maria was gone. Taken by Crusaders. While Altair had been battling at Kantara Castle, soldiers had attacked the safe-house and, despite a battle, had made off with some prisoners, Maria among them.

Markos, one of the few who had escaped capture, was there to greet the Assassin, worry etched into his face, fretting as he babbled, ‘Altair, we were attacked. We tried to fight them off but – but it was no use.’ He dropped his eyes, shame-faced.

Or was he feigning it?

Altair looked at the door to the drying room. It was open. Beyond, the door to the barred cell hung open too and he pictured her there, watching him with her almond eyes, her back against the wall and boots scuffing in the rushes strewn on the stone.

He shook his head to rid himself of the image. There was more at stake than his feelings for the English woman: he had no business thinking of her before the concerns of the Order. But… he had.

‘I wanted to stop them,’ Markos was saying, ‘but I had to hide. There were too many.’

Altair looked at him sharply. Now that he knew of Barnabas’s duplicity he was reluctant to trust anybody. ‘This was not your fault,’ he said. ‘The Templars are crafty.’

‘I’ve heard they harness the power of a Dark Oracle in Buffavento. That must be how they found us.’

Was that so? Altair thought about it. Certainly the Templars seemed to know their every move. But maybe that was less to do with an oracle and more to do with the fact that the Resistance was infested with Templar spies.

‘That is a curious theory,’ he said, wary that Markos might be trying deliberately to mislead him. ‘But I suspect it was Barnabas who tipped them off.’

Markos started. ‘Barnabas? How can that be? The Resistance leader Barnabas was executed the day before you arrived.’

Of course. Altair cursed himself. There had been a Barnabas who was loyal to the Resistance but the Templars had replaced him with their own man – a false Barnabas. Altair thought of Jonas, executed by him on the orders of the spy, and he hoped one day to be able to make recompense for that. Jonas hadn’t deserved to die.

Altair left for the harbour district, found where the Resistance prisoners were being held and slipped past the guards to discover them huddled in a cramped, filthy cell.

‘Thank you, sir, may God bless you,’ said one, as Altair opened the door and allowed him out. He wore the same look of gratitude as the others. Altair hated to think what the Templars had planned for them.

He searched the gaol in vain for Maria…

‘Was there a woman with you when you were taken?’

‘A woman? Yes, until the Bull’s son Shalim took her away in chains. She didn’t go quietly.’

No, thought Altair. Going quietly wasn’t Maria’s style. But who was this son, Shalim? Would he take over the Bull’s reign of tyranny?

So it was that Altair found himself scaling the walls of the fortress at Buffavento, making his way into the castle, then downwards into its dark, damp and dripping depths where the stone glistened blackly, where the lights from flickering torches barely penetrated the forbidding darkness, where every footstep echoed and there was the constant drip of water. Was this where the Templars kept their famous oracle? He hoped so. All he knew so far was that they were keeping one step ahead of him. Whatever they had in mind, he knew he wouldn’t like it: he didn’t like the idea of the archive he kept hearing about, or that they kept coming so close to crushing the Resistance. Anything he could do to halt their progress needed to be done. And if that meant a spot of witch-hunting, then so be it.

Now, edging along the corridors in the bowels of the castle, he found himself coming closer to what he assumed was the dungeon. Behind him lay the bodies of two guards he had encountered on his way, both with their throats slit, the corpses hidden from view. Just as with Moloch’s castle, he had been able to work his way to its heart using a mixture of stealth and killing. Now he heard voices, one of which he recognized immediately. It was Bouchart’s.

He was talking to a man on the other side of a steel gate pockmarked with rust.

‘So the girl escaped again, did she?’ snapped the Templar.

The other man wore sumptuous fur-lined robes. ‘One minute she was chained up, the next she was gone…’

‘Don’t insult me, Shalim. Your weakness for women is well known. You let your guard down and she walked away.’

‘I will find her, Grand Master. I swear it.’

So this was Shalim. Altair paid him special attention, faintly amused. Nothing about him – not his looks, his build and certainly not his attire – was reminiscent of his father, Moloch.

‘Do it quickly,’ Bouchart was snapping, ‘before she leads the Assassin directly to the archive.’

Shalim turned to go, but Bouchart stopped him. ‘And, Shalim, see that this is delivered to Alexander in Limassol.’

He handed Shalim a sack that the other man took, indicating his assent. Altair felt his jaw clench. So Alexander was working with the Templars too. The enemy seemed to have a hand in everything.

Now, though, the two men had moved off, and Altair resumed his progress towards the Oracle’s cell. Unable to pass through the gates, he clambered on to a balcony and worked his way round the outside of the fortress, then downwards again until he came to the dungeons. More guards fell beneath his blade. Soon the bodies would be discovered and there would be a general alert. He needed to move quickly.

Still, it seemed as though the guards had enough to contend with. He could hear screaming and ranting as he approached what he thought were the dungeons. As he came to the end of a tunnel, which opened into what looked like a gaol area, he realised where Bouchart had been going, because here he was again, talking to a guard. They stood on the other side of a barred partition outside a row of cell doors.

Well, thought Altair, at least he’d found his dungeon. He crouched out of sight in an alcove in the tunnel. To a background of shrieks, he heard Bouchart ask, ‘What’s happening?’

‘It’s that mad woman, sir,’ replied the guard, raising his voice to be heard over the din. ‘She’s on a rampage. Two of the guards are injured.’

‘Let her play,’ smiled Bouchart. ‘She has served her purpose.’

Yet again Altair found the way between himself and Bouchart blocked. He would dearly have liked to finish this now, even with the guard present: he thought he could overwhelm the man first, then take Bouchart. But it was not to be. Instead he was forced to watch, frustrated, as Bouchart and the guard moved off, leaving the area deserted. He came from out of his hiding place and went to the partition, finding a locked gate. Dextrous fingers worked at the mechanism. Then he passed through, and strode towards the door of the Oracle’s cell. If anything, her screaming was louder and more unsettling now, and Altair swallowed. He was frightened of no man. But this was no man. This was something different altogether. He found himself having to steady his nerves as he worked on the second lock. As the door swung open, with the high-pitched complaint of rusting hinges, his heart was hammering.

Her cell was vast, the size of a banqueting hall – a large banqueting hall over which hung the pall of death and decay, with rippling mist and what looked like patches of foliage among the pillars, as though the outside was intruding, one day to claim it in full.

As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom he looked for her but saw nothing, just heard her infernal screeching. It made the hairs on his arms stand on end and he suppressed a shiver as he trod further into her… cell?

This was more like her lair.

Suddenly there was silence. His senses pricked. He swapped his sword from hand to hand, eyes scanning the dark, dimly lit room.

‘Pagan blood,’ came a voice – a jagged singsong voice straight from a nightmare. He wheeled in the direction of the sound, but then it came again and seemed to have moved. ‘I know your name, sinner,’ she cackled, ‘I know why you’re here. God guide my claws. God grant me strength to snap your bones.’

Altair just had time to think, Claws? Did she really have – She appeared, whirling like a dervish from the darkness, black hair whipping about her, screaming as she came. What she had weren’t quite claws: they were long, sharp nails – and just as deadly. He heard their whistle as they sliced in front of his face. He jumped back. Then she was crouching like a cat, looking at him and snarling. He was surprised: he had expected an aged crone, but this woman… she had noble looks. Of course. It was the woman Barnabas had told him about, who had once lived in the castle. She was young and had been attractive once. But whatever the Templars had done to her, imprisonment had seemingly sent her mad. He knew that when she grinned, suddenly not so noble as she revealed rows of rotting teeth and a tongue that threatened to loll from her mouth. Giggling she struck once more.

They fought, the Oracle attacking blindly, swinging her nails, slashing Altair several times and drawing blood. He kept his distance, coming forward to launch counter-attacks until eventually he managed to overwhelm her and pinned her to a pillar. Desperately he tried to hold her – he wanted to reason with her – but she writhed like a wild animal, even when he pushed her to the ground and straddled her, holding his blade to her throat as she thrashed, muttering, ‘Glory of God. I am his instrument. God’s executioner. I fear neither pain nor death.’

‘You were a Cypriot once,’ Altair told her, struggling to hold her. ‘A respected noblewoman. What secrets did you tell those devils?’

Did she know that by helping the Templars she’d betrayed her own people? Did she still have enough reason to understand that?

‘Not without purpose do I deal in misery,’ she rasped, suddenly becoming still. ‘By God’s command I am his instrument.’

No, he thought. She didn’t. Her mind was gone.

‘Whatever the Templars have done to you, my lady, they have done you wrong,’ he said. ‘Forgive me this.’

It was an act of mercy. He killed her, then fled that terrible place.

Later, back at the safe-house, he opened his journal and wrote,

Why do our instincts insist on violence? I have studied the interactions between different species. The innate desire to survive seems to demand the death of the other. Why can they not stand hand in hand? So many believe the world was created through the works of a divine power – but I see only the designs of a madman, bent on celebrating death, destruction, and desperation.

He mused also upon the Apple:

Who were the Ones That Came Before? What brought them here? What drove them out? What of these artefacts? Messages in a bottle? Tools left behind to aid and guide us? Or do we fight for control over their refuse, giving divine purpose and meaning to little more than discarded toys?