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EVERY MAN A KING, by E. Hoffmann Price

CHAPTER I

“Do you have to go? At this hour?” Olajai turned from her mirror, but did not leave off unfastening the red velvet hood whose twinkling pendants trailed past her cheeks, and to her shoulders. “Couldn’t it wait till tomorrow?”

Timur frowned, which made it all the more certain that the King Maker’s granddaughter had not married him for his looks. He snatched a shirt of link mail from a hook, and as he worked it down over his broad shoulders, he grumbled, “One of Bikijek’s pets, and he’s got the king’s seal. Either be a good dog, or run out and join your brother at Saghej Well!”

Olajai said, wistfully, as she wiped off the last bit of dead-white makeup, “And I thought it’d be lovely, living in Samarkand.”

Olajai was shapely of body, and exquisite of face; the Turki heritage, showing in the peach blow tinge of her cheeks, gave features whose every line was sharp and clean and delicate in its drawing. This was Timur’s first and only wife, and thus far, he was glad that there were no others.

Though not quite twenty-seven, he looked older, for mountain blizzards and desert blasts had weathered his flat face. Wind blown sand and storm driven sleet had set the Mongol slant of his eyes in a permanent squint; and for all the blue Zaytuni silk tunic he put on over his shirt of linked mail, and his gold embroidery boots, and plumed pork pie hat, he seemed out of place in a palace.

“I’ll get away as soon as I can,” he promised, and limped out.

Bow legged, and never built for walking, he was further handicapped by an ankle which had stopped a well-aimed arrow. In the tiled reception room, he said to the waiting official, “Something important going on?”

The square-rigged Kipchak did not answer; he merely tapped the big four-cornered seal. In the court, a sleepy groom held his horse, and Timur’s.

They skirted the plaza of splendid Samarkand. The bitter clear moon brought out the blue of tile-fronted palaces, and the golden crests of tall minarets. Samarkand, the jewel of the Jagatai Empire, was now the prize of the Kipchak Horde who had overrun the land: and Timur was weary of serving invaders. But for luck, and a friend at Elias Koja’s court, he might be an exile, like Olajai’s brother, Mir Hussein. Yet, though his position as administrator of affairs gave plenty of enemies and little satisfaction, it at least enabled him to stand between Bikijek’s rapacious clique of nobles, and his own conquered neighbors.

Timur trailed the official, instead of riding boot to boot. There was more than just the matter of rank involved. Then, wary ever since that first strange warning, he noted the stirring in the shadows of the archway to the left. Here the street was narrow; here he and his guide faced a cold, white moon.

A bowstring twanged, the strident note of a horseman’s bow. Timur ducked. His sword was half unsheathed when the arrow thumped home, nailing the Kipchak squarely in the throat. The fellow made a choking sound, and lurched from the saddle.

Timur wheeled, chin in, and crouching low, so that there was hardly a vulnerable spot exposed. The Ferghana stallion stretched out in a great bound; hooves struck fire. When things happened too fast for thought, Timur Bek was driven by the instinct to close in, to cut down.

Then a man came out, barefoot, and bearded. “Go home, Timur Bek. There was no other way to warn you.”

The face was in shadow, but Timur recognized the voice and the figure. “Good shooting, for a scholar! Why?”

“Allah will enlighten you. Also, the man you were following won’t be able to tell anyone you’ve been enlightened.”

“What is this, Kaboul?”

“If all is well with your family, then this is a mistake. And the peace upon you.”

Kaboul the Darvish turned into the shadows of the archway. On the ground, Timur saw a horseman’s bow, but neither quiver nor arrows.

“One man, one arrow.”

And now Kaboul was going back to his cubicle to write a Persian quatrain, or an ode in Turki!

Timur, retracing his course, held his horse to a walk, for in spite of the menace which threatened Olajai he could not risk the sound of galloping. When he finally reached the wicket which gave entrance to the rear court of his house, he hitched himself up and stood in the saddle. Then, catching the crown of the wall, he swung himself to the top, and dropped to the grass inside. His first move was to unbolt the little gate, and lead his horse in, for he dreaded the helplessness of being afoot.

His felt boots made no sound. As he hurried past the servants’ quarters and down a hallway, he heard voices, in front: a challenge as of a drowsy porter, then brusque answer, and a scuffle which ended in a groan.

There was time. He hurried back, mounted up, and again felt complete. He nudged the stallion with his boot, and stroked the sleek neck, wheedling the bewildered beast into the tiled passageway.

A woman cried out, more in wrath and indignation than in fright. “Father of pigs! Get out of here or I will have you skinned alive.”

“That’s her, Olajai Turcan Aga!”

“Come down, khanoum; we won’t hurt you.”

“So you do know that this is Timur’s house. You know, and come in?”

They laughed at the threat. “And we know where Timur is.”

That was when the lame rider’s scowl became a grin. “Come down, Olajai!” he called. “We’re leaving town!”

The deep-chested hail made the men at arms whirl about. They had curved swords, they had maces; they wore peaked helmets, and armor of overlapping plates sewed on leather, but they were afoot, and they were surprised.

The stallion snorted. He quivered, then leaped as Timur’s legs tightened. The heavy blade licked out, finding the gap between neck-guard and hauberk. As the stroke bit home, Timur traversed, so that the wall covered his left. He swayed in the saddle; a spike-headed “morning star” ripped his tunic, exposing the link mail beneath, and then his blade flickered, slashing the man’s forehead.

Blood blinded; that one was out of action.

“Come down; we’re riding!” Timur shouted.

Some were scrambling now to get to the front court and their waiting horses; several tried to close in with swords. Blades clanged. Timur hewed down, slicing off plates of armor.

Olajai snatched a tall Chinese vase from the landing and heaved it at the head of the rearmost. While his helmet saved him from a smashed skull, the impact dropped him in his tracks. She dashed down the stairs and plucked the fellow’s helmet from his head.

“Put it on!” she cried, crowding up on Timur’s left.

“Grab a horse!” he answered, and booted the stallion after the handful who had raced for their mounts.

And when his horse got firm footing on the hard-packed earth, Timur charged with effect.

Olajai followed. She was not dressed for riding, but the ripping of her gown took care of that. And she picked a good mount.

Two of the raiders galloped across the square. Two others fled afoot. Timur snatched the bow whose case hung from the saddle of Olajai’s horse. As he strung it, she passed him an arrow.

The hindmost of the footmen pitched on his face.

Timur grinned. “Good bow. Now keep behind me; there’ll be the devil to pay at the gate.”

* * * *

There was, but it did not last long.

Guardsmen were turning out. The two surviving horsemen had attended to that. But the moon was bright, and Timur’s bowstring twanged, once, twice, thrice: the deadly Turki arrows, released at a dead run, cleared a path. Then a whirl of steel, and the fugitives went pelting down one of the lanes which threaded the orchard girdle of Samarkand.

CHAPTER II

THE BEGGAR

Once a bend in the lane furnished momentary cover, Timur pulled up. “Get Eltchi Bahadur and as many others as you can, and ride direct for Saghej Well. I’ll keep the Kipchaks off your heels, and I’ll meet you later.”

Olajai had long since learned to think quickly, and to move while thinking; she waved, reined her horse down a cross lane, and galloped to notify the chief of Timur’s fifty picked fighting men who had followed him from his home in Kesh. And since they lived outside the city walls, Olajai’s task was safe enough.

Her brother, Mir Hussein, was at Saghej Well with forty odd retainers. They had outraced the Kipchaks to find refuge in the wastelands, and their heads apparently were not considered worth the cost in horseflesh.

Timur dismounted. When he heard the approach of the pursuers, he pretended to be picking a stone from his horse’s hoof. In a moment they came into view, and in the full moon, they saw him. Olajai could not be far away. The horsemen reined in. It was over, they thought.

The fugitive, having the advantage of the moon, fired from his own shadow. A man toppled. Timur swung into the saddle, and the Ferghana stallion took off in a falcon swoop.

He twisted, shooting as he rode. And this was not his second choice horse!

They would stick. Speed was not the essence of this chase, since he had neither rations nor water nor a spare mount. As he gained a lead, he reined in a little, holding the distance just beyond arrow range. For all they knew, Olajai was ahead of him, just beyond sight.

Timur now had time to ponder on the reasons behind the raid on his house. Bikijek’s resentment at a man who spent too much time blocking the sale of justice, blocking the extortion of doubled taxes, and the making of false returns: that was one fair guess. The other, plain court jealousy. Though the attempt to kidnap Olajai suggested a third answer—a blow at her exiled brother, or a stranglehold on Timur himself.

And as he rode, his memory reached back to that night when he had drunk his guests off their feet; it all came back, that survey at sunrise, of his littered banquet room.

He recalled the drums which had rolled and thundered across the broad median. They blotted out the muezzin’s call to prayer. From a high window he could see the horsetail standards at Bikijek’s door. The puppet king, Elias Koja, old Togluk Khan’s son, let Bikijek play with the tokens of royalty, instead of setting to work with a running noose.

It would not, it could not last long, and when it ended, the Golden Horde of the Kipchak would restore order.

Order; herds eaten by Kipchak soldiers, granaries emptied by Kipchak officers, towns and farmsteads burned, and all Timur’s broad acres in Kesh devastated with the rest. All because Bikijek, chief lord of the young king’s court, had drums beaten five times daily before his palace.

Ten or a dozen local emirs, so busy battling each other that they had not stopped Elias Koja when his father sent him south to be Grand Khan of the Jagatai; that was the trouble. Rugged individualists, every man a king, and so now they had the Horde on their necks, and now their lands were the proving ground of an apprentice whose father had handed him the entire Jagatai heritage in which to learn the trade of kingship.

Timur had laughed aloud, for wine and fermented mare’s milk had made him see the truth with a bitter clarity which his sober and busy days had never permitted. “First I fought Uncle Hadji, after Uncle Hadji and I drove Beyan Selduz out of town. Then they murdered Uncle Hadji, and I got an army to avenge him, and then the army divided into three parts and we had a war to settle the dividing of the booty. Every man a king. Allah! What we need is one king, and that one home grown. Too bad Mir Hussein’s grandfather isn’t alive.”

He had smiled, in half drunken grimness and regret, thinking of the King Maker and the King Maker’s grandson, handsome, hard fighting, Mir Hussein, fickle, crackbrained, unpredictable Hussein who had the loveliest sister in the world.

“Allah curse Bikijek, Allah curse every man who does not curse Bikijek’s religion and his father and his grandfather!”

He had spoken aloud. A grave voice had made him turn. There, in the arched doorway stood a ragged man with a snarled beard; the slanting rays kept his face from being any too clear.

“Who asks Allah to curse the religion of another true believer?”

Timur snorted. “I’m talking to myself. Only way to do, if you want to hear sense for a change.”

Then his eyes became used to the glare: he saw the grimy khelat, the greasy skullcap, the girdle of frayed rope, the dirty hands which fingered a wooden bowl. Dirty hands, this beggar had, but fine and long, made for good penmanship. And he wore a writing case at his girdle and a scroll carefully wrapped in a clean red silk scarf.

‘Well, darvish!’ Timur found a gold piece. “Guest of Allah, and a lot more welcome than these Kipchak pigs!”

Only then had his eyes a chance to focus sharply on the seamed face, shrewd, ironic, kindly; somewhat of a dish face, with broad, flat nose, Mongol features and melon head like Timur’s own.

And Timur knelt on the littered tiles, catching the beggar’s hand, too swiftly for any evasion; he kissed it.

“By the Splendor! I’d heard—I didn’t recognize—”

The darvish freed his hand, made a gesture to decline the reverence “Kaboul Shah Aglen, now the Guest of God and the least of the slaves.” Timur Bek had risen, to step back, entirely bewildered. Kaboul Shah Aglen, eighth in direct descent from Genghis Khan’s son, Jagatai, begging his bread, and for shoes, growing calluses on his feet!

Kaboul smiled, “The darvish robe would fit you, Timur Bek. Last night’s friends are this day’s enemies. Become intoxicated by the splendor of Allah, and become His Guest, and the peace will be with you.”

Outside, just then, horses had begun to squeal and snort; saddle drums rolled, for Bikijek was riding to the mosque. As the lordly sounds died out, Kaboul Aglen went on, “When Togluk Khan comes south to cure the disease which his son ignores, your palace becomes a mirage, and you’ll be stealing sheep again. Get out, while you still can leave without killing too many horses.

“Genghis Khan, the master of all mankind, once had to steal a horse to keep from wearing out his boots. In me, the circle closes on itself. I beg my bread, as in the end all the race of Genghis Khan must do.”

Timur’s face darkened; Karashar Nevian, his ancestor, nine generations back had been Genghis Khan’s uncle and advisor. Then he laughed, and it was like trumpets braying before the charge. “See here! You’re the heir to the Jagatai throne, you, not Togluk Khan nor Togluk Khan’s son. I’ll make you Grand Khan in Samarkand!”

The beggar shrugged. “No time; too soon, you’ll be riding for your neck. You, not Bikijek.”

Timur flipped the golden dinar into the bowl.

The beggar whisked it out. “What is nothing now will be your fortune soon, and the peace upon you!”

And here it was: hard riding pursuit behind him, while his wife raced to round up what fighting men she could find. So he laughed again, from thinking on the words of Kaboul Aglen, and the murderous bowstring a scribe could pluck.

* * * *

Forty-two horsemen, all with spare mounts, waited with Olajai when two days later, Timur’s horse stumbled toward the rendezvous, where tents were scattered about a spring which kept the grass green.

Hashim, melon headed and scar-faced, came running to greet him; and he walked back, clinging to Timur’s stirrup leather. “We ride again, tura!” he said, using the Turki word for “my lord.” “It is like the old days again.”

Then Timur saw Tagi Bouga Barlas, his distant cousin, hard bitten and grinning; Sayfuddin, the greatest archer of them all, coddling a bow; and roaring Elthci Bahadur whose strength and skill had thus far hacked his way out of all the traps into which he charged. They crowded about, grimy and sweat gleaming; jeweled collars and gold inlaid helmets and embroidered belts grotesque against greasy khalats, and sheepskin jackets.

“Hai, Timur Bahadur!”

Quickly they broke camp and rode, for they had rested while Timur led the Kipchak riders a crazy chase in circles. And now, being among friends, Timur dozed in the saddle; and Olajai rode beside him.

CHAPTER III

BATTLE

Five days brought Timur to the Jihun’s poplar lined banks; and swimming this river put the Jagatai realm behind them. At the Well of Saghej they found Mir Hussein, with Dilshad Aga, his wife, and some forty horsemen.

The King Maker’s grandson was handsome as his sister was lovely; a small, pointed black beard, and high arched brows, and a high bridged, straight nose with nostrils whose flare made one think of a stallion scenting a fight. Until his army had been scattered, he had been King in Kandahar; now he had lost everything but hope.

There was no meat, so they ate cooked millet and buttered tea. Mir Hussein said, “Bismillahi, it could be worse.”

Timur grimaced. “We can’t eat sand very long. But with a couple good raids, I’ll have an army at my back. The men of Kesh were giving me hard looks, you’d think I’d sold them out, just because I took the thankless job of trying to stand between them and those Kipchak hounds! But this fast ride has set a lot of them thinking.”

“Inshallah! But I can’t show up in Kandahar with a guard of forty men.”

Timur chuckled sourly. “No, they’ve probably got a new king there. That’s the trouble, too many kings, instead of one good one. Now, your grandfather—”

Mir Hussein sighed. “May God be well pleased with him! But do you think he could improve things? He used to pull kings out of his saddlebags, but this is different. Still, you’d do pretty well as Grand Khan of the Jagatai.”

Dangerous ground. If Timur did raise an army to drive the present puppet out of Samarkand, he’d be quite a hero, but once he took the throne, jealousy would start feud. Mir Hussein was good in battle, and good nowhere else. “You’re the grandson of Mir Kazagan,” Timur countered. “How’s Tekil?”

“Hungry and looking for business. At least seven hundred Turkomans and the like.”

“Our hundred will draw his following,” Timur argued. “And with that start, we’ll begin to make an impression.”

So they rode through the march of hell, across the black sands of Kivac. The scrawny oasis looked like a small paradise, for the lips of Timur’s men were cracked from thirst.

The citadel loomed up, above the poplars. “I don’t like it,” Timur said. “No one working in the fields. No one tending the ditches.”

Instead of pressing on to the city, they made camp at the fringe of green which marked the beginning of cultivation.

Timur beckoned to Eltchi Bahadur and Tagai Bouga Barlas. “We’ll ride in and pay our respects to Tekil.”

Hussein cut in, “No! Let me go. He knows I’ve spent a couple of months at the Well of Saghej, and he made no trouble. Let me talk to him.”

Timur’s eyes narrowed. “Hmmm … don’t tell him I’m here. Just say you know where I am.”

The deep-set Turki eyes sparkled. “So you’ve been thinking about that mess in Samarkand?”

Where Hussein had been the ill favored one, it now seemed that Timur’s head was most in demand.

That night, Timur posted double guards and slept with his boots on. While his fame as a captain would always get him followers, it would also make his head a prize in a land where every man was a king, and allegiances changed overnight.

In the morning he heard trumpets and drums, and saw Mir Hussein’s standard, and the riders who came from the gates, the fields and through the groves.

“Break camp, and be ready to mount up!” Timur commanded.

Then he rode out with twenty men to meet Tekil.

Ceremonious greetings: the burly governor fairly fell from his horse to be the first to dismount. A big, red-faced man, a hearty, smiling man. “Welcome, welcome, Timur Bek! Kivak is yours. You and your brother, I bid you welcome.”

Tekil had an escort of perhaps two hundred horses. Timur wondered where the others were. He caught old Hashim’s narrowed eyes, and made a twist of head and chin. The old fellow gave a gesture of assent; and unobtrusively edged from the clump of horsemen, to head back to camp.

More compliments. Hussein was smooth and smiling and affable. Tomorrow, he and Timur would with pleasure and heartiness attend the governor’s banquet. Today, Allah bear witness, things were in an uproar in camp. Horses, badly overtaxed, needed attention. And some of the party was still unaccounted for. Ay,Wallah! Some baggage animals, carrying all the gifts designed for His Excellency, were lagging a day’s march behind.

Something was wrong, something was off color; Hussein’s fluent patter confirmed Timur’s earlier premonitions. He said, cutting in brusquely, “Allied-to-Greatness, we beg permission to turn from the light of your Presence!”

Words and music did not matter. He was in the saddle before Tekil fairly realized that another speaker had addressed him. Tagi Bouga Barlas mounted up; and so did Hussein.

Tekil’s face changed. And then came the great bawling voice of Eltchi Bahadur, and the pounding of hooves. “To horse, O Bek! The bastard’s got us hemmed in!”

“Swords out!”

And Timur had scarcely shouted his command when an arrow smacked home with a solid thump. Eltchi was shooting, shooting hard, fast, straight. “Get out of my way,” he howled, “get out of my way!”

Timur and Mir Hussein were blocking his line of fire. Then the visitors and the host’s men went into action, blades out; some lancers maneuvered for working space, while others threw their lances down and snatched maces from their saddle bows.

“To camp!” Timur shouted. “Archers fall out!”

There was no drill by command, as such; it was rather instinctive teamwork, based on many a pitched battle and running fight. Eltchi Bahadur charged headlong at the Tekil’s guard. Hacking and hewing, he was swallowed up by milling horsemen and billowing dust.

Meanwhile, as though called by signal, half Timur’s escort swooped to right and left, and the bows began to twang. Hard driven shafts laced the flanks of Tekil’s tight packed traitors; murderous, close range archery; cunningly driven shafts, some picking men, others nailing horses whose fall would block the movement of other riders.

Stung by the ferocious archery, Tekil’s men opened out. Timur and Hussein pressed in, head on, to divide the enemy. And from the rear came the brawling, booming voice of Eltchi Bahadur. He looked as though an avalanche had passed over him, but he was hewing his way back to meet Timur.

Timur’s archers fell back, shooting as they withdrew and covering the retreat. Over the roar of battle, he heard the approach of his main detachment, and saw his chance. “This way, you bawling bull!” he shouted to Eltchi, and pointed toward a low hillock.

In a moment, Timur’s standard was on the knoll.

Dust ringed the oasis. The rest of Tekil’s men were closing in. It was now clear where the governor’s force had been. It was all too clear that the riders trailing Timur out of Samarkand had been baiting him, while a courier rode directly to Tekil. Bikijek, he now concluded, had known all the while where Mir Hussein was, and had counted on Timur’s joining his brother-in-law: the two were to be settled beyond the border of the Jagatai territory.

Ten to one: Timur took a fresh horse, and looked out and down at the closing circle of steel. He said to his wife, and to Dilshad Aga, “Keep your heads down. There won’t be many of us to block the arrows, not for long.”

CHAPTER IV

OLAJAI

The one sided battle was reaching its end as the sun slowly dragged down toward the horizon. Olajai, ignoring arrows, went about during lulls, carrying a goatskin jar of brackish water.

“Easier each round,” Timur said, and licked the dust from his lips.

She laughed. “They’re well whittled down, too!”

Of Tekil’s men, scarcely fifty were able to fight: the others were dead, or they had left the field because of wounds. As for Timur, only seven were about his standard.

Charge after charge had been swept back, for in the beginning, Tekil’s men had blocked each other, only a few at a time being able to present themselves to the enemy; and closing in on Eltchi Bahadur was a swift way to the mercy of Allah.

Those who first charged up the little knoll had struggled in sandy soil, facing a hail of arrows: and the next wave had been blocked by windrows of fallen horses and men. Finally, exhaustion took the heart from all but the strongest. Skill failed, and so did the will.

“Only seven to one now, my dear! Give Bahadur a drink!”

He turned to his sister-in-law: “I’ll get you horse tails, tie them to the standard.”

There were plenty of once splendid mounts who had no further use for their tails. Timur hacked, and Dilshad Aga set to work.

Timur waited. The ring of winded, wounded enemies waited. The air had the dead stillness of a well-fired oven, except when hot wind drove scorching sand. Tagi Bouga Barlas and Sayfuddin were now on foot. Eltchi Bahadur grinned, though wearily; blood and sweat and dust made his homely face a devil’s mask.

“Hai, Bahadur! The sons of pigs would turn tail if someone knocked that Tekil out of action.”

Timur snorted. “I’ve spent all day trying to get at him. I’ve been cutting meat till my arm’s ready to fall off, he always gets someone between me and him.”

Hussein came up; debonair, head cocked like the head of a falcon, eyes aglitter. “Why take down our standard, brother?”

“It’s coming up in a second.” Then Dilshad Aga called, and Timur went to take the staff. Hussein saw the three horse tails. “The standard of Genghis Khan! By Allah, why not? This is our day. God does what he will do, and here we are.”

Timur planted the staff, and said to Hashim, “Sound off!”

The one unbroken saddle drum rolled and grumbled in the hot silence; a hot wind made the three horse tails ripple, then fan out. Timur challenged the enemy: “Sons of Bad Mothers! Here is the standard of Genghis Khan, the Master of all Mankind. He rides again!”

Hussein mounted up, wordlessly, and with the smooth swiftness of a panther. Sword out, he raced down the slope. Then came Eltchi Bahadur’s great voice; the drum stopped rumbling. Olajai cried out—many men had died, but this was her brother, and a clump of swordsmen had swallowed him up.

The others were at his heels. Tekil’s standard, clipped in half, was trampled in the dust. Eltchi Bahadur smashed home with all his weight and steel. And as he raced, Timur plucked his bow. One shot. Just one. A single shaft, threading through the shifting fighters, caught Tekil between the teeth. The impact knocked him from his horse.

Then an arrow caught Timur’s mount. The beast crumpled, flinging the rider asprawl. Timur rolled, recovered, and from the bloody sand he snatched a half-pike. Eltchi Bahadur had hewn a path to Tekil. Timur bore down on the pike, driving through armor, driving it through the man, and deep into the earth.

Whoever could run or ride fled to the fortress. Seven wounded victors left the field, to find whatever safety they could, before Tekil’s men recovered from the shock, and began to think of vengeance.

They retraced their course. At the desert’s fringe, three of the survivors said, “Lord Timur, Allah does what he will do, and with your permission, we go to our homes in Khorassan, while you raise an army.”

This also had happened before, so Timur answered, “Go with my blessing.”

Then on the night when they were not far from the Jihun, Timur said to Hussein, “There are not enough for any defense, only enough to be conspicuous. Better we separate. You go to Hirmen, and spend the winter with the Mikouzeri tribesmen. I’ll go back home to Kesh, incognito, and I’ll meet you in Hirmen, later.”

So they parted. And when Timur was alone with Olajai, he said, “Shireen, you married a prince in Kesh, and now look! Not one rider behind me.”

“I’m not worrying. Though I was scared silly, until you had that crazy notion of hoisting three horse tails!”

He eyed her sharply. “You quit worrying then? Mmmm … it did something to your brother, the crackbrain, he was off before I knew what was happening.”

She nodded. “That shocked me, too. Then, suddenly, I knew that Tekil’s men would break. For a crazy instant, it was as if Genghis Khan had come back through all these nine generations, and out of his grave.”

“The sun, my dear. It was bad.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t see anything, I didn’t hear anything, I just felt something. As though you had really had the right, that moment, to put up the horse tail standard. And they felt it.”

“You’re giving Eltchi Bahadur and Hussein not much credit!”

“I notice you took the tails off before we left. I’m not worried. It’s working out. What that darvish said. Only he didn’t say all. Maybe he didn’t know, maybe he couldn’t see so far ahead. But I do.”

“What’s that?” His voice was sharp.

“My grandfather made kings. He unmade them. Always, he put on the throne of Samarkand someone of the direct line of Genghis Khan. And there was peace, the very name made peace. You know, he could have taken the throne himself.”

“He could. And Kazagan Khan would have filled any throne.”

“But he didn’t, he wouldn’t. Timur—don’t you see what I mean? You have a right to the name, you’ve proved the right, back there.”

They marched, from brackish well to drywell where there was water only by digging. Then the worst of the two horses collapsed. Timur dismounted and said “Take mine.”

She gaped. He said gruffly, “Mount up!”

“Why—darling—whatever—you’re crazy.”

Her incredulity was natural. A man tramping on foot would be too worn out to fight. It was plain sense that he should ride while Olajai walked.

“But—”

“Mount up!” he commanded and she obeyed.

He tramped along holding the stirrup leather.

And that afternoon toward sunset as they halted to rest he looked at his boots. The soles were gone.

“See! The darvish is right! Timur of the race of Genghis Khan is barefooted. This thing had to be. And now that I cannot go any lower I must go higher and the Power is with God!”

She was no longer worried by his seeming madness in walking while a woman rode. “You lied to me, you knew what happened on that knoll, as well as I did!”

They were coming near to a well, or to where one should be. The sun’s level rays bent into their backs so that their shadows reached long and dark ahead of them.

Then he saw the horsemen riding into the glare. “How many?” he asked Olajai, very calmly.

“Ten—twelve—fifteen—too many, Timur, and you’ve been walking.”

“Who are they—what are they?”

“Turkomans,” she answered. “I was afraid of that.” The Governor of Kivac’s force had been largely Turkoman.

Olajai said, lightly, “We can’t use horse tails again. We haven’t enough horses.”

She started to slide out of the saddle, so that he could mount up. He said, “Not yet. The glare keeps them from seeing that there are two of us.”

When they reached the well, and its thin cover of scrawny trees, he made the horse turn, so that it screened the next move. Olajai slid from the saddle. He took his lariat and secured it to a root which reached from the wall of the well.

“It’s dry. The water is in the other hole. Get down and stay down. You’re near enough now to get to the river afoot.”

Then he mounted up, drew his sword, and rode at them, shouting his challenge. He had no more arrows. The riders had fanned out to envelop the oasis, so as to block the escape of any other travelers who might be there. Every sign pointed to being cut down and robbed of his arms, his horse gear, the jewels of his belt and scabbard; so he shouted, “Timur, the Man of Kesh, Timur, the son of Tragai!”

A man cried an answer. The archers lowered their bows. That one man rode forward and dismounted.

“Timur Bek! Welcome, and the blessing of Allah, and the Peace of Allah upon you! We heard that you had gone this way, and we came to meet you.”

So Olajai came from the pit. Timur gave her bracelets to Hadji Mehemmed, the Turkoman raider with whom he had ridden once, some years previous. And Hadji Mehemmed gave them horses, and an escort of ten men. Olajai said, that night, “This proves it—the horse tails are still with you.”

CHAPTER V

“SPREAD THE GOOD WORD”

At Bokar-Zendin, Timur left Olajai with friends, for being north of the Jihun again, he risked recognition, ambush, betrayal, which he would not have Olajai share. “More than that,” he said, “if you went, I’d be recognized just that much sooner.”

“Women’s chatter? Well, men haven’t done too well by you!”

Timur chuckled amiably at that painfully just quip. “Shireen, wherever we were guests, and we couldn’t always refuse hospitality without making ourselves even more conspicuous, there’d be women looking at you. They’d guess, and much sooner than any men would, looking at us.”

“Mmmm … yes, of course.”

Now that the blame had been passed to superior feminine perception, Olajai felt better about it all. So the Lord of Kesh sneaked thief-like across the lands of his ancestors, not even daring to enter his own estate, for this choice territory was packed with Kipchaks.

A lone archer limped through the market place. Timur, being afoot, had the best possible disguise, yet the risk was deadly enough, since men of Bikijek’s clique came in from Samarkand every day.

One by one, he cornered retainers who had ridden with his late father, Emir Tragai. These had to look twice before they could believe that this haggard footman was Timur Bek. Each one said. “Lord Timur, we thought that you had quit us. We were glad when we heard that you’d left Samarkand with a troop on your heels. Then we knew that you were with us in heart, and in the end, you would come back and wipe them out.”

“What with?”

“We join whatever army you raise.”

Close-mouthed, weather-beaten men listened to him and then spread the word. When he left Kesh, Temouka Kutchin rode after him with twenty horsemen ready for the field.

They took the trail for Badakshan. The story of his desperate fight against Tekil of Kivac had spread, and one chieftain after another joined him. There was Bahram Jalair, and a distant cousin, Saddik Barlas; Kazanchi Hassan with a hundred horse came seeking him. Mir Sayfuddin, whom he had not seen since the disaster in the desert, had meanwhile raised seventy picked men. Another kinsman, Koja Barlas, had a like party. Then came Shir Bahrain, and Ulum Kuli with two hundred horse, Mamut Keli with as many footmen.

Timur’s disaster and his barefooted march across the desert recruited more men more easily than any success had ever done.

Even the Kipchak Horde helped him: for with Bikijek’s nobles now leading raiding parties over all the Jagatai territory, captain after captain fled to join Timur.

When he met Mir Hussein and they reviewed their combined forces, Timur said, “Now that the enemy has taught them that too much freedom is no freedom at all, they’ve stopped being kings.”

Spies came, saying that the Kipchak raids were becoming more severe. Worse yet, Togluc Khan had sent some 20,000 of the Golden Horde to the north, to reinforce his son, Elias Koja.

“We’re not ready. What we have is good, by Allah, but not enough. Time is against us,” Hussein said.

“Time is the toy of Allah,” Timur retorted. “He does with it what pleases Him.”

“It pleased Him to have most of us wiped out facing odds of ten to one,” Hussein pointed out, realistically.

And these men would follow Timur only as long as they willed, and no longer. Even Genghis Khan, more nearly an absolute lord than any man who had ever ruled men, had ruled only by the will of his captains: Asiatic democracy, masquerading as a despotism.

So Timur’s frown deepened, and even more when he heard that Kesh was heavily garrisoned. Worst of all, spies said that Olajai, finally leaving Bokar-Zendan to him and her brother, had been recognized and trapped; she was a captive in Kesh, a hostage for his good behavior.

Timur asked the messenger, “Who else has heard this?”

“No one, tura, save yourself and Mir Hussein.”

“I’ll take your head,” Timur solemnly swore, “I’ll skin you and stuff your hide with straw if a word of it leaks out in camp. Is that clear?”

“Aywah, tura.”

He gave the man a handful of golden dinars, and dismissed him.

Then, to Hussein: “I’ve got to get her out of there.”

“I take refuge with Allah! My own sister, but you can risk a good little army against a walled city, just for a woman? Timur, that’s not sense. Your men’ll think you’re crazy, wasting them on a woman.”

Timur smiled. “That’s something I’m not telling them.”

“Allah! But what?”

“Listen.”

The drums sounded assembly, and the trumpets brayed. Timur spoke from the saddle: “O Men! Friends of my father and my uncle, a saint came to me in a dream last night. Allah has promised us our city. Even though we had green boughs instead of lances, our faith would make us win.

“The Presence of Genghis Khan came into the desert, and our enemies ran.

“And if we take Kesh, every captain from Badakshan to Kandahar will join us to share in our next glory. When they join, who will stop us?”

He sold them as they stood there. And not even on the march, the hard forced march on Kesh, did a man of them wonder what Timur would do for siege engines.

“They’re drunk,” Hussein said. “Drunk and not from wine. How did you do it?”

“I don’t know. It came to me.”

“Well, if we do capture Kesh,” Hussein countered, “they’ll besiege us, and have you ever seen a Mongol or Turk who was any good, locked up behind walls?”

Timur laughed triumphantly. “Hai! Out of your own mouth, brother! The very truth that’s going to make Kesh open up in no time. Go and spread the word! Keep them with a dream in their eyes!”

They rode so fast that there was no news of their coming.

Bivouac: and at dawn, far off, rose the gray walls of Kesh, high above the orchards.

“Now get busy,” Timur said to his captains. “Cut off green boughs. Divide into four columns.” He saw their faces change at this insane suggestion, but he gave them no chance to object. “Let each column mark the time, and do it in this wise—”

They listened, they grinned, their slanted eyes widened, and then they howled and drew their swords to hew limbs from the forest.

Timur with a picked handful emerged from the woods, and raced down into the plain, and toward the fields. He had all the musicians: and all were sounding off brazen trumpets and saddle drums and ear-slashing cymbals. Musicians on horse, musicians on camel back, and a picked troop of lancers: they moved at the pace of a polo game, Kipchak guards came from Kesh to welcome what they believed to be fellow invaders.

“Swords out!”

Though not caught entirely off guard, they might as well have been. They were cut down, and their horses galloped wildly home with empty saddles: and Timur resumed his bold race.

By now the gates of Kesh were closed. When Timur reined in, his archers shadowed him with a curtain of arrows. He demanded, “Surrender at once, and we’ll let you march out alive.”

A man in heavy Khorassan mail risked his head. Timur’s archers ceased firing. The garrison commander came up to the parapet. The man was puzzled: a hundred horse seemed hardly the right force to take a walled town.

“You’re crazy!” he raged. “Or drunk. Who are you?”

“Timur Bek, and what are you doing in my town?”

The bold challenge took the commander aback. “I am Daulat Ali, and I hold this in the name of Elias Koja, Khan of Samarkand, Son of Togluk Khan.”

“You can become wealthy and famous by taking my head,” Timur reminded him “Bikijek wants it badly.”

Daulat Ali was no drill ground soldier; Bikijek didn’t send that kind out to hold a town. Yet he was worried. There must be a sizable army on the way, and there had been no warning.

Timur went on. “March your garrison out. One hour’s delay, and I’ll have the head of every fifth man, taken by count, with no regard to rank.”

“You can’t take a town with that handful!” Daulat Ali retorted.

“Only Allah knows what is in my hand! Trifle a bit longer, and not one of you leaves alive. Quick, man! You’re up on the wall. Look around. Do you want a siege, or do you think you’d like to try a sortie?”

On the four horizons, great columns of dust rose. Each was drawing toward Kesh. Citizens were now on the walls, some of Timur’s own people. They began to yell, “Allah! Armies from Khorassan! Armies from Kabul!”

Rioting broke out within the town. Timur grinned when he heard the shouting. “I won’t have to take your heads, they’ll tend to that before I can save you fellows!”

Heaving water jugs and roofing tiles from housetops may annoy soldiers, but such civilian resistance rarely gets far. That was what worried Daulat Ali. Timur must have promised his people four armies, or they’d never be crazy enough to stone Kipchak hard cases.

Timur could now see the dust columns from the ground level. “If you move fast enough you’ll have a chance to warn the apprentice king.”

Turning the garrison loose, instead of taking them prisoner or cutting them down would give Elias Koja and Bikijek a nasty shock. Only a strong army could afford such a gesture of contempt. And Daulat Ali, already shaken, signaled to his trumpeters; they sounded recall.

The disarmed garrison filed out, and rapidly enough not to see that they had surrendered to dust clouds raised by horsemen dragging green branches.

And when Timur found Olajai, he said, “Home again, shireen, but only Allah knows how long we’ll stay.”

CHAPTER VI

KING-MAKER

By the time his spies had caught up with him, Timur realized that though he would quickly have to abandon Kesh he had at least succeeded in more than a personal enterprise: his daring capture of the city was bringing hundreds of one-time doubters to his standard.

And then Timur learned that Elias Koja’s army, strongly reinforced by his father’s troops, had moved out of Samarkand. They were going toward the Jihun, to make a clean sweep of the Jagatai lands and possibly to invade Khorassan.

So Timur and his newly won recruits got out of Kesh before Elias Koja’s general, Bikijek, could learn that green branches had swept his garrison out of town.

Timur won the bridge with a few hours to spare. Then from the Khorassan side, he saw touman after touman of Kipchak troops, each 10,000 strong. The apprentice king’s father was out for conquest. “Brother.” Mir Hussein said, “our army will scatter like dust, once we start running. They’ll forget that trick at Kesh.”

“Then we won’t run.”

“We can’t face 60,000 Kipchaks, not when Bikijek leads them.”

Olajai came from behind the red carpet which, hanging from its long fringes, separated her quarters from the reception room of the pavilion. “Remember the horse tails, Timur!” she cut in.

Hussein turned on his sister. “You little fool, how long will Allah’s patience last! Bluffing Bikijek is not quite the same as scaring a blockhead out of Kesh!”

Timur scowled. “I’ve got an army. One retreat, and they’ll go back to their sheep.”

“Yes, and just one bout with the Golden Horde, and they’ll be minced mutton. You can’t keep on recruiting on the strength of glorious defeats like the one at Kivak!”

“The horse tails,” Olojai repeated. “The Presence!”

Timur rose. “We can hold the bridge for a day.”

So he went to dispose his six thousand against ten times as many.

From sunrise to sunset, troop after troop of Kipchaks charged the bridgehead, taking their toll, but going down before the stubborn defense. Timur and Eltchi Bahadur plied mace and sword; and the sight and sound of them steadied the little army. Yet when the sun sank, they were tired and battered: wearied from the very cutting down of successive waves.

That night, spies swam the Jihun. In speech and dress and face, they matched the enemy; and they could mix freely, grumbling about the stiff resistance, and muttering about Timur’s reserves, spread out, well behind the Jihun. And they muttered about the fall of Kesh.…

Meanwhile, Timur was moving, He left only five hundred to hold the bridge: which picked men could do, for another day. The others divided, half going upstream, half downstream, well beyond hearing of the enemy, to risk the dangerous fords.

Bikijek could have made a similar attempt, but with his overwhelming force, it seemed far more sensible to hammer for another day, and drive through the troops who held the bridge.

Finally, there was the rumor of Timur’s reserves; Bikijek was too good a general to risk being cut up in such fashion. Once he learned—

But Bikijek had no chance to learn.

Timur’s losses by drowning were smaller than they could have been, had he and his captains not known every foot of the treacherous fords. Time and again, he went back, each time with a fresh horse, to lead the next detachment over. And on the final trip, he listened to a spy just returned: “Togluk Khan is dead! His son was about to go home when there was news of us.”

Timur turned to Hussein, who commanded the final party.

“Allah is with us! There is a fear in Elias Koja. When he should go to Kipchak to receive the allegiance of his father’s lords, and take the old man’s throne, he stays here. The raid on Kesh has shaken him!”

Timur led his hazaras into the hills well behind the Kipchak camp. He spread them far apart. “Make fires,” he commanded. “Many fires. As of many bivouacked toumans.”

That night, he looked down on the fires of Bikijek’s six toumans. And that night, Bikijek looked backward and upward at fires which suggested a force at least equal to his own: and a force which had slipped up between him, and Samarkand, and the long trail to Kipchak.

At dawn, with all his men carefully under cover in the woods at the foot of the slope, Timur watched Bikijek’s scouts patrolling the river. The Kipchaks were worried; they had not resumed the attack on the bridgehead. Fires behind them at night, and now, they found hoof prints at the dangerous fords. As they saw it, Timur, with far more army than anyone had credited him with having, had held the bridge in order to make a night crossing to cut off their retreat, and so drive them into the river.

Bikijek’s troops were soon in motion. First, they were going to withdraw; second, they were going to make the best disposition after what they considered a thorough outmaneuvering.

Then came Timur’s charge: not from the distant line of the past night’s campfires, but from the forest at the foot of the hills. Either too early, or too late, it could not have succeeded, despite the advantage of surprise; but Timur’s lightning slash was timed to the second. He caught the Kipchaks when they were neither set for defense, nor fully committed to withdrawal.

Some tried to rush the bridge. Other hazaras fled along the bank. Those who tried to reform and fight it out were blocked by disorganized units. And Timur’s troops picked the heart of the opposition: Bikijek’s touman, and the force led by Tokatmur.

Elias Koja’s standard went down before the rush. Tokatmur, second in command to Bikijek, fell under the fury of swords which followed the final flight of arrows. And it was like the moves of a chess game long reasoned out in advance: one-two-three, and checkmate.

The apprentice king escaped, and so did Bikijek, one leaving behind him a throne, the other losing an army. And when the trumpets sounded recall from cutting down the fugitives, Timur formed his troops and raced on to Samarkand.

As he rode back through the city from which he and Olajai had so narrowly escaped, the citizens who crowded the streets and packed the housetops, began to shout, “Sahib Karan! Lord of the Age!”

He had conquered a city by dust, and he had triumphed over an army by fire: and Olajai said, “When the Jagatai princes meet they’ll make you Grand Khan of Samarkand.”

She was right. Hussein had said as much; and the Barlas clan, Timur’s uncle’s kinsmen, were behind him. But as he rode toward the palace vacated forever by Elias Koja, Timur made plans of his own.

That night, serving men dragged monstrous trays into the banquet hall: camels roasted entire, and sheep; and there was horseflesh, and leather trays heaped with rice and millet. Others set out jars of wine, and jars of fermented mare’s milk, and flagons that only a Mongol could drain.

Eltchi Bahadur was there, roaring as on the battlefield; Hussein, sleek and smooth and handsome as a panther; and the Barlas clan, flat-faced, grim and slant-eyed; Turki and Mongol in silken tunic and silken khalat. Though Togluk Khan the tyrant had died a natural death, horsemen still raced northward to deny his son any chance of an equally quiet end.

It was complete; complete, except for two things: Timur Bek was not present, and the grand khan’s dais at the head of the great hall was empty. Lords and captains, beks and emirs, ranged in rank on either side, with that one high place vacant: election day in Samarkand.

Some laughed. Some muttered. Ali sniffed the savor of roasted meat, and wine ready for the drinking. But Timur, Sahib Karan, the Lord of the times, was late.

Then the drums rolled and the long trumpets brayed. Guards marched in, escorting a horse tail standard. In the courtyard soldiers shouted, “Hai, Bahadur! Sahib Karan, Timur, Grand Khan of Samarkand, Khan of the Jagatai!”

The uproar of the rank and file told the emirs and the beks how they had better vote; and they knew that wholesale desertions would follow an unpopular choice. Most of the Jagatai princes agreed with their men; but some scowled. For Timur to make a point of delaying his entry until all the others had arrived was laying it on too heavily; and for him to have the horse tail standard carried before him was taking too much for granted.

But the shouts from the court gave the lords no choice.

Then they saw who preceded Timur: a bearded man in the ragged robe of a darvish; a man who protested, a man who, though handled with respect, was being hustled into the hall, and toward the vacant high place.

At the foot of the dais, Timur halted with his barefooted companion. He raised his hand and the shouting ceased.

“O Men! In the days of your grandfathers, Kazagan Khan the Turk could have taken the throne of Samarkand but this he did not do; instead, he set up one of the blood of Genghis Khan, the Master of All Mankind, and used all his force to maintain one whom no one would deny or envy!

“Here is the darvish, here is the Guest of Allah, here is Kaboul Shah Aglen, directly descended from Genghis Khan’s son Jagatai! Here is one who cares so little for power that he turns his back on thrones, and contemplates the splendor of Allah! Here is one with wisdom, not pride.

“Where we have each been kings, there has been no strength, and from too much freedom, we had an invader on our necks! So let this man be Grand Khan, for there is not one of us too proud to serve him!”

The shouting drowned the protests of the darvish. He could not deny his duty. They put an embroidered khalat over his ragged gown; they made him ascend the dais, and each prince in turn bowed nine times before him, as the ancient custom prescribed.

And when the banquet ended, the following noon, Timur Bek went to his own house, where Olajai waited.

“So you gave away a throne? After the Presence that came to you on the hill at Kivak?”

Timur was a little drunk, and he was tired, and he was hoarse from song and shouting. “He is the ninth generation, and all things go in nines with the race of Genghis Khan. Your brother and the others would soon turn against me—yet I can hold them together, serving him. And we won’t have too many kings.”

She looked up, smiling; her disappointment was gone. “The Presence will return to you, Timur.” Then, just in the interests of discipline: “Allah, but you’ve slopped wine all over yourself, you’re an awful looking mess for a King-Maker, you’re as bad as my grandfather. You’re ready to fall on your face!”