The Towers of Samarcand (21 page)

An hour later, the Varangians and Shulen set out along the same road but soon left it and followed a lesser route back towards Astara on the shores of the Khazar Sea, some four hundred miles to the north-east. For a week, their horses carried them through desert and mountain, forest and river, night and day. They rode under merciless sun and merciful moon, bathing in the sweat of their bodies by day and cool
streams at night. They talked little and slept less. And not once did any fall behind.

Late one afternoon, they stopped to look over a sea with villages scattered along its edge and tiny boats strewn across its surface.

‘Tonight we eat fish,’ said Luke and he turned to smile at Shulen who’d ridden up to his side.

‘And then?’

Luke had produced the map drawn for him by Ibn Khaldun and was studying it. ‘Then we follow the seashore until we see the Alburz Mountains rise up on our right. There we go to Sultaniya.’

‘Where we become Shi’ite,’ she said, smiling.

Luke smiled. ‘Yes, where we become gloomy Isma’ilis and you disappear behind a veil. Where we meet Miran Shah.’

‘Who is mad and dangerous.’ This was Nikolas. ‘Luke, can you just tell us why we want to meet a dangerous madman? Nothing too long, a summary will do.’

‘Nikki, he’s Tamerlane’s son. They’re all mad and dangerous. Anyway, it’s in the future so let’s not think about it. For now, let’s have some fun.’ He turned in his saddle. ‘We’ve spent the week clinging to mountain paths. What say we race to that village?’

Eskalon snorted and Matthew laughed. He leant over to the horse. ‘Are you too fat now from eating the kadi’s food, Eskalon?’ Then he lifted his heels and was gone. By the time they’d entered the village, their horses were panting like Jezebels and Matthew was triumphant. ‘Too fat. Or perhaps it’s the rider. They fed you too well in Kutahya, both of you.’

Shulen arrived just ahead of the other two Varangians.

‘Hey!’ said Arcadius, riding up to her, his brow thick with dust. ‘We carry armour. You have nothing but your bedding.’

‘And the Venetian glass, don’t forget that,’ said Shulen, leaning back on her saddle. Her face was pink and her long hair had knotted into waves across her back. Luke smiled.

You’re changing
.

The village they had entered was a desperate place and seemed empty of people. It was built at the point where the track they’d come down met one that followed the shore of the lake. On either side of it were dismal hovels of mud and grass and beyond them, banked in the black sand, lay broken fishing boats. Smoke drifted skyward from the roofs and the smell of cooking fish rose with it.

‘Do we stay here?’ asked Nikolas. ‘It seems we might get fed.’

A door squeaked open and a child appeared, filthy and almost naked. Luke dismounted and reached into his saddlebag for bread. He held it out, speaking over the child. ‘We mean no harm. We just want fish to fill our bread. We’ll pay for it.’

A man came out holding a piece of wood. He was dressed in rags and as filthy as the child. He stood staring at Eskalon. Then he nodded.

Luke turned to the others. ‘We eat fish tonight.’

So they did. Sitting around a fire made of driftwood and seaweed that bubbled and hissed as it burned, they gave bread to the villagers and got fish in return. Later, they lay beneath the stars in blankets heavy with salt and listened to the rasp of the waves on the sand and the anxious murmurings of the people who’d sheltered them. And the next morning they left before any were awake.

It took them another week to reach the Alburz Mountains. It was a week in which they galloped over sands or picked their way along cliff-top paths, trees blasted horizontal beneath them, the nests of seabirds between their roots. Always by their
side was the grey expanse of the sea, rhythmic as the womb, its surface featureless except when pierced by the moon or fishing boats and the frenzied fight of their wakes.

The people of this land were strange, subdued creatures, hybrids of earth and water. They were refugees, thrown across the world by invasion to seek invisibility among the lagoons and caves of this sea. They were Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis and people of other races who wanted solitude and peace and asked no questions of five travellers making their way east.

It was a week of hard riding and at night they slept deeply among barrels and nets and crabs that darted between them. They awoke stiffened by salt and cold, with the cry of birds carried loud and faint on the currents above them. Once they slept at some salt pans; they warmed themselves next to the chimneyed furnaces that made the salt, which was stacked around them in boxes: crystals winking up at the stars.

The next day they saw mermaids on the shore and swam with them for a while in the waves, stripping to their cotton shorts. But the mermaids were afraid and came to sit with Shulen on the rocks and throw shells at their suitors. And Shulen laughed and reached into her saddlebag to show them her strange Venetian glass.

At last, the Alburz Mountains rose up to the south and they turned towards them, finding a path through meadows grazed by herds of wild horses that raced beside them as they rode. Further on, the path rose gently, then steeply, into foothills covered in pine and chestnut until, above the trees, they could see mountains stretched out before them, their western slopes tinged with crimson.

Luke looked at his map. ‘Tomorrow night we should reach the castle of Alamut, which is out there somewhere, about fifty
miles away. There are wild tribes in those mountains and Ibn Khaldun recommended we sleep in the castle’s shadow. The people don’t go near it. They think it’s still full of assassins.’

‘So what about tonight?’ asked Arcadius.

‘Tonight, we find a cave.’

‘Fire?’

‘No fire, no cooking,’ Luke said. ‘From now on we must remain unseen. We will reach Sultaniya from the east, which will not be the direction anyone still looking for us will expect us to come. But it will take us another week.’

That night, lying in the darkness, Luke told them what he’d learnt from Ibn Khaldun of the man they were to meet in Sultaniya.

‘He is Temur’s second son. His older brother, Jahangir, died of some sickness when only twenty. Jahangir was his father’s favourite: brave, good, and everything that Miran Shah isn’t. And he had a beautiful wife, Khan-zada.’

Shulen said: ‘Some say that it is Khan-zada who has driven Miran Shah mad. She was forced to marry him when Jahangir died and Miran Shah knows she’ll never love him as she did his brother. His jealousy has driven him insane.’

Nikolas asked: ‘Will we meet her?’

‘I hope so,’ replied Luke. ‘Yakub says that she has influence over Temur.’

‘Why would she have influence?’ asked Matthew.

Shulen said: ‘Because she was Jahangir’s wife and because she is mother to Temur’s favourite grandsons, Mohammed Sultan and Pir Mohammed, both of whom seem to have inherited their father’s virtues. Mohammed Sultan is Temur’s heir.’

Luke yawned. ‘And there’s another reason she has influence,’ he said. ‘You will remember how Ibn Khaldun said that Temur is
obsessed with Genghis Khan? About how he minds not being of his line? Well, Khan-zada is of royal blood. She is the granddaughter of Uzbeg, Khan of the Golden Horde in the north.’

‘Which means he’ll listen to her?’ asked Matthew.

There was no answer because Luke had fallen asleep.

That night they slept well and awoke glad not to have salt in their hair and the smell of fish in their nostrils. They found a waterfall and washed as best they could and filled their flasks. They ate cold mutton and biscuits before setting out into the Alburz Mountains.

The riding was hard and slow and the horses slipped on shale or stumbled through rock falls, their ears flat against their heads and their nostrils quivering with alarm. The sounds of their hooves echoed up from ravines too deep to fathom or rolled down the slopes above, and no one thought of speaking. It was a high, barren land of jagged ridges and sudden shadow and they felt no part of it.

In the afternoon, they began to descend, sparse scrub giving way to single trees, then woods which were thick and shut out the sun. The sudden gloom made the horses start and blow and they kept their reins short. Then they came out into a wide valley, terraced on either side and startlingly green. There had been people here once, many people, and their deserted villages were still scattered along its sides. Wasted fields stretched all around them. They rode in silence beside a river that twisted its way through gulleys and cataracts and opened out into deep pools where people once must have swum and washed their clothes.

‘What happened here?’ Arcadius was riding next to Shulen.

‘The Mongols,’ said Shulen. ‘These were the lands of the assassins and Alamut was their stronghold. The Mongols destroyed them a century ago.’

‘The assassins?’

‘Later, Arcadius. Look up there.’ She was pointing to a crag at the end of the valley that had come into view. ‘That’s it. The Eagle’s Nest: Alamut.’

At first he saw only the steep sides of a mountain that rose higher than its neighbours. Then he saw that the sides became walls and the walls battlements, all brushed with the same orange of the late-evening sun. It was impossible to believe that anything could have been built on such a peak. He whistled softly.

‘Impregnable.’ Arcadius had reined in his horse to stare.

‘Not to the Mongols,’ said Luke, who had come up beside him. ‘We need to get to it before dark.’

They broke into a trot and an hour later arrived at the bottom of the mountain. An old track, barely visible, rose around its side and they took it.

‘We’ll stop here,’ said Luke. They’d found a wide-mouthed cave above the track that, with some disguise, would be invisible from either direction. It was big enough to accommodate both them and the horses. ‘If we cover the entrance, we can light a fire,’ he said, dismounting. ‘But no cooking.’

The others climbed down from their horses and undid the saddlebags strapped to the animals’ sides. They took down their bedrolls, removed the saddles and bridles and poured water into vessels for the horses. When the animals were tethered, they set off to find wood for camouflage and fuel. By the time they’d returned, it was almost dark and a half-moon was high in the sky.

When the mouth of the cave had been stopped with foliage, the fire lit and a meal eaten, they set their bedrolls against their breastplates and laid down to talk. The horses were tied at the front of the cave and would provide warning of any approach.

Arcadius said: ‘Shulen, you were going to tell us of these assassins.’

She picked up a stick, turning it in her hand, before replying. ‘They were an elite band of warriors, especially trained to assassinate their enemies.’ She paused and smiled. ‘Rather like you Varangians.’

Nikolas, who was lying next to her, his head almost touching hers, said: ‘I should hope better. We were forced to leave Monemvasia, were on the losing side at Nicopolis and nearly got executed by a madman in Tabriz. The only people we might have assassinated are ourselves.’

Shulen smiled. ‘Your time will come.’

Luke looked at the fine, dark beauty of this woman, no older than himself. She felt his eyes on her and turned her head to him. For a while no one spoke. Matthew looked from one to the other of them. ‘The assassins?’ he prompted.

‘The assassins, yes.’ She turned back to the fire. ‘Well, they were a cult. They were Shi’ite Muslims, which means they believed that the true line of the Prophet runs from his son-in-law Ali. Most of the Shi’ites live here in Persia.’

She looked around at the faces, tired from their long ride but alert and listening. ‘The assassins were founded by a man called Hasan-i Sabbah. He was born two centuries ago not far from here. He was a brilliant man: a mathematician, philosopher and alchemist. He converted to the Ismai’ili belief and gathered many disciples around him. He soon found himself on the run from the Sunni Seljuk Turks, who ruled at that time, and he came here to the Alburz Mountains where the people were Shi’ite and had long resisted the reach of the Seljuks. He saw Alamut and decided that it would be his base.’

‘He laid siege to it?’ asked Arcadius.

‘No, he infiltrated it with his followers and they took it from within. It took him two years. Then he started the assassins.’

‘What were they, these assassins?’ asked Nikolas. ‘What did they do?’

Shulen prodded the fire. ‘They were young men recruited for their strength and intelligence. They were indoctrinated with the Ismai’ili beliefs such that they were ready to sacrifice their own lives to murder anyone they were told to. Invariably they died in the attempt.’

‘Who did they kill?’

‘Usually Sunnis of power and prominence. The Seljuk vizier Nizam al-Mulk was the first. They carried out their killings in public places to make their point.’

Luke pondered this. What would persuade a man to sacrifice his own life to kill another? Was that what he would do for his empire?

‘It is said’, she went on, ‘that Hasan-i Sabbah would drug the young
fida’iyin
with hashish and that, when they’d fallen asleep, would have them taken to a beautiful garden within the castle. There they would awake to find ravishing women and all that they could want. Then Sabbah would tell them that they were in paradise and that if they wished to return to it they would have to carry out the deed assigned to them.’

Matthew spoke. ‘And now?’ he asked. ‘What of them now?’

Shulen returned her gaze to the fire. ‘Now, only their ghosts remain.’ She rolled on to her back and looked up at the roof of the cave where their shadows danced. ‘They were destroyed in these mountains by the Mongols. Their castles were taken, one by one, and their people massacred. That’s why the valley is as it is. But there were assassins west of here by then, in Syria. They were recruited by the Mamluk Sultan Baybars to carry out
killings on his behalf. It is said that the sultans in Cairo still use them, but it is only rumour.’

Shulen had moved because the smoke from the fire had begun to make her eyes sting. Now she rose. ‘I am going outside. I want some air.’