the-secret-crusade-oliver-bowden

He looked at her. ‘I’m not sure that that’s how I would have put it,’ he
said, a sad smile forming.
‘Perhaps not, but even so.’
‘I need to find out, Maria,’ he said. ‘I need to know for sure.’
He was aware that they were being watched, but he was an Assassin and
he knew Masyaf better than anyone, so it was not difficult for him to
leave the residence, make his way up the wall of the inner curtain and
squat in the shadows of the ramparts until the guards had moved past.
He controlled his breathing. He was still quick and agile. He could still
scale walls. But …
Perhaps not with the same ease he once had. He would do well to
remember that. The wound he’d received in Genghis Khan’s camp had
slowed him down too. It would be foolish to overestimate his own
abilities and find himself in trouble because of it, flat on his back like a
dying cockroach, hearing guards approach because he’d mistimed a
jump. He rested a little before continuing along the ramparts, making his
way from the western side of the citadel to the south tower complex.
Staying clear of guards along the way, he came to the tower then
climbed down to the ground. He moved to the grain stores, where he
located a flight of stone steps that led to a series of vaulted tunnels
below.
There he stopped and listened, his back flat against the wall. He could
hear water flowing along the small streams that ran through the tunnels.
The Order’s dungeons were not far away, so rarely used that they would
have been kept as storerooms were it not for the damp. Altaïr fully
expected Malik to be their only occupant.