Читать книгу Tamerlane: The Earth Shaker - Harold Lamb - Страница 5

Table of Contents

At this time Timur—we cannot very well call him Tamerlane—was a young gentleman of leisure. And leisure with Timur meant activity. He was powerful in body, a fine physique, wide-shouldered, long-limbed. His head was large and splendidly poised—a high forehead and full dark eyes that moved slowly and looked directly at a man. He had the broad cheek bones and wide sensitive mouth of his race, evidences of the vitality in him. The energy in him was little less than ferocious. A youth of few words, a deep and penetrating voice. He had no love of foolery and in all his life he never appreciated a jest.

We are given a glimpse of him riding down a deer with his companions over the open plain in winter. Timur was in the lead when his horse came to a gully that was both wide and deep. Timur tried to turn the horse, and, failing, kneed him forward to the jump. His mount did not quite clear the gully, and slipped back with his hind feet, while the young Tatar kicked himself loose from the stirrups and swung to safety. The horse fell and was disabled—Timur going around the gully to his companions and mounting a led horse.

Light began to fail, and the riders turned back. Darkness and a heavy rain soon lost them in the open steppe. They were suffering from cold when they passed some black mounds that looked like tents. “They are sand hills,” said Timur’s companions. The son of Taragai threw his reins on the horse’s neck and gripped the mane. The pony stretched his neck and neighed, so Timur turned toward the mounds, and presently a light was seen, and the shapes in the rain disclosed themselves as black felt tents.

At once the young Tatars were assailed by the dogs and men who believed them to be raiders as a matter of course.

“Nay, ye people of the tents,” Timur cried, “I am the son of Taragai.”

Weapons were put away and hospitality extended—broth heated up in the pot over the fire, and quilts spread in a dry spot for the guests. The fleas in the quilts banished slumber, and Timur abandoned the coverlets, to stir up the fire and tell stories, his hosts coming forth to listen until daylight and the end of the storm. Years later Timur sent reward to the family of the black tents.

In this early world of Islam hospitality was an obligation to be accepted as such and returned only in kind. The Tatars were great wanderers, and Timur had the freedom of every tent and courtyard from Samarkand to the Land of the Sun. With his handful of companions he might travel a thousand miles in a fortnight, through the mountain tracks or down along the desert’s edge—carrying nothing more with him than his sword and a light hunting bow. The Arabs of the caravan camps talked to him, being honoured by the presence of a chieftain’s son; hillmen, washing river gravel for particles of gold, told him their legends and gossip of their horses and women of other clans; he played chess with the barons of the clans in their citadels.

“The Kingmaker of Sali Sarai has asked for thee,” they said.

Timur had taken thought for the remnants of his father’s possessions. The sheep he divided up into flocks, giving them to the care of herders whose pay was a fourth of the milk, the butter and the wool. The goats, horses and camels were cared for in the same way. No other property is mentioned.

With him Timur took the best of the string of horses, and a boy—Abdullah, born in his own house—to serve him. And with this escort he rode south through the foothills toward the great river Amu. So might a youthful, esquire-at-arms have travelled to the court of his king, in Norman England—except that no squire of Christendom rode clad in soft shagreen boots and a high-crowned white felt hat, bordered with sable, and a coat-robe of dressed horsehide with wide flaps over the shoulders, girdled with a heavy leather belt ornamented with silver work and turquoise. And few youths of England were so utterly alone as Timur, his mother dead, his father in a monastery and his kinsmen more than ready to become his enemies. An adventurer, he joined the camp of warriors without a king.

“Instead of religion,” Kazgan the Kingmaker told him, bluntly, “brothers.”^[1]

There were many eyes to watch him—to judge his horsemanship, the way he handled his sword in the bouts that would have hazarded his life if he had not been sure of his blade. Taragai had been a chieftain and Timur was his only son.

And in Sali Sarai, where two thousand Tatars—lords, youths and warriors—encamped in the forests, no one thought of teaching Timur anything. He had to find out for himself, and find out he did.

One of the horse guards galloped in with the tidings that raiders had come over the border and were driving off horses. Kazgan the Amir called Timur to him and ordered the scion of the house of Barlas to go with a company of the younger men and bring back the horses. Timur rose at once—he had been sitting with the Amir’s men—and set out. It was a task that delighted him, a mounting of horses and a swift dash for half a day along the tracks of the invaders.

They proved to be Persians from the west, and they had gathered up plunder on the way, putting it into packs on the captured horses. At sight of the Tatars they divided into two parties, one remaining with pack animals, the other advancing toward the pursuers. Timur’s companions advised him to attack the baggage train.

“Nay,” he said, “if we overcome the fighting men, the others will flee.”

The raiders stood their ground long enough to exchange a few sword cuts with the helmeted men, but they knew themselves outmatched and scattered. Timur escorted back the horses and gear to their owners, and Kazgan praised him, rewarding the young Barlas warrior with his own bow case.

Thereafter Kazgan the Kingmaker liked the son of Taragai and began to show him favour.

“Thou art of the family of the Gurigan, the Splendid,” he said, “but thou art not a tura, a descendant of the family of Genghis Khan. Before thy life, the ancestor of thy house Kayouli made an agreement with Kabul Khan, the ancestor of the house of Genghis. The agreement was that the offspring of Kayouli should be leaders and commanders of the army, while the house of Kabul should rule as Khans. It was so said between them, and it was written on steel and the steel is kept in the archives of the great Khans. Thy father has said this to me and it is true.”

And he added thoughtfully, “Surely my path has been only one. I have drawn my reins to the path of war, and I have not turned aside from the struggle. Now men follow me, and my name is glorious. That is the one path, and there is no other.”

This Timur knew. He knew also that Chagatai the son of Genghis Khan had ruled all that portion of the earth including the lands of the Afghans to the south and the vaster mountain ranges behind the Majesty of Solomon. In the hundred years since then the children of Chagatai’s line had loosened their grip on their heritage; individual Tatar clans had become virtually rulers of their own provinces and the Khans had retired to the north to hunt and drink, until now they only appeared near the Green City to pillage and carry off what struck their fancy under pretext of putting down a revolt.

Kazgan had been the amir, the commander, of such a Khan, and had made Samarkand his residence, until he tired of watching disastrous raids and had dared rebel against the Khan. Long and bitter fighting followed, ending in the death of the Khan, and leaving Kazgan lord in reality of Samarkand and the provinces of the Barlas and other Tatar clans. To fulfil the law of Genghis Khan, and to satisfy these warriors who now looked to him for leadership, he had called a council and elected a descendant of the royal line Khan of Samarkand—a puppet king, fed and protected by Kazgan and good-naturedly indifferent to other matters. Thus was Kazgan called the Kingmaker.

Like Timur, he was of a small family, not a tura of the royal blood of Genghis Khan. Audacious, he had made alliances; just and upright, he had enforced the respect of the restless Tatars. He was blind in one eye from an arrow wound. After the great stroke of his rebellion, he devoted himself to hunting and only lifted the standard of war at need. He could not feel certain of the support of the Tatar clans, and he saw in Timur a chieftain’s son who could aid him greatly.

Other amirs of the Kingmaker’s court had interests of their own. They gave tribute and the outward show of loyalty to Kazgan’s puppet on the throne of Samarkand, but they had all shared in Kazgan’s successful revolt. Some of them could muster ten thousand riders to their standards, and only Kazgan’s sagacity kept the reins of power in his hands.

He noticed that Timur was a favourite of the bahaturs, the men among the Tatars who had won a name for valour. They were the berserks of the clans who went to battle as if to a feast, and Taragai’s son took his place among them as if by right. He went off with them on raids and they returned to sit on Kazgan’s carpet and tell tales of his recklessness and daring.

It seemed that there was in Timur a spark of sheer eagerness that made him love a risk for the sake of its danger. But, more than that, in a crisis Timur remained quiet and thoughtful. “A breeder of action,” the bahaturs said. His overflowing physical energy made light work of long rides and sleepless nights. Timur had the qualifications of leadership, and he liked to lead. And he was over-confident—too full of his own strength. He asked Kazgan for the headship of the scattered Barlas clan.

“Wilt thou not wait?” the Kingmaker, who did not at all approve the suggestion, made answer. “It will be thine, some time or other.”

After a while it occurred to Kazgan to give Timur a wife. And he chose one of his granddaughters, who was also of the reigning family of another clan.

[1] “Din ayiri, Kardash”—“Religious faith apart, brothers.” They spoke Turki, but their written language was the Mongol-Uighur of Central Asia, now vanished. Most of them, including Timur, knew a good deal of Arabic—the Latin of Asia.