by Dan Davis
“What if he serves Hulegu and yet only pretends to Berke that he serves him?” Stephen said to Hassan, one evening as we ate together in our home in the Kingdom of Georgia.
It was easy enough in those times and in that part of the world for me to pose as a wealthy French mercenary, especially with such a mixture of foreign peoples in my entourage. Especially, also, as the opposing armies of the Golden Horde to the north and Hulegu’s Ilkhanate to the south were at risk of coming to blows in the lands that lay between them, like Georgia. With a fabricated reputation for martial brilliance and reliability that we had sent ahead of us, the local lord had provided me with a perfectly acceptable residence so that I and other soldiers of fortune like me would be on hand should hostilities break out.
“Perhaps our man Enrico serves both masters?” Hassan said. “Giving information to both Hulegu and Berke, and so serves only himself?”
“Might it be that he trades information to anyone who can pay?” Eva suggested. “The Latin magnates of Constantinople, his fellow Venetian traders, and the Saracen lords. It would seem that Enrico of Candia knows everyone. Surely, we may expect to find him accommodating. We should pay him well, not ask too much of him in return, and grudgingly provide him with a plausible story about why we wish to know about the palace. Something that he would not feel honour bound to sell us out for.”
“What might such a thing possibly be?” Thomas asked.
“Horse thieves,” Eva said. “We will steal the Ilkhan’s most valuable horses right out of his stable, for breeding in Acre, where good horses are a fortune.”
Hassan sighed, and pinched his nose, for he had little regard for the wisdom of women, especially when it was sound. “And if we make contact and he sells us to Hulegu, what then of our entire undertaking? We must be cautious.”
“For God’s sake,” I said to the group, and banged my hand on the table, causing them to turn to me all at once as the plates and cups rattled. “Stephen, go to his people and buy us some blood slaves for ourselves, will you? The usual type. Mutes or morons, if possible. Foreign savages if not. We shall continue to move cautiously but we must act, and not sit around talking about the matter.”
Two years later, I still did not know whether the Venetian Enrico of Candia was loyal to Hulegu or not. Whether he had sold us out, and whether we were walking into a trap. And that thought, along with a thousand other worries about our assassination plan, played on my mind as I scaled the wall of Hulegu’s palace on a cold night in February 1265.
***
Maragha was not a large capital but it had a high city wall and four sturdy gates. The outer wall to the north had a small postern gate big enough only for men and not horses, and we had promised a fortune to a certain Kipchak guard if he would but open it to us on that night. Praise God, the young fellow held up his end of the bargain. Orus seized him, and whispered threats should we find he had sold us out to his masters. When the terrified Kipchak swore to Christ—for he was a Nestorian—, that he had done precisely as we had required, Orus expertly cut the young man’s throat.
I have killed uncounted thousands in my life and been witness to many times more deaths, but it is the dishonourable ones such as that squalid murder which have plagued my dreams down the centuries. An inauspicious start to our infiltration, and it unsettled me all the more as it felt as though our venture was tainted with the underhanded act. But it was an act of necessity for, once he had let us in, we could not let him go lest he be captured and give us up, nor could we tie him up lest he be discovered and do the same. And so, a treacherous blade to the gullet it was, and his body we shoved into a dark doorway.
I told myself that the incidental deaths of the innocent were necessary in order to save Christendom from Hulegu’s horde. We would kill hundreds to save millions.
Slipping into the city through the postern was straightforward. Making our way through the streets was likewise a relatively simple matter and we did so swiftly and without challenge. Alas, there was but a single gate into the walled palace compound and so over the wall we went, climbing like lizards up the stones with our gear hanging from sacks behind some of us. We had a lot of men to kill, and we needed the means to do it. For they were not ordinary men, but Hulegu and his immortals, and they would die hard.
The others followed me, dropping as quietly as shadows down the inside of the wall into the dark soil and ornamental bushes near to the base of the wall.
I counted down Eva, Thomas, Stephen, Hassan, Orus, and Khutulun. We were all there, and all ready.
One of the Mongols that William had turned had been killed by the Mamluks and our information suggested Hulegu had twelve immortals left alive to serve him.
Every one of them was in the palace with him that night. Eight of them were Hulegu’s personal bodyguards, collectively known as the keshig, and they were with him or near to him almost all the time and had been for years. By all accounts, they were battle-scarred brutes who terrified the courtiers. But the other four immortal lords had been recalled from their regions of Hulegu’s Ilkhanate. It was the Mongol new year celebration, and they would feast together and discuss the Ilkhan’s strategic priorities for the following year.
It was the first time Hulegu’s immortals had all been together for many months and we knew we may never have a better opportunity.
There were seven of us and thirteen of them, so already we were at a numerical disadvantage as far as immortals of the blood went. Another disadvantage was that one of my men was Stephen, who I had trained to fight with basic competence in the intervening years but who would never be anything like a true warrior, even with his immortal’s strength. And I had two women on my side. Deadly and skilful though they were, neither Eva nor Khutulun had the strength to match an immortal man of similar skill. And Hulegu’s keshig bodyguards and lords were all seasoned soldiers.
Not only that, there would be mortal men in Hulegu’s hall. Retainers, servants, supplicants, family members, soldiers, bodyguards, and slaves. Every Mongol court was a jumbled web of alliances and relationships and anyone we found in that hall would have to be killed, too. At worst they would fight us, and at least they would get in our way. For all I knew, I was leading my six companions against two hundred men or more.
Waving at them to follow, I led my company along the inside of the wall, between it and the lines of heavily-pruned fruit bushes that bordered the Persian style palace gardens. It was an absurd indulgence for a Mongol prince but Hulegu had settled into a luxury that would no doubt have been beyond the imagining of his barbarian fathers out on the savage steppe. An indulgence that displayed the confidence he had in his position, far enough from his enemies than no army could surprise him, and security in his own immortality. He would not be the only Mongol seduced by the degenerate wealth of the people he had conquered with such contempt.
I crept along beside the rows of ornate bushes, bent double and listening carefully for any signs that we had been seen by the patrolling night guards. If the alarm was raised before our attack was begun, then our chance of success would be gone, and the chance that any of us would escape would be close to nought, for we would be cornered and assaulted by hundreds of soldiers.
But we had our advantages. Assuming that none in our network of spies had been compromised or had been an enemy all along, then we would have surprise on our side.
Also, many Mongols would become fall-down drunk on an ordinary night in the ordus and we had timed our assassination to coincide with the celebration of the new year. Orus and Khutulun swore that everyone at court would have feasted all day on milk, cheese, mutton, roast horse, rice and curds and especially endless mountains of buuz, which were steamed dumplings stuffed with meat and were the only halfway edible food in the vile Mongol diet. They would certainly be stuffed to the guts and guzzling down gallons of fermented horse milk and rice wine. Our informants had told us that Hulegu’s men mixed blood into their drinks to make an intoxicating potion they revelled in, to the
confusion and repulsion of all who were not immortals. The gluttonous brutes had been hunting and banqueting for several days already and so they would surely be suffering from their excesses.
Whereas we had been practising. At Hassan’s urging, we had rehearsed our roles in the assault on the palace many times. We had discussed it at table, we had even staked the ground in estimated dimensions of Hulegu’s hall and acted out our parts as if we were revels or guisers performing for each other so that we could coordinate the timing of our attacks. We practised fighting in confined spaces. We all practised throwing. Eva and Khutulun became expert at tossing fist-sized stones into distant baskets.
Alert to every sound, I heard the cooks in the kitchens behind the palace shouting at their servants while they roasted meats, the smell of which filled the air and made my guts churn. Figures hurried here and there. A muttering boy dragged a basket of firewood along the ground toward the servants’ entrances at the rear of the palace. Two men carried a freshly-slaughtered goat from one building to another, laughing about something as they went.
When we reached the centre of the north wall, we paused and unwrapped our weapons from the strips of wool or sheepskin that had kept them from clanging or rattling during our incursion. After all of us were ready, I nodded to Stephen.
For just a moment, Stephen’s features in the gloom reminded me of when he had been a bookish English monk too afraid to even approach me on the ship in the Black Sea. He nodded back at me and hurried past us, all alone in the shadows, toward the palace stables with his heavy sack clutched to his chest. Whether he buckled under the pressure of his mission remained to be seen.
Looming above us in the darkness, Hulegu’s palace seemed rather bigger than it had when we had staked out the dimensions on the ground.
After Stephen vanished into the gloom, the rest of us headed straight toward a specific servants’ entrance at the rear of the palace, listening hard for any sign of the guards or anyone else who might discover our intrusion and raise the alarm. The kitchens were close by now, just across a courtyard, and the fires within were casting light from under the door and smoke from above the roof. A door in the kitchens opened, throwing a shard of yellow light slanting across the ground, and a young man came out. I waved my people down and we ducked low on the path. The lad carried a heavy jar in his arms, no doubt filled with wine for the celebrating lords within the palace. Tensing, I prepared to run him down and destroy him before he could raise the alarm. But he continued on across the courtyard, kicked open a door into the palace, and headed inside.
I let out the breath I was holding and waved my people to follow me. My nervousness only increased as I went. Killing enemy soldiers had rarely bothered me, even when I was young but I knew innocent people would die in our attack and I could not shake the feeling of guilt. I kept telling myself that they would be victims of war and their incidental deaths would help to avoid a great many more deaths in the future and so the sin would be mitigated. Besides, they would only be Saracens, Persians, Mongols, mostly, and Armenians and I would be saving all Christendom west of Jerusalem from the irresistible invasion of the Mongol lords of war.
Assuming, of course, that our attack worked.
We moved swiftly and slipped up to the palace itself. All but Thomas and Hassan, who continued on around the building, heading for a side entrance to the other side of Hulegu’s hall. My steadiest man, the old Templar was a great comfort to me and watching him disappear alone into the darkness stirred my heart greatly. He and Hassan were heading further into the palace than the rest of us and their task was immensely dangerous. I felt certain that I would never see them again, and I wished I had spoken to Thomas of my high regard for him. Then again, what was the point of such things? We all die, and either we will see each other again or we will not. And either way, God knows the truth and surely that is all that matters.
What a foolish old man I had become, feeling so emotional and apprehensive. An indulgence I could not afford.
Inside the servants’ entrance was a large chamber where food and wine was prepared for the hall upstairs. The room was lined with shelves, and dried meats and herbs were hanging from the beams. Lamps hung from chains gave off a good light. Already, I could hear the cacophony of raised voices talking further within the building and above our heads, muffled by the stones and timbers of the building.
The boy who had carried the jug of wine across the courtyard was at a bench along the wall, ladling the contents into smaller serving jugs. I saw and smelled at once that it was not, in fact, wine but fresh blood he was transferring. Two old women in servants clothing turned from preparing a huge platter of roasted meat on a workbench and stared at me with confusion written on their faces. The fact that they appeared to be innocent Armenian servants doing their duty caused me to hesitate to do what was necessary.
My companions pushed into the room after me while I stood staring at the three servants, wondering if I might not have them bound and gagged instead of dispatched. One of the old women dropped to her knees with her hands raised in supplication as our intentions dawned on her. The other screwed up her face in anger and took a deep breath.
She did not have time to utter a cry, for Khutulun pushed past me and cracked the woman’s head open with the hammer side of her axe, and then buried the blade into the skull of the other one. Through it all, the boy stood stock still, arms by his sides and his eyes screwed shut. Khutulun whipped her axe blade from the old woman’s skull and hacked into the lad’s face, dropping him like the women. Wiping her blade on her coat, she turned and sneered at me, her expression mocking my weakness. I had a foolish urge to protest that I would have killed them had she not intervened but Eva grabbed the sack from my hand and shoved me into motion.
Without further idiotic delay, I headed into the servants’ stairwell and ran up the timber stairs, the others right behind me. It was dark and narrow and the boards creaked underfoot and though we attempted to be quiet, we sounded like an invading army as we ascended.
A man’s voice growled something above and I ran up the last few steps, drawing my dagger.
It was a Mongol soldier, dressed for war. A kezik, a guard protecting his lords within the nearby hall. And though he was there to stop unauthorised entry and to fight intruders, he was not truly expecting to have to do so. Since the dawn of time, almost every guard who ever stood on duty has served an unremarkable watch where the greatest danger to him is being found dozing by his commanding officer. There are a few moments where his expectations conflict with reality and he must adjust to the fact that he will have to shake himself for sudden violence.
Those few moments were all I needed.
I leapt up the steps and slammed my dagger up under his chin and forced him clear from the landing area into the antechamber, bearing him down beneath me with my hand over his mouth. His dark eyes were wide in shock that he was being killed.
Orus jumped over me and brought down the second kezik with a terrific blow from his mace. The crash the man made as he hit the wall and bounced onto the floor was sure to bring more men from within the hall to investigate. The kezik’s dented helm rolled across the floor until Orus stamped on it.
The kezik beneath me stopped struggling and I savoured the smell of his blood and watched as his eyes faded and he breathed his last breath into my face. It reeked of sour wine and onions.
Khutulun and Eva continued on up the stairs to the gallery above, their feet making a terrible din.
The revelry within the hall continued unabated but I could not feel relief. At any moment, they could discover us. Thomas and Hassan, or Stephen, could already have been killed or—even worse—captured.
Our dead keziks had been guarding the rear door into the hall where Hulegu and the other lords celebrated the new year. A small, sturdy door of dark wood was all that separated me from my enemies. Orus stood before it, a mace in one hand and a bulging sack in the other.
“Bar the door,” I hissed at him.
He turned with a confused expression. “How?”
Certain that he was being foolish, I stepped beside him, cursing his stupidity.
Yet he was correct.
Our paid informants had sworn that the doors at either end of the hall could be barred and yet there was nothing to suggest that had ever been possible. Merely an ornate iron latch.
I took a deep breath and clapped Orus on the shoulder. “Do not let even a single man through,” I said and relieved him of his sack, for I would need the contents in short order.
Before I ascended the next stair to the gallery, I glanced back at the young Mongol warrior. He stood with a mace in his left hand, and his sword now drawn in his right. A single man to hold that small antechamber against a horde who would be desperate to escape.
He turned and looked at me over his shoulder. For once, he did not grin. Instead, he nodded once, slowly and in response, I bowed my head.
I took the final stairway in a few leaps to find Eva and Khutulun crouched at the top of the steps. Another servant lay dead, face down against the wall with blood pooling beneath him.
I had reached the gallery, which ran along one side of the building just beneath the edge of the vaulted ceiling, with a beautifully carved balustrade at waist height, that looked down onto the hall below. At the far end of the gallery I knew was a stairway leading to some other part of the palace beyond the hall but I had to trust that Hassan and Thomas would do what they could to block or distract any reinforcements from that end once the assault began. In its normal function, such a gallery could house musicians, at other times it was where lords could look down on those inside the hall without having to mix with them.
It would also, I hoped, provide the perfect platform for committing a massacre.