Emissary (Book 1)

Acre

"...BUT I DON'T HAVE TO LIKE IT," I blurted out.

Maria looked at me in surprise then she smiled. She wasn't expecting me to say it out so loud.

You are probably wondering what prompted me to object like that?!

Yes... Well... Let me start from the beginning ....

Everything that had happened before that night was just a beginning, a mere drop in the sea, insignificant events that would eventually lead to disaster.

It all started after we came back from Dimyata. It was almost a year since twenty-three, dirty, and bloodied young men, who managed to survive the massacre of Dimyata, better still, those twenty-three, who initiated that terrible incident, came back home to the safety of the school compound. I was hardly fifteen years old then, and I was their commander.

We managed to win in Dimyata but at what cost?! We started with almost fifty young men, most were the only friends I had in this world. Only twenty-three managed to survive and return to Cairo. But we did thwart a Seljuq invasion that would have wiped out the Fatimid empire and its Ismaili way of life. We ended up killing more than five hundred soldiers most of which were asleep in their beds. I should have felt good about that, but I didn't.

The school in Cairo was our home. It was there inside its walls where we trained, toned our skills as soldiers in the army of the Fatimid Empire, ate and slept in relative safety from the harsh world, a world that was going to become even harsher because of me. On the outskirts of Cairo, hidden from prying eyes, we learned how to live, how to kill and how to become assassins. After we came back from Dimyata, I fully immersed myself in my training as well as my studies; studies of theology, philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, languages, poetry, music, ... and sex. Yes. Sex.

From day one I had become a permanent fixture in Mistress Maria's household. Every night I would go to the main house just outside the school compound to be welcomed by the Mistress or one of her female students to be lead to one of the bedrooms where I would spend the night in the arms of one, sometimes more, of her beautiful creatures. In every one of those nights I was taught a different lesson; lessons in love, lessons in sex, and especially lessons in pleasure. I learned how to give pleasure as well as how to receive it.  Besides, who was going to stop me? "The Butcher of Dimyata" wasn't exactly a title to be proud off. Non the less it was a door opener. Still I didn't have to like it.

That afternoon a rider came galloping into the school grounds carrying a message from the master. Master Badr al-Jamali, the governor of Akka (Acre) and one of the fiercest commanders in the Fatimid army, had sent an urgent message to Chief Daii Mustafa-Ibn-Qays, the curator of the school. The master had been spending half his time in the city of Akka and the other half in Cairo where he oversaw our training. We knew that the message was important because the rider and the horse were both shaking from exhaustion after several days ride. A couple of minutes later I was summoned to see the Chief. I felt a shiver run down my spine. I knew I wasn't going to like this.

"You are to take a few of your best men and go to Akka," Chief Mustafa ordered. "You're to leave before dawn lieutenant," that was all he said.

I haven't been addressed by my rank since Dimyata and I felt another shiver course through my body. I was content being a mere soldier. I was content to serve the master, the Fatimid empire, the Ismaili cause, his cause. I didn't want command. I was hoping that that lieutenant rank was a temporary one under the circumstances. I was wrong.

Laying in the arms of Maria that night was a blessing. Making love to her, listening to her moans, whispering my name as I pounded the hell out of her was a dream come true for any young man my age. Of course she wasn't any shyer as she worked and drank every last inch of me. All that was supposed to take my minds of things. Unfortunately it didn't. All I could think of was that I was being summoned to my doom and there was nothing I could do about it. More so I felt that any colleague or friend I was going to take with me was doomed as well. Since my mother, God bless her soul, sold me as a mamluk (slave) to the master, I had been away from the school only once, and that was to Dimyata, and we all know how that ended. Now I was to go to Akka and I had a bad feeling about this.