Meng Guang said nothing, though he raised his eyes at last and met those of Kublai. Almost like a shiver, he shook his head.
‘Very well,’ Kublai said. ‘I see I will have to disappoint a friend. Take this one and hang his body from the walls. The rest will live.’
He watched closely as the Mongol with the iron pole shouldered through the guards and pushed Meng Guang through to the front. The old man went without a protest and his guards did nothing. They did not dare look at each other, understanding at last that their lives hung on a single word from this strange prince who spoke in the language of authority.
‘My word is iron,’ Kublai said to the guards, as Meng Guang was led away. ‘Your people will come to know this, in time.’
Hulegu was panting slightly as he drew to a halt and passed his hunting eagle to its handler. The bird screeched and flapped, but the man knew her well and calmed the bird with a hand on her neck.
General Kitbuqa carried a white-flecked kestrel on his right arm, but he had only two pigeons on his belt and his expression was sour. Hulegu grinned at him as he dismounted and handed over a small deer, its head lolling brokenly. His cook was Persian, a local man who claimed to have once served the caliph himself. When he had been captured on the way back to the city from some distant market, Hulegu had taken him into his staff. It pleased him to eat meals the caliph should have been enjoying, though he made sure to have them tasted first. The dark- skinned man bobbed his head as he took the flopping animal, his gaze bright on the eagle as she fussed. His people loved to hunt the air. Hawks and kestrels were treasures, but the massive eagles were almost unknown in that region. The dark gold bird that settled on the handler’s wrist was worth a fortune.
Hulegu looked to Baghdad, just two miles to the north. His armies surrounded the ancient walled city, even to the point of blocking the Tigris with pontoons they had constructed in his absence. In all directions, he could see the dark smears of his tumans, waiting patiently. The caliph had refused to destroy the walls as an expression of his good faith. Hulegu still had the letter somewhere in his packs. The words were clear enough, but it was still a mystery to him. The man had written of the followers of Mohammed, certain that they would rise up to defend the centre of their faith. Hulegu wondered where they all were as his army settled in around the city. In a previous generation, the caliph might have been right, but Genghis had slaughtered his way across the region, not once but twice. It amused Hulegu to think of the survivors crawling out of rubble, only to encounter Genghis on his way back to the Xi Xia territory on his last campaign. Baghdad did not have the support it had enjoyed in previous centuries, but the caliph seemed almost unaware of his isolation.
Hulegu accepted a drink of orange juice, chilled in the river overnight. He knocked it back and tossed the cup to a servant without looking to see if the man caught it. The people of Baghdad did not share their master’s confidence in God. Every night, they let themselves down by ropes, risking broken bones by scrambling down the rough walls. Hulegu had no idea how many people there were inside, but each dawn found another hundred or so being herded up by his men. It had become almost a game to them. He let his men practise their archery on the groups, giving the men and boys to be slaughtered while the women and girls were handed out to those who had pleased their officers. The caliph had not surrendered. Until he did, their lives were forfeit.
Hulegu heard the sizzle as his cook put fresh-cut venison steaks into a pan of hot fat. The smell was laced with garlic and his mouth watered in anticipation. The man was a marvel. Kitbuqa’s pitiful pigeons would not add much meat to the general’s noon meal, he thought, but then that was the difference between eagles and hawks. His eagle could send even a wolf tumbling. She and Hulegu were the same, he thought complacently. Predators did not need mercy. He could envy the bird its perfect single-minded ruthlessness. It had no doubts or fears, nothing to trouble a mind dedicated only to the kill.
Once more, he looked to Baghdad and his mouth tightened to a thin line. His cannons barely chipped the stones. The city’s defensive walls had been designed with sloping surfaces that sent the balls skipping away with little damage. When the black powder was gone, he would be left with torsion catapults and heavy trebuchets. In time, they would still break the walls, but not with the same roaring terror, not with the same feeling of godlike power. Baghdad was known to have no boulders for miles around it, but his men had planned for that, collecting them in carts as they came south. Eventually, they would run out and he would have to send his tumans to collect more.
Hulegu grimaced to himself, weary of the same thoughts spinning in his head as each slow day passed. He could assault the walls at any time, but they were still strong. Stubborn defenders could take as many as four or five of his men for each one they lost. That was the purpose of castles and walled cities, after all. They would pour naphtha oil and drop rocks on those trying to climb. It would be a bloody business and he did not want to see thousands of his men killed over one city, no matter how much wealth was reputed to lie inside its walls. It would always be better to smash the walls down, or for starvation to bring the caliph to his senses.
‘If you make me wait much longer,’ Hulegu muttered, staring at the distant city, ‘it will go hard with you.’
General Kitbuqa looked up as he spoke and Hulegu realised the man was still hoping for an invitation to share the noon meal. He smiled, recalling the eagle’s stoop. There was too much meat for one man, but he did not offer to share it. Hawks and eagles did not fly together, he reminded himself. They were very different breeds.
Caliph al-Mustasim was a worried man. His ancestors had secured a small empire around Baghdad that had lasted five centuries, with the city as the jewel. It had even survived the ravages of Genghis as he swept through the area decades before. Al-Mustasim liked to believe Allah had made the Mongol khan blind to the city, so that he rode past it without stopping. Perhaps it was even true. Al-Mustasim was not only of the royal Abbasid line, but also the leader of the Moslem faith in the world, his city a light for them all. Surely there were armies on their way to relieve Baghdad? He clasped his hands and felt the sweat on them as his fingers slid together and apart, over and over. The caliph was large of body, his flesh made soft by years of luxury. He felt the clammy perspiration in his armpits and clicked his fingers to have slave girls approach and wipe him with cloths. He did not break off his fearful thoughts as they tended to him, raising his arms and wiping at the smooth brown expanse that was revealed beneath his silks and layers. They had been chosen for their beauty, but he had no eyes for them that day. He barely noticed as one of them fed him sticky sweets from a bowl, pressing them into his mouth as if they fattened a prize bull.
As he lay there, a cluster of laughing children ran into the room and he looked fondly at them. They brought noise and life, enough to pierce the despair that weighed him down.
‘The qamara!’ his son demanded, looking up at him beseechingly. The other children waited in hope to see the marvel and al-Mustasim’s face softened.
‘Very well, just for a little while before you return to your studies,’ he said.
He waved his arm and they scattered before it, whooping in excitement. The device had been built to the specifications of the great Moslem scientist, Ibn al-Haitham. ‘Qamara’ was merely the word for ‘dark room’, but the name had stuck. Only a few servants went with him as he walked along a corridor to the room where it had been constructed. The children ran ahead in their excitement, telling those who had not already seen it everything they could remember.
It was a room in itself, a large structure of black cloth that was as dark as night inside. Al-Mustasim gazed on the black cube fondly, as proud as if he had invented it himself.
‘Which one of you will be first?’ he asked.
They leapt and shouted their names and he picked one of his daughters, a little girl named Suri. She stood shivering with delight as he placed her in the right spot. As the curtain fell, plunging them all into darkness, the children shouted nervously. His servants brought a flame and soon little Suri was lit brightly by shuttered lamps. She preened in the attention and he chuckled to see her.
‘The rest of you go through that partition now. Close your eyes and do not open them until I say.’
They obeyed him, feeling their way through the layer of black cloth by touch.
‘Are you all ready?’ he asked.
The light from the lamps on Suri would pass through a tiny hole in the cloth. He did not fully understand how light could carry her inverted image, but there she would be, inside the room with them in light and shadow. It was a marvel and he smiled as he told them to open their eyes.
He heard them gasp in wonder calling to each other to see.
Before al-Mustasim could organise another to take Suri’s place, he heard the voice of his vizier Ahriman speaking to the servants outside. Al-Mustasim frowned, the moment of simple joy spoiled. The man would not leave
