The Grand Cham (Lamb, Adventure magazine)/Chapter 11
XI
THE THUNDERBOLT
TWO weeks before Tamerlane's audience with the Christians, the stars traced the outline of the river Khabur in Anatolia, two hundred miles west of Tamerlane's camp. Down the river toward the flat roofs of the town of Angora drifted a small skiff, only half-visible in the glittering light from the stars which seemed intensified by the heat of the windless July night.
But the stars were eclipsed by the myriad torches and lanterns of Angora and the illumination of ten thousand tents clustered about the Turkish town.
Bayezid, his court and his army held festival. Angora, an unfortified trading-town, yet served admirably for mobilizing the army of the Ottomans and Seljukes. Galleys had come from Greece, where the Crescent ruled, to land their loads of Moslems on the Anatolian shore across from Constantinople; the Mameluke had sent their splendid cavalry hither from Alexandria; the veteran main army of the sultan had been withdrawn temporarily from the conquest of Constantinople.
So Angora was filled with the warriors of a dozen kingdoms. Forbidden wine flowed freely and revelry held the courtyards and roofs. The sultan knew how to hold the loyalty of his men by pleasure and by generous pay which reenforced the natural fanaticism of the Moslems and the devotion cf the Janisseries—that formidable mass of soldiery recruited from Christian child slaves raised by Moslem teachers.
The skiff drifted with the current of the river to the jetties of the town, already crowded with native craft. Michael Bearn raised himself cautiously, clutched the side of a fishing-boat and climbed to the jetty.
“Who comes?”
A sharp challenge rang from a pair of spearmen standing at the shore end of the dock. Michael stiffened; then advanced carelessly.
“A sailor,” he made answer in his good Arabic, “from the Byzantine coast. I have heard that the great sultan is here and I have come to look upon his face.”
A lantern was brought from an adjoining hut and the two spearmen looked him over casually. Michael's skin was burned a deep brown by the sun and he had secured a short cloak that concealed the outlines of his stalwart body. His leather tunic and bare knees bore out the identity he claimed.
“Does a son of a dog think to look upon the favored of Allah?” gibed one of the Moslems. “Stay—you have been a slave on the galleys.”
The soldier's sharp glance had noted the scars on Michael's wrists where the irons had pressed.
“Aye,” assented the Breton; “a galley-slave.” He tapped his stiffened arm. “But useless, my lord warrior. I have been freed in a battle.”
His pulse quickened, for he knew the strict discipline of Bayezid's army—despite the appearance of revelry—and was aware that every precaution was being taken, now that the battle with Tamerlane was impending.
“You are no true follower of the prophet,” said the sentry sharply. Michael's curls, escaping from under his loose cap, revealed that he was not one of the orthodox Moslem peoples.
“Your wisdom is fine as a rare gem,” acknowledged he. “I am a Christian who has not seen his own country for many years. My lord warrior, I pray you let me pass into the town where there is wine to be given away and sweets made of grapes and flour and butter. I have not eaten for two days.”
This was strictly true. Michael's tone was that of the hopeless slave addressing his guards. The sentry sneered and ran his hand under Michael's cloak to make sure that he held no weapon, and then fell to cursing his own fate that kept him from the feasting. Michael made off.
At the river-gate of the town he was confronted by the head of a Mongol—one of the envoys from Tamerlane—caked with dried blood, stuck upright upon a spear. The crowd of soldiery and towns-people surging through the gate paused to spit at the wax-like features and to heap insults on the Tatars.
Michael was carried in with the throng, but now his eyes held a new light and his lips were hard with purpose. He knew for the first time the certainty of conflict between the sultan and the khan.
At the river's edge, up-stream, he had bought his new cloak with a few silver-pieces and the cap to match. He had cast away his sword to carry out his character of freed galley-slave. Now Michael was among the alleys of Angora over which the crescent standard hung. He glanced indifferently at the lighted balconies where costly rugs were hung and at the magic-lantern pictures that Arabs were displaying in darkened corners. He heard the distant chant of fanatical imams, exorting the Moslems in the mosques.
Asking his way from a drunken Sipahi, he approached the walled gardens where Bayezid and his court held feast.
The heat grew instead of lessening that night. The glimmer of heat-lightning more than once darkened the gleam of the stars. This the imams, crying from balcony and courtyard, announced as a good omen.
“The Thunderbolt will strike!” they said. “The world trembles.”
The heat impelled Bayezid and his divan—the councilors who feasted with him—to leave the torrid rooms of the house where they were guarded by a double line of Ottoman infantry and to seek the gardens where an artificial lake shaded by cypresses offered moderate comfort.
On this lake was a floating kiosk of teakwood inlaid with mother-of-pearl, its roof fragrant with flowers, with curtains drawn back to allow free passage to the air.
Bayezid, flushed with the stimulus of bhang and opium, lay back on his cushions, idly watching the play of torch-light reflected in the lake. The grandees were intent on a spectacle of women and boys who danced in iridescent garments of moghrebin and chrysoliths at the edge of the garden by the kiosk.
These feasts had been ordered by Bayezid, who felt himself at the summit of his power. Now he surveyed the splendor around him through half-closed eyes.
“We will make a welcome,” he murmured, “for the Tatar boor. News has come to me that he advances with his power upon the Khabur.”
They nodded assent—sheikh, malik and caliph.
“When he comes to the Khabur,” went on Bayezid, “I will have a hunt declared. My troops will aid me in the pursuit of game. That will show the Tatar how much we esteem him.”
Some of the councilors looked more than a little startled. It was no light thing to hunt game in the presence of Tamerlane's army. And Bayezid had ordered the Mongol envoys slain, wantonly, as it seemed.
The man who was called the Thunderbolt turned sleepy eyes to the dark face of the Sheikh of Rum, in whose country they were encamped.
“Give orders for ten thousand beaters to be mustered from the town. It is my will.”
The official prostrated himself and muttered:
“Tamerlane has forty thousand infantry and twice that number of riders, O Guardian of the Faith. Will you pursue the beasts of the field when such a host stands across the river?” He plucked up courage from the sultan's silence. “Bethink you, Star of the East, there is but one cloud upon the face of your sky—Tamerlane. You have gained the Danube; Constantinople will be yours as Greece is now—then the rest of Frankistan. And, when Tamerlane falls, Iran, Tatary and India”
“Sheikh,” Bayezid smiled, “have you forgotten my spies in the Tatar camp?”
IN THIS manner was it ordained by the sultan that they should mock Tamerlane. Festival was to be held in the town, even when the Tatar horsemen occupied the opposite bank of the Khabur. The bulk of the Seljuke knights—the pick of the host—was to be kept in its tents by the town.
The councilors, hearing this, wondered whether ceaseless conquests had not affected the mind of Bayezid. But the leaders of the Mamelukes and Janisseries smiled, saying that they were invincible and—some beasts to be slain must be first trapped.
Michael Bearn, sitting among the cypresses on the farther bank of the lake where there were no guards, watched the feast of Bayezid until dawn reddened the sky across the river and the call of the muezzin floated over the roofs of Angora.
He was studying again the brilliant assemblage of grandees that he had seen at times from a distance during his captivity. He noticed the councilors start up from their cushions. By the fading light of the torches he could see them staring up at the sky.
Almost at the same time he heard a sound—a shrill cry that was more like a scream. It rose from one side of the miniature lake, swelled, and dwindled swiftly.
Michael knew the cry of herons and water-fowl. This was different. It was more like the scream of a horse in pain. Yet it had sounded a hundred feet above the kiosk. A shout reached his ears from the kiosk, a bow-shot away.
“The warning of Tamerlane!”
Guards were running here and there about the lake. Torches advanced along the shore toward him from the palace. It was no time to sit wondering about the source of the queer sound in the air. Broad daylight would be upon him in a moment.
Cautiously Michael began to crawl through the willow-thickets of the lakeside, toward a gully by which he had gained his point of vantage. The light was strong enough for him to see his way.
He stumbled over something projecting from the ground and found that it was an arrow. With some difficulty he pulled it out, for his curiosity had been aroused by its weight.
Instead of a point, the shaft terminated in a hollow steel cylinder, perforated in the sides. Michael weighed it in his hand and chuckled. Such an artow as this, sent from a powerful bow, would emit a loud whistling sound when passing through the air. In fact it had been the passage of this shaft that he had just heard.
The arrow was plainly of Tatar make and Michael guessed that some man of Tamerlane's, hidden in the rushes across the lake, had sent it as a warning to Bayezid. He thrust the shaft under his cloak, and, hearing footsteps approaching, made his way down the gully.
For several days thereafter Michael was very busy. He frequented the bazaar, heard the news of the preparation for the sultan's hunt, and out on the plain of Angora behind the town saw regiments of Janisseries drilling constantly.
And he noticed another head on the Angora gate-posts—an old Tatar fisherman who had been seen more than once dragging his nets in the river. Under the head a large bow had been placed.
Michael guessed that the man who had fired the whistling arrow would not report his feat to Tamerlane.
He heard great amirs say openly in the town that Bayezid was drunk with power and with wine. Litters of Moslem women and captives from Georgia and Greece were passing constantly through the streets.
The finest cavalry of the sultan was encamped a league behind the town, apart from the rest of the army. Angora was continually a-throng with merrymakers, as if the fast of Ramazan had just been broken.
Knowing the inexorable discipline of the Ottoman army and the merciless cunning of Bayezid, Michael doubted the evidence of his senses. This was no idle laxity or sport such as the Thunderbolt was accustomed to use in pleasuring his men.
Even when Tatar horsemen were seen, swooping about the plain across the river, there was no sign of any preparation made to meet Tamerlane.
But when Michael made his way down to the river-bank one cloudy night, he found the boats that were drawn up on shore filled with men, and out in the center of the Khabur he could discern the black bulk of guard ships moving back and forth.
“Bayezid waits!” He laughed silently. “Aye, and thus he waited at Nicopolis! I begin to see the answer to the riddle. And now, for a visit to the sentry post that welcomed me at the jetty. Grant the same two Janisseries be on watch; the hour is the same.”
Dawn revealed two unexpected things to the officers of the Janisseries who commanded the guard at the river-front. On a small dock two spearmen lay bound and gagged beside an extinguished lantern. The white woolen turban, the kaftan and bow of one were gone.
And one of the guard boats reported that its steersman was missing. A Janissery, the men of the galley said, had come on board when they were putting out from the shore—a warrior who declared that he knew the river and was skilled in managing a galley. He had carried a bow.
Before an hour had passed, so the tale was repeated, this helmsman had disappeared from the craft, taking with him the steering-oar. They had not heard him fall overboard. But at the end of the hour they heard a whistling arrow, shot into the air from the other side.
Michael's penetration of the Ottoman lines had been comparatively simple because the Turk guards—not yet drawn up in battle order—had not looked for a foe from within.
One of the sentries he had found at a distance from the lantern and had stunned with a blow on the forehead. The other, running toward the slight noise, had been easily overcome by the powerful Breton.
Michael exulted in the fact that his right arm was once more serviceable after a fashion. Stripping one of the guards of tunic, cloak and cap, he had gained access to a galley.
Not trusting as yet to his right arm, he had taken the steering-oar with him when he dropped over the stern of the galley to swim to the farther shore.
Here, to disturb further his late companions and to test his arm, he had let fly the cylinder-headed arrow over the river.
Now he began to run up from the bank of the Khabur, casting aside his cloak as he went and unwinding the cumbersome turban. It would not be very long, he knew, before he would encounter Tatar patrols and he did not wish to be cut down as a Janissery.
Michael had gained what he had come for. He had guessed the riddle of Bayzid's inaction and the revelry in Angora. An ambush was being prepared for Tamerlane.
The Tatars were to be beguiled into an attack and a trap was to be set for them on the river.
Michael studied the stars overhead and shaped his course by them, shaking his head as he made out a crescent moon on the horizon. He would be late for his rendezvous with Bembo.