A Wind in Cairo (23 page)

“Is he really?”

“And Syria, too. As truly as I live.”

“Ah,” she said. She frowned. “I didn't do anything. He was just so sad, and so kind, in spite of what he is. I wanted to comfort him a little.”

“And so you did. And he laid his blessing on you. That's mighty, mistress. There are princes who would kill to have even a fraction of what he gave you all unasked.”

“The sultan didn't seem to mind.”

“How could he?”

She smiled and shook her head. “You're not logical, Jaffar.”

“I don't have to be.” He scrubbed her as she liked, hard but not too hard, raising a cloud of rose-scented foam. She purred like a cat. He kissed her, too quick to catch. “I don't have to be anything but glad.”

For his valor Khamsin had won a great prize: a groom to himself, one of the sultan's own, and freedom from lead or hobble. He was circumspect in it. He slept by his mistress' tent, with his groom snoring gently within his reach. He grazed as close to the camp as he might, and as far from the mares. Though it was spring and they were in season, and he was sorely tempted.

It was astonishing how much strength of will a stallion could have. More than a man. More by far than Hasan al-Fahl.

Zamaniyah smelled of roses this morning. He closed his eyes and breathed it in.

She wielded the brush with good will and no little insouciance. The groom had just learned his lesson. The mistress cleaned her horse herself. He sat on his haunches in the tent's shade, narrow-eyed, critical. She ignored him with conspicuous care.

Khamsin could not decide whether to be amused or displeased. She could have been kinder. It was not the boy's fault that he was here; and he was a good servant. Better than that haughty eunuch of hers, who carried himself as if he were the King of Nubia.

Ah well, thought Khamsin. He had the wits to love Zamaniyah.

“I met a magus yesterday,” she said. In Greek, which was rude. It would be no more than she deserved, if the boy proved fluent in it.

A magus?

Khamsin's back hunched; his ears flattened. He pawed the ground, tossing his head, as if could fling off a word as one flings off a stinging fly.

She slapped his shoulder to stop his pawing, seeing no reason in it, taking no great notice of it. “He's come to help defend the sultan against the Assassins. He's very wise and very learned and very sad.”

Khamsin did not want to hear. His mind darted, hunting escape. But where could he go? If a mage wanted to find him, a mage would, for anything that he could do.

He was being an idiot. The magus had come to aid the sultan, she had said it herself. One smallish horse, even a horse who had been born a man, could not possibly matter to him.

“I like him,” said his blissful innocent of a mistress.

His head snapped about, incredulous.

She scratched the hollow under his jaw. “Poor man, he's suffered horribly. His daughter has gone away and won't let him visit her; she's sworn enmity against all men, even her father. Because once they had one as a guest—they found him in the street, Khamsin, all beaten and battered, and healed him and fed him and showed him every courtesy; and do you know how he paid them?”

Allah, Allah, he knew, why must she know, why could he not move? Her hands woke dim bodily pleasure. Her words flayed him to the bone.

“He raped her,” she said, hating the very word, spitting it. “That's what he gave them in return for his life. Can you believe it? Can you imagine it?”

He tried to shrink down. A horse was not made for it. He could only drop his head, clamp his tail to his flanks.

She pulled it up again, attacking it with the comb. “I hope,” she said, words coming out in spasms between sharp angry strokes, “I hope he learns—learns perfectly—exactly what he did. He didn't know, the magus says. He just wanted. He didn't care what he did to anyone. He wanted and he took.” The comb caught on a tangle. She worried it free. Paused. “God help anyone who tries to take anything from me.”

Oh, that he could melt into the earth. Or die. Or be anyone but Khamsin who had been Hasan.

She left his tail, started on his feet. “It makes me so angry, Khamsin. It scares me. That a man can do a thing like that. They do it in war, I know, though the sultan tries to stop them. They do it in the streets of any city there is. But in one's own house, from one's own guest...it goes beyond unspeakable. It makes a mockery of God and law and plain humanity. If a man can do that, what can he not do?”

Escape unscathed.

Innocently, mercilessly, she twisted the knife. “But you, you're not a man. You don't know about hosts and guests and courtesies. You just know sense. You won't take what a mare won't give.”

He, no. Never. Never again.

She linked her arms about his neck. “I'm glad you're not a man,” she said. “I'm glad you're Khamsin.”

Such comfort, that was. Cold and raw; unendingly cruel.

She noticed something when she rode him. He was obedient out of the habit of it. There was no spark in it. No joy. It was all slain.

She decided that he was tired. She cut it short; and that too was cruel. Everything she did was cruel. Because of what she knew, and of what she did not know. Which, surely, surely, the magus would tell her. Then she would hate Khamsin as she hated Hasan; and his punishment would be complete.

“Enough,” said the sultan. “Enough of this.”

He stalked in front of his tent, hands knotted behind him, glaring at motionless, impervious Aleppo. His engines had nicked a tower or two. His army had quelled a sortie or three. The city was no more his now than it had been when his siege began.

He could, Zamaniyah knew, wear it down and starve it out. But that might take a year; and his army could not live on grass, even if it fasted throughout as now it fasted in Ramadan. No more would it linger if he ceased to pay it.

They needed a battle, and plunder. Something solid and swift.

“Mosul,” said one of the emirs, “is moving at last. Saif al-Din will gain little enough profit from conquest of the east, if you wield his uncle's realm behind him. If he allies with Zangi his brother...”

“Not if we can help it,” the sultan said. There was a smile or two, quickly quelled. Zangi needed no encouragement to thwart his brother, whom he despised most cordially; he had welcomed the aid of a company of the sultan's troops. With Zangi's malice to engage it, Mosul could not strike Syria with its full force.

But even that could catch the sultan between its hammer and Aleppo's anvil.

Their voices contested, now mingling, now distinct.

“We cannot give up this siege.”

“Why not? We hold the south. We can withdraw, replenish our strength, firm our grip on what we have; then strike again in a better hour.”

“There will be none better. Aleppo and Mosul between them can hammer us to dust.”

“And have you forgotten the Franks? Aleppo would as easily ally with them as fight them.”

“They? Their king is a child.”

“Just so is Aleppo's; and have we won it yet?”

“The king is not the only lord in Frankland. Some are stronger than he is. One of them in arms, summoned by our enemies, or simply seeing our disarray—”

As often while his emirs shouted at one another—council of war, they called it, though it was more war than council—the sultan kept his distance, saying nothing. He would speak when he judged it time to speak. He would do what he, himself, chose to do. The emirs never seemed to notice how little account he took of all their warring counsel.

“See,” cried an emir, brandishing the letter that had brought them together. “See what insolence Mosul compels us to endure! ‘Yusuf,' the whelp informs the world, ‘has scorned the laws of humankind. He has forgotten what he is and whence he came; for all that the father did for him, he recompenses the son with rebellion and with treason. Therefore I, kinsman and loyal servant, lord by my lord's bestowal of Mosul—‘”

They shouted him down. “Mosul is a yapping dog! Has it moved? Has it done aught but smite us with words? The Franks, now—”

“The Franks have moved.” That, at last, was the sultan, soft and level. A messenger knelt at his feet; a letter was in his hand. Both had come quietly, unheeded in the uproar.

The sultan rose in spreading silence. “The Franks have moved,” he said again. He seemed calm, but there was a spark in his eye. It was not, Zamaniyah perceived, fear. “The Count of Tripoli has crossed our borders; he has passed by Homs and moves upon Hama. Aleppo,” he said above a rising roar, “Aleppo and Mosul have sworn alliance with him. Do we endure this, my lords? Do we sit like ladies in a harem, while the infidel ravages the lands we have so newly won?”

He had them. Not as quickly as that, and not as simply, but the tide was against resistance. They could see as well as he, that the siege had accomplished nothing.

But to chance open battle, in Ramadan—

“We have no choice!” He was roused, quiet no longer, diffident no longer. “We march at dawn. We stay for no man. The infidel has set his foot in Syria.”

The sultan was not a hasty man, nor a rash one. But when he determined to move, he moved. At dawn as he had commanded, hard upon the first prayer, the army departed from Aleppo. They left nothing behind but scouts and spies and the hacked and useless remnants of siege engines.

They rode like the wrath of Allah. They stopped for nothing and no one. The weak and the stragglers dropped away. The strong clung grimly to their saddles or ran stoically at the stirrups of the horsemen. They had perforce to remember an art of necessity: changing mounts at speed, and resting as seldom as men and beasts could bear.

Zamaniyah tricked Khamsin thus once, but only once. The second time he would not allow it, though she cursed him. He was acting like a man. Flaunting his hardihood; killing himself. “You idiot!” she shouted at him. “We have to fight when we get there. Do you want someone else to carry me then?”

He checked, snorted, veered. Her knee brushed the side of the remount. She snatched the saddle and swung over before Khamsin could know what he had done.

Unless he had intended it. His eye was bright as he fell in beside her.

“Damn you,” she said. “You understand Arabic.”

He nipped her boot and skittered to the very end of his rein, and there stayed, matching the soft-gaited bay pace for pace.

She watched him out of the corner of her eye. Sometimes he worried her. No, she admitted to herself. Sometimes he frightened her. He was not like any horse she had ever seen, even the horses of Arabia, who could be half Jinn and half fire. None of them had ever come quite so close to human wit and wickedness.

She shifted her aching body in the saddle. The bay barely noticed. Khamsin was intent on keeping his footing in the rutted and trampled road. He looked like any horse in that long undulating line, smaller than some, handsomer than most. Somehow, while she was not looking, his chest had deepened, his haunches rounded and grown strong: narrow no longer, weak no longer, yet elegant still. She reached, brushed his neck with the tips of her fingers. He bent an ear in acknowledgement. Perhaps it was an apology. Perhaps he accepted it.

It was twenty-five leagues in the hawk's flight from Aleppo to Hama, across a plain from which the splendor of spring was already retreating, giving way to dust and sere grass and pitiless sky. Yet Hama was no city of open spaces. It was a secret place, a place of green shadows and windless stillness, set in the deep furrow which the river Orontes had carved in the earth. Other cities stretched high up to heaven. Hama nestled within the circle of cliffs, girdled with gardens, embracing its river.

It wore now a crown of steel. From far away they could see one another, the Franks in their mailed lines, the army of the sultan pressing grimly onward. Word had flown back through the ranks. They would halt only to fight.

Zamaniyah straightened her aching body. At the mention of battle, the infantryman who clung to her stirrup had raised his head; a light had come into his face. He grinned up at her, a white gleam amid the dust.

She managed a thin smile. Her heart had quickened, but not with pleasure. She was barely sure of herself against Muslims. How could she face the towers of steel that were Franks?

They had slowed, to gather strength, but still they moved much too swiftly for her peace. Through dust and massed men she could see nothing of either city or enemy.

The drums beat, thudding in the center of her.
Halt; form ranks.
Some idiot was singing. A Bedu love song, of all improbable things in this hateful place.

Khamsin was waiting for her, with his groom smirking beside him. The whelp had mocked her with a miracle: spotless horse, impeccable caparisons. They might have come fresh from the stable.

She had not, and she felt it in every bone. Jaffar had her weapons, her bow, her quiver. For the boy's sake she sprang lightly into the saddle; the eunuch passed up her arms.

This was war, and holy. Therefore they were allowed to break the fast. She took her share of water, eyed the bread and mutton with little favor. Because Jaffar was there, glaring horribly, she choked down a bite or two.

The drums beat again.
In ranks. Battle order.

They spread across the rolling level: left, right, center. Baggage behind, guarded. The sultan on a rise with his standard, overseeing the field. Voices shrilled high, exultant, weariness forgotten.

Khamsin had raised his own deafening paean. Now at last his rider could see the enemy. Against the milling hordes of Islam, the Franks stood up in clear and ordered lines. Their knights were tall and terrible. Their banners were barbaric: beasts, birds, creatures both and neither, ramping on gaudy fields, defying the simplicity of holy words sewn and painted on the black and gold and green of the sultan's standards.