Hope of Earth

by Piers Anthony

  Flo considered. When the neighbor’s bubo had suppurated, he had started mending. Maybe that was the key. “We will drain it,” she said.

  She fetched a sharp knife with a thin, almost needlelike point. She sponged off the swelling. “This will hurt, a moment,” she said. “But it may help.”

  “Do it!”

  “Snow, hold his arm,” she said. “So I can work.”

  Snow took hold of Sam’s arm, clasping it to her generous bosom. Ro aimed the knife point, then stabbed it precisely into the center of the bubo.

  Sam grunted. His arm swept down, hauling Snow with it, so that she landed across his chest. Ro barely got the knife out of the way in time.

  Then Sam relaxed, and Snow recovered her balance. Ro lifted the arm away, and he did not resist.

  Her aim had been true. Blood and pus were welling out of the hole she had made. “The pressure is off,” Sam said. “It doesn’t hurt as bad.”

  “It is draining,” she explained. Then, to Snow: “Let it drain. Keep it clean. Better that poison come out, than stay in his body.”

  Dirk was more fortunate. His fever broke, and there was no bubo. He was ill with something else, and was recovering. That was a relief.

  Sam mended, and Dirk did. The draining of the bubo seemed to have been the turning point for Sam. Ro knew that it might be coincidence, but she was glad that her experience with the neighbor man had given her the hint.

  Then Ned came down with the plague. He had gone to the wall to see to the unfinished work of the other two, because though the Mongols appeared to have given up the siege, that could be a ruse. Now he had the swelling in the neck, and the fever.

  “We know how to tend him,” Flo said.

  “My turn,” Wildflower said. “Please.”

  “Girl, this is ugly business,” Flo warned her.

  “I know. But if I stand idle, and he dies—”

  “We’ll do it together,” Flo decided.

  They moved Sam out. He remained weak, but could walk, and was no longer in danger. They left Dirk for another day or two; his illness was routine, but debilitating. Ned took his brother’s place.

  Wildflower had been somewhat prepared by the body they had hauled out of the street, and by discussion of Sam and Dirk’s illnesses. But Flo feared she was not ready for the malady in Ned. So she kept a close if unobtrusive eye out.

  “We shall have to strip him and bathe him,” Flo said. “I can do it—”

  “No. I will do it.”

  “He will stink. It is the odor of the plague, coming from his breath, skin, spittle, and all else. It must simply be endured.”

  “The smell carried through the house,” Wildflower said, wrinkling her nose as she smiled.

  “He will foul himself. We must simply clean it up.”

  “I will do it.”

  And Wildflower bravely did the required jobs, leaving Flo to tend to Dirk. Flo hoped it wouldn’t extirpate her feeling for the young man, because the more this former princess buckled to the noxious task, the better respect Flo had for her.

  Ned’s fever was high, and in the throes of it he cried out in delirium. “Wona, no! Don’t make me do it!”

  “Who?” Wildflower asked, perplexed. “Do what?” But he was lost in some other realm.

  “It may be time for you to know,” Flo said. “But you must never repeat it.”

  “Repeat what?”

  “Ned was seduced by Sam’s first wife, a beautiful and faithless woman. He could not break her hold. So we sent her away, and Sam found Snow instead. Sam does not know, and Ned feels guilt. So if you have a relation with him—”

  “That could be a problem,” Wildflower agreed. “But if he didn’t rape her—”

  “She raped him, really.”

  “Then I understand well enough,” the girl said grimly. “Better than someone else might.”

  “We do understand about rape,” Flo said.

  Then at last the ship came in. Ittai and Jes arrived home in style, as befitted their status as proprietors of a merchant vessel. He wore a short buttoned tunic of intricate pattern, divided down the center into opposing colors, with a fringed collar and a long pointed hood. Beneath it was a long-sleeved shirt with decorative buttons and armbands with descending cloth streamers. He wore a jeweled girdle about the hips, and hose with each leg a different color. His pointed shoes buttoned at the ankle and the top of the arch. Jes’s hair was too short to be braided, but she wore a pretty tiara. Her gown was sideless and sleeveless, and laced with fine ribbons from shoulder to hip. Flo knew they hadn’t worn those elegant outfits on the ship; they had changed just before disembarking.

  The family made immediate arrangements to embark. But Captain Ittai balked. “We can’t take a man with the plague on the ship! The crew would mutiny.”

  Flo realized that it was true. “Then we shall have to wait.”

  “The crew is not eager to remain in port any longer than necessary. We can’t delay more than a few days.”

  “It will have to do.”

  For several days Ned’s outcome remained in doubt, as the bubo on his neck swelled and his skin spotted. He stopped fouling himself after the food that had been in his system cleared, but the stench of his body was awful. Flo and Wildflower took turns going out so as to have the relief of fresh air. They took turns sleeping too, because Ned’s case was worse than the others. Flo lanced the bubo, but it didn’t seem to help. His body seemed to be wasting away.

  “I can’t hold the crew much longer,” Ittai warned them.

  Flo shook her head. “I think we had better prepare ourselves. Ned is going to die.”

  “No!” Wildflower protested. “He must live!”

  “You don’t know that he will value you, if he lives,” Flo said, trying to soften the blow rather than to be cruel. “Maybe he doesn’t really want to live.”

  “I understand that too. But he is my hope. I must save him!”

  “Girl, I wish you could. But I don’t know how.”

  Wildflower’s face was desperate. “By loving him!”

  Flo did not argue. It seemed that the strain of this siege was affecting the girl’s mind.

  Wildflower sponged off Ned’s face. “You think you are evil, because of Wona,” she told him. “But you couldn’t stop her. You are not evil. You think no one will love you, but someone will. I will love you. I will love you.” Then she kissed his wasted lips.

  Ned’s eyes opened. “But you are my sister!” he protested.

  “I am not your sister!” she retorted. “Could a sister do this?” She kissed him again.

  Flo kept her silence. There was no real logic to Wild-flower’s words or actions, but they were probably as close as she would ever come to the love she craved.

  Yet they did seem to have some effect on the man. Ned relaxed, and fell into what seemed to be a less tortured sleep. Flo marveled, wondering whether it was possible. Was Ned expiring from guilt as much as from the disease?

  It was, indeed, the turning point. The next day Ned’s fever was down somewhat. He took water and a bit of food. The day after, he took more.

  Then he became conscious of his surroundings. “Who has cared for me?” he asked Flo, for Wildflower was now sleeping in the next room.

  “We have,” Flo said. “Wildflower and I.”

  He looked wary. “I had a strange dream. Did I say something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she say something?”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head, electing not to pursue the matter.

  Now they could depart this cursed city. The crew might not like it, but Ned was obviously recovering. So probably he would not spread the plague to anyone else, even if it did pass from man to man, as seemed doubtful. Two of them had been stricken, and been lucky enough to survive; Flo was sure that luck would not hold much longer.

  Unfortunately, the very ships seeking to carry people to safety from the plague carried the plague to other cities of Europe. T
he crews might not knowingly take aboard sick people, but the delay between infection arid symptoms made it inevitable. In 1347 it spread to Constantinople and Turkey; in 1348 it spread to Greece, Italy, Spain, and France; in 1349 it spread to northern Europe. Thereafter it moved on into Russia and faded out. It killed 60-90 percent of those infected. But not everyone caught it. The manner of contagion was a mystery to the people of the time, but today we understand it. We also know that there was not one, but three forms of it. The first, which was at Kaffa, was bubonic: spread by rat fleas when they bit human beings. It could not be transmitted directly from human to human. The reason Flo’s family was largely spared the plague was her unnatural fetish about cleanliness; there was little dirt, and no rats, and therefore no rat fleas in her house. Its course and symptoms were as described. There is no evidence that draining the bubo helped, however; indeed reports are mixed on whether a draining bubo led to recovery or immediate death, It may be that the best course was to have the bubo subside naturally, a symptom rather than a cause of recovery. Possibly those who had good health before being stricken had better survival odds; that is the assumption here. Later in Europe the second form was encountered: pneumonic. This occurred when a person infected with the plague also caught pneumonia. It attacked the lungs, causing violent, bloody coughing. The bacilli infected the breath, so that it spread by air. It was more deadly than the bubonic form, being said to be universally fatal in three days. When a person coughed blood, he was doomed. This did not improve with time; an outbreak in the twentieth century was fatal, on average, in 1.8 days. Buboes did not appear, perhaps because there was hardly time. The third form was septicémie, and was even swifter: it infected the blood, and the victim was dead in a few hours. The plague, in its three forms, may have killed a third of all Europeans during the first great siege. It recurred irregularly, and still exists today. But the contemporary world has seen little to compare to the horror the plague held for the folk of the fourteenth century.

  Chapter 15

  KHAN

  One of the most notorious conquerors in history was Timur the Lame, otherwise known as Tamerlane. But that was what his enemies called him; he called himself Sahib Qiran, “Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction.” He was a Turk in Transoxiana (“Across the Oxus” River—now the Amu Darya), in central Asia north of modern Afghanistan. He seems to have been a genius in battle but a poor governor, so that his battles always had to be fought over. But his impact on central Asia may have been second only to that of the Mongols, whose mantle he claimed.

  One day a Mongol prince came to Tamerlane’s capital of Samarkand to beseech his aid against kinsmen who were displacing him. This was Toqtamish, a descendant of Genghis Khan and pretender to the throne of the White Horde. Timur was glad to receive him, as this royal Mongol might prove useful, and gave him three cities: Otrar, Sabran, and Signakhi on the north bank of the Syr Darya, the northern of two rivers feeding into the Aral Sea. This was between the territories of Transoxiana and the White Horde, claimed by each, so needed strong defense.

  Unfortunately Toqtamish was not apt in this respect. His relatives invaded and defeated him in battle, driving him out. He returned to Timur, who sent a force to back off the Mongols, installing Toqtamish in Sabrán again. But when Timur’s troops departed, the Mongols came back and ousted Toqtamish again without difficulty. This time Timur himself came into the steppe and in 1377 severely defeated the White Horde, putting Toqtamish back in power in his cities. But as soon as Timur went home, the Mongols routed Toqtamish a third time. So Timur gave the hapless prince further support, and in the winter of 1377-78 not only beat the enemy, but enabled Toqtamish to become khan of the White Horde. How long this would last was doubtful, as Toqtamish seemed to have as much of a genius for losing battles as Timur had for winning them.

  Then something odd happened. It remains a mystery to history, but an exploration of the events following Toqtamish’s second rout may resolve it The time is 1376.

  NED, RANGING OUT AHEAD TO scout the way, heard a distant clamor. That could be trouble. He rode up on a bluff overlooking the Syr Darya and peered forward.

  To the north, across the river, the remnant of a battle was proceeding. He could see the colors of Timur, and those of the White Horde. The standards of the Turks were in disarray, while those of the Mongols were organized.

  “Oh, no,” he breathed. “Toqtamish lost again.”

  He was about to ride back to carry the word to his commander, when he saw a special eddy current in the larger swirl of the battle. A lone horseman was fleeing a group of riders. He had evidently gotten isolated from his troop and was about to be killed.

  But why would they pursue an ordinary cavalryman? Where could he go? He was caught between the enemy and the river, evidently unarmed, no longer a threat to the Mongols. They would do better to mop up the remaining pockets of organized resistance. Unless—

  Could it be? Yes, that Would explain it. It could be Toqtamish himself, the one the White Horde was after. The pretender to their throne. They would not let him go!

  Fascinated by the distant interplay, Ned strained to see it unfold. He remembered how rival royal factions among the White Horde had vied for power, and Urus Khan had risen to dominance five years before. Opposed by his cousin Tuli Khoja, he had acted forthrightly: he had attacked and killed his rival. Khoja’s son Toqtamish had had to flee for his life. He had gone to the one power capable of reversing his ill fortunes: Timur of Transoxiana.

  Ned, as an apprentice strategist in Timur’s court, had studied the activities of the White Horde, because Timur’s generals were keeping a wary eye on the rise of a potentially dangerous power to the north. Urus clearly had large ambitions, which included reuniting the White and Golden Hordes under his own leadership, and possibly Persia too. Since Persia was Timur’s sphere of endeavor, this bore watching. Ned was one of a number of strategists assigned to watch and advise about such developments, so that Timur would not be caught unprepared. What use to conquer Persia, if the White Horde then swept down on his flank? So the appeal of a legitimate pretender to the Mongol throne was of considerable interest.

  He remembered the fanfare with which Timur’s General Uzbeg had escorted Toqtamish to Samarkand. Timur himself had hastened back from the front to meet him, greeting him as his son. There were lavish gifts of gold, gems, robes, silks, furniture, camels, horses, tents, drums, banners, and slaves.

  He had installed Toqtamish as ruler of the borderlands between Transoxiana and the White Horde, and given him fresh troops with which to defend his territory.

  Of course Timur’s generosity was calculated. A genuine and loyal Mongol prince was a fine buffer to have on that perilous border. It solved the problem of the ambitions of the khan of the White Horde. For now.

  But as soon as Toqtamish settled in, Urus Khan sent an army commanded by his son Qutlugh-buka to rout him out. Toqtamish was forced to flee, but the victorious Qutlugh-buka was severely wounded in the battle, and died the next day. This surely did not please the khan.

  Ned had watched with wonder as Timur greeted the Mongol prince with even greater honors than before, and supplied him with a fresh army. Toqtamish had set out to reclaim his lost domains. But spies had brought news to Samarkand of another Mongol army moving south, this one commanded by Urus Khan’s eldest son, Tokhta-qiya, who was determined to avenge the death of his brother. So Timur had sent the ranking official Idiku Berlas to counsel Toqtamish and assist him in ruling his limited kingdom, so that he would not be ousted again. Ned was part of that party.

  But now it was apparent that they were too late. Tokhta-qiya, perhaps spurred on by his grief, had not waited for Toqtamish to enter Sabrán. He had intercepted Toqtamish on the way, and probably caught him by surprise, and routed him. Now Toqtamish was fleeing for his life, and his prospects looked bleak indeed.

  The lone rider reached the river just ahead of the pursuit and drove his horse into the water. But the animal might have balked—Ned couldn’
t tell from this distance—and the man had to shed armor and swim. The troops of the White Horde drew up at the water, not caring to try to ford it in their armor, and took deliberate aim with their bows. Several arrows missed, for it was a fleeting target; the man was holding his breath and swimming under the surface as much as possible. Also, the river’s current was bearing him along, further confusing his irregular appearances. But then there was a cry, and Ned saw the faint discoloration of blood in the water. The fugitive had been struck!

  But the man made it to the far bank. He staggered from the water, entered the forest, and threw himself into the underbrush, evidently exhausted. The archers were running down the river, trying to get into better position for loosing their arrows more accurately, but their target had disappeared.

  Now Ned turned his horse and galloped back to report to Idiku Berlas, as he should have done before. But he had wanted to see whether the fugitive escaped, because if it was Toqtamish, and if the prince died, then their mission would have become pointless. Now he knew that there was still a chance. But he had to hurry, because he had to reach Idiku and return with aid before the Mongols could reach a fordable spot in the river, cross, and locate their prey.

  Soon he reached Idiku. “There is a battle beyond the river!” he cried. “Mongol, Turk. The Mongols won. I think I saw Toqtamish escape!”

  “Where?”

  “By the river woods. I marked the place.”

  “Lead the way.”

  Idiku and his troop followed Ned to the region he had seen. They plunged into the woods flanking the river, forging on through.

  “He could be anywhere along here,” Ned said. “And the Mongols could be crossing the river in pursuit.”

  Idiku signaled, and the men spread out to approach the river in a line. They reached it, and saw Mongols carefully fording it with roped horses. But the moment the Mongols spied them, they retreated. The river was no place to defend against arrows from the land.

  Meanwhile Idiku and Ned ranged through the brush.