The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [186]
It was his task, at this moment, to discover how anxious they were. To do what he wanted, he needed all the bargaining power he could get, including any feelings of guilt they might have over Vavuk. He supposed they had hired Kurds to find him. Perhaps the men whom Doria had hired to attack him were also Kurdish. There was a joke in that somewhere, if he hadn’t lost so many men. But then, the friends of Uzum Hasan had not been concerned to rescue his men, just himself. He remembered that Kurdish lands adjoined the lands of the Turcomans. Uzum Hasan’s eldest son, in his twenties, was by a Kurdish wife. Perhaps the men who brought him back from Vavuk were not hired, but came from this very encampment. If so, he hoped not to set eyes on them.
She said, “Take him to see the fellow. He is with the others, and well cared for. Then we shall talk, you and Diadochos and I, over a sherbet.”
He could have eaten the falcon. He bowed, backed and, turning, walked painfully out. By the same unwritten law, no one paid him any attention as he went, although his escort at the door took him every inch of the way to where Julius was. They wore Shiraz cuirasses of gilded steel, and their round shields were all worked in silk. The smell of camels was as strong as before. His wounds ached and throbbed, and he closed his mind to them. He took the chance, as he walked, to look about him; and saw where the caravanserai had been built. Beyond, outlined in lights, he could see the high walls and towers of the town and its citadel, and the double minaret of the old medresseh, and the dome of the mosque. Erzerum, sentinel of the plateau, guarded the camel route between Europe and northern Persia. Along the string of plains between here and Tabriz, thousands of camels passed yearly. Once, as Theodosiopolis, this was a bulwark of the Roman Empire of the East. Romans, Persians, Byzantines, Seljuks, Tartars held it before the Turcomans overran it fifty years or so since, and sent their mothers as negotiators, heralds, couriers, spies. Their brave, their demanding mothers.
His escort stopped. Before him was an earthen building, not a tent, with a stout door. The windows were shuttered, and there was no light round the cracks. There was no sign of his men. Either they were dead, or asleep, or he had been tricked, or else…Just as his guards were starting to unlock the door, Nicholas stepped aside and rapped on the shutters. “Julius? We’re free. Don’t do anything stupid.”
They must have been clustered round the door, waiting to break out. Julius roared, “What! Nicholas!” and there was clamour of voices. A lot of voices. Six? Eight? The door opened and two of his escorts, carrying torches, strode in ahead of him. The light swept round the room, illuminating face after face. Long before the big lamp had been lit, he had counted them. He heard the guard leave, and stood in his silly tunic and leggings with his face aching from the grin that was on it.
There were ten of his own men inside, including his captain, and Julius with two of his servants. They all bore wounds of some sort or another, but they were all on their feet, and none looked mortally sick, or much worse than himself. The man with the shorn arm must have died. They had light, and bedding, and fresh clothes, and the remains of a generous meal. They had put out their own torch, hoping to fight their way out and escape. Julius was pummelling him on the back. It was agony. Then he held him at arm’s length and said, “We’re free?”
“Of course we are. We’re in Erzerum,” Nicholas said. He was looking at them all, one by one, and they responded, crowding round, with bright faces and eager questions. If they blamed him for what had happened, there was no sign of it. Someone said, “Trust young Nicholas!”
“Trust young Nicholas!” said Julius with the utmost good humour. “Who put the perishing archers on the wrong side of the road, and didn’t keep scouts at both ends, and didn’t see to it that we had enough light to tell one man from another? So what happened? And