The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman And Matters Of Choice Part 63

Because of the uncertain times, many of the students had left their apprenticeships and returned to their homes outside the city. "This leaves few medical clerks to do the work of the hospital," the hadji grumbled. Fortunately, the patient population was correspondingly low, people instinctively feeling more concern about impending military violence than about illness.

That night Mary's eyes were red and swollen and she and Rob clung to one another with a tenderness that had almost been forgotten.

In the morning when he left the little house in Yehuddiyyeh he could feel change in the air like dampness before an English storm.

In the Jewish market most of the shops were uncharacteristically empty, and Hinda was frantically packing up the goods in her stall.

"What is it?" he said.

"The Afghans."

He rode to the wall. When he climbed the stairs he found the top lined with strangely silent people and at once saw the reason for their fear, for the host of Ghazna lay a.s.sembled in great strength. Masd's foot warriors filled half the small plain outside the western wall of the city. The hors.e.m.e.n and camel soldiers were encamped across the foothills, and war elephants were tethered on the higher slopes near the tents and booths of the n.o.bles and commanders, whose standards snapped in the dry wind. In the midst of the camp, floating above all, was the serpentine banner of the Ghaznavids, a black leopard's head on an orange field.

Rob estimated this Ghazna army to be four times as large as the one Masd had led through Ispahan on his way west.

"Why haven't they entered the city?" he asked a member of the kelonter's police force.

"They have pursued Al here and he is within the city walls."

"Why should that hold them outside?"

"Masd says Al must be betrayed by his own people. He says if we deliver the Shah, they will spare our lives. If we do not, he promises a mountain of our bones in the central maidan."

"Will Al be delivered?"

The man glared and spat. "We are Persians. And he is the Shah."

Rob nodded. But he did not believe.

He descended the wall and rode the horse back to the house in Yehuddiyyeh. The English sword had been stored away, wrapped in oily rags. He strapped it to his side and bade Mary to take out her father's sword and barricade the door behind him.

Then he remounted the horse and rode to the House of Paradise.

On the Avenue of Ali and Fatima, people stood in worried groups. There were fewer persons in the four-laned Avenue of the Thousand Gardens and no one in the Gates of Paradise. That usually immaculate royal boulevard showed signs of neglect; caretakers had not groomed or pruned the landscaping of late. At the far end of the road was a solitary sentry.

The guard stepped out to challenge as Rob approached.

"I am Jesse, hakim at the maristan. Summoned by the Shah."

The guard was little more than a boy and looked uncertain, even frightened. Finally he nodded and stepped aside so the horse might pa.s.s.

Rob rode through the artificial woods created for kings, past the green field for ball-and-stick, past the two racing tracks and the pavilions.

He stopped behind the stables, at the living quarters that had been given to Dhan Vangalil. The Indian weapons-maker and his elder son had been taken to Hamadhn with the army. Rob didn't know if the two men had survived, but their family was gone. Their little house was deserted and someone had kicked in the clay walls of the smelting furnace Dhan had built with such care.

He rode down the long graceful approach road to the House of Paradise. The battlements were empty of sentries. His mount's hooves clattered hollowly across the drawbridge, and he tethered the horse outside the great doors.

Inside the House of Paradise his footsteps echoed through the empty corridors. Finally he came to the audience chamber in which he had always come before the king, and he saw that Al sat in a corner alone on the floor, his legs crossed. Before him was a ewer half-filled with wine, and a board set up with a problem in the Shah's Game.

He looked as rank and untended as some of the gardens outside. His beard was untrimmed. There were purple smudges under his eyes and he was thinner, making his nose more of a harsh beak than ever. He stared up at Rob standing before him with his hand on the hilt of his sword.

"Well, Dhimmi? Have you come to avenge yourself?"

It was a moment before Rob realized Al was talking of the Shah's Game and already rearranging the pieces on the game board.

He shrugged and took his hand from the hilt, arranging the sword so he could be comfortable as he sat on the floor opposite the king.

"Fresh armies," Al said without humor, and opened by moving an ivory foot soldier.

Rob moved a black soldier. "Where is Farhad? Was he slain in the fighting?" He had not expected to find Al alone. He had thought he would have to kill the Captain of the Gates first.

"Farhad was not slain. He has fled." Al took a black soldier with his white horseman, and at once Rob used one of his ebony hors.e.m.e.n to capture a white foot soldier.

"Khuff would not have deserted you."

"No, Khuff would not have run away," Al agreed absently. He studied the board. Finally, at the end of the battle line he picked up and moved the rukh warrior carved in ivory with killer's hands cupped to his lips, drinking his enemy's blood.

Rob baited a trap and sucked Al in, giving up an ebony horseman in exchange for the white rukh.

Al stared.

After that the king's moves were more deliberate and he spent more time in contemplation. His eyes gleamed as he gained the other white horseman but cooled when he lost his elephant.

"What of the elephant Zi?"

"Ah, that was a good elephant. I lost him too at the Gate of al-Karaj."

"And the mahout Harsha?"

"Killed before the elephant died. A lance through the chest." He drank wine without offering any to Rob, directly from the pitcher and spilling some on his already filthy tunic. He wiped his mouth and beard with the back of his hand. "Sufficient talk," he said, and settled into play, for the slight advantage was with the ebony pieces.

Al turned grim attacker and tried all the ruses that once had worked so well, but Rob had spent the last years pitted against finer minds; Mirdin had shown him when to be daring and when to be cautious and Ibn Sina had taught him to antic.i.p.ate, to think so far ahead that now it was as though he led Al down the very paths in which annihilation of the ivory pieces was a certainty.

Time pa.s.sed, and a sheen of sweat appeared on Al's face, though the stone walls and stone floor kept the room cool.

It seemed to Rob that Mirdin and Ibn Sina played as part of his mind.

Of the ivory pieces there came to be on the board only the king, the general, and a camel; and soon, his eyes holding the Shah's, Rob took the camel with his own general.

Al placed his general before the king piece, blocking the line of attack. But Rob had five pieces left: the king, the general, a rukh, a camel, and a foot soldier, and he quickly moved the unthreatened foot soldier to the opposite side of the board, where the rules allowed him to exchange it for his other rukh, no longer lost.

In three moves he had sacrificed the newly reclaimed rukh in order to capture the ivory general.

And in two more moves his own ebony general periled the ivory king. "Remove, O Shah," he said softly.

He repeated the words three times, while he positioned his pieces so there was no place for Al's beleaguered king to turn.

"Shahtreng," he said finally.

"Yes. The agony of the king." Al swept the remaining pieces from the board.

Now they examined one another and Rob's hand was back on the hilt of his sword.

"Masd has said if the people don't deliver you up, the Afghans will murder and pillage in this city."

"The Afghans will murder and pillage in this city whether they give me up or don't give me up. There is only one chance for Ispahan." He clambered to his feet, and Rob rose so a commoner would not be seated while the ruler stood.

"I will challenge Masd to combat, king against king."

Rob desired to kill him, not to admire or like him, and he frowned.

Al bent the heavy bow few men could have bent, and strung it. He pointed to the sword of patterned steel Dhan Vangalil had made, where it hung on the far wall. "Fetch my weapon, Dhimmi."

Rob brought it and watched him strap it on. "You go against Masd now?"

"Now appears a good time."

"You wish me to attend you?"

"No!"

Rob saw shocked disdain at the suggestion that the King of Persia would be squired by a Jew. Instead of being angry, he felt relief; for it had been said impulsively and regretted as soon as uttered, since he could see no sense or glory in dying alongside Al Shah.

Yet the hawk's face softened and Al Shah paused before leaving. "It was a manly offer," he said. "Consider what you would like as reward. When I return, I shall issue you a calaat."

Rob climbed a narrow stone stairway to the highest battlements of the House of Paradise, and from this aerie he could see the houses of the wealthiest part of Ispahan, Persians standing atop the wall of the city, the plain beyond, and the Ghazna encampment that stretched into the hills.

He waited for a long time with the wind whipping his hair and beard, and Al did not appear.

As more time elapsed he began to blame himself for not having killed the Shah, certain Al had gulled him and then made good an escape.

But presently he saw.

The western gate was hidden from his sight but there on the flat plain beyond the wall the Shah emerged from the city, astride a familiar mount, the savagely beautiful white Arabian stallion, which was tossing its head and prancing smartly.

Rob watched Al ride straight for the enemy camp. When he was close, he reined up the horse and stood in the stirrups as he shouted his challenge. Rob couldn't hear the words, only a thin, unintelligible shouting. But some of the king's people could hear. They had been raised on the legend of Ardewan and Ardeshir and the first duel to choose a Shahanshah, and from the top of the wall rose the sound of cheering. In the Ghazna camp, a small group of hors.e.m.e.n rode down from the area of officers' tents. The man in the lead wore a white turban but Rob couldn't tell if it was Masd. Wherever Masd was, if he had heard of Ardewan and Ardeshir and the ancient battle for the right to be King of Kings, he cared nothing for legends.

A troop of archers on fast horses burst from the Afghan ranks.

The white stallion was the fastest horse Rob had ever seen, but Al didn't try to outrun them. He stood in the stirrups again. This time, Rob was certain, he shouted taunts and insults at the young Sultan who would not fight.

When the soldiers were almost on him, Al readied his bow and began to flee on the white horse, but there was no place to run. Riding hard, he turned in the saddle and loosed a bolt that felled the leading Afghan, a perfect Parthian shot that drew cheers from those watching on the wall. But an answering hail of arrows found him.

Four arrows found his horse as well. A red gush appeared at the stallion's mouth. The white beast slowed and then stopped and stood, swaying, before it crashed to the ground with its dead rider.

Rob was taken unawares by his sadness.

He watched them tie a rope to Al's ankles and then pull him to the Ghazna camp, raising a trail of gray dust. For a reason Rob didn't understand, he was especially bothered by the fact that they dragged the king over the ground face down.

He took the brown horse to the paddock behind the royal stables and removed the saddle. It was a task to open the ma.s.sive gate alone but the place was as unattended as the rest of the House of Paradise, and he manhandled it himself.

"Goodbye, friend," he said.

He slapped the horse on the rump and when it joined the herd he shut the gate carefully. Only G.o.d knew who would own the brown horse by morning.

At the camel paddock he collected a pair of halters from the impedimenta hanging in an open shed and chose the two young, strong females he wanted. They knelt in the dust chewing their cuds, watching his approach.

The first tried to bite off his arm when he drew near with the bridle; but Mirdin, that most gentle of men, had shown him how to reason with camels, and he punched the animal so hard in the ribs that the breath whistled from between the square yellow teeth. After that the camel was tractable and the other animal gave no trouble, as though it learned by observation. He rode the larger and led the second beast on a rope.

At the Gates of Paradise the young sentry was gone, and as Rob traveled into the city it appeared Ispahan had gone mad. People were rushing everywhere, bearing bundles and leading animals laden with their belongings. The Avenue of Ali and Fatima was in an uproar; a runaway horse careered past Rob, causing the camels to shy. In the marketplaces, some of the merchants had abandoned their goods. He saw covetous glances directed at the camels, and he took his sword from its sheath and held it across his lap as he rode. He had to make a wide berth around the eastern part of the city in order to reach Yehuddiyyeh; people and animals already were backed up for a quarter of a mile as they tried to flee Ispahan through the eastern gate to evade the enemy camped beyond the western wall.

When he reached the house, Mary opened the door at his call, her face ashen and her father's sword still in her hand.

"We are going home."

She was terrified but he saw her lips moving in thanksgiving.

He took off the turban and Persian clothing and put on his black caftan and the leather Jew's hat.

They a.s.sembled his copy of Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine, the anatomical drawings rolled and inserted into a length of bamboo, his casebook, his kit of medical tools, Mirdin's game, foodstuffs and a few drugs, her father's sword and a small box containing their money. All this was packed on the smaller camel.

From one side of the larger camel he hung a reed basket and from the other, a loosely woven sack. He had a tiny amount of buing in a small vial, just enough to allow him to wet the end of his little finger and let Rob J. suckle the fingertip, and then do the same for Tam. When they were sleeping he placed the older boy in the basket and the baby in the sack, and their mother mounted the camel to ride between them.

It wasn't quite dark when they left the little house in Yehuddiyyeh for the last time, but they didn't dare delay, since the Afghans could fall upon the city at any moment.

Darkness was complete by the time he led the two camels through the deserted western gate. The hunting trail they followed through the hills pa.s.sed so close to the Ghazna campfires that they could hear singing and shouting, and the shrill cries of the Afghans working themselves into a frenzy for the pillaging.

Once a horseman seemed to be galloping straight at them, yipping as he rode, but the hoofbeats veered away.

The buing began to wear off and Rob J. started to whimper and then to cry. Rob thought the sound doomingly loud, but Mary took the boy from the basket and silenced him with her teat.

There was no pursuit. Soon they left the campfires behind, but when Rob looked back whence they had come a roseate nimbus had appeared low in the sky and he knew Ispahan was burning.

They traveled all night and when the first thin light of morning came, he saw he had led them out of the hills and no soldiers were in sight. His body was numb, and his feet ... he knew that when he stopped walking pain would be another enemy. By this time both children were wailing and his gray-faced wife rode with closed eyes, but Rob didn't stop. He forced his tired legs to continue to plod, leading the camels west, toward the first of the Jewish villages.

PART SEVEN.

The Returned.

75.