The Towers of Samarcand (The Mistra Chronicles)

by James Heneage

Ibn Khaldun looked amazed. ‘Well now, how long have we known each other?’ he asked, bowing deeply in the direction of Shulen, his hands pressed together. ‘And in all that time you have never mentioned a daughter. Allah forgive you for such modesty! Does your wife know of this lady?’

  The fat merchant looked uncomfortable. ‘My wife glories in our daughter, of course,’ he said, spreading his hands. ‘But I fear that now Fatimah must depart with her servants.’ He had turned to the four friends and begun a series of minute jerks of the head.

  But Ibn Khaldun was not finished. ‘Please,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘I was listening to your conversation. It was not the talk of master to servants. I would like to meet these friends of yours.’

  Abdul-Hafiz looked around. He put his lips to the ear of the smaller man. ‘You have seen Yakub?’

  ‘It was he who sent me over,’ whispered Ibn Khaldun.

  Luke had read Ibn Khaldun’s work on Chios. Now he stepped forward and took the man’s hand in his. ‘Ibn Khaldun,’ he said, ‘we are honoured to greet you. Please join us.’ He gestured towards the fire. ‘May I present my friends Matthew, Nikolas and Arcadius? We are all sons of Varangians who used to guard the Archon at Monemvasia. And this is Shulen, not related to Abdul-Hafiz.’

  Ibn Khaldun smiled again, the deep lines of his face curving to frame a mouth uncluttered by teeth. ‘Varangians from Monemvasia?’ he asked. ‘I’d heard of you from Plethon.’ He sat and looked around. ‘We have mutual friends in Plethon and Omar. Like them, I’m a thinker, interested, above all, in history. I’m engaged in a great project: a history of the world.’ He paused. ‘I live in Cairo where, until recently, I was Kadi to the Mamluk Sultan Barquq.’

  Luke was staring at him, entranced.

  ‘So why am I here?’ he asked. ‘The Sultan of Egypt fears that Temur, whom you call Tamerlane, may be bringing his hordes west. I am interested in an alliance between the Mamluks, the Turks and the Qara Qoyunlu, who some call the Black Sheep. Yakub knows this.’

  The man was seated on a folding chair of wood and canvas and his thin ankles were thrust forward to the fire. He wore embroidered slippers lined with squirrel fur with ends that curled. Above, he wore a thoub tied at the waist with a crimson sash. This was a fastidious man who felt the chill. He placed his hands on the arms of his chair and leaned forward over the stone.

  ‘Now, let’s see,’ he murmured, taking the chalk from the merchant and beginning to draw. ‘This must be China, this India and up here, the land of the Golden Horde. Down here’ – he was drawing a coastline – ‘is Africa. The Portuguese are finding more to the south every year.’ He looked up at the merchant. ‘Not good news for you, my friend, who does so well from this land route.’

  Abdul-Hafiz frowned.

  Ibn Khaldun continued. ‘Over here is Constantinople where your silk road ends and beyond are the Christian Kings. These are not rich or populous lands.’ Now Ibn Khaldun looked up at Luke. ‘Do you know what the largest city in Christendom is, my friend?’

  Luke shook his head.

  ‘Paris,’ he answered. ‘Ninety thousand people. Tabriz itself has a population of a million and its annual revenues exceed those of the King of France. One street in Cairo contains more people than the city of Florence and the number of ships that dock at its Nile port is three times the number in Venice, Genoa and Ancona combined.’

  Luke shifted his sword and leant forward to put a log on the fire. ‘But what has this to do with Tamerlane?’

  Ibn Khaldun folded his arms on his lap. ‘The question everyone is asking is: will he come west? His obsession is the building of Samarcand. He needs money to do it and there is more money in the east than the west.’

  Luke asked: ‘So why do you fear him coming west?’

  ‘Well now,’ Khaldun replied, ‘Barquq managed to execute the Mongol envoys sent to him last year, one of whom was related to Temur himself. Very unfortunate.’

  ‘So you think he’ll punish the Mamluks?’ asked Abdul-Hafiz, his jowls alive with concern. ‘What then would stop him sweeping across the Maghreb? Soon he would be at the Alhambra!’ His huge torso quivered at the thought and he spat unhappily to his side.

  There was movement from outside the circle. It was Yakub. He was carrying a jug. ‘I bought wine from the Venetians,’ he said, looking at Luke. ‘They said it comes from your home.’ Yakub had a stool with him which he set down next to Ibn Khaldun. He poured himself a cup and passed the jug to Luke. The rich smell of Malvasia filled Luke’s nostrils and memory rose with the smell. He passed it to Matthew without pouring. He asked: ‘Is Tamerlane as bad as his forefathers?’

  ‘That’s the problem,’ Ibn Khaldun replied. ‘They’re not his forefathers. Temur was born into the Barlas tribe, a minor clan in the lands of the Chagatai. His claim to kinship with Genghis Khan is through his wife Bibi Khanum, the widow of his old rival Husayn. She is a princess of the royal line. Temur does not like not being of direct descent.’

  ‘So what does that mean?’

  ‘It means’, Khaldun answered, ‘that Temur’s overriding ambition is to unite the four kingdoms that were once the Khan Empire. He has already brought together the Chagatai Khanate, the northern kingdom of the Golden Horde and the Ilkhanate of Persia. There’s one left to do and it is the most difficult and Temur is an old man, over sixty.’

  ‘Which is China?’ asked Arcadius.

  ‘Which is China, yes: the vast Yuan Empire created by the greatest of Genghis’s grandsons, Kublai Khan. Kublai’s reign was a time of prosperity for China but his successors were dissipated and the last of them taxed his people cruelly to fund his debauchery. Then a peasant leader called Chu Yuan-chang gathered the people in revolt and threw out the tyrant, establishing himself as the first Emperor of a new dynasty, the Ming. He holds the throne still, but is old. I believe Temur is waiting for him to die.’

  ‘So he’ll invade China?’ asked Luke.

  ‘Ultimately, but it’ll be no easy task. The Chinese have over a million men under arms and have cannon and countless other machines of destruction. Indeed, they invented the powder that fires them all. Any campaign against the Mamluks will just be to fill in time before an assault on China.’

  ‘Which makes sense,’ said Luke, thinking back to his time in the Germiyan camp. ‘Temur knows that he has to keep the tribes occupied or they will fight between themselves.’

  Ibn Khaldun nodded. ‘And there’s another reason for attacking the Mamluks: revenge. It was the Mamluk Sultan Baybars that inflicted the only defeat ever suffered by the Mongols. A century and a half ago, he destroyed Hulagu’s army after the rape of Baghdad and so turned back the Mongol hordes.’

  Abdul-Hafiz was sitting very still, his eyes wide open with fear. He was running his tongue over his bulbous lips as if considering for a moment the possibility of wine passing between them.

  ‘He must be stopped,’ he said in a barely audible voice. ‘This is the Devil, Shatan sent to earth. This is the end of the world.’

  No one spoke. Perhaps it was. A vast army come up from hell to kill everything that stood in its path. An army of Shatan.

  Luke reached down and curled his fingers round the hilt of the dragon sword. He glanced at Matthew and knew they were thinking the same thing.

  Are we mad?

  There was a shout from the other end of the courtyard. Food was being served and a stream of hungry people poured from the dormitories.

  ‘We should go,’ said Abdul-Hafiz, patting his stomach, ‘or there’ll be nothing left.’

  *

  At the other end of the courtyard, away from the clamour of food served, sat the Venetians, who were eating their own. Cloaked, hatted and booted in black, they looked like a group of sextons peering into a grave. They were talking about the Chinese merchants who were also part of the caravan and their whispers did not escape their circle.

  ‘Ten lengths?’ whispered one.

  ‘That’s what they said. Or gestured, anyway. They want it for br
eeding.’

  For a thousand years and more, Chinese merchants had been travelling west to find the best horses in the world. Once, these had come from the Fergana Valley, east of Samarcand, whose horses, the Tang had believed, were bred from dragons and sweated blood. Then they’d bought kuluk horses from Khota that could run forty miles without stopping. Now they wanted Arab stallions and those from Al-Andalus where the Carthusians had blended blood to such effect. Eskalon was from the Maghreb, bred by Berbers. He was a blend of Arab and Spanish blood and it showed in his colour and bearing. Perhaps the Chinese had seen this.

  ‘And they will pay ten lengths of silk?’ asked the first Venetian. ‘For one horse?’

  The other nodded and leant forward over the fire. ‘Raw silk.’

  The first whistled quietly through his teeth. That was a lot for one horse.

  ‘So how do we do it? The fat merchant’s daughter won’t sell to the Chinese and she won’t sell to us either. I’ve asked her.’

  At that point, one of the four, who had yet to speak, turned from the fire to look across the courtyard to where the merchant had sat before the call to food. Only the gazi remained there now, sitting hunched on his stool staring hard into the flames. The Venetian was a young man, previously unknown to the others, trading Malvasia wine for the Mamonas family, some of which he’d just sold to the gazi. He’d come from Venice and his name was di Vetriano.

  ‘I think he’s Greek,’ he said.

  ‘The horse?’

  ‘No, the servant. The servant that leads the horse. He has a sword.’ He paused and looked round at them. ‘The lady’s servants are all Greeks and they want us to believe they’re Arabs.’

  The Venetians were silent for a while, each evaluating this new evidence. One of them looked up from the fire. ‘They’re spies?’

  The young man nodded. ‘The Greeks want to ally themselves with Tamerlane against the Turk. They want him to come west to fight Bayezid.’

  ‘So they go to Samarcand?’

  ‘Or Sultaniya. They may want to meet Tamerlane’s son, Miran Shah, who is viceroy there. But they’ll have to pass through Tabriz first.’

  ‘Where Qara Yusuf rules?’

  ‘Where Qara Yusuf rules and might be interested to know who they are.’

  The three older Venetians were silent then, thinking of the profit that could be got from a horse that became available. The youngest of them smiled into his wine.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TABRIZ, SUMMER 1399

  The city of Tabriz had not had walls since Tamerlane had sacked it eight years before and the green haze of its orchard suburbs could be seen from afar. It was built in a high valley between two ridges of hills, those to the south capped with snow. The caravan road approached it up a gentle slope that rose from the northern shores of Lake Orumiyeh.

  ‘A thousand concubines and enough gold to sink a fleet of junks,’ said Yakub as he rode up beside Luke. They were skirting the salt-crusted rocks at the lake’s edge and the gazi was pointing his whip across its waters.

  ‘The island of Shahi, where Hulagu was buried,’ he explained. ‘He sleeps there with his harem. Only they were alive when they entered the tomb.’

  Luke looked across at the dim outline of a mausoleum. There were birds rising from the lake’s surface in a riot of beating wings, the early sun on their backs and golden circles of water spreading beneath their feet. There was a smell of salt in the air.

  ‘Did Hulagu sack Tabriz?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, but not badly. And it’s now busier than ever with the northern road closed.’

  Luke knew about this from Ibn Khaldun. A decade ago, Tamerlane had fought a long and bloody winter war against his erstwhile ally Toktamish in the north. He was leader of the Golden Horde and had invaded Tamerlane’s empire in the middle of winter. Tamerlane had driven him back into his own lands, finally cornering him in the snowy wastes of Russia. Now the northern trade route was closed and merchants had to come south to Tabriz and Sultaniya to exchange their wares. For Tamerlane, this meant more to tax and more money to lavish on his beloved Samarcand.

  Two hours later they were weaving their way through streets thronged with stalls selling the produce of every continent. Luke was dazzled by the scale and noise of the place. It was beyond anything he’d seen, an endless warren of streets opening into huge squares, each with its own fountain. Next to this, Monemvasia was a village.

  ‘Where does all the water come from?’ he shouted into Ibn Khaldun’s ear. They had dismounted now and were threading their way through a crush of jostling people. Luke was leading Eskalon and water was running through channels on either side of the street, some of it splashing against the horse’s hooves.

  Ibn Khaldun pointed at the pavings below him. ‘From down there,’ he replied. ‘The Persians built underground pipes that bring water down from the mountains. In the summer they put ice in the fountains and leave vessels by their sides. I’ve seen it.’

  They passed a jewellers’ bazaar where a group of women were admiring slave girls displaying necklaces and bracelets for sale. A row of Jewish merchants sat behind with long beards and prayer beads. They came into wide square paved with white stone with pebbles between. The buildings around it were a mixture of mosques, caravanserais and madrassahs. At its centre stood an enormous juniper tree, a hundred feet tall, beneath which old men sat on benches and talked.

  Luke pointed to the roof of the madrassah. ‘Yakub, do you see those men?’

  The gazi came up to his side and squinted into the sun. ‘What of them?’ he asked. ‘Don’t point.’

  ‘They’ve been watching us. I would swear it.’

  ‘Then don’t look up. We should separate. Where are your friends?’

  Luke thought of weapons. He had his sword wrapped in a cloak on Eskalon’s back and Torguk’s bow tied to the saddle. It would take time to reach them. ‘They’re ahead. With Shulen and the camels.’

  ‘We need to keep distance between us. Slow down.’

  Up ahead, Shulen was walking between Nikolas and Arcadius. She’d seen that all the other women of the city wore long white headdresses with a veil of black horsehair covering their faces. She stood out.

  ‘Arcadius,’ she whispered. ‘See if you can buy me a veil somewhere. One like the other women are wearing.’

  Arcadius nodded and began to move away. Then Matthew saw something.

  ‘Wait!’ he hissed.

  There were men approaching them through the crowd. Armed men in mail. ‘Are we surrounded?’

  ‘It looks like it. What do we do?’

  They had formed a little triangle by now, with Shulen inside it. Matthew had drawn his sword. It was the only one they had between them. The soldiers were getting closer, pushing aside men and women as they came. Nikolas spoke.

  ‘Well, we’re not going to win. We’ve got one sword and they’ve got two each.’

  Matthew didn’t agree. ‘We can get past them. If we all rush in the same direction, we can break through. Shulen, take my hand. The rest of you, on my count.’

  The Varangians readied themselves to charge. They were unarmed but they were strong and they were light. And there were many people about.

  ‘One …’

  The soldier in front lifted a bow. There was an arrow on its string.

  ‘Now!’

  They charged, Matthew in front. The soldier with the bow went down as his head drove into his midriff. A woman in front of him screamed.

  ‘Follow me!’ he yelled, lifting his sword.

  People were falling over each other to get out of the way. A stall selling bolts of cotton collapsed and a Persian merchant screamed abuse. A money changer was hit on the head by an awning as it fell. It was chaos.

  They’d reached the opening to a street too narrow for stalls. It was blocked by a donkey whose cargo of raw silk was being unloaded. Matthew smacked his blade against the animal’s rump and it shrieked and started down the alley. A fat merchant came to his
door and tried to hold on to Shulen as she passed. She kicked him in the shins and he sank, howling, to his knees.

  ‘Run!’ Matthew yelled.

  But Shulen had tripped. Her hand slipped from his and he looked back to see her on the ground with Nikolas trying to help her up. Now there was a soldier at the head of the street and he was calling for others to join him.

  Matthew turned to see the other end of the alley blocked by men with swords. Shulen had risen to her feet but was clearly in pain. They were trapped.

  ‘Great idea,’ said Nikolas. ‘The charge. That worked.’

  *

  The night they spent in the pit was a night spent in hell.

  Marched from the street of their arrest, the three Varangians were disarmed and thrown into a place of darkness: a darkness so complete that they could only find each other by sound or touch. They wondered what other creatures shared the cell with them. There was breathing and scratching all around them that could have been rats or a chained lunatic. The smell was overwhelming. The stench of centuries of excrement and dead vermin had entered the ancient stone and now filled their noses, their mouths, their minds. It was a path into madness. Matthew hoped that Shulen was being held somewhere better than this.

  They’d already guessed that their captor was Qara Yusuf, Lord of the Qara Qoyunlu. But why he should want to imprison them they had no idea. Nor did they know who had betrayed them or whether Luke and the others had managed to escape.

  Answers came at dawn. Just when Matthew had managed to subside into sleep, a shaft of light from above awoke him. A ladder was handed down, and in their blindness it took some time for the Varangians to climb it. When they had, they were led down a narrow street towards a large blue-domed building, which they took to be the palace. Then they were searched twice, bound by the wrists and taken into an anteroom on the far side of which were two tall doors through which came muffled conversation.

  ‘What do we say?’ hissed Nikolas, turning to Matthew.

  ‘We tell them that we’re Greeks trying to find a better life out east. We tell them that we were at Nicopolis and can see that the days of the Empire are numbered.’