The Towers of Samarcand (The Mistra Chronicles)

by James Heneage

  ‘Where are the gautchin?’ Matthew’s voice echoed from inside his helmet. ‘Nikolas has been hurt.’

  Luke glanced to where Nikolas was fighting. He had decapitated a grenade-thrower but there was blood running down his arm. It was coming from his neck. ‘We’ll have to break out!’ shouted Luke. ‘Follow me.’

  He turned Eskalon back towards the Mongol camp, dropping an enemy as he did so. From in front he heard shouts and the clash of steel. The men before him were looking over their shoulders.

  The gautchin.

  ‘They’re here!’ he yelled and thrust Eskalon into the confusion. Suddenly he felt exhilaration where there’d been exhaustion. They were winning and they would survive. He lifted his dragon sword and took the bow-arm from a man with a giant swing.

  He heard a cry to his left. Nikolas was on the ground and a Mamluk was lifting his sword to strike him. Luke heaved at his rein and Eskalon turned. The man was too far away. He lifted the dragon sword and threw it. It turned once in the air before embedding itself in the man’s back. Luke kicked Eskalon’s flanks and held out his arm to his friend. ‘Get on!’

  Nikolas had removed his helmet. He was grey with loss of blood. He took Luke’s hand and was pulled on to the back of the horse. Luke bent low to recover his sword. He yelled: ‘Hold on!’

  Matthew and Arcadius had seen what had happened and had fallen back to protect their friends. But the Mamluks were already in retreat. The shouts of the gautchin were louder now and getting nearer and behind them would come the whole army. Then the Varangians were through the last of the fleeing Mamluks and the gautchin were charging past them with their terrifying masks and howls of the hunt. The Varangians reined in their horses. Men appeared and Nikolas was taken from Eskalon’s back and Luke watched him carried away in a cloak.

  Matthew said: ‘He’ll live. It wasn’t so bad.’

  Arcadius had come up beside them. ‘Shall we go back to the battle?’

  Luke felt his horse move beneath him. Eskalon wanted to go back, but the battle seemed to be moving away fast, the Mamluk force in full retreat. They’d have to ride hard to catch it up. He kicked Eskalon.

  The three rode towards Damascus, trampling the Mamluk dead and wounded as they went. The Mongol army was now all around them, some only half dressed, some women, all chasing the enemy in every way they could. By now, the day was almost with them and, as the walls of the city drew closer, Luke could see that its giant gates were being slowly closed. Thousands of the city’s garrison were still outside but the gates were closing.

  The Mongols riding beside them could see it too and roars of anger turned to roars of joy as the prospect of new slaughter presented itself. Luke could see that some of the Mamluks had turned to fight, fitting arrows to bowstrings. Some had fallen to their knees and were tearing their hair. Others ran on.

  The Varangians pulled up their horses. They’d seen the way this army did its slaughter and had no desire to get closer. They saw the Mongols fall upon the thousands stranded outside the gates and butcher them with a speed and efficiency that meant that, in less than an hour, it was all over and the vultures could begin their work. Then the Mongols swept back to their broken camp, past the three Varangians who sat in silence on their horses, looking at a field of ten thousand dead. Luke was the first to speak.

  ‘The fools,’ he whispered. ‘The utter, utter fools. They’ve given Tamerlane the excuse he was looking for.’

  Matthew asked: ‘Is that why he pulled back, do you think?’

  Luke nodded. ‘He must have known what might happen.’ He looked at his best friend. ‘After all, the gautchin were waiting.’

  *

  The following night, Tamerlane moved his siege engines within range of the walls of Damascus. They were huge machines, captured from a dozen armies, capable of hurling fireballs into the city at a terrible rate. Meanwhile the elephants dragged battering rams forward to the beat of a drum, the mahouts, deel-clad, on their heads. The army settled down in an arc that covered the landscape and its fires reflected the stars in the sky.

  The next morning, Luke, Matthew and Arcadius were summoned to Tamerlane’s tent. Nikolas was still in theirs, bandaged and sleeping. They found the Emir seated on a plain chair with his foot raised on a footstool. With him were his two grandsons, Khan-zada and Shulen. The air smelt of herbs and Shulen had oil on her hands. The Varangians prostrated themselves on the carpet. Tamerlane was smiling.

  ‘You Greeks were brave last night,’ he said. ‘I’m told you led the army.’

  Luke spoke from the carpet, ‘I was awake when the Mamluks came, lord.’ He paused. ‘As were the gautchin.’

  Tamerlane grunted. ‘They’re always awake. They guard me. They caught the dervish.’

  Three nights past, a Mamluk assassin had stolen into the camp disguised as a dervish dancer. The gautchin had found knives on him and sent him back with no ears or nose.

  Tamerlane continued: ‘They’ve sent someone over to parley. The one you talked to. He’s waiting outside.’ He leant forward. ‘You told me to trust him and they attacked us. And where are my million dinars? Why don’t I cut off this one’s head and send it back?’

  Inspiration came to Luke. He said: ‘The man who waits outside is a great historian, lord. His writings will be read for centuries. Surely such a man should write of you?’

  Tamerlane considered this. His eyes gleamed from behind his glasses. He nodded. ‘Show him in.’

  Two guards opened the tent doors and Ibn Khaldun walked through them, his hands tied together, He looked tired and dishevelled. He dropped to his knees.

  ‘How did you get here?’ Tamerlane blew his nose into his hand and shook it away.

  ‘I was lowered down the walls in a basket, lord,’ replied Ibn Khaldun. ‘The city is in turmoil. It was not safe to leave by the gate.’

  Tamerlane laughed and gestured to Luke. ‘That’s what he does with my army,’ he said, slapping the arm of his chair. ‘He lowers them in baskets. In Georgia. You should put it in your histories.’

  Ibn Khaldun bowed from the waist, his head to the carpet. He murmured: ‘As you desire, lord.’

  Tamerlane leant forward and peered at him. ‘I’ve long wanted to meet you,’ he said. ‘I’ve had your histories read to me.’

  This was a surprise to everyone but Shulen. Ibn Khaldun looked up. ‘I am gratified, lord.’

  ‘They’re good but they don’t include me. You write of empires’ rise and fall. Will mine fall?’

  Ibn Khaldun paused for only a heartbeat. ‘Inevitably, lord.’

  There was silence for a time while Tamerlane inspected his fingernails. Then he chuckled. ‘You’re brave,’ he said. ‘What of the Mamluks? Will the Mamluk dogs rule longer than the Mongols?’

  ‘Not unless they relearn how to fight. They have abandoned us.’

  Tamerlane knew this. His spies had come in just after dawn to report that the Mamluk army had melted away into the desert.

  ‘They have abandoned you,’ said Tamerlane. ‘They sent you into the city to get the money, then fled back to Cairo. What is the mood inside the city now, historian?’

  Ibn Khaldun said: ‘Realistic, lord. They’ve lost an army and half their garrison. They are assembling gold.’

  ‘Ah, but how much? One million dinars is no longer enough. I’ve lost men.’

  The old man chose not to answer. Instead, he kept his brow to the carpet.

  Tamerlane asked: ‘Did you come alone?’

  ‘I brought a servant, lord.’ He paused. ‘Let down in a smaller basket.’

  Tamerlane threw back his head and roared, keeping the glasses to his nose with a finger. His vast ring flashed in the light that fell through the toghona. ‘I like you, historian. Your servant can return to the city to tell them that the price for their lives has gone up to ten million dinars.’ He leant forward to scratch his bandaged foot. ‘As for you, I desire that you stay here and write for me a description of the whole country of the Maghreb, detai
ling its distant and nearby parts, its mountains and its rivers, its villages and cities – in such a manner that I might seem actually to see it.’

  *

  Ibn Khaldun stayed in the Mongol camp for a month, first writing of the Maghreb with questionable accuracy, then discussing it with Tamerlane. The Lord of the Celestial Conjunction was obsessed by the rhythm of empires: how they rise and fall, and why. His empire would last, he declared, because Allah was with him. Ibn Khaldun was wise and gracious and often silent and Tamerlane liked him more and more.

  Luke watched all this with mounting horror. If Tamerlane was asking for a map of the Maghreb, it was because he was planning to go there next, not to Bayezid. He raised the question with Mohammed Sultan one evening when they were walking with Shulen.

  ‘He doesn’t tell me anything,’ said the Prince. ‘Since Georgia, he’s kept his plans to himself even more than usual. I don’t know where he’ll go next, truly.’

  Shulen said: ‘And he changes the subject when I give him his oils. His spies come in and I am dismissed.’

  Meanwhile, the terrified citizens of Damascus sat within their walls with Tamerlane’s horde camped in a menacing circle around them and no Egyptian – or Ottoman – army in prospect. Every now and then, the Mongol siege engines hurled balls of fire among them to hurry the process of surrender and eventually it came. The gates opened and a long line of soldiers, priests and merchants filed out ahead of mules bearing gold. It wasn’t ten million dinars but it was as much as they could find. Or so they said.

  Tamerlane received the men and the gold and the city’s surrender and promised to keep his army outside the walls if the remainder of the garrison were delivered to him. The men duly marched out to the sound of the drum and formed up in front of the victor, laying their weapons on the ground before prostrating themselves.

  Their commander begged for the lives of his men but Tamerlane was deaf to mercy. He impaled them, all eight thousand, one by one. It happened through the night, and the screams of agony rose over the city and into the houses and through the trembling flesh of a million hands pressed to ears. The next morning, those few citizens who’d managed to sleep awoke to an army of bloody scarecrows staring sightlessly up at the walls. Only these ones didn’t scare away the birds.

  By midday, the city had opened its gates and Tamerlane, his usual retinue and a bodyguard of gautchin had ridden through. Accompanying him were the Varangians, Shulen and Ibn Khaldun. The city within made a curious sight. The streets were empty of people and six weeks of siege had transferred most animals from street to cooking-pot. Everywhere were broken doors and the contents of houses thrown outside. It was as if the city had already been sacked.

  Mohammed Sultan was riding next to Luke. ‘It seems they’ve tried hard to find the ten million dinars,’ he said.

  They rode through the streets to the Umayyad Mosque where Tamerlane dismounted and went in to pray. Luke stayed outside in the courtyard, looking up at the fabulous vision of heaven that crowded its walls. His eyes swept up minarets that seemed to pierce the very belly of paradise, pouring green, blue and gold mosaic over a desert city rich enough to have raised them. He was overwhelmed by its beauty.

  After the mosque, they rode up to the citadel where the city’s leaders awaited their fate. Tamerlane quickly made it plain. ‘I want all of your wealth,’ he said. ‘Since you have chosen not to give me what I’ve asked for, now it will be everything. Every dress, every jewel, every plate, every cup. Everything.’

  The word went round the city as word does and they rode back through streets now filled with people. They’d come to the doors and roofs of their buildings in their thousands and they were silent and sullen. They were people with nothing more to lose.

  When they got back to the Mongol camp, Ibn Khaldun came to Tamerlane. He’d seen the way things were going. He wanted to go home but had one last request. ‘The officials who came with me into Damascus, also abandoned by the Sultan of Egypt, are capable administrators who can do you good service in your vast empire.’

  ‘What do you wish for them?’ asked Tamerlane.

  ‘A letter of security, signed by yourself, lord, which will allow them to leave the city and join your army.’

  Not only did Tamerlane agree to this, but he allowed Ibn Khaldun to take his mule and leave the camp as soon as he might wish. There were things to come, perhaps, that Tamerlane did not wish the historian to see.

  Tamerlane had posted guards at the city gates with instructions not to allow any part of the army to enter. But the Mongols were tired and bored and some of them found a way inside the walls. They began to plunder and were set upon by the citizens. A thousand Mongols died. Luke was outside Tamerlane’s tent when the news arrived. He was with Mohammed Sultan. The Prince was shaking his head.

  Luke looked at the Prince, dread in his heart. ‘Was this meant to happen?’ he asked quietly. ‘Did Temur ever intend to spare this city?’

  Mohammed Sultan didn’t answer. Instead he looked towards Tamerlane’s tent where the black flag was already being raised. The storm was about to be unleashed. They heard the cheers of men who saw the flag. They saw the koumis passed from mouth to mouth by men gathering the will to do things that no human should do to another.

  And so it began. The Mongol army poured into the city and began to slaughter every living thing within its walls. Fired with koumis, they outdid each other in the ingenuity of their torture so that people begged not to live but to die quickly. To start with, the tide of death was slow, the Mongols wanting plunder more than blood. But once the wagons had been piled with treasure, the mules weighed down with booty and every camel within fifty miles of the city gathered to carry what it could, then the killing began in earnest.

  Luke, the other Varangians and Shulen stayed in the camp and wished themselves deaf. From across the gardens and orchards came the dark music of pain. For three days and nights, the screams continued until the sound of fire took over. Having taken everything they could, the Mongols set light to the city. A wind rose up from far into the desert and blew west towards the mountains, bringing the apocalypse on its back. The wind swept over the city walls and fanned the flames so that they leapt from house to house, garden to garden, mosque to mosque, faster and faster until they reached the heart of the city. The Umayyad Mosque sat on a hill and by the time that the fire reached it, the heat was so great that the lead on its dome began to melt. Soon the roof fell in and the fire rose up to devour the beauty it found within. By morning, the greatest building in Islam was no more.

  Throughout it all, Tamerlane was deaf to entreaty. Mohammed Sultan, Pir Mohammed, even Shulen tried in vain to reason with him, reminding him that he was the Sword of Islam, but the madness of destruction was upon him and he was consumed by it. He sat outside his tent and drank wine as wagons filed past, some filled with the riches of Damascus piled high, some with heads to build the biggest towers yet.

  When it was over, when the city had been levelled and its walls pulled down, Tamerlane ordered the black flag lowered and the army made ready to march away. A quarter of it was sent back to Samarcand with the plunder, and the caravan that carried it was the longest the world had ever seen. The entire contents of Syria were on the move, displaced from a smoking, ruined landscape, to embellish the new centre of the world. Luke and his friends watched it go in silence and thought of Constantinople.

  ‘He can’t stop himself,’ said Matthew eventually.

  ‘No,’ agreed Luke.

  ‘Should we go back to Plethon? He should know of this.’

  Luke shook his head. ‘We go to Lebanon with the army for the rest of the winter and then see where he takes us next. We have no choice. We are oath-bound.’ He paused. ‘And we have our empire to save.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE, SUMMER 1401

  Zoe Mamonas was lying in her tent reading a letter. She was naked.

  Partly this was to do with the heat. It was evening bu
t the summer sun was still strong and the inside of the tent, where no Bosporus breeze could enter, was an oven. Partly, also, it was to do with the man now tending her garden: Yusuf, a janissary of extraordinary size and ugliness. He had come with her from Monemvasia and, when not tending to her garden, applied himself to her carnal needs. With Suleyman so often in Edirne, these were many and frequent.

  Suleyman’s absences were beginning to concern her. Her plans required him to marry her as Gülçiçek had suggested and, since Luke had not come, Zoe had to think of another way for Anna to disappear. The letter might provide the answer. It had come from inside Constantinople.

  The garden Yusuf tended was neat and long and full of tulips. There was a formal hedge around it broken by a gate with little bells on it that opened on to a gravel path. The bells and gravel were Zoe’s warning device should Suleyman return without notice. It was an oasis of calm and order in the dirty landscape that surrounded it. Now in its seventh year, the siege had turned the orchards and fields outside Constantinople into desert or quagmire, depending on the season.

  Inside, the tent was large and divided into three rooms: one for sleeping, one for washing and one for receiving guests. Zoe was in the first of these because Yusuf had just left it and because she wanted privacy to read the letter. The bells sounded and she looked up, folded the letter and put it beneath the mattress. Footsteps were moving the gravel outside and getting closer. There were voices.

  Suleyman.

  Zoe rose and put on a dressing gown. There were two to choose from: red and white. She chose the white. It was of weightless silk and it hung from her like rain. She parted the curtains and walked into the audience room of the tent. Suleyman was standing there, dressed for the ride, with dust rising to the top of his boots. He looked exhausted.

  ‘Baghdad is destroyed,’ he said. He sat in a chair and put his head into his hands, the long hair parted by ringed fingers. ‘Tamerlane has turned it into dust.’ He began to remove his boots, shaking dirt on to the carpet as he did so. He looked up. ‘You’ve been asleep?’