The Towers of Samarcand

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ALEPPO, WINTER 1400

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.

‘They fell on Aleppo as ravening wolves, as jackals of the steppe. Children were slaughtered before their mothers, mothers violated before their husbands. The very streets ran with blood. Oh my Lord! It is only the owl and vulture that now take refuge in the city of Ibrahim and there is no birdsong there. It is a place of skulls built into towers taller than minarets. It is a place of death.’

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.

Ain Jalut.

He said: ‘You will take half the army and march to our borders and wait. We’ll see if this young Sultan will choose to defend Syria or remain in Cairo.’

‘And what do we tell Temur’s envoy?’

‘We tell him that Temur will get Ahmed and the others when we’ve seen him return to Samarcand. Not a moment before.’

*

Zoe was standing at the entrance of Suleyman’s tent, her fingers pulling aside the tent-flap enough to see the Mongol envoy emerge from his audience with Bayezid and walk towards his horse. She was frowning.

It was evening by now and the shadows were lengthening. The rain had come and gone and the work of the siege was dying with the day. From every direction came the pinpricks of twenty thousand fires being lit and the murmur of an army sitting down to eat. The air smelt of wet earth and leather and canvas and soon it would smell of food.

Zoe narrowed her eyes. The horse was familiar. It was large and richly caparisoned and, without any doubt, was Eskalon. It made sense. The Mongol horses were small, shaggy creatures, ill fitted to diplomacy. Eskalon would impress. But why was the envoy here at all? Was it to make peace with Bayezid so that Tamerlane could plunder the riches of Egypt unhindered? And if so, where did that leave Suleyman?

Zoe had not enjoyed her time at the siege. First had come the news of Damian’s death. It seemed her twin brother fallen from the Goulas after some fight with her father. He’d been drunk. She remembered a man standing before her in this very tent telling her how it had happened: a smaller, older, frailer man than her father, yet her father nonetheless. He’d not looked at her when he’d spoken.

‘It was an accident. He was drunk and he slipped.’

It was a lie but what was the truth? Had her father killed him? Had that been the only way for Zoe to inherit? She’d felt sick every time she’d considered the question since.

She’d not seen her father from that day. They said he never left his palace in Venice these days, had handed all business over to his lieutenants. Zoe wondered sometimes what sort of business she would inherit at the end of it all.

Worst of all, Suleyman had not yet proposed marriage to her and seemed to spend more and more time at Edirne. There, Zoe had heard, he rode out with Anna, even though she was supposed to be imprisoned.

Then there was the problem of Suleyman. His absences from the siege had been noticed by Bayezid. If Tamerlane wasn’t coming, then Constantinople would surely be taken by Mehmed who would reap all the glory.

And what would Suleyman reap?

Now she watched the envoy approach Eskalon and pat his neck. The horse dipped his head twice and snorted through the silk. Zoe thought of Luke. How could she persuade him to come and take Anna away from Suleyman?

He won’t know that Anna thinks him married. What if he did?

She wasn’t sure herself. She’d doubted the Venetians’ story even as she’d enjoyed telling it to Anna. But then the man from Castile had arrived to confirm it. It hardly mattered.

If he learns that Anna thinks him married, he might come and get her. Especially if he also knows she’s free of Suleyman.

Would he? Yes. Zoe stepped from the tent and, as she did so, Eskalon’s head turned. The envoy watched her approach, bowing and then straightening up. He was a man of middle years with a small, intelligent mouth beneath a beard streaked with grey. Zoe arrived beside the horse. She ran her fingers through his mane.

‘Eskalon.’

The envoy nodded. ‘You know the horse?’

‘I know his master.’ She looked at the Mongol. ‘Not you.’

The envoy smiled. ‘No, not I. One who has found favour with my master.’

‘One who is a Varangian.’ She paused. ‘I hear he is married. To the woman called Shulen.’

The man remained silent.

‘Will you give him a message?’

The envoy frowned. Then he nodded.

‘Please tell him that Anna has heard of his marriage to the girl Shulen and is greatly distressed. Tell him that she was engaged to be married to the Prince Suleyman but is now released. But she is his prisoner.’ She paused and put her hand on the envoy’s arm. ‘He will want to know this.’

The envoy had gathered his reins, perhaps thinking that he had more important business to attend to. He put his foot into the stirrup and pulled himself high into the saddle. He took the reins. ‘And who should I say has sent this message?’

‘A friend.’