Samarkand the Omnibus: Books 1-2

by Graham Diamond

  Carolyn darted to Jasmine’s side. The girl was unconscious, eyes open but seeing nothing. Her body had taken a terrible toll, she realized. An incredible toll at the hands of this monster. It was unbelievable that she was alive at all.

  “I think he’s dead,” panted Roskovitch, glaring at the stilled form.

  The saya shuddered. “And not a moment too soon. I don’t know how much longer I’d have been able to carry the fight.”

  “Nor I,” admitted the Russian grudgingly. He turned from the giant, focused his attention on the girl, ignoring the pain in his broken hand. “What now?” he asked.

  Carolyn wiped her hands free of Krishna’s blood, stared down fretfully at the whore. “We’ll have to leave her, barbarian,” she said.

  “But she’ll die!”

  “I know — but what else can we do? Jasmine, through her own treachery, brought this upon herself. In any case, we’re needed above. I don’t know for how long Hezekiah can keep up the ruse alone. He’s —”

  They turned at an animal growl. Krishna was on his feet, pounding his chest and roaring with demoniac mirth.

  “By the Prophet’s holy beard!” gasped Roskovitch.

  The Hun warrior scooped up his weighty sword and began to brandish it above his head. Carolyn leaped to one side, Roskovitch to the other. The weapon sang demoniacally, hitting against stone, humming through the air.

  “Back!” shouted the scalp-locked barbarian. “Get back!”

  The saya’s head missed being lifted off her shoulders by the swishing blade by a hairbreadth. Her heart pounding, she felt a growing numbness in her side as Krishna let loose an open hand and sent her careening back into the cell.

  The son of Kabul was breathing heavily, monstrously, coming after her one step at a time, oblivious to the knife jabs that Roskovitch planted against his mail. The giant reeked of sweat and blood and anger and the awful bile that was spilling from his mouth. Roskovitch was sure that even were he to cut off each of the chancellor’s appendages, somehow the brute would still continue the battle.

  Carolyn scuttled to her feet, jumped sideways, slashed with her blade. The pain in her side intensified and she cried out, but as she did, her knife found its mark. The blade sliced off the tip of Krishna’s bulbous nose. The chancellor reeled, tasted the blood as it poured like wine over his mouth. His face twisted; he came after his prey with renewed fury. The saya slipped on urine-damp straw, fell before his feet. Krishna bowled over, accidently tripped. Roskovitch dived at the writhing form, dug his dagger through mail and flesh. The blade broke when it touched bone, implanted in Krishna’s collar. The raving, frothing Hun whirled around on the floor, grabbed the barbarian by the neck and yanked him closer. He struggled to be free of the death grip, feeling life ebbing out of him as the huge fingers pressed relentlessly around his throat. Jasmine was moaning, Carolyn shrieking as she stabbed at the chancellor over and over. Suddenly the hands were weakening; Roskovitch gasped, blessedly feeling air swell his bursting lungs. Krishna’s tongue was lolling from his mouth, a deep, unearthly growl rising from somewhere inside.

  At last the scalp-locked barbarian was able to break himself free. As he staggered to his knees, still panting, hands wrapped around his middle, Carolyn plunged her blade one last time through Krishna’s gut. She hovered over him for a moment, withdrew the dagger, and put her ear close to his mouth. Through his pain Roskovitch lifted his head and looked at her.

  The saya sighed a long sigh. “He’s stopped breathing” was all she said.

  Roskovitch shut his eyes in thankful prayer, staggered toward the orange light of the corridor. The cell was a shambles, blood splattered everywhere, the straw tossed hither and yon, the iron-braced door resting grotesquely off its hinges. He’d never known or even seen a man like Krishna before, he knew. Never even dreamed that one could possibly exist. It had been sheer fortune and fortune alone that had allowed him and the saya to bring Krishna down. It should have taken ten men. Twenty!

  “Come on, barbarian,” said Carolyn, a gentle hand on his bruised shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Roskovitch nodded weakly, and together they stepped from the gloomy cell. Their feet marched slowly along the passage, and it was in the shadow of the torch hanging from its brace in the wall that they paused. Carolyn, feeling a new set of goosebumps run down her back, slowly turned. Her face turned white. Roskovitch did not even have to ask. He turned, careful not to aggravate his bruises, stared darkly back toward the cell.

  Krishna, body wracked, bleeding, stood malevolently at the entrance, his sword once more in his hand. Taking slow, deliberate breaths, he was moving forward again, this time rocking from side to side as he made his way along the passage.

  Roskovitch put his broken hand to his temple, shook his head. “We’ll never kill him,” he said. “Never.”

  The saya disregarded his pessimism and drew her knife boldly. Krishna seemed more to crawl through the shadows than walk, his vest of mail dripping with crimson, his shirt torn open at the throat. He was limping from the gaping wound in his thigh, staggering from the blinding pain in his belly and ribs, his face distorted and almost noseless, mouth quivering as a mixture of blood and spittle ran down his chin and beard. But his hulking frame moved on defiantly, frighteningly, unyieldingly. Like a ghoul or a zombie or a nightthing come forever to haunt its enemies.

  Krishna deftly blocked Carolyn’s courageous thrust. He gurgled as the woman was thrown to the floor by the sheer force of his body. Then his demented eyes focused on the barbarian, and through the pulp of his face Roskovitch was sure he saw him smile. Yes, it was him that the chancellor was after. Only him. The woman didn’t matter, his own life didn’t matter. Until the scalp-locked barbarian was dead, he would not die either.

  Roskovitch remembered he was weaponless, his finest blade still sticking up out of Krishna’s collar, where it had lodged. Without taking his eyes from the satanic Hun, he fought off the pain in his hand and grabbed firm hold of the torch. The flame was ebbing, the oil-soaked rags barely clinging to the wood. But it was thick — and Roskovitch had a club. A club against a man who wouldn’t die.

  He dared the Hun to take another step closer. Krishna showed no fear. He slid his left foot forward, clumsily advanced. The club hissed through the air, its knobby, flamed end crashing against the chancellor’s face. Instantly it turned color, whiskers singed by the fire, flesh and bone flattened by the power of the blow. Krishna groaned, kept moving. Roskovitch, not believing what he saw, for such a blow would surely kill the stoutest of men, winced. He backpedaled, slid from side to side as best he could in the narrow passage, trying not to afford the chancellor a solid swing of his sword. Undaunted, Krishna came on.

  Seconds dragged like hours. It looked as though Krishna would collapse at any time under his own weight, but somehow he never did. Roskovitch led him on, dodging, moving constantly, never becoming a steady target. But soon he would be at the end of the corridor, he knew, close to the chancellor’s quarters, where guards would be within calling. If the devil was to fall, it must be soon.

  Krishna came on; Roskovitch sucked in a deep breath, feigned a thrust, jumped to the side as the heavy blade swung at him, then came up with his club, slamming it under the chancellor’s chin, cracking his jaw. The flames caught the beard, and all at once Krishna ignited into a human torch, his hair, his beard sputtering with bright-yellow fire, burning his flesh, his ears, his chest and arms and hirsute legs. The chancellor screamed with unearthly fervor. And like the human torch that he was, he ran back down the passage, the fire only fanning, crying, cursing, engulfed horribly. He fell into a heap of smoldering meat, roasted alive, still twitching while Carolyn lifted herself and stared at him with wide, terrified eyes.

  It was a ghastly sight, this human roast, like a squealing pig on a skillet, like a live pheasant in an oven, ungutted and stinking. The saya retched and fled, falling at last into Roskovitch’s waiting arms. Together they took one last, brief look, knowing t
he dreaded chancellor would be dead when the screaming stopped. They rounded the comer of the passage and raced for the secret tunnel Jasmine had shown, willing to pay any price for not ever having to return to the dungeons.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Khan sat unceremoniously, elbows on his desk, head resting in his hands. He shut his good eye and seethed silently, the two trusted generals before him uneasily shifting, casting fretful glances at each other.

  At length, while the first threads of daylight pushed through the bamboo curtains and the hamsin yowled, he peered up at them both, face haggard and drawn. “Why wasn’t I warned of this sooner?” he asked weakly.

  The armored, plumed-helmeted generals were taken aback by his lack of forceful command. They’d expected him to greet this news with shouts and threats, maybe a beheading. Instead he sat there like an old man, tired and strained. But the anger was there all right, in his eye, his single eye, and he regarded them murderously while they stumbled for answers.

  “Our carrier pigeons were hampered by the foul weather,” one claimed righteously. “You know these desert lands, Sire, understand the problems of communication —”

  Kabul silenced him by banging a fist onto the wood. “Communication?”

  They bowed in unison. “Yes, O Mighty One, glorious savior of the world. This hamsin, you see —”

  “Hamsin, hamsin! I’m sick of the word, understand? Sick of your excuses as well! Tell me, for how long has the wind blown, eh? A day? A day and a half?” They nodded and he seemed to calm. “So. And how long ago was this message from the south dated?”

  The older of the generals swallowed with apprehension. “Twenty days, Sire.”

  “Twenty days! Twenty days! And you stand here now and tell me this? That an army — Le-Dan’s army — has crossed the frontier onto our lands? Nearly three weeks after it occurred?”

  Both soldiers were shaking. They’d known their khan for too many years to recall, fought with him side by side, ate where he ate, slept where he slept, dreamed his dreams. And they understood perfectly well what he would do to them for this.

  “We suspect that the pigeons were intercepted, Sire. Held somewhere across the steppes, then released only yesterday.”

  Kabul sulked; he downed a swallow of wine from a goblet, frowned at the taste, and spilled it all onto the floor, the way he would make their blood spill for this.

  “Can I trust no one? No one at all? Gods below! I’m served by idiots! When the pigeons were late in arriving, didn’t you wonder? Didn’t it give you cause to speculate, and perhaps see the necessity of flying off a column into Persia?”

  “We, we thought it best not to provoke the sanshah so openly, Sire.”

  “You thought not to provoke the Persians,” mimicked the Khan. “So instead you did nothing. Not even get word to me.”

  “Not true, lord!” whined the younger general, bowing humbly before his liege. “We did send word — several times. But it took some time for us to realize that the messages were being intercepted.”

  Kabul threw up his hands in exasperation. What dolts they were! Didn’t they sense from the beginning that something was afoot? How was it that he, with only one eye, was able to see things so much clearer than those still with two?

  He felt a dull throbbing come into his head and he knew that a spasm would come quickly, if he did not regain his self-control. In the manner that Sing-Li had instructed, he took a series of deep breaths, letting them out slowly, flexing his hands into fists and then releasing. It had something to do with the flow of his blood, the Chinaman had said. Allowed more blood to rush to his brain, prevent the attack. Ah, what would I do without Sing-Li?

  His generals waited nervously as he completed his exercises. At length he sighed, turned to them once more, his face its normal coloring. “Assess for me where we stand today,” he said dryly.

  The older soldier complied. “As you know, Sire, we rode ourselves from the edge of the desert through the windstorm to bring this news. There is no longer any doubt. The renegade soldier, Le-Dan, had left his sanctuary in Persia and boldly made an open threat to us. Even now he marches his forces on Samarkand.”

  “That close?”

  They nodded somberly, grains of desert sand falling from their beards.

  “And what do you, my trusted southern generals, propose doing about it?”

  “Smash him at once, Sire. Call out your local troops —”

  Kabul laughed loudly, bitterly, but with real mirth. “I see,” he told them. “Fight a battle immediately, amid the worst sandstorm in memory. And do it even though I’ve already depleted half my forces to meet a Kazir threat along the steppes.”

  “A Kazir threat, my lord? Surely you haven’t left Samarkand defenseless to chase these hill Phantoms?”

  The Khan waved an imperious hand. These two would never understand. Never. There was no point in trying to explain. Oh, the world was growing more complex daily. The Turks pressing him in the West, the stubborn Hindus and Afghanis to the East. Now this, a new danger from Persia. A weaker sovereign would have crumbled long ago, yes, long ago.

  “You are fools,” he said. “Grown too old and too fat for your positions.” They shifted uncomfortably, surprised when Kabul leaned back and yawned, looked toward the windows, where the howling wind mercilessly beat. “I’ve conquered Le-Dan before,” he said quietly, recalling the battle almost six years before, when his legions had trampled Samarkand’s empire underfoot. “He’s a pest and nothing more. Let him come with his army. The Huns will be ready.”

  “But, lord!” protested the younger general. “He comes with the might of the sanshah behind him!”

  Kabul reached into the fruit bowl, took a handful of dark grapes and crushed them, the juices trickling between his large fingers. “That will be the fate of the sanshah,” he announced. “He’ll rue the day he let Le-Dan beguile him. Now to other matters. If I gave you both leave to ready yourselves against Le-Dan, how long —”

  “I must see the Khan!” boomed a voice.

  The sudden commotion taking place outside the resplendent room of state cut Kabul from his thoughts. He peered obliquely beyond the tall Doric columns to the closed twin oval doors. Outside would be his sentries, under instruction to admit no one while he met with his southern commanders. “Our liege is not to be disturbed!” he heard a sentry shout hoarsely, and that was followed by a spate of obscenities and another demand to be let inside.

  Kabul rose from his place, angered at the outburst, growing red as the doors suddenly burst open and his crippled son Tupol came hobbling inside, straining to fight off the guards hanging onto him. “Father!” he cried. “Father! I must speak with you at once!”

  The Khan snapped a finger, the guards bowed and stepped back. Tupol fell to his knees, shaking. The generals moved unnoticed into the shadows of the columns, watched as Tupol began to shriek his words incoherently.

  “Get hold of yourself!” snapped Kabul. “On your feet! What’s the matter? What’s happened, eh?”

  “The end, Father! It’s the end!” A bead of sweat fell from Tupol’s nose, and the youngest son took hold of his deformed hand to keep it from quivering.

  “Well? Speak!”

  “Insurrection, Father! Against you! Krishna is dead!”

  “What?” Kabul turned ashen, peered dramatically down at his sniveling offspring. “What are you talking about, fool! Stop sniveling and tell me!”

  With his hands now to his anguished face, Tupol cried, “It’s true! My brother has been burned alive by assassins! And Temugin has lost his mind! He’s taken his private guard and broken into the Forbidden Wing —”

  “The Chinaman’s quarters?”

  “Yes, Sire. There’s an awful tumult, Father. Screaming, fighting. Temugin’s men have slain Sing-Li’s personal entourage, and the Chinaman’s been made his prisoner! He’s going to kill him, Father! Kill him!”

  The Khan staggered back, his hand yanking at his hair. Was the whole world
insane? Sing-Li to be killed? By Temugin? Temugin? What in the name of all the dark gods was going on? “Who gave such an order?” He bellowed so loudly that everyone in earshot cringed. “By what right has Temugin done this?”

  “I know not, Sire,” whimpered Tupol. “Only that Temugin has vowed to slay the murderer of all my brothers.”

  Kabul was stunned. “Has Temugin given his mind to opium? He accuses Sing-Li of the murders?”

  “Yes, Father! All of them! And he’s going to proclaim himself as heir to your throne, rightful heir, Father — the office that you have sworn to me!”

  “To you?” Kabul’s eye blinked uncontrollably, he glared at his son with total incomprehension. “Are you mad? Are you all mad?” He spun with the pain, the shooting spasms that rocked his head. The seizure was close, and this time he wouldn’t be able to stop it; he wouldn’t even be able to call the Chinaman for his needles!

  “You’re all against me!” raved Kabul, rocking on his heels, reaching out to the carved arm of his chair for support. “All of you! It’s a plot, a plot! Guards! Arrest them all!”

  The soldiers glanced at one another fretfully, then to the tottering Khan, who had begun to froth at the mouth. The southern commanders shared a quick look, then bolted for the door.

  “Stop them!” shrieked Tupol.

  At the command of the youngest son the daggers went flying; both generals stumbled and fell, rolling over the tiled marble floor, the blades in their backs.