Imperial Fire (32 page)

Minarets and domes under an eggshell moon gave Hero his first sight of Bukhara the Noble. The expedition camped in an orchard two miles from the capital and left at dawn, faces scrubbed, clothes laundered and armour polished. They hadn’t ridden a mile when a troop of lancers and archers blocked their way.

Vallon passed Hero letters in Arabic and Persian penned by the Logothete’s department. ‘I’ll leave you to negotiate.’

The commander wore a coif and mantle of fish-scale armour over silk robes. After listening to Hero’s address, he despatched a lieutenant to the emir’s palace with the documents and then withdrew his troops a distance, leaving Vallon’s expedition to simmer on the highway. A smog of smoke and dust hung over the city. Behind its dun walls a mosque’s sea-green dome floated in the pall like a polyp, a gold cupola shining dully behind it and minarets like slim phalluses receding into the haze.

Permission to proceed arrived from the emir’s secretariat in late afternoon. The soldiers formed up on each flank of the convoy and escorted it through a gate set in a fortified tower rising forty feet above the ramparts. Immediately inside lay a suburb favoured by the city’s elite, a few open gateways offering glimpses of courtyards and well-watered gardens. The escort led the expedition to a
ribat
or caravanserai built against the ramparts. From the outside it resembled a prison, with blind mud walls and towers at each corner, the inner towers forming part of the city’s defences. The company entered through a set of carved wooden doors let into a keep constructed of bricks plaited in knotwork designs. Inside lay a serene courtyard centred on a rectangular pool shaded by mulberry trees and surrounded by cloistered accommodation that included airy dormitories and apartments built above stables, kitchens and a bath house. A staff of servants stood ready to attend the foreign guests and a stooped gardener and his boy went about their work, watering rose beds.

The escort’s commander informed Hero that the emir’s representative would call on the expedition after morning prayers the next day. In the meantime, the cooks, launderers and ostlers stood ready to service the travellers’ needs. The moment the gates closed behind the escort, soldiers armed with bows filed onto the parapet and took up position ten yards apart, facing inwards.

When Vallon had found his quarters and arranged his chattels, he summoned his leading men to a council in the caravanserai’s
iwan
, a vaulted three-sided hall open to cooling breezes from the north. He swept out his gown and looked over the courtyard.

‘I’ve seen worse billets.’

Hauk eyed the guards. ‘A jail scented with roses is still a jail.’

Vallon half-raised a hand. ‘Patience.’

That was a quality whose tensile properties the Vikings had stretched to breaking point. They were sea rovers hundreds of miles from their element, fair-skinned northerners who wilted under the fierce Asian sun.

‘Remind us who we’re dealing with,’ Vallon said to Hero.

‘Bukhara is ruled by Karakhanids, a Turkish tribe related to the Seljuks and opposed to them. Like the Seljuks, they’re Muslim converts who have adopted Arab and Persian culture while retaining some of their nomad ways. The ruler styles himself both Sultan and Khan; his governor in Bukhara carries the titles Emir and Beg. The present khan is called Ahmad, grandson of Ibrahim, a lord of the horizons who considered walls to be a prison and ruled the city from a nomad encampment. Despite their wilderness origins, the dynasty are generous patrons of religion and the arts, endowing many madrasahs and burnishing Bukhara’s reputation as “the dome of learning in the east”. Avicenna, the great historian and physician, was born in the city. As a young man, Omar Khayyam, the brilliant mathematician, astronomer, philosopher and poet, studied algebra here.’

Hauk wasn’t interested in the Karakhanids’ cultural heritage. ‘How do we milk the bastards?’

Vallon winced. ‘We’re fewer than two hundred surrounded by thousands. Act the pirate here and you’ll die like a pirate. I should warn you the Turkmen have ingenious methods for executing malefactors. The blunted and barbed stake inserted up the rectum is one. A night cast into a pit with venomous serpents and scorpions is another. And I’m sure that doesn’t exhaust their cruel inventiveness.’

One of Hauk’s lieutenants, a hulking specimen with bleached eyes, a snub nose and a plaited beard, leaned forward and spat insultingly close to Vallon’s feet.

‘We’re only here because you denied us a few barrels of water.’

Vallon touched the hilt of his sword. ‘The only reason you’re alive is because I took pity on you.’

Hauk put out a restraining hand. ‘Peace, Rorik. We command our own destinies now and have enough gold to pursue our ambitions.’

Vallon smoothed out his gown. ‘Precisely. You can follow any wind you find favourable.’

Hero watched the Vikings leave. ‘I’m glad we’ve seen the last of that gang.’

Vallon nodded, but something about the general’s expression suggested that a clean break with the northern marauders wasn’t a foregone conclusion.

It wasn’t just the heat stored in the sun-baked walls that kept Hero from sleep. He couldn’t stop marvelling at the fact that he’d travelled further east than almost any man before him, further even than Alexander, the conqueror of the known world. Once he passed Samarkand, only a week’s journey away, he’d be treading ground even Master Cosmas Monopthalmos hadn’t stepped on. He threw back his sheet, lit a lamp and took a copy of the Logothete’s itinerarium onto the balcony. Unrolling the scroll, he traced their progress sea by sea, city by city. He calculated that they’d covered between a third and a half of the distance to China. After Samarkand, the landmarks were no more than names – Kashgar, Khotan, Cherchen, Chang’an and, in a blank space at the end of the scroll, Kaifeng, capital of Song China.

A cock crowed. The first call to prayer rose and was answered from all directions, the sounds overlapping, one voice rising as another faded out, blending into a clamorous, melodious hubbub.

Hero turned and smiled. ‘Couldn’t you sleep either?’

‘I’m too excited,’ Aiken said.

‘Let’s go up and watch the sun rise.’

They climbed a twisting staircase built into one of the towers and emerged onto a high platform. Birds flocked past, black shapes winnowing across the peach and lilac sky. Hero rested his hands on the parapet and watched the sun swell above the metropolis, striking lustre from the green and blue tiles cladding mosques, minarets, mausoleums and madrasahs.

The sun rose and the clamour of the waking city rose with it. Flat-roofed houses, ribbed melon-shaped domes and feathery treetops faded into the smoke and dust of another day.

‘Are you glad you came?’ Hero said.

‘Oh yes. I feel as if I’m treading in the path of emperors.’

After breakfast Hero visited the bath house where a taciturn giant laid him on a slab and pummelled and thumped him, cracking each joint in turn and finishing by lifting up his head and bending it forward until something inside gave. On the slab next to him another masseur trod Vallon’s backbone with his feet.

Clad in a shot grey silk kaftan, Hero stood at Vallon’s side to receive the emir’s representative. The double doors opened and a mounted column high-stepped into the yard, preceded by a band playing fifes, trumpets and kettledrums. Behind the vanguard rode a young aristocrat with features so finely etched they should have been struck on coins. Only the suggestion of an epicanthic fold hinted at steppe origins. In his right hand he carried a gold-inlaid axe as badge of office. His spirited horse also commanded attention – small, chiselled head sprung on a long powerful neck, sturdy crupper and shortish straight front legs. Its flowing mane and tail suggested that at full gallop it would give the impression of flying.

Hero presented the official to Vallon. ‘His Eminence Yusuf ad-Dawlah, Second Secretary in the Office of Foreign Affairs. His Eminence trusts that our accommodation meets our expectations and assures us that this house is our house for the duration of our stay.’

‘I should hope so,’ Vallon said. ‘We’re paying enough for it.’

Yusuf sat his horse, exuding authority and the faint scent of amber. A tattered mob of crows flew cackling overhead.

Hero explained their mission, stressing the benefits that would accrue to all centres of civilisation from an alliance with the Song emperor.

Yusuf didn’t seem impressed. ‘God above is closer to us than the emperor of China. Nevertheless, it’s not our intention to deny you progress. You may proceed east with the emir’s blessing and at your own risk.’

‘We’ll need guides and fresh pack animals.’

‘That will be arranged.’

‘Ask him to arrange an audience with the emir,’ Vallon said.

Yusuf’s response was silky. ‘His Excellency would love to receive you. Alas, the emir is making a progress through the provinces, ensuring the peace and prosperity of the great khan’s dominion.’

Hero decoded the lie. ‘I suspect the emir doesn’t want to be associated with us if we fail – not after the last embassy perished.’

‘Ask the minister what he knows of their fate.’

Yusuf’s expression veiled. ‘They passed through Bukhara Sherif last summer and we afforded them every courtesy while warning them of the dangers they faced. They paid no attention. If I may say so, they struck me as arrogant and ill-prepared.’

‘That’s not a failing you’ll find in us,’ Hero said. ‘We’ve suffered setbacks and know that more await. We would welcome any advice you can offer.’

‘My advice? Turn back. Our khan, may God the exalted show mercy on him, can guarantee you safe passage only as far as Kashgar. Beyond that the roads to China unravel. Forts lie empty and crumbling. Gangs of deserters lie in wait for the few caravans desperate enough to risk the journey.’

At a prompt from Vallon, Hero indicated the troopers and Vikings. ‘Our soldiers have been denied contact with society for months. They long to resume intercourse with it.’

At the thought of letting loose the lecherous soldiery on the city, a twinge of migraine seemed to cross Yusuf’s face. ‘No more than six men are allowed out at any one time, and then only under armed escort. Any crimes they commit will be punished under Bukhara’s laws. I understand that your men have human needs.’ Yusuf nodded at one of his retinue. ‘Arrange it.’ He made to turn.

‘One last thing,’ Hero said. ‘I gather that you record the arrival of every traveller who enters the city.’

‘We welcome the righteous and try to turn away the lawless. Why do you ask?’

‘A month ago, nomads seized one of our troopers in the Kara Kum. We suspect his abductors intend to sell him in the slave market.’

‘If he was taken a month ago, you should have looked for him in Khiva.’

That brought the minister’s visit to an end. His orchestra struck up and he followed it out, the gates crashing shut behind him.

Next morning Hero and Aiken set out to explore the city under the protection of a minder called Arslan. They passed through an inner wall surrounding the medina and threaded narrow lanes tunnelling between windowless mud walls. Arslan forced a passage through the jostling crowd and strings of donkeys and camels heaped with country produce.

All God’s tribes seemed to be represented on the streets – moon-faced Turkmen with apple cheeks and green eyes, hawk-nosed Arabs with iron-grey beards, Persians with features that might have been copied from miniatures. Most of the Turkmen gentry wore skull caps and striped gowns called
khatans
gathered at the waist by sashes broad enough to hold scimitars. The more rustic element favoured padded jackets and riding breeches and cone-shaped helmets of white felt with upturned brims. Hero observed a man wearing kohl eye-shadow and a rose behind one ear leading a tribe of wives and daughters so smothered in horse-hair veils that they resembled beehives with a narrow window at the top. Other exotic elements included Manichean monks clad all in white, wearing tall cloches; and Jews in hats of tight-curled karakul wool, obeying the sumptuary laws that decreed they tie their gowns with cords too thin to hold weapons.

Leaving the sunlight, Arslan plunged into the semi-darkness of a multi-vaulted bazaar that from outside looked like a clutch of giant eggs. Hero and Aiken followed him along labyrinthine aisles, past piles of saddlebags and prayer mats, between the stalls of cobblers, ropemakers, confectioners and goldsmiths, assistants crying the wares while the owners bargained with their customers and slandered their competitors.

Sunlight dazzled and shadows blinded. They had debouched into an open market offering everyday goods. Rose-coloured rock salt stood in piles like pink ice. Flies swarmed over racks of meat. Poultry scrabbled in wicker cages. A stallholder insisted that the foreigners sample melon with flesh as white as milk, as sweet as honey. Metalsmiths beat out household utensils on the spot, inviting passers-by to observe the quality of their workmanship.

Hero squeezed through a gate into a noisy square where the atmosphere was as much festive as commercial. Groups of bumpkins watched artistes perform stunts with snakes and nimble dogs.

A pimp with a wall eye accosted them. ‘Do you like bad girls?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Hero.

‘Naughty boys. Hey!’

Hero tugged Arslan’s sleeve. ‘I think that’s enough for the first day.’

Exiting the square into a quieter quarter, Hero noticed several drinking houses open to the street, their clientele lounging on rugs under awnings while musicians plucked lutes in the background.

‘What are they drinking?’ he asked Arslan.

‘
Chai
, sir, from China. It’s all the fashion among the gentry. Would you care to try some?’

‘Yes, I would,’ said Hero. He turned to Aiken. ‘Master Cosmas sampled the beverage and claimed it had many sovereign qualities.’

At a word from Arslan, the owner of the next chai-khana hurried to prepare a place on a fine rug dyed with precious lac. He showed his guests a block of chai stamped with Chinese characters, explaining that it was called Longevity Dragon Sprout, reserved for the emperor’s court.