A Wind in Cairo (14 page)

She shrugged off Zamaniyah's telling her so. “I want to see the fighting.”

“There won't be any—”

“Games, then.” She lay as usual in Zamaniyah's bed, more lovely than ever in her insanity. “I'll be your mamluk. No one will even notice me.” And as Zamaniyah opened her mouth: “No one noticed me on the field. I stayed away from your sultan. Is it true that he has sworn to drive the Franks from the face of the earth?”

Zamaniyah was not to be distracted. “You cannot go. It's too public. My father will be there.”

That old fear, it seemed, had lost its power over Wiborada. “How will he know me? I'll be disguised.”

“He will know,” said Zamaniyah.

Wiborada made a soft derisive sound. “He's a man. I'm his slave. He'll never see me outside my proper place.”

Zamaniyah struck her. She swayed, astonished, making no effort to strike back. But her eyes had changed. Zamaniyah shivered. For an instant she saw hatred, raw as a wound; and something that was like madness. The madness of the trapped beast.

“He is my father,” Zamaniyah said. Explaining. To a Christian, a slave. “I know him. If he sees you, he will kill you.”

“But not you. You, he cherishes as his own soul.”

One blow was enough. Zamaniyah's fist clenched into pain.

“You have nothing to fear,” said Wiborada. “I would rather die than live in a cage.”

“You lived well enough before I let you out of it.”

“Did I?” Wiborada held out her arms. There on the white skin were long thin scars, visible only if one looked for them. “I tried. More than once. I kept failing. I was let live because—and they told me this, little Saracen—because I was beautiful, and therefore valuable. If I had been ugly I would have been killed with my father. Beauty is property, O daughter of my master.”

“You did nothing to mar your own.”

She had struck home. Wiborada rose, graceful even in rage. “I don't like you, Saracen. I don't like you at all.”

“What does liking have to do with needing me?”

The Frank stopped short.

“You use me,” said Zamaniyah. “I allow it, because it suits me. This I do not allow. You will not taunt my father with your freedom.”

“But I do,” whispered Wiborada. “Every night when he comes to me, uses me, sleeps like a trusting fool beside me, I laugh. If he only knew, I tell him. If he only guessed.”

“You are mad.”

“Yes,” said Wiborada. She smiled. “You had better do your best shooting for the sultan. I'll have wagers riding on it.”

“You will
not
—”

She was gone. Back among the rustling, whispering women, where she knew Zamaniyah would never follow.

The
maidan
stood beyond the walls of the city. Al'zan called it the hippodrome, the field of races, but of games also, the play that honed men for war. Zamaniyah had ridden there at polo with the sultan; had seen races, even contests of archery, emir against emir or champion against champion. These games were greater than those, but not so much greater.

In none of them had she been called on to distinguish herself. And none had been meant for Khamsin's proving.

“It's too soon,” she said. “He's not ready.”

Al'zan was calm. Easy enough for him. It was not
his
father who sat among the emirs, ignorant as yet of his daughter's part in this. It would be her gift to him, this proving before the princes. With so many witnesses, and taken by surprise besides, surely he could not refuse it.

If Khamsin did not shatter it all with unreadiness.

“He won't,” said Al'zan, maddeningly serene. He inspected the girth, brushed a fleck of dust from the saddle. Khamsin stood rigid, head up, tail high, trying to take in everything at once. He thrummed like a bowstring under her hand.

“Nor,” Al'zan continued, “will you.”

He had found the root of her fear. No more than Khamsin had Zamaniyah ever made display of her prowess. Only her mamluks and her teachers—and, once, the sultan—had ever seen what she could do.

She looked at the broad stretch of the
maidan
and knew that she would forget everything she knew. So many men. So many horses. So many watchers under the pitiless sky.

Her mamluks made themselves a wall about her. One, smaller than most, met her glance. Blue eyes smiled. Wiborada had no shame, no fear at all. Her grin shone even through the headcloth wrapped about her face. “Fifty dinars if you finish in the money,” she said. “A hundred if you win. Make me rich, little Saracen.”

“I'd rather make you sane,” muttered Zamaniyah. But there was comfort, however crooked, in that pagan recklessness. She wished a little of it on herself.

Al'zan beckoned. Her heart stopped. So soon? The lancers were still wheeling on the sand, shrilling battle cries.

Slaves waited, bearing targets.

She vaulted astride. Khamsin started forward; she snatched rein.

Al'zan had him. “Ride him lightly,” the Greek said. “Be at ease. If you have no fear, he can have none.”

She nodded. Words were beyond her. Jaffar passed up her bow in its case, her quiver, her rings: the ring of silver that her father had given her, that guarded her fingers against the chafing of the string; the ring of leather through which ran the reins when she wielded the bow. Jaffar saw them all settled; he touched her knee to wish her well. She was glad that he did not smile.

Khamsin tossed his head. His forelock swung, braided with blue beads against ill fortune. He snorted, stamped.
Get on with it,
his body said.
Show the world how splendid I am.

“
Allahu akbar,”
she said. Entrusting it to the One who knew best of all how to give them, if not victory, at least the strength to finish the course.

The lancers hurtled together, wheeled, charged the sultan. A bare lance-length from his smiling face, they plunged to a halt and swept down their spears in salute. He bowed; they spun and galloped, shrilling, from the field.

Now it lay open for the archers. Zamaniyah wove with Khamsin among the rest of those who would try the mounted contest, grown men and boys, steady to a man, on seasoned horses. They kept together, men with men and boys with boys. None approached her. Most of the boys were mamluks, some as fair as Wiborada. She edged toward their corner of the waiting ground.

A herald in the sultan's black and gold divided them. She was not to go with the raw boys; she was set among the young men. She knew none of them. All of them seemed to know her. None spoke or smiled. She was younger than they, and female. They would not have been human if they had not resented her.

The herald explained to them all what they all knew. They would ride the course of targets one by one. Each must ride it swiftly, and shoot swiftly, and conquer by surety of aim.

Khamsin sidled, ears flat. He had taken a dislike to one of the stallions. She slapped his neck. He threw up his head, rebellious. It was all too much for him. He would never heed her, with all there was to see and hear and shy at.

He had to. She shortened rein and set to work distracting him: riding the figures of the Greek art. He resisted, but the training was strong. It mastered him. It calmed him, a little.

The boys rode their simple course, awaited the tallies, hailed a champion. The young men inspected their horses, saw to bows and arrows and strings. Perhaps they were not as calm as she had thought. There was remarkably little of the boisterousness that young men were given to.

One by one they answered the drum and the calling of their names. Zamaniyah did not watch them. Khamsin objected to standing still while another leaped into a gallop before him, nor did it mollify him to trot sedate circles. He was growing angry, slipping what control she had.

The drum beat, none too soon. The herald called her name. Her eyes flashed to the sultan under his canopy; to the emirs about him. The sun was too bright. She could not see her father's face. Whether he was startled, or angry, or oblivious. Whether he was there at all.

There was, there must be, only the field. Her hands flew of themselves, stringing the bow. Her lips moved in brief and silent prayer. Khamsin gathered himself. She settled deeper in the saddle, firmed her grip on the bow, slid the reins a little farther along the ring that circled the longest finger of her right hand. When she drew bow, they would follow, not so tight as to check her horse's gallop, not so loose as to abandon him altogether.

The herald signaled. Her heels touched the quivering sides. Khamsin sprang into flight.

It was all one. Sun, sky, field. Targets in their course, blurred with the gallop's speed: Franks mounted, afoot, kneeling on the ground, leering like devils. Khamsin singing with tension, wavering subtly, yielding to the touch of leg and rein. Arrow to string, arrow to string. Aim, nock, loose. Let it fly, spare it no glance, aim, loose. Khamsin stumbled, bucked—one lost, no time, no time—recovering, aiming, in the name of Allah, a hit? A hit. Three more, two more, one—out.

Wind roared in her ears. No; not wind. Voices. A clamor of—cheering?

Khamsin carried her before the sultan. She bowed; and the stallion, serene as any Muslim for all the foam that spattered his neck, bent his knee and did obeisance. Applause burst forth. She wheeled her improbable courtier about and trotted back to her place.

Her face bore a smile, fixed as if carved there. Nowhere about the sultan had she seen her father. If he had left—if for anger he had withdrawn, or for shame—

Her teeth set. A new rider ran the course, his mount steady, no flashes of temper to cast his aim awry. She relieved Khamsin of her weight, loosened the girth, led him slowly about.

Perhaps al-Zaman had never come at all. She had been caught up in her secret, and in her fears; she had never thought to ask him if he would go.

She almost laughed. So much fretting, and for nothing. Whether she won or she lost, her father would not see.

It did not matter. She had ridden for herself, and for Khamsin, and for the sultan. And for Al'zan who came to take the bridle; for Jaffar, for Wiborada, for her mamluks in their loyal circle. Their pride in her was sweet, though it made her blush.

“You rode well,” said Al'zan: his highest praise.

“You shot well,” said Jaffar, higher praise yet.

Khamsin snorted. “And you,” she said to him, “ran very well indeed.”

She had not been heeding the rankings. Her father was not there, that she could care whether she had finished last or second from the last. When they called her name, she did not hear it. Jaffar was tugging at her; people were making a great deal of noise.

“Last?” she asked. “But why—”

“Not last!” Wiborada shouted in her ear. “F
irst!”

Wiborada's Arabic was worse than she knew.

Jaffar was saying the same. Dragging Zamaniyah. Flinging her bodily into the saddle.

The tumult was protest. A woman had won the robe of honor. What man could endure it?

Any man fairly defeated, cried a faction of surprising size. There were the targets, there her arrows, there the tallies taken and sworn to. For the one she had not even touched, six were slain with arrows to heart or brain, five sore wounded in the body. No other had shot so skillfully.

The horse, then. The horse had won it for her.

His scream rang over the clamor of voices. He bolted through her mamluks, past men and horses, bit clamped in teeth, Zamaniyah borne unresisting, unable to resist. On the open field he bounded to a halt. He released the bit. Slowly, too subtly at first even for her understanding, he began to dance.

Training was strong. She found her seat. Her hands found their place, the reins light in them, but firm. Her will remembered itself.

She rode the figures, serene as if she were alone, absorbed. They bore her closer, closer to the targets that awaited the approach of the champions. She was not that, not yet, perhaps not ever, but an archer, she was. No idiot male could take that from her. Khamsin was supple beneath her, pure joyful obedience. She freed her bow from its case, strung it at the canter—a feat, and they both knew it, and were most proud of it. Two arrows yet remained in her quiver. Two shots.

For the champions they had raised beyond the targets a more difficult target still: the single tall mast of the Turkish art, and atop it, glittering, a golden cup; and fluttering on a string, now on the cup, now in the air, a dove. One rode past the mast at full gallop—if one were a champion, one all but brushed it in passing—and aimed upward, and shot the cup from its mooring; and if one were a master, one slew the dove with a single clean shot; and if one were more than master, one caught cup and dove together and brought them down.

Zamaniyah had trained at the mast. Everyone did. But always on seasoned horses. Never on Khamsin. One false step, one stumble, and horse could strike the mast, slay himself, slay his rider.

A clear voice rang out behind her. “A pretty dance. Fit for a lady, if lady she were. To be so brazen—to ride against men—to
win—”

Anger was white and pure, cold in the heart of its fire, clear. She stroked Khamsin's neck. It sweated, but he was strong beneath. One run still, no more. “Will you?” she asked him. “Can you?”

He slowed, smoothing his gaits. His head rose, as if he measured the mast, the cup, the dove. He snorted at them.

No one moved to stop her. Many had forgotten her in their outrage at what she had done, or in the headiness of a battle brewing. Soldiers and heralds moved to quell them. The sultan had risen and drawn his sword.

She filled her lungs until surely they must burst. “
Allah!”
she cried. That Name drew eyes. She deepened her voice as much as she might, made it as strong as one small woman's could be. “In the Name of Allah, listen to me! I ride here at my sultan's command. I wield my bow in his name. See if I may call myself an archer—strike a wager with me. If my arrows take both cup and dove, the robe and the title are mine to keep. If I take neither, or one alone, I surrender all to the man who would have had them but for me. That is my oath. May Allah be its witness!”