the Arsiyah returned, just before daybreak, at the very hour when all of creation seemed to fall silent as if fighting off tears, Zelikman could hear the rumbling of the men’s bellies and the grit in their eyelids and the hollowness of failure sounding in their chests.
He waited until he saw a small lizard emerge from a fissure in the rock and creep toward a narrow medallion of sunlight on the granite. Then he led Hillel up over the rise again and back down into the valley, where the tents had been struck and the horses rounded up and saddled and the troops moved out north along the road. Zelikman followed the track northward for five leagues or more and then came to a barren place where another road branched away running northeast toward the shore of the Caspian sea. A small mound of stones marked the presence in this place, at one time if not today, of some ancient god of the crossroads. If you kept on to the north you would come, Hanukkah had told them, to Atil, the Khazar capital, at the mouth of a river that was also called Atil, though some called it Volga. A fresh trail of horse dung and hoof prints marked the northeast road; the Arsiyah were bound for the Caspian shore.
He followed them east for two days, in a steady downpour most of the way, through flooded gorges and spattering mud. The Arsiyah drove themselves hard, taking brief rest, lighting no fires, and after a day of bitter pursuit Zelikman understood the cause of their desperation: they were rushing to the relief of a regiment or a town that they feared might already be lost. Near dawn of the third day he caught his first whiff of the sea and narrowed the distance between himself and the Muhammadan troops until he could see the thongs of cloth-of-gold that enlaced their black queues, the splashes of mud on their leggings. As he came up a rise, he smelled smoke, and half a breath later he saw it, boiling and black. A thick, greasy smell like that which had hung over the stronghold in Azerbaijan. It was the smell of burning animals.
Hillel nickered and stepped sideways, and Zelikman mocked him tenderly for his cowardice. He swung down from the saddle and crept up to the top of the rise and trained the Persian glass on the ruination of a walled town built beside a broad estuary, flat roofs and minarets and a great white mosque giving up their matter and form to heaven in black gas and thick flakes of ash. Through the wooden gates, long strings of men and women and animals knotted and coiled as the townspeople abandoned their lives.
Along the waterfront, burned ships broke slowly into black pieces, and the slant sails of dhows caught fire. Standing off beyond the shallows, dragon prows surveyed the despoiling of the walled town. Fair-haired Northmen in jerseys of barbarous red poled out to their ships on wide barges heavy-laden with bales and casks, with kegs and sacks and huddled women, and handed them up to their fellows on the decks, and poled back to the wharves again for more. The red-shirted men swarmed in the streets, and a dozen of them were at work with irons, prying loose the golden sheeting that clad the domes and minaret spires of the great mosque. They worked quickly and without their usual piling up of booty on the shore for the elaborate rites of their thievish creed, probably because some lookout not distracted by rape or robbery had chanced to gaze down from the shattered walls of the city and see the company of horsemen charging hard for the town gates.
There was a turbulence around those gates now as, driving out the survivors, bright-shirted men put their shoulders to the oak beams and sealed off the living from the dead, the loot from the looted, and bought themselves the time they would need, or so they hoped, to get away. Zelikman had observed firsthand the thievery of Northmen, whom the people of this shore called “the Rus,” and what he had not witnessed he had learned from Amram, who had served alongside blond giants in the
He waited until he saw a small lizard emerge from a fissure in the rock and creep toward a narrow medallion of sunlight on the granite. Then he led Hillel up over the rise again and back down into the valley, where the tents had been struck and the horses rounded up and saddled and the troops moved out north along the road. Zelikman followed the track northward for five leagues or more and then came to a barren place where another road branched away running northeast toward the shore of the Caspian sea. A small mound of stones marked the presence in this place, at one time if not today, of some ancient god of the crossroads. If you kept on to the north you would come, Hanukkah had told them, to Atil, the Khazar capital, at the mouth of a river that was also called Atil, though some called it Volga. A fresh trail of horse dung and hoof prints marked the northeast road; the Arsiyah were bound for the Caspian shore.
He followed them east for two days, in a steady downpour most of the way, through flooded gorges and spattering mud. The Arsiyah drove themselves hard, taking brief rest, lighting no fires, and after a day of bitter pursuit Zelikman understood the cause of their desperation: they were rushing to the relief of a regiment or a town that they feared might already be lost. Near dawn of the third day he caught his first whiff of the sea and narrowed the distance between himself and the Muhammadan troops until he could see the thongs of cloth-of-gold that enlaced their black queues, the splashes of mud on their leggings. As he came up a rise, he smelled smoke, and half a breath later he saw it, boiling and black. A thick, greasy smell like that which had hung over the stronghold in Azerbaijan. It was the smell of burning animals.
Hillel nickered and stepped sideways, and Zelikman mocked him tenderly for his cowardice. He swung down from the saddle and crept up to the top of the rise and trained the Persian glass on the ruination of a walled town built beside a broad estuary, flat roofs and minarets and a great white mosque giving up their matter and form to heaven in black gas and thick flakes of ash. Through the wooden gates, long strings of men and women and animals knotted and coiled as the townspeople abandoned their lives.
Along the waterfront, burned ships broke slowly into black pieces, and the slant sails of dhows caught fire. Standing off beyond the shallows, dragon prows surveyed the despoiling of the walled town. Fair-haired Northmen in jerseys of barbarous red poled out to their ships on wide barges heavy-laden with bales and casks, with kegs and sacks and huddled women, and handed them up to their fellows on the decks, and poled back to the wharves again for more. The red-shirted men swarmed in the streets, and a dozen of them were at work with irons, prying loose the golden sheeting that clad the domes and minaret spires of the great mosque. They worked quickly and without their usual piling up of booty on the shore for the elaborate rites of their thievish creed, probably because some lookout not distracted by rape or robbery had chanced to gaze down from the shattered walls of the city and see the company of horsemen charging hard for the town gates.
There was a turbulence around those gates now as, driving out the survivors, bright-shirted men put their shoulders to the oak beams and sealed off the living from the dead, the loot from the looted, and bought themselves the time they would need, or so they hoped, to get away. Zelikman had observed firsthand the thievery of Northmen, whom the people of this shore called “the Rus,” and what he had not witnessed he had learned from Amram, who had served alongside blond giants in the
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