The Final Battle (Complete) The Grand Finale!

Was Saladin truly safe and sound, as he and those around him claimed? Perhaps his body was, but his soul was not.

That exhaustion was beyond words. These past few days, he had constantly thought back to his youth—though he had only been the son of an official, and when he had been with Sultan Nur ad-Din, he had been more a hostage than a companion to the so-called attendants and princes.

Those years had been exceedingly hard. Scrutiny and probing came at him from every direction, while Sultan Nur ad-Din's alternating warmth and coldness left him sitting on pins and needles, tossing and turning without rest.

But had he ever been dejected because of it? Had he ever wavered? No. He had never resented Sultan Nur ad-Din for using him. Instead, he had followed that king with an insatiable hunger, learning everything he could glimpse and touch.

When the princes mocked and toyed with him, he had watched them and the people around them. While still a youth, he had already decided that Nur ad-Din's empire would inevitably be but an epiphyllum blooming for a single night. Nur ad-Din had no heir worth using—or rather, from that time onward, Saladin had believed that he himself ought to be Nur ad-Din's heir.

The Prophet had already told them that an heir need not be linked by blood or surname. They could also be linked by a shared ideal.

And what had Nur ad-Din's ideal been? The answer was to unite the Saracen world, allowing the Saracens to possess a nation as vast and civilized as Rome.

At that time, even though Saladin's purse was empty, his status humble, and only a scant few followers stood at his side, he had still been brimming with confidence, utterly steadfast in his belief