The Towers of Samarcand (46 page)

‘So she is in the camp,’ said the Prince. He was frowning slightly. ‘Where might I find her, Mother?’

Khan-zada looked up then. ‘She doesn’t want to see you.’

Mohammed Sultan looked bewildered. ‘Of course she wants to see me.’ He turned to his grandfather. ‘Temur Gurgan has given permission for our marriage.’

Khan-zada began to say something but Temur interrupted. ‘I cannot make her see you if she’s changed her mind.’

Mohammed Sultan was silent for some time, frowning at the ground. Then he turned to Luke. ‘Is this of your doing?’ he asked softly. He was nodding slowly, his eyes fixed on Luke. ‘Yes, of course. You have decided that you want her after all,’ he whispered.

Khan-zada came forward. ‘Luke has nothing to do with this.’

She tried to take her son’s hand but he snatched it away. He stared at her. ‘How could you deny me the same happiness that you had?’ he asked. He turned to leave. ‘I’m going to find her.’

No one stopped him. Luke and Khan-zada watched him go while Tamerlane rose to his feet. He laughed. ‘He’ll calm down once we put a Persian whore to him. It’s time to dismiss the army. They’ve stood long enough.’

*

Bayezid was in an unpredictable mood. Having marched without break from Ankara to Sivas and then back to Ankara, his army was exhausted. And they were thirsty since Tamerlane had poisoned all the wells on their route.

They had finally found a well with fresh water. It was low and there would be little to go round, but it was water. Now the decision had to be made whether to stay the night there and rest the army or push on the few miles to the Cubuk Creek where there would be water in abundance.

In the tent were Bayezid, his three sons, Yakub Bey, Prince Lazarević of Serbia and the general Evrenos Bey, and they were all bent over a map spread out on a table. It was still light outside and the tent door was tied back so that the noise and smells of the vast army were amongst them.

Bayezid had turned to Evrenos Bey. ‘What do the scouts say?’

‘Temur’s army is a mile upstream of the Cubukcay,’ said the general, untying the straps of his armour. The tent was hot and the awning admitted no breeze.

‘A mile upstream?’ said Bayezid delightedly. ‘The fool! He could have put his army between us and the river.’

‘He chooses to stay on the high ground, lord,’ said Lazarević.

Bayezid turned to him. ‘Will your men march tonight?’

Lazarević passed a hand through his hair. He was as tired as all of them. ‘If it is asked of them, lord. But would it not be better to rest the army here tonight? We can send forward a small force to the river. They can tell us if Temur makes a move. We would be safe here and the men are tired.’

‘And he would hardly abandon his high ground to attack us,’ said Mehmed. ‘I think we should stay here.’

Bayezid turned to his eldest son. ‘And you, Prince Suleyman? What would you advise?’

Suleyman was still angry that, against all advice, Bayezid had chosen to abandon his position at Ankara three weeks ago to go chasing after Tamerlane. Now they were back at Ankara with Temur occupying their old position. He bent over the map, running his finger up the line of the Cubuk Creek until it reached the little blocks of wood that were the Mongol army.

‘We know this land well, Father, because we have so recently been here,’ he said quietly.

There was shocked silence at the insult. But Suleyman went on: ‘Temur occupies a good position. But our army has always been victorious when we have defended rather than attacked. It was so at Nicopolis.’ He paused and looked round at the other men. Mehmed was watching him intently. ‘I think we should wait for him to come to us. Stay where we are and bring water from the Cubukcay. Sooner or later he must attack.’

The Sultan was staring at his son. ‘You think we cannot defeat these dogs if we attack them?’ he asked quietly.

Suleyman straightened. ‘I didn’t say that, Father.’

There were veins at Bayezid’s temples. He held the side of the table with his fingers pressed hard to the wood, his nails white. His eyes were wide, their pupils vast, and small beads of sweat were gathered on his brow. Suleyman stood very still before him. Little by little, the Sultan gathered himself, exhaling great breaths in the effort. He addressed the men.

‘We will rest here the night,’ he said. ‘Send out a force to the Cubukcay and tell them to warn us if Temur moves so much as a hair of his Mongol arm. We will need that water tomorrow.’

*

Tomorrow dawned with blood dripping from the heavens.

A small storm in the night had gathered up the ruined crust of this land and hurled it into the sky where it was slowly falling to earth through a sun that had risen like a shield drawn from a furnace. If either army had wanted an omen, then this was the omen they’d feared.

It will be a day of blood
.

Luke, Matthew, Nikolas and Arcadius were riding hard, their armour aflame and their long hair streaming behind them. Luke was on Eskalon and far out in front and his shoulders rose and fell as he urged more speed from the horse.

The country south of the fortress of Ankara was formed of low, undulating hills. Its ground was hard and fractured, full of rock and brittle grass and one long sliver of life called the Cubukcay. The creek was away to their right, invisible beneath its steep banks: a single twisting vein within a body exhausted by nature. It was the liquid hope towards which the Ottoman army was marching.

That morning, when Luke had risen, Tamerlane had summoned him to his tent and talked of the Horns of Hattin. It was a place in the Holy Land where, two hundred years past, a crusader army had been defeated by thirst. It was where an invincible army, deprived of water, had sunk to its knees and died in the desert.

‘Today we will give them another Hattin,’ Tamerlane had whispered, sitting on the side of a bed in which a magnificent creature the colour of ebony still slept. ‘Ride out with your Varangians and tell me what you see when they get to the creek.’

And now they were there. The four of them had arrived at the crest of a hill that overlooked the road to the Cubukcay from the east and below them was the Ottoman army. It was in good order, the Serbian heavy cavalry and regiments of sipahis in front, the solid blocks of the janissaries behind and the long tail of the bashibozouks strung out as far as the eye could see. In the early sunshine, the army resembled an endless, jewelled caterpillar flashing its winding way through clouds of dust to the beat of drum and the clash of cymbal. The army was vast.

‘When is it to happen?’ asked Arcadius.

Luke looked at the sun, measuring the time. ‘It’s already happened,’ he said. ‘Watch.’

The army beneath them had broken its line of march and was running towards the riverbank, men dismounting and leaving their horses and racing each other to get to the water. Soldiers were disappearing into the shadow of the creek, their helmets glinting in the sunlight as they tore them off to gather what they could to drink.

Then the silence that had been broken only by the drum and cymbal was filled with shouts of anger and despair, with the cries of men deprived of what they’d been promised.

The creek was dry.

The engineer from Genoa had served Tamerlane well. For a week past the Mongol army had stripped itself to the waist to build the canals, dams and reservoirs that would divert the Cubukcay waters from their natural flow. For a week, Tamerlane’s beloved elephants had discarded their castles to haul earth and stones to bring into being his most ambitious piece of cunning yet. The Sultan’s army had been led into a trap. It had been given just enough water from the one unpoisoned well to make it come to battle. Now Tamerlane had closed the breach in the dam upstream and the water had stopped.

The Sultan’s army would have to fight without water.

Below them was pandemonium. Men were fighting each other to reach the trickle that was still in the creek and the long tail of the army was pressing forward to join the frenzy. Janissaries were beating the bashibozouks back with the flats of their swords, forming lines to prevent them stampeding the men in front. If the drums were still beating, their sound was smothered by the parched cries of desperate men whose throats were swollen with thirst.

Luke turned to his friends. ‘We’ve seen enough,’ he said. ‘And it isn’t pretty. Let’s get back to the army.’

They turned and dug their heels into their horses’ sides and Luke looked up at the sun.

It will be a day of blood
.

A mile upstream of the Cubuk Creek, Temur’s army was waiting in a giant crescent that filled every part of the landscape. It was drawn up in the same eight divisions that the Emperor had failed to review the previous day, but now there were thirty-two elephants lined up in the middle with towers on their backs and giant scimitars on their tusks. Beside them stood catapults that had been hauled down from the castle and around the base of each machine were what looked like the bloated corpses of goats.

In front of it all was Tamerlane and he was on his knees. Dressed in full armour, he was kissing the carpet beneath him, his old body rising and falling in the rhythm of prayer. He was beneath a canopy of brilliant green silk and, above it, limp in the breathless air, hung his standard: the three circles of the Celestial Conjunction. Not a sound came from the two hundred thousand men waiting behind him.

Luke and the Varangians brought their horses to a stop at what they hoped was the proper distance. Luke looked at the flag and remembered when a black one had been raised outside the walls of Damascus.

Matthew said: ‘I think we’ll leave you here.’ He turned his horse and rode away. Luke watched him go; then he approached Tamerlane.

Tamerlane made three more bows before sitting back on his ankles. He beckoned to Luke. ‘The omens are bad,’ he growled, signalling for Luke to help him rise. ‘The imams didn’t like the bloody dawn and the shamans don’t care for the goats they’ve opened.’ Now standing, he pushed Luke away and adjusted the sword by his side. He looked down at his hand. ‘Still, the ring has clouded so I know they’re wrong. What did you see?’

Luke told him all that they’d seen and Tamerlane grinned, his flat face wrinkling in pleasure. ‘Fighting each other? Even the janissaries? That’s good.’ He gestured to the catapults. ‘Well, they’ve worse to come. The first thing we’ll throw at them will be goats full of water.’ He winked at Luke. ‘Your engineer has done well. He may not be able to play chess but he can divert a river. What a game, eh?’

Luke suddenly felt exposed in front of the army. He felt as if a million eyes were watching him talking to the most powerful man on earth. ‘Where would you like me to go, lord?’ he asked.

Tamerlane shrugged. ‘Wherever you like.’ He paused. ‘No, stand with the gautchin. I may need your riding later.’

Luke bowed and backed away to where Eskalon was waiting. Taking the reins, he led him through a gap in the divisions to where the Emperor’s elite stood beside their horses. They were drawn from the forty tribes of Mawarannahr that claimed Chagatai Mongol origin, and they were the best of the best. They were clad in glittering mail and wore domed helmets spouting high plumes of green horsehair. Many wore masks of
silver and gold, worked into the features of unearthly creatures: half-Tartar, half-demon. They looked terrifying.

Mounted at their front was Mohammed Sultan, patting his horse’s neck and flicking flies from its ears with his mailed fingertips. He had tried to find Shulen but failed. Luke rode up to stand beside him, bowing from the saddle as he approached. They sat there side by side in silence for some time.

It was Luke who broke it. ‘Mohammed Sultan,’ he said quietly, looking straight to his front, ‘you are my friend and I speak only truth to you. Whatever reason Shulen has for not speaking to you has nothing to do with me.’

*

An hour later Mohammed Sultan still hadn’t spoken to Luke and they were standing on either side of Tamerlane who was seated on an old comfortable stallion between the prow and stern of an enormous cushioned saddle. Behind them stood a retinue of emirs and imams,
ming-bashi
s and
on-bashi
s and standard-bearers carrying a dozen flags and Horsehairs.

They were watching the approach of a dust cloud that covered every inch of the horizon and seemed to shudder to the beat of a distant drum. Already the day was hot and Luke felt himself sealed to his saddle by sweat. His helmet was resting on the pommel before him, his gloves beneath it, and he was trying to remember if he’d seen any other man in the army drink from his water bottle. He put his palm on to the dragon head at his side and withdrew it quickly. It was scalding. But if he was parched, what would the men marching towards him be suffering?

Tamerlane was clearly thinking the same thing. ‘When do they come within range of our catapults?’ he called over his shoulder.

A ming-bashi rode forward. ‘Any time now, lord. They will have their horsemen out in front. You wanted the goats to land among the bashibozouks.’

Tamerlane nodded, chuckling to himself. ‘Like rainfall,’ he murmured. ‘Let us bathe them in a shower of torment.’

Standing slightly behind, Luke had been watching Tamerlane watching his enemy draw closer. He’d seen a man bewitched by the approach of destruction, a man hypnotised by the promise of colossal bloodshed. He’d seen a man who had never lost a battle preparing, at last, to meet another who claimed the same. Both had equal numbers of men but only one had water.

This will be my greatest battle
.

Now, emerging from the cloud in front, Luke could see the army they were to do battle with and it was immense. On its left wing rode the Serbian knights, row upon row of heavily armoured cavalry behind their prince in his dazzling white armour, a forest of pennanted lances above them. On its right were the thousands of gazi warriors, the men of the Germiyan and Karamid and Dulkadir tribes, and many others besides. Some wore mail and some the skins of animals but every one of them held a bow in his hand and a quiver of arrows slung by his side. Beside them pranced the high-plumed sipahi regiments and the Kapikulu in their golden and silver mail.