by Noah Gordon
Alā was delighted, thinking that enemy cowardice had given him the easiest of victories. He lost no time in putting his sword to a throat and telling the terrified villager to lead them to Dhan Vangalil. The sword-maker turned out to be a wiry man with unsurprised eyes and gray hair and a white beard that sought to hide a young-old face. Vangalil agreed readily to go to Ispahan to serve Alā Shah; but he said he would choose death unless the Shah allowed him to bring his wife, two sons, and a daughter, as well as various supplies needed to make the rippled steel, including a large stack of square ingots of hard Indian steel.
The Shah agreed at once. Before they could depart that place, however, scouting parties came back with disturbing news. The Indian troops, far from fleeing, had set up positions in the forest and along the road and were waiting to fall upon anyone seeking to leave Kausambi.
Alā knew the Indians couldn’t contain them indefinitely. As had been the case at Mansura, the hidden soldiers were poorly armed; further, they were forced to live off the wild fruits of the land. The Shah’s officers told him that doubtless runners had been sent to bring Indian reinforcements, but the nearest known military force of any size was in Sehwan, six days away.
“You must go into the forest and clean them out,” Alā ordered.
The five hundred Persians were divided into ten units of fifty fighters each, all foot soldiers. They left the village and beat the brush to find their enemy as though they were hunting wild pigs. When they came upon Indians, the fighting was fierce and bloody and prolonged.
Alā ordered all casualties to be removed from the forest lest they be counted by the enemy and give him knowledge of dwindling strength. And so the Persian dead were laid in the gray dust of a street in Kausambi, to be buried in mass graves by the prisoners from Mansura. The first body to be brought in, at the very start of the forest fighting, was that of the Captain of the Gates. Khuff was dead from an Indian arrow in the back. He had been a strict, unsmiling man but a fixture and a legend. The scars on his body could be read like a history of hard campaigns for two Shahs. All that day, Persian soldiers came to look at him.
They were coldly angered by his death and this time they took no prisoners, killing even when an Indian wished to surrender. In turn, they faced the frenzy of hunted men who knew they would be shown no mercy. The warfare was unrelievedly ugly, either jagged arrows or men doing their worst with sharp metal, all slashing and stabbing and screaming.
Twice a day the wounded were assembled in a clearing and one of the surgeons went out under heavy guard and gave first treatment and brought the patients back to the village. The fighting lasted three days. Of the thirty-eight wounded at Mansura, eleven had died before the Persians had departed that village and sixteen more had perished in the three-day march to Kausambi. To the eleven wounded who survived in the care of Mirdin and Rob, thirty-six new maimed were added during the three days of the forest battle. Forty-seven more Persians were killed.
Mirdin performed one more amputation and Rob three, one of them involving only the fixing of a skin flap over a stub made perfectly below the elbow when an Indian sword took a soldier’s forearm. At first they treated wounds the way Ibn Sina had taught: they boiled oil and poured it as hot as possible into the wound to ward off suppuration. But on the morning of the last day Rob ran out of oil; remembering how Barber had tended lacerations with metheglin, he took a goatskin of wine and bathed each new wound with strong drink before dressing it.
That morning the last outburst of fighting had begun immediately after dawn. At midmorning a new group of wounded arrived and bearers carried in someone wrapped from head to ankles in a purloined Indian blanket. ‘Only wounded here,’ Rob said sharply.
But they set him down and stood, waiting uncertainly, and he noticed suddenly that the dead man was wearing Mirdin’s shoes.
“Had he been an ordinary soldier we would have placed him in the street,” one of them said. “But he is hakim, so we have brought him to hakim.”
They said they were on the way back when a man sprang from the brush with an ax. The Indian had struck only Mirdin and then was himself cut down.
Rob thanked them and they went away.
When he removed the blanket from the face he saw it was indeed Mirdin. The face was contorted and seemed puzzled and sweetly cranky.
Rob closed the tender eyes and bound the long, homely jaw shut. He didn’t think, moving as if drunk. From time to time he left to comfort the dying or care for the wounded, but always he came back and sat. Once he kissed the cold mouth but didn’t believe Mirdin knew. He felt the same way when he tried to hold Mirdin’s hand. Mirdin was no longer there.
He hoped Mirdin had crossed one of his bridges.
Eventually Rob left him and tried to stay away, working blindly. A man was brought in with a maimed right hand and he did the last amputation of the campaign, taking the hand just above the joint of the wrist. When he came back to Mirdin at midday, flies had gathered.
He removed the blanket and saw that the ax had cleaved Mirdin open at the chest. When Rob bent over the great wound, he was able to pry it wider with his hands.
He was bereft of awareness of either the odors of death within the tent or the scent of the hot crushed grass underfoot. The groans of the wounded, the buzzing of flies, and the far-off shouts and battle sounds faded from his ears. He lost the knowledge that his friend was dead and forgot the crushing burden of his grief.
For the first time he reached inside a man’s body and touched the human heart.
60
FOUR FRIENDS
Rob washed Mirdin and cut his nails, combed his hair and wrapped him in his prayer shawl, from which half of one of the fringes was cut away, according to custom.
He sought out Karim, who blinked as if slapped upon hearing the news.
“I don’t want him in the mass grave,” Rob said. “His family will certainly come here to get him and bring him home to Masqat for burial among his people in sacred ground.”
They chose a place directly in front of a boulder so large elephants couldn’t move it, taking precise bearings and pacing off the distance from the rock to the edge of the nearby road. Karim used his privilege to obtain parchment, quill, and ink, and after they had dug the grave Rob carefully mapped it. He would redraw a good chart and send it to Masqat. Unless there was incontrovertible evidence that Mirdin had died, Fara would be considered an agunah, a deserted wife, and she would never be permitted to marry again. That was the law; Mirdin had taught it to him.
“Alā will want to be here,” he said.
He watched Karim approach the Shah. Alā was drinking with his officers, bathing in the warm glow of victory. Rob saw him listen to Karim for a moment and then wave him away impatiently.
Rob felt a surge of hatred, remembering the king’s voice in the cave, and what he had told Mirdin: We are four friends.
Karim returned and said shamefacedly that they must proceed; he muttered broken fragments of Islamic prayer as they filled in the hole, but Rob didn’t try to pray. Mirdin deserved sorrowing voices raised in Hashkavot, the burial chant, and the Kaddish. But the Kaddish had to be said by ten Jews and he was a Christian pretending to be a Jew, standing numb and silent as the earth closed over his friend.
* * *
That afternoon the Persians could find no more Indians in the forest to kill.
The way from Kausambi was open. Alā appointed a hard-eyed veteran named Farhad to be his new Captain of the Gates, and the officer began to bawl orders calculated to whip the force into readiness to leave.
Amid general jubilation, Alā made an accounting. He had gained his Indian swordmaker. He had lost two elephants at Mansura but had taken twenty-eight there. In addition, four young, healthy elephants had been found by the mahouts in a pen in Kausambi; they were work animals, untrained for battle but still valuable. The Indian horses were scrubby little animals ignored by the Persians, but they had discovered a small herd of fine fast camels in Mansura and doze
ns of pack camels in Kausambi.
Alā was aglow with the success of his raids.
One hundred and twenty of the six hundred who had followed the Shah out of Ispahan were dead, and Rob had the responsibility for forty-seven wounded. Many of these were grievously injured and would die during travel, but there was no question of leaving them behind in the ravaged village. Any Persian found there would be killed when fresh Indian forces came.
Rob sent soldiers through every house to collect rugs and blankets, which were fastened between poles to make litters. When they left at dawn the following morning, Indians carried the litters.
It was three and a half days of hard, tense travel to a place where the river could be forded without fighting. In the early stages of the crossing two men were swept away and drowned. In the middle of the Indus the current was shallow but swift and the mahouts placed the elephants upstream to break the force of the water like a living wall, yet another demonstration of the true value of these animals.
The terribly wounded died first, those with perforated chests or slashed bellies, and a man who had been stuck in the neck. In one day alone, half a dozen succumbed. Fifteen days of travel brought them into Baluchistan, where they camped in a field and Rob placed his wounded in an open-sided barn. Seeing Farhad, he sought an audience, but Farhad was all posturing and pompous delay. Fortunately Karim overheard and at once brought him to the tent to see the Shah.
“I have twenty-one left. But they must lie in one place for a time or they will die too, Majesty.”
“I cannot wait for wounded,” Alā said, eager for his triumphal march through Ispahan.
“I ask your permission to stay here with them.”
The Shah stared. “I will not spare Karim to remain with you as hakim. He must return with me.”
Rob nodded.
They gave him fifteen Indians and twenty-seven armed soldiers to bear litters, and two mahouts and all five of the injured elephants so the animals might continue to receive his care. Karim arranged for sacks of rice to be unloaded. Next morning the camp was filled with the usual frenzied bustle. Then the main body moved out onto the trail and, when finally the last of them had gone, Rob was left with his patients and his handful of men in a sudden lack of noise that was at the same time welcome and discomfiting.
The rest benefited his patients, out of the sun and the dust, and spared the constant jolting and shaking of travel. Two men died on their first day in the barn and another on the fourth day, but those who hung on were the tough ones who clutched at survival, and Rob’s decision to pause in Baluchistan allowed them to live.
At first the soldiers resented the duty. The other raiders soon would be back in Ispahan to safety and triumphant acclaim, while they had been given prolonged risk and a dirty job. Two members of the armed guard slipped away during the second night and were not seen again. The weaponless Indians did not attempt to flee, nor did the other members of the guard. Soldiers by profession, they soon realized that next time any of them might be struck down, and they were grateful that the hakim would risk himself to help their kind.
He sent out hunting parties every morning and small game was brought back and dressed and stewed with some of the rice Karim had left them, and his patients gained in strength even as he watched.
He treated the elephants as he did the men, changing their dressings regularly and bathing their wounds in wine. The great beasts stood and allowed him to hurt them, as if they understood he was their benefactor. The men were as stolid as the animals, even when wounds mortified and he was forced to cut stitches and rip open mending flesh so he could clean away the pus and bathe the wound in wine before closing it again.
He witnessed a strange fact: in virtually every case he had treated with the boiling oil, the wounds had become angry, swollen, and full of suppuration. Many of these patients had died, while most of the men whose wounds were treated after the oil had run out were without pus, and these men lived. He began to keep records, suspecting that this single observation perhaps had made his presence in India worth something. He was almost out of wine, but he had not manufactured the Universal Specific without having learned that where there were farmers, kegs of strong drink could be obtained. They would buy more along the way.
When finally they left the barn at the end of three weeks, four of his patients were well enough to ride. Twelve of the soldiers were burdenless and thus could trade off with those who carried litters, allowing some to rest at all times. Rob led them off the Spice Road at first opportunity and took a circuitous route. The longer way would add almost a week to their travel, which made the soldiers sullen. But he wouldn’t risk his tiny caravan by following the Shah’s larger force through a countryside in which hatred as well as starvation had been sown by the ravaging Persian foragers.
Three of the elephants still limped and were not given loads, but Rob rode on the back of the elephant whose trunk had received minor slashes. He was happy to leave Bitch and would be content never to ride a camel again. In contrast, the elephant’s broad back offered comfort and stability and a king’s view of the world.
But the easy travel allowed unlimited opportunity for him to think, and the memory of Mirdin was with him every step of the way, so that the ordinary wonders of a journey—a sudden flight of thousands of birds, a sunset that set the sky to flaming, the way one of the elephants stepped on the lip of a steep ditch to crumble it and then sat like a child to slide down the resulting earth ramp—these things were noticed but brought little joy.
Jesus, he thought. Or Shaddai, or Allah, whoever You may be. How can You allow such waste?
Kings led ordinary men into battle and some who survived were poor stuff and some were purely evil, he thought bitterly. Yet God had permitted one to be cut down who had had the qualities of saintliness and a mind scholars envied and coveted. Mirdin would have spent his life seeking only to heal and serve mankind.
Not since the burial of Barber had Rob been so moved and shaken by a death, and he was still brooding and in despair when they reached Ispahan.
They approached in late afternoon, so that the city was as he first had seen it, white buildings, blue-shadowed, with roofs of reflected pink from the sand hills. They rode directly to the maristan, where the eighteen wounded men were handed over to others for care.
Then they went to the stables of the House of Paradise, where he rid himself of responsibility for the animals, the troops, and the slaves.
When that was done, he asked for his brown gelding. Farhad, the new Captain of the Gates, was nearby and overheard, and he ordered the groom not to waste time trying to locate one horse in the milling herd. “Issue the hakim another mount.”
“Khuff said I would get back the same horse.” Not everything had to change, he told himself.
“Khuff is dead.”
“Nevertheless.” To his own great surprise, Rob’s voice and stare became hard. He had come from carnage that had sickened him but now he yearned for something to strike, violence as a release. “I wish the same horse.”
Farhad knew men and recognized the challenge in the hakim’s voice. He had nothing to gain from brawling with this Dhimmi and a great deal to lose. He shrugged and turned away.
Rob rode beside the groom, back and forth through the herd. By the time he saw the gelding he was ashamed of his ugly conduct. They separated the horse from the others and put a saddle on it while Farhad hovered and didn’t hide his contempt that this flawed beast was what the Dhimmi had been prepared to fight for.
But the brown horse trotted eagerly through the dusk to Yehuddiyyeh.
Hearing noises among the animals, Mary took her father’s sword and the lamp and opened the door between house and stable.
He had come home.
The saddle was already off the brown horse and he was in the act of backing the gelding into the stall. He turned, and in the poor light she saw he had lost considerable weight; he looked almost like the thin, half-wild boy she had met in Kerl Fri
tta’s caravan.
He reached her in three steps and held her without speaking, then his hand touched her flat belly.
“Did it go well?”
She gave a shaky laugh, for she was weary and torn. Only by five days had he missed hearing her frantic screams. “Your son was two days in coming.”
“A son.”
He placed his large palm against her cheek. At his touch the flooding relief made her tremble, so that she came close to spilling oil from the lamp and the flame flickered. When he was away she had made herself hard and strong, a leather woman, but it was deepest luxury to trust again that someone else was shielding and capable. Like turning from leather back into silk.
She set down the sword and took his hand, leading him inside to where the infant lay asleep in a blanket-lined basket.
Suddenly she saw the round-faced bit of humanity through Rob’s eyes, tiny red features swollen from birthing travail, fuzz of darkish hair atop his head. She felt annoyance at the kind of man this was, for she couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or overjoyed. When he looked up, mixed with pleasure there was agony in his face.
“How is Fara?”
“Karim came and told her. I observed shiva with her, seven days. Then she took Dawwid and Issachar and joined a caravan bound for Masqat. With God’s aid, by now they are among kinsmen.”
“It will be hard for you without her.”
“Harder for her,” she said bitterly.
The child began a thin wailing and Rob picked him from the basket and gave his little finger, which was taken hungrily.
Mary wore a loose dress with a drawstring at the neck, sewn for her by Fara. She opened the garment and lowered it beneath her full breasts, then took the babe from him. Rob lay down alongside them on the mat as she began to nurse. He moved his head onto her free breast and soon she felt his cheek’s wetness.