“Kerman, Damascus, and Gaza.”
Jaufre nodded. “I see. As it happens, havildar, my party wishes to travel west,” he said.
“Does it? And how many are in your party?”
“Four.”
The havildar scratched his chin, staring off into the middle distance. “I have no wish to be discourteous, young Jaufre of Cambaluc, but in these unsettled times I would be remiss in my duty to the security of the caravan if I did not inquire as to your companions, and your business.” The havildar’s gaze was steady on his.
“Of course,” Jaufre said. “We are merchants, late of the house of Wu Li, also of Cambaluc.”
“Wu Li,” the havildar said. “I have heard the name.”
“My master was not accustomed to travel west beyond Kashgar, but he had a large network that extended as far as Venice,” Jaufre said.
“News came down the Road some time back that Wu Li had died.” The havildar’s tone carried only mild inquiry, but his gaze was intent.
“Sadly, that is so. Early last year.” Jaufre thought the wound scabbed over but something in his expression made the other man look away.
“My condolences on the death of so worthy a master,” the havildar said, bowing, more deeply this time in respect of Wu Li’s memory.
Rambahadur Raj made fresh tea and renewed their cups. “There was mention of a daughter,” he said meditatively. “Is she one of your party?”
Jaufre unclenched the teeth that had snapped shut. “We left Cambaluc together. Of necessity, we took different routes on the Road. The intent is to meet again in Gaza.”
“Hmm,” the havildar said. “I can’t seem to recall the name of Wu Li’s agent in Kabul…”
“Grigori the Tatar,” Jaufre said, and pointed. “He lives on the edge of the market, near the Grand Mosque.”
“I am acquainted with Grigori,” the havildar said. “The others in your party?”
“You have already met Félicien,” Jaufre said.
“And what is it you do, young man?”
“I am a scholar, and a seeker after truth,” Félicien said, not without pride.
The havildar grunted. “A full-time occupation these days. I wish you luck with it. Who else?” he said to Jaufre.
“Shu Shao, a healer and Wu Li’s adopted daughter.”
“Another healer is always useful,” the havildar said, nodding his head. “That’s three. You said you were four?”
“The fourth is…” Jaufre couldn’t help making a face. “Hari of India. He is…chughi.” At Rambahadur Raj’s quizzical glance, he added, reluctantly, “A priest.”
“A priest?” the havildar said, thoughtfully. “A proselytizer?”
“No,” Jaufre said firmly, repressing the memory of Hari being beaten before the gates of Kashgar for practicing religion without a license. “He is, as is young Félicien here, a seeker after truth.”
“So long as he doesn’t seek after one truth to the exclusion of all others,” the havildar said drily.
“He does not,” Jaufre said, still firmly, and resolved to make the matter plain to Hari before they set out. “And the fee?”
“You will mount yourselves?”
“We will.”
“Provide your own food and fodder?”
“Yes.”
The havildar mentioned a sum, Jaufre reacted in horror, and after fifteen minutes they had agreed on a sum that Rambahadur Raj thought was too low and Jaufre of Cambaluc thought too high. A good bargain, sealed by a handshake.
“Consider you have been given the usual warnings against fire and quarreling with your neighbors,” the havildar said.
“Of course,” Jaufre said.
“As to our departure, as I said before. We leave the instant my merchants have sold their last sack of rice, their last bale of cotton, and their last slave.” The havildar raised his voice. “Alaric!”
One of the guards, taller than the rest, detached himself from a group of men setting up tents. “Havildar.”
“Meet Jaufre of Cambaluc. His party of four will be joining us when we depart Kabul. Jaufre of Cambaluc, meet Alaric the Templar, my second in command.”
“Not a Templar, havildar,” the man said in a long-suffering tone.
He was dressed in the ankle-length, belted coat and baggy pants with the gathered hems of the Persian, and at first that was what Jaufre mistook him for. As he approached, though, Jaufre saw that his face was long and his nose thin, and when he raised a hand in casual salute of the havildar his sleeve fell back and Jaufre saw a flash of paler skin and realized that the color of his face came from long exposure to the sun.
Most interesting of all, the sword that hung at Alaric’s side could have been the twin of Jaufre’s own.
5
Talikan, spring, 1323
“YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS,” Johanna said.
She was ignored, and in spite of the clear warning in Firas’ eyes she went so far as to lay a hand on Farhad’s sleeve as he brushed past her. “Farhad, if you fight Ogodei, he will kill you, he will kill every single one of your people and he will raze Talikan to the ground. To the ground, Farhad!”
That morning, upon the discovery of the bodies, Johanna had sent Tarik back for the sheik, who had sent his son. Farhad had looked at the remains of his scouts and returned them all inside the walls of the city at once. The sheik had dispatched other scouts to confirm the story, and the men who came back all too quickly bore first-hand-reports of an approaching army infiltrating the valleys between the surrounding hills and laying waste to everything and everyone in its path.
“How soon will they get here?” the sheik said.
The first scout exchanged a glance with his peers. “An hour, my lord,” he said. “Perhaps two. No more.”
The sheik and his son, aided by a circle of grim-faced counselors, began immediately to lay plans for a siege. Now, an hour and a half later, they stood on the wall next to the great eastern gate now, watching Ogodei’s army spill from the hills onto the verdant plain between the hills and the city. Columns of smoke rose from farm buildings and villages.
Johanna wasn’t supposed to be there at all, but she had taken advantage of the panic and confusion of the first moments of discovery to follow Farhad to his father’s side. So far, everyone had been too busy to notice, or if they had, too distracted to order her back to the harem. “Look!” she said now, pointing. The Mongol army seemed to move forward like lightning, in horizontal bolts that covered terrifying amounts of ground in thrusts and forays. “They will be on the city in minutes!”
Farhad cast a casual glance over his shoulder and gave her an indulgent smile. “Calm yourself, Nazirah. Remember, we have seen this Ogodei. A bully, merely, who like all bullies backs down at the first challenge.”
“A bully with a hundred thousand men, Farhad,” she said. “And they are Mongols. It hasn’t been that long since Genghis Khan laid waste to the Persian empire. You must have heard the stories.” She thought of Halim the dyer, and of Alma and Hayat, and of Ishan the stable master. What Ogodei’s men would do to them and their families would make death seem like a blessing. She tried to speak in conciliatory tones that would reach beyond the pride that formed such a strong barrier between Farhad and any reasonable viewpoint. “A bully, perhaps, as you say, but a bully with siege engines, and poisoned arrows, and fire bombs, and Ogodei alone knows what other horrors.”
“I would match our walls against a hundred hundred thousand such men. We have withstood sieges before, Nazirah. There is nothing to fear.”
His father was standing a few paces away and before Farhad could stop her she stepped in front of him, dropping to her knees to touch her forehead to the floor. “Sheik Mohammed, I beg you, for the life of your city and the lives of all its citizens, I beg you to hear me.”
There was a sudden stillness in their immediate surroundings. No one in Talikan had ever seen Johanna offer anything but defiance to anyone within its walls, and her obeisance shocked t
hem all into momentary silence.
The stillness gave her hope. “Lord, you have observed Ogodei with your own eyes. He was known as an ambitious man in Cambaluc, it was the reason he was posted to the West when he was named to his hundred thousand. He is a great admirer of the Great Khan, Genghis himself. It was suspected in Cambaluc that he views himself as a stronger ruler than any vying for power in Everything Under the Heavens.” She was speaking rapidly, afraid that she would lose the sheik’s attention. “He was a friend of my father’s, who knew him well. From the words of my father, the honorable Wu Li, whose voice was respected from Cambaluc to Kashgar, I believe I divine Ogodei’s thought. I believe that he wishes to build his own empire on the back of your own, and with that empire at his back to bring even Everything Under the Heavens itself under his rule. Perhaps even to challenge Oz Beg Khan in the north.”
She raised her eyes and somewhat to her astonishment found the sheik looking directly at her. Encouraged, she said, “Lord, I beg you, I beg you on behalf of all the people of Talikan to treat with Ogodei. If you submit to his rule, he will spare you and your city.” She swallowed. “If you defy him, he will destroy it, and every citizen in it.”
He opened his mouth as if to reply, and then shut it again. “When they come,” she said quickly, “the front troops will consist of every man, woman and child from surrounding towns in villages, as well as soldiers defeated in other battles whom they have taken prisoner. They will drive these before their own troops, forcing you to waste your arrows and bolts before Ogodei’s own troops arrive at your gates with siege engines.”
“We have no report of siege engines in the infidel’s train,” the sheik said.
“They will build them,” she said. “Even now their engineers are razing the villages and towns they have captured for materials.”
“Father,” Farhad said, “she can’t know any of this. And why would you listen to a woman who dares to speak in your presence of war anyway?” He seemed to recall where they were. “She should not be here. She out of her place. Send her back to the harem.”
It felt as if they were standing at the center of a large storm, surrounded by a whirlwind of frantic effort and only nearly contained panic. Johanna was conscious of Firas standing behind her, of Farhad one pace to left, and of the sheik, tall and still in his white robes, the white band of his headdress casting shadow over his deep set eyes. She hadn’t seen him in over a month. He had lost weight. He looked pale and tired and she got the impression that he stood erect beneath the weight of his robe only with great effort.
He stirred. “My son has a point. How is it you know so much of the war tactics of the Mongols? Your father must have been foolish indeed to allow it.”
“Lord, what does it matter!” she cried. “They are Mongols! Remember Baghdad! Remember Kiev! They have made an art of warfare! If you resist, they will destroy you, and Talikan, and every living soul inside its walls!”
The sheik listened as the echo of her words was devoured by the thunder of the approaching army.
In an agony of apprehension, she could only imagine what was going on inside his head. The Persians were a proud race, even now, hundreds of years after the fall of the empire that had once laid claim to everything from Khotan to Zaranj to Toprak Kala. Broken now into many separate pieces, walled cities and oasis towns separated by vast stretches of steppe and desert and truncated and isolated by mountain ranges, it was every community for itself. No leader of any community, no Persian and certainly no follower of Allah would find it easy to bend the knee to a barbarian horde out of the East.
But this man must, she thought desperately. He must.
He raised his contemplative eyes from her face and looked at his son standing behind her. “Perhaps it would do no harm to speak to them,” he said.
Something seized her braid and she cried out in surprise and pain as she was yanked from her knees to her back. Farhad dragged her across the rough stone and dropped her in an unceremonious heap out of his way.
“You are old, father,” Farhad said, “with an old man’s ideas.” And before anyone could say anything else, before his father could move out of the way, Farhad drew his scimitar and thrust it deep into his father’s breast.
Johanna watched numbly as blood welled from around the blade and stained the front of his robes. His legs buckled and he crumbled to his knees before his son, in a parody of the Muslim observance of prayer.
Farhad withdrew his sword from his father’s chest and flicked the blood from the blade. Johanna felt warm splatters on her face. “We shall not kneel before this infidel horde and beg for mercy,” he shouted. “We will fight!” There was a ragged cheer, although there were more than enough older men who did not cheer, who had heard Johanna’s words, even if those words had been spoken by a woman. They were older men, she noticed with the part of her mind that was still functioning. The younger men looked excited and all of them had their swords out and raised in salute to Farhad. “And we will not just fight, we will destroy them utterly!”
He raised his scimitar over his head. A last drop of blood ran down the silver blade. “Allahu Akbar!”
“Allahu Akbar!” This time the response was larger and louder and longer.
“Allahu Akbar! God is great! Allahu Akbar!”
And with that, the transition of power was complete. Farhad began snapping out orders. Men leapt to obey.
Johanna tore her gaze away from the still face of the late Sheik Mohammed and got to her feet. “You are a fool, Farhad,” she said fiercely, “and my only consolation is that you will know just how big a fool before Ogodei kills you!”
He looked over her head. “You, Firas, isn’t it? See the Lady Nazirah safely back to the harem.”
“Lord.” Firas took her arm and force-marched her away. “You do our cause no good by calling him foolish in front of his men,” he said in a fierce undertone.
“I would call him more than that!”
He gave her a hard shake. “Be still! This may be our chance.”
Her vision, occluded by rage and fear, cleared at once. “To get away?”
“Yes, but we will have to do it before the city is surrounded.”
“They will flank it,” she said. “Ogodei knows me for Wu Li’s daughter, he will know North Wind, could we not ride out to meet him and beg for the city’s life?”
The glance he gave her was pitying. “Nothing you said to Farhad was untrue, young miss. If the city fights, it and all the people in it are forfeit. It is known that Ogodei has done the same to other cities ever since he came down from the Terak. He is building his own empire, and he will brook no interference. Besides, you have forgotten.”
She looked at him.
“Gokudo,” he said.
She halted at the top of the steps, and a sliver of unease shivered down her spine. “Gokudo,” she said, although it sounded to Firas more like a hiss, and then they were both nearly knocked from their feet by a deafening roar of challenge that they could feel through the very stone of the walls of Talikan itself. As one, they turned and raced to peer over the side of the wall.
As far as the eye could see the plain was covered with men on horseback, mirrored armor glittering in the morning sun. Spears beat against shields and the shouts of a hundred thousand warriors joined in a deafening wave of sound. They were laughing, shouting, gesticulating obscenely at the men on the wall and above the gate. As more and more of them poured from the hills into the plain, Johanna saw more than one defender of Talikan grow momentarily still and pale beneath the sinking realization that there would be no defeating this massive army. Most of them had very probably never seen a hundred thousand men in one place before. Ogodei’s force filled the plain in a broad wedge from canal on the right to river on the left, which left Talikan surrounded on every side they weren’t bordered by water.
A ragged hail of arrows sailed over the walls and struck at Ogodei’s front lines, filled with unarmed men, women and children who looked li
ke farmers and their families. They fell, pierced by Talikan’s arrows, and more were shoved forward to take their place. It was a plan designed to take the heart out of the fiercest defender, their own arrows killing their own people, and it did not fail of effect. An order was shouted, Farhad’s voice, she thought dazedly, and another flight of arrows hurled themselves from behind the walls, striving for farther targets, most of them failing to find them.
“They are wasting ammunition,” she said, her voice lost in the cacophony. Who knew that war was so loud?
She looked then for Ogodei, and picked out an unarmed man riding bareback, moving swiftly from the front of the force to a knot of men on a small rise well out of bowshot. The rider would be a courier, and she followed him as he bowed to the figure at the center of the knot. She pointed, and Firas pulled her hand back when an arrow sailed over her head too close for comfort. The Mongols were shooting back, but not in any concentrated way. They were saving their arrows, she thought. Farhad, if he had a brain in his head, would notice and act accordingly.
She had no hope that he would.
Firas put his mouth to her ear. “We must go!”
But then her eyes found Gokudo.
He was forcing his way through the throng gathering around the great wooden gates, which inside had four sets of massive wooden bars dropped into heavy brackets embedded into the walls. They looked formidable from where Johanna stood, until she looked again at the force on the other side of them.
Gokudo, the dull black of his quilted armor set apart from the sewed skins of the Mongols, looked more so, especially with the tall black spear with the curved blade held at his side.
Being told that he was alive when she had left him for dead so many leagues and months ago was one thing. To seem him resurrected before her was like a body blow, and she bent at the waist, gasping for breath. Firas grasped her arm and drew her upright, preparing to pull her from the wall by force if he had to.
By some malign chance Gokudo chose that moment to look up. He saw her immediately, and there fell one of those odd, fleeting moments of stillness that come in the middle of even the bloodiest of battles. The world fell away, and there were only the two of them left, she staring down at him, he staring back up at her.
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