A Wind in Cairo (21 page)

She was not like Zamaniyah. She did not waste speech on beasts. Her hand was hard on his bridle, not cruel but not gentle; simply unfeeling. She was wiser than to try to ride him, though there might have been purpose in that. A mamluk leading a horse was a common enough sight after a battle. Horses lost their riders, ran free, were captured and taken to the captors' masters for counting and claiming.

He could have wished that she had thought to rid him of the saddle. It itched abominably where he had sweated; he thought there might be a gall beginning. Zamaniyah would have the woman's hide if she knew.

He was thinking of it. But first he wanted to see what she was up to. He had suspicions; as yet they were no more than that.

They passed the fallen gates of the town. Guards called out a challenge. Wiborada answered in her huskiest voice. “The Emir al-Zaman. Have you seen him?”

Her livery was her passport. They peered at it, nodded, pointed. “Yonder,” they said.

It was simple, once one knew. The sultan must have been on his way to the citadel to treat with its garrison, which had refused to fall with the fall of the town. In the heart of the market, empty now, its stalls shuttered or swept away altogether, he had paused. Two of his emirs confronted one another, both mounted, both armed, both bristling. Men of the sultan's guard gripped their bridles firmly, despite fierce resistance. A crowd of soldiers milled and muttered. Their mood was venomous.

Khamsin could have groaned aloud. His father was in a white rage. His mistress' father was in a red one. “This man,” grated al-Zaman, “interferes with the execution of my duty.”

“My duty,” said Ali Mousa, “is to gather what I may of provisions for the army, and to pay a fair price as you, my lord, have commanded. This man attempted to seize and sequester a large portion for his own use.”

“I take my proper share for myself and my command. Else,” said al-Zaman, “for your malice, we would have none.”

“I gather and divide as my sultan ordains,” the sharif said stiffly.

“Oh, aye! And a little over for everyone, but for what is mine, a bare sufficiency—and that of soiled goods, weeviled flour, meat run to maggots.”

“You receive no more and no less than any other emir. But always you strive to seize more, to take the best and leave the worst for others, and you feign that you have done nothing. And that, sir, is common thievery.”

“Thievery!” al-Zaman cried. “And what is it that you do, you son of a Frankish dog?”

The sultan had been trying in vain to break in upon their battle. They wrenched at reins, spurring toward one another with swords drawn. He snatched a spear from one of his guards and hurled it. Their mounts shied. The spear buried itself to the haft in the ground before the dancing hooves.

The sultan followed it. His anger was rare, and all the more deadly for that. He beat back their swords. He shouted at them. “
Enough!”
They gave way, snarling still, but shocked into the beginnings of sense. “Are you my emirs or my enemies? What word of God or Prophet sets you free to wage your war in the midst of mine?”

“This offspring of a Turkish camel—” Ali Mousa began.

“This child of an Egyptian ass—” snarled al-Zaman.

The sultan roared them into silence. “I will not have it! You will fight for me or for yourselves. One or the other. Choose!”

They glared at one another. Their men shifted, restless. The sultan wheeled his horse about. “There shall be but one war in Syria. Mine. If you would pursue your own, you shall pursue it elsewhere. Serve me or leave me.
Choose!”

The air rang. The enemies were rigid, quivering just visibly, hating. Their eyes burned upon the sultan; upon the town which they had helped to take; upon each other.

Slowly they blinked. Slowly, slowly, they sheathed their swords.

The sultan was not satisfied. “While this war endures, you will not indulge your enmity; or you depart in dishonor. Will you swear?”

They swore. Low and hard, but clear enough for that.

The sultan nodded once, brief and sharp. The anger was taut still in his face. He saw them go, each to his separate duties, each to his separate forces. Then at last he continued his march to the citadel.

Khamsin braced himself to break free. But the Frank had seen enough. She did not try to impose herself upon her master; she turned back, her hand no gentler on his rein for that he came willingly.

He would have run if there had been any wisdom in it. He wanted his peace, his handful of barley sweetened with mutton fat, his brushing and his freedom from bridle and saddle. He did not want to be Hasan whose loyalties were all torn anew. He wanted to be plain witless Khamsin.

He checked, jibbed as the woman wrenched him forward. It was Hasan who had been the witless one; whose fidelity had never been to any but himself. Khamsin was the one who suffered agonies.

It was not supposed to be like that. He was an animal. He was simplicity made substance.

He tucked in his head, speeded his pace a fraction. The woman, surprised, shifter her grip. In the instant of almost-freedom, he snatched the bit and bolted. Her cries diminished behind him.

Let her rage. He knew his place, as she had chosen not to. Once free of her, he settled to a trot, making his way toward the lines and the grooms and the pampering which he had richly earned.

Damascus was the door to Syria, the lesser cities the posts of its lintel; but Aleppo was the key. Here had been the capital of Nur al-Din's kingdom. Here his son made his stand; here gathered the princes who had vowed never to serve Yusuf. He had offered them clemency. They responded with naked steel.

The land about the city seemed wan and old, a plain of dust and of bitter wind. Low dun hills rose up in it; a little river watered it, the merest trickle beside the great ocean of the Nile. The city lay between, a circle of walls under the lowering sky, and looming out of them like a mountain out of the sea, the sheer and sudden crag of its citadel.

Towns, Khamsin was learning, were only the nut. Citadels were the meat. The battle before Homs, of which even yet he did not know whether to be proud or ashamed, had won no more than the town; its fortress had fallen only to a month's determined siege.

He was seasoned now, he supposed. He was losing count of his battles. They were all alike. Stark terror; running, fighting, yelling; swelling exhilaration; and numb exhaustion after. Whether by some twist of the Hajji's magic or by the will of Allah, neither he nor his rider ever took a wound.

She kept calling him valiant. He had no way to tell her that it was not courage, it was panic. And being the idiot that he was, he did not know enough to run away from his terror; he ran full upon it.

He looked at the citadel of Aleppo and knew, quite calmly and quite clearly, that he was mortal; that he could die. The knowing did not frighten him. War was fearful. Fate was fated.

Jaffar was not a Muslim. He had never learned to submit to the will of Allah. When he slept, he dreamed death. When he woke, he looked about him and saw death.

He tried to hide it from Zamaniyah. He told her, when she pressed him, that his thinness and his grey pallor were his body's hatred of the bitter Syrian winter: cold that no fire could warm, rain that no tent could keep out. Perhaps she believed him. She made him eat far more than he wanted. She fetched him sweet things, dainties found the gods knew where, bits of fruit and meat; even wine, because he was not forbidden it, and it was strong, warmed with spices. She hovered and fretted until he would happily have driven her out. Or told her, flatly and most cruelly, the truth.
I dream your death. I cannot stop dreaming it. It drives me mad.

He did not say it. He followed her everywhere. If she protested, she protested for his sake. He heard her out in silence, and went on being her shadow, though thinner and paler with each day that passed.

The sultan sat his horse before the gates of Aleppo. Robes, turban, banner, all were black. His mail and his helmet were gold. His mare was of that color called
al-ashab al-marshoush,
the flecked grey, the color most favored of kings.

Zamaniyah, in black and grey steel, on Khamsin who was the red of battle, sat not far from him. She had begun beside her father, but Khamsin's restlessness or the mare's allure had brought him, and his rider with him, among the sultan's bodyguard. They, who knew her, made no move to prevent her. One even smiled.

On the gates above them, weapons bristled. None moved to attack. This was a parley, and for the moment, if not amicable, at least not violent.

Of those on the gate who professed authority, only two mattered: the magisterially fat Turk who was the regent, Gumushtekin; and the small figure of the prince. The child spoke for himself. Well instructed, no doubt, but also well schooled. His voice was thin but clear. “Have you come to accept me as your overlord?”

“I have come to free you from ill counsel,” the sultan answered, giving him no title as he had given the sultan none.

The boy's head turned from side to side, taking in his emirs, his elders, his impassive eunuch. He looked down again upon the sultan. “Is it ill counsel that bids me claim what is rightfully mine?”

“The claim and the counsel have brought no peace to Syria. Therefore the wisest of its princes sent to me, beseeching me to come to the kingdom's aid. Most of its people have welcomed me, and most without bloodshed. Why do you resist me, when I would do you naught but good?”

“If you meant me well, you would not stand here in arms.”

“The arms are Syria's,” said the sultan. “We would wield them in your name, if you would allow it.”

All along the wall, men hissed and spat. The sultan did not waver. No more did the prince. “You want the kingdom for yourself,” he said. “Go back. Go back where you came from.” He raised a hand. A rain of arrows blackened the sky.

“Sharp,” said the sultan, “and to the point.”

He was not visibly discomfited, although an arrow had presumed to pierce his cloak as he retreated. He sat in the shelter of his tent while wind rocked the walls and a true rain beat upon the roof. His servants warmed him and his emirs with kaffé. Many of them were warm enough with anger or with outrage; one, lightly wounded, swore vengeance over and over as the surgeon dressed his hurt.

Zamaniyah sipped the sweet, scalding kaffé and tried not to shiver. She was wetter than she liked to be, and colder; until she thought of Khamsin roofless in the rain. Then her teeth chattered on his behalf.

“What will you do?” someone asked the sultan.

“Take Aleppo,” he answered swiftly. “However long it takes me, however long the city holds against me, in the end it will fall.”

“And the young pup?”

“He makes war on me. So be it. Allah knows which of us is better fit to rule.”

He said it calmly, and unshakably. Some of the emirs seemed surprised. Either they were fools, or they were feigning it. She would not have liked to have a wager riding on either.

She was not a good soldier. She kept thinking of the wrong things. The Syrian prince could have been wise. He could have accepted Yusuf's regency; learned from it; and at last, when he was grown and strong and well able to rule a kingdom, claimed it for his own. Had not Yusuf himself done much the same?

He and his counselors had chosen war. No one seemed dismayed. Most of them were delighted. War was the strong choice, the man's choice.

Certainly steel was simpler than speech. If, all too often, no quicker, nor any more absolute.

Khamsin welcomed winter's passing, even knowing that, slowly as the siege went, he would have to face the furnace-heat of Syrian summer. Now, at the gates of spring, it was pleasant to sleep under the stars, or to idle under the sun while men labored over the siege engines, or on occasion to partake in a swift sortie. Sometimes Zamaniyah hunted for the pot, trying his speed against the gazelle or her archery against the birds of the air. Every day that she could, she took an hour to remind him of his training: the gentler art, the Greek mystery that took his body's own dances of joy and challenge and fear, smoothed and fined them, taught them cadence, transmuted them into art.

He was becoming a dancer. On a day of sun and wind she told him so, dancing a little herself for joy of it. He took joy to match, but in her presence, in the touch of her hand, in the scent of her hair as he nibbled it.

She went away. Reluctantly, he liked to think. But she was wanted. In camp it was the custom that everyone who was not on guard should dine together, sultan and slave alike. They ate from the same pot, drank from the same jar, in the equality of war.

It was clever, he had heard someone say. A poisoner might hesitate if he lacked the certainty of dainties prepared expressly for the sultan.

Khamsin idled hipshot in his place, content for once to stand still, resigned to halter and lead. They had stopped trying to hobble him. He fought the damnable bonds; he found ways out of them; he turned on grooms who dared to try again. They were not fools, the horseboys of the army.

They haltered him, pegged him in place, let him be. He tried not to envy the others who could wander at will. Some were very clever at outwitting their hobbles and straying far in search of grazing.

He thought more than once of being clever himself: pulling up his peg, finding a place that suited him—by the river, maybe, where the grass was sweet and water plentiful—and pegging himself down again. He had never quite dared to do it. There was always someone watching, or someone passing, or something to quell his courage.

It was quiet now, the wind a little gentler, a cloud or two circling coyly about the sun. Here at the army's back, away from the city, the guards were spread wide. For every one who stood visibly at his post, a handful scattered among hills and hollows, alert for any scent of ambush.