Silk Road (57 page)

From what seemed a long way off he heard the mumbles and laughter of men’s voices moving about the camp, an eerie keening over the rattle of the drums, then a scream, perhaps imagined, of one of his fellow prisoners.

‘Joss-ran,’ a voice said.

He looked up. All he could see was the orange glimmer of camp fires through the entrance of the yurt.

‘Joss-ran.’

He realized she was here, his beautiful witch Khutelun, her eyes glittering in the dark. She crouched down in front of him. ‘You should not have ridden out,’ she said.

‘It was my duty to protect the priest.’

‘You thought to be brave. See where it has left you.’

There it was again, that terrible keening. ‘What is that?’ he asked her.

‘They are grieving for the widows you made today.’

‘It was not my intention to make widows; I was fighting for my life. And what of the widows you made?’

She reached up and her fingertips traced the contours of the wound on his forehead. A show of tenderness, at last, he thought. Perhaps she has not forgotten the desert entirely.

‘What is to happen to me?’

‘My father is angry with me that I brought you back as my prisoner, and he is angry with you that you could not die of your wound. He would have you dead but he does not wish the responsibility for it.’

He tried to move his position but the effort sent another spasm of pain through his shoulder. ‘Tell him I regret the inconvenience I have caused him.’

‘He has read the missive you brought with you from Khubilai. It has clouded the waters. Some of my father’s generals say you are an ambassador and you must be treated with respect. Others say that as you treated with Khubilai, then you should be executed. There are a few who wish to keep you as a hostage. But is your life of any worth to Khubilai?’

He forced a savage grin. ‘Tell them the Emperor of Cathay loves me like a brother.’

She did not smile. Something in her expression disturbed him.

‘And what is your father’s opinion?’

‘My father favours execution. He says that dead men eat less food.’ She sighed. ‘I shall do all I can to sway him. I will find a way to set you free.’ She had with her a wooden bowl, filled with water. She soaked a piece of rag in it and used it to wash away the dried blood around his eye. Then she cleaned the arrow wound, tenderly as a lover. Even now, in his desperate condition, he was aware of the warmth of her breast against his silken undershirt.

‘I still want you, God help me,’ he whispered.

She made no answer.

‘Did you hear me, Khutelun?’

‘I may wash your wounds. Beyond that, there is nothing I can do for you.’

‘I have to know. Do you feel nothing at all for me?’

‘You are a barbarian from the west. How can I feel anything for you? I shall marry the son of a khan who will make my own sons princes of the steppe like my father.’ She finished her ministrations. It was a kindness, he thought, though it had done nothing for his pain. ‘The wound is clean.’ 376

‘Why does your father torment me with this collar? Tell him that if I vex him so, then he should do what he will. I am not afraid to die.’

‘I will tell him what you said.’ She stood up and went to the doorway of the yurt.

‘I would give everything to lie with you for just one night before I die.’

‘Then you are a fool,’ she said and slipped away into the darkness.

J
OSSERAN HAD WORN
the cangue for just a few hours and already he felt as if he bore the weight of the cathedral at Chartres on his shoulders. Every small movement was agony. Pain and fatigue brought on a reverie that was not quite sleep, for sleep was impossible, but a delirium that transported him from his terrible predicament back to a cave above a narrow defile in the Mountains of the Sun.
‘Had you not thought of us joined together in this way, as Shiva is joined with his wife? Have you not sometimes thought of this as your destiny? And as mine?’

He realized there was someone else in the yurt and when he looked up he saw Qaidu standing over him, watching him. Perhaps this was the pronouncement of his sentence. He would soon know how he was to die.

Qaidu had his hands on his hips, his legs splayed. ‘What should I do with you, Barbarian? My generals say I should execute you with the others.’

‘The others?’

‘Khubilai’s dogs. They are traitors to the people of the Blue Mongol and a stain on the legend of Chingghis Khan. I have decreed they are to be boiled alive.’

Even as he spoke Josseran could hear his fellow prisoners going to their deaths. He hoped they had given Drunken Man some of the black koumiss he loved so much to help him through his ordeal. He shifted his position slightly so that he could look into the other man’s eyes.

‘And what is it that gives you pause on my account?’

The screams of the tortured men echoed through the camp. Ah, they have warmed the pot already. Josseran could not imagine such a death. But I will not beg for my life, he promised himself. If they
break me bone by bone, I will not beg. May God give me the strength to resist these devils.

‘Perhaps I can offer you another choice,’ Josseran said.

A wolf grin. ‘What choice could you offer me, Barbarian?’

‘Let me marry Khutelun.’

How quickly the smile fell away. Qaidu’s hand went to the sword at his belt. Josseran thought he would strike off his head then and there. But instead he contented himself with placing one foot on the cangue, forcing it almost to the ground, bending Josseran’s neck down between his knees. ‘Do you toy with me?’

Josseran did not, could not, respond. The pain was beyond imagining. With a grunt Qaidu removed his foot and stepped back.

Josseran tried to raise his head. It was like trying to lift his own horse in his arms. My back is broken, he thought.

Unable to straighten up, he collapsed on to his side. He uttered a grunt of pain, his whole weight supported now on his right hip and knee.

‘Perhaps I will have you boiled with the others after all,’ Qaidu growled.

‘I mean . . . what I say.’

‘There are many ways a man can die, Barbarian. You are not making it easy for yourself.’

‘I propose . . . a test.’

He heard the hesitation in the other man’s voice. ‘A test?’

‘A race, on horseback . . . Khutelun against . . . me. Should I . . . win, I have her . . . in marriage.’

‘And what would you do then? Would you take her with you to the barbarian lands?’

‘I would . . . stay here.’

‘Here?’ Qaidu’s voice shrill with disbelief. ‘Why do you wish to stay here?’

Josseran had no answer to that. Yet why not? What was there to return to? Was there even one soul who would weep for him if he did not return to Acre?

‘What would you wager for this?’ Qaidu asked.

It is the agony of the cangue making me mad, Josseran thought. May the Lord in heaven forgive me. I am trading everything I
possess in body and spirit for the glimmer of a bauble, a whispered promise in a bazaar. Madness.

‘Many young men have asked for her before you,’ Qaidu persisted. ‘Not ragged barbarian envoys, these were fine Tatar princes and each wagered a hundred horses against the promise of her as wife. If Khutelun wins, as she surely must, what have you to offer?’

‘My . . . life.’

‘Your life is forfeit anyway!’

The screaming began again. How long does it take a man to boil?

‘I still have it . . . at this moment. It is all I . . . have since you have not yet . . . made up your mind what my . . . fate will be.’

Qaidu grunted, perhaps in grudging admiration of Josseran’s courage. ‘And if I told you that I intend to let you go free? Would you still make this wager?’

Josseran did not answer. How does a man make such contracts with his head and arms tortured by the cangue? Qaidu nodded to one of the guards who grabbed the edge of the infernal device and pulled Josseran upright. The weight was returned to a more tolerable position and Josseran uttered a sob of relief. Enough for now to lean the cangue against the frame of the yurt, and take a moment’s blessed relief from the crushing weight.

‘So will you set me free, my lord Qaidu?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I have the means to make the wager. I have a life to barter with, after all. So do we agree?’

‘This is all I want from you!’ Khubilai’s missive to the Templar command was thrust under his nose. He tore it into shreds. ‘We shall not let the usurper arm himself with Hülegü!’

‘It makes no difference. The messenger and the message are the same. You cannot grasp one without the other. Should I return to Acre I shall inform my masters and the prince Hülegü of all that I have seen and heard. You are better served agreeing to the wager. Either way I shall remain here. It would not be wise to let me go, my lord.’

‘You know, of course, that it is Khutelun and Khutelun alone who argues for your life!’

A moment’s stillness, a moment to smile. He heard himself say,
as if from very far away: ‘That is why I do not want my freedom. I want Khutelun.’

‘You are a fool.’

‘She told me this also. I am sure you are both right.’

Qaidu studied him for a long time. ‘You are strange to her, and that fascinates her, because she is a shaman and not like other women. She is drawn to things that those of us who do not have the gift rightly fear. But you are not for her.’

‘Let her decide that,’ Josseran said.

Qaidu took some time to consider. Josseran could hear his breathing, though he was unable to raise his head to look into the khan’s eyes. ‘It were better you had died today,’ he said finally, and left the yurt. From outside came the beat of the shaman’s drums, the inhuman screams of the boiled and not yet dead.

K
HUTELUN SAT ON
a knoll above the camp, beyond the corona of the night fires and the protective perimeter of the
kibitkas
. She had come to be alone with the spirits, under the sheltering canopy of the World Tent that was tonight suspended from the bright nub of the Pole Star. Her body was buffeted by a bitter wind.

She could make no sense of the turmoil inside her. She hugged her knees with her arms and pressed her forehead against her fists. She let out a small cry that startled a sentry, dozing on his horse somewhere below her.

For as long as she could remember she had hated her sex and all that it represented. As a child she had preferred her brothers’ company to that of her sisters, a fondness that had been tempered by competition. She had learned to best them at hunting, at riding, even at wrestling. As she grew she had done all she could to win her father’s favour, though she sensed that he smiled more kindly at her brothers than he did on her. From watching the horses in the pasture she learned the difference between mare and stallion, and she understood that this was the source of the problem.

But a Tatar woman does not sit quietly and compliantly like a Chin with her braided hair and lily feet. She set out to prove to her father that she was tougher and braver and more skilled than any in the clan. She had practised hour after hour, day after day, with bow and arrow. And these last two seasons she had won her reward, for Qaidu had allowed her to ride beside him in the hunt, had even given her command of her own
mingan
.

But she was still a woman and he expected her to marry and bear sons. And if that was how it must be she had promised herself that one day it would be her children, and not any of her brothers’
spawn, that would take her father’s place as khan of the clan and lord of the Fergana steppes.

But her ambition had been betrayed by a weakness she had never suspected within her. There was simply no advantage to a union with this barbarian and yet she had allowed herself to imagine it.

She could not understand why he harboured this craving for her. When he discovered she was a mare like any other he would be disillusioned, and then she would be powerless, both as a woman and as the man she had tried to become.

So why did she persist with this dangerous game?

Qaidu had told her of the challenge that the barbarian had issued. That he would do such a thing, take such a gamble for her, truly astonished her. But she had told her father that she would accept. He would take the test that all her suitors had taken. If she won, he would die; if he won, she would relinquish her saddle and surrender herself to him as wife to husband.