‘You have sworn an oath before God to see me safe returned to Acre,’ William repeated.
‘Which God did I swear to? The God of Jerusalem? The God of the Mohammedans? Or the God of the Tatars? I have never seen such gods as I have witnessed in this last year.’
‘If you ride out of these gates, they will kill you. You will ride not only beyond the help of Christendom but beyond the help of God Himself.’ When Josseran did not respond, he said: ‘Stay with me to Acre and I shall stay silent about your heretical opinion and blasphemies.’
Josseran’s horse, saddled to ride, stamped its feet in the shadows.
‘What has made you so afraid, William?’
‘I am not afraid,’ William said but Josseran heard the catch in his voice.
‘You are terrified to go on from here without me. What has happened to shake you like this?’
‘You flatter yourself. Go, if you must. But remember this. If you ride away from Kashgar tonight you abandon forever your own kind. You will be lost in this world and the next.’
‘I fear that I already am, no matter what I do.’
William stepped closer. ‘What would your father say if he were here? Would he want you to throw away your life, as he did? What a legacy he left you! If you can find redemption nowhere else, find it there, in making your peace with him.’
Josseran sat unmoving in the shadows long after William had gone. Finally, he got to his feet. He found his horse and rested his head on the poll, breathing in the smell of horse and leather. He felt the pony’s withers twitch beneath his beard.
William was right. Qaidu and his bandits would kill him should he return. Was that what his father had wanted for him? Had his ghost followed him all along the Silk Road, as Khutelun had said, his guardian and protector, just to see him die in one defiant but futile gesture? He had to go on, if only to find something to believe in, something to make his father proud, something that would make even heaven worthwhile.
He started to unstrap the girth, defeated by faith, as well as by reason.
CXXX
MIAO-YEN WATCHED the preparations from the window of her chamber, high in the western tower. Men and horses filled the courtyard, mostly Alghu’s irregulars in their brown furs, the wooden quivers on their backs bristling with arrows. It seemed they were ready for a fight on the road. Their force was bolstered by the men of her father’s kesig who had accompanied her from Shang-tu.
In the midst of the preparations she saw the barbarian sitting motionless on his stallion, the holy man beside him, mournful in his black-cowled robe.
Our-Father-Who-Art-in-Heaven had saved her life and yet now he refused even to speak to her. It was all so mysterious. What had she done to earn his enmity?
She did not relish the prospect of another journey. Although she had recovered from the fever, she had a sickness in her stomach and she had not bled this moon. It must be because of the illness. Her breasts were also sore and swollen but she was reluctant to mention so delicate a matter even to her maidservants.
The girls helped her wrap her lily feet for the journey. Two of them removed the embroidered silk shoes on her feet, then carefully unwound the long strips of binding cloth, yards and yards of it. She groaned as it was done and almost wept with relief, as she always did, when the last cloth was removed.
She looked down at the wreckage of her limbs in loathing and disgust. There was not, as men imagined, the feet of a small girl beneath the bindings. Without their coverings they were the feet of a monster. The arches had been crushed and the toes were curled inward under the insteps. Rotting flesh hung from them in long strips.
She whimpered as her feet were cleaned, for the agony did not grow any less with time. During this operation she held a flower to her nose to alleviate the smell. When it was finally done the maids replaced the bindings with a fresh strip of cloth.
So much for the life of a royal princess.
Josseran sat stiffly in the saddle, waiting for the gates of the fort to be thrown open. Their party was pressed tightly together in the courtyard and the smell of the Tatars was overpowering, a pungent mixture of horse and goatskin and unwashed bodies that had him almost gagging, even after so long amongst them. Wild-eyed shamans passed amidst the milling throng of men and horses, sprinkling mare’s milk on the ground and on to the polls of the horses. They were filthy creatures with matted beards and hair, their white robes stained with mud, shrieking incantations to the sky.
He stared at William’s back. Dark patches stained the rough wool of his robe. He had been at the birch again, it seemed, punishing himself for some transgression known only to God and himself.
How he wished he had never set eyes on him.
The iron-studded gates creaked open and the vanguard rode out. Their officer turned the column to the right, the lucky way, before straightening their line and heading towards the mountains. A cart, covered in silks and furs and white ermine, followed them out, bearing the gilt sedan of Princess Miao-yen and her ladies.
Josseran and William were at the rear of the line with the rest of Sartaq’s cavalry. They followed the caravan through the Kashgar oasis, along avenues of poplar, past clusters of mud-brick houses and orchards of apricot trees.
Later that morning Sartaq and his kesig veered away to the southwest and the blue gallery of the mountains. The rest of the caravan, Alghu’s irregulars and the wagons bearing the princess, continued on, taking the northern route through the pass.
They galloped across a desert of black stones, the impossible mountains rearing ahead of them. Josseran spurred his horse after Sartaq and caught him at the van. Sartaq grinned. ‘What is it, Barbarian?’ he shouted.
‘It is never wise to split your forces,’ Josseran yelled at him over the rush of the wind and the drumming of their horse’s hooves.
‘And if your enemy is also wise,’ he shouted back, ‘he will never assume that you are foolish!’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Qaidu’s troops are waiting for us in the mountains! We know they are there but they do not know that we know it. So we have set a trap for them. When the caravan reaches the Valley of the Shepherds it will make a very tempting target. But we shall have already doubled back through the passes and we will be waiting on the high ground. If Qaidu commits his forces to an ambush we shall decimate them!’
‘You risk Miao-yen’s life!’
‘Miao-yen is still in the fort! There is no one in the sedan but Alghu’s archers.’ Sartaq laughed, eager for the battle he had engineered, delighted with his own ingenuity. ‘An enemy will see what you wish him to see. We have chosen the killing ground. Once we trap Qaidu these mountains will be safe again for our caravans!’
Josseran fell behind, leaving Sartaq to gallop on ahead. He was impressed with the Tatar’s cunning, but a part of him also felt unutterably sad and, yes, frightened. He prayed that if Qaidu did send his raiders into Sartaq’s trap, Khutelun would not be among them.
CXXXI
KHUTELUN AND HER cavalry waited in the black shadows of the spruce. The brown hills glistened under a blanket of frost that was slowly melting away with the rising of the sun in the eastern sky. A minaret and a stand of poplars rose from the mist at the far end of the valley.
They had waited all that morning but there was no movement on the road, the only traffic a donkey, loaded with firewood, driven along by a barefoot urchin with a stick.
Finally they saw the caravan in the distance, sun glittering on the swords and lances of the escort. As it came closer Khutelun could make out the kibitkas bearing the princess’s sedans. Behind the wagons came three more jegun of cavalry.
Her spies in Kashgar had reported that they had split their force, the better disciplined troops of the kesig taking the road to the south. Joss-ran and his shaman were with them. She allowed herself a smile. So, he had survived. She knew he would.
Why had they divided their troops? The passes were steeper at the southern route, and unsuited to
wagons, and she supposed they thought to speed the Christians on their way. Whatever the reason it worked to her advantage for now she was pitted against an enemy of similar strength. Surprise would weigh the odds in her favour. Her objective was not to gain ground but to take from them Khubilai’s daughter, either by capture or by the sword. They would strike quickly, and retreat to the mountains.
Yet she was unable to shake off a deep sense of foreboding. The premonition was nameless and there was no seeing to accompany it. Perhaps, she thought, it is a foreshadowing of my own death.
She went back to the horses, waiting eagerly under the trees.
Sartaq sat hunched against the cold, his long felt coat hanging in dark folds down his horse’s flank. His sparse beard was beaded with ice, his breath frothing white on the air. His warriors waited behind him in the shadows of the gully, arrows bristling from the wooden quivers on their backs. A triangular pennant hung limp from the shining blade of a lance.
They could see Qaidu’s raiders waiting just below the tree line on the far side of the valley. Sartaq turned to Josseran with a wolfish grin. ‘You see! I told you they could not resist.’
Josseran did not answer. He searched for a flash of purple silk among the distant knot of riders, but it was impossible to make out; they were too far away.
Khutelun sprinkled koumiss from her leather saddlebag on to the ground, invoking the assistance of heaven against her enemies. She closed her eyes and tried again to listen to the spirits, but the unease which had settled on her all that day had dampened her intuitions. She looked up at the Blue Sky, her face creased in confusion. The other Tatars watched her, troubled by her indecision.
‘What is it you are trying to tell me?’ she whispered.
She jumped into the saddle. The caravan was spread across the valley floor below them. They could not delay the moment.
She raised a fist in the air, the signal for the charge.
CXXXII
THE HORSEMEN STREAMED out of the tree line, and the shriek of their war cries carried clearly across the valley on the frigid air. Josseran watched in grim silence.
‘You will stay here,’ Sartaq said to Josseran. ‘I shall leave ten of my men as escort for you. You will be safe.’ Sartaq raised a hand, waiting for the two forces to engage, ensuring there could be no swift retreat for Qaidu’s warriors. ‘This is for my brother-in-law,’ he said.
He gave the signal and the Tatars streamed down the moraine and along the valley, a thousand of them, each in boiled-leather armour, bows across their backs, the steel points of their lances flashing in the sun.
‘What is happening?’ William shouted.
‘Qaidu’s soldiers have attacked the caravan. Sartaq has set a trap for them.’ He wheeled his horse about. ‘Tell me the real reason you would not baptize the princess.’
‘Why do you wish to question me on this now, Templar?’
‘Just tell me the truth.’
William hesitated, but then it was as if something shifted in him, some great burden of guilt was shrugged aside. ‘Why should I bring her to a God who brings nothing to me?’
‘William? Do not tell me you have lost your faith.’
‘Take your pleasure in my fall, as you will.’
‘There is no pleasure in it. I am astonished, that is all.’
‘He has abandoned me, Templar! I have borne every suffering in His name, travelled far beyond the known world and endured each and every indignity, and what help has He given me, though I cried out again and again for His assistance to aid my endeavours in the name of His son? Was she to be my consolation for all I have done? Was that the crumb He threw at me? One convert, and that a mere woman, a heathen woman?’
‘She is a soul.’
‘One soul is of no account to me! I dreamed of millions!’ The wind howled around them, throwing grit and ice in their faces. ‘I will tell you the truth of it, if that is what you wish. I do not know what I believe in any more.’
Josseran stared into the priest’s face, and saw something there he had thought never to see: fear. It was like watching the sun topple from the sky.
He turned in the saddle and stared at the thin, dark line of horsemen sweeping down the green slope. Then he saw it, the very thing he had dreaded: a flash of purple silk.
Khutelun. His mouth was suddenly dry.
‘What did you say?’ William asked him.
‘Khutelun. I said, Khutelun.’
‘What?’
‘Khutelun is there.’
‘The witch?’
‘She is there. Do you see the purple? She is down there!’
‘Then she is going to die.’
‘Or she may be saved. You may have lost your religion, priest, but I have found mine. This is my faith: I believe in the congress of two ill-tamed souls, of the sacred bond that will make a man do anything and everything for a woman, and she for him. I have no creed to offer, no confession. My heaven is with her, and my hell is when I am not.’ Josseran put his hand to his throat, to the crucifix he wore under his silk undershirt. He tore it off his neck with sudden violence, brought it to his lips to kiss it for the last time and tossed it to the priest. ‘Pray me for me, Brother William.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I do not know why it so amused God to put you in my path, but I cannot say I shall miss your company when we are apart. Nevertheless, I wish you Godspeed to Acre.’
‘Templar!’
‘I cannot do my penance. If I am damned, then let me be damned. You will not see me again.’ He spurred his horse down the grey moraine, after Sartaq’s cavalry.
‘Josseran!’ William screamed.
Their Tatar escort was taken by surprise. Their attention was focused on the battle taking place just below them. When they heard William’s shout they all turned their heads but by then Josseran was already galloping away from them and they were too late to stop him.
CXXXIII
KHUTELUN GALLOPED THROUGH the milling ranks of Alghu’s cavalry, her cavalry behind her. Alghu’s men had ridden out to meet them but the momentum of her attack had taken them off guard and dozens of them already lay in the grass or in the shallows of the river, slain or wounded by the first volley of arrows. Khutelun and her vanguard rode through and around them, avoiding individual combats, interested only in the prize that awaited them in the kibitka.
They were within a dozen paces when the curtains parted. She shouted a warning, but it was lost in the screams and the thunder of hooves. Instead of the princess, all that awaited them within the silk curtains of the royal litter were Alghu’s archers.
She tried to wheel her horse around, but it was too late.
She heard the whine of the arrows, and all around her her magadai screamed and clutched at their wounds. Several slid from their horses. Her own mare was hit in the shoulder by an arrow and reared on to its back legs.
It took all her skill to stay in the saddle. She put her own bow to her shoulder and loosed two arrows into the archers in the sedan. She knew it was hopeless. The charge had been checked, the impetus lost.
And besides, their quarry was not there.
She spurred her horse away from the caravan. She realized that the unease she had felt all that morning had been more than the premonition of her own death. It was the foretelling of disaster. She looked up the valley, knowing what she would see.
A black line of horsemen was galloping along the flood plain, and in moments it would sweep through their flank. Now she understood the nature of the trap.
All around her, she heard the cries of men suffering and dying, the clash of steel on steel as a hundred different combats took place along the line of the skirmish. She galloped back up the slope of the valley, found her messenger, had him send the retreat arrows singing through the air.
But she knew it was too late, much too late.
As Sartaq’s cavalry swept into the battle lines, the tattered remnants of Khutelun’s mingan broke off and streamed back
towards the foothills. Josseran galloped around the mêlée and looked for the purple silk: he saw Khutelun escaping up the face of the mountain slope, gathering the remnants of her soldiers around her. She was heading towards the tree line on the north side of the valley.
Sartaq’s warriors loosed volleys of arrows from the saddle as they pursued her. He joined the pursuit, splashing across the ford, just one purpose in mind.
CXXXIV
KHUTELUN TWISTED AROUND in the saddle. The retreat had degenerated into a score of separate pursuits. She was on her own now, with two riders following her up the slope, their lamellar armour identifying them as men from Khubilai’s kesig. They were gaining ground.
Another arrow slapped into her mare’s rump and she screamed and almost fell. She looked back again and saw that a third rider had joined the hunt.
The black shelter of the pines seemed impossibly far.
Josseran’s pony was galloping at breakneck speed across the uneven ground. His charge across the valley had taken him almost into the path of two of Sartaq’s troopers; he was almost close enough to touch them. He saw the rider nearest him raise his bow to his shoulder and take aim.
Josseran swung wildly with his sword, an act of desperation. The blade slashed across the rump of the bowman’s mount. The pony screamed and swerved, throwing his rider’s aim. As Josseran spurred alongside him the bowman looked over his shoulder, his face twisted in anger and surprise.
Josseran swept sideways with the butt of his sword and knocked him from his horse.
Just a hundred paces from the tree line now. Khutelun knew she could lose her pursuers there.
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