The E. Hoffmann Price Spice Adventure MEGAPACK ™

by Price, E. Hoffmann

  Heaving water jugs and roofing tiles from housetops may annoy soldiers, but such civilian resistance rarely gets far. That was what worried Daulat Ali. Timur must have promised his people four armies, or they’d never be crazy enough to stone Kipchak hardcases.

  Timur could now see the dust columns from the ground level. “If you move fast enough you’ll have a chance to warn the apprentice king.”

  Turning the garrison loose, instead of taking them prisoner or cutting them down would give Elias Koja and Bikijek a nasty shock. Only a strong army could afford such a gesture of contempt. And Daulat Ali, already shaken, signaled to his trumpeters; they sounded recall.

  The disarmed garrison filed out, and rapidly enough not to see that they had surrendered to dust clouds raised by horsemen dragging green branches.

  And when Timur found Olajai, he said, “Home again, shireen, but only Allah knows how long we’ll stay.”

  CHAPTER VI

  King-Maker

  By the time his spies had caught up with him, Timur realized that though he would quickly have to abandon Kesh he had at least succeeded in more than a personal enterprise: his daring capture of the city was bringing hundreds of one-time doubters to his standard.

  And then Timur learned that Elias Koja’s army, strongly reinforced by his father’s troops, had moved out of Samarkand. They were going toward the Jihun, to make a clean sweep of the Jagatai lands and possibly to invade Khorassan.

  So Timur and his newly won recruits got out of Kesh before Elias Koja’s general, Bikijek, could learn that green branches had swept his garrison out of town.

  Timur won the bridge with a few hours to spare. Then from the Khorassan side, he saw touman after touman of Kipchak troops, each 10,000 strong, The apprentice king’s father was out for conquest. “Brother,” Mir Hussein said, “our army will scatter like dust, once we start running. They’ll forget that trick at Kesh.”

  “Then we won’t run.”

  “We can’t face 60,000 Kipchaks, not when Bikijek leads them.”

  Olajai came from behind the red carpet which, hanging from its long fringes, separated her quarters from the reception room of the pavilion. “Remember the horse tails, Timur!” she cut in.

  Hussein turned on his sister. “You little fool, how long will Allah’s patience last! Bluffing Bikijek is not quite the same as scaring a blockhead out of Kesh!”

  Timur scowled. “I’ve got an army. One retreat, and they’ll go back to their sheep.”

  “Yes, and just one bout with the Golden Horde, and they’ll be minced mutton. You can’t keep on recruiting on the strength of glorious defeats like the one at Kivak!”

  “The horse tails,” Olajai repeated. “The Presence!”

  Timur rose. “We can hold the bridge for a day.”

  So he went to dispose his six thousand against ten times as many.

  From sunrise to sunset, troop after troop of Kipchaks charged the bridgehead, taking their toll, but going down before the stubborn defense. Timur and Eltchi Bahadur plied mace and sword; and the sight and sound of them steadied the little army. Yet when the sun sank, they were tired and battered: wearied from the very cutting down of successive waves.

  That night, spies swam the Jihun. In speech and dress and face, they matched the enemy; and they could mix freely, grumbling about the stiff resistance, and muttering about Timur’s reserves, spread out, well behind the Jihun. And they muttered about the fall of Kesh.…

  Meanwhile, Timur was moving, He left only five hundred to hold the bridge: which picked men could do, for another day. The others divided, half going upstream, half downstream, well beyond hearing of the enemy, to risk the dangerous fords.

  Bikijek could have made a similar attempt, but with his overwhelming force, it seemed far more sensible to hammer for another day, and drive through the troops who held the bridge.

  Finally, there was the rumor of Timur’s reserves; Bikijek was too good a general to risk being cut up in such fashion. Once he learned—

  But Bikijek had no chance to learn.

  Timur’s losses by drowning were smaller than they could have been, had he and his captains not known every foot of the treacherous fords. Time and again, he went back, each time with a fresh horse, to lead the next detachment over. And on the final trip, he listened to a spy just returned: “Togluk Khan is dead! His son was about to go home when there was news of us.”

  Timur turned to Hussein, who commanded the final party.

  “Allah is with us! There is a fear in Elias Koja. When he should go to Kipchak to receive the allegiance of his father’s lords, and take the old man’s throne, he stays here. The raid on Kesh has shaken him!”

  Timur led his hazaras into the hills well behind the Kipchak camp. He spread them far apart. “Make fires,” he commanded. “Many fires. As of many bivouacked toumans.”

  That night, he looked down on the fires of Bikijek’s six toumans. And that night, Bikijek looked backward and upward at fires which suggested a force at least equal to his own: and a force which had slipped up between him, and Samarkand, and the long trail to Kipchak.

  At dawn, with all his men carefully under cover in the woods at the foot of the slope, Timur watched Bikijek’s scouts patrolling the river. The Kipchaks were worried; they had not resumed the attack on the bridgehead. Fires behind them at night; and now they found hoof prints at the dangerous fords. As they saw it, Timur, with far more army than anyone had credited him with having, had held the bridge in order to make a night crossing to cut off their retreat, and so drive them into the river.

  Bikijek’s troops were soon in motion. First, they were going to withdraw; second, they were going to make the best disposition after what they considered a thorough outmaneuvering.

  Then came Timur’s charge: not from the distant line of the past night’s campfires, but from the forest at the foot of the hills. Either too early, or too late, it could not have succeeded, despite the advantage of surprise; but Timur’s lightning slash was timed to the second. He caught the Kipchaks when they were neither set for defense, nor fully committed to withdrawal.

  Some tried to rush the bridge. Other hazaras fled along the bank. Those who tried to re-form and fight it out were blocked by disorganized units. And Timur’s troops picked the heart of the opposition: Bikijek’s touman, and the force led by Tokatmur.

  Elias Koja’s standard went down before the rush. Tokatmur, second in command to Bikijek, fell under the fury of swords which followed the final flight of arrows. And it was like the moves of a chess game long reasoned out in advance: one-two-three, and checkmate.

  The apprentice king escaped, and so did Bikijek, one leaving behind him a throne, the other losing an army. And when the trumpets sounded recall from cutting down the fugitives, Timur formed his troops and raced on to Samarkand.

  As he rode back through the gates from which he and Olajai had so narrowly escaped, the citizens who crowded the streets and packed the housetops, began to shout, “Sahib Karan! Lord of the Age!”

  He had conquered a city by dust, and he had triumphed over an army by fire: and Olajai said, “When the Jagatai princes meet they’ll make you Grand Khan of Samarkand.”

  She was right. Hussein had said as much; and the Barlas clan, Timur’s uncle’s kinsmen, were behind him. But as he rode toward the palace vacated forever by Elias Koja, Timur made plans of his own.

  That night, serving men dragged monstrous trays into the banquet hall: camels roasted entire, and sheep; and there was horseflesh, and leather trays heaped with rice and millet. Others set out jars of wine, and jars of fermented mare’s milk, and flagons that only a Mongol could drain.

  Eltchi Bahadur was there, roaring as on the battlefield; Hussein, sleek and smooth and handsome as a panther; and the Barlas clan, flat-faced, grim and slant-eyed; Turki and Mongol in
silken tunic and silken khalat. Though Togluk Khan the tyrant had died a natural death, horsemen still raced northward to deny his son any chance of an equally quiet end.…

  It was complete; complete, except for two things: Timur Bek was not present, and the grand khan’s dais at the head of the great hall was empty. Lords and captains, beks and émirs, ranged in rank on either side, with that one high place vacant: election day in Samarkand.

  Some laughed. Some muttered. Ali sniffed the savor of roasted meat, and wine ready for the drinking. But Timur, Sahib-Karan, the Lord of the Times, was late.

  Then the drums rolled and the long trumpets brayed. Guards marched in, escorting a horse-tail standard. In the courtyard soldiers shouted, “Hai, Bahadur! Sahib Karan, Timur, Grand Khan of Samarkand, Khan of the Jagatai!”

  The uproar of the rank and file told the émirs and the beks how they had better vote; and they knew that wholesale desertions would follow an unpopular choice. Most of the Jagatai princes agreed with their men; but some scowled. For Timur to make a point of delaying his entry until all the others had arrived was laying it on too heavily; and for him to have the horse-tail standard carried before him was taking too much for granted.

  But the shouts from the court gave the lords no choice.

  Then they saw who preceded Timur: a bearded man in the ragged robe of a darvish; a man who protested, a man who, though handled with respect, was being hustled into the hall, and toward the vacant high place.

  At the foot of the dais, Timur halted with his barefooted companion. He raised his hand, and the shouting ceased. “O Men! In the days of your grandfathers, Kazagan Khan the Turk could have taken the throne of Samarkand but this he did not do; instead, he set up one of the blood of Genghis Khan, the Master of All Mankind, and used all his force to maintain one whom no one would deny or envy!

  “Here is the darvish, here is the Guest of Allah, here is Kaboul Shah Aglen, directly descended from Genghis Khan’s son Jagatai! Here is one who cares so little for power that he turns his back on thrones, and contemplates the splendor of Allah! Here is one with wisdom, not pride.

  “Where we have each been kings, there has been no strength, and from too much freedom, we had an invader on our necks! So let this man be Grand Khan, for there is not one of us too proud to serve him!”

  The shouting drowned the protests of the darvish. He could not deny his duty. They put an embroidered khalat over his ragged gown; they made him ascend the dais, and each prince in turn bowed nine times before him, as the ancient custom prescribed.

  And when the banquet ended, the following noon, Timur Bek went to his own house, where Olajai waited.

  “So you gave away a throne? After the Presence that came to you on the hill at Kivak?”

  Timur was a little drunk, and he was tired, and he was hoarse from song and shouting. “He is the ninth generation, and all things go in nines with the race of Genghis Khan. Your brother and the others would soon turn against me—yet I can hold them together, serving him. And we won’t have too many kings.”

  She looked up, smiling; her disappointment was gone. “The Presence will return to you, Timur.” Then, just in the interests of discipline: “Allah, but you’ve slopped wine all over yourself, you’re an awful looking mess for a King-Maker, you’re as bad as my grandfather. You’re ready to fall on your face!”

  [1] Editorial note: Tamerlane, the name we know so well, is a Persian-ized corruption based on a pun comparable to “Heel, Hitler.” Timur is the true name; and “Bek” or “Beg” is simply prince or lord.

  REVOLT OF THE DAMNED

  I

  Nita Ricco brought the wicker baskets of melons into her bedroom on the second floor of the filling station and carefully drew the shades. The gas pumps were locked, and below, the lights were out. Anyone wanting five gallons of regular could go elsewhere; to hell, for all Nita cared, or to Mexico, just south of the city limits.

  She wished to God Blaze Hayden would come home. Torres, delivering the precious melons, had made her uneasy, with his snaky eyes. He had not even bothered to count the thousand-odd dollars in large bills. He had been watching Nita’s every graceful move, trying to outwit the turquoise chiffon negligée whose half transparency gave tantalizing glimpses of her lovely legs.

  The gown enveloped her like a scented bluish mist. The desert breeze that invaded a shuttered window made the frail fabric cling to the sweetly rounded curve of her hips. A little crucifix gleamed in the hollow of her firm young breasts; it matched the red-gold of her wavy hair.

  The heels of her tiny satin mules sank into a thick-napped Chinese rug, which like the furniture, was costly but a bit garish. Blaze Hayden could never have bought those things for Nita by selling gas. Her gray-green eyes were somber as she emptied the melons on the hardwood floor, then knelt and split them with a knife.

  Each cantaloupe contained several five-tael tins of opium.

  A tap at the door made Nita start. She rose, and her smile reflected the sudden glow in her eyes. Blaze had returned. The blue chiffon trailed away from her thighs as she hurried to admit him.

  Then she recoiled from the open door and hastily drew her gown together. Torres had returned. His eyes glittered from smoking home-grown marijuana. He licked his thick lips. “Señora, ees dangerous for you to stay alone—” Torres made a sweeping gesture as he crossed the threshold. “So I ’av return. We ’ave the drink, no?”

  He produced a bottle of tequila. Torres was tall and swarthy and despite his loose mouth, not a bad looking young Mexican.

  “Scram!” snapped Nita, putting on a bold front. “I paid you.”

  A snarl now bared Torres’ white teeth. Cat quick, he flashed toward her. Nita dared not scream. If help did arrive, all those tins of Golden Pheasant opium would damn her and Blaze.

  Torres was beyond mincing words. He had seen too much of Nita’s white beauty to retreat. Desperate, she glanced about. There was the knife on her dressing table.

  She lunged, but Torres intercepted her. She clawed his swarthy face. She almost wriggled from his grasp, but her frail chiffon robe parted in trailing shreds. Then her brassiere slipped. The opium smuggler was beyond fear or reason.

  “You damn dirty lug,” Nita panted. “Blaze’ll kill you—”

  Torres skidded on some melon seeds. Nita, peeled down to her scanties, flung herself toward the dresser and seized the knife.

  “Drop it!” snarled Torres, recovering. “If you use it, the polees will know—about the opium—the beeg boss will keel you!”

  That was Bud Worley’s way. A foolproof racket is based on dead men’s bones. One strike and out! No bungler lived long in Worley’s mob.

  Then Nita’s fingers closed on a box of dusting powder. The Mexican, distracted by the gleaming blade, caught the choking cloud squarely in the face. She snatched the table lamp. But before she could smash it across his head, the door slammed open, and a tall man bounded in.

  “Blaze—my God—”

  “The greasy bastard!” He was lean, broad shouldered; wrath hardened his thin face into grim angles. “You black son—”

  He lunged. His fist landed like a caulking maul. Before Torres could collapse, Blaze picked him up and bodily hurled him through the window.

  The shattering of glass was followed by a grunt, a thud, a muttered oath in Spanish. Blaze, gun drawn, leaned over the sill. He turned away, grinning.

  “Running like hell, honey.” He caught Nita in his arms and stroked her copper-red hair. “That wallop sobered him, huh?”

  “Blaze,” she sobbed, “I’m checking out of the racket. I don’t care what you do! It’s lousy, stinking, putrid! Running hop—”

  “Baby, we can’t quit.” Blaze’s face lengthened, suddenly became old and weary. “The Feds’d get us. Worley, the rotten skunk, he’d turn us in.”

>   This was an old story to Nita. First, a bit of easy money, smuggling perfume. Nothing wrong, nicking Uncle Sam out of customs duties he had no right to, anyway. Every tourist does it, or tries it. Then a load of Chinese. And finally, Blaze Hayden dared not refuse to run that filling station in Calexico, right on the border. Worley had said, “Play, or else.”

  They ignored the horn blast outside until it was repeated several times. Blaze started. He recognized the sound. Leadfoot Johnson had pulled up to get the northbound load of narcotics.

  “I’m quitting. I don’t care, I am!” Nita was half hysterical.

  “Shut up, you idiot!” snapped Blaze, dashing to the door.

  But Leadfoot was already clumping up the stairs. He was a big blond fellow whose tanned face was scarred from flying glass and metal; a racing driver not quite good enough for the big time, but a wizard on the highway, piloting a grimy old car with a supercharged engine.

  “’Lo, Blaze.” He eyed the disordered room and Nita’s remaining tatters of negligee. “Listen, you two. It’s none of my damn business you battling. But you was talking out loud. Forget this quitting idea. Bad for the health!”

  “This racket’s lousy,” Nita bitterly observed. “Sure, I said it.”

  Leadfoot scratched his sandy hair, shrugged. “Ditto, toots. But you know what happens to saps that think they can walk out. Let’s go, Blaze.”

  They loaded the junk. Then a gritting of tires, and the whine of the supercharger was swallowed in the roar of the big engine.

  Nita turned despairing eyes to Blaze when he returned.

  “I’ll stick,” she sobbed. “Any way we turn, we’re damned. I guess you and me can’t revolt.…”

  “But you can keep a gat in your dresser,” muttered Blaze. “If that hop-crazy spic ever makes another pass at you, burn him down and hide the junk before the cops get here. Anyway, I’ll be on hand after this when Torres delivers a load.…”