From the walls of Masyaf, day by day, fedais went out to murder this great one, or that great one, at the bidding of their lord Sinan.
For the most part they came not back again; they waited week by week, month by month, year by year, till the moment was ripe, then gave the poisoned cup or drove home the dagger, and escaped or were slain.

Death waited them abroad, and if they failed, death waited them at home.

Their dreadful caliph was himself a sword of death.

At his will they hurled themselves from towers or from precipices; to satisfy his policy they sacrificed their wives and children.

And their reward--in life, the drugged cup and voluptuous dreams; after it, as they believed, a still more voluptuous paradise.
All forms of human agony and doom were known to this people; but now they were promised an unfamiliar sight, that of Frankish knights slaying each other in single combat beneath the silent moon, tilting at full gallop upon a narrow place where many might hesitate to walk, and--oh, joy!--falling perchance, horse and rider together, into the depths below.