‘It’s out there somewhere, Luke. The patrols said at least fifty thousand.’
Nikolas rode up to Luke’s side. ‘We need to give the city a wide berth. Let’s head out into the desert.’
Luke nodded. He was in no mood to meet a sortie from the city. In fact he was in no mood to meet anyone. The numbness that he’d felt in the ruins of Aleppo had stayed with him every mile of the two hundred they’d ridden to Damascus. On the way, he’d witnessed the obliteration of Hama, Homs, Baalbek, Sidon and Beirut with a sort of dread detachment, as if the horror belonged to a world he didn’t inhabit. His eyes had seen deeds of savagery that his brain would not admit, had witnessed evil that could find no place in his matrix of experience. He’d learnt to withdraw, putting on armour, better than any Varangian mail, to survive this apocalypse. He’d taken refuge in silence.
And throughout it all, he’d clung to one truth that no amount of blood could wash away: Anna was not to marry Suleyman.
But the envoy had told him something else: that Anna believed him married to Shulen. If she thought him married, she would think him lost to her. His first impulse had been to ride west to Edirne as fast as Eskalon would take him. But he was oath-sworn to Tamerlane, as were his friends. And something deep, deep within him knew that he couldn’t ride to her until he’d done what he had to do.
Luke turned Eskalon’s head towards the desert. ‘Follow me.’
*
Half an hour later the four Varangians had arrived at the Mamluk army and were shown into the presence of Ibn Khaldun. As soon as Luke had heard that the Kadi was with the army, he’d volunteered himself for the task of parleying with a man he knew he could trust. He’d gone to Tamerlane and offered himself, not expecting to be accepted. He was.
Now the old historian was before him in a tent full of sculpted armour, sherbet and exquisite creatures who tiptoed around on bare feet. Ibn Khaldun explained: ‘They’re my bodyguard, believe it or not, and it’s their armour around the walls. I’ve never seen them in battle so I don’t know how safe I should feel.’ The old man had risen from a furred divan and placed his hand on his heart. He bowed. ‘May the peace of Allah be upon you, Luke.’ He looked around. ‘And no less upon the rest of you.’ He gestured to one of the creatures. ‘I never got the chance to see you fight in Tabriz. Would one of you like to wrestle now and we can finish this business without further bloodshed?’
Luke produced a smile, his first in a month. ‘Ibn Khaldun, we’re here to parley, not wrestle your bodyguard.’ He heard a sigh of disappointment from behind him: Nikolas. ‘How big is your army?’
‘As the sands of the desert. Numberless.’ The old man paused while he sat again. ‘Shall we say sixty thousand? With cannon.’
‘So less than half Temur’s.’
The historian arranged the folds of his tunic that swept to the floor in patterned silk. ‘If you say so. But you’re forgetting Bayezid.’
Luke shook his head. ‘Not Bayezid but Mehmed. And he’s stopped at the border.’
The Kadi’s face remained composed. ‘So why are you here? Temur seems to have the advantage. Please sit.’
Four of the bodyguard had appeared with folding chairs. Luke was the first to sit. He leant forward. ‘Ibn Khaldun, I am here to prevent further massacre, if I can. I’ve seen too much these past weeks. I’m tired of blood.’
‘But your master never tires of it,’ said the Kadi. ‘It’s his elixir. It keeps him strong, so they say.’
‘His army is tired. His generals tell him to rest in the mountains of Lebanon. He has no cannon and you have strong walls. He is persuadable.’
‘Because he can see that even if he wins this battle, he’ll be too weak to beat Bayezid as well.’ Ibn Khaldun drank some sherbet and patted the neat beard beneath his smile with a napkin. ‘And, of course, that’s what you want: Tamerlane strong enough to beat Bayezid.’ He put down the cup. ‘But what makes you so sure he’ll go back to Samarcand afterwards?’
‘I’m not,’ admitted Luke. ‘Sometimes I wonder whether Constantinople wouldn’t be better off with Bayezid’s army on its walls.’
‘Ah, but that wouldn’t fit with the plan,’ said Ibn Khaldun. ‘Plethon wants the Roman Empire to recapture its birthright, a re-merger of Greek and Roman culture, as it always was. But at the right time, which isn’t yet.’ The historian joined his hands beneath his chin and looked at Luke, then his friends. ‘But what do you want, all of you?’
Matthew spoke. ‘We want what Luke wants,’ he said. ‘To save our empire from Bayezid. And we want to stop this bloodshed and go home; Luke to Chios, us to Monemvasia. We’re all tired.’
Ibn Khaldun nodded. ‘Very sensible. So how do we achieve this? We have two armies either side of Damascus and some excitable generals. How do we stop them fighting?’
Luke said: ‘With money. One million dinars and he’ll turn round and go away.’
Ibn Khaldun looked surprised. ‘Really? And why would we believe him?’
‘Because Temur may be unpredictable but he’s not stupid. You’ve said it yourself: he doesn’t want to be weakened with an Ottoman army behind him. ‘He paused. ‘And perhaps he thinks Egypt too big a prize just now.’
‘Where will he go to rest?’
‘To Lebanon.’
‘And then?’
‘To Bayezid. He’ll have been persuaded by then.’
Ibn Khaldun was silent for a long time then, seemingly absorbed by the patterns on the sleeves joined in his lap. ‘One million dinars is a lot of money.’
‘Not for Damascus. It’s one of the richest cities on earth. You can find it.’
The old man nodded. Then he rose and clapped his hands. Two of the bodyguard appeared, this time in armour. ‘These ladies will escort you out of our camp. Tell Tamerlane that he will have his money by sundown tomorrow.’
‘And how will it be brought to him?’
‘I will bring it myself. I will go into the city.’
*
The Varangians’ ride back was shorter than the ride out because Tamerlane had moved his army forward into the orchards around the city walls, well out of arrow-range. It had been done, Luke supposed, to concentrate the minds of those collecting the ransom.
The army was a fearsome sight. In the fading light, it seemed that the entire landscape was made up of Mongol horsemen standing stirrup to stirrup. At their centre were the huge hulks of the elephants with towers on their backs and giant scimitars on every tusk. As Luke rode closer, he could see that every Mongol had his four spare mounts tied by his side so that the army seemed, in this light, even bigger than it was. This was a familiar Tamerlane ruse. On the approach to Aleppo, Tamerlane had ordered brooms tied to the horses’ tails so that the dust cloud seen from the city would stretch across every part of the horizon.
In front of the army sat Tamerlane with his sons and grandsons beneath the various flags and skulls that told of God and superstition. A shaman was mounted to the rear. Luke and his companions rode over to Tamerlane, dismounted and prostrated themselves in the sand.
‘What did they say?’
Luke looked up. Tamerlane was mounted next to Mohammed Sultan with Shulen on his other side patting a pretty palfrey that looked out of place in this army. She smiled at him.
‘They will pay you one million dinars by this time tomorrow,’ said Luke. ‘It will be brought out to you by the Kadi himself. He has gone into the city to collect it.’
Tamerlane grunted. He had his eagle on the arm that still bore the scars from its talons. He tickled the top of its head with his gloved finger.
‘That is a pity. They are cowards.’
Mohammed Sultan coughed. ‘Father, it is a fabulous sum. Enough to clad the Bibi Khanum’s dome in gold. We can rest for the winter, then come back later in the year.’
Tamerlane nodded slowly. He took a lump of offal from the pocket of his deel and fed it to the bird. He grunted again. ‘Very well. Turn the army around.’
*
Ibn Khaldun had entered Damascus to find its people more belligerent than he’d hoped. He’d ridden straight to the citadel to meet the governor, a man of ninety who had none of the wisdom of age. With him were the leaders of the city’s garrison, merchants and clergy. The imams had just arrived from the Umayyad Mosque where they’d been seeking the guidance of Allah. The words ‘Ain Jalut’ were, in Ibn Khaldun’s opinion, on too many lips.
‘One million dinars!’ said a fat merchant, trembling with outrage. ‘It’s an extortionate sum.’
‘Extortion is what Temur does,’ said the historian calmly. ‘The alternative is worse.’
‘But we have the sultan’s army behind us,’ said the governor, ‘and Bayezid’s coming. We just have to wait.’
Ibn Khaldun shook his head. ‘Bayezid has sent only half his army with his second son who is currently sitting on the border and doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to cross it. I expect Tamerlane has made a separate agreement.’
It was late evening and they were standing in a room high in the citadel tower. Through opposite windows they could see the shapes of two armies, one much larger than the other. The sun had set and soon it would be dark. A slave had just entered with a taper to light the torches on the walls.
‘Don’t light them,’ said Ibn Khaldun to the man. ‘These gentlemen need to see the armies outside.’
‘We have our own garrison as well,’ said a general. ‘Twenty thousand at least.’ He turned to the governor. ‘We should strike now while they’re tired. They’ve had nothing but forced marches since leaving Sivas.’
Someone else agreed. ‘If we let them rest the winter in Lebanon, they’ll just return stronger in the spring.’
‘But you might have a proper army sent from Cairo by then,’ said Ibn Khaldun.
‘They have no cannon and our walls are strong.’ The governor turned to the imams. ‘What does Allah tell us to do?’
A man with a voluminous beard, eyebrows and a look of religious ferocity spoke. ‘He tells us to wait. Not pay this ransom and wait.’
This was what might have happened if, at that moment, a merchant standing by one of the windows hadn’t seen something extraordinary. His back was to the meeting and he was looking out to the north.
‘The Mongol army is marching away,’ he said.
*
It was nearly dawn and Luke was walking with Shulen among the elephants, all of which were standing, for elephants sleep standing up. Their mahouts slept beside them, well within trampling distance of their chained feet. It was this mutual trust that had brought Luke here every night when he couldn’t sleep. In a world that had been lost to evil, it reminded him that humanity still existed somewhere, even if not within humans.
The mahouts, one to each elephant, had come with them from Delhi and were suffering from the winter cold of the desert. Shulen had found furred deels to give them.
‘Are they all boys?’ she whispered as she laid a deel over a sleeping mahout. ‘Why not girls?’
Luke shrugged. ‘The elephants are all male so I suppose their keepers have to be male.’
‘But why must the elephants be male? Are men so much fiercer?’
Luke knew the answer to this. ‘In battle, the she-elephant will run from the male. A mahout told me this.’
Shulen thought about this. It seemed strange. She looked down at the sleeping boy lying in the night-shadow of his colossal friend. ‘It’s a curious friendship,’ she murmured. ‘What’s that by his side?’
‘The bag? Inside is a chisel-blade and hammer. If the mahout gets hurt in battle, the elephant will run amok. Those will cut through its spinal cord and kill it instantly.’
Shulen shivered. She straightened up and the two of them walked beyond the elephants to look south towards the city. They could hear the sounds of the camp followers and baggage train still coming in. It took a long time for this army to turn around. She looked across at Luke and saw the strain on his face. He’ll come tomorrow.’
Luke shook his head. ‘He said tonight. There’s been a problem.’
Shulen put her hand on his arm. ‘A million dinars is a big sum to raise,’ she said. ‘Imagine all the camels needed to carry that amount of gold.’
‘If it was taking time, he’d have sent word.’
Shulen regarded him in silence. Luke had changed so much over the past months. Ever since the Georgia campaign, he’d been subdued, lost in his thoughts. Shulen had learnt one reason for it from Matthew.
‘She can’t leave Edirne, Luke,’ she said softly. ‘She’s a prisoner.’ She looked away. ‘She’ll still be there when you arrive.’
‘She thinks we’re married.’
‘Well, she’ll learn differently. When you arrive.’
Luke turned to her. ‘And when might that be, Shulen?’ he asked, the bitterness giving edge to his voice. ‘We thought he’d go to Bayezid but he came south instead. Who’s to say he won’t come back here in the spring when he’s rested the army? He never does what we expect.’
Shulen had probably spent more time with Tamerlane than anyone else in the army. Her salves for his joints were becoming indispensable and were required daily. When she wasn’t talking to him, she was listening to Mohammed Sultan talking to him. She was as mystified by Tamerlane as she was scared of him. ‘I think he’s had his fill of blood,’ she said quietly. ‘After the winter, he’ll fight Bayezid and then go home. It’s what Mohammed Sultan is telling him to do.’
Luke looked away. There were noises in the distance: shouts and screams. They were coming from the baggage train. Then there was an explosion. ‘Oh my God,’ he whispered.
‘What’s happening?’
Luke was shaking his head in disbelief. ‘They’re attacking us. The fools are committing suicide.’ Then he was running in the direction of his tent.
*
When he got there, he found his friends awake and putting on their armour. The Varangians’ tent was among those of the gautchin, Tamerlane’s bodyguard, who were already armed and ready to ride, each man standing next to his horse. A general, known to Luke, was preparing to mount, his foot in the stirrup. Luke ran up to him and put his hand on his shoulder. ‘Do you remember what I showed you in Georgia, Torchin? The arrowhead?’
The man nodded. He had a hideous silver face-mask angled to his helmet whose vacant eyes stared up at the sky.
‘We Varangians will be the point. You gautchin must follow us as fast as you can. Can you do that?’
The man nodded again and pulled himself into the saddle. He shouted commands to his men and lowered his mask.
Luke heard more explosions from the baggage train. He turned to Matthew. ‘We’re going to need lances.’
‘We’ve got them. They’re coming up with the horses.’ Matthew helped Luke to tighten his cuirass straps. ‘Here’s your sword.’
Then the neck of the dragon was in Luke’s hand and he felt a charge of excitement flash through him. He looked down at those ruby eyes and at Plethon’s ring on his finger. He kissed it. He heard a neigh behind him and turned to see Eskalon with a groom. He went up and took the horse’s head in his hands. ‘Today you’ll be a destrier, old friend,’ he whispered. ‘As you were born to be.’
Luke put on his helmet, mounted and took the lance. He turned to the other three, who were already on their horses. ‘Let’s go.’
There was confusion in the direction they were riding and it became worse the closer they got to the enemy. First it was men scrambling to find their horses and weapons, then it was camp followers: old men, women and children, running to escape whatever was behind them, some hideously burnt. There were more explosions and flashes from in front. Luke kicked Eskalon, shouting at those in their way. They rode on until they coul
d see the attackers.
The first Mamluks were mounted on small, quick ponies and carried naft grenades of baked clay, which they were hurling into the wagons of the baggage train. There were flames everywhere. These jandars were dressed in tunics lined with fire-proof talc and had hoods to protect their heads. Some were swinging the grenades in slings above their heads.
‘Greek fire!’ yelled Luke over his shoulder. ‘Close up!’
Behind the grenade-throwers were thousands of Bedouin ashir auxiliaries who were firing arrows over the heads of the jandars. The ground was strewn with Mongol dead and dying: men, women, mules, dogs; it was a scene from hell.
‘Close up!’ Luke shouted again and he slowed Eskalon to allow his three friends to form up on either side of him. Arrows were landing on his helmet and shoulders. ‘Lances down!’
They hit the jandars at terrifying speed. Eskalon was twice the size of the Mamluk ponies and tore into them, butting and biting like a huge, rabid dog. The jandar soldiers had small shields strapped to their upper arms, expecting arrows. Instead they got armoured knights at full charge. They were lifted from their saddles by the impact, grenades flying from their hands to explode amongst the ashirs behind them. Now the sounds were of the screams of men.
The Varangian arrowhead drove deep into the Mamluk ranks, cutting a swathe of destruction as it went. The four were too close for the Mamluk arrows to harm them and the lances kept their swords at bay. Jandars and ashirs fell before them by the score and the momentum of the Mamluk attack was stopped, then turned. But the Varangians couldn’t keep up their charge forever. They began to slow. They threw down their lances, lifting swords and axes instead. Now they were fighting hand to hand and the Bedouin auxiliaries were all around them, closing in. Luke glanced behind him.
Where are the gautchin?
He swung the dragon sword again and again, slashing with its blade and smashing with its pommel. He had the advantage of height and he used it to cut down on his enemy from above, fighting on one side because Matthew was protecting his other. Meanwhile, Eskalon tore chunks of flesh from the Bedouin ponies on every side.
The Towers of Samarcand (The Mistra Chronicles) Page 30