Tabriz, the Mongol Empire, AD 1299
The sun beat down. It was always hot in summer and Jared Bey, chief silâhtar to Sultan Ghazan of the Ilkhanate Mongols knew better than to be working at this hour in the afternoon. He sprawled in a hammock on the shady balcony of his whitewashed stone house, clear of the stench and noise of the street below, letting his eyes rest on the hazy immediacy of the mountains across the plain.
Softly his concubine Kadrİye laid a sherbet down on the little table and backed away, her hands respectfully together.
‘Teşekkür ederim,’ he murmured, grateful for its cool refreshment. She had always placed his own comforts before her own and he wondered what she really thought of her foreign master.
He’d done well and should be content with the chance of fortune that had seen him to this place. It was now eight years after the humiliation at Acre. The captives of value had been paraded in chains before the triumphant Khalil, made to bear the banners of the defeated Crusaders upside down in derision – and the heads of the less valued dangling from poles.
Later, away in the distance he saw the last knights and their treasure embark by treaty on Templar ships to sail away for ever. He would never forgive their betrayal, for it would have been only Christian charity to bargain for the freedom of the Saracens’ prisoners.
His own fate was efficiently determined: sold into slavery to the Mongols in the north for a goodly sum as a skilled foreign craftsman.
The early years had been hard, but his natural ability had brought respect and advancement – and preservation for Perkyn, who he’d claimed as his indispensable assistant. Together they’d fought for standing in an alien and merciless land. The small competences he had learnt in Acre had since progressed to valuable skills as an armourer, capable of producing weapons, armour and the peculiar battlefield devices favoured by the Mongols.
He was put in charge of the field armourers, a high position that brought with it a residence here in the capital and a crew of smiths and artificers. They were a motley band, men from all parts of the empire in outlandish dress and habit and were troublesome to rule.
Nevertheless it was a far more agreeable life than he’d ever experienced, much more than in England – but he was a slave and would never now know any other life. Occasionally his thoughts had turned to his son but he knew it was becoming increasingly unlikely he would see him again.
However, shortly he must leave these comforts for a time to join another campaign. Later in the evening cool, ox-trains would set out to the border bearing their equipment: tools, forges, charcoal, iron scrap, specialist anvils, heat treating oils, all the impedimenta of fire and iron made transportable.
It was trouble with the Seljuq Turks, a border disturbance normally settled with massed horsemen. It seemed that this was a more than usually stubborn display by the Seljuqs, probably a siege, given that he and other long-stay units had been sent for. He hoped not, for this would be his third, and the customary conclusion to a Mongol siege was mass slaughter with bodies piled outside the gates to rot while he tried to get on with his repairing.
It turned out to be as he’d feared: a small walled city whose name escaped him, in the foothills of the borderlands that had thought it could outlast the patience of a Mongol horde.
The outcome was inevitable but in the meantime it was life in an encampment on a dusty plain – tents, meagre rations, stinking field latrines and boredom.
His workplace was in the rear, well protected among the baggage train and stores, and he had little to fear except pilfering and their lack of care in the use of fires. His tent set up, he was free to rest from the long ride, leaving Perkyn to get the long, leather forge tent stocked and laid out. His ustabaşı could be relied on to get the men’s quarters erected and ready for occupation.
As the days passed there was no movement in the situation that he could see. Mining was proving near impossible as there was bedrock just under the surface and open ground was making it hard to close in on the walls. The Mongol commander would need to think again if he was going to end the siege in weeks instead of months.
‘What’s this, then?’ Perkyn asked, pausing counting nails. He nodded to a column of soldiers approaching in the distance, hauling a structure shrouded in cloth.
‘Only one?’ Jared retorted with contempt. It wasn’t hard to make out that this was a mangonel, quite big – and there were no others.
The column passed through the camp. These men were different to any he’d seen before, slighter in build, more oriental but escorted by mounted Mongols with their characteristic short, recurved bows.
They moved on and he saw them take position squarely before the massive main gates of the city. He shook his head in disbelief – this had been the object of so many bloody attacks that had been beaten off – surely they didn’t think that with this one engine they could do better? Dozens of even bigger ones had not made any difference at Acre.
He watched them set up camp around it but then lost interest.