greeted him with renewed interest, which by their nature they did their best to conceal. After they remembered their dead they sat down by a good fire, and the Sorb slave piled their plates with grilled lamb and rice boiled with onion and fat and filled their cups with wine. The stranger attended to his food without apparent pleasure and sipped his wine. Then he took out a small length of clay pipe or hollowed bone, filled it with a dark paste and lit it with a straw
“Regensburg,” he said. “I spent time there, as a student of physic, many years ago. In the Jewish street.”
“A golden lane of piety and learning,” Joseph Hirkanos suggested, “lighting the gloomy precincts of Christendom.”
“There was a family with whom I lodged. The family of Meshulem ben Hayim, noted physicians all.”
Joseph, Menashe, their Hirkanos cousins and the three other Radanites in the party, members of the Sac- erdoti clan based in Ragusa, maintained the agreed-upon silence, watchful and measured. The nephew snorted and then endeavored to transform the snort into a not very credible simulation of choking on his wine.
“A great family,” Joseph Hirkanos said, in the same bland way “A credit to our brothers in the West. But not one with which we are personally acquainted, alas, having never fallen ill in that city”
“I imagine their numbers have dwindled since then,” the stranger said. “They were never numerous to begin with. A few old bachelors and widowers, buried in their books. Pitiably tending to the bodies of the very nobles and burghers who condone the massacre of Jews by ignorant mobs.”
“I believe,” Joseph Hirkanos said, “that only one of that family remains.”
“Only one.”
“His name-” Joseph pretended to consult his brother with a look “-I believe it may be …”
“Solomon?” the stranger said eagerly, and Joseph understood for the first time how young he was. But he said nothing, and the others shook their heads in solemn ignorance or amnesia.
“You have a remarkable horse,” the nephew said, after a pause. “It's a shame that your saddle and harness are of such poor quality and so hard used.”
The Radanites turned to him and stared, none longer or with more astonishment than his uncle Joseph. The stranger's puzzlement vanished more quickly than that of the Radanites.
“Indeed,” he said. “I owe him better. In the morning I would like to see the best of your stock.”
“Your uncle is dead,” Joseph Hirkanos said. “Your father has abandoned all hope of your return.”
Zelikman ben Solomon smiled.
“He abandoned that years before I ever left Re-gensburg,” he said. “How is the old buzzard's health?”
“Weak. Once we have concluded our business in Atil, we intend to return to Regensburg, taking the more direct route. With God's help you could see him again before it is too late.”
“It was too late for him and me on the day that I was born,” Zelikman said.
“To forgive is a great blessing,” Joseph said. “But it is a greater one still to allow oneself to be forgiven.”
“The Radanite stations are comfortable and well provisioned,” Menashe said. “The consideration you paid in return for passage with us would hardly reflect the luxury you could expect.”
“The old boy doesn't have six months in him,” the nephew said.
Zelikman thought it over, slowly, seeming to visit in his pipe fancy the fog and clear sunshine, the deep fragrant forest, the cathedral bells.
“I accept your kind invitation,” Zelikman said. “My services as a physician ought just to offset my fare.”
The elephant gave a low moan, startling them, and a moment later they heard a faint trill, carried on the wind from off the river, and then another.
“Trumpets,” the nephew said.
They walked to the edge of the upland and saw tiny fires starring the eastern dark. The Brotherhood of the Elephant had at last arrived at the walls of Atil. Zelikman watched the pinpoints flicker with an air of uneasiness as if they formed the points of a constellation by which he hoped to steer a doubtful course.
“War,” Joseph Hirkanos said. “Bad for business.”
Zelikman said nothing for a long while, and the old Radanite assumed that he had not heard or had nothing to add to his sage and bitter remark.
“That's not the case, alas,” Zelikman said finally, “if one is a surgeon.”
The next morning, the Italian sat up and asked for broth and soon afterward was heard to whistle the opening measures of his constant tuneless tune. But when they went to find Zelikman ben Solomon of Re-gensburg, to thank him for saving the life of their companion, of whom, despite his whistling, they were all rather fond, neither he nor his horse could be found. A subsequent inspection of the wagons revealed the absence of a good harness and an excellent Iberian saddle.
CHAPTER TEN
“I can on ly s ave men one at a time,” Zelikman said.
He sat cross-legged on a carpe t that smel led like rutting sheep, in the cramped gloom of a circular dog tent constructed, as far as he could tell, from equal quantities of rancid felt, dung smoke and the acrid shadow cast by a naphtha lamp. He was working to get Amram to take him and his proposal seriously, a task impeded by the fact that he was still wearing the robes and head wrap with which the Radanites had generously if unwittingly supplied him, his patchy golden beard tied in trivial plaits and blackened with lamp soot.
“I am not overly encumbered by principle, as you know,” Zelikman continued. “I am a gentleman of the road, an apostate from the faith of my fathers, a renegade, a brigand, a hired blade, a thief, but on this one small principle of economy, damn you, and damn that troublemaking little stripling, and damn every one of those men out there, living men, in full possession, for the most part, of all their limbs and humors, I have to hold firm: if we can only save them one man at a time, then by God we must
“I didn't get a word of that,” Filaq said. Having declined to sit with the reunited partners, he leaned against the roof pole nearest the low door flap, hugging himself in the way of a youth trying to keep his temper, glowering at Zelikman from under his ruddy eyebrows. “But if what this barber proposes is that, having mustered these men and promised them redress of their grievance and a fine fight, we now sneak into the city like cutpurses and strangle Buljan in his sleep with a silk girdle … “
“A scarf will do as well,” Zelikman said.
“… and send those good men home with a handclasp and our thanks for their trouble, then I suggest he wriggle on back to whatever reeking Western sump exuded him and leave us to settle this matter in the Khazar way Openly. By fire and steel. And soon, Amram, today, now, before the main body of the army can return from the Crimea and surround us.”
“We sent our demand for his surrender not two hours ago, boy!” Amram said. Six lancers of the 15th Arsiyah, the best-attired, finest-armored troops in the Brotherhood, had been admitted under flag of truce into the city, bearing testimonials of the humble obeisance of the Little Elephant, Filaq, eternally loyal servant of the kagan in whose name all truces were held to be sanctified, and lenient terms of surrender to Buljan, who would be permitted to keep not only his household goods, camels and tents but-over the objections of Filaq-the eyes and tongue in his head.
“And in any case, your ‘good men’ have no grievance with Buljan,” Zelikman said, fighting the urge to make a trial of his skill at strangulation, by scarf or bare fingers, right there. “Their quarrel is with the
