A golden eagle has wings that spread wider than a man’s outstretched arms, and it weighs about as much as a fair-sized dog, so when it comes plummeting down—when it stoops, as the hawkers say—it is a formidable projectile. That one hit the back of my uncle’s head, fortunately only with its wing and not with its talons, but that was a blow heavy enough to knock him sprawling across the fire. My father and I dragged him out, and beat the sparks out of his smoldering aba, and he had to shake his head for a time to get his senses back, and then he cursed magnificently, until he went into a fit of coughing. Meanwhile, I stood over the spitted meat, ostentatiously swinging a heavy branch, and the eagles stayed away, so we did manage to cook and eat the meal. But we decided that, as long as we were in eagle country, we would stifle our revulsions and spend each night in a karwansarai from then on.
“You are wise to do so,” said the next night’s landlord to us, as we ate yet another nasty meal of mutton and rice. We were the only guests that night, so he conversed while he swept the day’s collected dust out the door. His name was Hasan Badr-al-Din, which did not suit him at all, for it means Beauty of Faith’s Moon. He was wizened and gnarled, like an old olive tree. He had a face as leathery and wrinkled as a cobbler’s apron, and a wispy beard like a nimbus of wrinkles that could not find room on his face. He went on, “It is not good to be out of doors and unprotected at night in the lands of the Mulahidat, the Misguided Ones.”
“What are the Misguided Ones?” I asked, sipping a sharbat so bitter that it must have been made of green fruit.
Beauty of Faith’s Moon was now going about the room, sprinkling water to lay the remaining dust. “You perhaps have heard them called hashishiyin. The killers who kill for the Old Man of the Mountain.”
“What mountain?” growled my uncle. “This land is flatter than a halycon sea.”
“He has always been called that—the Sheikh ul-Jibal—though no one knows really where he lives. Whether his castle is really on a mountain or not.”
“He does not live,” said my father. “That old nuisance was slain by the Ilkhan Hulagu when the Mongols came this way fifteen years ago.”
“True,” said the aged Beauty. “Yet not true. That was the Old Man Rokn-ed-Din Kurshah. But there is always another Old Man, you know.”
“I did not know.”
“Oh, yes, indeed. And an Old Man still commands the Mulahidat, though some of the Misguided must be old men themselves by now. He hires them out to the faithful who have need of their services. I hear that the Mamluks of Egypt paid high to have a hashishi slay that English Prince who leads the Christian Crusaders.”
“Then they wasted their money,” said Uncle Mafio. “The Englishman slew the sassin.”