the-secret-crusade-oliver-bowden

himself, but most of all she would have approved of what he was doing
now: taking his knowledge and learning and bringing them back to the
Order. Had he known when he ended his exile that he had been heading
back to Masyaf for that reason? He still wasn’t sure. All he knew was
that, once here, there had been no other option. He had visited the spot
where they had buried her; Malik’s gravestone was not far away, tended
by young Malik. Altaïr had realized that Maria, Sef and Malik, his
mother and father, even Al Mualim, were all lost to him for ever. The
Brotherhood, though, he could take back.
But only if the young Malik was as good as his word. And standing
there, feeling the excitement and expectation of the crowd like a weight
he must bear upon his back, Mukhlis hovering nearby, he began to
wonder. His eyes fixed on the citadel, he waited for the gates to open
and the men to appear. Malik had said there would be at least twenty,
all of whom supported Altaïr with the same fervency he did. Twenty
warriors and, with the support of the people, Altaïr thought it was
enough to overcome the thirty or forty Assassins still loyal to Abbas.
He wondered if Abbas was up there now, in the Master’s tower,
squinting to make out what was happening below. He hoped so.
Throughout his life, Altaïr had refused to find gratification in the
death of another, but Abbas? Despite the pity he felt for him, there were
the deaths of Sef, Malik and Maria to take into account; there was also
Abbas’s destruction of the Order. Altaïr had promised himself that he
would take no pleasure – not even satisfaction – from Abbas’s death.
But he would take pleasure and satisfaction from the absence of
Abbas when he had killed him. He could allow himself that.
But only if the gates opened and his allies appeared. Around him the