The Lion of Cairo

by Oden, Scott

  The young Persian woman cocked her head to one side, glanced curiously at Assad. “You are the Sufi from the Hejaz … but are you not also the slayer of Jalal al-Aziz?”

  “I am many things, lady,” Assad replied, offering her a slight bow. To the Caliph, he said: “The appointed time draws near, my lord.”

  “Of course.” Rashid al-Hasan turned back to Parysatis. “What was it your father used to say? About luck?”

  “That luck is the result of good preparation,” she said.

  “And am I prepared?”

  There was a frankness to Parysatis’s gaze as she smoothed Rashid’s khalat one final time. “You are the Pillar of the Faith, a Prince of the Sons of Ali descended from the favored daughter of the Prophet himself,” she said softly. “Who is this man who would challenge you? Who is this Shirkuh?”

  The Caliph exhaled, his shoulders squared, pride stiffening his spine. “Bless you, daughter of Ibn Khusraw, and thank you.”

  “For what, my lord?”

  “For your company … and for reminding me of who I am.”

  Parysatis smiled, her eyes moist. Nodding, Rashid al-Hasan gave her hand a squeeze, then turned and descended the dais in a swirl of white linen and cloth-of-gold. The tall Assassin held the silken curtain open for the Caliph, who passed from the alcove and into the domed hall without a backward glance. Though his features were yet thin and pale, Rashid al-Hasan nevertheless wore a mask of iron resolve.

  “If murder remains out of the question,” Assad said, falling in beside him, “have you decided how else we might lure your enemy into a pact of friendship?”

  The Prince of the Faithful glanced sidelong at him. “A good question. I’ve given it some thought…”

  6

  The Pearl Pavilion was a league from Cairo’s walls, at the heart of an unkempt garden overlooking the reed-choked banks of the Nile. Built upon a foundation of limestone blocks quarried from the temples of Old Egypt, the pavilion’s walls were formed from thick columns of milky alabaster that supported a dome of carved wood and stucco—traceries of vines and flowers intertwined with delicate calligraphy. Sheers of translucent linen fluttered between the columns, while unlit lamps of filigreed glass hung from ceiling beams.

  Shallow steps led up from the Nile’s bank; here, in the shade of a knotted cypress, Massoud’s boot heels clacked on stone as he paced, his hand toying with the hilt of his saber. The Circassian smoothed his bead-heavy mustache. “I don’t like this,” he muttered again. “This place … it is a perfect spot for an ambush. What’s to stop Shirkuh from ringing this grove with his cavalry and burning us out like escaped slaves?”

  “Nothing, save his word,” Assad said. The tall Assassin sat on a thick cypress root, idly stirring the leaf mold with the tip of a crooked twig. Though he presented the picture of nonchalance, his eyes betrayed a sense of wariness.

  Massoud snorted. “His word? Come, now, you’re not so naïve as to believe he would keep his word, are you?”

  “It’s not a question of naïveté,” Assad replied. “It’s about knowing your man. Shirkuh ibn Shahdi is a cavalier, noble by breeding if not by birth. In the souks of Palmyra they still tell the tale of his exile from Tikrit. They say he spilled the blood of a gentleman who insulted a woman of Shirkuh’s acquaintance. This is not a man who gives his word lightly.”

  “Still, I don’t like it.”

  Assad rose to his feet. “You don’t have to like it. Just make sure your men know what’s expected of them.”

  “They are prepared. You need not worry about that.” Thirty-four of Massoud’s finest soldiers guarded the pavilion, inside and out—veteran swordsmen who wore steel chain beneath their silken khalats, and who carried round shields inlaid in gold with the blessed words of the Prophet. To bring their company up to twoscore, the Caliph himself had selected a pair of chamberlains, a revered jurist of al-Azhar Mosque, and a scribe whose task it was to record the words and deeds of the participants.

  A brazen horn announced the arrival of the Damascus contingent; as one of the two chamberlains rushed out to guide Shirkuh and his men to the pavilion, Assad and Massoud returned to the Caliph’s side. Inside, a breeze off the river ruffled the linen sheers. Rashid al-Hasan sat on a low divan strewn with pillows, the gray-bearded jurist at his right hand and the scribe at his left. The young monarch’s newfound confidence remained unshaken; he sat erect, composed. He nodded to Assad, who took up a position behind and left of the Caliph’s divan.

  They did not have long to wait. Through billowing linen, Assad spotted a column of men approaching the pavilion—gaunt Turkomans who had long since traded their sheepskin jackets for coats of mail, sinewy hands resting near the hilts of their yataghans, the curved swords favored by these dwellers of the Asian steppe. At the head of the column, escorted by the Caliph’s chamberlain, came three men; two were Kurds who shared a family resemblance—Shirkuh, Assad reckoned, and a younger kinsman—while the third was a fox-faced Arab, his wild eyes agleam with the light of fanaticism. His terrible gaze raked the pavilion as though searching for someone.

  Shirkuh gestured for his Turkomans to remain outside the pavilion; with his kinsman, the Arab, and a pair of grizzled officers, the Kurd who was Nur ad-Din’s right hand ascended the shallow steps on the heels of the chamberlain. The latter bowed three times before hurrying forward to fall prostrate at the Caliph’s feet.

  “O, Most Noble One! O, Prince of the Faithful, who strengthens the religion of God, I present to you the honorable al-Amir Asad al-Din Shirkuh ibn Shahdi! By his side stands the son of his brother, Yusuf ibn Ayyub, and the captains of the Army of Damascus. With them comes Dirgham, once of Cairo, my lord.”

  Rashid al-Hasan dismissed the chamberlain with a nod. “The blessings of Allah upon you, Shirkuh ibn Shahdi.”

  “And may His beneficence shine upon the descendents of blessed Fatimah for the length of your days, O Caliph,” Shirkuh replied, bowing. “We have—”

  “Excellent One,” Dirgham interrupted, “has your office been so reduced that your vizier forces you to treat with us in person, as though you were selling baubles in the souk?” The Caliph stiffened; Shirkuh’s face purpled. Turning his head slightly, he tried to silence the Arab with a growl. Dirgham, though, was having none of it. He shrugged off Yusuf’s hand as the younger man sought to restrain him and took a step forward. “Such insults to your august person should no longer be tolerated! Send for Jalal al-Aziz, my lord! Give us both a blade and we will let Allah decide the issue!”

  The silence that descended over the pavilion was all but absolute, broken only by the rattle of leaves and the soft skritch of the scribe’s pen. A humorless smile flirted at the corners of the Caliph’s mouth. Finally, he turned and gestured to one of his chamberlains. “An excellent idea. Fetch my vizier. He and Dirgham should be reacquainted.”

  The chamberlain bowed and scurried to the rear of the pavilion, where one of the Circassians passed him something; crossing to where Dirgham stood, the chamberlain placed his burden on the floor at the other’s feet. It was a round, covered basket, tightly woven of reeds and caulked with pitch.

  “Though,” the Caliph continued, “the issue of your respective claims on my power has been rendered moot.”

  The chamberlain lifted the lid. Dirgham recoiled at the stench rising from inside the basket. Nestled in a bed of discolored silk, the severed head of Jalal al-Aziz, mottled and bloated with putrefaction, stared up with milk-white eyes. Dirgham gasped for breath, lips writhing as he sought to form coherent words. “M-my … My lord! I—”

  The Caliph raised his voice. “You have done Cairo a great service, Shirkuh ibn Shahdi, by returning this traitor to us. And though you come girded for war, we bear you no ill will. No doubt you and your benevolent master, Nur ad-Din, fell prey to the curse of silver upon Dirgham’s tongue … for Allah the Most Merciful knows it drips falsehoods like poison.”

  “I protected you!” Dirgham shrieked, spittle flying into his beard. “When
others would have gladly used you for their own ends, I thrust my neck out for you! And this is how you repay me? With lies and baseless accusations of treachery?”

  “Is it a lie that you would plunge Egypt into war for the sake of revenge?” the Caliph said. “Is it a lie that you hoped to use the swords of Damascus to regain your lost prosperity? To assuage your bruised ego? This man has played you for a fool, good Shirkuh! Give him to me, and I will see he meets the end he so abundantly deserves!”

  Shirkuh stroked his beard. His good eye shifted from the Caliph to Dirgham and back again. Beside him, Yusuf stirred.

  “Is it not written, uncle, that he for whom the door of righteousness is opened should take advantage of the opportunity, for he knows not when it may be shut against him?”

  Shirkuh glanced sidelong at Yusuf; slowly, he nodded. “My nephew is a man of uncommon wisdom, and I would do well to heed his advice. But I cannot simply hand Dirgham over to you. Something must be given in exchange.”

  Dirgham whirled. “Idiot! Nur ad-Din will have your head!”

  “What is he worth to you, good Shirkuh?” the Caliph said, ignoring Dirgham’s outburst.

  “To me, nothing. To my master, Nur ad-Din, he perhaps has some small value—as a curiosity, nothing more. Still, it is the principle of the thing, you see.”

  “I do. Let me propose this, then: in exchange for your pledge of peace and cooperation, I offer you the position that Dirgham covets so. I offer you the robe of vizier—not my sole vizier, mind you, but a place of honor, nonetheless. Thus will my enemies become yours … and for the moment I hold Dirgham as chief among my enemies.”

  Shirkuh and Yusuf exchanged incredulous looks. “For peace, you say? And cooperation?”

  Dirgham backed away. “Do not be a fool! Do you not see? This is how the Partisans of Ali repay loyalty! You have an army, Shirkuh! Use it as your master intended!”

  “Enough!” the Caliph barked. “What say you, good Shirkuh?”

  Assad saw a slow smile twist the older Kurd’s lips; he smoothed his beard, a calculating gesture. Finally, Shirkuh nodded. “I say let your enemy trouble you no longer, my lord. Uzbek.”

  Dirgham barely had time to recoil from Shirkuh’s dismissal before the fork-bearded Turkoman officer Uzbek leaped in and hammered a callused fist into the side of his head. The Arab staggered under the sudden blow; Uzbek seized him as he fell, turned, and dragged the former vizier from the pavilion. Through panels of sheer linen, Assad watched as the lean and leathery Uzbek hurled Dirgham to the ground at the feet of the scowling Turkomans. The Arab shrieked a litany of curses that changed to pleas for mercy. Both fell on deaf ears. A yataghan flashed in the dusty sunlight; it rose and fell, Dirgham’s screams cut short by the sounds of steel rending flesh, of vertebrae crunching.

  The Caliph watched the execution in utter stillness, his eyes like chips of black ice. After the deed was done he glanced over at the scribe who, though pale with shock, had not ceased his record. “Let it be written,” the Caliph said, “that on this day, Dirgham of the Lakhmi Arabs met his just and proper end. Let him remain unburied and unmourned as a warning to those who would betray Cairo.” He turned back to face Shirkuh, but before he could say anything more a horse came crashing through the dusty undergrowth outside the pavilion, its rider screaming incoherently.

  The Caliph shot to his feet. Around him, the soldiers of Cairo reacted instinctively, drawing steel and baring teeth in defiance. “What madness is this?” Massoud bellowed, thrusting himself in front of the Caliph, while Assad—his face set with murderous purpose—aired the edge of his salawar and sidled closer to the scowling Shirkuh. Steel hissed as fierce Turkomans sprang to their lord’s defense.

  “Wait!” Yusuf ibn Ayyub forced his way between the two groups. “Wait! Listen!”

  The horseman gasped, gestured back toward Shirkuh’s camp. “An army is coming … coming up the valley from Bilbeis! Jerusalem! They fly the banner of Jerusalem!”

  “Jerusalem?” Shirkuh whirled to face Rashid al-Hasan. “What madness, indeed! Is this your doing? Would you lull us into complacency while your Nazarene allies cut our throats?”

  “They are not my allies!” the Caliph snapped, prodding with his booted toe the basket holding the severed head of Jalal al-Aziz. “But his! I feared as much. No doubt when word reached Jalal that you had set out for Egypt, he sent envoys to Jerusalem. Amalric has been ever eager to add Cairo to his kingdom. The Infidel is upon us, Shirkuh. Do we quibble amongst ourselves, or do we make ready?”

  Such was the earnest honesty in the Caliph’s voice that not even Assad could discern his lie—that he was not aware of Jalal’s blasphemous alliance beforehand. Shirkuh’s good eye bored into the young Prince of the Faithful; he looked him up and down, seeking some outward sign of treachery. After several long moments, the Kurdish general barked with laughter. “God’s teeth! You have the right mettle, O Glorious One! I swore your enemies would become mine, and that dog of a Nazarene, Amalric, is the enemy of all righteous men! Let our forces join to send him shrieking back to his master in hell!”

  7

  Trumpets blared along the Turkoman lines; whirring kettledrums fired the blood of the ferocious steppe dwellers, stoking their lust for slaughter to a fever pitch. Assad saw dervishes among them—wild-eyed men bereft of armor who swung bright silken banners embroidered with the sayings of the Prophet over their heads, and who chanted “Allahu akbar!” at the tops of their lungs. Steel rippled as men thrust lance and sword to heaven.

  “Allahu akbar!”

  A guard of a dozen mamelukes surrounded the Caliph; Assad stood near, holding the reins of his borrowed horse while the younger man added his awestruck voice to the fury of the Turkomans. He had insisted on leading Cairo’s forces out himself, to personally hand command of them over to Shirkuh. Assad thought it curious that the one-eyed Kurd had only requested fifteen hundred men from the Caliph—with the caveat that they all be cavalry, well armored, and mounted on swift horses. Still, Rashid al-Hasan obliged him by giving over the remaining five hundred Jandariyah led by their captain, Turanshah, with another thousand drawn from the Sudanese mercenaries. Allied officers clustered around Shirkuh, listening as he laid out his plan for the Nazarenes.

  “Allahu akbar!”

  The sun was well past its zenith, and the heat of afternoon lay like a stifling blanket over the Nile Valley. A mile distant, across a sandy plain where the cultivated lands touched the desert, Assad could discern the vanguard of the Nazarene army, their harness flashing like lightning through a haze of dust. Nigh deafened by the roar of the Turkomans, Assad nevertheless gave ear to Shirkuh even as he watched the enemy fan out into a line of battle.

  “Allahu akbar!”

  “—are tired from their march, thirsty, and unprepared to fight! Amalric thought to find a fretful city on the verge of capitulation, with an unseen ally plucking the strings of power in a song of submission! He did not expect to find an army facing him! He did not expect the lords of Damascus to join with the lords of Egypt!” The gathered officers bellowed their approval. Shirkuh calmed them with a raised hand. “Blessed Allah saw fit not to grant Amalric a surfeit of imagination where the waging of war is concerned. He is predictable. Even now, he arranges his lines as he always does: his cursed knights in the center with his infantry defending each flank. He will try and use his horsemen as a carpenter uses a wedge, to split our formation. I am of a mood to turn his conceit against him.”

  Shirkuh drew a dagger and knelt in the sand. He sketched out a series of lines; then, gesturing to his nephew, he said: “Yusuf, take the left wing. Dismount four thousand of your men and have them dig their heels in against the Nazarene infantry. Load the remaining thousand with as many arrows as their horses can carry and send them against Amalric’s flank. I will do the same on the right. Harry them without mercy, Yusuf. Force them to wheel and we will crush them in on themselves. You, sons of Cairo, you will have the center. Nay, do not cheer so, for you will bear
the brunt of Jerusalem’s cavalry charge.”

  Turanshah stepped forth from the knot of Cairene officers, grim and deadly in the plain gray mail he had adopted since his fall from grace. “You honor us, Amir Shirkuh. Let Allah witness my oath: we will not falter.”

  The Kurdish general grinned. “Ah, but I want you to falter. When Amalric’s cavalry presses you, fall back. Draw them off in pursuit. The Nazarene will break his own lines to keep up.”

  A slow smile spread across Turanshah’s face. He salaamed and returned to his place. Shirkuh stood; he stropped his knife against his trouser leg to clean sand from the blade before sheathing it, and then swept his sobering gaze over the assembled officers. “It is a soldier’s duty to risk all in battle. If any among you fear death or slavery, then I say you are fit to serve neither Sultan nor Caliph! Go home, if fear threatens to unman you! Put down the sword and take up the plough! Raise goats! Stay with your wives, for you have no place here among true men, if indeed true men you are! I go to fight! Will you come? What say ye?”

  The officers responded with one voice, a roar that echoed across the plain: “Aye!”

  “Take your marks, then!” Shirkuh bellowed, vaulting into the saddle. “And may God grant us a swift and easy victory! Allahu akbar!”

  “Allahu akbar!”

  “We should return to the city, my lord,” Assad said, nodding to the Caliph as the collected officers dispersed to their posts.

  “Aye, he’s right,” Shirkuh said, reining in beside Rashid al-Hasan. “It’s about to get a damn sight less safe here, Glorious One. Prepare your city. Should we falter in truth—or should Amalric prove tougher than usual—his heathens will be pounding on the gates of Cairo by supper.”

  “I have great faith in your ability, Shirkuh ibn Shahdi,” the Caliph said. “Despite our differences, I pray Allah bless you and keep you … and may He grant you victory over the Infidel.”