House of War

by Victor Foia

He cast an intense look over his audience and seemed pleased to see many of his students nodding. “The commander with the best archers, the most skilled swordsmen, and the fleetest horses wins the glory, the booty, and his god’s approval. Isn’t that so?”

  “Insha’Allāh,” the students said in unison.

  “Yes, indeed,” Enver said, “such a commander will win the war, only if Allah wills it.” He wiped his eyes and lips with a rag then stowed it in the sleeve of his mantle. “Before the great battle of Ankara, both Tamerlane and Beyazid prayed to Allah facing the qibla. Then they both declared to their troops, ‘Today we shall be victorious, Insha’Allāh.’”

  Mehmed, who’d been lost in thought until now perked up at the mention of his ancestor.

  “Historians concur that Beyazid’s archers, swordsmen, and riders were better than Tamerlane’s. They’d been hardened battling for decades the best European armies.” Enver paused to catch his breath. “Over the same decades, Tamerlane’s soldiers had been fighting hordes of poorly armed civilians who cowered at the sound of his name.” He paused again, this time for effect, and his eyes drilled into Mehmed’s. “Can then anyone tell me why Tamerlane trounced Beyazid at Ankara?”

  The students looked at each other, then, as one, turned to Mehmed.

  “It’s common knowledge he was betrayed by his Christian allies,” Mehmed said.

  “I lied when I proclaimed that war is a clash of arms,” Enver said, and raised his hands in mock apology. “What I should’ve said is, twenty percent of war is a clash of arms. The remaining eighty percent is a clash of footwear, underwear, outerwear, porridge, drinking water, medicine, horseshoes, saddles, belts, buckles, arrowheads, rain shelter, axle grease, gun powder—”

  Enver uttered the last sentence in one breath, and now, exhausted, let his head droop. After resting a few minutes, he resumed as if nothing had happened. “Prince Mehmed’s great-grandfather lost the war not because of the defection of his allies, but for want of drinking water. I know because it was my job to supply it. But when Beyazid’s men and horses began to falter after fighting under a fierce sun for over eight hours, and when fresh water was all they needed to finish off Tamerlane, my water cisterns were stuck a day’s march in the rear.”

  The students let out a gasp, and Mehmed jumped to his feet.

  “You’re playing tricks on us, Enver Pasha,” he said, heated. “If you’d failed in your assignment, my grandfather would’ve executed you when he took power after Beyazid’s death. Instead, he let you keep your job as quartermaster.”

  Enver gave a brief chuckle, then said with a disarming smile, “You’ve caught me, My Prince. I didn’t fail in my duties at Ankara. Your illustrious great-grandfather was simply too impetuous to allow the movement of troops and supplies to be properly coordinated.”

  Enver spent the rest of the day, eight tedious hours, detailing the tasks the quartermaster was responsible for in supporting a large campaign: renting draft-animals, repairing bridges and roads, victualing the troops, watering the entire army …. Vlad’s notes filled ten pages and still it seemed Enver was nowhere close to ending his disquisition. There was no aspect of war preparation he hadn’t been involved with in his sixty-year career.

  Mehmed had been right about Enver being obsessed with minutia, but wrong about being boring. The old quartermaster’s dissection of logistic elements revealed for Vlad the true strength of the Ottomans. It wasn’t the large number of troops they commanded, or their fighting skills. It was their ability to fulfill the needs of the army before the first arrow was shot. Enver demonstrated that the outcome of any war was decided long before the soldiers set in motion for the front line.

  Vlad planned to memorize all he could of Enver’s lecture, so upon returning home he’d be able to share his new insights with Marcus. As the future king of Wallachia, his brother would treasure such intelligence on the country’s greatest enemy.

  “Tomorrow I shall tell you how the dread of horse manure earned Beyazid the nickname of Yıldırım, the Thunderbolt,” Enver said with a whimsical smile.

  “Father must’ve sent Enver to Bursa only to test my submission to his appointed teachers,” Mehmed said as he and Vlad left the classroom. “I should have him disemboweled for the things he’s been saying about Beyazid.”

  “Enver’s giving you a valuable lesson on what makes a large army function well on long campaigns,” Vlad said. “When you become sultan you’d do well to remember these things.”

  “Nonsense,” Mehmed said. “What I’ll need to conquer Europe is brave warriors on fast horses. That’s what Attila had and no one could stop him. I don’t need a bunch of old men counting horseshoes and belt buckles.”

  Back in his chamber, the specter of Donatella’s treachery took hold of Vlad again and turned the night hours into an endless string of vituperations against the woman he still loved. When morning came, he was glad at the prospect of spending another full day listening to Enver Pasha.

  “As a young man,” Enver began his lecture the second day, “Beyazid loved to make merry. Food, wine, girls, boys: there was never enough of those things for him.”

  Vlad caught Mehmed biting his lip, but otherwise showing indifference to what must’ve sounded to him like another provocation on Enver’s part.

  “When his father was killed at Kosovo, and he became sultan, Beyazid’s debaucheries intensified beyond measure.” Enver counted silently on the fingers of both hands. “On the return to Bursa, one time we didn’t break camp for nine days, so taken was he with carousing.”

  “Next you’ll tell us, Enver Pasha,” Mehmed said, livid, “that the greatest sultan our dynasty has produced should’ve been nicknamed Ayyaş, Dissipated, not Yıldırım, Thunderbolt.”

  “Patience, My Prince,” Enver said. “We’ll get to the matter of the nickname soon.”

  Mehmed returned to his note pad, and Vlad noticed the boy was finishing off a doodle that showed Enver Pasha being impaled through the bellybutton.

  “It was the middle of a hot summer,” the old man continued. “On the third day, a few dozen soldiers fell ill. The next day, several hundred. By the eighth day half the army was on its ass, and the sultan still gave no sign of wanting to move on.”

  “All that illness owing to Beyazid’s reveling,” Mehmed grumbled.

  Enver gave Mehmed an patient smile. “The camp doctors were at a loss at how to prevent the rest of the soldiers from getting sick, and were arguing with each other over the cause of the epidemic.”

  “Was it the plague, Enver Pasha?” one of the students said.

  “It turned out to be the horses,” Enver said. “And it was a historian who came up with the explanation.”

  “Ah, so my great-grandfather wasn’t to blame after all,” Mehmed said with exaggerated relief.

  “We had sixty thousand horses in our camp, which included twenty thousand taken as booty from the Serbs at Kosovo. Since a horse produces about twenty pounds of manure per day, the wall of horseshit around our camp was rising by a million two hundred thousand pounds every day. After the eighth day we were surrounded by nearly ten million pounds of manure.”

  “What does horseshit have to do with getting sick, Enver Pasha?” Mehmed said. “Genghis Kahn must have had half a million horses, and I’ve never heard of his soldiers getting sick from horse dung.”

  “The historian I’ve mentioned,” Enver said, “recalled that when King Darius was preparing for the Battle of Gaugamela, he had a hundred and fifty thousand animals in his camp. Horses, camels, mules, oxen … As Darius’s negotiations with Alexander of Macedon dragged on and on, the air in the Persians’ camp became poisoned by the mountain of manure, and thousands of his soldiers died.”

  “But there is no account of Alexander’s men getting sick,” Vlad said.

  “Quite true, my friend,” Enver said and gave Vlad an approving look. “Alexander had only twenty thousand horses, and he kept them on the move while he pinned down the Persians in their camp.”<
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  “So the Macedonians didn’t breathe poisoned air?” one of the students said.

  “What did Beyazid do?” Mehmed asked, sullen.

  “He vowed never again to let his army spend two nights in the same camp when on campaign. That’s why he could show up at a distant battlefield quicker than any enemy would expect. Yıldırım, people started to call him, on account of his speed. Thunderbolt.”

  Mehmed’s cheeks colored deeply and he said, under his breath, “I wonder what Beyazid would do to anyone tracing his feared nickname back to a mountain of horse manure.”

  The rest of the day Enver talked about proper waste management in wartime, and Mehmed added doodles to his note pad, all variations of tortures he conjured for the old teacher.

  “We’re finally rid of the boot counter,” Mehmed said, when on the third day Enver Pasha took leave of his students. “We’ve got a free week before the start of Ramadan, so let’s spend it riding horses in the countryside. Once the holy month begins we’ll be too weak from not eating and drinking all day to stay in the saddle.”

  “I haven’t yet ridden Samur in the open field,” Vlad said. Perhaps fresh air and exercise would bring him relief from the pain Donatella’s betrayal had caused him.

  But relief, in its capricious bent, was already awaiting him. And Lash turned out to be its unlikely agent.

  “You have a letter from your father,” Lash said in a state of agitation when Vlad returned to his chamber.

  Jolted by the news, Vlad stretched out his hand, unable to utter a word.

  “I don’t have it myself, Master,” Lash said. “An old Gypsy woman in the spice bazaar told me she’s met the king’s messenger who insists on handing the letter to you in person.”

  “And you trust this woman?” Vlad said.

  “She’s a cousin of my mother’s,” Lash said.

  Vlad chuckled. “Is there a place in the world where you have no relatives?”

  Lash seemed to reflect upon an answer.

  “Never mind,” Vlad said. “Take me to her.”

  23

  I AM THE TRUTH

  December 1442, Bursa, Ottoman Empire

  “You must completely surrender yourself to Sheik al-Masudi,” Jalāl said when they reached the door to the sheik’s hall. “Obedience to him is of the same importance as the profession of faith. Never doubt his words, keep his secrets, and be ready to sacrifice your life, if he requires it.”

  Omar was grateful the old man accompanied him to his audience with the sheik. He felt too insignificant to receive the saint’s undivided attention.

  Unlike the first time Omar entered the sheik’s hall, this time the room was well lit. Twelve candles had been placed on the floor, forming two equal-sized crescents that started on the sides of the saint’s alcove. Omar supposed the flames represented the souls of the Twelve Imams, and the crescents their warm embrace.

  In front of the alcove was a sheepskin that Omar guessed was intended for him to kneel on. He approached it, walking slowly between the two crescents of light, heart pounding, knees shaking. When he knelt, he sensed Jalāl kneeling behind him. At Omar’s right stood a low table with a liquid-filled cup on it. At his left, a similar table had on it an elifi tac, the white, conical, felt cap worn by the murīds who had completed their initiation.

  There was slight movement behind the veil, and Omar held his breath. He expected the saint to question him on the enemies of jihād and feared his capacity to speak might abandon him before he gave the answer.

  But the saint kept his silence.

  “You may speak,” Jalāl whispered. “Don’t be afraid.”

  Just then Omar realized that to simply say, “Those seeking peace with Dar al-Harb are the enemies of jihād,” couldn’t be an adequate answer. He felt the saint wanted to hear Omar pronounce their names.

  “Khalil Pasha is an enemy of jihād,” he said, timid.

  This couldn’t be news to the saint. Most people knew the Grand Vizier favored peace over war with the infidels. If the saint expected Omar to call out this enemy’s name, it had to be for a purpose related to his own qualification as a murīd. But what could that purpose be?

  “Is that the only name you can think of?” Jalāl said.

  There was disappointment in the murshid’s voice, and Omar hated himself for being the cause of it. He tried to remember whether he’d heard of other important men who were peace seekers. Certainly not the Second and Third Viziers. Their reputations as advocates of jihād were widespread. He agonized over his inability to come up with other names. But wait … there was one person he knew had the same views as the Grand Vizier. Should he dare pronounce it?

  Jalāl whispered, “Don’t hesitate.”

  “Sultan Murad?” Omar said, tentative.

  Jalāl said nothing.

  Omar took that as an encouraging sign and said, this time with conviction, “I’m certain the sultan’s an enemy of jihād.”

  “Anyone else?” There was exasperation in Jalāl’s tone.

  Omar was too drained of energy to think of new names. He let his shoulders slouch and waited in silence to be sent away.

  When half an hour had passed, the sheik said, “Drink.”

  It was the same soothing voice Omar heard the first time he entered this hall, two months before. His heart resumed its normal beating and the tightness he’d felt in his throat relaxed. He wondered how the sound of a single word from this man could have such a calming effect on him. He’s a saint, indeed.

  “Drink,” Jalāl whispered. “It’s the first secret of your initiation.”

  Omar took the cup at his right with a steady hand and placed it to his lips. The pungent smell of the liquid made him pause. Rakija? He recognized the alcoholic beverage he’d tasted once in his teenage years. On that occasion his father gave him a cruel thrashing, and Omar had never touched the forbidden drink again. He glanced over his shoulder at Jalāl.

  The old man mouthed, “Surrender yourself to the sheik.”

  Omar drank the cup in one long draft, and when he put it down, he felt as if hot needles had stabbed his gorge. His eyes filled with tears and his lungs refused to breathe. But in a few moments the burning sensation yielded to a pleasant heat throughout his body. He inhaled with the greed of the drowning man.

  The next half hour passed in silence. Omar felt increasing lightness in his body, until it seemed he’d become detached from the ground. His spirit became free of all apprehensions, as if he were a carefree child.

  It’s the saint’s baraka, Omar thought with wonder and gratitude.

  Al-Masudi pulled back the veil and exposed his left leg, bent and clad in an ordinary cotton cloth. Omar leaned over and kissed the saint’s knee. A bony hand caressed the back of Omar’s head, and he remained lost in that submissive posture, filled with a happiness he’d never before experienced. While his head rested on the saint’s knee, Omar’s spirit soared above the clouds, bathed in a warm light that extinguished all desires and fears.

  A disembodied voice resembling that of the sheik, but coming from all directions at once, declaimed with deliberate gravity,

  “I saw our Maker with my heart

  “And cowered, deep in shock.

  “‘Fear me not,’ His spirit said,

  “‘For I am you, al-Haqq.’”

  The hand caressing Omar withdrew, and he straightened up. The elifi tac was now on his head, yet he had no recollection of how it got there.

  “Ana al-Haqq, I am the Truth.”

  This time the voice came undoubtedly from behind the veil, and the words sent a shock through Omar. Did he understand them right? Al-Haqq was one of Allah’s ninety-nine names. Yet, the sheik, a mortal, was claiming to be one with al-Haqq, the Truth. The worm of disbelief wiggled inside Omar. Then the inner voice he’d been hearing for weeks said, The Shaytan wants to harden your heart and claim you as his own. Turn your back on him and never doubt the saint’s words again.

  Omar’s heart began to race, fil
led to overflowing with joy. Against his will words burst from his lips, passionate, effervescent. “You’re my Maker, I’m Your slave.”

  Jalāl removed Omar’s elifi tac and replaced it on the table. Omar felt cold and embarrassed, as if he’d been exposed naked in a public place. He knew the saint’s baraka had ceased to be with him.

  “The elifi tac will be yours,” Jalāl whispered, “only after the sheik has accepted your gift.”

  24

  FIRE STARTER

  December 1442, Bursa, Ottoman Empire

  The evening prayer was still about an hour away, but heavy clouds had already brought night to the spice bazaar. Beneath the vaulted roof hundreds of lamps made the air sparkle, as the light of their flames danced upon myriad pyramids of colorful spices. A rainbow of scents assailed Vlad, some of a cloying sweetness, others of an irritating sharpness. He felt as if he’d stepped into an alchemist’s lair. At one moment he caught a whiff of clous, the mysterious spice King Dracul had shown his boyars when he depicted Wallachia as a future outlet for the goods of the Silk Road. The recollection increased Vlad’s eagerness to read his father’s letter. He poked Lash in the back to urge him on, and the two of them picked up the pace as they navigated through the dense crowd of shoppers.

  Lash stopped in front of a stall where a gaggle of Gypsy women stood chattering in Romani čhib behind mounds of sunflower seeds. At the sight of the two men, the women fell silent. The oldest among them nodded at Vlad, then turned around and walked behind a curtain.

  When Vlad joined her there, she took his hand and kissed it. “God protect you, My Prince,” she said in the crude vernacular of the Wallachian peasants.

  “Where’s my letter?”

  Instead of replying, the woman led Vlad through a narrow, ill-lit passage. When she came to a door, she opened it and stepped aside.

  “In there, My Prince.” The woman kissed his hand again and returned to her stall.

  Beyond the door, Vlad spied a small antechamber laid with Persian carpets and lit by half a dozen candles. He removed his boots and stepped inside. A delicate perfume pervaded the room, as if a window were open to a rose garden.