The young man was unmoved. ‘With the paizi you can change horses at every fifty-mile staging post, or yam as we call them. It is what it’s for.’
‘And sleep?’ asked Arcadius. ‘Or even food? What chance of those?’
‘You will eat and sleep in the saddle. Those following you will be doing the same.’ The man had mounted and begun to move down the path. It was steep and the horses could only walk it and Luke found himself at the back behind Khan-zada. There was much he still wanted to know.
‘Highness,’ he ventured, ‘why did you go to all the trouble of kidnapping us? Why not simply ask us to take you to Tamerlane?’
The woman did not look round immediately and he wondered if she’d heard him. Then she reined in her horse so that there was distance between her and the rider in front. ‘I needed to see you.’ She had not turned and her head was held as high as always. Her voice was low. ‘I needed to see you to know if I could trust you. And I needed to see the girl.’
‘And you couldn’t do that by meeting us on the road?’
‘How?’ She put the question to the sky. ‘How would I have met you? How would you have reacted to being stopped by a group of assassins?’
Luke saw the truth of this. But it raised another question. ‘How did you know we were on our way to Miran Shah?’
She did not answer this and was silent for a long time. Luke watched her back as it moved in time with the sway of the horse. Even mounted, she had the grace of a queen. Then she asked a question of her own. ‘Do you love her as much as she does you?’
Luke was still muddled by the drug and wondered how she could possibly know about Anna. Then she spoke again.
‘I was watching her while you were asleep,’ she said, now turning so that the piercing eyes were on his. One hand was holding her reins, the other resting on the rump of her horse. ‘She didn’t know I was there. I saw her look at you for an hour before you awoke.’ She paused. ‘You are fortunate to be so loved.’
Luke felt the familiar pang of guilt. He took his eyes from hers and began to busy himself with his bow.
‘So, it is unrequited,’ she said quietly and looked back to her front. ‘A pity.’ She kicked her horse to catch up with the others and Luke was left feeling only shame.
They had reached the bottom of the mountain now and a green valley stretched out before them, steep-sided and with a broad path at its base. Immediately they broke into a canter and Luke had to pull Eskalon back to prevent him from overtaking the others. He looked behind him. There was no sign of pursuit and he wondered how much time the assassins’ deceit had bought them. At least the seven of them would be fast. The Varangians rode well and Shulen had been raised in the saddle. Khan-zada, meanwhile, looked as if she had the same control of her horse as she did over everything else.
We might just do it.
The valley led into another and the mountains on either side were falling to foothills when they saw the royal road beneath them. It was evening and the slope to their right was straddled with the long shadows of rocks scattered across its surface like embers. The horses were tired from hours without rest and their manes hung limp against their necks. They could not go much further.
The assassin, still leading, reined in his horse. ‘The yam is a mile beyond the place we will join the road. I will go on alone from here. Wait until dark and then ride to join me.’
Khan-zada nodded and the man rode on down the slope.
Luke watched him go and then looked left and right along the road. It was empty. He looked at the desert beyond and saw only birds circling, black specks against a red sky. The late sun had turned the flat land into a sheet of bronze that waited, pulsing, for the cool of night. Then he saw a black shape by the side of the road. ‘What is that?’ he asked, pointing.
Khan-zada looked up from studying the map. ‘It’s a horse,’ she replied. ‘A dead horse.’
She went back to her map, then decided that more explanation might be required. ‘It’s a courier’s horse. Anyone carrying a paizi is permitted to take any horse from any person along the road if he is on Temur’s business. Even members of the royal family must give up their horses. So the couriers leave their horses to die by the side of the road. It is quite usual.’
Nikolas whistled softly, looking at Luke and then Eskalon. ‘We certainly needed that paizi.’
‘Temur is obsessed with many things but most of all fresh news,’ she continued. ‘So our postal service, our shuudan, is the fastest in the world. It helps him rule.’
They dismounted and sat on the ground and stayed there watching the sun fall behind the hills, each occupied by their own tired thoughts. They’d given what water they had to the horses, which drank noisily and scraped their noses along the sand looking for grass. When it was nearly dark, they rose and remounted and walked down to the road and along it until the dark outline of the yam came into sight. It was a small, squat building of stone with a low chimney and beside it was a longer one that would be the stable. As they approached, they could see a light shining from within.
‘Wait here,’ said Luke, pulling up his horse. He’d unstrapped his bow from the saddle. ‘Matthew, if it’s a trap, take everyone back to the hills and find another way east.’
Shulen spoke. ‘I will come with you.’
Luke looked at her and remembered Khan-zada’s words. He spoke gently. ‘No you won’t. You will stay with Khan-zada and the others. They need you.’
Shulen began to answer but the Princess had ridden up and taken her bridle. ‘Stay with us,’ she said softly. ‘He will be safe.’
Luke rode forward to the building and dismounted. There was no sound from within the walls. He walked up to the door with his bow, arrow pointed to the front. Slowly, using the tip of the arrow, he pushed the door open.
The assassin was seated by the fire with an old man at his feet. There was a pool of blood around the man’s head and his throat was open.
‘He’s dead,’ he said. He was turning the blade of a long knife in the firelight.
‘You had to kill him?’
The man turned. His face was empty of emotion. ‘It is what I do,’ he said simply.
Luke stood awhile looking into the coldest eyes he’d ever seen. Then he nodded slowly and turned back to the door.
‘You are the strongest of them,’ said the man to his back. ‘You will have to do such things if you are to survive. We are not so different, you and I. Here, take the paizi.’
*
Ten minutes later, they were riding different horses away from the staging post. All except Luke who was still on Eskalon and now had the paizi hanging from his neck. The assassin stood by the door to watch them go and Luke was glad to leave him behind.
As he rode, he lifted the paizi in his hand to examine it. On one side were engraved the three circles of Temur’s kingdoms on earth and on the other, the outline of a fish. He pondered this. Was it, perhaps, the boast that Tamerlane laid claim to the oceans as well?
Night had fallen and for once they were thankful that the moon was only half full. It was cold and they had put on extra clothes, the Princess wearing a fur-lined hood which all but concealed her face. It was too dark to travel fast on the road and they ate a meal of bread and cheese as they bumped their way east, their horses’ ears alert to the sounds of the night.
By dawn, half of them were asleep in their saddles, slumped over their horses’ necks like sacks of grain; Arcadius was snoring loudly. Only Luke, Khan-zada and Shulen were awake and riding together at the front. They had not spoken for hours and Luke had slept a short while and dreamt of three Magi going west.
Now he broke the silence. ‘Highness, does Temur know nothing of what his son is doing in Sultaniya?’
Khan-zada lowered the hood from her head. The sun had yet to rise before them but the night’s cold was in retreat and the glow on the horizon gave the promise of warmth to come. She had removed the birds from her hair and it tumbled out like a rich carpet.
> ‘He knows some of it,’ she replied. ‘But Sultaniya is a long way from Samarcand and anyone who might speak against Miran Shah is either dead or too frightened to do so. Besides, Temur is unpredictable and could easily turn on the person who told him.’ She paused and smiled at him. ‘We shall see.’
There was a grunt from behind them and Luke turned to see Arcadius, still snoring, slipping slowly from his horse. Luke wheeled round and pulled him up into his saddle by the collar. He looked at his friend’s face, still asleep. In the half-light of the moon, he looked haggard with deep lines under his eyes. He hadn’t spoken at all since leaving the yam and Luke wondered if he was sickening again. He rode back to join Khan-zada.
‘Did he hurt you?’ Shulen was asking the Princess as he rejoined them.
Khan-zada shook her head. ‘No. But he might have soon. There was a feast. It lasted a week. He had a dish served that was first a huge horse, roasted with chestnuts and herbs. Then it was cut open and there was an antelope inside. Then the antelope was opened to reveal a calf, and inside that was a hare. He was drunk and began talking about serving up a woman slave in this way, with her foetus still within. I was disgusted and left the tent. Afterwards he was angry and I thought he might hurt me.’
Luke and Shulen looked at one another in horror.
‘So you see, he is truly mad. And someone has to tell Temur.’
There was a flash of colour over the hills ahead, a thin line of cadmium that hooped quickly into a crescent and flung rays into the sky, transforming it instantly to indigo. They stopped.
‘Now that is alchemy,’ murmured Khan-zada, her face aglow. She turned to Shulen. ‘Is it not?’
Shulen was looking at her with something unreadable in her eyes. ‘“The alchemy of souls … the transmutation of the mortal into the immortal.” That’s what you said, highness. Is it possible?’
‘Immortality?’ she smiled. ‘Perhaps. Hasan-i Sabbah thought so.’
*
The road they followed was wide enough to fit half a dozen horses abreast. It followed the contour of the foothills of the Alburz Mountains so that on their left a steep slope of stone and shale rose above them and on their right the vast desert of Kavir stretched out to infinity. The cold of the night fled the instant that the sun rose and soon they were removing clothes as they rode, folding them flat to put between them and their saddles. No one spoke except Luke who, as was his custom, spoke quietly to Eskalon.
Soon the sun was high in the sky and the ground under their horses hooves seemed to beat beneath its heat. The desert beside them was a lifeless thing, its only movement the spirals of sand and scree that would rise and turn and fall back to earth. Its cracked surface spread out to a horizon blurred by distance and mirage and desert.
Luke bade farewell to Eskalon at the next staging post. The stallion was exhausted and could barely stand, but he looked at his replacement with deep suspicion.
‘Hide him,’ Luke said. ‘If you give him to anyone, I will come back and kill you.’
For three days they rode. For three days they felt the morning sun warm their foreheads and the evening sun their backs. For three days they ate, drank and slept in the saddle, as they’d been told they would, and only paused to shit or change horses, their paiza working every time. They sped through villages and towns called Rey and Damghan. As they went further east, the people they met were fewer and poorer and numbered hardly a man among them.
They arrived in Nishapur, a walled city of cracks and empty houses. There was scaffolding everywhere but no sound of building. The water that ran in open drains by the side of the road was foul and the air stank. They wove their way through empty streets with cloths pressed to their mouths. Luke turned to Khan-zada. ‘Where are all the men?’
The Princess, veiled and erect, was staring ahead as if the answer might be written somewhere above the houses. ‘Taken east,’ she said quietly. ‘Taken in chains to build the mosques and palaces of Samarcand and Kesh. Enslaved.’
‘Don’t they have men there?’
‘Not enough to put Temur’s dreams into stone. He is making buildings bigger than anything the world has yet seen.’
She paused to pat the neck of her horse that had been startled by a flea-bitten dog. ‘He wants them finished before he dies.’
Luke thought of a man with unimaginable power who still feared the neglect of future generations. He thought of a man born in a tent who knew that immortality lay in stone.
‘I have seen his Summer Palace in Kesh,’ she continued. ‘The Ak Serai. It is magnificent and larger than anything you could ever imagine. Numberless rooms and a garden for every hour of the day. Do you know what is written above its gate?’
Luke was silent.
‘“Let he who doubts my power, look upon my buildings.”’ She laughed then, a joyless sound, muffled by silk. ‘And do you want to know the irony?’ she whispered. ‘They have no foundations!’
‘No foundations?’
Khan-zada shook her head. ‘No foundations. The man tasked with their completion is my cousin. He told me that the architects are working to an impossible timetable. They are so terrified they will not finish in time that they have built without foundations. The buildings will fall down in ten years. They had better hope that either he or they will be dead by then.’
They had reached a square where a pitiful fountain dribbled water from its spout. There were people here setting up market stalls but the produce displayed on them was thin.
‘You could say’, she went on, looking around her, ‘that these are the lucky ones. Temur killed millions when he led his hordes this way. Ten years ago, these cities were emptied. Now they’ve been filled with widows and orphans from the devastated lands around.’
They left the city as fast as they could. It was a day’s ride to Mashhad and Luke wanted to reach it before dark. It would be their last staging post before the Kara Kum desert and they would need to change their horses for camels to cross it.
So far, they’d seen nothing of their pursuers. They had no way of knowing how much time had been bought for them by the assassins, but it was unlikely that they’d been able to travel faster than the Varangians. Luke supposed they must be fewer by now, limited by the horses left for them at the various staging posts. He prayed none were on Eskalon.
The camels would present a problem. They couldn’t cross the desert without them but anyone chasing them on horseback would catch up with them in hours. And, of course, their pursuers didn’t need to cross the desert. It was time to confront these creatures of Miran Shah.
They left Mashhad at dawn in possession of a long wagon. After the horses, the camels’ rolling gait seemed slow.
‘Don’t they go any faster?’ asked Nikolas, his hand between his bottom and the cushion on which he sat.
Matthew said: ‘I had no idea you were so keen to get to Tamerlane.’
The four Varangians were silent after that, each thinking of what was to come. Their task was to persuade the most dangerous man on earth to do what he didn’t want to do: to come west. It seemed impossible that they’d survive such a task. Luke rode behind his three friends, watching them sway like drunks at a wedding. At least he’d come near to being a man of the steppe, while they were still fair-haired giants from the west, as alien to Tamerlane as mercy.
They came down through the mountains late in the afternoon, the black sands of the Kara Kum spread before them like a burnt offering. By evening, they’d arrived at a narrow defile with high hills on either side. They pushed the wagon on to its side and blocked the road.
‘It won’t fool them, but they should be riding fast enough for it to confuse,’ said Luke, wiping his brow. ‘And that may be all we need.’
‘How far behind are they, do you think?’ asked Matthew.
Luke shrugged. ‘Who knows? But the camels have slowed us down a lot.’
‘We’d better get into the hills then,’ Matthew said. ‘We know what to do.’
They l
ed their camels back the way they’d come and tethered them. Luke unstrapped his sword and bow and pointed them to their positions.
They were just in time. As he was arranging his arrows beside him, Luke saw a cloud of dust rise from the foothills. Half an hour later, he heard the drumming of hooves and, soon afterwards, the jingle of harness. Then they came into view. The riders were pushing their horses hard, desperate to reach their quarry before the sands of the desert engulfed them.
There were five of them. Five men only, riding without armour or anything that would slow their pursuit, five men with swords strapped to their backs and bows by their sides. They had come so close to catching them up.
Now they saw the wagon and their horses reared up as they reined them in. Luke closed his eyes for a second’s relief. None of them was Eskalon. ‘All right. Let’s bring them down.’
Luke aimed Torguk’s bow as Nikolas and Shulen did the same. Three arrows were loosed and three horses fell, bringing their riders with them. But the men were good. They jumped from their horses as they fell and took cover behind their twisting bodies. Meanwhile the two remaining riders galloped back to find cover. The three in front let fly their arrows, forcing the Varagians to duck below their rocks. The two behind dismounted and began climbing the hillside to outflank them.
But it was all too late. The men sent by Miran Shah had expected a woman and her servants. Instead they had Varangians. The men on the hillside were halfway up when Arcadius and Matthew emerged from behind their boulders and fired into them at point-blank range. The men were dead when they fell.
Meanwhile, the three in front lay with their backs exposed, not knowing the fate of their comrades. Matthew and Arcadius had time to reload and move to positions from which they could not miss.
In a minute, it was all over. Their pursuers were no longer pursuing them and the Varangians had two new horses. Already, birds were circling above the corpses and flies humming around the arrows that protruded from their bodies. There was blood on the ground and the air smelt of death. Only the desert now lay between them and Bokhara. And beyond Bokhara lay Samarcand.
The Towers of Samarcand (The Mistra Chronicles) Page 18