the-secret-crusade-oliver-bowden

A frightened sound escaped the merchant. He dropped to his knees,
holding his clasped hands aloft in supplication. His face was etched with
pleading; his eyes gleamed with tears.
Tamir looked down at him, a pathetic creature kneeling before him,
and spat. The trader blinked phlegm from his eyes.
‘You dare slander me?’ roared Tamir.
‘Peace, Tamir,’ whimpered the old man. ‘I meant no insult.’
‘Then you should have kept your mouth shut,’ snarled Tamir.
Altaïr could see the bloodlust in his eyes and knew exactly what was
going to happen. Sure enough, Tamir slashed at the merchant with the
tip of his dagger, opening a sagging hole in his tunic that was
immediately stained red. The merchant fell back to his heels with a
keening screech that cut through the marketplace. ‘No! Stop!’ he
squealed.
‘Stop?’ jeered Tamir. ‘I’m just getting started.’ He stepped forward,
drove his dagger deep into the man’s stomach and thrust him to the
ground where he screamed like an animal as Tamir stabbed him again.
‘You came into my souk,’ he shouted.
Stab.
‘Stood before my men.’
Stab. A fourth time. The sound like meat being tenderized. The old
man was still screaming.
‘And dared to insult me?’
Stab. He punctuated every word with a thrust of his dagger. ‘You
must learn your place.’
But now the merchant had stopped screaming. Now he was nothing
but a battered, bloody corpse sprawled in the courtyard, his head at an