the-secret-crusade-oliver-bowden

and lying down with his thawb pulled around him, for just a few hours,
perhaps, enough to restore some energy before resuming the journey
home to Masyaf – well, the thought was almost too much for him.
What gave him pause, however, what made him fearful of stopping
was the talk he had heard – talk of bandits abroad, thieves preying on
tradesmen, taking their goods and slitting their throats, a band of
brigands led by a cutthroat named Fahad, whose legendary brutality was
matched only by that of his son, Bayhas.
Bayhas, they said, would hang his victims by their feet before slicing
them from throat to belly and letting them die slowly, the wild dogs
feasting on their dangling innards. Bayhas would do this, and he’d be
laughing.
Mukhlis liked his guts inside his body. Neither did he have any desire
to surrender all his worldly goods to brigands. After all, things in Masyaf
were hard and getting harder. The villagers were forced to pay higher
and higher levies to the castle on the promontory – the cost of protecting
the community was rising, they were told; the Master was ruthless in
demanding taxes from the people and would often send parties of
Assassins down the slopes to force them to pay. Those who refused were
likely to be beaten, then cast out of the gates, there to wander in the
hope of being accepted at another settlement, or at the mercy of the
bandits who made a home of the rocky plains surrounding Masyaf and
seemed to become more and more audacious in their raids on travellers.
Once, the Assassins – or the threat of them at least – had kept the trade
routes safe. No longer, it seemed.
So, to return home penniless, unable to pay the tithes that Abbas
demanded of the village merchants and the levies he wanted from the