Samarkand the Omnibus: Books 1-2
Page 37
Carolyn stepped in front of the women, blocking Mufiqua’s way. The drugged, impudent son glared at her through fogged eyes, lifted his arm as if to strike. A few gasps rose from the novices. The overseer, though, held her ground firmly, her figure framed by streams of sunlight pouring down from the ceiling-high narrow windows. Although Mufiqua was about to slap her viciously, Carolyn made no move either to protect herself or to reach for the gem-encrusted curved knife strapped to her maroon leather belt Instead, she faced him squarely, her eyes ablaze in the manner of every angered Kazir woman. Mufiqua’s hand lifted higher, slowed, then trembled. He took a single step backward, nearly knocking into a huge clay flowerpot in his stupor, and Carolyn inwardly smiled. She’d won this little match of wits.
With a polite but reserved lowering of the head, turning her palms forward before him, she said calmly, “Your presence is unwelcome, my lord Mufiqua. Surely you meant no disrespect to your father, but I must ask you to leave and return at the appointed hour. The Khan would be most displeased if —”
“The Khan, the Khan!” Mufiqua sputtered, beginning to totter. He was seeing double now, two enraged overseers before him, and twice as many novices as there had been only seconds before. “What care I for the stupid rules my father imposes!”
The eunuch became livid at the outburst; he would have gladly strangled the slobbering son had it been in his authority. The girls became frightened, would have fled had not Carolyn warned them to stay put. Then to Mufiqua: “Perhaps you would allow me to find you a place to rest. By evening I shall present to you the loveliest woman in my charge.” She reached out to take hold of his arm, partly to steady his balance, partly to gently urge him away before further damage was done. Mufiqua pulled away roughly, pushing her with force. Carolyn fell back. Mufiqua broke into hysterical laughter at the sight. Blood was pounding inside his head, his dreams of purple clouds and heavenly visions stirred in front of his twitching face. “Whore!” he barked. “Do you know who I am? How dare you touch my person? Slut!”
Carolyn held down her seething anger, forced to remind herself this was neither the Steppes nor the Stronghold. Here she had a role to play, and she must not let her own grievances take command, not now, not while she was so close...
“Forgive me, Lord Mufiqua...Noble son of the mighty Khan, glorious —”
A distant rumble of thunder exploded, a thunderstorm rapidly falling over the city. Mufiqua raptly turned toward the verandah to peer at the darkening sky. He chuckled to himself, raised out his arms and called loudly, “I hear you, O Father. Send me your wrath against this woman who knows not who I am!”
Carolyn shared a quick glance with Jasmine. Mufiqua’s mind was clearly unbalanced, but until this moment no one had considered him totally deranged.
The son of Kabul faced the overseer again. “Do you hear? Do you hear how you’ve disturbed my father? Bitch of a whoring goat!”
Lightning struck, the horizon swirling with threatening grays and blacks. The guards, eunuch, and novices stared frozen and wide-eyed at the ranting lord. Even the concubines hidden behind the screens hushed.
“Your...father, my lord?” said Carolyn.
Mufiqua laughed. “Now do you know who I am, eh? Now do you know?”
Swallowing, feeling her mouth turn suddenly dry, Carolyn replied, “You have become a god.”
The ground shook with closer, violent claps of thunder; overhead, closed in a swell of dismal, churning clouds.
Mufiqua held out an arm, pointed directly at Jasmine. “That one!” he rasped. “Bring her to my rooms!”
The girl was aghast; with pleading, frightened eyes she implored the overseer to have mercy, not to heed his command.
“But, my lord,” said Carolyn, deftly blocking his view of her, “she is untrained! A novice. Surely you would prefer a woman of more experience, one who can fulfill your every thirst, even the thirst of a living god...”
Mufiqua’s eyes narrowed; he stared at Jasmine, seeing through the veil not the terrified country girl but rather the woman of his dreams, the street dancer, the female enchantress who’d escaped him for the last time. Sharon.
Rain fell, a swift and crushing torrential rain most uncommon in Samarkand at this time of year. Carolyn looked back to the scared novice, then again to the imposing figure of Mufiqua planted before her. You swaggering bastard, she thought. So now you’re a deity, eh? Your mind is so twisted and warped by your lusts and pleasures that all reality is lost. Laugh now, swine. While you still can!
She bowed deeply. “Your command shall be obeyed.” Straightening, she snapped her finger at the confused eunuch, disregarding Jasmine’s sobbing pleas. She said, “Have the novice bathed and suitably clothed. Lord Mufiqua must be honored this night.”
The eunuch’s jaw hung like a monkey’s. “But, Mistress!” he stammered. “She is not — the girl must first undergo — the Khan himself would never —”
“Stop sniveling like a hag! Obey my orders, eunuch — or suffer more than the loss of your manhood!”
Mufiqua roared at the sight of the recoiling eunuch, wishing he could have been there when his balls had been removed.
“No!” cried out Jasmine. The girl made to run, was quickly stopped by the guards, brutally thrown into the waiting arms of the eunuch. “I’d rather die!” she screamed, glaring at Carolyn, this woman who somehow she’d thought had been a friend. “I’ll never sleep with that pig! Never; do you hear! Never!”
Carolyn’s open hand smacked hard; Jasmine’s face darkened with the blow. The eunuch pinned her arms, allowing her to kick out freely, and pulled her away while the other novices looked on in total horror and disgust.
“Remove the bitch at once!” yelled Carolyn, her voice resounding above Jasmine’s continued protests. The overseer’s eyes remained cold as ice as she followed the trembling figure, her face as impassive as her gaze. Inside, though, she was bleeding. But control meant everything in a situation like this. Everyone would be observing her behavior — the concubines, the eunuch, the guards, whatever other prying eyes might be watching. Spies were everywhere, everywhere.
She turned back toward the drugged brute, a thin smile showing for him. I’ll play your game, bastard. Do your filthy bidding. But you’ve made a costly error. Thrown this poor frightened child into my arms far faster than I could have managed myself. For that, bastard, I am grateful.
“The girl shall be brought to you at nightfall,” she said evenly.
Mufiqua was no longer seeing double; his head had started to pound, the sure sign that the drug was wearing off. He must quickly return to his rooms, he knew, smoke once more. Tomorrow get hold of the pig Amar and have another package of the elixir brought at once. Oh, the price would probably be raised, as it always was when he needed the opium urgently; still, it was worth the cost, well worth the cost. What is money to a god?
“Nightfall,” Mufiqua repeated. He strode from the hall with a victorious grin etched in his sunken features, unaware that the solemn, loyal guards of the Khan considered him lower than a leper.
Chapter Fifteen
Soon it would be dawn. Not yet, but soon. Sharon had this thought as she sat hunched in the shadows of the sloping dune. She sifted her fingers through the grains, knowing that within a few hours the sun would make them burn like tiny fires. Night, day, night, day. Seasons come and seasons pass. Years, decades, centuries, millennia. Cities, nations, empires.
A looming silhouette, robed, stood fleetingly across from her in the starlight, then disappeared. Zadek, Sharon thought. Faithful Zadek. See how he trails me, watches over me, even when I have told him to keep away. By all rights she should be furious. What Kazir, mullah or no, would dare to disobey the Panther’s instructions? Who but Zadek would have secretly left the safety of the Stronghold and, alone, followed across the desert to here, at the very edge of the free lands, to be on hand at a time like this. Didn’t the mad mullah know the dangers? Didn’t he understand the importance of this morning?
A chill bit through her desert robe; she tightened her scarf over her face, leaving only her angry eyes exposed. It took no prophet, no soothsayer to know and understand the Khan’s vicious plans. Thirty years before, he and his tribe had swept out of the unknown plains of Central Asia, bent on conquest. Now he ruled a thousand leagues and more in every direction. An empire rivaling that of the mighty Alexander, of which Samarkand was the heart. Already his numberless regions had struck west, marching endlessly through the cold lands of Rus, sweeping past the Black Sea until they had forayed upon the very steps of the Christian holy city of Constantinople. With the Turks on the defensive, little could stop him from moving across the Bosporus into Europe proper, where crumbling Rome waited to be humbled. Such was the might of the Huns that simultaneously a similar attack was planned for the south, for the empire of Persia. Meanwhile his emissaries cunningly curried the favor of the Indian rajas, lulling them with false promises and offers of new wealth — even while clandestine forces surged through the passes of Khyber, waiting for the order to strike and take the entire subcontinent of India. And, when all this was accomplished, there was more — more than any conqueror had dared before: Cathay itself. China — all of it. Hun spies already fermented disorder, turning province against province in Kabul’s evil scheme to take the Forbidden City. From Rome to Peking — this was the terrible aim of the Huns, and it caused Sharon untold grief to realize that not one nation, not one empire, including that of the revered sanshah, was able to prevent it. No, only she, only she and her small army of fanatical Kazirs stood in the Khans way. A pesky fly determined to topple the elephant forever.
A few gray threads worked their way up from the eastern horizon, signaling the first comings of the new day. Her gaze swept past the dunes, out and over the scrub-weeded plain. Shadows were growing longer. Shadows of the advance patrol combing the Steppes in search of the elusive Kazir desert forces. She could hear the snorting and whinnying of tired horses. Hun patrols were few and far between these past years, each side willing to do little more than bait the other while their forces gained strength, biding time until the final conflict. Sharon, though, had special purpose for being here now, today, along this windblown dune. Below the mountains of sand nestled the remains of a tiny village. Until the conquest it had been a thriving community of hillmen. Herders, farmers, drawn to this place by its well and oasis. A peaceful village, quiet and serene, where for untold centuries caravans rested on their journeys west to Bagdad, east to the Afghani frontier. Now, as she peered among the rutted remains, there was no sign of life, only abandoned sheds and roofless mudbrick houses. No breakfast smoke rose from the hearths. There were no chickens, no dogs. Nothing. Only the eerie sounds of wind pushing past the poisoned well, rattling aging doors and shutters. A human skeleton clung to shredded cloth, immobile in the dusty street ever since the morning Khalkali’s army has swept through, butchering the men and most of the children, gathering up the crying women and dragging them back to Samarkand to be distributed as whores among the hordes.
A tear came to Sharon’s eye; she wiped it away, sniffed, and regained her frozen impassivity. The Hun patrol, perhaps fifty strong, was coming closer. Orange streaks had started to pierce the sky, and the Huns shielded their eyes from the brightness. The officer in command sent out three riders some hundred meters ahead, then signaled his men forward. Sharon grudgingly admired the skill of the riders, and knew them to be the finest horsemen in the world — save for the Kazirs themselves, whose prowess had long before earned them the name of “Phantoms.”
The Panther of the Steppes positioned herself lower, better concealed, and waited breathlessly. Her eyes were worry-filled; she shifted slightly, digging her boots. They must not suspect! she hissed to herself. They must enter the village in force, as always...
Some of the Huns were laughing, exchanging crude jokes among themselves. The outriders were already at the well, shields gleaming in new light, craning their necks and grimly peering this way and that. Satisfied all was quiet and deserted, they whistled to call the main force of the patrol forward. Spurred horses neighed, moved in a steady line past the first of the abandoned houses along the sloping outskirts. Down into the dry wadi they moved, then up and out along the weeded track.
A cold smile parted the desert Panther’s lips; she thought, Yes, this is the right thing. Kabul can only be stopped if every single piece is in place...
The captain of the patrol, a rugged commander with a thick neck, scratched at the edges of his great, drooping mustache and glumly swept his gaze beyond the well and along the curving street. For three years and more he’d been in control of this sector of desert, hating every moment, dreading these weekly forays ordered by his immediate commander, who himself had received instructions from Lord Khalkali. The war against the Kazirs was perhaps the most brutal and hopeless of all the Khan’s campaigns. The one-eyed devil pursued these desert tribesmen out of sheer hate and frustration rather than necessity. Had the captain his choice, he would have marched with Gamal. Yes, now there was war, the kind every Hun dreams of. Cities of wealth to be plundered, real armies to be fought — not fleeting ghosts. His comrades had returned to Samarkand with saddlebags bursting with booty — not to mention the slaves, the dark-skinned Turk and Arabian women they had stolen. Gamal had been a hero, Khalkali merely a brooding fool, relegated to governing this slice of useless desert, with scrubweed for plunder — and a silent Kazir knife in your back if you weren’t careful enough.
The soldier leaned over in his saddle and spat. All this would soon change, though, he was confident. For secretly, he and several other of Khalkali’s top commanders had already shifted allegiance, sworn to fight under Lord Jamuga’s banner, once the old Khan died. In Jamuga they saw the Huns’ only hope of new leadership — that and the lord’s personal promises that if they supported him, they would be rewarded beyond their wildest imaginations. The captain already fancied himself a general, leader of thousands, conqueror of the Indian frontier states, riding back to Samarkand one day in triumph similar to Gamal’s. A right hand to the new Khan, Jamuga, over the spineless corpse of Khalkali and his other dung-brained brothers.
He tersely barked for the outriders to move ahead once more, paying scant attention while they disappeared into the maw of the winding, shadowed narrow single street. A man can’t be too careful in the desert, the captain assured himself, taking firmer hold of his sword. He’d been fighting Kazirs too long for that, seen them appear literally out of the sand, attack, kill savagely, then vanish. Like the wind. Like the onslaught of a sudden hamsin. No, a man can’t be too careful.
He held up his hand, halted his weary forces. Impatiently he waited for the outriders to return. Long moments passed with only the sound of the wind.
“I don’t like it,” someone grumbled from behind. The captain shot the man an icy glance, then spat again. The deserted village did indeed seem sinister in the pale glow of dawn. This squalid hump of huddled mudbrick stood precariously close to the border of free Kazir territory, and as such needed constant attention. If the desert was the hammer, then places like this surely were the anvil.
With a low grunt he lowered his arm and signaled his force to move on without the return of the outriders. Pushing forward uneasily, his head snapped around at a sharp sound. The knife was already out of its scabbard when he saw the wind-pushed door, slanting on twisted hinges, banging gently against the outer wall of brick. Getting too jumpy, he told himself. Soon you’ll be believing in nightthings the old hil
lwomen rattle about.
They passed the broad, broken-corraled building knowing it to be the smith’s. The empty stalls stared gloomily back from within the shadows. For barely an instant something else, dark and malevolent, seemed to move within the darkness. A fleeting form...
The captain tugged lightly at his horse’s reins, nudged the black gelding closer to the smithy’s doorless threshold. Something inside had moved, he was sure of that; but whether it was a frightened jackrabbit or a well-concealed man in the rafters above the stalls, he couldn’t tell.
Pairs of double horses followed him, the main force lingering a few paces behind, arrows being drawn from quivers. This village was a perfect place for a surprise attack, the captain knew. A veritable trap, what with his men clustered along the narrow street, unable to spring loose and fight freely with the mudbrick structures so closely hugging either side. And where were the outriders, anyway?
The captain drew his sword. Halfway out of his saddle he heard the battle cry, the shrill, familiar Kazir cry of attack.
Simultaneously the doors of the houses banged open, desert-garbed, faceless Kazir fighters pouring through. Archers moved across the roofs, firing down a deadly barrage. A dozen horses reared, screamed. Some of his men slumped, arrows through their necks, hurled to the ground. Huns wheeled their steeds around, weapons drawn, swung low and mightily in wide arcs, slashing through the advancing ranks of the rushing desert men.
Ahead, from the curving track through which the outriders had disappeared, came a thundering company of mounted Kazirs, all robed in desert-white, unarmored, and unafraid of the fierce, mail-breasted Huns. In the rays of the new-born sun the battle was joined, wind howling amid the war cries, steel clashing against steel, dulled thuds of men being thrown from their saddles and trampled by frightened, rearing horses.