A Wind in Cairo

by Judith Tarr

  She bit her tongue, much too late. He flushed darkly. “You are not—”

  Some things could still hurt. It depended on where they came from. “I see,” she said. “I am not a man. Has it taken you so long to notice?”

  “That is not,” he said with strained patience, “what I meant.”

  “But I’m not a man. It matters, doesn’t it? After all. You tried so hard to convince everyone that it didn’t. Has someone said something invidious?”

  “Invidious,” he said, “no.” He dropped to the carpet. she admired his ease in managing skirts, scabbard, and temper, all at once. He fixed his eyes on her. Seeing her, perhaps, for the first time as she truly was. “No one else is like you,” he said. “And yet you make yourself seem...not ordinary; not harmless. But not a monster, nor ever a threat. You are what you are, without pretense. You give no man cause to inveigh against you.”

  She kept her eyes down, somewhat in confusion and somewhat in embarrassment. Yes, she was like that; she worked at it. Why did people keep thinking that it was something to praise her for?

  “You could be a mockery or a scandal,” he said. “You manage to be neither. You acquit yourself well in whatever you do, but never so well as to rouse envy or to waken outrage.”

  “Except once,” she muttered.

  He had to pause for remembrance. He laughed a little. “You were angry then, and you made up for it after. I’ve noticed: when you’re angry you forget. You let people see the fire in you.”

  He stopped. The silence lasted long enough that she looked up, to find him blushing visibly and shockingly, as if he had said something scandalous.

  “Listen to me,” he said, sounding angry himself. “Allah! My tongue staggers like a drunken Frank. I only mean to ask you. To tell you. Whatever befalls, you always have my protection.”

  She frowned without thinking; realized what she did; smoothed her face. “I know that, my lord. I’ve always known it. You gave your word.”

  “I give it again. I bid you remember it. No one can force you to do anything against your will. If anyone—anyone—tries, he will have to deal with me.”

  “Are you talking about my father?”

  “Anyone,” he repeated.

  She rose slowly. It was not proper, but her legs were doing their own thinking. “What are you trying to tell me, my lord?”

  “That your will is free. That I will stand behind it in whatever it elects to do.”

  “My lord,” she said. “That is a very great trust.”

  “You are worthy of it.”

  Her head shook, slightly, of itself. He had answered nothing of what she asked. He would answer nothing. Even tongue-tied, he was king.

  oOo

  She must have taken proper leave. No one upbraided her; no one tried to call her back.

  She fetched up against Khamsin, who was grazing by her tent. “He knows about the emir,” she said. “Or...”

  She could not say it aloud. Or he was telling her that he, himself, would offer, if she would accept.

  She shook herself. That was foolish. The sultan would have asked for her if he had wanted her. He was no callow boy, to sigh and blush and languish in her wake. And he knew as well as she, that the lord of Egypt and Syria could not take a wife who rode to war like a man; and he had as much as told her that no one could shut her up in any harem, not even himself, unless she consented to it.

  “Is he telling me I shouldn’t accept the emir? Or telling me I should, even if my father forbids?”

  Khamsin was no help. Neither was Jaffar. The two of them were exchanging glances of shameless complicity.

  She cursed them both and went to drown her sorrows in the midday prayer.

  oOo

  It was easy to watch the sultan make a fool of himself over Zamaniyah. He did not know why he did it. Setting her free to be what she had always been for him: his private oddity, his falcon whom he kept for her wild beauty and her sudden fire.

  And yet, as the sun sank, Jaffar’s spirits sank with it. He had not liked the feel of this place when he came to it. There was blood on it, and the promise of violence. Now the word had gone out. Tomorrow the enemy would have come close enough to fight.

  He dreaded sleep and the dreams that would come with it. He thought long on waking the night through; but his mind was made up, his weapons honed in secret, and he could not fight with his every bone longing for sleep. Still less could he trust to wine or a sleeping draught. What if she woke and needed him?

  Sleep, then, it must be. He had armor against dreams, but not against what waited for him now, crouched under the very arch of the gate. Even awake he knew its shape. Its claws were the color of blooded blades.

  Naming it would take a little of its strength. “Death,” he said in his own tongue as he lay on his mat. “I name you Death.”

  It barely waited for his eyes to close. It seized him at the very edge of sleep and devoured him. It rent him asunder; it trampled his bones. It showed him what must, ineluctably, be. It spat him up on the shores of the dawn.

  oOo

  The camp had been stirring the night long. He lay and listened to it. The dream was with him. Part of it was bitter clarity. Part was clouded; and that was not mercy. The clouds veiled the pitiful little that might have hinted at hope.

  She was awake. He felt it under his skin. He went to her. She was gazing dark-eyed into the shadows. When he came she smiled, a sweet drowsy smile with no fear left to stain it.

  He wanted to seize her, clutch her close. He dared not. He must speak calmly, reasonably. “Mistress,” he said, “dawn is coming. Will you rise?”

  She nodded, sat up. Her hair tumbled over the curve of her breast. She shook it out of her face, yawned, stretched.

  While she ate the food he brought, he said it. “Mistress. The sultan set you free to do as you please. Did he not?”

  She paused. Her eyes widened slightly. She nodded with care, with waking suspicion.

  “I think,” he said, “that it might please you to forgo this battle.”

  At the first word he saw her harden. He pressed on in spite of it. “You don’t need to prove your courage. You’ve done it over and over. If you won’t stay in camp, you can set yourself with the sultan. Then if he’s endangered you can defend him; but you needn’t endanger yourself or your Khamsin on the open field.”

  Her eyes narrowed, as if she had seen the calculation in Khamsin’s name. “You know I can’t do that. I have a place near my father.”

  “The sultan would welcome you.”

  “Oh, certainly,” she said, scornful. Eyes and voice sharpened. “Why are you talking in circles? What are you getting at?”

  He was not the sultan. He could say it—almost—straight. “I don’t want you to fight today.”

  “You never want me to fight.”

  “Today is more than plain not-wanting. Or asking you to hide in your tent.”

  “No; only under the sultan’s skirts, while my father faces the full heat of battle. Did I misunderstand my lord completely? Is this what he meant?”

  “Maybe,” said Jaffar. It was not a lie, precisely.

  She hissed. He had angered her; and when she was angry, she knew nothing of reason. “I won’t be protected like this. I won’t!”

  “Even though I know that you will die?”

  She checked, hard. But she did not know of his dreams. That had always been his secret, alone; his alone to suffer. Now that it was too late, he tried to tell her. His words raveled and fell uncomprehended.

  “You know this?” she demanded.

  “I know.”

  Her eyes scanned him slowly, as if he were a stranger, and she did not know if she dared trust him. “You’re a...soothsayer?”

  He tossed his head in desperation. “I dream dreams. My gods send them to me. They tell truth.”

  They were tangling his tongue now, clouding her mind, firming her will against him. He watched and he knew, and he could do nothing but make it wor
se. “My gods,” he tried to say again. “My gods—”

  “There is no god but Allah.”

  Blind in her damnable Faith. Blind and deaf.

  So would they all be. Even the Frank. None of them would help him. If he bound her, hid her, won her hatred but preserved her life—

  Darkness came between them, shattering even that dim hope. It bore Frankish shape, a glimmer of pale hair. She greeted Zamaniyah shortly enough and sought her belongings, unheeding of the tension that stretched the air to breaking. As she drew out the corselet in its wrappings, he cast the last of his spears. “Very well,” he said. “Deny me. And know that I ride at your back.”

  “You can’t,” said Zamaniyah.

  “I can’t what? Ride? Fight? Die with you if you insist on this lunacy?”

  “But you have no armor.”

  He had his own box. He burrowed in it. Under a thin shield of clothing lay weight and solidity: the quilted coat of a Nubian soldier. It was cut for riding.

  “You aren’t a Nubian.”

  That was feeble, and they both knew it. Grimly he pulled on the coat, belted it, hung from its belt the helmet that had been wrapped in it.

  “You can’t,” she said, falling back once more upon simplicity. “I can’t let you.”

  “Are you afraid my presence will unman the troops?”

  Her breath caught sharply.

  “If you go,” he said with a shade less cruelty, “I go. If I can defend you I will. If I can’t, I don’t want to live.”

  “What if you die and I don’t? What then, Jaffar?”

  He spoke through cold and rising dark: the dream returning, possessing him. “You know how you can prevent it.”

  Her head shook, obstinate. “This is my portion. I won’t run away from it.”

  His people said that death’s nets were strong and not to be resisted. Hers spoke of fate and of what their God had written. It was all the same.

  And she was Zamaniyah, and Zamaniyah never did anything that accorded with prudence. The moment he had spoken of death and danger, he had lost her. He should have kept silent and spirited her away.

  Too late. Too late for anything but what must be.

  22

  Even before it begins, battle has a taste, like iron that is the core of blood. The air was full of it. Khamsin’s fodder reeked of it. It made his skin shiver; it set him dancing.

  Most often when his servant murmured and stroked and cajoled him into calmness, he let himself submit, because it was easier than disobedience; and it pleased Ali. Ali, pleased, was pleasant company. He had a sweet voice in singing, but he would never lift it where a human could hear. Most of them thought him mute. It suited him to have them think so; for then they left him alone.

  But now Khamsin could not yield to those hands or that subtle voice. Ali pursued him doggedly, brushing him until he shone like polished cedarwood, combing his mane to silk, knotting his tail and weighting it with leaden beads. The beads in his forelock were glass, and blue. His caparisons were green and gold. The familiar weight of them wound him tighter still. He shied away from the mace in its saddle sheath; Ali came as close to cursing as he ever came.

  A shadow unfolded itself from Zamaniyah’s tent. Khamsin stopped short and stared. The eunuch was got up, by all that was holy, like a man of war. The heavy coat lent bulk to his slenderness. His beardless face would have passed muster among the clean-shaven Nubians. His weapons had the patina of much use; and he carried them as one who knew what they were for. He looked most martial, and most dangerous.

  He faced Khamsin. He ignored the silenced horseboy. He glared without saying a word, until Khamsin stamped and snorted.

  “Patience was never your strength, was it, my prince?”

  Khamsin snapped, warning. The eunuch seized his bridle. He tensed to rear; but the black eyes held him more firmly than any hand. “I know what you are,” said Jaffar, soft as a tiger’s purr. “I know what you must have been.”

  Khamsin’s eye rolled. His head jerked, stilled.

  “Protect her,” said this terrible creature who was infinitely more a man than he, and infinitely less. “Or by all gods that are, I will hound you to the gates of death, and beyond them, to the world’s ending. That is a vow, O my enchanted prince.”

  Khamsin damned pain. He tore himself free. The eunuch did not try to seize him again. He met those eyes as best he could, and gave them hate, which was for the two of them; and promise, which was for Zamaniyah.

  The eunuch pondered both hate and promise. After a stretching moment he turned on his heel. His scorn was open, his doubt perceptible. But he had said what he had come to say. The rest, said his retreating back, was between God and Khamsin.

  oOo

  By full daylight the army was up, armed, fed, and entrusted to Allah. The sultan held the center behind a wall of men and steel. A page stood by with his charger, but he now sat, now stood, now paced, in a flurry of messengers.

  For a little while Zamaniyah was one, bringing word that her father’s ranks were in their places, and seeking word of the enemy. Khamsin was even more restive than usual; it took most of her will and her patience to hold him in.

  As she brought her stallion to a bucking halt near the sultan, she heard him speaking rapidly, dictating to a secretary who struggled to keep pace. “‘Uncle, nephews, my kinsmen, I bid you, fly. If the journey is too much for you, take your ease; but send your men to me. I stand between Mosul and the Franks; Aleppo approaches my lines. Allah, Allah, let not my uncle read this letter unless he has set foot in his stirrup!’”

  From the hilltop and from the promontory of her saddle, Zamaniyah could see far and clear. The hills at the army’s back; the river before, carved deep into the plain’ and moving on it, a confusion of armies.

  Wings flapped over her head. One of the sultan’s guards, warden already of a cage of cooing birds, caught this new one: a brown dove, a messenger. He unbound the message from its leg.

  The sultan was up, his letter forgotten. “What? What is it?”

  The man bowed, presenting the tiny scroll. The sultan read it rapidly. A great light grew in his face, “Allah, Allahu akbar! The Franks have agreed. My envoy comes with their terms. Ya Allah! Now it begins to go as I would have it.” He spun back to the scribe. “Tell my uncle. Deplore the need for this bargain that our enemies have forced upon us. Beg him to come on wings if he may; or even this small victory will come to nothing.”

  Zamaniyah shook herself out of her fascination. There were men about, emirs whom she knew vaguely, accepting such messages as her own. She gave it; received the orders which she had been sent for.

  As Khamsin began to circle back toward their place in the lines, the sultan’s eye found her. Armored, she looked like any young archer in the army; but he knew her horse. She took his smile back with her, a warmth to remember in the cold clenching of battle’s beginning.

  The ranks of Islam were nothing like ordered Frankish lines. They shifted and flowed about the standards of the captains. The young and the eager tested their weapons, limbered their mounts, simply fretted in and about their places. Seasoned fighters took their ease in what shade they could contrive; some even seemed to sleep.

  Messengers galloped back and forth. Men of neighboring companies mingled, companionable. There was a great deal of laughter and song; and Zamaniyah could see a game of dice in progress. The players were wagering their hopes of plunder.

  She had dismounted to spare Khamsin. After all his fretting, he seemed to have seen the virtue in quiet. He had an understanding with Jaffar’s mule; they were side by side, nose to tail, flicking the flies from one another. Terror or no, she found herself smiling at the sight of them.

  Someone was standing near her. He had been standing there for some little time, saying nothing. She turned. Whatever she would have said, she forgot entirely.

  Abd al-Rahim bowed like a courtier. “Lady,” he said. “Have I your leave to wish you well?”

  She was co
nscious of Jaffar standing as close as her shadow, and of her father caught up in his command. She was sharply, almost painfully conscious of the young man who had risen to meet her eyes. She had no voice to speak. She nodded.

  His smile was luminous. He dared mightily, almost unpardonably: he touched her cheek.

  His hand leaped back even as it touched, as if it burned him as it had burned her. “Allah protect you,” he said.

  Jaffar’s snort was as eloquent as Khamsin’s. She could have hit them both. But Abd al-Rahim was there still, bowing again, leaving her in a faint scent of musk and leather. His place was far down the line, among the Syrians.

  She willed her eyes to stop following him. Thunder rumbled all about her. A shout went up. She snapped about. An army was coming at the charge.

  Her body never stayed for her sluggard of a brain. She vaulted into the saddle, snatched her bow.

  People were raising a deafening clamor. Its sense dawned on her. Not dismay. Not enmity, or the madness of battle. Joy. “Farrukh-Shah! Shihab al-Din! Taqi al-Din!” The sultan’s kinsmen, his uncle, his brother’s sons, come at last as he had prayed. “Egypt! Egypt has come!”

  In force, with a high heart, singing. Suddenly all the sultan’s army was the center, and Egypt spread wide in its wings; and they who had been a small force to be so strong, were a mighty army.

  And Aleppo, on the plain, had flowed together with Mosul and come on with the speed of war: agonizingly slow, appallingly swift.

  Zamaniyah did not know how it was for other people. For her everything was both bitterly clear and lost in a haze of terror. She could read every word on every banner of the army that came against her; but she could see nothing of the warriors’ faces, only a blur of white, brown, black, and a gleam of eyes, and a glitter of sun on bared steel. That undulating roar was the massed voices of the armies, and the thunder of hooves and drums, and the shouted commands of the captains.

  She had learned, by laborious degrees, to focus. To see only what was directly about; to hear only her own commander. Since he was her father, that was less difficult than it might have been. It gave her an anchor in the sea of milling, shrieking, murderous humanity.