“Where could I go, then?” Balkis cried. “Where could I be safe?”
“For you, now?” Idris smiled without mirth. “Anyplace you like—you know enough magic to guard yourself well, and cope with anything but a magician who’s even stronger than yourself. You can be sure you’ll meet one sooner or later, lass, even if you stay here—and you would be better off by far to seek out a kindly one who draws his power from goodness, than to wait till an evil sorcerer finds you.”
Balkis shuddered at the thought. “Where shall I find a good wizard, then?”
“In Merovence,” Idris said, with decision, “for women are treated better there than anywhere else.”
Balkis frowned. “Why in Merovence?”
Idris shrugged. “Belike because a woman rules there—Queen Alisande. Perhaps it is also because of her that the minstrels there have begun to sing of the glories of courtly love, of admiration so strong that it can kindle desire for a woman all by itself, a desire that need not be consummated but is ecstasy when it is. Such a notion exalts women far beyond the rest of the world, which regards us as little more than beasts of burden, and chattels that men trade like coins.”
Balkis shuddered. “Merovence let it be, then! But to which wizard shall I go?”
“Why not begin with the best?” Idris gave her a sunny smile. “Ask the Lord Wizard himself—the queen’s husband and consort, and by all tellings, the mightiest in the realm! If he turns you down, go to a lesser—but I’ve a notion that he’ll take you as a pupil for his wife’s sake, if not for his own.”
Balkis turned thoughtful, and voiced what Idris hadn’t. “And because his wife is the queen, he would be unlikely to importune me for sexual favors?”
“For his wife,” Idris agreed, “but more because, if he draws his power from Goodness, adultery would weaken him tremendously. No, child, seek you the Lord Wizard of Merovence and you’ll be as safe as you may, and become tremendously learned in the bargain!”
“Let us hope I can bargain well indeed,” Balkis said darkly.
Cat-memory served Balkis well, and she had no trouble joining a mule train bound for Merovence-as a mouser, of course. The merchants hired a full company of armed guards, ones who specialized in protecting commerce, for they had to pass through deep forests and cross broad rivers. Twice the soldiers had to beat back forest bandits, once they had to fight off river pirates, and they reached Merovence with only a dozen wounded. Some of those wounds would have killed the soldiers, though, had not Balkis crept among the groaning and fevered in the makeshift hospital wagon, and recited healing charms in her meowing voice. One or two soldiers later told of bizarre dreams in which the caravan’s cat spoke to them, and all their mates enjoyed a good laugh over such an outlandish tale.
At last the morning sun burned away the mist, to show a small city lapping up the slopes of a long hill, on top of which stood a castle with high walls and graceful towers.
“Bordestang!” the merchants cried, and their eyes glinted in anticipation of sharp trading and good profits. “The Queen’s Town!”
Balkis’ pulse quickened, too, but whether it was in anticipation or dread she did not know. She had some hard dealing of her own to do.
Far to the east, Suleiman the Caliph had some hard decisions to make—in the thick of battle. But his wits worked at their quickest and most certain when they were encased by a steel helmet that rang with the echoes of battle-cries, screams of pain and rage, and the clash of steel, of sword against sword and lance against shield.
“Back!” he commanded his adjutant. “Our soldiers are more skilled, but for every barbarian they slay, five more gallop in—and every single one of them is mounted!”
Cavalry was only half of his army. The adjutant nodded, grim-faced, never doubting his sovereign for a moment, and turned to signal to the trumpeter. The man set his instrument to his lips, and the signal for retreat blared out over the army. Other horns took it up, momentarily drowning the sounds of steel. The Arabic army pulled together and began their retreat, foot by foot, defending against overeager barbarians every inch of the way. Fired with triumph, many of the horde rode to the flanks to slay as many of the Muslims as possible, some even attempting to ride behind the army—but its back was to a river, and the rearguard defended the bridgehead well. Nomad after nomad rode against their grounded spears, and died.
On their own flanks, their comrades met similar fates, for the Arab crossbows thrummed and sent a message of death that the barbarians received before they could come near the army—received in their chests, fell from their horses, and died. Their companions turned, but loosed arrows from tough, short, compound bows before they fled. Many of their arrows fell short; those that did reach the Arabs clattered against light armor or shields and fell, to be trodden underfoot. Only a few found flesh; only a few of the retreating army fell on the flanks.
Their comrades in the van, though, fared far worse, for they were indeed outnumbered five to one. They had become the rearguard as the army retreated. They fought furiously. Crossbows and archers could do nothing, for the enemy followed within yards of them, charging again and again against their own blooded mares. Horses screamed and reared, lashing out at one another with sharpened hooves, and the barbarian horsemen rode against trained and disciplined Arab cavalry. Behind them waited infantrymen, hungering for a few feet of space to rush in, stab upward with their spears, and retreat. Those strokes were short, for the barbarians rode ponies, and if the Arab lances did not transfix the riders, they brought low the horses. The Caliph’s cavalry struck downward at their opponents, and though it seemed to take ten strokes to slay even one of the tough little men, die they did.
Then hooves rang hollow on the pontoon bridge, and the army yielded their platform board by board. But as the rearguard passed the first of the boats that supported the bridge, they slashed the ropes that held them in place, then struck as deeply as they could with lances. The barbarians followed them onto the bridge—and sank, their horses screaming. They could not stop quickly, for hundreds of their fellows pressed them from behind, and a thousand barbarians plunged into the river as boat after boat drifted from the bridge, then sank.
A few barbarians had managed to thrust themselves so deeply into the Arabic army that they were carried away with the retreat, calling out in despair in a dozen different barbarous tongues—but as the soldiers swung scimitars high to slay, those same “barbarians” called out in good Arabic, “Not me, you fool! I’m a spy for the Caliph!”
The soldiers didn’t believe them, of course, but they couldn’t take the chance. They bound the barbarians and took them along.
When the army had finished the crossing and the remnants of the pontoon bridge were drifting away, the trumpets blew the halt, and the Arabs turned to digging a ditch to guard their perimeter, and to pitching their tents. As dusk closed in, campfires flared, cooking pots steamed, and the army paused to lick its wounds, sentries vigilant for the slightest sign of barbarians moving in the night—there was always the chance that they might find a way to cross in the darkness. It seemed unlikely, though, for they rode their horses like men who came from plains that stretched so wide they scarcely knew what a true river was.
By the Caliph’s tent, braziers flared high as the captives were brought before him to be greeted by a coded question, to which they answered the password-answer—if they knew it.
“Who brought the Qaa’ba?”
“Ibrahim and Ishmael.”
“What would you have of Toledo?”
“Steel.”
“What is damascened?”
“Swords.”
The Caliph’s own wizards listened to the exchanges, and told those who truly knew from those who merely guessed—for there were a few barbarians who spoke Arabic with accents so thick it was clear they had learned it as a foreign tongue, and poorly at that. Some were indeed the Caliph’s spies, though, recruited by other spies. Each, for his own reason, had come to hate the cause he serve
d.
Those who did not answer the questions, or who tried and failed, were sent to a squadron of men who had lost brothers or fathers in that day’s battle. When the true spies had been winnowed from the accidental captives, the Caliph asked them, grim-faced, “Whom do we fight?”
Now one or two spies interpreted for the barbarians who had taken the Caliph’s coin, and who told more than the disguised Arabs, for they had known the answers for years.
“We all are members of hordes,” one barbarian explained, “what you would call tribes. But we are of many nations—Turks, Pechenegs, Mongols, Kirkhiz, Kazakhs, Polovtsi, Manchus, and more—any whom Olgor Khan can sway to his service.”
“Who is Olgor Khan?” Caliph Suleiman asked, his brow dark.
“You would call him a king,” another barbarian answered. “He was born the son of the Khan of the Azov Horde, but when he came to power, a priest with burning eyes journeyed to him from the distant South, one who called himself Arjasp, and told him that if he worshiped the god of darkness and strove to bring all people into the god’s power, that god would exalt him and make him emperor of the world.”
“And he let himself be seduced by the lure of power?” Suleiman asked.
“Of power and riches,” a third barbarian said, “for the priest promised him the wealth of all the world, masses of gold and gems by the bushel, if he would bow down and worship Arjasp ‘s god.”
“What name has this god?” Suleiman demanded.
The barbarians answered, “Angra Mainyu, or Ahriman.”
The Caliph stiffened, staring at them in horror.
CHAPTER 4
“I know that name,” said the general who stood nearby.
“Yes, I know it well,” the Caliph said through stiffened lips. “There is a small district within my empire whose people still speak of Ahriman—but he is not the god they worship, he is the demon they abhor.”
The barbarians stared. “It is no mere invention of this high priest, then?”
“Ahriman is the name they have given him of late,” Suleiman replied. “The old name of this king of demons was Angra Mainyu, and he is the enemy of their true god, Ahura Mazda, the god of light. In times long past, his priests were called ‘magi.’ “
“ Why, even so,” said one barbarian, with a shudder. “Arjasp calls himself a ‘magus.’ “
“They are the oldest of the wizards,” said the general, “and claim that all magic comes from them, for they have given their name to it.”
” ‘Magic’ comes from ‘magi’?” asked one barbarian, wide-eyed. “Then may the heavens defend us, for we are lost!”
“Not so,” snapped an Arab wizard, “for we have learned a great deal since these magi invented their form of magic—and believe me, theirs is only one of many! We know something of theirs, and of others far older!”
The barbarians seemed to be a little reassured by the claim.
“What does this Khan Olgor with those he conquers?” the Caliph asked.
“Say ‘emperor,’ rather,” said one of the Arab spies, “for he styles himself ‘gur-khan,’ which means Great Khan, or Khan of Khans.”
“The audacity of him!” Suleiman fumed, but he could not deny the validity of the claim, for a man who had brought many nations and their kings beneath his sway was indeed an emperor.
But not the only emperor—nor would he ever be, Suleiman swore to himself. “What happens to the peoples of the nations he conquers?”
“Those who join him of their own free will and seek places in his army are honored,” said one barbarian, “and their wives and children dress in brocades, live in tents of silk, and eat meat every night. Those whom he commands to surrender, and who do so without battle, are left to live much as they did before, governing themselves, though their kings must obey the commands of the Great Khan. Their merchants, however, grow rich from trade with all other tribes and nations who have joined the empire.”
“How long has it been growing?” the Caliph demanded.
“Nearly twenty years,” a barbarian answered.
“What of the tribes who fight against the Great Khan’s conquest?” the Caliph asked.
“He butchers all their men,” a barbarian answered, grim-faced, “and builds a pyramid of their skulls to mark where a town was so foolish as to resist him. He makes eunuchs of those males who are still boys, then sells women and children all into slavery. Where there was a city before, there remains only a deserted ruin—deserted until he gives it to one of his wild tribes for their dwelling.”
Even Suleiman had to suppress a shudder. “How much territory has he taken, this Great Khan?”
“His hordes have swept all through the center of the world, O Caliph,” a barbarian said.
Suleiman turned to his Arab agents, frowning. “What does he mean?”
“It is their term for Central Asia, O Caliph,” answered one. “Your empire and Europe sit on the western edge of the world and China on the eastern, with the land of the Hindus on the southern.”
“What lies on the northern?”
“Ice, and people whose hides grow thick fur over everything except their faces.”
In the heat of Persia, that almost sounded attractive. The Caliph nodded and turned back to the barbarian. “How many nations has Olgor taken?”
“We Polovtsi, the Kirghiz, the Kazakhs, the Tartars …”
“The Afghans, the Pathans, the Mongols … “ said another.
“The Uzbeks, the Huns, the Turks …”
Suleiman listened, dazed, as the names of Central Asian nations rolled before him.
“He has even conquered Fu-shien, a Chinese province that spreads beyond the Tien Shan Mountains,” a last barbarian added. “All have fallen before him or joined him with eagerness, beguiled by the promise of loot and empire.”
The Caliph drew breath. “Is there any part of Central Asia he has not conquered?”
One by one the spies shook their heads. Suleiman turned to his wizard, anger gathering. “Have you learned nothing with alI your scrying that these men have not told me?”
“All is as they say.” The oldest and most powerful of his wizards stepped forward. “We can only add that there are pockets of people here and there who have fled the cities that fell to Olgor and taken refuge in mountains, desert oases, and islands in the middle of vast lakes, who hold out against the Great Khan and stay free—but it seems they survive only because he does not think them worth his time when he has a world to conquer.”
“We can say a bit more about the arguments with which Arjasp cozened Olgor,” a middle-aged wizard added. “He told him tales of Iskander’s empire, how that ancient Macedonian brought all the world under his sway, from Greece to the Indus River, in one short lifetime, not even a score of years. But he does not inspire his troops with Greek art and reason—he fires them with orgies and demon-worship.”
The barbarians shuddered, and one pleaded, “Speak not against Angra Mainyu, or he will cast us into eternal night!”
“I shall speak against the demon king and condemn him indeed,” the wizard told them, his face dark with anger, “for he cannot stand against the power of Allah, the One and Only God!”
The barbarians shrank from his words, moaning and making signs against evil.
“So Olgor’s goal is nothing less than the conquest of the whole world,” Suleiman said, brooding, “though how a priest of the magi can preach the worship of Ahriman, I cannot understand. Still, it is not his ultimate purpose that must concern us here—it is his immediate target.” He turned to a messenger. “Send word to Baghdad for all to leave the city and hide in the hills. We shall fall back and make a stand there; it may be that the city’s walls will give us victory over these masses of uncouth horsemen.”
The messenger bowed and turned away.
Suleiman turned back to the spies. “Will he be content with Baghdad, or must he come farther?”
“He will go to the edge of the world,” said one.
A
nother said, “He means to conquer yourself and all your empire, of course, O Caliph—but he wishes most earnestly to conquer all of the Holy Lands, especially Jerusalem and Mecca, to desecrate them in order to gain power for his demonic lord. He thinks that with the holy places, he will take also the wills to resist of both Muslims and Christians.”
A gasp of alarm echoed from every Arab, shocked at the audacity and impiety of such a thought.
“He may be right,” said the oldest wizard grimly. “The common folk might well think that if God could not save the cities consecrated to Him, He could not also save His people.”
“Such blasphemy,” Suleiman said angrily, “and such falsehood! Allah is the only true God, though I will concede other nations may have other names for Him! None can triumph over Him, and we shall prove that upon Olgor’s body!”
The barbarians trembled, and one screwed up his courage to say, “Know, O Sun of Wisdom, that these are not anti-Christian devil-worshipers, but anti-Muslim demonists. It is not the Christ whom they profane, but Allah.”
“They will blaspheme the Christ soon enough,” a wizard said darkly.
“I do not doubt it,” Suleiman agreed. “Therefore must we make common cause with the Christians to stand against this corrupted khan.”
The Arabs stared at him, shocked by the notion of such an alliance.
“How many of them are there?” Suleiman demanded of the spies.
The barbarians spread their hands, lost for words, and an Arab spy asked, “How many stalks of grass stand upon the steppes of Central Asia, my lord? His hordes are numbered by thousands, his subjects by hundreds of thousands. His warriors darken the plain to the horizon and beyond, and there are at least two camp-followers for each warrior, often more. They devastate the land like a plague of locusts.”
The Crusading Wizard Page 5