Tamburlaine's Elephants

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  Bandits. Not warriors. Hotheads. Don’t they know about the might of Tamburlaine? Idiots. Rusti swung his sword.

  Eyesight – all five senses – sharper than in all his life. Seeing everything! Faces, beaded with sweat. Smell of horse – sour breath. Scimitars. Same shape as the moon. Moon in the sky already: watching. Rusti raised his shield; heard a blade hit it: heard it with the marrow of his forearm. Something thumped his back: a limb hacked from some man’s body. Not his though. Check body. Nothing amiss – nothing missing…

  Except (he noticed) his blood had all flowed to the core of his body and his face was very cold.

  Horses and ponies crowding in. Legs pinched against Arrow’s ribs. Must reach open space. Two camels; riders armed with sharpened poles. Turn Arrow. Use body weight. Yah: can’t catch me!

  A jeering satisfaction. Eeeeasy.

  Somewhere, a bugle. Different, louder trump close by. Elephants broken loose – milling about, encircled by the fighting. Men wrestling hand-to-hand among their legs. Should have howdahs, and armour, and warriors up top, lobbing javelins and fire! Yowls and shrieks – war whoops and the screaming of men on the ground.

  A head rolled to a halt right in his path. No beard. Young, then.

  The skirmish was over. A few of the bandits escaped into the encroaching darkness. Most did not.

  Returning to the kibitki, its poles skewed, its roof charred, Rusti was greeted by Kavita, who threw his thin arms around Rusti’s neck and hugged him close. A couple of warriors riding by pointed and laughed at the sight of a slave-girl expressing her thanks for the saving of her worthless life.

  Rusti, embarrassed, tried to pull free of the wiry, clinging arms, but Kavita was strong. His mouth was close to Rusti’s ear and the admiration burst from him like hot steam, hissing. True, he was trembling, but not with terror. Kavita was quivering with a fierce, triumphant hysteria. His feet began to stamp, and Rusti realized he was dancing, celebrating the victory he had watched from under the folds of the fallen tent.

  The inside of Kavi’s head was alive with pictures. Like shadows thrown by a campfire, the pictures flared and flickered – the sweeping turn of those massed ponies, the silver forest of blades, man-and-horse made one, the colour of noise, the noise of bloodletting. All his secret thoughts had found shape. It was as if he had wished the skirmish into being. Now he saw Rusti in a new light – a hero and a warrior who could deal out death, a boy full of power, a boy as full of violence as himself.

  As for Rusti, what did he remember of the skirmish? Only that head rolling into his path; the expression on its face, the look in the eyes. A young face, no older than his own. Eastern eyes, but not Mongol eyes. A foreigner – an enemy, therefore, and ripe for killing. Except that Rusti himself had such eyes.

  They made the journey by elephant. Dawn was still a way off when they arrived. Kavi was a mahout once more, dress rolled up in a bundle under him and his hair wild. There might have been a joy in prancing through the moonlight, clinging to the dry wrinkles of the elephants’ necks, but there was only one idea filling Rusti’s head to bursting. All day he had barely spoken. All day he had thought about nothing but Zubihat. His home town.

  And here it was again: a few broken walls, some neglected fields and a single tower, sticking up like an old man’s last rotten tooth. Did the spirits of the Dead linger in this awful place, unable to escape their fearful fate, still reaching out imploring fingers? No wonder the locals had abandoned Zubihat. Elephants are sensitive to things invisible. Gajanan and Damini walked now as if the ground was hot, their feet hovering over stone and soil and litter, reading the story of Zubihat from the marks it had left in the earth.

  “Help me,” said Rusti, and Kavi gave a start. In this immense, sad silence, the smallest sound was unnerving. “Will you? You will! You have to help me!” demanded Rusti.

  “I help.”

  The tower was not as tall as Rusti had expected. It was not as tall as in his dreams. Stories grow in the telling. The real thing did not touch the sky or blot out the moon. It was the work of soldiers building in a hurry, anxious to be on their way again. Besides, a great many people can be crammed into quite a small space.

  In their long and brutal lives, the elephants of Delhi had been taught to do many things – to run towards men on horseback who were firing arrows, to pick their way through rubble and fire, to kneel and bellow on command. But now, their riders’ commands confused them. Damini and Gajanan rested their broad foreheads against the rough brickwork of the tower, but could not understand what more was being asked of them.

  Luckily, nature had planted in their great heads the instinct to uproot trees, and the instinct called to them now, as surely as if it were a voice within the tower. Both elephants leaned forwards, leaned with all their great weight, pushing – just pushing with their foreheads. There was a whispering grate of brittle pottery. The bricks had been baked in a hurry, used too new, not weathered by monsoon or sun. The mortar had been poor stuff, sloppy stuff. The builders had not been bricklayers. No architect had designed this chimney of baked mud. Now its bricks began to shift under the strain. Dust fell onto the elephants’ toes, like dried blood.

  With heels and sticks, Rusti and Kavi goaded them forwards again, side by side, to lean and push and strain – to barge over this unnatural, giant, lifeless tree in the dark, dark landscape. Kavi grinned at the thought of destroying something built by the Crooked One. He did not ask questions, ask, “Why?” He was simply glad. Somehow he had managed to infect Rusti with the same hatred as was raging in his own bloodstream.

  A hole. A clattering tumble of bricks. The elephants snatched their delicate trunks aside and the boys covered their heads with their arms. Bang! Bang! Sharp corners. Rough edges. The falling bricks grazed their faces and forearms, and Kavi yelped with pain. Rusti gave a cry of both terror and triumph. The tower was breached! He felt a surge of hope, too. Maybe, if he could break down this wall, he would be able to see into the Past, glimpse the Truth, find something he had lost. There was terror, too. What would he let loose from the tower if he broke it open? Bones? Or ghosts? The walking dead? Screams or rats or a flutter of groping hands? Sweat streamed down his face, and his teeth chattered, so that Kavi asked time and again, “You want we stop?”

  “Just help me, Kavi. Please. Just help me.”

  Scared to look up, in case a brick fell in his face, Rusti felt an odd compulsion, even so, to see the sky. Were those really bats? Those flickers of black? Or were they birds of ill omen? Or… The spirits of the Dead hang in the sky over the soil of their homeland: this much he knew. That meant that his mother’s spirit and his father’s – his real father’s spirit – were watching him now from behind the black fleece clouds, the hangings of moonlight. What would they think of this son of theirs? A warrior in the Great Emir’s army, a rider of elephants, a pretend Mongol boy masquerading as a man?

  By sheer force of will, Rusti set Gajanan at the tower once more, and the elephant pressed his great forehead to the brickwork…and stove it in.

  A torrent of bricks came thudding down all around, grazing Gajanan’s neck and ears, sending the poor beast stumbling backwards. One brick struck Rusti in the breastbone, another the side of his head, and he fell from the elephant’s shoulders onto the flat of his back. The sky above him was full of flying bricks. Gajanan’s feet, stepping and overstepping him, actually tugged a lock of his hair out of his skull. The clouds milled about the ghastly moon. He could hear the sound of bricks breaking brittle bones, and feared that they were his own…

  Kavi saw Rusti fetch down the tower on top of himself. He saw his friend fall, and dismounted in the blink of an eye. Stupid, reckless boy: what was he thinking of? Finding Rusti unconscious, Kavi dragged him by his feet out of the reach of falling masonry.

  Now! If Rusti was dead, Kavi could go – simply ride – away from the Horde, away from Borte and captivity – away from Kavita. Good! Good, then! Let Rusti be dead!

  Except that pan
ic and grief and hope and fright kept hitting Kavi in the head like falling bricks. Why? Rusti was just a Mongol, wasn’t he? Just one of the Crooked One’s dogs busy eating up the world. No loss.

  There again, if Kavi rode away, he would never achieve his ambition, never keep the promise he had made to himself.

  Suddenly: hoof beats. Kavi felt them through the soles of his feet, long before he heard them. Horsemen! And coming his way. Mongol outriders? Or the bandits who had attacked earlier? It did not matter much either way, if they found him here, alone but for two elephants and a dead warrior.

  “Rusti! Rusti, wake! Get up! Men comes!” Of course he did not want Rusti to be dead! Who else did he have in the world? Who else came to the rescue every time Death opened its jaws to eat Kavi? “Rusti up! Up!” he hissed, prodding his friend, grabbing his shirt, lifting his shoulders off the ground. Ha! Kavi could get an elephant to its feet with a word and a push, but he had no idea how to do the same with a boy! Closer and closer came the drumming hoofs.

  The elephants! How could they miss seeing the elephants? Kavi ran to Gajanan and Damini and drew them coaxingly, tenderly behind the base of the tower. He had them kneel down, coiling their trunks away as if he were tucking them into bed. At night, from a distance – with luck – they might just look like an outcrop of rocks, their silhouettes broken up by fallen rubble. Then he ran back and dragged Rusti by his heels into the only hiding place he could think of – into the base of the ruined tower.

  He was greeted by a smell of decay, moss and bat lime. The wall still stood to a height higher then his head, shutting out the moonlight. His groping fingers told him that the floor was piled high with smooth sticks and bricks and litter. The horsemen must be within sight of the tower by now. Kavi curled up on his knees, folding himself down till his forehead touched the ground, letting his shoulders droop.

  Back in Delhi – a thousand years before (or so it seemed) – he had seen the wise men – the swamis and yogis – fold themselves away like this, to rest their souls and bodies, curled up like children in the womb. In fact Kavi could almost hear a mother’s voice whispering to him now: Lie still, child. Peace, child. All’s well…

  The bandits slowed their ponies to let them breathe, and to take swigs from a pigskin flagon. They noted the tower silhouetted against the moon, and, being local men, saw that it had shrunk to a stump since the day before. Had the detested Timur-the-Lame ordered it to be pulled down? Should they take a look inside? Should they see if the stories were true? See what twelve years could do to a hundred old men, women and… They shuddered superstitiously and shared the flagon again, to get up more nerve. Then they dug their heels into their ponies’ sides and trotted towards the ruin.

  All of a sudden, with a soughing roar, a blue glow engulfed the broken tower. Ice-blue fire. It flared high into the sky, loosing streamers like shot silk; flapping, fluttering, luminous vapour – sapphire tongues that licked at the underside of the moon.

  Superstitious dread seized the riders and spooked their ponies. The man holding the flagon dropped it, but they were far too scared to go back for it. They rode as if the ghosts of all their enemies were after them.

  When Rusti came round, he found himself in a charnel house of bones. But he had dreamed it so many times before that it seemed like just another nightmare. For a long time he lay looking up at the sky, wondering how much damage the bricks had done to him. Beside him, Kavi unfolded like an exotic flower. It seemed time to tell the truth. This was no place fit for lies.

  “My mother was walled up in this tower,” Rusti told him. “The Chronicler told me. She pushed me out through a hole in the wall. I am a tajik like you.”

  A long silence greeted his confession. At last Kavi held up a long thighbone and studied it, frowning. “Your mother? She is here?”

  Rusti thought about this. “No. Not now,” he said. “She is here now.” And he laid one hand over his heart.

  Kavi the Mahout might have covered his own heart and thought of his own mother. Kavita said,“I am not tajik. I am slave.”

  Outside, their elephant Gajanan pulled herself to her feet and, in brushing against the tower, dislodged another shower of bricks.

  “Why did you drag me in here?” said Rusti, both arms shielding his head. “Safer outside.”

  So Kavi told him about the riders, and about the need to hide. And Rusti said that Kavi was not slave at all, but a friend – a good friend. The best.

  Once – a thousand years before – Kavi the Mahout might have smiled and pressed his palms together and bowed his thanks. “Kavita the Slave” only threw aside the thighbone, sniffed his fingers and pulled a face. He looked round at the dreadful remains, and mentally added another crime to Tamburlaine’s account. “I help you,” he said. “Now you help me.”

  “Help you?” said Rusti. “Help you escape, you mean?”

  Kavita shook his head, long hair spilling round his face, wild as madness. “No. No. Help kill Crooked Pig. Soon. One day. We kill him. Yes?”

  One week later, the white tent of the Royal Chronicler was pitched once more among the others in the Royal Enclosure. Rusti was sent for once again, to play chess. And yet, when he arrived, there was no sign of the chessboard.

  “I have been absent,” said Shidurghu. “My duties took me another way.”

  “I know,” said Rusti, feeling clever. “You had to act as the Emir’s interpreter. Because you come from these parts, don’t you?”

  The Chronicler’s face twisted into a knot of surprise or irritation. “No! Who says so? Not at all. It is a lie. I know the language, but I know many languages! The Mighty Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction requires it!”

  Rusti pulled his lips between his teeth and bit down hard, vowing not to open his mouth ever again and risk saying the wrong thing. He dared not even leave; despite the terrible silence cramming the tent, the old man still seemed on the verge of speaking. Sure enough:

  “I must chronicle all that happened while I was gone. Perhaps you can help me. Did anything happen of which I should make note?”

  “Me?” Rusti’s face burned. Why would the old man ask him…unless he knew… Unless he suspected. Unless he could read minds.

  “You saw the tower? At Zubihat?”

  Rusti’s mouth turned dry in the instant. He licked his lips and nodded, but seeing that the old man’s eyelids were closed, had to force himself to do more than nod. “I saw,” he said.

  “Are they not magnificent, the works of the Great Emir? Has he not left his mark on the world of men?”

  Rusti swallowed. He had no idea what he was supposed to say. He thought it might choke him to agree. So he just repeated: “I saw.” When Shidurghu showed no sign of opening his eyes or of continuing the conversation, Rusti backed towards the door. His hand was on the tent flap when the old man mumbled something:

  “They say that at night blue flames rise from its summit. High into the sky. Heatless blue flames. Is this true?”

  “Not any more.” It fell out of Rusti’s mouth, unstoppable as an egg from a duck.

  The old man’s pale eyes snapped open. They bored into Rusti, prising more words out of him like it or not.

  “It fell down. The tower. A bit. Well, quite a lot. Fell down.”

  “Truly?” Shidurghu could not disguise his astonishment.

  “Lightning I expect!” lied Rusti, on the spur of the moment. “Or maybe a stampede ran into it! Buffalo. Or deer. Or camels! You could write that down in your History.”

  Shidurghu closed his eyes again and released Rusti from their alarming gaze. Awkwardly the boy backed out – remembering not to turn his back! – keeping his eye fixed on the unpredictable writer-down of History.

  So he saw the old man whisper, in words intended for no one else to hear: “The wonder of elephants!” as a single tear crept down the papery, yellow cheek.

  They planned all kinds of ways to murder the Emir. That is to say, Kavita planned and Rusti pointed out why the plans would not work
. Kavita thought of pits with sharpened spikes in the bottom.

  “A bodyguard always rides in front of him,” said Rusti.

  Kavita thought of poison.

  “He has a food taster,” said Rusti.

  Kavita thought of setting the royal kibitki alight.

  “His hounds would bark when you got close,” said Rusti. “Or his leopard would eat you.”

  “So I sit on him with elephants!”

  And Rusti laughed, because there is something comical about the idea of an elephant sitting down on a king.

  Chapter Eleven

  SAMARQAND

  The Horde pitched camp on the Rose-mine Plain, outside the walls of Samarqand – a velvety expanse of vivid green grass crossed by two roads as straight as the flight of arrows. Along these roads came messengers, at a gallop, carrying dispatches for the Emir, delivering his letters and summonses. In Samarqand, his fortune-tellers would read Tamburlaine’s horoscope and advise him how to become still more powerful in the coming year. His wives would show him the latest children born to him. His spies would report on rebellions or quarrels, plots or corruption in the four corners of the world.

  With every passing hour, hundreds more kibitkis went up as the Horde reached its capital city – thousands of molehills sprouting on the smoothest of lawns. There was an air of excitement, delight, celebration. The Horde had survived another campaign (those who were not dead). They had arrived home much richer (except for those who had lost everything). They had distinguished themselves as heroes (those who had not been maimed for thieving or beheaded for cowardice). They had been at war and bought themselves some peace. Now they were home for a rest.

  They would not stay long, of course: nothing would induce them to settle down. They would not grow soft, like the tradesmen and slaves and craftsmen who lived here all year round. But they had been on the rout, and they deserved a little comfort. Now was the time to turn loot into hard cash and put it to good use, feasting.