‘Which means that if Tamerlane defeats the Mamluks, Qara Yusuf and you will side with him against Bayezid?’
Yakub nodded. ‘If we’re able to, but it’ll be difficult.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘My argument is with Bayezid, not Tamerlane.’
Luke knew this. Yakub had spent eight years imprisoned in Ipsala Castle after Bayezid had taken his kingdom. His beloved sister, Devlet Hatun, had been forced to marry the Sultan. He hated Bayezid with every nerve of his being.
‘And if Bayezid joins forces with the Mamluks?’
Yakub grunted. It was not what he wanted to imagine. He looked up and his eye travelled along Eskalon’s back. ‘Your horse did well today.’
Luke smiled. He looked at Eskalon. ‘Mount to the Kadi of Cairo. It’ll go to his head.’
Yakub rose and went over to Eskalon, taking his mane and patting the broad plain of his neck. He turned. ‘You did well too. In fact you’ve done well all along. You were kind to Shulen. That was good.’
Luke narrowed his eyes. ‘Why?’
Yakub shrugged. ‘Because she will be important. She will help you.’
‘Not so far,’ said Luke. ‘If she hadn’t hurt her ankle, my friends would have got away.’ He began to brush Eskalon’s withers. ‘How will she help us?’
Yakub took the other brush from Luke and began on Eskalon’s flank. ‘Whatever you’ve learnt from us, you’re no nomad, Luke. Nor are your friends. She is. She will understand Tamerlane better than you. And she will take you to someone.’
‘Who?’ Luke had stopped brushing. ‘I have already told you, Yakub. I will do things my way from now on. Who will Shulen take me to? Is it Tamerlane’s son, Miran Shah? Is that why we go to Sultaniya?’
Yakub was silent. He continued grooming the horse. Luke was watching him, his head to one side.
‘Who is she, Yakub?’ he asked softly. ‘Who is Shulen?‘
‘Shulen is Yakub’s daughter.’
They both looked up to see her standing in the doorway. The firelight was behind her and they couldn’t see her face, only the silhouette of her grace and the long hair that covered it like a gossamer shawl. She was standing quite still. Luke shook his head.
Of course.
‘That is why I must come with you,’ she continued. ‘I can speak for the gazi tribes.’
There were so many questions suddenly. She came to his aid. ‘I don’t know who my mother is. He won’t tell me. I was put with the tribe when I was a baby, put into the care of a shaman and his wife. She taught me healing. I was given education by Omar, secretly, when he visited.’ Her head moved towards Yakub. ‘My father visited seldom.’
Yakub was now looking at the floor. ‘It was difficult.’
Shulen’s voice had dropped. ‘Perhaps. Anyway, I became a woman within the tribe and the target of unwelcome attention.’
Yakub was shaking his head. ‘I didn’t know,’ he whispered. ‘Nor did Omar.’
‘Because I chose not to tell him.’ Shulen stepped forward into the light of the torch. She looked ethereal. ‘Anyway, that is the past. My father wishes me to accompany you east.’ She turned to Luke. ‘I wish it too.’
Yakub had straightened. He placed the brush on a table below the saddle-rack and picked up his whip. ‘I must go,’ he said.
His eyes flickered between the two of them, then he turned and left. They heard his tread on the stone outside grow fainter. They were silent for a long while, standing there in the torchlight. They heard laughter from the fire. Shulen walked over to Eskalon and put her mouth to his ear. The horse moved its head fractionally to acknowledge her presence.
‘Eskalon, you are more blessed than you will ever know,’ she murmured. ‘How have you managed to capture this elusive love? What have you done to earn it?’
Luke saw the dark beauty of this mysterious girl who’d changed from witch to companion in half a year. He looked at her thin, angled body, so different from Anna’s, and at the long, long veil of hair that half covered her face and swept down to those healing hands. The only sound in the stable was the soft sweep of Eskalon’s tail against his flanks.
There was a shout from outside. Abdul-Hafiz was calling for them. They left Eskalon and walked across the stable yard to where their friends sat round the fire. There was light coming from a large building with camels tethered outside it. Big bundles of merchandise, roped within leather carriers, were scattered across the ground. Luke saw Ablah looking into the distance with contempt.
‘Varangians! Come out here and help with these baskets. Why must an old man do all the work?’
Luke walked over to him with Shulen. ‘Where’s the Venetians’ cargo?’ he asked.
Abdul-Hafiz pointed. ‘Over there, on those camels. We haven’t touched it yet. We thought there might be snakes.’
Luke said, ‘We’ll do it then.’
The two walked over to where a dozen camels were sitting placidly on the ground, their bundles next to them. One of them turned its head as they approached.
‘I’ll start at this end,’ said Luke, ‘and you can start at the other. We don’t need a full inventory, just some idea of what they have. Most of it can go on with Abdul-Hafiz to Samarcand where he can sell it for us.’
They began their search, untying the thick ropes and laying the merchandise out on a rug. It was an hour later when they next spoke.
‘Luke!’ Shulen called. ‘Come over here. There’s something strange.’
Luke rose stiffly and went over. The ground around Shulen had piles of glassware on it. In Shulen’s hand was a small rectangular box. ‘Look at this.’
Luke knelt beside her and saw that the box was lined with velvet. Cradled inside it were small prisms, stacked vertically and almost flat, and some thin pieces of wood.
‘What are they?’ asked Luke.
Shulen was staring hard at the contents of the box and didn’t answer for a while. Then she smiled and turned to Luke. There was a light in her eye. ‘I don’t know,’ she said softly. ‘But I think we’ll take them with us.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TABRIZ, SUMMER 1399
The Varangians, Shulen, Yakub and Ibn Khaldun left Tabriz in a fine calvacade of plumes and pennants and high-stepping Mamluk stallions. Qara Yusuf, accompanying them as far as the city gate, had the grace to apologise. He bowed to them from the saddle, placed his hand above his heart and wished on them the blessing of Allah. Then they took the road west into gazi lands.
The next morning, after a night in a caravanserai, Ibn Khaldun and Yakub departed as the first rays of sun caught the breastplates of their Egyptian bodyguard. Ibn Khaldun would return to his master in Cairo with an alliance he didn’t entirely believe. Yakub would return to Bayezid in Edirne with one he didn’t believe in at all.
An hour later, the Varangians and Shulen set out along the same road but soon left it and followed a lesser route back towards Astara on the shores of the Khazar Sea, some four hundred miles to the north-east. For a week, their horses carried them through desert and mountain, forest and river, night and day. They rode under merciless sun and merciful moon, bathing in the sweat of their bodies by day and cool streams at night. They talked little and slept less. And not once did any fall behind.
Late one afternoon, they stopped to look over a sea with villages scattered along its edge and tiny boats strewn across its surface.
‘Tonight we eat fish,’ said Luke and he turned to smile at Shulen who’d ridden up to his side.
‘And then?’
Luke had produced the map drawn for him by Ibn Khaldun and was studying it. ‘Then we follow the seashore until we see the Alburz Mountains rise up on our right. There we go to Sultaniya.’
‘Where we become Shi’ite,’ she said, smiling.
Luke smiled. ‘Yes, where we become gloomy Isma’ilis and you disappear behind a veil. Where we meet Miran Shah.’
‘Who is mad and dangerous.’ This was Nikolas. ‘Luke, can you just tell us why we want to meet a dangerous madman? No
thing too long, a summary will do.’
‘Nikki, he’s Tamerlane’s son. They’re all mad and dangerous. Anyway, it’s in the future so let’s not think about it. For now, let’s have some fun.’ He turned in his saddle. ‘We’ve spent the week clinging to mountain paths. What say we race to that village?’
Eskalon snorted and Matthew laughed. He leant over to the horse. ‘Are you too fat now from eating the kadi’s food, Eskalon?’ Then he lifted his heels and was gone. By the time they’d entered the village, their horses were panting like Jezebels and Matthew was triumphant. ‘Too fat. Or perhaps it’s the rider. They fed you too well in Kutahya, both of you.’
Shulen arrived just ahead of the other two Varangians.
‘Hey!’ said Arcadius, riding up to her, his brow thick with dust. ‘We carry armour. You have nothing but your bedding.’
‘And the Venetian glass, don’t forget that,’ said Shulen, leaning back on her saddle. Her face was pink and her long hair had knotted into waves across her back. Luke smiled.
You’re changing.
The village they had entered was a desperate place and seemed empty of people. It was built at the point where the track they’d come down met one that followed the shore of the lake. On either side of it were dismal hovels of mud and grass and beyond them, banked in the black sand, lay broken fishing boats. Smoke drifted skyward from the roofs and the smell of cooking fish rose with it.
‘Do we stay here?’ asked Nikolas. ‘It seems we might get fed.’
A door squeaked open and a child appeared, filthy and almost naked. Luke dismounted and reached into his saddlebag for bread. He held it out, speaking over the child. ‘We mean no harm. We just want fish to fill our bread. We’ll pay for it.’
A man came out holding a piece of wood. He was dressed in rags and as filthy as the child. He stood staring at Eskalon. Then he nodded.
Luke turned to the others. ‘We eat fish tonight.’
So they did. Sitting around a fire made of driftwood and seaweed that bubbled and hissed as it burned, they gave bread to the villagers and got fish in return. Later, they lay beneath the stars in blankets heavy with salt and listened to the rasp of the waves on the sand and the anxious murmurings of the people who’d sheltered them. And the next morning they left before any were awake.
It took them another week to reach the Alburz Mountains. It was a week in which they galloped over sands or picked their way along cliff-top paths, trees blasted horizontal beneath them, the nests of seabirds between their roots. Always by their side was the grey expanse of the sea, rhythmic as the womb, its surface featureless except when pierced by the moon or fishing boats and the frenzied fight of their wakes.
The people of this land were strange, subdued creatures, hybrids of earth and water. They were refugees, thrown across the world by invasion to seek invisibility among the lagoons and caves of this sea. They were Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis and people of other races who wanted solitude and peace and asked no questions of five travellers making their way east.
It was a week of hard riding and at night they slept deeply among barrels and nets and crabs that darted between them. They awoke stiffened by salt and cold, with the cry of birds carried loud and faint on the currents above them. Once they slept at some salt pans; they warmed themselves next to the chimneyed furnaces that made the salt, which was stacked around them in boxes: crystals winking up at the stars.
The next day they saw mermaids on the shore and swam with them for a while in the waves, stripping to their cotton shorts. But the mermaids were afraid and came to sit with Shulen on the rocks and throw shells at their suitors. And Shulen laughed and reached into her saddlebag to show them her strange Venetian glass.
At last, the Alburz Mountains rose up to the south and they turned towards them, finding a path through meadows grazed by herds of wild horses that raced beside them as they rode. Further on, the path rose gently, then steeply, into foothills covered in pine and chestnut until, above the trees, they could see mountains stretched out before them, their western slopes tinged with crimson.
Luke looked at his map. ‘Tomorrow night we should reach the castle of Alamut, which is out there somewhere, about fifty miles away. There are wild tribes in those mountains and Ibn Khaldun recommended we sleep in the castle’s shadow. The people don’t go near it. They think it’s still full of assassins.’
‘So what about tonight?’ asked Arcadius.
‘Tonight, we find a cave.’
‘Fire?’
‘No fire, no cooking,’ Luke said. ‘From now on we must remain unseen. We will reach Sultaniya from the east, which will not be the direction anyone still looking for us will expect us to come. But it will take us another week.’
That night, lying in the darkness, Luke told them what he’d learnt from Ibn Khaldun of the man they were to meet in Sultaniya.
‘He is Temur’s second son. His older brother, Jahangir, died of some sickness when only twenty. Jahangir was his father’s favourite: brave, good, and everything that Miran Shah isn’t. And he had a beautiful wife, Khan-zada.’
Shulen said: ‘Some say that it is Khan-zada who has driven Miran Shah mad. She was forced to marry him when Jahangir died and Miran Shah knows she’ll never love him as she did his brother. His jealousy has driven him insane.’
Nikolas asked: ‘Will we meet her?’
‘I hope so,’ replied Luke. ‘Yakub says that she has influence over Temur.’
‘Why would she have influence?’ asked Matthew.
Shulen said: ‘Because she was Jahangir’s wife and because she is mother to Temur’s favourite grandsons, Mohammed Sultan and Pir Mohammed, both of whom seem to have inherited their father’s virtues. Mohammed Sultan is Temur’s heir.’
Luke yawned. ‘And there’s another reason she has influence,’ he said. ‘You will remember how Ibn Khaldun said that Temur is obsessed with Genghis Khan? About how he minds not being of his line? Well, Khan-zada is of royal blood. She is the granddaughter of Uzbeg, Khan of the Golden Horde in the north.’
‘Which means he’ll listen to her?’ asked Matthew.
There was no answer because Luke had fallen asleep.
That night they slept well and awoke glad not to have salt in their hair and the smell of fish in their nostrils. They found a waterfall and washed as best they could and filled their flasks. They ate cold mutton and biscuits before setting out into the Alburz Mountains.
The riding was hard and slow and the horses slipped on shale or stumbled through rock falls, their ears flat against their heads and their nostrils quivering with alarm. The sounds of their hooves echoed up from ravines too deep to fathom or rolled down the slopes above, and no one thought of speaking. It was a high, barren land of jagged ridges and sudden shadow and they felt no part of it.
In the afternoon, they began to descend, sparse scrub giving way to single trees, then woods which were thick and shut out the sun. The sudden gloom made the horses start and blow and they kept their reins short. Then they came out into a wide valley, terraced on either side and startlingly green. There had been people here once, many people, and their deserted villages were still scattered along its sides. Wasted fields stretched all around them. They rode in silence beside a river that twisted its way through gulleys and cataracts and opened out into deep pools where people once must have swum and washed their clothes.
‘What happened here?’ Arcadius was riding next to Shulen.
‘The Mongols,’ said Shulen. ‘These were the lands of the assassins and Alamut was their stronghold. The Mongols destroyed them a century ago.’
‘The assassins?’
‘Later, Arcadius. Look up there.’ She was pointing to a crag at the end of the valley that had come into view. ‘That’s it. The Eagle’s Nest: Alamut.’
At first he saw only the steep sides of a mountain that rose higher than its neighbours. Then he saw that the sides became walls and the walls battlements, all brushed with the same orange of the late-
evening sun. It was impossible to believe that anything could have been built on such a peak. He whistled softly.
‘Impregnable.’ Arcadius had reined in his horse to stare.
‘Not to the Mongols,’ said Luke, who had come up beside him. ‘We need to get to it before dark.’
They broke into a trot and an hour later arrived at the bottom of the mountain. An old track, barely visible, rose around its side and they took it.
‘We’ll stop here,’ said Luke. They’d found a wide-mouthed cave above the track that, with some disguise, would be invisible from either direction. It was big enough to accommodate both them and the horses. ‘If we cover the entrance, we can light a fire,’ he said, dismounting. ‘But no cooking.’
The others climbed down from their horses and undid the saddlebags strapped to the animals’ sides. They took down their bedrolls, removed the saddles and bridles and poured water into vessels for the horses. When the animals were tethered, they set off to find wood for camouflage and fuel. By the time they’d returned, it was almost dark and a half-moon was high in the sky.
When the mouth of the cave had been stopped with foliage, the fire lit and a meal eaten, they set their bedrolls against their breastplates and laid down to talk. The horses were tied at the front of the cave and would provide warning of any approach.
Arcadius said: ‘Shulen, you were going to tell us of these assassins.’
She picked up a stick, turning it in her hand, before replying. ‘They were an elite band of warriors, especially trained to assassinate their enemies.’ She paused and smiled. ‘Rather like you Varangians.’
Nikolas, who was lying next to her, his head almost touching hers, said: ‘I should hope better. We were forced to leave Monemvasia, were on the losing side at Nicopolis and nearly got executed by a madman in Tabriz. The only people we might have assassinated are ourselves.’
Shulen smiled. ‘Your time will come.’
The Towers of Samarcand (The Mistra Chronicles) Page 16
