Samarkand the Omnibus: Books 1-2

by Graham Diamond

  Kabul dropped to his knees, groaned and put both hands to his head. “The pain!” he roared. “Stop the pain! Call the Chinaman at once!”

  Tupol hovered over his father’s swaying form, not knowing what to do. He could kill the pitiful Khan right now, he knew, proclaim himself as ruler here and now. Then he’d be free to deal with Temugin and his cunning stargazer, yes, deal with them without the use of his pets. But what of Sing-Li? How much power did the Chinaman truly have over Samarkand? And what about the armies? Could he ensure their loyalty once they’d heard of his patricide?

  Kabul stretched out his arm pleadingly. “Do something, Tupol! Do something!”

  Licking his lips, the clever youth stepped back out of reach. “Yes, Father; I shall. But only if you’ll proclaim me heir at once! Before these guards, so that they’ll bind you to your word!”

  “My lord Tupol!” gasped the first sentry. “We can’t do that! The Khan — the Khan’s not in his right mind!”

  “Shut up!” Tupol turned on them all. “I’ll make you commanders!” he promised treacherously. “All of you! Generals! Yes, even generals! Just swear that my father had his wits about him!”

  They looked at one another greedily, each knowing that such an offer would never come again.

  “Well?” demanded Tupol, his face hard and cruel.

  They nodded and bowed. “Hail Tupol! Hail, the heir to the throne!”

  The deformed son smiled with wicked satisfaction, glared down again to his stricken, sobbing father. “Well, old man?” he demanded. “Shall you pay the price for Sing-Li?”

  Kabul managed to lift his head and look toward his child. “I’ll — I’ll kill you for...this”

  Tupol laughed. “You’ll kill no one, you old gutter rat! How long I’ve been at your feet, in your shadow, groveling. Watched while you hailed Gamal, primed Krishna, made false promises to Khalkali and Jamuga.” He spat at the twisted form of his father and even the soldiers in league with Tupol gasped. “Now say it! Say I’m your heir, for now and forever! Say it, you swine; say it!”

  “Yes!” cried Kabul, rolling on the floor, out of his head with terrible torment. “Yes, I swear it! You are my heir! You are my heir! Only help me!”

  Tupol grinned and folded his arms. “You heard it one and all?” he asked of the soldiers. And one by one they dourly nodded. They had heard. Lord Tupol was to be the next Khan.

  “Good. Rest here, Father,” he said to the moaning man on the floor. Then briskly to the guards, “Find every man you can! We’re going to take the Forbidden Wing by force — and kill my brother Temugin if he raises a finger against me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Holding out his hand, Temugin displayed the duplicate of the Khan’s seal ring, peering sharply at the silent figure. Sing-Li sat stoic and solemn, his Oriental eyes gazing straight ahead at the son of Kabul but seemingly seeing nothing. All around, the Forbidden Wing had been turned into a shambles, result of the brief but bitter fight that had taken place as Temugin and his troops had smashed through the doors of the private quarter, putting to the sword all those in protection of the Chinaman, sealing off the chambers one by one and claiming this bit of territory in his own name. Now, the fighting done, Sing-Li defeated and a prisoner, the wing of the palace seemed curiously deserted, empty save for Temugin and his men, who stood grimly at the entrances, their eyes and armor reflecting the braziers.

  “Admit your treachery!” boomed Temugin, angrily waving his ringed finger at the seated physician. “Sign this document now — and spare yourself my father’s torture.” Hezekiah unraveled the hastily-scribbled parchment upon which the names of each dead son and the manner of his murder had been thoroughly documented — a confession meant to rid the Huns once and for all of the devious criminal.

  The Chinaman tilted his head and glared at Hezekiah as the seer began to read. His tone was low and serious, and Sing-Li listened intently, an inscrutable smile on features. The sound of the pounding wind outside contrasted harshly with the grave silence within, and although it was full daylight by now, the sky remained a bleak and forlorn gray.

  “Well, Chinaman?” demanded Temugin when the list was read. “What have you to say to that? Shall you admit to our Khan what you have done?”

  There was no reply, and Temugin flushed with anger. The Chinaman was goading him, he knew. Provoking him.

  “It’s no use, my lord,” said a soldier stationed behind the screen. “He’ll never freely sign. Let me have him, Lord Temugin. Let’s see if my blade can wag his tongue a bit.”

  Temugin paced over the Oriental carpet stained with the blood of Sing-Li’s trusted bodyguard. He scanned the chamber, not noticing the broken jade and porcelain artifacts scattered across the floor, thinking now only how to force the Chinaman’s admission of guilt, so that Kabul would not doubt the confession.

  “What say you, stargazer? Do we turn him over to my guard?”

  Hezekiah interceded between the flaring son of the Khan and his immobile prisoner. “He must sign without coercion, my lord. Otherwise the Khan will never —”

  “My lord Temugin!”

  Other soldiers came racing inside the room.

  “Well? What is it?”

  “The courtyard, lord!” rasped one, pulling aside the bamboo curtains and exposing the view below. Temugin turned and stared. A melee has started, he realized; a scrambling cohort of the Khan’s own personal guard had forced their way into the Forbidden Wing and were surrounding and battling with his own smaller force. “What —? What’s the meaning of this?” he shouted.

  The soldier fell prostrate, bloodied weapon in hand. “The Khan has called for your immediate surrender, my lord.”

  Temugin’s eyes bulged, a blue vein protruded down his forehead and wildly pulsed. “My surrender?”

  The mayhem was spreading, from the courtyard and gardens, up along the winding stairs, and spilling into the corridors. Shouting, screaming, the clash of steel on steel as Tupol directed the bloody assault against the unprepared and inferior guard of his older brother. One, two, three at a time Temugin’s men went down beneath the onslaught of swinging swords. Blood spilled like wine as the wounded and dying shrieked.

  Temugin roared like a wounded jungle cat; he spun from the window and the view of the carnage, called for those few soldiers within earshot to make a stand in these quarters. Kabul’s forces burst onto the landing, Tupol in the vanguard. “Brother!” screamed Temugin, and with blind rage he pulled his sword from its scabbard, ran insanely down the hall.

  “Kill him!” cried Tupol, sputtering. “Kill them all!”

  Hezekiah’s face grew taunt with the rising din. Sing-Li, seeing his chance at hand, leaped up from his seat, knocked the stargazer off his feet. As Hezekiah staggered, Sing-Li boldly hurled himself through the bamboo curtains and the panes of glass, rolling onto the verandah. The power of the punishing hamsin rocked inside the chamber. Hezekiah covered his eyes and tried to follow, but the wind pushed him back with demoniac force, and by the time he fought his way to the window, he saw the slippery form of Sing-Li, head covered by his cowl, scramble toward the low wall of the hanging garden and lift himself over.

  “The Chinaman’s escaping!” Hezekiah yelled, flying sand clogging his vision momentarily. And by the time he had regained it, Sing-Li had vanished, vanished secretly somewhere within the confines of the palace compound.

  The fight outside the room echoed through Hezekiah’s numbed brain. He turned to see a bloodied Temugin retreating from the corridor, breaking across the threshold. “They’re going to kill me, stargazer!” he whimpered. “Do something, do something!”

  “There is nothing I can do,” panted Hezekiah, wincing as another of Temugin’s loyalists fell.

  “The Chinaman!” wailed Temugin. “Get him! He’s my only protection!”

  Dumbly, Hezekiah pointed to the window, where the wind was wildly smashing against the broken glass. “Sing-Li’s gone, lord...”

  “Gone? Gone?
What do you mean?”

  Tupol broke into the windy chamber just as Temugin reached the bamboo curtains. The crippled son stumbled over the writhing body of his brother’s last soldier, his face now warped with the taste of the power in his grasp. His eyes were filled with scorn as he saw Temugin cower behind the seer. “You are under arrest, Brother!” he said, spitting out the words. His garments were smeared with blood; in his good hand he brandished a twin-edged hatchet awash in crimson. Until this moment he’d never before realized how much he enjoyed killing.

  “Arrest, Brother?” said Temugin. “For what?”

  “For crimes against the new Khan.”

  Temugin narrowed his brooding eyes. “The new Khan, Brother?”

  Tupol laughed demoniacally. “Me, brother! Me! Now to your knees! Bow before me, grovel like the hound you are — and plead for your life!”

  The older son of Kabul regarded his crippled brother incredulously. All his dreams, all the promises made to him by Hezekiah, at that moment shattered before him like the illusions they had been. “Can you not do something, stargazer?” he whined.

  Tupol laughed even more as Hezekiah shook his head. “Bow, you pig of a whoring mother! Bow!”

  At that instant Temugin lost all control. With an animal scream he lifted his sword with both hands, swung it high above his head, and came charging across the room. He lunged for Tupol, bringing down the fearsome blade in an arc, hoping to cleave his head off his shoulders with a single blow. Tupol crouched, spun, let loose his hatchet. The stocky weapon cartwheeled through the air and caught Temugin with such force that the older brother was heaved oft’ his feet as the hatchet sank with a thud into his chest. Temugin reeled wildly backward, gurgling throatily, slamming against the far wall, crumbling before the bamboo curtains.

  “My brothers are all dead!” chortled Tupol. “All dead! I am the Khan!”

  Hezekiah, amid the insanity of the gloating cripple and the cheers of his supporters, buried his face in his hands and plunged himself out onto the verandah, fighting for his very life against the might of the raging hamsin.

  “After him!” he heard Tupol shout dimly. “The stargazer must not get away!”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The Hun captain, magnificent in his glittering armor and plumed helmet, squinted his eyes from the tower battlement and swept his gaze across the gloom of the day. It was difficult to see much with the swirling wind and clouds of sand everywhere, but as he focused along the maze of tiny, distant streets, there was no doubt about the figures slipping from house to house, gathering in groups along the fringes of the deserted marketplace, gathering, constantly gathering.

  He was a dour and mirthless man, friendless and brutish. But a fine soldier, a very fine soldier. And his wise eyes knew at once that these movements throughout the city forewarned trouble. For why else, amid the ravishes of the hamsin, would men be moving toward the walls of the Great Mosque and the palace compound.

  His men on duty in the towers paid scant attention to these happenings, content to while away their time with grumblings and poor jokes, wishing that the brutal windstorm would run its course quickly. Never in their most fanciful dreams would they have thought that an attack could come at such a time.

  The captain shouted to his aide for the warning to be given. But through the din of wind his words did not carry. The second-in-command along the wall shook his head, gestured to the captain that he could not hear the instruction. The Hun commander gritted his teeth, angrily cursing this befouled weather, ran across the parapet and up the stone steps that led to the high tower. Then he cupped his hands around his whiskered mouth and shouted again. “The signal! Give the signal! The city is under attack!”

  From atop the domed roof of the lower mosque a robed figure appeared, crossbow in hand. His aim was perfect even in the wind, and the snubbed arrow careened high through the air, unseen amid the dust, and caught the Hun captain in the back of the neck. His second-in-command looked on wide-eyed, unhearing as his commander screamed, pirouetted off the steps and fell from the wall. In death he gave the warning that in life had not been heard.

  All at once the cries were everywhere. Out of the alleys and byways and clustered streets they came, hundreds upon hundreds at a time, weaving knowledgeably through the labyrinth of hovels and onto the boulevard, finally reaching the somber walls of the sacred temple itself. Knives glittered in the subdued, eerie light, and at the gates they grappled with unsuspecting guards, silently cutting their throats, flinging the iron gates open wide, then bursting through in hordes, scattering this way and that. The assault had begun.

  Bells clanged across the walls. Hun troops, startled and barely awake, rushed from their barracks to take up positions. “Kazirs!” shouted the officers of the watch to the troops. “The Kazirs are loose in the city!”

  The roar of wind continued, this time fanning the fires that had been purposely set. Women and old men ran from their homes, screaming and wailing as billowing clouds of black smoke rose above the searing flames. Samarkand was afire!

  “Insurrection, my lord!” said the general, bowing low and grandly before Tupol. “It’s taken hold everywhere, from one section of the city to the next. The peasants are out in the streets, howling while these Kazirs overpower our positions.”

  Tupol growled angrily, hobbled to the balcony of the room of state. In the corner lay the Khan, moaning and writhing, oblivious.

  “What are we to do, Sire?” said another general. “It won’t be long before they reach the palace or —”

  “Shut up and let me think!” barked Tupol. The soldiers lowered their heads. In his rage the crippled son of Kabul flung a brazier to the marbled floor, walked briskly toward the tightly shut windows. Kabul was sniveling, holding his hands to his wounded eye and groaning.

  “Will you be silent?” Tupol kicked his father roughly in the ribs and stepped over the writhing body. Kabul kept on whimpering, rolling over the tiles. “I must think!” said Tupol, fingertips gently massaging his temples. “I need time...”

  “There is no time, Sire,” someone said.

  Tupol looked around to identify the voice.

  “The Kazirs are pressing every advantage,” the soldier went on boldly, knowing that he was tempting his liege’s wrath. “Reports are coming in constantly. First they’ve taken the Old City. Then marched on to the tier of the Open Market. We had a hundred men stationed at that post, Sire, and it fell within minutes. The Great Mosque is under siege, the fires spreading quickly with this damned wind —”

  “I don’t want to hear any more about the wind!” flared Tupol. “And if there’s insurrection, it’s your job to stop it! Stamp it out before it takes hold!”

  The soldiers bowed again, backstepped as Tupol paced before them. “Yes, Sire, but how are we to fight these Phantoms in a storm? I tell you these Kazirs are uncanny! They fear nothing, nothing!”

  Tupol grabbed the general by his collar and flung him halfway across the opulent hall. “Coward! Consider yourself removed from your command.” Then to the other startled soldiers: “If any more among you wish to relinquish your own command, say so now — or stop whining and put an end to the rebellion!”

  “Yes, Sire,” they mumbled, and to a man they bowed and hurried from the room of state, out to where their solemn aides stood waiting for new orders. Dry lightning cracked, lit up the sky. Tupol stared and scowled. Fools, he told himself. Frightened by a handful of outlaws. By wind, by their own shadows. All shall pay for their cowardice. Pay with their heads!

  Kabul lifted himself to his knees, rocking with the intense pain smashing through his head. “Sing-Li,” he muttered weakly. “You — you promised to fetch me the Chinaman — ooof!”

  The kick of Tupol’s boot to his groin doubled the Khan over.

  “You promised! You promised!”

  “I told you to shut up, old man! How am I supposed to think, eh? To find a way to stave off this disaster and save your rotting empire from crumbling,
eh?”

  “But you gave me your word! I am still Khan, not you!” Tears were streaming out of his single eye and he rolled with the blows searing his brain. “Sing-Li,” he sniveled. “Bring me Sing-Li!”

  “I told you already!” Tupol boomed, shuddering as another and more violent strike of lightning catapulted across the dark heavens. “The Chinaman is gone! The Oriental coward! Fled the moment he could, before my forces could recapture him from Temugin!”

  “And where is my son Temugin? What have you done to him?”

  Tupol laughed, regarding his father with unabashed scorn, this glorious Khan, this leader of millions, this scourge of the earth now reduced to a useless invalid. He spat in his face, and Kabul crawled away on his belly, moaning. The pain, although it had begun hours before, was not lessening the way it always did. If anything, it was becoming worse, aggravated by the realization that this time there would be no Sing-Li, no Chinaman with his black box of needles, magical needles, that somehow cured his affliction.

  A shattering downdraft of wind hurled against the portico, swept inside the room through the cracks in the glass doors. Tupol roused from his spiteful thoughts against his father and stared forlornly out. It was afternoon already, he knew. The fires were ablaze, as they had been throughout the morning, out of control. Now the entire sky seemed little more than a reflection of the leaping yellow flames. He could not see the many battles that were rampaging among the snaking streets, nor hear the shrill cries of battle, but he knew all too well that the Phantoms, the ruthless Kazirs, would yet be converging across the length and breadth of the city, slowly whittling away at his own strongholds. A quick skirmish here, followed somewhere else by a massed frontal attack, cleverly encroaching upon the palace gates while the dreaded wind hampered his plans for counteroffense.

  Damn this hamsin! Damn this whole city! Once the rebellion is crushed, I’ll burn all of Samarkand to the ground and let the vultures feed off the ashes!