The Towers of Samarcand (47 page)

In the centre, behind a screen of bashibozouks, were the regiments of the janissaries, the best fighting men in the world – so it was said – and at their head, resplendent on a huge black stallion, rode Bayezid beneath a tasselled sunshade. The Sultan raised a hand and the cry went up and the whole army came to a staggered halt, the drumbeat halting with it. Then, to a series of commands, the janissaries opened their ranks and men appeared pulling carriages.

Cannon.

Behind him, Luke heard a ripple of unease spread through the Mongol ranks. This was something new.

‘Release the goatskins,’ growled Tamerlane to Mohammed Sultan. ‘Let us give them water.’

There was a shout and suddenly the air was filled with a hundred bloated animals. They flew through the sky, landing in explosions of precious water among the ranks of the bashibozouks. Tamerlane clapped his hands in delight as men scrambled to scoop up something to slake their thirst.

But his delight was short-lived. At a command, the cannon spouted flame and deadlier missiles were flying through the air towards them.

They landed amongst the elephants which reared, trumpeting their fear. Some went down and the rest wheeled round to escape the barrage, their razored tusks slashing the air around them and the castles on their backs lurching giddily, spilling men. There was panic among the horses behind.

Tamerlane was no longer smiling. ‘Take the elephants to the rear,’ he yelled. ‘Quick, before they stampede!’

The Indian mahouts did their best, hauling and beating their charges through the gaps that had opened in the ranks behind, but a second wave of destruction was on its way and soon missiles were landing on the beasts and the men who were scrambling out of their path. The elephants were shrieking in pain and men were going down before them.

‘Lord, the screens!’ shouted Mohammed Sultan, pulling hard on the reins of his terrified horse.

The screens were already on their way. Walls made of layer upon layer of wicker and mud packed together and covered with animal hides were being carried forward through the
army and thrust deep into holes that had been previously dug. They were just in time. More stones were in the sky. The balls smashed against the walls; some flew over the tops to crash into the men behind. Luke looked behind him. He could see the castles atop the elephants swaying their way to the rear while the ranks tried to re-form. The elephants were leaving the battle.

Bayezid has won the first part
.

The cannons had stopped firing. The Turks were moving them forward so as to hurl their balls further into the Mongol army. Tamerlane would have to send out something to force them back. He could no longer wait for the Turks to attack him.

But the man in the white armour far off to the right of the Turkish line wasn’t going to let Tamerlane seize any advantage. Prince Lazarević of Serbia raised his arm. The sword above it flashed as it caught the sun and the lines of heavy cavalry behind him began to move forward at the trot, their lances held high and their caparisoned horses tossing their heads.

The Serbians were going to charge.

It was a magnificent sight: row upon row of knights in their emblazoned hauberks riding knee-to-knee upon horses twice the size of the Mongols’. The hill seemed to shake as their horses gathered speed, moving from trot to slow canter as the distance closed between them and the wing commanded by Tamerlane’s youngest son.

Luke glanced across to where Shahrukh stood in front of his troops. He had been named for the game of chess and it seemed to have shaped his character. Shahrukh was a learned man of great piety, not of destruction. But he was Tamerlane’s son and he knew how to fight.

At his signal, horsemen galloped out from the ranks behind him and charged down the hill towards the oncoming knights. Like a flock of birds swooping to take seed off the field, they swarmed down on the wall of advancing metal, loosing volley upon volley of arrows.

In truth, they could do little to slow it, let alone stop it. The big Serbian horses were as armoured as their riders and the arrows bounced off both. A few animals fell but the momentum of the charge continued. The front line of the knights lowered its lances.

Luke glanced over at Tamerlane, who was frowning. The battle was not going to plan. He turned to Luke. ‘Go and tell him to charge.’

But the message wasn’t needed. Shahrukh had signalled the advance and his troops were already moving down the hill to meet the Serbian knights. Minutes later, the two armies met. The noise was deafening. Fifty thousand men collided and the air rang with the sound of sword hitting sword and animal colliding with animal. It was as if two floodwaters had met, forcing skyward a debris of broken limbs, blood and horseflesh, filling the skies with the sounds of death.

But the Serbs had the weight and the momentum and long, brutal lances which tore through the Mongol ranks and soon the forces of Shahrukh were falling back, men and horses trampled by the hooves of the Serbian destriers. Luke and Mohammed Sultan looked at each other, thinking the same thought.

They could reach the camp. Where Shulen and Khan-zada are
.

The Prince was the first to wheel his horse round, digging his heels into the animal’s flanks and pulling at the single rein to turn it round. Tamerlane glanced at him, his thick eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To the camp, Grandfather,’ shouted Mohammed Sultan over his shoulder. ‘To get there before the Serbians do!’

Tamerlane frowned and scratched his beard. Then he shrugged and said calmly to Luke: ‘Bring him back. His place is with the army, not the women.’

*

Suleyman was watching all of this from the back of a skittish destrier whose eyes beneath its face-guard were wild with excitement. Beside him was Yakub in his buff-leather armour. He’d just witnessed the Serbian breakthrough and the Mongol army swinging round to protect its flank.

Suleyman turned to him, his thirst forgotten. ‘We should attack now,’ he shouted. ‘If we can encircle them, then the janissaries can advance to their front to finish them off.’

The gazi looked across to where the tip of Bayezid’s sunshade could just be seen above the dust. No rider was on his way to tell them to advance but what the Prince said made sense. Bayezid would win this battle if the momentum was sustained. But there had been no order.

‘The Sultan has not told us to go,’ he shouted. ‘We should await the order. It may be a trap.’

But the Prince was standing up in his stirrups, turning his head from the battle to the Kapikulu behind. His horse was pawing the earth beneath its hooves. ‘We’ll go,’ he said. ‘The thunderbolt doesn’t know when to strike any more.’

‘Lord …’ Yakub found himself addressing Suleyman’s back. ‘It could be a trap!’

‘A trap?’ yelled the Prince, pointing. ‘The whole barbarian army has been knocked off balance! How can it be a trap?’

The gazi looked out at the army before them. Mongol divisions were being moved to shore up the open flank. Suleyman was
right. He turned back to him. ‘It’s as we planned?’ he shouted. ‘You lead with the Kapikulu and I’ll bring my gazis up in support?’

Suleyman grinned. ‘As we planned, Yakub. Let’s show these dogs how a gazi fights!’

*

When Mohammed Sultan and Luke rode into the Mongol camp, they found a scene of chaos.

There were some tents pitched at its centre and the wagons that carried the army’s food and booty were strewn haphazardly around them with no attempt made to form them into a defensive line. Word had arrived of the Serbians’ breakthrough and men, women and children were running, panic-stricken, in all directions. The soldiers among them seemed leaderless.

‘Where is Miran Shah?’ yelled the Prince at an officer whose aventail he’d grabbed from the saddle. The man looked up and recognised him.

‘In the tents, lord!’ he shouted. ‘What should we do?’

Luke had ridden up and reined in Eskalon on the other side of the man. With him were the Varangians whom he’d gathered on his way. He dismounted and took hold of Mohammed Sultan’s ankle.

‘Get to the tents, lord,’ he cried. ‘We’ll organise the defence.’

The Prince gazed down at Luke for a moment, then nodded and kicked his horse away. Luke turned to the other three. ‘Pull the wagons into a line and turn them on their side,’ he said. ‘And get as many men as you can behind them with plenty of arrows. We don’t have much time!’

The Varangians turned and shouted at the soldiers milling around them. The ground beneath them was shaking now and the war cries were getting louder. It was probably too late.

But Tamerlane had forced discipline into these men. With a plan to follow, they could do anything. Within minutes the wagons had been hauled into a line and up-ended, their contents spilling over the ground to leave the pillage of a score of cities glittering amidst the cracked earth. Men were already manning the barricade behind, their bows at the ready and a quiver of arrows by their sides.

The four Varangians had positioned themselves at intervals down the line. Luke ran up to a man who wore the emblems of a ming-bashi. ‘Tell them to wait for my command before they fire,’ he yelled over the thunder of hooves, now very loud. ‘And tell them to shoot at the horses!’

He looked beyond the wagons and saw the Serbian cavalry a hundred paces away. Huge visored knights, their lances levelled for the charge, were galloping towards the wagons as if nothing stood in their way. The grunts of the horses, exhausted by a mile of running, were mixed with the cries of men almost upon their quarry. They looked unstoppable.

‘Now!’ roared Luke and a thousand arrows crashed into the horses’ chests, piercing armour, leather, skin and artery to cause a chaos of falling mounts and knights and broken lances and blood; the sky was filled with the screams of men thrown into the air and hitting the ground in heavy armour. The lines of knights behind had no time to pull in their horses and piled into those in front so that soon the whole scene was a mass of writhing men and animals.

But it was only a temporary reprieve for the Mongols. The knights behind came on, head down through the hail of arrows, trampling their friends to reach the barricade where their armour and maces would give them advantage in the
hand-to-hand melee that would follow. Luke looked behind him. There were no more men available.

Where is Mohammed Sultan?

*

The heir to Tamerlane’s throne was inside one of the tents holding a sword to the throat of his uncle.

Miran Shah was lying on the ground amidst the contents of a jug that rolled back and forth by his side. A dagger lay next to it with blood on its blade. The air stank of wine and he was laughing. ‘She is my wife,’ he was saying, his voice thick with drink. ‘I will do with her what I want.’

Mohammed Sultan’s arm was trembling. There was a shallow gash on his cheek and a trickle of blood ran from his ear on to his mail. When he spoke, it was in a voice brittle with hatred. ‘She is my mother and you will never touch her again.’

Seated on a divan was Khan-zada and next to her was Shulen and they held each other in tight embrace. The older woman’s dress was torn and her hair dishevelled. She had a bruise on her temple and bloodied teeth marks on her neck. Her hands clutched at the younger girl’s arms, leaving shadows at her fingertips.

‘Anyway,’ said Miran Shah, attempting to rise to his knees, ‘I wasn’t going for her. I was trying to be nice to your young slut and she stopped me.’

The Prince pushed the sword so that its tip was lost in his uncle’s beard, forcing him back to the ground. His jaw was moving beneath clenched teeth and his eyes were clouded with anger. In a moment his uncle would die.

‘Don’t.’ It was Khan-zada who’d spoken.

‘He would have raped her,’ breathed her son, pushing Miran Shah’s head back to the carpet as he edged the sword tip forward. ‘He would have raped Shulen, then killed you.’

‘Don’t, Mohammed Sultan.’ This time it was Shulen who had whispered the words. ‘As you love me, let him live.’

The Prince’s face became a grimace of pain. ‘As I love you?’ He turned to her. ‘What of your love for
me
? Where is that now, Shulen?’

Miran Shah, drunk as he was, mistook the moment as his opportunity. He grabbed the sword blade in his hand and thrust it away as he rolled to one side, the wine pooling around him. He was within reach of the dagger. But Mohammed Sultan had seen him and his boot stamped down on his arm. There was the crack of bone and Miran Shah howled in pain as the Prince lifted his foot and kicked him hard in the head. His uncle lay unconscious before him.

Glancing back at Shulen, Mohammed Sultan walked over to the door of the tent and looked through it. The clash of sword and mace seemed suddenly much louder. The battle was getting closer.

‘You must go,’ said Khan-zada. ‘We can tie him up. They need you out there. Go.’

The Prince looked at Shulen, who had picked up the dagger and was already cutting rope. ‘Not until I know why I am rejected,’ he said, walking towards her. ‘Not until I hear it from you, Shulen.’ He grabbed her arm. There were tears in his eyes as he gazed down into the only face he’d ever loved.

There was a crash of splintered wood outside as a wagon collapsed before the onslaught. A yell of triumph was followed by screams of pain. The Serbs were breaking through.

Khan-zada came up to them. She laid a hand on his arm and said: ‘Not now. Now is not the time. We’ll talk of this later.’

But Mohammed Sultan was holding Shulen tightly and was oblivious to his mother and the fight outside. His eyes were
misted. ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ he whispered, his brow furrowed with confusion. ‘What have I done, Shulen?’

She saw the despair and the pain in the eyes of a man she loved, could have loved properly. She brought him to her, her arms circling his neck, her lips at his ear. ‘You’ve done everything,’ she whispered softly. ‘You’ve done everything that a brother should do.’

At first, the word made little impact but Shulen had drawn back and was staring at him in a way that made him recall it. He let go of her arms, shaking his head as if she’d slapped him.