And for what?
Constantinople hadn’t been the same since being hollowed out by the Black Death. Coming on the heels of Crusader occupation, the plague had dealt insult to injury, leaving Palaiologos with a capitol more in historical legacy than in function. And the royalty of the West must have known this, too. If once their knights had lusted for glory and conquest at Byzantine expense, now those same Western kingdoms twiddled their fingers dismissively at the exhortations of Palaiologos’s representatives. Nobody seemed at all bothered by the idea that a Muslim army would eventually cross the Bosporus.
So why was the Eastern Roman Empire going to spend itself blocking the Ottoman threat for the sake of people who regarded Emperor Palaiologos’s plight as a mere bagatelle?
The walkway through the village was narrow and paved with foot-worn cobble. For all Chrysoloras knew, Alexander the Great might have strode this same way once upon a time. How odd—the general thought—that legendary leaders and great nations should all succumb to the one enemy they could never vanquish: time. It had swept away the Athenians and the Spartans and the Romans who came after them, though there were some who still pretended the era of the Caesars had not yet passed.
And one thousand years hence, what future man would go in the spiritual steps of Chrysoloras himself? With a new country’s might rising or falling. And would anyone remember what happened here, now, in this anonymous place?
Turning past corners of several squat buildings, Chrysoloras arrived at the portico of the house his men had commandeered for their headquarters. He stopped cold when he spied the strange-looking, armored riders sitting on the backs of somewhat squat, solid-looking horses. The strangers’ faces and eyes were not the faces and eyes of the Abkhazi, nor the Kartli, nor the Sassun. Armenians? No, definitely not them, either. The riders seemed to have come from a place far to the east and north of the Caspian Sea. Their skin was dark from living in the sun, and their expression was that of men who had seen a long road filled with much danger and hardship.
The shafts of spears—tipped with wicked points—fluttered colorful streamers, while slightly curved swords were sheathed in similarly curved scabbards. To the untrained eye such warriors might have been mistaken for Turks. But these were clearly not Ottoman sons.
They watched Chrysoloras’s arrival in silence.
A different person—Eastern Roman—walked quickly out of the portico and confronted the general.
“Took you long enough,” he said curtly.
“Patience, Orrin,” the general said. “I’m an old man. You are not.”
“Regardless of your age, I’d think the sound of those guns closing across the river would put a spring in your step!”
The young ambassador was adorned in a red velvet doublet, much in the style of his Western counterparts with whom he’d been used to interacting prior to being pushed into this seeming exile with Chrysoloras. His displeasure with the situation had been piped into the general’s ears on an almost daily basis for the better part of eleven months.
“It would seem we have guests, yes?” Chrysoloras said, pointing at the strange men on horseback.
“Guests, indeed,” the ambassador said, mocking Chrysoloras’s somewhat cavalier tone.
The general sighed.
“Fine, Orrin, I capitulate to your urgency. What’s the news, and how does it help or hinder us?”
“Better if you hear it from the Khan’s envoy himself,” the emperor’s ambassador said stiffly, beckoning for Chrysoloras to follow the ambassador back the way he’d come.
“These are not Tamerlane’s men, are they?” Chrysoloras said, feeling a hot shock run up and down his spine. If the Ottoman threat was not bad enough, there was the Tumurid threat too. Chrysoloras’s men were technically on Timuran soil, though the villagers hadn’t expressed any allegiance to any particular sovereign.
“No, and that’s the vexing part,” the ambassador said, leading both Chrysoloras and his aide-de-camp through a dingy hallway to a larger banquet hall which had been cleared of dining furniture and now served as the Byzantine garrison’s main audience chamber. Guards to either side of the doorway stiffened at Chrysoloras’s entry.
“The general!” shouted one of them, to which every other Byzantine soldier in the room stood quickly to attention.
“As you were,” Chrysoloras said, waving away their trained, precise military decorum. He’d never been particularly comfortable with the stiffness of protocol.
At one end of the long table, several men—of the same derivation as the riders—were clustered. They watched Chrysoloras approach, but did not render the same honors as had been done by the Eastern Roman troops.
“You are the commander?” said one of the strangers, in thickly-accented but carefully-pronounced Greek. It had been the tallest of them who’d spoken. His helmet—resting on the table before him—had a prominent crest which differentiated it from the rest.
The general was taken aback.
“I am,” Chrysoloras said, also in Greek, feeling an almost electric impulse in his stomach. He’d visited many a Western court and knew the niceties expected therein. But these men were of another breed entirely. The bits of gold affixed to weapons and helmets spoke of rank, but like the men outside, these soldiers had the expressions of people who’d been hardened by a long and terrible journey. How was it possible that this man spoke a language familiar to so few in Chrysoloras’s command?
“Missionaries,” the dignitary said, by way of explanation. “Languages have always been my fascination, and when I had a chance to learn Greek, I took it. Now, I believe it will serve us both well. My master Jorightu Khan of the Yuan Dynasty seeks to communicate with an officer of Emperor Palaiologos.”
“Surely you mean an ambassador,” Chrysoloras said, tipping his head in Orrin’s direction.
“No,” the stranger said. “Diplomats can be too eager to make promises which are never kept. I need a man who can do better.”
Orrin’s cheeks flared pink. He too spoke Greek, though not nearly as well as Chrysoloras thought the young ambassador should. He was about to retort, but was stopped short by the quick look Chrysoloras gave him. Now was not the time to let one’s bruised pride do the talking.
“I am such a man,” Chrysoloras said calmly. “Though you will forgive me if I am not familiar with your khan’s kingdom specifically.”
“You have perhaps heard of Yesuder?” the strange dignitary said.
Chrysoloras stared dumbly for a moment, trying desperately to remember why that name sounded familiar. Then it hit him.
“You’ve come much farther than I first guessed,” Chrysoloras said frankly. “And I am afraid we’re in no position to offer you a rich welcome, what with the Turks approach to this village.”
“It is because your emperor and my khan share a mutual problem that I have been sent to find you,” the austere foreign officer said.
“And by what name shall I know you?” Chrysoloras asked.
“I am General Ulagan. Jorightu Khan sends his salutations to your Emperor Palaiologos.”
“We are grateful for the khan’s good will,” Chrysoloras said. “Can you be more specific about this problem?”
Ulagan snapped his fingers once, and both of the men at his sides set to work unrolling a cloth map illuminated by the morning sunlight filtering down from the hall’s upper-level windows. Chrysoloras, the ambassador, and Chrysoloras’s aide-de-camp approached. The cloth was silky smooth and fine in appearance, though the geography displayed on it looked very little like anything Chrysoloras had ever seen.
General Ulagan began stabbing his finger at various places, using Mongolian names which Chrysoloras—despite all his training—couldn’t begin to understand. Sensing Chrysoloras’s confusion, General Ulagan breathed deeply, and snapped his fingers a second time. The map was rolled up as quickly as it had been deployed, and returned to a bamboo-tube receptacle slung by a cord over one of Ulagan’s officer’s backs.
&nb
sp; Ulagan tapped a thumb at his lower lip, thinking.
“Your garrison will soon be overrun,” he said.
“I know,” Chrysoloras said.
“When news reached me that your emperor had dispatched troops this far east I had assumed he would send a considerably larger force. When the Turks become aware of how few you are, they will send word to their commander, and whatever your emperor hoped to accomplish here will have been for naught.”
“I know that too,” Chrysoloras replied glumly.
“Why have you not evacuated?”
“To where? There are no ships to carry us away. We were deposited here with the knowledge that we would not have the luxury of retreating. I’ve devoted the past day to composing several messages of surrender which will—I sincerely hope—spare the lives of most of my remaining men.”
“You will be taken as slaves,” the general said matter-of-fact.
“Perhaps not.”
“Hope is not a strategy,” Ulagan said, his expression growing dour.
“I apologize for not being the kind of man you expected,” Chrysoloras said. “If it’s great tactics and martial knowledge you require, I can’t help you. I am an officer by appointment, not experience. I have spent my life learning to use words, as opposed to swords. I can’t battle my way to a solution, so I must use the tool God has given me. You’ve arrived at a bad moment, and may be surrendering with us.”
“No,” Ulagan said. “We have not ridden across half the world just to be captured by the Muslims.”
“Why you have come so far, and to what end?”
“First things first,” Ulugan replied. “If you can get your men moving, now, my men have a clear route of escape secured.”
Chrysoloras raised an eyebrow and looked at the ambassador. The young man’s dour expression had instantly transformed into one of astonishment. The general’s ordinary instinct would have been to warn the ambassador against making rash decisions. What evidence was there to trust these strangers from the northeast? If Chrysoloras had learned anything in his life, it was to never, ever assume that things could not get worse. Because they could. And would.
But still…Who was to say these Mongolians had not been guided to this specific place at this specific moment, for a work far greater than any Chrysoloras or the young ambassador could comprehend? It was folly to strive against the mind of God. And though Chrysoloras had become a cynic since his failure to sway the Pope, he’d still been praying fervently for a better option.
Chrysoloras turned to face the guards at the doorway. He clapped his hands loudly three times and said, “Inform the captains! Gather every man who can ride or walk, and bring what weapons and provender can be carried!”
* * *
The road north was little more than a cow path which had been recently churned up by Mongolian horse hooves. The prior night’s autumn rain had turned things muddy, and it was hard going for both animals and men. Oxen—yoked to carts—trudged tiredly. Men were caked in wet soil up to their waists. Chrysoloras’s troops eyed the Mongols suspiciously, while the Mongols themselves barely payed the Byzantine troops any mind. Ulagan’s riders sat erect and alert in their saddles, eyeing the trees to both the east and the west. There appeared to be at least twice as many riders as Eastern Roman men walking, and Chrysoloras could hear muttered grumbling among his people who resented the fact. But the captains kept the men in line as they moved up the gentle slope—their pikes and spears braced on their shoulders, forming a lazily wavering forest of wooden shafts rising into the air.
Behind them, the little village slowly shrank in the distance. The Turks would find none of Chrysoloras’s men there. The villagers themselves would soon be under new management, and whether or not they would like the Turks any better than they had liked the general’s men—and they had not liked Chrysoloras’s people much at all—was an open question. Ostensibly, the garrison had been protecting those poor people from the Ottoman threat. But protection and occupation could look eerily similar if you were one of the hapless souls forced to watch as one army moved out, while another army moved in.
Chrysoloras rode alongside Ulugan, one officer looking remarkably unlike the other. Ulugan seemed to have been born to the saddle, and rode as if his steed were a part of the man. His helmet gleamed dully in the afternoon sunlight, while his lamellar armor rested easily on what Chrysoloras judged to be a muscular, mature frame. While Chrysoloras himself was frumpy and hunched, his soiled boots and drab topcoat looking very unlike the finery which typified other generals of the Eastern Roman Empire.
The ambassador rode near the middle of the column, surrounded by his entourage. Whenever Chrysoloras looked at his young counterpart, he noticed the ambassador peering over his shoulder—no doubt pining for the comfort of solid walls. Chrysoloras sympathized. He knew intimately the vulnerable feeling a diplomat experienced out on the open highway. Even being surrounded by men sworn to die to protect you didn’t completely assuage the sensation of unease when traveling as an Eastern Roman dignitary on foreign soil.
“Things must be desperate for you to have undertaken such a long journey,” Chrysoloras said to his Mongolian counterpart.
“The Yongle emperor of the Ming Dynasty wants us all dead,” Ulugan said solemnly. “Our people once ruled China completely to the far eastern sea. But as your own emperor knows too well, change is inevitable. The Yuan were rolled back, like a receding wave on the low tide. We could have united with our brothers of the Golden Horde and fought Yongle, but the Golden Horde wanted nothing to do with a people they considered to be vanquished refugees. So you see, General Chrysoloras, we are not so different. Both of our countries are in severe peril. There is nowhere for the Yuan to go but southwest, and the Muslims are in our way. Including the kingdom of the one you call Tamerlane, though the Timur are our people by blood. And your emperor must keep both Tamerlane and the Turks from taking Constantinople. If you could not find a willing ally to your west, the Yuan are ready and able to answer your call for aid.”
Chrysoloras allowed himself a small chuckle.
“Do you mock our offer?” Ulugan asked sharply.
“Not at all,” Chrysoloras said, continuing to use Greek, which seemed to be the only language the two generals knew between them.
“Why the amusement?” Ulugan demanded.
“My emperor will no doubt wonder what’s to prevent the Yuan from pressing across the Bosporus, assuming the Ottoman Turks can be conquered. Your Khan would ask the same question in Emperor Palaiologos’s place, I think. If I can speak plainly—one general to another—the most dangerous enemy is sometimes the friend you have improperly judged.”
“That is wisdom,” General Ulugan said, nodding his head in agreement. “Very well. Let me explain. Three great seas border the land desired by Jorightu Khan. The Turks occupy the western portion, while the people of Timur occupy the eastern. We Yuan would make it all our own. The people of Timur will become part of us again. But Jorightu Khan desires a friendly Christian neighbor. With Eastern Romans there may be dialogue. The productive establishment of trade. The Ming Dynasty may hate the Yuan, but the Silk Road will roll regardless. Or so Jorightu Khan believes.”
“Did you not tell me earlier today that hope is not a strategy?” Chrysoloras said.
Now it was Ulugan who chuckled.
“Words are indeed your weapon,” the Mongolian general said. “I have been speared with my own speech! Allow me to say that I cannot question the wisdom of the Khan. Were I in his place I would probably choose a different path. But that is not for me to decide. I have my orders.”
“Constantinople is my home,” Chrysoloras said. “Part of me wishes greatly for it to be defended at all cost. And yet, another part of me wishes for the Turks to flood into the West. It would serve those kingdoms right for how they have treated the Eastern Roman Empire since the split between Eastern and Western Christendom.”
“We are each officers of withered nations,” Ulugan said.
He leaned to the side and spit into the mud over which his horse traveled.
“Perhaps we can help our respective rulers to make our nations great again?”
Ulugan permitted himself a smile for the first time.
“It would make my heart glad, to die in the service of a strong Yuan country.”
“I can persuade my emperor,” Chrysoloras said, “assuming I can reach home again. By land it would take many months. It will be shorter on the Black Sea, assuming I survive to discover passage.”
As if on cue, a shout of alarm rose at the top of the column. All heads—Mongolian, and Eastern Roman—jerked forward at the sound.
“We are ambushed!” Ulugan said, baring his teeth in a snarl.
“Captains!” Chrysoloras bellowed. “Make ready to repulse the enemy!”
Latin men swirled among the Mongolian horses as the different ranks jostled to reform toward the threat. The bristling mass of Eastern Roman spearmen rushed forward through the mud, eager to bring their weapons to bear, while archers formed up behind them. General Ulugan barked hard orders in his native language and sent his riders thundering out into the treeline.
“Where are they going?” Chrysoloras asked, his chest heaving as the adrenaline of impending battle flooded his veins.
“They are faster, and can flank the enemy!”
“My own men will engage them head-on. I am afraid we aren’t sufficiently numerous to challenge a real army, however.”
Chrysoloras—though he didn’t have a soldiering bone in his body—urged his horse forward. The cacophony of clashing weapons could be heard up ahead, and soon the screaming of men filled the air. Chrysoloras’s bodyguards kept him penned, their own horses pulled in tight to protectively surround the general. His bodyguards’ heads swiveled this way and that, looking for any threat. But since the ambush had come from off the road proper, it was difficult to tell how many Ottoman Turks were involved, or if they were even Turks at all. Much was still obscured by the trees.
Trouble in the Wind Page 12
