The Towers of Samarcand

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

ANKARA, 27 JULY 1402

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-bashis and on-bashis 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.

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.

‘Brother?’ he whispered. ‘Brother?’ He took a step backwards, looking wildly from one to the other of the women, a thousand thoughts crowding his mind. He turned to his mother. ‘Someone else … before Jahangir? You …?’

His mother nodded again. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Shulen is your sister. Now go.’

*

Outside, the situation was desperate. Luke was using his shield to block the swipes of a huge studded mace swung by a knight whose armour was splattered with filth. His other hand held his dragon sword, poised for the moment to strike. Beside him stood Matthew, axe in one hand and sword in the other.

Mohammed Sultan had emerged from the tent with no helmet and a look of madness on his face. He glanced up and down the barricade. ‘Luke!’ he yelled, leaping forward with his sword raised above him.

Within seconds the three men were fighting side by side, Luke in the centre. The ground before them was piled with dead and wounded and slippery with their blood.

‘Is the battle lost?’ yelled the Prince, ramming his pommel into the visor of a knight who’d got too close.

Luke ducked to escape a blow from another mace. He glanced at the Prince. ‘I don’t know. But your helmet, lord. Where’s your helmet?’

Luke was the only one of the three with a shield. He saw that there was something reckless in the way the Prince was fighting. He edged closer to him, ready to give protection should it be needed. He glanced at Matthew. Luke was leaving his friend exposed but what choice did he have? Mohammed Sultan was not acting like one who wanted to survive the battle.

‘If the Serbs are at the camp, then the day must be lost,’ shouted the Prince. ‘Suleyman will have charged from the other side to surround us.’

It seemed likely but it made little difference. They were fighting for their lives.

‘Luke,’ Mohammed Sultan went on, ‘I know now why Shulen …’ He’d delivered a blow to the neck of a knight and found his mouth suddenly filled with the man’s blood. He spat it out and tried again. ‘She’s my sister.’

‘Who is your sister?’ panted Luke.

‘Shulen. Shulen is my sister.’ He parried an axe-swipe and plunged his sword under the cuirass of a knight arching to strike.

The statement was ill timed. Luke heard it and suddenly he was on his knees with blood in his nostrils and stars before his eyes. He’d been struck hard on his helmet. He heard a roar above him as the Prince leapt forward and a scream as his attacker was brought down.

When he could see again, Luke looked up at Mohammed Sultan. He seemed super-human, possessed of the strength of six men. His sword was everywhere, swinging and blocking and finding the gaps in which to thrust. A mound of dead and dying lay around him. But he was beginning to tire.

Luke got to his feet, shaking his head to clear his vision and wiping the blood from his nose. He felt drained of strength. He saw that he, Matthew and Mohammed Sultan were now an island amidst a sea of Serbians. The Mongol line had broken and Temur’s men were behind them, falling back on the tents, furiously contesting every inch of the way.

Luke took a deep breath. ‘We have to get back!’ he yelled into Matthew’s ear. ‘We’re cut off!’

Matthew glanced behind him and nodded. His head was caked in dirt and blood. He grabbed Luke’s shield to protect them both from the hail of blows, just in time. A sword came from nowhere and Luke managed to parry it. But he was seeing double and his head was splitting with pain. ‘I don’t think I can do much more,’ he said.

On his other side, Mohammed Sultan was in trouble too. Luke could hear his breathing. It was short and rasping, air drawn through a throat swollen with thirst. He was tiring fast. Luke saw a Serbian in black armour pointing a long tube. His mind flashed back to the kourtchi report in the morning.

The black-steels have handguns.

He wrenched the shield from Matthew. But he was too late. There was a deafening bang and the heir to Tamerlane lay on the ground.

Luke looked down. Mohammed Sultan was quite still. He swayed on his feet and Matthew caught him as he fell. The Serbian knights around them had stopped fighting. They too were in awe of this terrible new weapon. They formed an exhausted ring around Mohammed Sultan, their shoulders rising and falling with fatigue. One of them removed his helmet.

It was Prince Lazarević. He looked at Luke without animosity. ‘Give yourself up,’ he said in Greek, leaning on his sword, his handsome face streaked black between locks of filthy hair. ‘You have fought bravely. Your friend is dead and you are wounded. Don’t follow him.’

Luke was staring at the still-smoking weapon. Then at Lazarević.

You don’t know who he is.

There was a shout from the Mongol lines behind. The battle in that direction seemed to have stopped as well. A woman riding a big horse was making her way towards them and the Serbians were parting to let her pass. Luke stared in disbelief.

Shulen. Shulen riding Eskalon.

She entered the ring around Mohammed Sultan and stopped the horse before Prince Lazarević. With one fluid movement, she dismounted and passed the reins to Matthew. She looked down at the body and then up at the Serbian Prince.

‘He is my brother,’ she said simply, her face without emotion. ‘Let me take him home.’

Lazarević stared at her and then down at the ground. ‘Who is he, lady?’

‘He is my brother,’ she said again, ‘and he deserves better than this for his grave.’

The Serbian Prince stared at her for a long time. Then, very slowly, he nodded. ‘Take him.’

It was then that Luke saw Shulen was not alone. Standing unhurt behind her were Arcadius and Nikolas and they stepped forward and gently lifted the body of the prince on to the back of the horse. They held his body in place as Eskalon was led back towards the tents. Matthew came over to Luke. ‘You’re hurt. You should retire.’

Luke turned to his oldest friend. ‘Matthew, the shield …’

His friend shook his head. ‘It’s not important. Leave this battle. You’re wounded.’

Luke hardly heard him. Waves of dizziness were sweeping over him and his sight was still blurred. He could only think of how he hadn’t protected his best friend with his shield. He saw Shulen walk up to Prince Lazarević and take his mailed hands in hers. He heard her say: ‘Wait until we get back to the tents.’

Mongols and Serbians watched her go. Men in bloodstained armour watched a thin girl of mysterious beauty walk back to the tents behind a horse, both picking their careful way through a ground littered with dead.

Matthew took Luke’s arm. ‘Luke, you’re wounded. Stop now.’

There was another bang, the signal for the battle to begin again, and Matthew found himself parrying two blows. Once he’d cleared some ground, he began to push Luke to the rear. A roar came from behind and then Arcadius and Nikolas were beside them, fighting like devils, repelling the Serbs while Luke stumbled back to the tents. He got there in time to see Mohammed Sultan lifted from Eskalon. His eyes were closed and his face very pale. Khan-zada was waiting for him, her face a mask of horror.

Luke turned to Matthew. His head was in agony. He said again, ‘Matthew, the shield …’

There was something unreadable in Matthew’s eyes. ‘Luke, we can talk of that later. There is a battle to fight.’

‘Is it lost?’

Matthew shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It looks like Suleyman has charged our left wing with his Kapikulu and the gazi tribes. It looks bad.’

‘And Tamerlane?’

‘The janissaries were advancing on him behind a swarm of bashibozouks. I don’t know if he held.’

Luke looked at the two lines of men before him, embraced in a whirl of weaponry. There were more explosions and more Mongols fell to the earth with holes in their heads. All along the line, the Mongol soldiers were giving way. Inch by inch they were losing ground; it would be only minutes before the Serbians were at the tents.

Matthew said, ‘I’m going back to fight. Don’t try to follow me.’

Luke opened his mouth but nothing emerged. Then he fell to his knees and vomited. He sank his head in his hands and stared at the ground. It was shaking.

More hooves. More Serbians to finish us off.

He staggered to his feet. He looked towards where the thunder was coming from. It came from behind the knights, from the other side of the low hill on which the camp had been set. It was the thunder of thousands upon thousands of horses and there could be little doubt from which army they came.

‘Gazis!’ screamed a Mongol to Luke’s left.

Luke strained to see above the tide of crests and flailing weaponry.

‘Gazis!’ The cry was taken up along both lines. The wild men of the steppe were charging to help their Serbian allies.

But the gazis weren’t slowing as they approached the rear of the Serbian ranks. With blood-curdling yells, they fell upon the knights and the men-at-arms. The exhausted Serbs tried to turn but it was too late. The horsemen tore into their ranks with their swords whirling above them, mowing them down like ripe wheat and driving them into a mass of bloody chaos. In the crush, the Serbs’ handguns were useless and their armour worse. Men fell and couldn’t rise, suffocating in their steel beneath the heels of their comrades. It was slaughter.

The Mongols surged forward slashing their way towards these new, unexpected allies, summoning every reserve of strength to win this battle, bellowing with the hope of a new outcome.

At first, it stayed in the balance. The Serbs were well armoured and fought well. But Prince Lazarević’s men were tired and they were outnumbered and surrounded. For another hour, they battled with a ferocity that belied their heavy armour. Then quite suddenly it was over. There was no one left to kill.

*

It was the middle of the day and the relentless heat of the sun bore down upon a camp full of heaped corpses, raising a stench that even the vultures seemed unwilling to approach. All around the tents were bodies twisted into the contortions of death, pile upon pile of men who had risen that morning to see blood in the sky and had watched it flow in rivers on the ground by afternoon.

To one side stood Luke, his helmet thrown to the ground and his face streaked with blood. He was sick from his wound and sick with relief. He heard footsteps approach him and managed to look up. Before him stood the chief of the Germiyans in a deel that still bore the imprint of the armour he’d cast to one side. Its sleeves and neck were spattered with filth and above them the battered face was grinning.

Luke was the first to speak. ‘Have we won?’

Yakub nodded. ‘I did as I said I would. We followed Suleyman’s Kapikulu, then rode across to come up behind the Serbians.’ He stepped forward and took Luke’s shoulders in his hands. He was frowning. ‘But you’re hurt.’

Luke shook his head. The pain was unbearable. He said, ‘Bayezid?’

‘On a hill with his janissaries. Temur has surrounded it.’

‘And Suleyman?’

‘Fled the field.’

Luke nodded. There was a sound behind him and he remembered something. He turned to find Shulen standing in front of the tent. ‘Is he alive?’ he asked, dreading the answer. She was wiping her hands on a towel and Luke saw that the blood reached far up her arms.

She nodded. ‘But it’s bad. We had to remove the stone that was fired into him.’ She glanced past him and he knew who she was looking for.

He turned to see Tamerlane approaching on a horse, a cloth held to his face. Next to him rode Pir Mohammed, his head crudely bandaged and his mail slashed in a dozen places. Carried behind them were the Horsehairs of two armies. Tamerlane dismounted stiffly and looked around him, his face devoid of expression. He looked twenty years older. He walked up to Shulen and took her hands. ‘Is he inside?’ he asked quietly.

‘Yes,’ she said and turned to open the tent door.

Before he entered, Tamerlane paused and turned about, his old milky eyes settling on Luke. He motioned for him to come forward. When Luke was kneeling in front of him, he placed two hands on his shoulders, bending forward so that their faces were very close.

‘Tarkhan,’ he said. ‘You know what that is, Greek?’

Luke nodded.

‘It means’, said Tamerlane, ‘that you can commit the same crime nine times before I kill you for it.’ He paused. ‘You are tarkhan now, Greek, and you will sit at my right hand tonight.’