Silk Road (66 page)

They had waited all that morning but there was no movement on the road, the only traffic a donkey, loaded with firewood, driven along by a barefoot urchin with a stick.

Finally they saw the caravan in the distance, sun glittering on the swords and lances of the escort. As it came closer Khutelun could make out the
kibitkas
bearing the princess’s sedans. Behind the wagons came three more
jegun
of cavalry.

Her spies in Kashgar had reported that they had split their force, the better disciplined troops of the
kesig
taking the road to the south. Joss-ran and his shaman were with them. She allowed herself a smile. So, he had survived. She knew he would.

Why had they divided their troops? The passes were steeper at the southern route, and unsuited to wagons, and she supposed they thought to speed the Christians on their way. Whatever the reason it worked to her advantage for now she was pitted against an enemy of similar strength. Surprise would weigh the odds in her favour. Her objective was not to gain ground but to take from them Khubilai’s daughter, either by capture or by the sword. They would strike quickly, and retreat to the mountains.

Yet she was unable to shake off a deep sense of foreboding. The premonition was nameless and there was no seeing to accompany it. Perhaps, she thought, it is a foreshadowing of my own death.

She went back to the horses, waiting eagerly under the trees.

Sartaq sat hunched against the cold, his long felt coat hanging in dark folds down his horse’s flank. His sparse beard was beaded with ice, his breath frothing white on the air. His warriors waited behind him in the shadows of the gully, arrows bristling from the wooden quivers on their backs. A triangular pennant hung limp from the shining blade of a lance.

They could see Qaidu’s raiders waiting just below the tree line on the far side of the valley. Sartaq turned to Josseran with a wolfish grin. ‘You see! I told you they could not resist.’

Josseran did not answer. He searched for a flash of purple silk among the distant knot of riders, but it was impossible to make out; they were too far away.

Khutelun sprinkled koumiss from her leather saddlebag on to the ground, invoking the assistance of heaven against her enemies. She closed her eyes and tried again to listen to the spirits, but the unease which had settled on her all that day had dampened her intuitions. She looked up at the Blue Sky, her face creased in confusion. The other Tatars watched her, troubled by her indecision.

‘What is it you are trying to tell me?’ she whispered.

She jumped into the saddle. The caravan was spread across the valley floor below them. They could not delay the moment.

She raised a fist in the air, the signal for the charge.

T
HE HORSEMEN STREAMED
out of the tree line, and the shriek of their war cries carried clearly across the valley on the frigid air. Josseran watched in grim silence.

‘You will stay here,’ Sartaq said to Josseran. ‘I shall leave ten of my men as escort for you. You will be safe.’ Sartaq raised a hand, waiting for the two forces to engage, ensuring there could be no swift retreat for Qaidu’s warriors. ‘This is for my brother-in-law,’ he said.

He gave the signal and the Tatars streamed down the moraine and along the valley, a thousand of them, each in boiled-leather armour, bows across their backs, the steel points of their lances flashing in the sun.

‘What is happening?’ William shouted.

‘Qaidu’s soldiers have attacked the caravan. Sartaq has set a trap for them.’ He wheeled his horse about. ‘Tell me the real reason you would not baptize the princess.’

‘Why do you wish to question me on this now, Templar?’

‘Just tell me the truth.’

William hesitated, but then it was as if something shifted in him, some great burden of guilt was shrugged aside. ‘Why should I bring her to a God who brings nothing to me?’

‘William? Do not tell me you have lost your faith.’

‘Take your pleasure in my fall, as you will.’

‘There is no pleasure in it. I am astonished, that is all.’

‘He has abandoned me, Templar! I have borne every suffering in His name, travelled far beyond the known world and endured each and every indignity, and what help has He given me, though I cried out again and again for His assistance to aid my endeavours in the name of His son? Was she to be my consolation for all I have done?
Was that the crumb He threw at me? One convert, and that a mere woman, a heathen woman?’

‘She is a soul.’

‘One soul is of no account to me! I dreamed of millions!’ The wind howled around them, throwing grit and ice in their faces. ‘I will tell you the truth of it, if that is what you wish. I do not know what I believe in any more.’

Josseran stared into the priest’s face, and saw something there he had thought never to see: fear. It was like watching the sun topple from the sky.

He turned in the saddle and stared at the thin, dark line of horsemen sweeping down the green slope. Then he saw it, the very thing he had dreaded: a flash of purple silk.

Khutelun.
His mouth was suddenly dry.

‘What did you say?’ William asked him.

‘Khutelun. I said, Khutelun.’

‘What?’

‘Khutelun is there.’

‘The witch?’

‘She is there. Do you see the purple? She is down there!’

‘Then she is going to die.’

‘Or she may be saved. You may have lost your religion, priest, but I have found mine. This is my faith: I believe in the congress of two ill-tamed souls, of the sacred bond that will make a man do anything and everything for a woman, and she for him. I have no creed to offer, no confession. My heaven is with her, and my hell is when I am not.’ Josseran put his hand to his throat, to the crucifix he wore under his silk undershirt. He tore it off his neck with sudden violence, brought it to his lips to kiss it for the last time and tossed it to the priest. ‘Pray me for me, Brother William.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I do not know why it so amused God to put you in my path, but I cannot say I shall miss your company when we are apart. Nevertheless, I wish you Godspeed to Acre.’

‘Templar!’

‘I cannot do my penance. If I am damned, then let me be damned. You will not see me again.’ He spurred his horse down the grey moraine, after Sartaq’s cavalry.

‘Josseran!’ William screamed.

Their Tatar escort was taken by surprise. Their attention was focused on the battle taking place just below them. When they heard William’s shout they all turned their heads but by then Josseran was already galloping away from them and they were too late to stop him.

K
HUTELUN GALLOPED THROUGH
the milling ranks of Alghu’s cavalry, her cavalry behind her. Alghu’s men had ridden out to meet them but the momentum of her attack had taken them off guard and dozens of them already lay in the grass or in the shallows of the river, slain or wounded by the first volley of arrows. Khutelun and her vanguard rode through and around them, avoiding individual combats, interested only in the prize that awaited them in the
kibitka
.

They were within a dozen paces when the curtains parted. She shouted a warning, but it was lost in the screams and the thunder of hooves. Instead of the princess, all that awaited them within the silk curtains of the royal litter were Alghu’s archers.

She tried to wheel her horse around, but it was too late.

She heard the whine of the arrows, and all around her her
magadai
screamed and clutched at their wounds. Several slid from their horses. Her own mare was hit in the shoulder by an arrow and reared on to its back legs.

It took all her skill to stay in the saddle. She put her own bow to her shoulder and loosed two arrows into the archers in the sedan. She knew it was hopeless. The charge had been checked, the impetus lost.

And besides, their quarry was not there.

She spurred her horse away from the caravan. She realized that the unease she had felt all that morning had been more than the premonition of her own death. It was the foretelling of disaster. She looked up the valley, knowing what she would see.

A black line of horsemen was galloping along the flood plain, and in moments it would sweep through their flank. Now she understood the nature of the trap.

All around her, she heard the cries of men suffering and dying, the clash of steel on steel as a hundred different combats took place along the line of the skirmish. She galloped back up the slope of the valley, found her messenger, had him send the retreat arrows singing through the air.

But she knew it was too late, much too late.

As Sartaq’s cavalry swept into the battle lines, the tattered remnants of Khutelun’s
mingan
broke off and streamed back towards the foothills. Josseran galloped around the mêlée and looked for the purple silk: he saw Khutelun escaping up the face of the mountain slope, gathering the remnants of her soldiers around her. She was heading towards the tree line on the north side of the valley.

Sartaq’s warriors loosed volleys of arrows from the saddle as they pursued her. He joined the pursuit, splashing across the ford, just one purpose in mind.