Silk Road by Colin Falconer Read Free Book Online Page A

the sun, their red and grey standards whipped from pennant lances. Yusuf shouted an oath. His eyes were wide, like a horse running from a fire.
    But the horsemen had already outflanked them, in an expert pincer movement, executed at the gallop. Gérard instinctively reached for his sword but at a sharp command from Josseran he sheathed it again. Bohemond’s soldiers, too, had been taken by surprise and sat docile in their saddles, watching.
    Josseran looked around at the friar. William sat calmly in the saddle, his face a mask. ‘Well, Templar,’ he shouted over the thunder of hooves, ‘let us hope your Grand Master’s faith in you was not misplaced.’
    Kismet stamped her feet, excited by the charge and the foreign scent in her nostrils.
    The horsemen whooped like devils as they completed the encirclement and then rushed towards them. There were perhaps as many as a hundred in the squadron. For a moment it seemed they would gallop over them but at the last moment they reined in their broad-shouldered ponies and stopped.
    Then there was deathly silence, save for the occasional snort of a horse and jangle of traces. Josseran spat out their dust.
    So. These were the dread Tatars.
    Their stench was more horrible than their appearance. Their cheeks were the colour of boiled leather and without exception they had dark eyes that seemed to slant, and coarse, straight black hair. They wore little body armour, either a coat of mail or a cuirass of leather covered with iron scales. Each soldier had a lobster-tail helmet of leather or iron and a round, leather-covered wicker shield. In hand-to-hand combat they would be no match for a heavily armoured Frankish knight, Josseran thought. Yet he supposed, looking at the bows they carried with them, and the box-like quivers of arrows on their belts, they would never allow a superior enemy to get up close.
    Their horses were scarcely bigger than mules; ridiculous, ugly animals with blunt noses and large shoulders. Was this really the most feared cavalry in the world?
    One of the Tatars, wearing a gold-winged helmet, walked his pony forward and looked them over. Their officer, Josseransupposed. His eyes were golden and almond-shaped, like a cat. He had a wisp of a black beard and carried a battleaxe in his right fist.
    ‘Who are you?’ he said, in passable Arabic. ‘Why do you approach Aleppo?’
    Josseran removed the scarf he had coiled around his mouth and he saw a moment’s surprise in the eyes of the Tatar officer at seeing his fire-gold beard. ‘My name is Josseran Sarrazini. I am a knight of the Order of the Temple, assigned to the fortress of Acre. My lord is Thomas Bérard, Grand Master of the Order. I have been sent as ambassador to your prince, the lord Hülegü.’
    ‘And what of the crow perched on the brown skeleton behind you?’
    The crow. Josseran smiled. In his black habit, it was exactly what William looked like. ‘He is a fellow ambassador.’
    ‘He does not dress like one.’
    ‘What does he say?’ William said.
    ‘He wishes to know our business.’
    ‘Tell him I have a missive for his lord from the Pope himself.’
    ‘Be patient and let me do the talking for us.’
    ‘My name is Juchi,’ the Tatar officer said. ‘I will escort you to Aleppo. Hülegü, Khan of all Persia, will meet with you there.’
    Josseran turned to William. ‘They are going to take us to Aleppo to meet with Hülegü.’
    ‘Good,’ William said. ‘I have had enough of this horse and your company already. I do not think I could stand another day of it.’

XIV

    T HEY HEARD A LEPPO long before it came into view.
    The city was in its death throes. Only the citadel, with its great barbicans and paved glacis, perched on a rock high above the town, still resisted the Tatar onslaught. Below the fortress, the town itself was already in the hands of the invaders, who had exacted swift retribution for the people’s intransigence. Smoke rose from the gutted remains of the mosques and