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