A Wind in Cairo

by Judith Tarr

  “Why go at all?” asked a small man in a very large turban, a scholar with ambitions toward government. “You are safe, and free of your overlord. You can rule in peace.”

  “For how long? The Franks—”

  “Snapping at Syria, as we should be. If by the malice of Iblis they seize it and turn upon us...”

  “Allah forbid!”

  “Egypt—”

  “Syria—”

  oOo

  Zamaniyah’s head ached. She rested it on drawn-up knees and sighed. How men could talk so much to so little purpose, she would never know. And they accused women, scornfully, or precisely that. Could they never hear themselves?

  If she peered sidewise, she could see the sultan. He had said nothing for a long while. His head was in his hand; perhaps he was not even listening.

  The currents of debate had swirled away from him. Factions eddied, babbling. None seemed to notice that he was not part of it. He was alone, forgotten.

  Softly she settled at his feet. For a while he did not see her. She was content. He needed presence, and silence; not endless chatter.

  When he spoke, she started. She had begun, all unwitting, to drowse. “Are you tired?” he asked her.

  She shrugged a little. “There will be time enough for sleep.”

  “I should never have kept you. This is ill entertainment for a young creature.”

  “Learning is like that,” she said.

  He raised his brows. “Have you learned anything here?”

  “Oh, yes, my lord,” she answered truthfully. “Much.”

  “What would you do if you were I?”

  It was the sort of question he would ask. She swallowed a sigh. “I don’t know, my lord. There are too many choices; I know too little. What do you want? To hold what you have? To bow to a new overlord? To take the lordship for yourself?”

  He frowned. She was cold, suddenly. It was hard to remember what he was. He had always been gentle when she saw him, more man than king. But he was not known for his gentleness. He had killed the caliph’s vizier—with his own hands, people said. He had ordered the captivity of every royal seed, male apart from female, female apart forever from male. He had crucified the conspirators against him.

  He was, when it came to the crux, sultan. And it was dangerous to tell the truth to kings.

  He did not order her flogged. He did not even rebuke her. He rose; he smote his hands together. Even before silence had the wits to fall, he said, “We thank you for your counsel. We shall ponder it with all due care.” He bowed to them, abrupt, courteous, oblivious to protests. His guards hastened to attend him. Without a word he strode from the council.

  oOo

  He pondered most duly and most deliberately. He sent messengers to the child prince, offering condolences, implying loyalty. He gathered his army, wielded it in defense of his domain. He made no move to set foot in Syria.

  Allah rewarded him, people said. The Frankish king died ignominiously after all his feats in battle, of a sudden sickness; his son was a child and, more grievous yet for his people, a leper. The north and the sea were safe by force of arms; the south had yielded to the sultan’s captains; the Yemen lay in the hands of his brother. Syria was weak and weakening.

  “Ripe,” said al-Zaman. “Ripe for the plucking.”

  Zamaniyah watched him partake hungrily of his first dinner in his own house since he left to ride with the sultan. He had taken a small wound or two, nothing for any but wives and servants to fret over; he was lean, bronzed, honed with fighting and hard riding. He always looked younger when he came back from the wars, even when they had gone less than well; as these, by Allah’s mercy, had not. They were his greatest pleasure. Muslim wine, he called them.

  He had brought gifts for them all. Hers was a coat of silk from Byzantium, and a sword, balanced for a smaller hand and a shorter arm than most, with a silver hilt. The blade came, he told her, from India, but the hilt had been wrought in Damascus.

  “We’ll be seeing its gardens again,” he said, smiling at her. “I’m not here for long. The sultan is staying in camp with the army; he’ll march again soon.”

  “To Syria?”

  “To Syria.” He grinned, showing his white teeth. He was a handsome man, she thought, taking pleasure in the sight of him; though it was pleasure alloyed with pain, and fear for him, that he must ride again to war.

  He pulled her to him and set a kiss between her eyes. His own were glinting as they always did when he cherished a secret. “Now there, catling. Do you miss me so much?”

  She nodded mutely. Her eyes, being woman’s eyes, wanted to run over. Her mind would not let them; dried them, somewhat, with a flash of temper.

  He kissed her again and held her tightly, smiling down at her, sparking mischief. “Do you know why we’re going to Syria at last? It’s happened—what all of us prayed for. Damascus has sent to the sultan of Egypt. In Allah’s name, for the sake of the love that was between his lordship and the sultan of Syria, let him come to the aid of the realm. And so,” said al-Zaman, “he shall.”

  “And you with him.”

  “Of course. Where else would I be?”

  Here, she almost said. Safe. With us. She did not say it. Peace had never been his element.

  His smile broadened once more into a grin. “Would you like to come with me?”

  Her heart stopped. He had not said that. Oh, surely he had not said it. That he would take her to war.

  “It’s time,” he said, “that you learned what all your training is for.”

  She swallowed, coughed. Her mouth was dry. “Will the army allow it?”

  The light of mischief left him. He was cold again, hard again: the man the world knew and was justly afraid of. “The army will allow it.”

  She contemplated all the facets of a single word. No. She knew what he would do. Be angry. Strike her. Call her a coward. But, in the end, yield. Because at last he had gone too far; and she was his child. She could be as implacable as he.

  “The sultan has given leave,” he said.

  “Willingly?”

  “Honorably.”

  She sat motionless within the circle of his arm. Feeling her body. It was all a woman’s now, more than she had ever thought it would be. Even her face was changing. Smoothing. Softening. A man would have to be very blind, or very obstinate, to take her for a boy.

  I am a woman, she said in her mind, framing it with care, because he must hear it when she spoke it; he must understand. I have been obedient. I have bowed to your will, as a woman must. But in this I cannot obey. A woman does not ride to war.

  Did she not?

  Her mind uttered madness in Wiborada’s voice. Zamaniyah was never the child her father could have wished for. But Wiborada—she would have reveled in this. And she was trammeled in the harem, and Zamaniyah was trammeled in the world, and never a hope of altering it.

  Was there?

  Would she fulfill her ancient threat, take refuge in the harem: even the harem of a husband? Could she?

  She closed her eyes. Truth, now. She wanted what she had. Freedom. This was its price.

  Was it so high? Men loved it, yearned for it. She was trained as well as any. She thought that she might have courage.

  She had never prepared herself for this. She had never thought that her father would ask it. No man, even a madman, would trust in battle to a female.

  And why not?

  Wiborada’s voice again, joyously heretical. All this time, and Zamaniyah had fancied that she was civilizing the barbarian; and the barbarian had been corrupting her. Making her think—by Allah, making her think as her father thought.

  Maybe he was not mad at all. Maybe his nature was simply, and utterly, a barbarian’s.

  She laughed suddenly, startling him. “When do we go?”

  oOo

  Khamsin was appalled.

  “I didn’t want to,” Zamaniyah said, “until I stopped to think. Why shouldn’t I go to the war? I’m trained f
or it. I’m not afraid to die, I don’t think.”

  He was. And he was terrified of pain. War hurt. It wounded; it left scars. It killed.

  “I have Jaffar to take care of me. And my bow, and my new sword. And you. Now you can show them all what a warhorse you are.”

  He would show them all what a coward he was.

  “Two years, now, since we began. Can you believe it? You’ve done splendidly. You have a gift, Al’zan says. You’ll make us proud.”

  He bit her. She yelped, slapped. “Ai! Keep it for our enemies, idiot.”

  He shook his head and stamped. She refused to understand. She soothed what seemed to be his restlessness, and babbled of battles. She was going to cast her life away, and his own with it.

  If he threw her, wounded her a little, enough to keep her from riding with the army...

  He could not.

  Wound himself?

  Mar his precious skin?

  Let another horse carry her? Entrust her life to some witless animal? Some beast who would never care whether she was safe in its saddle or fallen on the ground, not set her life above its worthless own? He would die first.

  As, indeed, he very likely would.

  14

  Drums beat. Banners whipped in the wind. Horses stamped, danced, cried aloud. In a roaring of laden camels and a clatter of weapons, the chosen of the sultan’s army mustered for war. Seven hundred mounted men and one lone woman in her father’s shadow, stiff in new armor, calming herself with her restive mount.

  A small number for an army of Islam, but a brave one, and proud. Vanguard and rearguard shone in the yellow gold of the sultan’s guard, mingled with the black and scarlet and sacred green of picked emirs, each under his own standard, and over all the black banners of Abbas. The rearguard was al-Zaman’s to command. He ruled it easily, unblinded by the honor; his emirs and his soldiers minded him as well out of the sultan’s sight as in it.

  They prayed in their long lines, those who would go and those who would linger in the camp of the sultan’s wars. The drums were, for this while, silent. The wind sang the louder above their bowed heads.

  They rose in a wave of armed exultation. The drums rattled forth anew. Mount, they commanded. Mount and ride.

  Khamsin’s saddle was warm from the sun. Zamaniyah settled as deep in it as she could, taking her time about it, because she wanted to clap heels to his sides and bolt, toward Syria, toward Cairo, it did not matter.

  The sultan faced his brother al-Adil who would rule Egypt in his name. They parted with dignity, with ceremony that betrayed nothing of sorrow. It was the lot of kinsmen who were princes, to meet most often only to part.

  Zamaniyah had known it all her life, but she had never hardened to it. Jaffar was here, her best-beloved shadow; and the mamluks who seemed to have decided that they were hers; and Khamsin. But Al’zan was leagues away in Cairo, with all the servants who had startled her with weeping when she left them, and Wiborada veiled and grimly silent in the harem. Even the women had seemed dismayed that she was going, as if, after all, she had been more to them than resentment and unending scandal. All of them had shaped the greater portion of her world; and she might never see them again.

  Hard to think of; but hard to dwell on, here in the sun, in the beating of the drums, in the singing of war songs and the chanting of the name of Allah. Her heart had leaped in spite of itself. Oh, they were a fine brave army; wonderful in the arrogance of their smallness. They would be enough, they and their sultan. All of Syria would fall before them.

  “Allah!” they shrilled. “Allah-il-allah!”

  The drums quickened. The vanguard shifted, formed, began to move. Rank by rank, the army followed.

  oOo

  Heat. That was war. Dust; flies. Thirst slaked in grudging sips. Riding endlessly, relentlessly, from dawn to blazing noon to dusk. In this army there were no stragglers. They were the chosen of the sultan’s chosen. If Syria would be theirs, it must be theirs swiftly, wholly, incontrovertibly.

  “Eleven days from Bilbais to Busra.” The men about al-Zaman’s fire looked at one another and shook their heads. “I’d never believe it if we hadn’t done it.”

  “The horses believe it,” said one of the emirs.

  “My backside believes it.” The man who had spoken shifted and groaned most piteously. They all laughed.

  One instructed him, in detail, in what to do with his backside. “We’re here, aren’t we? Busra’s emir has an army waiting for us; and every Turk and Kurd and Bedu on this side of Syria is coming back to us. This war is ours. God is with us. Didn’t we ride through the very kingdom of the Franks, in broad daylight, and camp in their demesnes, and never a one moved to stop us? Syria will fall like a ripe apple. We’ll only have to open our hands.”

  “Allah willing,” said al-Zaman, mindful of the honor of his position, and therefore of his piety. He took great care not to see the flask that went round, filled with what purported to be rosewater. It never went past Zamaniyah. His hand always managed, as if by sheerest chance, to direct it elsewhere.

  She had never been overly fond of rosewater.

  She clenched her teeth against a yawn. Her backside had reckoned every stride from Bilbais to Busra. She could count each separate muscle and bone. Her mind echoed with the question she would never fall so low as to ask. Why? Why this of all the wars I might have been dragged to?

  Because, her father would have been sure to answer. It was time. It was always time when he decided that it was.

  His men were paying her their highest compliment. They had forgotten that she was there. Strangers who came to share their fire were not enlightened as to the sex of the slender young person beside the emir.

  Al-Zaman leaned toward her, touched her arm. “Go to bed,” he said.

  She never argued with eminent good sense. She returned his kiss, found a smile to answer his, made her protesting bones carry her to her tent.

  For that much she was granted of her father’s charity: she had a tent of her own, small but ample, pitched beside his and guarded by mamluks. Once on the march, a soldier—drunk on forbidden wine, or led to folly by a wager—had tried to creep inside. He had greeted the dawn pegged to the ground outside the camp, his bowels spread temptingly to lure the vultures. No one since had dared to trouble her sleep.

  Jaffar had water for her, and a basin unearthed from Allah knew where: the blessed luxury of a bath. He looked baleful, which meant that he was pleased with himself. “You are a wonder and a marvel,” she told him solemnly, “and you are going to take your turn in it.”

  “After you,” he said. And when she was blissfully clean and robed in clean linen and laid in bed, he folded his slender length into the basin and made excellent use of it.

  She was tired beyond thought and somewhat beyond sleep. She watched. He knew, but he did not seem discomfited. He was not a Muslim, to trouble himself with modesty, though for her sake he had always been careful to remember it.

  She yawned and settled her aches in something like comfort. If she closed her eyes, the ground beneath her pallet seemed to sway, as if she rode still astride Khamsin or one of her father’s remounts.

  At the thought, a smile hovered. Khamsin was a jealous companion. He hated it when she left him for another, though she did it solely for his sake, to spare his strength.

  Jaffar finished his bathing. Lamplight caught the glitter of water in his tight-curled hair. The two soldier-slaves who guarded her came, eyes politely averted, and carried the basin away. She yawned again. Her eyelids were growing heavy.

  She felt more than saw Jaffar slip out of the tent, as he did every night, to see that all was well about it. In a little while he would come back and lie in front of the flap, guarding her as he had ever since she could remember.

  A quiet clamor rocked her on the edge of sleep. Voices hissing; a scuffle of feet. Before her eyes had well opened, she sat up, tensed, remembering against her will the stranger in her tent, locked in silent deadly strug
gle with Jaffar, wrapped in the stink of wine and man-sweat.

  The flap burst open. She leaped for her dagger. A shape fell rolling at her feet. Armor, helmet, turban half unraveled; and Jaffar a shadow of wrath behind. He wound his hand in a coat that was the livery of her father’s mamluks, hauled the culprit up, struck helmet and turban from a head as bright as gold.

  Even in grim captivity, Wiborada could grin at Zamaniyah’s expression. “Salaam,” she said in her broad Frankish accent.

  Jaffar let her go. She dropped to the carpet, flushed, breathing quickly, and completely unrepentant.

  “This,” said Jaffar with deadly quiet, “was standing guard in front of your father’s tent.”

  Wiborada tossed her head with its crown of yellow braids, now somewhat disarrayed. “And so I should be still! You could at least have given me time to call in another.”

  “So,” he said. “They all know. Dare I ask what sweetened it for them?”

  “You do not!” She was whitely and beautifully angry. “If anyone answers for this, it will be I alone. I conceived it; I executed it. One man, or perhaps two, or three, abetted me in it, under duress.”

  “Indeed,” said Jaffar.

  “I am faithful to my master. I guard him!”

  Zamaniyah caught her before she could fly at him. She was larger and heavier, but not yet blind with fury; she yielded, slowly, glaring terribly at Jaffar’s immovable calm.

  Zamaniyah stood over her and thought of screaming. Not overlong. There was no profit in it. “Why?” she asked at last, when she could trust her voice.

  The damnable woman shrugged, smiled. “Cairo was a prison without escape. War, I have no fear of. And it was possible, and I wanted to, and maybe I can be useful. I know how to fight.”

  “Father will flay you alive.”