Silk Road

by Falconer, Colin

  She angrily brushed such thoughts aside. He was her prisoner now. The past meant nothing, nothing at all.

  His eyes blinked open. ‘You,’ he murmured.

  ‘I have to remove the arrowhead,’ she said.

  He nodded.

  She had brought four of her arban with her. She assigned one of the barbarian’s limbs to each of them and they held him down, leaning their weight on him while she set to work.

  Because of the barb on the metal tip, an arrow made a larger wound when it was removed than it had on entry. But his under-shirt had bound itself tightly around the arrowhead, and Khutelun was able to use the silk to turn the barb without tearing too much flesh. But the muscles of Josseran’s shoulder went into spasm and she had to use a great deal of force. Josseran groaned and bucked as she worked. Finally it came free with a wet, sucking sound and Josseran gasped aloud and fainted again.

  She soaked up the blood with a cloth. Just as she had finished she heard the entrance flap behind her thrown aside. Her father stood in the doorway, his hands on his hips.

  ‘Is he going to live?’

  She nodded. ‘The arrow lodged in the muscle and damaged no vital organs.’ She held up the golden tablet she had removed from around his neck. ‘He carries the paizah of Khubilai.’

  ‘Khubilai’s chop means nothing here,’ Qaidu growled. He stared at the body of the giant barbarian at his feet. He shoved him with his foot, more from irritation than spite. ‘It would have been better if the arrow had pierced his heart.’

  ‘The spirits of the Blue Sky were protecting him.’

  ‘Then I do not understand the ways of the spirits.’ Their eyes met. She realized that he knew more of her thoughts and feelings than she supposed. ‘This is not as I would have desired.’

  ‘An unfortunate coincidence.’

  ‘Indeed,’ he agreed. ‘But there is no help for it now. When he recovers bring him to my yurt. I will examine him there.’

  Qaidu prowled the carpets, his hands clenched into fists. Before him were his three prisoners; two of Sartaq’s escort, both of Khubilai’s kesig, and the barbarian ambassador. The barbarian shaman had escaped, Khubilai’s cavalry had appeared just as Khutelun’s men were about to recapture him.

  But they had retrieved the barbarian’s saddlebag and found the treaty Khubilai had offered to the Christians in Acre. They also found the Khan’s gifts.

  ‘What is this you have here?’ Qaidu growled. He tore open the bundle and threw the scrolls of fine brushwork on to the floor. ‘Is this what Khubilai considers valuable?’ He stood on the scrolls in his boots, to show the barbarian what he thought of them.

  Josseran swayed on his feet. He had lost a lot of blood. ‘In our land, they would be considered . . .’ Josseran searched for the Tatar word for art, but he did not remember it, did not know if he had heard such a word. ‘People would admire them for their beauty.’

  ‘Beauty!’ Qaidu spat. There was a shuffling silence. Josseran was aware of the press of Tatar bodies and the gleam of lance points in the filmy darkness. The smell of sweat and leather and fire smoke was overpowering.

  ‘A true warrior lives in a yurt,’ Qaidu was raging. ‘He rides his horse each day, he fights, he drinks koumiss, he hunts, he kills. The Chin have sapped Khubilai’s strength and he has forgotten how to live like a Person. Look!’ He picked up one of the scrolls and held it in his fist. ‘What good is this to a man?’

  Josseran staggered again. It was difficult to concentrate on these proceedings. He was just a pawn in this civil war now. Qaidu considered him Khubilai’s creature and the gold paizah that was to ensure his safe passage might instead seal his fate.

  ‘Khubilai has proved he is no Khan of Khans. He is more Chin than the Chinese.’

  ‘Surely it is not wrong to learn a little from others,’ Josseran said, finding himself, even now, moved to defend his patron.

  ‘Learn? What is there to learn from those who are not strong enough to defeat us?’ Qaidu was working himself into a towering rage. ‘We are the masters of the Chin, and yet he builds his palaces in Cathay, and lives at his ease. Now he wants to change even our way of life, the ways that made us masters of the world! He wishes us all to become like the Chin and live in towns and cities. He no longer understands us, his own people! For us, to settle is to perish!’

  The Tatars roared their assent, closing in around Josseran and his fellow captives. We are an entertainment now, Josseran thought, and a rallying cry. Qaidu is using our capture for his own purposes. His raging is to impress his soldiers and his allies.

  ‘If Khubilai has his way our children will wear silks, eat greasy food, and spend their days in teahouses. Our sons will forget how to fire an arrow from a galloping horse and they will hide themselves from the wind. And then we will become like the Chin and we will be lost forever. Look at all we have!’ He spread his arms to encompass the pavilion, their encampment, the grasslands on which they lived. ‘We have a yurt that we move with the seasons. We have our horses and we have our bows and we have the steppe, we have the eternal Blue Sky! With these we have made ourselves Lords of the Earth! That is the Tatar way, the way of Chinggis Khan, the way of Tengri! Khubilai is Khan in Shang-tu perhaps, but he is not my khan. He is more dangerous to the Mongol people than all our enemies!’

  ‘Your dispute is of no import to me,’ Josseran shouted over the cheering, fatigue and the pain of his wound making him cast all caution aside. ‘I came here seeking an alliance with the khan of the Tatars against the Saracen. The struggle for the throne among you is not of my making. I am merely an emissary from my masters in Outremer.’

  ‘If you wished to treat with us,’ Qaidu shouted, ‘you should have made your peace at the feet of Ariq Böke in Qaraqorum.’

  ‘I shall gladly make my peace with whoever rightfully holds the throne.’

  ‘The throne belongs to Ariq Böke! But you are right, you are just an ambassador, not like these dogs.’ He kicked out at Drunken Man, who cried and thrust his head further into the carpets. ‘What I will do with you, Barbarian, is yet to be decided. If we allow you to return to your fellow barbarians, you will tell them that we are in discord. Yet you are an envoy and it behoves us to proceed with caution. Put him in a cangue so he cannot escape and we will think further on this!’

  As they led him away Josseran searched the throng for Khutelun but he saw only his old friend Tekudai, his expression as sullen as the rest. It occurred to him for the first time that she might have abandoned him.

  CIX

  THEY CALLED IT a cangue, a yoke of heavy wood that fitted around the neck and had two smaller holes on each side that held the wrists. Once it was in place it was impossible to lie down, to rest or to sleep. The weight of it on his neck and the cramping it caused in the muscles of his shoulders were doubtless intended to break his spirit.

  Blood had crusted over his right eye, which had now swollen shut. From time to time he felt a trickle of watery blood on his cheek. But it was nothing compared to the pain in his shoulder. It burned as if the joint had been opened with a white-hot metal hook.

  He felt himself falling towards darkness, a phantom world inhabited by the drums of the shamans and cold, relentless pain.

  From what seemed a long way off he heard the mumbles and laughter of men’s voices moving about the camp, an eerie keening over the rattle of the drums, then a scream, perhaps imagined, of one of his fellow prisoners.

  ‘Joss-ran,’ a voice said.

  He looked up. All he could see was the orange glimmer of camp fires through the entrance of the yurt.

  ‘Joss-ran.’

  He realized she was here, his beautiful witch Khutelun, her eyes glittering in the dark. She crouched down in front of him. ‘You should not have ridden out,’ she said.

  ‘It was my duty to protect the priest.’

  ‘You thought to be brave. See where it has left you.’

  There it was again, that terrible keening. ‘What is that?’ he asked her.
>
  ‘They are grieving for the widows you made today.’

  ‘It was not my intention to make widows; I was fighting for my life. And what of the widows you made?’

  She reached up and her fingertips traced the contours of the wound on his forehead. A show of tenderness, at last, he thought. Perhaps she has not forgotten the desert entirely.

  ‘What is to happen to me?’

  ‘My father is angry with me that I brought you back as my prisoner, and he is angry with you that you could not die of your wound. He would have you dead but he does not wish the responsibility for it.’

  He tried to move his position but the effort sent another spasm of pain through his shoulder. ‘Tell him I regret the inconvenience I have caused him.’

  ‘He has read the missive you brought with you from Khubilai. It has clouded the waters. Some of my father’s generals say you are an ambassador and you must be treated with respect. Others say that as you treated with Khubilai, then you should be executed. There are a few who wish to keep you as a hostage. But is your life of any worth to Khubilai?’

  He forced a savage grin. ‘Tell them the Emperor of Cathay loves me like a brother.’

  She did not smile. Something in her expression disturbed him.

  ‘And what is your father’s opinion?’

  ‘My father favours execution. He says that dead men eat less food.’ She sighed. ‘I shall do all I can to sway him. I will find a way to set you free.’ She had with her a wooden bowl, filled with water. She soaked a piece of rag in it and used it to wash away the dried blood around his eye. Then she cleaned the arrow wound, tenderly as a lover. Even now, in his desperate condition, he was aware of the warmth of her breast against his silken undershirt.

  ‘I still want you, God help me,’ he whispered.

  She made no answer.

  ‘Did you hear me, Khutelun?’

  ‘I may wash your wounds. Beyond that, there is nothing I can do for you.’

  ‘I have to know. Do you feel nothing at all for me?’

  ‘You are a barbarian from the west. How can I feel anything for you? I shall marry the son of a khan who will make my own sons princes of the steppe like my father.’ She finished her ministrations. It was a kindness, he thought, though it had done nothing for his pain. ‘The wound is clean.’ 376

  ‘Why does your father torment me with this collar? Tell him that if I vex him so, then he should do what he will. I am not afraid to die.’

  ‘I will tell him what you said.’ She stood up and went to the doorway of the yurt.

  ‘I would give everything to lie with you for just one night before I die.’

  ‘Then you are a fool,’ she said and slipped away into the darkness.

  CX

  JOSSERAN HAD WORN the cangue for just a few hours and already he felt as if he bore the weight of the cathedral at Chartres on his shoulders. Every small movement was agony. Pain and fatigue brought on a reverie that was not quite sleep, for sleep was impossible, but a delirium that transported him from his terrible predicament back to a cave above a narrow defile in the Mountains of the Sun. ‘Had you not thought of us joined together in this way, as Shiva is joined with his wife? Have you not sometimes thought of this as your destiny? And as mine?’

  He realized there was someone else in the yurt and when he looked up he saw Qaidu standing over him, watching him. Perhaps this was the pronouncement of his sentence. He would soon know how he was to die.

  Qaidu had his hands on his hips, his legs splayed. ‘What should I do with you, Barbarian? My generals say I should execute you with the others.’

  ‘The others?’

  ‘Khubilai’s dogs. They are traitors to the people of the Blue Mongol and a stain on the legend of Chingghis Khan. I have decreed they are to be boiled alive.’

  Even as he spoke Josseran could hear his fellow prisoners going to their deaths. He hoped they had given Drunken Man some of the black koumiss he loved so much to help him through his ordeal. He shifted his position slightly so that he could look into the other man’s eyes.

  ‘And what is it that gives you pause on my account?’

  The screams of the tortured men echoed through the camp. Ah, they have warmed the pot already. Josseran could not imagine such a death. But I will not beg for my life, he promised himself. If they break me bone by bone, I will not beg. May God give me the strength to resist these devils.

  ‘Perhaps I can offer you another choice,’ Josseran said.

  A wolf grin. ‘What choice could you offer me, Barbarian?’

  ‘Let me marry Khutelun.’

  How quickly the smile fell away. Qaidu’s hand went to the sword at his belt. Josseran thought he would strike off his head then and there. But instead he contented himself with placing one foot on the cangue, forcing it almost to the ground, bending Josseran’s neck down between his knees. ‘Do you toy with me?’

  Josseran did not, could not, respond. The pain was beyond imagining. With a grunt Qaidu removed his foot and stepped back.

  Josseran tried to raise his head. It was like trying to lift his own horse in his arms. My back is broken, he thought.

  Unable to straighten up, he collapsed on to his side. He uttered a grunt of pain, his whole weight supported now on his right hip and knee.

  ‘Perhaps I will have you boiled with the others after all,’ Qaidu growled.

  ‘I mean . . . what I say.’

  ‘There are many ways a man can die, Barbarian. You are not making it easy for yourself.’

  ‘I propose . . . a test.’

  He heard the hesitation in the other man’s voice. ‘A test?’

  ‘A race, on horseback . . . Khutelun against . . . me. Should I . . . win, I have her . . . in marriage.’

  ‘And what would you do then? Would you take her with you to the barbarian lands?’

  ‘I would . . . stay here.’

  ‘Here?’ Qaidu’s voice shrill with disbelief. ‘Why do you wish to stay here?’

  Josseran had no answer to that. Yet why not? What was there to return to? Was there even one soul who would weep for him if he did not return to Acre?

  ‘What would you wager for this?’ Qaidu asked.

  It is the agony of the cangue making me mad, Josseran thought. May the Lord in heaven forgive me. I am trading everything I possess in body and spirit for the glimmer of a bauble, a whispered promise in a bazaar. Madness.

  ‘Many young men have asked for her before you,’ Qaidu persisted. ‘Not ragged barbarian envoys, these were fine Tatar princes and each wagered a hundred horses against the promise of her as wife. If Khutelun wins, as she surely must, what have you to offer?’

  ‘My . . . life.’

  ‘Your life is forfeit anyway!’

  The screaming began again. How long does it take a man to boil?

  ‘I still have it . . . at this moment. It is all I . . . have since you have not yet . . . made up your mind what my . . . fate will be.’

  Qaidu grunted, perhaps in grudging admiration of Josseran’s courage. ‘And if I told you that I intend to let you go free? Would you still make this wager?’

  Josseran did not answer. How does a man make such contracts with his head and arms tortured by the cangue? Qaidu nodded to one of the guards who grabbed the edge of the infernal device and pulled Josseran upright. The weight was returned to a more tolerable position and Josseran uttered a sob of relief. Enough for now to lean the cangue against the frame of the yurt, and take a moment’s blessed relief from the crushing weight.

  ‘So will you set me free, my lord Qaidu?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I have the means to make the wager. I have a life to barter with, after all. So do we agree?’

  ‘This is all I want from you!’ Khubilai’s missive to the Templar command was thrust under his nose. He tore it into shreds. ‘We shall not let the usurper arm himself with Hülegü!’

  ‘It makes no difference. The messenger and the message are the same. You cannot gras
p one without the other. Should I return to Acre I shall inform my masters and the prince Hülegü of all that I have seen and heard. You are better served agreeing to the wager. Either way I shall remain here. It would not be wise to let me go, my lord.’

  ‘You know, of course, that it is Khutelun and Khutelun alone who argues for your life!’

  A moment’s stillness, a moment to smile. He heard himself say, as if from very far away: ‘That is why I do not want my freedom. I want Khutelun.’

  ‘You are a fool.’

  ‘She told me this also. I am sure you are both right.’

  Qaidu studied him for a long time. ‘You are strange to her, and that fascinates her, because she is a shaman and not like other women. She is drawn to things that those of us who do not have the gift rightly fear. But you are not for her.’

  ‘Let her decide that,’ Josseran said.

  Qaidu took some time to consider. Josseran could hear his breathing, though he was unable to raise his head to look into the khan’s eyes. ‘It were better you had died today,’ he said finally, and left the yurt. From outside came the beat of the shaman’s drums, the inhuman screams of the boiled and not yet dead.

  CXI

  KHUTELUN SAT ON a knoll above the camp, beyond the corona of the night fires and the protective perimeter of the kibitkas. She had come to be alone with the spirits, under the sheltering canopy of the World Tent that was tonight suspended from the bright nub of the Pole Star. Her body was buffeted by a bitter wind.

  She could make no sense of the turmoil inside her. She hugged her knees with her arms and pressed her forehead against her fists. She let out a small cry that startled a sentry, dozing on his horse somewhere below her.

  For as long as she could remember she had hated her sex and all that it represented. As a child she had preferred her brothers’ company to that of her sisters, a fondness that had been tempered by competition. She had learned to best them at hunting, at riding, even at wrestling. As she grew she had done all she could to win her father’s favour, though she sensed that he smiled more kindly at her brothers than he did on her. From watching the horses in the pasture she learned the difference between mare and stallion, and she understood that this was the source of the problem.