Читать книгу Tamerlane: The Earth Shaker - Harold Lamb - Страница 9

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It was the beginning of the autumn rains, and Timur’s rendezvous with Hussayn was far to the south, below the Amu river. But he could not resist making a wide circle back to visit his home. Besides, he did not want to join Hussayn empty-handed. Near the Amu he had picked up some fifteen followers and horses at the residence of a friendly chieftain—Aljai could now ride in a horse litter. The sickly pony and the ignoble camel were given away to beggars.

We have a glimpse here of the young Tatar’s devotion to his princess. He had set out ahead of Aljai with a few men, intending to go alone on his excursion around Samarkand. But when he came to the ford of the Amu, where armed parties were passing back and forth, he ordered his men to wait, saying that the heat was too great for travel. Accordingly, they halted under some poplars within sight of the road for a week or so until Aljai’s slower cavalcade came up.

Aljai was astonished at the sudden appearance of her champion, but Timur, cautious now that his princess was to be safeguarded, became anxious at sight of fresh dust arising along the road. He ordered horses and litter into the river, fording and swimming the swift current between the sand bars until the danger point was passed and he had put the river between Aljai and the distant riders.

When he had hidden her away in a suburb, he entered Samarkand unnoticed with his followers at the time of evening prayer. For forty-eight days he remained here under the eyes of the Jats who were still hunting him. At night he went to the sarais to listen to the talk of the roads; he visited the houses of his friends secretly, with an idea of heading a sudden rising in the city where it was least expected. More than once, standing in the crowds of the mosque courtyards he saw the Jat prince ride past with his officers.

He risked his life to no purpose. Nothing could be done at the moment. The Jats had the country firmly under their hand. Overbearing and exacting, the northerners were still the visible representatives of the authority of Genghis Khan. Moreover, they were victorious.

The Tatar princes around Samarkand were accustomed to follow a military leader. They were not fanatic Muhammadans, but men trained to war, and thinking of little else. To any man who could rouse them and restrain them and give them a taste of victory they would be faithful. But the Jalairs had submitted to Ilias—Hussayn was a fugitive, with a Jat prince sitting in the hall of his palace at Kabul. And they saw no hope as yet in following the youthful Timur.

They warned Timur that his presence was known to the Jats. Again the scion of the house of Barlas had to take to his horse and escape at night.

He did not go alone. A small following had collected around him—masterless men, wandering troopers, lovers of hazard and loot, wild Turkomans and adventurous Arabs. They were poor material for an army, but they made splendid partisans for the road.

They laughed when Timur led them within sight of the Green City, and camped in the abandoned summer pastureland above the white dome of his palace where the Jats could be watched, riding out to look for him. They boasted of his deeds to the Barlas bahaturs who had wind of his presence and arrived to salute him—Elchi Bahatur, he of the broken bow, and white haired Jaku Barlas who had a raven’s instinct for scenting out happenings.

And these veterans of the Kingmaker’s camp emptied many a cup with the young outlaw. “When God’s earth is so wide,” they said, “why dwell within walls?”

“Words!” Timur cried. “What will your deeds be? Are you crows, to feed from the crumbs of the Jat’s table, or hawks to strike down your prey?”

“Y’allah!” The two Barlas men made answer. “We are not crows.”

When Aljai joined them they saluted the princess respectfully. Had she not taken part in the battles of her lord? When Timur broke camp late that autumn and moved south toward the mountains to meet Hussayn they went with him.

It was no road for weaklings. For five hundred miles it twisted among the ranges that were the very bulwark of the sky—down through modern Afghanistan, vaguely mapped and only partially explored to-day. It followed a river gorge upward until the river became a bed of ice, and they had to force a path through knee deep snow.

The road led them under the glaciers of the Father of Mountains, still rising to wind swept plateaux where they pitched their round cloth tents under echoing cliffs. By day they moved in the glare of snow fields in the higher altitudes, except where the wind had cleared the pebble-strewn bed of the valley before them.

The horses wore felt blankets and the riders were wrapped in wolfskins and sables. When they came to timber they cut enough fuel to load on sledges and carry with them. At times they passed below the watch towers of a tribal citadel, where unseen sentinels wailed at them and dogs barked a thousand feet overhead.

More than once they were attacked by Afghans who did not know the men they had to deal with. Timur and his men emerged the richer by these raids. They crossed the twelve thousand foot pass between the snow summits of the Hindu Koh, and slid and clambered down the precipice that brought them to the valley of Kabul.

This meant no respite for them, because they had to circle the city. After buying fresh horses and sheep in the villages, they took the Kandahar trail which was easier going, being nearly free from snow. They reached the lower valleys of the south, and found Amir Hussayn waiting for them at the rendezvous with an army that was twin to Timur’s but more numerous.

During the end of the winter they rested, and were heartened by an ambassador who came with gifts from the ruler of the near-by ranges.

There had been, it seemed, a rebellion among his people of Sijistan, and he had lost most of his hill forts. He promised reward to Timur and Hussayn if they would join him in ousting the rebels. The allies accepted the overture—Hussayn with the idea of making himself master of this southern province, Timur eager to be in the saddle again.

When the roads were passable, they joined the lord of Sijistan and marched off to fight his battles—being for the moment no more than soldiers of fortune. This was the sort of thing Timur relished. They captured most of the belligerent strongholds, surprising some, storming the others on ladders.

Hussayn, however, caused trouble by pillaging the villages and then putting his own men in as garrisons. Timur was indifferent, but the Sijistanis were not pleased and the remaining rebels profited from the strained relations, sending a message to their ruler, “We bear thee no ill-will; bethink thee, if the Tatars are allowed to take our places, they will keep the whole country for themselves.”

The master of Sijistan marched off at night without word to the adventurers, and joined forces with the former rebels. It was a typical about-face of the mountain clans, always suspicious, and uncertain of strangers. They attacked Timur who beat them off and charged into their array.

In this conflict, with no more than twelve warriors around him at the time, he was a target for the arrows of the Sijistanis. One shaft splintered the bones of his hand another struck him in the foot. He paid no heed to the wounds, beyond breaking the arrows and pulling them out, but afterwards they proved serious and he was forced to keep to his tent.

The Sijistanis had been defeated, and the allies gained new property and followers from the victory. Hussayn set out to the north with the bulk of the new army, leaving Timur to rest in the hills and recover from his injury.

Here he was joined by Aljai, and for a brief space the dark-haired princess had the Tatar lord to herself in the camp where no one could summon him to war. Their pavilions stood among vineyards where the air was always cool, and the horses tasted of paradise in the lush grass. At night under the full moon of the month of Shawwal they lay on carpets looking down into the shadows of the lowlands. For this moon Aljai could watch Timur sitting with his boy child, the World Gripper.

And she counted the days, when Timur limped restlessly around the camp, trying his injured foot. It pained him a good deal, though he stood straight as before. And when—too soon for Aljai’s love—Timur called for his armour and his saddle horse, she brought out his sword and girded it over his loins, her dark eyes impassive with the grief that a young wife must not show before her lord.

“May God shield thee, O my husband.”