the-secret-crusade-oliver-bowden

with the shame of having succumbed to the Saracens’ interrogation.
Caring only that his father had given himself up to die and …
‘It’s your fault!’ he had screamed, twisting and pulling away from
Ahmad, who stood with his head bowed, absorbing the boy’s words as if
they were punches.
‘It’s your fault,’ Altaïr had spat again, then sat on the brittle grass,
burying his head in his hands, wanting to shut out the world. A few
steps away, Ahmad, exhausted and beaten, had folded to the ground
also.
Outside the citadel walls, the Saracens departed, leaving the headless
body of Altaïr’s father behind for the Assassins to retrieve. Leaving
wounds that would never heal.
For the time being Altaïr had stayed in the quarters he had shared
with his father, with their walls of grey stone, rushes on the floor, a
simple desk between two pallets, one larger, one smaller. He’d moved
beds: he had slept in the larger one, so that he could smell his father’s
smell, and he had imagined him sometimes, in the room, sitting reading
at the desk, scratching away at a roll of parchment, or returning late at
night to chide Altaïr for still being awake, then snuffing out his candle
before retiring. Imaginings were all he had now, the orphan Altaïr.
Those and his memories. Al Mualim had said he would be called in due
course, when arrangements had been made for his future. In the
meantime, the Master had said, if Altaïr needed anything, he should
come to him as his mentor.
Ahmad, meanwhile, had been suffering from a fever. Some nights his
ravings were heard throughout the citadel. Occasionally he screamed as
if in pain, at other times like a man deranged. One night he was shouting