the-secret-crusade-oliver-bowden

and their heads bowed in respect for the dead, so it was an easy task for
Altaïr to slip through the crowd in order to gain a good vantage point.
To locate his final target. He who had set Altaïr on this path – whose
death would be just retribution for the suffering he had caused and that
which had happened in his name: Robert de Sable.
Passing along the rows of mourners, Altaïr realized it was the first
time that he had ever found himself at the funeral of one of his targets,
and he cast a look around to see if there were any grieving members of
the dead man’s family nearby, wondering how he, the killer, would feel
to be confronted by their grief. But if Majd Addin had had close relatives
they were either absent or kept their sorrow hidden among the crowd;
there was no one at the graveside but the imam and …
A cluster of Templar knights.
They stood in front of an ornately decorated fountain set into a tall
sandstone wall, three of them, wearing armour and full-face helmets,
even the one who stood in front of the other two, who also wore a cape.
The distinctive cape of the Templar Grand Master.
And yet … Altaïr squinted, staring at de Sable. The knight was
somehow not as Altaïr remembered him. Had his memory played tricks
on him? Had Robert de Sable taken on greater dimensions in his head
because he had bested Altaïr? Certainly he seemed to lack the stature
that Altaïr remembered. Where, also, were the rest of his men?
Now the imam had begun to speak, addressing the mourners: ‘We
gather here to mourn the loss of our beloved Majd Addin, taken too soon
from this world. I know you feel sorrow and pain at his passing. But you
should not. For just as we are all brought forth from the womb, so too
must we all one day pass from this world. It is only natural – like the