The Towers of Samarcand (37 page)

*

But the welcome they received was not what they’d expected.

News of the baskets had preceded the army and by the time Mohammed Sultan, the four Varangians and Shulen presented themselves to Tamerlane, he knew the story well. To begin with, the Lord of the Celestial Conjunction was jovial. ‘Baskets!’ he chuckled, his glasses bobbing up and down on his nose. ‘You had my army weaving baskets?’

It was a stratagem even Tamerlane would have been proud of but Mohammed Sultan would take none of the credit. He was on his knees in his grandfather’s castle-tent and beside him knelt Luke. He gestured to him. ‘It was Luke’s idea, Grandfather. We do not have King Giorgi but his country has sworn vassalage.’

Tamerlane’s face darkened. ‘No Giorgi? What about Prince Tahir? Did you capture him?’

Mohammed Sultan shook his head. ‘Lord, he fled to Suleyman who was still in Armenia.’

‘But who has now returned to Bayezid, who already gives refuge to his father Ahmed.’

Miran Shah, whose advisers had shouldered the blame for the plot against Tamerlane and unshouldered their heads in consequence, now said: ‘Bayezid has allied himself with the Mamluks and Qara Yusuf of the Black Sheep. Your spies have said it, Father. He gets stronger.’

Tamerlane’s spies were numberless, nameless and ruthless. He had informers in every court – itinerant monks, strolling
vagabonds, physicians, procuresses – all of whom used the empire’s courier to send news to their emperor every day.

‘Perhaps’, said Mohammed Sultan tentatively, ‘it is therefore time to strike Bayezid before he can link up with the Mamluks? Their combined army would be very great.’

Tamerlane grunted. Then a smile spread across his lips. ‘Would you like me to read you the letter I’m sending Bayezid?’ he asked.

Mohammed Sultan exchanged a glance with Shulen. Had Tamerlane taken his lessons further in their absence?

The Emperor adjusted his spectacles and, very slowly, read the letter:

Tamerlane looked at Shulen, his two eyes huge behind the spectacles. ‘Well, is it good, teacher? Or is there too much water?’

Shulen spread her hands before her. ‘Lord, you are magnificent.’

Miran Shah was now looking at Mohammed Sultan, mischief in his eyes. ‘We will have, of course, the news of what you did in Georgia to spread terror west. How many Georgians did you kill, do you think, nephew?’

Mohammed Sultan shook his head. ‘We did it another way.
Georgia is not like the plains of Persia. Their army could hide in the mountains. We were merciful and the people helped us.’

Tamerlane was frowning. ‘So how many did you kill?’

For the first time, Luke felt a knot of fear inside him. The conversation was taking a dangerous course. He decided to speak. ‘Lord, I advised the Prince to be merciful. The booty we bring back is very great and the Georgian people might be persuaded to stay vassals this time.’

It was a mistake and Miran Shah pounced on it. ‘So are you suggesting, Greek, that my father’s tactics have been wrong these last years?’ he asked quietly. ‘Has the Sword of Islam been fighting the wrong wars all this time?’

Luke had seen the trap too late. He was in it and its walls were very steep. He decided to say nothing.

Tamerlane’s eyes were fixed on his heir. ‘How many did you kill?’ he asked again.

‘Few, lord,’ answered the Prince. ‘Their army surrendered soon after the baskets had done their work. I let them live.’

For a long time, Tamerlane sat there, staring at his heir in silence. Then he said: ‘That was very wrong. We will have to make up for it.’

*

A month later, Bayezid was in his harem in Edirne, leaning naked against the sides of a shallow bath in which, amidst rose petals, floated a smaller version of his navy. All of the galleys had masts except one that carried a beaker of wine. Two page boys swam around him in the water, one on his back, while a third rubbed ointments into his shoulders. The smell in the room was a mixture of herbs, wine and something else that made the man who’d entered feel nauseous.

‘Father, you wished to see me,’ said Suleyman.

The Sultan raised his eyes from the boy floating on his back. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We have news of Tamerlane. He’s taken Sivas.’

Suleyman rocked backwards on his heels. Sivas was only four hundred miles east of Bursa and Tamerlane was in the Qarabagh. Or was. ‘But I regarrisoned it. I put in four thousand Armenian sipahis.’

The Sultan’s voice was low. ‘Shall I tell you what happened to those sipahis?’

Suleyman didn’t answer.

‘After a week of siege, the Mongols breached the walls and the sipahi commander offered to surrender to avoid a massacre. Temur agreed and promised that no drop of Armenian blood would be spilt.’

Bayezid laughed then, a dry sound.

‘Well, he kept his promise. He had a pit dug and he buried them alive, every one of them. Then he turned on the city’s Christians. Five thousand had their heads tied between their thighs – men, women and children – and were thrown from the walls.’ He paused and looked at his son with disgust. ‘I told you to keep an eye on him and instead you invaded a country we didn’t need.’

For some moments, Suleyman was struck dumb with the shock. Then he said, ‘I thought he would stay in the Qarabagh.’

‘Well, you were wrong. His army’s now taken Malatiyah, so it lies between us and the the Mamluks.’ Bayezid’s face was expressionless. ‘He’s coming to fight us,’ he said quietly. ‘And, because of you, we do not have our allies with us.’

Luke stared at the child. His throat was open and in his hand he held a wooden sword. He was little older than Giovanni must be now. Three? Four? The eyes that stared back had a strange, faraway look as if they’d ranged over the furthest boundaries of human evil. Luke looked down at his sword. Had those dragon eyes seen anything to match this?

Matthew said: ‘Why look at him?’

It was a good question. Why look at him? The square was full of dead children and the birds that gorged on them. A mosque stood to one side, little more than smoking rubble after four days of desecration. Adjacent was another ruin with charred benches propped into a pyre. Next to it, a Mongol lay on his front. He was wearing a woman’s dress and in his hand was a flask from which wine had run into blood.

‘It must have been a school,’ said Nikolas.

Beyond the boy lay a girl of the same age who’d lost her eyes to the birds. She was rolled into a ball, naked, blood all around her. Arcadius was kneeling beside the little body. ‘He was trying to defend her,’ he said. ‘With his sword.’

Tamerlane had come to Aleppo. Leaving Malatiyah, he’d
struck south into Syria, part of the Mamluk Empire, and Luke and his friends had seen all that had ensued. Every town, every village, every living thing in this army’s path had been destroyed and the towers of skulls left behind were the tallest yet of Tamerlane’s hideous career.

Luke had been numbed by it all. To find some path back to humanity, he’d tried to imagine the last bit of life before the death that he saw all around him. Had it been the shake of the ground to the sound of a million hoofs, or the black cloud on the horizon that had first warned of the apocalypse to come? Had the people prayed to a God that seemed no longer there? Had they hugged children to their breasts, shielding eyes from the horrid face of Armageddon?

Luke had begged God for forgiveness for his pride, his stupidity, for surely these new heights of savagery had everything to do with the restraint he’d urged on Mohammed Sultan in Georgia? His friends tried to persuade him otherwise.

‘It’s because he has no cannon,’ Matthew had explained. ‘He can’t open gates with cannon, so he has to do it with terror.’

Certainly the terror had worked. As usual, Tamerlane’s agents had fanned out ahead of the army; the beggars, mercenaries and wandering
ozanlar
that crept into cities after dark and sat in public places murmuring of the terrible things they’d seen; telling of small men with flat faces, drunk on the mare’s milk they called koumis, eating half-raw meat taken from beneath their saddles, washing it down with the blood of their horses. These were the creatures the Greeks had named from the blackest part of their hell:
Tartarus
. And they were on their way.

Aleppo was 160 miles south of Malatiyah and Tamerlane’s army had covered the distance in three weeks, stopping only to slaughter. The city was an ancient place where Ibrahim
had performed his devotions. It was a place of commerce and culture at the crossroads of trade routes and its markets were crammed with the produce of continents. Its governor, Damurdash, knew that there’d be no time for the Sultan to send an army from Cairo, so he’d gathered what troops he could from Antioch, Acre, Homs, Ramallah and Jerusalem.

Within the city were two factions: those who wished to fight and those who didn’t. The fighters won; their army was large and their walls strong. So Tamerlane set out to tempt them out with skirmishing parties that rode up the walls and hurled abuse at those above. It worked. The gates opened and the Syrian army drew up in battle formation outside. But Tamerlane’s war elephants filled them with terror and, when they charged, the Syrians fled back towards their city. In the mayhem, thousands were trampled to death and soon the city’s moat was piled high with corpses.

Damurdash had little option but to surrender and a long line of priests, doctors and sharifs, loaded with priceless gifts, left the city to sue for peace. Tamerlane agreed to spare the city, then entered it, slaughtered the envoys, and began four days of general massacre. The women and children fled to the city’s mosques but the Mongols followed them there. They took the children from their mothers and killed them, then raped the mothers before killing them too. Finally they killed the fathers and brothers who’d been forced to watch it all.

And Luke, Matthew, Arcadius and Nikolas, bound by oath to Shatan, were forced to watch it all as well. Now, with no one left to kill, the Mongols had left and Luke was in a square staring at a boy with his throat open.

He turned to Matthew. ‘No, this is the result of the mercy
shown in Georgia,’ he said quietly. ‘The world has only so much blood and Tamerlane must have his fill.’

Nikolas then said what they’d all been thinking: ‘Why will he stop at Constantinople?’

It was what Luke had been asking himself since leaving Malatiyah when he’d last seen the grim set of Tamerlane’s face beneath his tasselled helmet. The question had tormented him every mile of the way. Why would Tamerlane stop at Constantinople? Or Mistra for that matter?

Or Chios?

Had he brought an unstoppable Shatan west to do worse than Bayezid could ever dream of? He’d hardly slept on the march so far. He’d certainly not sleep tonight. Not after this. Luke shook his head slowly and said what he didn’t believe: ‘No. His army is tired. His generals urge him to turn back. He’ll go on to Damascus and then take his booty home.’

But will he?

*

In the Ottoman camp outside Constantinople, that very question was being debated between Bayezid and his sons. With them were the Grand Vizier and Yakub Bey. They were standing, or sitting, in a tent behind the Turkish lines and from outside came the sound of an army engaged in the business of siege: the thump of trebuchet released, the crash of stone on wall, the desultory cheer of men pausing in their work to watch. It was midday and the sky was overcast, promising rain. Soon the cheers would turn to grumbles – though not loud, for this was the Ottoman army.

Prince Mehmed was reading a letter to his father. It was from the Kadi Ibn Khaldun and it told of terrible things.

He paused. ‘Shall I go on?’

Bayezid shook his head. ‘No, I think we understand the calamity. I suppose he wants us to send an army?’

Mehmed laid the letter down on the table next to a bowl of sugar. ‘Of course, Father. As we are obliged to do by the alliance brokered by Prince Yakub. We are each to come to the other’s aid if attacked.’

‘But we’ll be too late.’ This was Suleyman. ‘He’ll have taken Damascus by the time we get there.’

Mehmed shook his head. ‘Not if they defend it, which they will if they know we’re coming.’

Bayezid leant forward to the sugar bowl. ‘Remember we have a counter-offer.’

The offer had just been put to them by Tamerlane’s envoy, who was waiting outside. He’d brought with him a different sort of letter from the Lord of the Celestial Conjunction. It was a promise not to attack Bayezid if he sent no army to help the Mamluks and delivered to him the Princes Ahmed, Tahir and Qara Yusuf, all vassals of his who’d taken refuge in Bayezid’s court.

Mehmed snorted. ‘What worth has any promise from a madman?’ He paused and lowered his voice. ‘Father, you are Yildirim and you’ve never lost a battle. Our combined armies will be twice his number. This is our chance to rid the world
of this scourge.’ He glanced at Yakub, then back at his father. ‘Remember Ain Jalut.’

Ain Jalut was the only time the Mongols had been stopped before. The battle had been fought not far from Aleppo a century and a half before. The Mamluk Sultan Baybars had defeated the Mongol horde and sent it home. The world had been delivered. Could it happen again? Bayezid looked at his second son and nodded slowly.