A Wind in Cairo

by Judith Tarr

  “I hope so,” said Zamaniyah.

  oOo

  The Frankish woman was wise enough, Khamsin supposed. If it were wisdom that he waited in sweating terror, with Zamaniyah on his back trying her utmost not to tremble; and al-Zaman beside them on his nerveless grey stallion, awaiting the signal to attack. If he brooded now, he brooded upon the enemy: a walled town, a broken gate, a bristle of defenders.

  Their own line had no order to it that Khamsin could see. That it had two flanks and a center, he knew: he had heard people speak of it. He saw only a mass of men and beasts, a glitter of weapons and helmets, a restless eddy and swirl about no common center.

  A clear voice rose up to heaven. “God is great! God is great! There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God! Come to prayer, O ye Muslims! Come to prayer!”

  Drums beat, sudden and fierce. Men’s voices shrilled above the muezzin’s wail. “Allah-il-allah! Allahu akbar!” Swords flashed out, up. Arrows flew. The tide of Egypt swept upon this small islet of Syria.

  There were no limits to terror. It mounted and mounted and mounted. It swelled from pain into sheerest, starkest exhilaration. He cried aloud. Zamaniyah’s voice echoed him, thin and high. Her arrows sang above his head. His feet bore them both where her will, his madness guided. Forward, spurning earth. Forward into death’s maw.

  This was the mightiest prayer of Islam. Holy war. War that is holy, just war, war in the name of one’s God and one’s Faith and one’s sultan.

  Charge met charge with the clangor of steel on steel. Horses screamed with rage and in agony. The air throbbed with the iron sweetness of blood.

  Zamaniyah thrust her bow into its saddle-sheath. It slapped Khamsin’s side; he bucked lightly, offended. Her sword rang from its scabbard. They waded in a sea of steel. He leaped, struck, slashed with teeth and heels. Bodies shrieked and reeled and fell.

  It was nothing, this battle. A mob, armed. A city, hostile. Had he not seen it in Cairo? and he all but alone then, unarmed, unready; but walled now in army, a flood of shrieking, slashing, steel-toothed champions. They were splendid. They were God’s own. They were victorious.

  oOo

  Jaffar had thought that he had borne all that a human creature need bear, and somewhat over. He had been a perfect innocent. He had never sent his mistress off to battle. He had never stayed behind in his proper place, the servant’s place, on guard over her tent; and known through every instant that she could be dying, now, while he kept useless watch over trifles.

  Nor could he suffer in merciful solitude. Ah, no. The master’s tame Frank had to plague him with her presence.

  “You look like a panther,” she growled, “prowling. Can’t you ever sit still?”

  “No!”

  She gratified him, slightly. Her eyes widened at his vehemence. His mind took the measure of her. Bleached corpse, stone-eyes, straw-hair, hideous. White, gold, eyes the deep pure blue of lapis, face carved in ivory, rare and unflawed beauty. Even in mamluk livery. Even scowling.

  He, as beautiful among his own kind as was she among hers, as hideous here as she would have been to his slender ebony people, met scowl with furious scowl. “How can I sit still? She could be dead.”

  “I could be fighting beside her.”

  His head tossed, contemptuous. “What use would you be? You’d never be thinking of her.”

  “And you would?”

  “Always.”

  Her scowl smoothed to a broad mime of astonishment. “By the saints! How you love her!”

  “She is my mistress.”

  The Frank laughed, loud and mocking, barbarian. “Oh, certainly she is.” Her eyes narrowed. “You couldn’t really? Could you?”

  He could have killed her. It would have been simple. She fancied herself a warrior. He was one. And no one knew; no one but Zamaniyah.

  He sat by the tent’s flap and smiled his sweetest smile. “Would you truly like to know?”

  She had no shame, and precious little fear. “People tell stories. They say your kind aren’t all alike. Some of you have enough for the purpose.”

  His smile widened to a panther-grin. “If I did, would I tell you?”

  “Of course not,” she said. She clasped her knees and rocked. Movement. At last. He almost laughed. “What would her father do if he knew?”

  Jaffar did laugh then. “What makes you think he doesn’t?”

  “But—” she said. “But he—you—she—”

  “I was bought for her. Because I am what I am. Because a fat capon could never guard her as she of all women must be guarded. Our kind are valued, O innocent. Some of us rise high. The one who wards the little prince of Syria, who rules the kingdom in the child’s name—he’s one of us. Didn’t you know?”

  Even ignorance could not shame her. “You want no more than Zamaniyah.”

  “Should I want more?”

  “There’s power,” she said. “Riches. Freedom to revel in them.”

  He spread his hands. “What are they? Will they give me back what is gone? Will they free me from death?”

  “Death is better than life.”

  “Is that why you evade it so cleverly?”

  She hissed at him. “I would be free.”

  “Would you? You could have been. You need only have walked out of camp in the Franks’ country.”

  At long last she flushed. Her eyes darted. “Where would I have gone? My father is dead. Others would long since have taken our lands. What could I expect but beggary and scorn?”

  “What,” he asked, “indeed?” She glared at her knotted fingers. He contemplated his own. “I think you did want to go. I think you pondered it, long and cruelly hard, and chose what you have. There are flaws enough in it, and Islam is never the Faith for you, and your man is hardly a tender young lover; but he is, as much as any man can be, yours. So is my mistress mine.

  “We do choose,” he said, “in the end. Even when we hardly know what we have chosen.”

  “No more do they know. We’re slaves. Bought fidelity. We’re nothing to them, unless we vex their peace.”

  “And then they forbid us to die with them.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes!”

  oOo

  Zamaniyah did, after all, come back. Alive; whole, as far as he could see; mastering her demon of a horse. There was blood on her armor, on her sword. She was greenish pale, although she smiled, dismounted with her wonted grace, accepted willingly Jaffar’s entirely unwilled embrace. He clutched her blindly, babbling nonsense, shaking her and railing at her and clutching her again. “Never,” he said. “Never leave me behind again. Never!”

  No matter that he had chosen it, because it was his duty. He was beyond reason.

  Briefly enough. He let her go, cheeks burning. “Mistress. I didn’t—”

  “I missed you, too,” she said. No one else could have heard how her voice shook. She held out her hands, stiffly, as if they did not belong to her. “I’m all blood. I’m supposed to be clean. I have to go back. Father—the sultan—”

  “Did they command you?”

  Her eyes flickered. “There’s so much still to do. Khamsin—”

  “I have Khamsin,” said Wiborada, who knew him well enough to ignore his flattened ears and shaking head. She led him protesting away.

  Jaffar led his mistress protesting to bath, bedgown, bed. He had almost to sit on her to keep her there. But her body had more sense than she; it conquered her before she knew what it had done.

  She kept him by her, holding his hand in her small cold one. In the tent’s dimness, lamplit, her face was thin and pinched. “Have you ever killed anyone?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Does it get easier? The more you do it?”

  “Some say it does.”

  She shivered and clutched his hand. “I don’t want it to. I want to remember what it is, and how it is, and what it does to souls. I never want to forget.”

  It would have been easy to turn his hand. To fill i
t with the new and startling fullness of her breast. To know what it was that a man could have.

  He sighed invisibly. Even a eunuch, it seemed, could be a fool for love.

  She did not know. His fingers were limp under hers, oblivious to the lure of her, to the beauty that was growing in her, slowly, surely, wondrously. Pain was shaping it, fining it.

  Let no one know, he prayed to any god who could hear. Let no man see, and rouse to lust, and take her away.

  “You should remember,” he said. “But not too much. Not beyond bearing.”

  “It should be unbearable. It has to be.” Her fingers warmed upon his, fever-hot. “War is not holy, Jaffar. War is horror.”

  He bowed his head to wisdom.

  “It’s a madness,” she said. “Blood is beautiful: so red, so bright. It leaps in fountains. It enriches the earth. But death...death is blood when it has dried. Death is hideous.”

  She was beautiful, living, drifting on the borders of sleep. She was slow to cross them. Dreading, surely, what waited there. Dreams; horrors.

  It was bitter to see, in her who had had the art of dreamless sleep. He stroked her hair with gentle fingers, and murmured words in his own tongue. His mother had spoken them over him when he was small: a spell, very old, very strong; a ward against ill. Inch by reluctant inch she yielded to exhaustion. He watched nightlong, guarding her body as his words guarded the gates of her dreams.

  oOo

  The dead wandered the field of their slaying, dim shapes, bewildered, bewildering. Why did they linger? Could not an angel have been spared to snatch them to Paradise? They were not supposed to wander thus, lost, drifting shadow-frail across the world of the living.

  They seemed not to see one another, or the men who labored in the aftermath of battle. Perhaps they could see Khamsin. They moved aside as he passed, although they made no move to evade the woman who led him. She walked through one shadow warrior: terrible to see, her ripe humanity filling for a moment the shape of a ghost. Then they flowed apart, the dead questing for he knew not what, the living for something other than the horselines. Those were well behind.

  She was not like Zamaniyah. She did not waste speech on beasts. Her hand was hard on his bridle, not cruel but not gentle; simply unfeeling. She was wiser than to try to ride him, though there might have been purpose in that. A mamluk leading a horse was a common enough sight after a battle. Horses lost their riders, ran free, were captured and taken to the captors’ masters for counting and claiming.

  He could have wished that she had thought to rid him of the saddle. It itched abominably where he had sweated; he thought there might be a gall beginning. Zamaniyah would have the woman’s hide if she knew.

  He was thinking of it. But first he wanted to see what she was up to. He had suspicions; as yet they were no more than that.

  They passed the fallen gates of the town. Guards called out a challenge. Wiborada answered in her huskiest voice. “The Emir al-Zaman. Have you seen him?”

  Her livery was her passport. They peered at it, nodded, pointed. “Yonder,” they said.

  It was simple, once one knew. The sultan must have been on his way to the citadel to treat with its garrison, which had refused to fall with the fall of the town. In the heart of the market, empty now, its stalls shuttered or swept away altogether, he had paused. Two of his emirs confronted one another, both mounted, both armed, both bristling. Men of the sultan’s guard gripped their bridles firmly, despite fierce resistance. A crowd of soldiers milled and muttered. Their mood was venomous.

  Khamsin could have groaned aloud. His father was in a white rage. His mistress’ father was in a red one. “This man,” grated al-Zaman, “interferes with the execution of my duty.”

  “My duty,” said Ali Mousa, “is to gather what I may of provisions for the army, and to pay a fair price as you, my lord, have commanded. This man attempted to seize and sequester a large portion for his own use.”

  “I take my proper share for myself and my command. Else,” said al-Zaman, “for your malice, we would have none.”

  “I gather and divide as my sultan ordains,” the sharif said stiffly.

  “Oh, aye! And a little over for everyone, but for what is mine, a bare sufficiency—and that of soiled goods, weeviled flour, meat run to maggots.”

  “You receive no more and no less than any other emir. But always you strive to seize more, to take the best and leave the worst for others, and you feign that you have done nothing. And that, sir, is common thievery.”

  “Thievery!” al-Zaman cried. “And what is it that you do, you son of a Frankish dog?”

  The sultan had been trying in vain to break in upon their battle. They wrenched at reins, spurring toward one another with swords drawn. He snatched a spear from one of his guards and hurled it. Their mounts shied. The spear buried itself to the haft in the ground before the dancing hooves.

  The sultan followed it. His anger was rare, and all the more deadly for that. He beat back their swords. He shouted at them. “Enough!” They gave way, snarling still, but shocked into the beginnings of sense. “Are you my emirs or my enemies? What word of God or Prophet sets you free to wage your war in the midst of mine?”

  “This offspring of a Turkish camel—” Ali Mousa began.

  “This child of an Egyptian ass—” snarled al-Zaman.

  The sultan roared them into silence. “I will not have it! You will fight for me or for yourselves. One or the other. Choose!”

  They glared at one another. Their men shifted, restless. The sultan wheeled his horse about. “There shall be but one war in Syria. Mine. If you would pursue your own, you shall pursue it elsewhere. Serve me or leave me. Choose!”

  The air rang. The enemies were rigid, quivering just visibly, hating. Their eyes burned upon the sultan; upon the town which they had helped to take; upon each other.

  Slowly they blinked. Slowly, slowly, they sheathed their swords.

  The sultan was not satisfied. “While this war endures, you will not indulge your enmity; or you depart in dishonor. Will you swear?”

  They swore. Low and hard, but clear enough for that.

  The sultan nodded once, brief and sharp. The anger was taut still in his face. He saw them go, each to his separate duties, each to his separate forces. Then at last he continued his march to the citadel.

  oOo

  Khamsin braced himself to break free. But the Frank had seen enough. She did not try to impose herself upon her master; she turned back, her hand no gentler on his rein for that he came willingly.

  He would have run if there had been any wisdom in it. He wanted his peace, his handful of barley sweetened with mutton fat, his brushing and his freedom from bridle and saddle. He did not want to be Hasan whose loyalties were all torn anew. He wanted to be plain witless Khamsin.

  He checked, jibbed as the woman wrenched him forward. It was Hasan who had been the witless one; whose fidelity had never been to any but himself. Khamsin was the one who suffered agonies.

  It was not supposed to be like that. He was an animal. He was simplicity made substance.

  He tucked in his head, speeded his pace a fraction. The woman, surprised, shifter her grip. In the instant of almost-freedom, he snatched the bit and bolted. Her cries diminished behind him.

  Let her rage. He knew his place, as she had chosen not to. Once free of her, he settled to a trot, making his way toward the lines and the grooms and the pampering which he had richly earned.

  16

  Damascus was the door to Syria, the lesser cities the posts of its lintel; but Aleppo was the key. Here had been the capital of Nur al-Din’s kingdom. Here his son made his stand; here gathered the princes who had vowed never to serve Yusuf. He had offered them clemency. They responded with naked steel.

  The land about the city seemed wan and old, a plain of dust and of bitter wind. Low dun hills rose up in it; a little river watered it, the merest trickle beside the great ocean of the Nile. The city lay between, a circle of walls u
nder the lowering sky, and looming out of them like a mountain out of the sea, the sheer and sudden crag of its citadel.

  Towns, Khamsin was learning, were only the nut. Citadels were the meat. The battle before Homs, of which even yet he did not know whether to be proud or ashamed, had won no more than the town; its fortress had fallen only to a month’s determined siege.

  He was seasoned now, he supposed. He was losing count of his battles. They were all alike. Stark terror; running, fighting, yelling; swelling exhilaration; and numb exhaustion after. Whether by some twist of the Hajji’s magic or by the will of Allah, neither he nor his rider ever took a wound.

  She kept calling him valiant. He had no way to tell her that it was not courage, it was panic. And being the idiot that he was, he did not know enough to run away from his terror; he ran full upon it.

  He looked at the citadel of Aleppo and knew, quite calmly and quite clearly, that he was mortal; that he could die. The knowing did not frighten him. War was fearful. Fate was fated.

  oOo

  Jaffar was not a Muslim. He had never learned to submit to the will of Allah. When he slept, he dreamed death. When he woke, he looked about him and saw death.

  He tried to hide it from Zamaniyah. He told her, when she pressed him, that his thinness and his grey pallor were his body’s hatred of the bitter Syrian winter: cold that no fire could warm, rain that no tent could keep out. Perhaps she believed him. She made him eat far more than he wanted. She fetched him sweet things, dainties found the gods knew where, bits of fruit and meat; even wine, because he was not forbidden it, and it was strong, warmed with spices. She hovered and fretted until he would happily have driven her out. Or told her, flatly and most cruelly, the truth. I dream your death. I cannot stop dreaming it. It drives me mad.

  He did not say it. He followed her everywhere. If she protested, she protested for his sake. He heard her out in silence, and went on being her shadow, though thinner and paler with each day that passed.