“Hai, Timur Bahadur!”
Quickly they broke camp and rode, for they had rested while Timur led the Kipchak riders a crazy chase in circles. And now, being among friends, Timur dozed in the saddle; and Olajai rode beside him.
CHAPTER III
BATTLE
Five days brought Timur to the Jihun’s poplar lined banks; and swimming this river put the Jagatai realm behind them. At the Well of Saghej they found Mir Hussein, with Dilshad Aga, his wife, and some forty horsemen.
The King Maker’s grandson was handsome as his sister was lovely; a small, pointed black beard, and high arched brows, and a high bridged, straight nose with nostrils whose flare made one think of a stallion scenting a fight. Until his army had been scattered, he had been King in Kandahar; now he had lost everything but hope.
There was no meat, so they ate cooked millet and buttered tea. Mir Hussein said, “Bismillahi, it could be worse.”
Timur grimaced. “We can’t eat sand very long. But with a couple good raids, I’ll have an army at my back. The men of Kesh were giving me hard looks, you’d think I’d sold them out, just because I took the thankless job of trying to stand between them and those Kipchak hounds! But this fast ride has set a lot of them thinking.”
“Inshallah! But I can’t show up in Kandahar with a guard of forty men.”
Timur chuckled sourly. “No, they’ve probably got a new king there. That’s the trouble, too many kings, instead of one good one. Now, your grandfather—”
Mir Hussein sighed. “May God be well pleased with him! But do you think he could improve things? He used to pull kings out of his saddlebags, but this is different. Still, you’d do pretty well as Grand Khan of the Jagatai.”
Dangerous ground. If Timur did raise an army to drive the present puppet out of Samarkand, he’d be quite a hero, but once he took the throne, jealousy would start feud. Mir Hussein was good in battle, and good nowhere else. “You’re the grandson of Mir Kazagan,” Timur countered. “How’s Tekil?”
“Hungry and looking for business. At least seven hundred Turkomans and the like.”
“Our hundred will draw his following,” Timur argued. “And with that start, we’ll begin to make an impression.”
So they rode through the march of hell, across the black sands of Kivac. The scrawny oasis looked like a small paradise, for the lips of Timur’s men were cracked from thirst.
The citadel loomed up, above the poplars. “I don’t like it,” Timur said. “No one working in the fields. No one tending the ditches.”
Instead of pressing on to the city, they made camp at the fringe of green which marked the beginning of cultivation.
Timur beckoned to Eltchi Bahadur and Tagai Bouga Barlas. “We’ll ride in and pay our respects to Tekil.”
Hussein cut in, “No! Let me go. He knows I’ve spent a couple of months at the Well of Saghej, and he made no trouble. Let me talk to him.”
Timur’s eyes narrowed. “Hmmm … don’t tell him I’m here. Just say you know where I am.”
The deep-set Turki eyes sparkled. “So you’ve been thinking about that mess in Samarkand?”
Where Hussein had been the ill favored one, it now seemed that Timur’s head was most in demand.
That night, Timur posted double guards and slept with his boots on. While his fame as a captain would always get him followers, it would also make his head a prize in a land where every man was a king, and allegiances changed overnight.
In the morning he heard trumpets and drums, and saw Mir Hussein’s standard, and the riders who came from the gates, the fields and through the groves.
“Break camp, and be ready to mount up!” Timur commanded.
Then he rode out with twenty men to meet Tekil.
Ceremonious greetings: the burly governor fairly fell from his horse to be the first to dismount. A big, red-faced man, a hearty, smiling man. “Welcome, welcome, Timur Bek! Kivak is yours. You and your brother, I bid you welcome.”
Tekil had an escort of perhaps two hundred horses. Timur wondered where the others were. He caught old Hashim’s narrowed eyes, and made a twist of head and chin. The old fellow gave a gesture of assent; and unobtrusively edged from the clump of horsemen, to head back to camp.
More compliments. Hussein was smooth and smiling and affable. Tomorrow, he and Timur would with pleasure and heartiness attend the governor’s banquet. Today, Allah bear witness, things were in an uproar in camp. Horses, badly overtaxed, needed attention. And some of the party was still unaccounted for. Ay,Wallah! Some baggage animals, carrying all the gifts designed for His Excellency, were lagging a day’s march behind.
Something was wrong, something was off color; Hussein’s fluent patter confirmed Timur’s earlier premonitions. He said, cutting in brusquely, “Allied-to-Greatness, we beg permission to turn from the light of your Presence!”
Words and music did not matter. He was in the saddle before Tekil fairly realized that another speaker had addressed him. Tagi Bouga Barlas mounted up; and so did Hussein.
Tekil’s face changed. And then came the great bawling voice of Eltchi Bahadur, and the pounding of hooves. “To horse, O Bek! The bastard’s got us hemmed in!”
“Swords out!”
And Timur had scarcely shouted his command when an arrow smacked home with a solid thump. Eltchi was shooting, shooting hard, fast, straight. “Get out of my way,” he howled, “get out of my way!”
Timur and Mir Hussein were blocking his line of fire. Then the visitors and the host’s men went into action, blades out; some lancers maneuvered for working space, while others threw their lances down and snatched maces from their saddle bows.
“To camp!” Timur shouted. “Archers fall out!”
There was no drill by command, as such; it was rather instinctive teamwork, based on many a pitched battle and running fight. Eltchi Bahadur charged headlong at the Tekil’s guard. Hacking and hewing, he was swallowed up by milling horsemen and billowing dust.
Meanwhile, as though called by signal, half Timur’s escort swooped to right and left, and the bows began to twang. Hard driven shafts laced the flanks of Tekil’s tight packed traitors; murderous, close range archery; cunningly driven shafts, some picking men, others nailing horses whose fall would block the movement of other riders.
Stung by the ferocious archery, Tekil’s men opened out. Timur and Hussein pressed in, head on, to divide the enemy. And from the rear came the brawling, booming voice of Eltchi Bahadur. He looked as though an avalanche had passed over him, but he was hewing his way back to meet Timur.
Timur’s archers fell back, shooting as they withdrew and covering the retreat. Over the roar of battle, he heard the approach of his main detachment, and saw his chance. “This way, you bawling bull!” he shouted to Eltchi, and pointed toward a low hillock.
In a moment, Timur’s standard was on the knoll.
Dust ringed the oasis. The rest of Tekil’s men were closing in. It was now clear where the governor’s force had been. It was all too clear that the riders trailing Timur out of Samarkand had been baiting him, while a courier rode directly to Tekil. Bikijek, he now concluded, had known all the while where Mir Hussein was, and had counted on Timur’s joining his brother-in-law: the two were to be settled beyond the border of the Jagatai territory.
Ten to one: Timur took a fresh horse, and looked out and down at the closing circle of steel. He said to his wife, and to Dilshad Aga, “Keep your