the-secret-crusade-oliver-bowden

shadows and run from any who would face them fairly.’
Altaïr froze, knowing now that the trap was to be sprung. He tried to
push through the crowd more quickly.
‘But not today,’ he heard the imam call, ‘for it seems one stands
among us. He mocks us with his presence and must be made to pay.’
Suddenly the crowd around Altaïr opened, forming a circle around
him. He wheeled, seeing the graveside where the imam stood pointing –
at him. De Sable and his two men were moving forward. Around him the
crowd looked fierce, and was closing in to swamp him, leaving him no
escape route.
‘Seize him. Bring him forward that God’s justice might be done,’
called the imam.
In one movement Altaïr drew his sword and ejected his blade. He
remembered his Master’s words: Choose one.
But there was no need. The mourners might have been brave and
Majd Addin beloved, but nobody was prepared to shed blood to avenge
him. Panicked, the crowd broke up, mourners falling over their robes to
escape, Altaïr using the sudden confusion to dart to one side, breaking
the advancing Templars’ line of sight. The first of them just had time to
register that one member of the crowd was not escaping, but instead
moving towards him, before Altaïr’s sword was through his mail and in
his gut and he fell away.
Altaïr saw a door in the wall open and more knights come pouring
through. Five at least. At the same time there was a hail of arrows from
above, and one knight was spinning and falling, the shaft protruding
from his neck. Altaïr’s eyes shot to the ramparts where he saw Templar
archers. On this occasion their aim had favoured him. He was unlikely to