Casca rose in time to be hit by Shojan's cane spear, its tip made of iron. Karzan dropped his rope in order to defend himself against an attack by two of the bandits. Casca staggered to the edge of the dark hole. The spear had passed through his right side, the head extending two hands breadth out the other side of his body. In his pain he stumbled again at the edge of the Bottomless Pit and tried to regain his balance. For what seemed an infinitely long second he wavered there, body half cast over the brink. Then the earth gave way. He fell far and long, his body bouncing off of boulders and branches that poked out from the sides of the pit. Then he was no more to be seen or heard from.
When Casca fell the fight at the top of the pit came to a quick conclusion. Though Yousef and his men outnumbered the Mamelukes they were by no means their equal in battle and none of the outlaws had a desire to die for such little profit. They fled the scene leaving Bu Ali looking over the edge of the Bottomless Pit wondering how to explain things to Hassan.
Back down the mountain the bandits fled. One had died in the exchange but the others all had minor wounds. Still Yousef gloated. He had accomplished his main purpose and the scar-faced one was finally dead. No one could live through such a fall. Perhaps now their luck would change and he would be able to pursue his dream of being a bandit chieftain.
Bu Ali had no such dreams of glory for he had to stand before the Master and explain his failure. To Karzan he ordered, "There is no need for you to go any further. Take the others and go back to Mamud. Your job here is finished." Karzan saw a look of desolate acceptance of fate on the face of Bu Ali. Yet this was no concern of his. He was to do as he was ordered. He asked no questions but merely nodded his head in agreement, glad to be rid of whatever job it was that Bu Ali had led them on.
They left Bu Ali at the edge of the pit tossing rocks over the side then cocking his head to listen. He never heard any of them hit bottom. Raising his eyes to the mountain above and the Castle Alamut he resigned himself to whatever fate was in store for him at the hands of the Old Man of the Mountain. There was no use trying to fight one's destiny for it had long ago been written by the hand of Allah and what would be would be.
Yousef's troubles were not yet over. The next dawn left him with two of his men gone, one of them Shojan, who had decided that he had seen and tasted enough of Yousef's generalship and would do better on his own. He had made the right decision, for on the following day, Yousef and what remained of his band ran straight into the captain of the Emir's guard and were taken prisoner.
Each of them was carefully skinned alive and staked out on the desert floor to slowly roast under the relentless sun of Persia. It was a horrible, torture-filled death. Without their skins to keep in the moisture, in less than a full day their bodies would be dried to rubbery husks which the captain would bring back to Apnea in triumph.
Casca was just beginning to experience his own kind of torture, torture worse than any he had ever known in the centuries since the Jew had damned him to eternal life.
The first plunge into the blackness of the Bottomless Pit was of course filled with pain — pain Casca had known. But when his body had hit the jagged rocks, the jirad shaft inside him had splintered, the two sawtooth edges raking back and forth inside his burning gut, and that alone would have made him scream. But a rock had smashed into his head and had broken bones, pinched his nerves, and paralyzed the functions of his voice as well. He jerked into and out of consciousness, awake when his falling body smashed into the rocks on the side of the pit so that he knew the full pain of the thousand-foot drop, unconscious as he entered the complete darkness.
He was awake, though, when he hit the water, shockingly cold water that gagged him, suffocated him, drowned him.
Death.
He had often longed for death, longed for the eternal sleep that would end the misery of his eternal life. But this was not death as an eternal sleep. It was a gagging, suffocating horror that repeated itself over and over and over. Quite literally, he was dying a thousand deaths, one by one. In one of his conscious moments he surmised that he was in a qanat, in one of the underground rivers the wise men had said existed, but he had no way of knowing whether he was being carried along by the river or simply hanging in one spot. He had no sense of time whatever. The recurring horror he was experiencing could've taken hours, days, weeks, or years. He had no idea. At first he wondered how he could return to consciousness, then gag, suffocate, and drown again. Finally he realized that the strange healing powers of his body were working. When he was below water, he was dead, drowned. But apparently there were pockets of air over parts of the river, and when his dead body would rise into such a pocket, the healing would bring him back to life — only to suffer the gagging death again when the waters swept him under.
But was the water carrying him along? Or was it that his body was simply bobbing up and down in the same spot, the same pocket of air? He had no way of knowing. The wise men had said that the qanats fed the oases. If that was so, and the river was carrying him along, then he might have some hope of getting out of here. But how long would it take? And would he have gone completely mad by the time it happened?
But what if it was the same spot, over and over and over again?
He was certain of one thing.
He knew time passed because his wounds healed. Sometime during the ordeal he even pulled the two ends of the broken jirad from his body. Finally, in the brief moments of waking, he was completely healed. When that happened he found that he could prolong his time of "life" by treading water until the swift current forced him under again. But that in itself told him something. He was being carried along. And the air pockets were different. Some were much larger than the others. Maybe there really were underground openings to the oases…
He hit upon a rough way to calculate time. By assuming that he might hit two pockets in a single day, he began to reckon in his mind how long he was under. Using this method, days passed… weeks.. months…
Always when he came "alive" he was ravenously hungry and terribly thirsty — for wine — not water.
There was something else he wanted.
Something he wanted even more than all the others put together..
Revenge.
Long before the first "month" was up he had made a promise to himself of what he was going to do if and when he got out. No longer were other people going to be doing things to him. When he got out he was the one who was going to do the doing. And he knew how he was going to start.
Bu Ali.
It was the Mameluke captain who was responsible for all his misery. And it was the Mameluke captain he would make pay. Not the bandit chief and his men. There was nothing personal in their killing him. The Emir? Perhaps. But Bu Ali came first. As the days passed, the weeks, the months, the ways in which Casca imagined killing Bu Ali multiplied. But he never really got confused about method. One way or another, once he was free, he would waste that bastard. Eventually, of course, he tired of keeping track of time. One moment of "life" melted into another. But with its passage the fire within him burned stronger: nobody sure as hell better get in his way…
As time passed Casca noticed that the air pockets were beginning to get bigger and bigger, and the flow of the river not nearly as swift. Were they approaching an oasis?
Finally…
An underground cavern. Muddy floor, but a floor nevertheless. Casca could walk upright. And up ahead, something strange.
The faintest sliver of light.
He had come to an oasis.
He was alive, healed, ravenously hungry And ready to even the score.
Getting out wasn't as easy as he expected. The passage narrowed, and though he got down on his hands and knees, he still couldn't get out. He would have to dig his way through an earthen dam, with only his hands to pull away the mud, earth, and rocks. And when he did it, the built-up pressure of the water would probably grab him and thrust him upwards.
Unless there was a ridge of solid rock within the earthen dam.
In which case he would stay here forever, conscious, the length of his own body away from freedom…
And unable to reach it.
He began to dig…