E. Hoffmann Price's Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK®

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “Who asks Allah to curse the religion of another true believer?”

  Timur snorted. “I’m talking to myself. Only way to do, if you want to hear sense for a change.”

  Then his eyes became used to the glare: he saw the grimy khelat, the greasy skullcap, the girdle of frayed rope, the dirty hands which fingered a wooden bowl. Dirty hands, this beggar had, but fine and long, made for good penmanship. And he wore a writing case at his girdle, and a scroll carefully wrapped in a clean red silk scarf.

  “Well, darvish!” Timur found a gold piece. “Guest of Allah, and a lot more welcome than these Kipchak pigs!”

  Only then had his eyes a chance to focus sharply on the seamed face, shrewd, ironic, kindly; somewhat of a dish face, with broad, flat nose, Mongol features and melon head like Timur’s own.

  And Timur knelt on the littered tiles, catching the beggar’s hand, too swiftly for any evasion; he kissed it.

  “By the Splendor! I’d heard—I didn’t recognize—”

  The darvish freed his hand, made a gesture to decline the reverence. “Kaboul Shah Aglen, now the Guest of God and the least of the slaves.”

  Timur Bek had risen, to step back, entirely bewildered. Kaboul Shah Aglen, eighth in direct descent from Genghis Khan’s son, Jagatai, begging his bread, and for shoes, growing callouses on his feet!

  Kaboul smiled. “The darvish robe would fit you, Timur Bek. Last night’s friends are this day’s enemies. Become intoxicated by the splendor of Allah, and become His Guest, and the peace will be with you.”

  Outside, just then, horses had begun to squeal and snort; saddle drums rolled, for Bikijek was riding to the mosque. As the lordly sounds died out, Kaboul Aglen went on, “When Togluk Khan comes south to cure the disease which his son ignores, your palace becomes a mirage, and you’ll be stealing sheep again. Get out, while you still can leave without killing too many horses.

  “Genghis Khan, the master of all mankind, once had to steal a horse to keep from wearing out his boots. In me, the circle closes on itself. I beg my bread, as in the end all the race of Genghis Khan must do.”

  Timur’s face darkened; Karashar Nevian, his ancestor, nine generations back, had been Genghis Khan’s uncle and advisor. Then he laughed, and it was like trumpets braying before the charge. “See here! You’re the heir to the Jagatai throne, you, not Togluk Khan nor Togluk Khan’s son. I’ll make you Grand Khan in Samarkand!”

  The beggar shrugged. “No time; too soon, you’ll be riding for your neck. You, not Bikijek.”

  Timur flipped the golden dinar into the bowl.

  The beggar whisked it out. “What is nothing now will be your fortune soon, and the peace upon you!”

  And here it was: hard riding pursuit behind him, while his wife raced to round up what fighting men she could find. So he laughed again, from thinking on the words of Kaboul Aglen, and the murderous bowstring a scribe could pluck.

  * * * *

  Forty-two horsemen, all with spare mounts, waited with Olajai when two days later, Timur’s horse stumbled toward the rendezvous, where tents were scattered about a spring which kept the grass green.

  Hashim, melon headed and scar-faced, came running to greet him; and he walked back, clinging to Timur’s stirrup leather. “We ride again, tura!” he said, using the Turki word for ‘my lord.’ “It is like the old days again.”

  Then Timur saw Tagi Bouga Barlas, his distant cousin, hard bitten and grinning; Sayfuddin, the greatest archer of them all, coddling a bow; and roaring Elthci Bahadur whose strength and skill had thus far hacked his way out of all the traps into which he charged. They crowded about, grimy and sweat gleaming; jeweled collars and gold inlaid helmets and embroidered belts grotesque against greasy khalats, and sheepskin jackets.

  “Hai, Timur Bahadur!”

  Quickly they broke camp and rode, for they had rested while Timur led the Kipchak riders a crazy chase in circles. And now, being among friends, Timur dozed in the saddle; and Olajai rode beside him.

  CHAPTER III

  Battle

  Five days brought Timur to the Jihun’s poplar lined banks; and swimming this river put the Jagatai realm behind them. At the Well of Saghej they found Mir Hussein, with Dilshad Aga, his wife, and some forty horsemen.

  The King Maker’s grandson was handsome as his sister was lovely; a small, pointed black beard, and high arched brows, and a high bridged, straight nose with nostrils whose flare made one think of a stallion scenting a fight. Until his army had been scattered, he had been King in Kandahar; now he had lost everything but hope.

  There was no meat, so they ate cooked millet and buttered tea. Mir Hussein said, “Bismillahi, it could be worse.”

  Timur grimaced. “We can’t eat sand very long. But with a couple good raids, I’ll have an army at my back. The men of Kesh were giving me hard looks, you’d think I’d sold them out, just because I took the thankless job of trying to stand between them and those Kipchak hounds! But this fast ride has set a lot of them thinking.”

  “Inshallah! But I can’t show up in Kandahar with a guard of forty men.”

  Timur chuckled sourly. “No, they’ve probably got a new king there. That’s the trouble, too many kings, instead of one good one. Now, your grandfather—”

  Mir Hussein sighed. “May God be well pleased with him! But do you think he could improve things? He used to pull kings out of his saddlebags, but this is different. Still, you’d do pretty well as Grand Khan of the Jagatai.”

  Dangerous ground. If Timur did raise an army to drive the present puppet out of Samarkand, he’d be quite a hero, but once he took the throne, jealousy would start feuds. Mir Hussein was good in battle, and good nowhere else. “You’re the grandson of Mir Kazagan,” Timur countered. “How’s Tekil?”

  “Hungry and looking for business. At least seven hundred Turkomans and the like.”

  “Our hundred will draw his following,” Timur argued. “And with that start, we’ll begin to make an impression.”

  So they rode through three marches of hell, across the black sands of Kivac. The scrawny oasis looked like a small paradise, for the lips of Timur’s men were cracked from thirst.

  The citadel loomed up, above the poplars. “I don’t like it,” Timur said. “No one working in the fields. No one tending the ditches.”

  Instead of pressing on to the city, they made camp at the fringe of green which marked the beginning of cultivation.

  Timur beckoned to Eltchi Bahadur and Tagai Bouga Barlas, “We’ll ride in and pay our respects to Tekil.”

  Hussein cut in, “No! Let me go. He knows I’ve spent a couple of months at the Well of Saghej, and he made no trouble. Let me talk to him.”

  Timur’s eyes narrowed. “Hmmm…don’t tell him I’m here. Just say you know where I am.”

  The deep-set Turki eyes sparkled. “So you’ve been thinking about that mess in Samarkand?”

  Where Hussein had been the ill favored one, it now seemed that Timur’s head was most in demand.

  That night, Timur posted double guards and slept with his boots on. While his fame as a captain would always get him followers, it would also make his head a prize in a land where every man was a king, and allegiances changed overnight.

  * * * *

  In the morning he heard trumpets and drums, and saw Mir Hussein’s standard, and the riders who came from the gates, the fields and through the groves.

  “Break camp, and be ready to mount up!” Timur commanded.

  Then he rode out with twenty men to meet Tekil.

  Ceremonious greetings: the burly governor fairly fell from his horse to be the first to dismount. A big, red-faced man, a hearty, smiling man. “Welcome, welcome, Timur Bek! Kivak is yours. You and your brother, I bid you welcome.”

  Tekil had an escort of perhaps two hundred
horses. Timur wondered where the others were. He caught old Hashim’s narrowed eyes, and made a twist of head and chin. The old fellow gave a gesture of assent; and unobtrusively edged from the clump of horsemen, to head back to camp.

  More compliments. Hussein was smooth and smiling and affable. Tomorrow, he and Timur would with pleasure and heartiness attend the governor’s banquet. Today, Allah bear witness, things were in an uproar in camp. Horses, badly overtaxed, needed attention. And some of the party was still unaccounted for. Ay, Wallah! Some baggage animals, carrying all the gifts designed for His Excellency, were lagging a day’s march behind.

  Something was wrong, something was off color; Hussein’s fluent patter confirmed Timur’s earlier premonitions. He said, cutting in brusquely, “Allied-to-Greatness, we beg permission to turn from the light of your Presence!”

  Words and music did not match. He was in the saddle before Tekil fairly realized that another speaker had addressed him. Tagi Bouga Barlas mounted up; and so did Hussein.

  Tekil’s face changed. And then came the great bawling voice of Eltchi Bahadur, and the pounding of hooves. “To horse, O Bek! They’ve got us hemmed in!”

  “Swords out!”

  And Timur had scarcely shouted his command when an arrow smacked home with a solid thump. Eltchi was shooting, shooting hard, fast, straight. “Get out of my way,” he howled, “get out of my way!”

  Timur and Mir Hussein were blocking his line of fire. Then the visitors and the host’s men went into action, blades out; some lancers maneuvered for working space, while others threw their lances down and snatched maces from their saddle bows.

  “To camp!” Timur shouted. “Archers fall out!”

  There was no drill by command, as such; it was rather instinctive teamwork, based on many a pitched battle and running fight. Eltchi Bahadur charged headlong at the Tekil’s guard. Hacking and hewing, he was swallowed up by milling horsemen and billowing dust.

  Meanwhile, as though called by signal, half Timur’s escort swooped to right and left, and the bows began to twang. Hard driven shafts laced the flanks of Tekil’s tight packed traitors; murderous, close range archery; cunningly driven shafts, some picking men, others nailing horses whose fall would block the movement of other riders.

  Stung by the ferocious archery, Tekil’s men opened out. Timur and Hussein pressed in, head on, to divide the enemy. And from the rear came the brawling, booming voice of Eltchi Bahadur. He looked as though an avalanche had passed over him, but he was hewing his way back to meet Timur.

  Timur’s archers fell back, shooting as they withdrew, and covering the retreat. Over the roar of battle, he heard the approach of his main detachment, and saw his chance.

  “This way, you bawling bull!” he shouted to Eltchi, and pointed toward a low hillock.

  In a moment, Timur’s standard was on the knoll. Dust ringed the oasis. The rest of Tekil’s men were closing in. It was now clear where the governor’s force had been. It was all too clear that the riders trailing Timur out of Samarkand had been baiting him, while a courier rode directly to Tekil Bikijek, he now concluded, had known all the while where Mir Hussein was, and had counted on Timur’s joining his brother-in-law: the two were to be settled beyond the border of the Jagatai territory.

  Ten to one: Timur took a fresh horse, and looked out and down at the closing circle of steel. He said to his wife, and to Dilshad Aga, “Keep your heads down. There won’t be many of us to block the arrows, not for long.”

  CHAPTER IV

  Olajai

  The one sided battle was reaching its end as the sun slowly dragged down toward the horizon. Olajai, ignoring arrows, went about during lulls, carrying a goatskin jar of brackish water.

  “Easier each round,” Timur said, and licked the dust from his lips.

  She laughed. “They’re well whittled down, too!”

  Of Tekil’s men, scarcely fifty were able to fight. The others were dead, or they had left the field because of wounds. As for Timur, only seven were about his standard.

  Charge after charge had been swept back, for in the beginning, Tekil’s men had blocked each other, only a few at a time being able to present themselves to the enemy; and closing in on Eltchi Bahadur was a swift way to the mercy of Allah.

  Those who first charged up the little knoll had struggled in sandy soil, facing a hail of arrows: and the next wave had been blocked by windrows of fallen horses and men. Finally, exhaustion took the heart from all but the strongest. Skill failed, and so did the will.

  “Only seven to one now, my dear! Give Bahadur a drink!”

  He turned to his sister-in-law: “I’ll get you horse tails, tie them to the standard.”

  There were plenty of once splendid mounts who had no further use for their tails. Timur hacked, and Dilshad Aga set to work.

  Timur waited. The ring of winded, wounded enemies waited. The air had the dead stillness of a well-fired oven, except when hot wind drove scorching sand. Tagi Bouga Barlas and Sayfuddin were now on foot. Eltchi Bahadur grinned, though wearily; blood and sweat and dust made his homely face a devil’s mask.

  “Hai, Bahadur! The sons of pigs would turn tail if someone knocked that Tekil out of action.”

  Timur snorted. “I’ve spent all day trying to get at him. I’ve been cutting meat till my arm’s ready to fall off, he always gets someone between me and him.”

  Hussein came up; debonair, head cocked like the head of a falcon, eyes aglitter. “Why take down our standard, brother?”

  “It’s coming up in a second.”

  Then Dilshad Aga called, and Timur went to take the staff. Hussein saw the three horse tails. “The standard of Genghis Khan! By Allah, why not? This is our day. God does what he will do, and here we are.”

  Timur planted the staff, and said to Hashim, “Sound off!”

  The one unbroken saddle drum rolled and grumbled in the hot silence; a hot wind made the three horse tails ripple, then fan out. Timur challenged the enemy: “Sons of Bad Mothers! Here is the standard of Genghis Khan, the Master of all Mankind. He rides again!”

  Hussein mounted up, wordlessly, and with the smooth swiftness of a panther. Sword out, he raced down the slope. Then came Eltchi Bahadur’s great voice; the drum stopped rumbling. Olajai cried out—many men had died, but this was her brother, and a clump of swordsmen had swallowed him up.

  The others were at his heels. Tekil’s standard, clipped in half, was trampled in the dust. Eltchi Bahadur smashed home with all his weight and steel. And as he raced, Timur plucked his bow. One shot. Just one. A single shaft, threading through the shifting fighters, caught Tekil between the teeth. The impact knocked him from his horse.

  Then an arrow caught Timur’s mount. The beast crumpled, flinging the rider asprawl. Timur rolled, recovered, and from the bloody sand he snatched a half-pike. Eltchi Bahadur had hewn a path to Tekil. Timur bore down on the pike, driving through armor, driving it through the man, and deep into the earth.

  Whoever could run or ride fled to the fortress. Seven wounded victors left the field, to find whatever safety they could, before Tekil’s men recovered from the shock, and began to think of vengeance.

  They retraced their course. At the desert’s fringe, three of the survivors said, “Lord Timur, Allah does what he will do, and with your permission, we go to our homes in Khorassan, while you raise an army.”

  This also had happened before, so Timur answered, “Go with my blessing.”

  Then on the night when they were not far from the Jihun, Timur said to Hussein, “There are not enough for any defense, only enough to be conspicuous. Better we separate. You go to Hirmen, and spend the winter with the Mikouzeri tribesmen. I’ll go back home to Kesh, incognito, and I’ll meet you in Hirmen, later.”

  So they parted. And when Timur was alone with Olajai, he said, “Shireen, you mar
ried a prince in Kesh, and now look! Not one rider behind me.”

  “I’m not worrying. Though I was scared silly, until you had that crazy notion of hoisting three horse tails!”

  He eyed her sharply. “You quit worrying then? Mmmm…it did something to your brother, the crackbrain, he was off before I knew what was happening.”

  She nodded. “That shocked me, too. Then, suddenly, I knew that Tekil’s men would break. For a crazy instant, it was as if Genghis Khan had come back through all these nine generations, and out of his grave.”

  “The sun, my dear. It was bad.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t see anything, I didn’t hear anything, I just felt something. As though you had really had the right, that moment, to put up the horse-tail standard. And they felt it.”

  “You’re giving Eltchi Bahadur and Hussein not much credit!”

  “I notice you took the tails off before we left. I’m not worried. It’s working out. What that darvish said. Only he didn’t say all. Maybe he didn’t know, maybe he couldn’t see so far ahead. But I do.”

  “What’s that?” His voice was sharp.

  “My grandfather made kings. He unmade them. Always, he put on the throne of Samarkand someone of the direct line of Genghis Khan. And there was peace, the very name made peace. You know, he could have taken the throne himself.”

  “He could. And Kazagan Khan would have filled any throne.”

  “But he didn’t, he wouldn’t. Timur—don’t you see what I mean? You have a right to the name, you’ve proved the right, back there.”

  They marched, from brackish well to dry well where there was water only by digging. Then the worst of the two horses collapsed. Timur dismounted and said, “Take mine.”

  She stared, gaped. He said gruffly, “Mount up!”

  “Why—darling—whatever—you’re crazy.”

  Her incredulity was natural. A man tramping on foot would be too worn out to fight. It was plain sense that he should ride while Olajai walked.