Silk Road by Colin Falconer Read Free Book Online Page B

madrassahs, the pale blue sky merging with the yellow haze, streaked with smoke from burning fires.
    It was the greatest siege army Josseran had ever seen. Herds of sheep and goats and packhorses and camels seemed to fill the entire plain. Even from a distance the booming of the Tatar kettledrums seemed to make the ground itself vibrate. He heard the braying of horses and camels and the screams of men fighting and dying below the walls as another charge was flung at the gates of the citadel.
    ‘This could be Acre,’ Josseran murmured. If their great enemy could be routed so easily, what chance would they stand against the barbarians?
    They rode through the streets of the old bazaar, passed the smoking, blackened timbers of a merchant warehouse. The cobbles below their horses’ hooves were slick with blood. The Tatar massacre had been chillingly efficient. Men and women and children lay where they had fallen; many of them had been beheaded and mutilated. The corpses had bloated in the sun and were covered with swarms of black flies that rose in murmurous clouds at their passage.
    The stench of death was everywhere. Josseran thought he was accustomed to it, but even he had to swallow back the bile in his throat. William put a sleeve across his mouth, began to gag.
    The Tatar soldiers stared at them with pure hate. They wouldrather cut our throats than parlay with us, Josseran thought, A regiment of Armenian foot soldiers trotted past, urged on by a Tatar drummer mounted on the back of a camel, beating a
naqara
, a war drum. This is why Hülegü found the alliance with Bohemond so useful, Josseran thought. He needs cannon fodder for the walls.
    The dark, brooding presence of the citadel loomed above them. The sun had fallen behind the barbican, throwing the streets in shadow.
    Squadrons of Tatar archers, armed with crossbows, were firing volleys of flaming arrows over the battlements. Nearby, huge siege engines had been drawn up. Josseran counted more than a score of them, great ballistae that hurled massive blocks of stone the size of houses. The walls of the fortress were pocked and battered from the daily assaults.
    ‘Look!’ Gérard hissed, pointing.
    Instead of stones the engineers were loading one of the lighter siege engines, a mangonel, with what appeared to be small, blackened melons. It took him some moments to realize what they were: not melons, or stones, or weapons of any kind. They were loading the sling with scores of human heads. They would not bring down the Saracen walls but he could imagine the effect these grisly missiles would have on the defenders’ morale.
    The sling was released, with a hiss, and its gruesome cargo arced towards the burning walls.
    A detachment of horsemen approached them through the smoke, the now familiar red and grey standards whipping from pennant lances.
    Bohemond’s soldiers had already dismounted and were kneeling beside their horses. Josseran and the others were slow to respond so Juchi’s men dragged them from their saddles.
    ‘What is happening?’ William shrieked.
    Josseran made no effort to resist. It was pointless. The Tatars forced them to their knees. From somewhere behind him he heard their guide, Yusuf, sobbing and begging for his life. William began to recite a prayer, the
Te Deum
.
    Beside him Gérard had his face pressed into the dirt, a Tatar boot on his neck. ‘Do they wish our heads for their catapults?’ he whispered.
    ‘If they do,’ Josseran answered, ‘the friar’s will make a particularly fine, heavy one. It may even make the breach in the wall that they have been hoping for.’
    He could feel the drumming under his knees from the hammer of the horses’ hooves. Were they to die then, their faces in the dirt?

XV

    T HE HORSEMEN STOPPED no more than twenty paces away; to a man they were armed with battleaxes and iron maces. Two of the Tatars walked their horses forward. One of them had a gold winged helmet and a leopard-skin